Messy Church_Tough Questions_2_16_25

Messy Church 1st Corinthians 4:6-13

Title: Tough Questions February 16, 2025

1st Corinthians 4:6-8,
I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.

For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!

Tough questions will either reveal comparison or contrast:

1. Have we become spectacles?

1st Corinthians 4-9, For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men.

Mark 9:35-37,
And He sat down and called the twelve. And He said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And He took a child and put him in the midst of them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me, and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but Him who sent Me.”

2. Are we considered fools?

1st Corinthians 4:10,
We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

Acts 17:18,
Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”— because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

3. Have we given everything?

1st Corinthians 4:11-13a,
To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and

buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat.

Matthew 8:20, And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

4. Are we seen as scum?

1st Corinthians 4:13b,
We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

2nd Timothy 3:12,
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

John 15:18-19,
 If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Big Idea: If the world does not hate us, we must ask ourselves… Why?

Next Step: Instead of asking how to get the world to love us… Ask…

John 6:63-65,
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray Him.) And He said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.”