FIVE EXHORTATIONS (PART 1)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Be on your guard.

1 Corinthians 16:13a

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

The Apostle Paul cared deeply for all his brother and sister Christians, no matter where they lived. During his missionary journeys, he took the Gospel to the world outside of Judea and Samaria, to places that had never heard of the name of Jesus before. And where he was received, he would plant churches, equipping believers to carry on his work long after he had moved onto the next place.

After he left a church, he never forgot about it or its congregants. In fact, if there was anything that kept Paul up at night, it was the incessant worrying over the churches he had put in place. This worrying played out in a series of epistles that occupy must of the New Testament, one of which we have been studying for quite a few months now, 1 Corinthians.

So what was Paul concerned about in regard to the church in Corinth?

First and foremost was church unity but right after that would be the persecution that Paul knew would come on the new Corinthian Christians. And so as he gets set to close his first letter, we find the apostle provide five closing exhortations which we will look at over the next five messages. Here’s the first exhortation:

Be on your guard. 1 Corinthians 16:13a

The call is here is to remain alert. There were plenty of reasons to do so.

First, the Corinthian church needed to be on guard against outside threats. The Christian religion was a fledgling belief system that came on the scene where far more established systems, systems that weren’t thrilled with competing. And so just as Jesus found stiff resistance, especially from the Jewish religious establishment, Paul knew the Corinthians would face the same just as he did in almost every place he took the Gospel to and so his call was to be on guard.

Second, although persecutors were a threat to be concerned with, there was an even greater danger ever lurking, the spiritual menace named Satan. Here’s what Peter said about him:

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8    

Did you catch Peter’s command?

He said to “be alert”. Don’t let your guard down. If the Corinthian church wasn’t wary of their evil, spiritual adversary, he would infect the church from the inside out with sinful behaviors and indeed this was beginning to happen within the Corinthian church. We know because Paul addresses it head on in this letter as well as the matter of the church not disciplining the person for the sins they committed. In other words, the church was complicit in the transgressions carried out because they took no action and this was something completely unacceptable to Paul, and rightfully so.

And so the first exhortation from Paul as he closes his first letter to the Corinthians was to be on guard. This urging was not only important to the Corinthian church but to any and all Christian churches since then. Satan is still in the business of destroying every good and perfect thing that the Lord puts together and he knows the church is the perfect place to begin so it’s always time to remain vigilant and keep Jesus at the forefront of everything because a place where Jesus is first is a place where the enemy will always be last.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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