1 Corinthians 4:9-21 | Episode #983

July 16, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 4:9-21

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts,

and so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians before we move on to the book of Joshua.

For I think that God has displayed us the apostles last as men condemned to death.

And he's right.

All but one died of natural causes.

I mean, all but one died as martyrs.

The only one that didn't die as a martyr was the one who Peter was talking about what was going to happen with him when he was being selfish, talking to Jesus on the seashore.

He was walking with Jesus, and Jesus had already told him, will you feed my sheep?

And he says,

he says, do you love me? And Peter says,

do you? He says, agape. Do you agape me? And Peter says, you know I filet o you. I brotherly love you.

And the reason Peter says that is because he's already rejected him. He's already. He's already disseding.

And so Peter says, I brotherly love you. But it's obvious I don't agape love you because I wouldn't have done what I did.

He says, so do you agape me, Peter? And he says, he says, lord, I filet o you.

He said, feed my sheep,

Peter, do you agape me?

Peter says,

lord, you know I love you as a brother.

Feed my sheep.

Then he says, peter, Peter, do you love me as a brother?

He says, lord, you know I love you as a brother.

He says, we'll feed my sheep,

man. That's a great interaction, isn't it?

And then he turns around, looks at John, says, what about him?

You know you ain't too far from glory.

And right next to glory is. Is the flesh.

He turns about, turns, looks at John,

says, what about him?

Jesus said, that's none of your business.

If I keep him alive till I come back, that's between me and him.

I think Peter got John out of martyrdom.

I think when they get to heaven, they're going to be a lot of laughing about that.

Yeah, you run your mouth one too many. And now John, who you was worried about, I just made sure he didn't get martyred.

Ha ha ha ha.

He says, as men condemned to death, for we have been made a spectacle, spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.

It's one of those passages which mentions that angels don't understand this process.

Okay,

so we're a spectacle to those who don't understand as humans. And we're a spectacle to angels because they don't understand the grace of God.

Okay? And the reason they don't understand the grace of God is because they don't experience the grace of God,

who are fools for Christ's sake,

but you.

We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ.

We are weak, but you're strong. Now he's starting to make fun of him.

You are distinguished. But we are dishonored to the present hour. We both hunger and thirst and we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless.

And we labor working with our own hands. Being reviled,

we bless. Being persecuted, we endure being defamed, we beg or entreat.

We have been made as filth of the world,

the off scoring of all things. Until now.

What he's saying is, I mean, I, I, I, I'm, I, I earn my own income, I do my own thing. I am, I, I am, I am, I am working,

I'm laboring for the kingdom and you're over there arguing about stupid stuff.

That's what he's saying.

Well, you quit.

I do not write these things to shame you.

But as beloved children, I warn you,

what he's saying is,

I'm doing all this stuff and I'm, you know, he's beaten and imprisoned.

He labored on his own,

he was carried before kings and governors,

he was humiliated.

And y' all arguing between whether or not you're in on Apollos's team or my team.

He says, I'm not writing this to shame you, I'm just telling you you need to be warned about this.

For though you might have 10,000 instructors in Christ,

yet you do not have many fathers.

He says, I was your spiritual father.

I'm the one that brought you the gospel.

For in Christ I have begotten you through the gospel.

Therefore I urge you,

imitate me.

That's some pretty strong words. And for this reason I have sent Timothy to you,

by the way, I,

I always find it an opportunity in every church I've ever pastored to take called men and teach them through first and second Timothy. It's a,

it's a pleasure to do so.

Timothy is a great leader of God,

leader in the kingdom,

and he is being taught by the apostle Paul, and he's being sent by the apostle Paul to handle them.

He says, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord,

who will remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach everywhere, in every church. He's saying I teach the same thing everywhere.

Now some are puffed up as though I were not coming to you.

Now, you need to hear this.

Because this, he's saying, daddy's coming home.

Okay,

Meaning y' all talk a bunch of trash till Daddy gets there,

right?

But I will come to you shortly if the Lord wills.

And I will know not the word of those who are puffed up,

but the power.

Meaning I'm bringing the power to the table.

They talk about arguing about this and that and the other.

He's saying I make the lame walk in the blind. See,

I raised the dead.

The miracles Christ did I do.

And greater than these,

he says, when I show up, it ain't going to be reasoning.

For the kingdom of God is not in word,

but in power.

Now what you hear me? That is not dismissing the Word of God,

but the Word of God, the Logos of God, the revelation of God.

If it is going to have its fullness, it must be planted,

it must be watered, it must grow,

and it must produce.

It must produce power.

Churches spend every Sunday morning trying to talk people into repentance,

calling it salvation.

That is the first step.

There's nothing wrong with it.

God has given us a gift that relates to it and called people to operate in it. It's called evangelism.

It's someone who has the power to speak the word of God to those who have not heard it, not received it, and they hear it and they repent and they turn to Him.

They don't make them born again, but when they're born again, the Word goes out from them.

They hear it, they believe it, and. And they turn and act upon it.

That's the first step in the sanctification process.

If you spend every Sunday morning trying to convince people to be what you called saved,

what I call being born again, what the Bible calls being born again,

you are only ever mature people learn to walk with God.

Pastors who produce mature people teach them to walk with God.

And when you walk with God,

you learn the power of God and you begin to operate in the power of God.

You see his Word go forth and make. Make a difference in the world. You see the world around you being changed.

You see him laying the path for you,

removing the barriers.

And let me say this to you, if you don't know what I'm talking about,

please start walking with God.

I can't explain it to you.

I I. I don't know how to explain it to you.

How many of y' all can take a 290 pound nose guard that runs a 4, 9, 40,

shoot your hands, drop your hips, get in, get. Get your feet in front of him and drive him backwards so that you can open up a hole? How many of y' all can do that?

All right, there's about five of us.

When I say that, you know what I'm talking about, right?

The rest of y' all, you ain't got a clue, do you?

You don't know what I'm talking about. It is football, but you don't know what I'm talking about.

I promise you, you don't know what I'm talking about because you ain't done it.

When I talk about the power of God manifest in your life, either you have experienced it or you haven't. If you haven't, I want you to.

That doesn't mean you're going to hell.

That doesn't mean you're lost.

That just means you haven't walked enough.

I can't explain it to you. Barriers. Seems like there's no way. I know that's the path God told me to go down. It seems like there's no way to the end of that.

Every time I look around, it seems like something's in my way. And then I take another step, and the thing that was right there in my way is out of the way.

How do you do that? I don't know.

First time I read James, chapter six.

Or is it five? Five. James. James, chapter five.

First time I ever read that as a pastor and realized I got to pray for folks that are sick and they're going to expect something to happen.

It worried because it says right after there, for the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. And I'm sitting there going, well, if it don't availeth anything, I ain't righteous.

I'm telling. But you think these things when you're 22 years old.

You know what God said.

Get to praying, boy.

I do the work you do to faithfulness.

But if you don't learn how to walk in the faithfulness, you'll never know the power.

Paul's saying y' all are arguing over things you shouldn't be arguing about. And I'm fixing to come back and let me tell you something, you're not operating the power. And the way I know you're not, because you're being immature,

because you don't take solid food. You're still on the Milk,

he says, for the kingdom of God is not just the Word. It's the manifestation of the Word in your life. It is the power.

It is the Word that changes, that grows, that becomes. And then it manifests itself in power.

What do you want?

Shall I come to you with a rod or in love and a spirit of gentleness?

What he's saying is, are y' all going to get right or am I going to have to show up?

This Sunday morning, we're going to talk about the people and the leaders of the church trying to figure out how to stop Jesus,

Okay?

And every time they go to seize him or they send somebody to arrest him,

they can't.

You know why?

Because the power of God keeps them from it.

Now the day it comes time for him to be arrested, and the Father told him it's time to be arrested,

they came to arrest him.

They asked him,

are you Jesus?

And he said,

I am.

The same words he said to Moses on that mountaintop from that bush.

And when he said that, all of them were knocked down on their backs.

He didn't run.

He gave them time to get up.

Peter pulled out a sword and cut one of his ear off,

put the ear back on.

Told Peter, put the sword away. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.

And you know what he did?

He let them arrest him.

You know why?

Because the world and the forces of darkness can do nothing to you that God does not ordain.

And you are redeemed by the power of his resurrection and you are sustained by it.

So quit acting like children and start walking with God.

That's what Corinthians is about.

But notice that last,

that second to last verse, what he says there is just. The Word is not sufficient because the Word ought to manifest itself.

If the Word does not manifest itself in power,

then it's not manifesting itself at all.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.