“Strong to the End”
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Isaiah 64:1-9
By: Rev. Kenneth Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church, Newport News, VA
www.parkview-umc.org
The church that Paul founded at Corinth had plenty of problems.
Some members of the church were arguing and forming competitive cliques, and each clique was claiming that they were more spiritual than the other.
There was a sort of spiritual arrogance that was tearing this community apart.
It would have been easy, perhaps, for Paul to look at the Corinthian Church, see all the infighting and divisions which had arisen and just give up on them, but Paul does not do this.
Instead, Paul begins this instructional letter by thanking God for God’s grace given to this church through Jesus Christ and with the confidence that, through Jesus Christ, they will be kept “strong to the end.”
And this hope, this confidence is a true mark of Christian maturity.
No doubt, Paul had a pretty good handle on human nature.
The Church at Corinth was exhibiting some of our less attractive qualities.
There was a mess in Corinth, but this mess was not an end in itself.
The reason?
The people who gathered to worship as Christians there had heard the message of Christ when it had been preached to them, they had accepted Christ’s free gift of salvation; they had begun the Christian journey and God wasn’t finished with them yet.
I’d like to think that God isn’t finished with me yet.
How about you?
It is easy to wring our hands and give up as soon as the going gets rough, but like newborn babies, Christian people must learn to roll over before we can crawl.
Then we must learn to crawl before we can walk.
And once we begin walking we must fall down many times before we are able to get very far.
And all along the way God is with us. God’s grace is surrounding us, picking us up, helping us to strengthen our spiritual muscles.
A person who was converted to Christ told this story:
A man fell into a dark, slimy pit.
He tried to climb out of the pit, but he couldn’t.
A holy man came along.
He saw the man in the pit and he said, “Poor fellow, if he’d listened to me, he never would have gotten there,” and he went on.
A doctor came along.
When he saw the man in the pit, he said, “Poor fellow, if he’ll come up here, I’ll help him,” and he too went on.
Then Jesus Christ came and He said, “Poor fellow!” and jumped into the pit and lifted him out.”
Through Jesus Christ, God has come alongside us offering us the power we need in order to face the demands of daily life and to rise above the muck of this world.
As Christians we are in the process of “becoming.”
We are living in the time of the “now” and the “not yet.”
That is what the Advent Season is all about, the “now” and the “not yet.”
The first Advent has already occurred.
God took on human form, was born into our world, and experienced what we experience.
He taught us how to live, love, and get along.
He lived with us. He wept for and with us, and ultimately died the death we deserve so that we no longer have to die an eternal death.
But the Second Advent has not yet occurred.
The Second Advent is when Christ will come in final victory and we will feast at Christ’s heavenly banquet.
When this occurs, we will “know” just as we are already “fully known.”
But right now, in the “not yet,” between the first and second Advent we still “see but a poor reflection as in a mirror.”
We are still childish in many ways, even as we are being called to put our childish ways behind us.
Paul talks about this in greater length later on in 1 Corinthians 13.
Right now our role is to allow ourselves to be the persons God created us to be.
As the prophet Isaiah proclaims in our Old Testament Lesson for this morning: God is our Father, “We are the clay,” God is the “potter.”
This means that we are to trust in God to mold us and make us, to stretch us and form us into the people we truly can be.
Therefore, patience and a worldview which recognizes these realities are imperative if we are ever going to get anywhere.
How many folks leave the church, following a brief period of enlightenment and excitement, when they suddenly become privy to the fact that Christians—including themselves--are far from being perfect, and that many of us are, at times, hypocrites, quarrelsome, arrogant, and immature?
There are no perfect people on this planet, only a perfect Lord and Savior.
And the church is filled with people who are at various different stages along this Christian journey of faith.
Some of us are very new, like a formless lump of clay.
Others have allowed God to mold us for many years…we are becoming more and more like Christ each day.
Others of us have not allowed Christ to mold us.
Perhaps we have accepted Christ as Savior, but have not yet begun to put our faith into action.
Maybe we haven’t allowed God to lift us up and out of the mucky pit.
Perhaps some of us have gotten off the path somewhere along the way and have allowed ourselves to be molded by something other than Christ.
Maybe we have been molded by the lure of money and things.
Perhaps the clay that is our life looks nothing like the image of Christ.
Clay can be molded to be many things.
Some clay is molded into the image of an ashtray.
Other clay is molded into the image of a lamp.
What image is your clay being molded into, what image is mine being molded into?
It was the winter of 1989.
Some friends of mine and I went to a local hill outside of Syracuse, New York.
It was a very steep hill—a local favorite for sledding.
It just so happened that it had sleeted earlier that morning—so there was an inch of ice over about a foot of snow.
Along with about five other friends, we decided that we would all jump on a sled together and go down the hill.
As we began our descent down the hill, all I can remember is terror.
For we quickly learned that we were moving way too fast—we were completely out of control on this hill of ice.
And that’s a feeling that most of us don’t like to have—the feeling of being out of control.
Perhaps that is one reason why some of us find it hard to let go and let God mold us and shape us after God’s will. We’re afraid of yielding our control to God.
Thankfully, this is a false sense of fear. For, as Paul tells us in verse 9 of 1st Corinthians: “God, who has called” us “into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.”
God knows what is best for us, and God wants what is best for us. All we have to do is allow God to do God’s work on us.
And we allow God to do God’s work on us by yielding ourselves to God’s will.
What gifts and talents has God bestowed upon you?
Are you a good speaker?
Are you a good listener?
Perhaps you have been gifted musically.
Whatever your gifts and graces are—are you using them for God’s glory?…
…or your own glory?
How about your prayer life?
Most of us could use some improvement in this area.
Do you pray?
Do you pray regularly and often for others, for the sick, for the unconverted, for the opportunity to show Christ’s love to another human being?
Do you study the Bible?
Do you come to church and Sunday school on a regular basis, and then do you put into practice what you have learned at church during the week?
These are ways of allowing God to mold us and stretch us and make us into His image.
This is how we grow and mature as Christians.
Have you made a stand in your life for good over evil.
Have you decided to stand up for the oppressed, for the poor and needy?
Have you asked God to take an active role in weeding out the hateful thoughts you may have about others—whether these thoughts be based on race, gender, or any other thing under the sun?
If so, you are allowing yourself to be molded into the image of Christ.
Remember what we talked about last week from Matthew Chapter 25?
Whatever we do for others, or don’t do for others…
…we have or have not done these things for Christ.
Yes, Jesus is the One who jumps down into the pit beside us.
Jesus can be found lurking behind the eyes of a brother, a sister, a stranger, a friend.
He is very involved.
He is very much a part of our lives.
In the Book of Revelation Jesus is described as knocking and waiting for entrance into our human souls.
Have we let Him in, or have we refused to be rescued from the muck of the pit?
These decisions not only effect our eternal salvation, they also effect our very lives in the here and now…
…during the time between the first and second Advent.
In Chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians Paul tells the Christians: “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.”
For now, while we await the Second Advent, let’s try and concentrate on allowing God to be the potter as we are the clay.
As Christians, our hope, our peace, our very salvation does not rest on what other persons do or fail to do.
All that we pin our hopes on depends on God’s unmerited grace which is the very nature of God Himself, freely expressed to us in His self-giving love, and in all that He has done in order to secure our redemption.
God is grace.
And His grace is revealed in Jesus Christ.
This grace is without bounds, it is free and it is endless.
It is also something we need…something we must have.
Therefore, our ability to cope with the heartaches and let-downs of this life rests on our capacity and willingness to receive, accept and move forward with God’s boundless grace no matter what other folks appear to be doing or no matter what we might find ourselves doing.
We aren’t expected to be perfect, we are expected to grow by yielding our hearts and lives to the Potter’s loving hands.
God is more than able…
…God’s grace is more than sufficient to straighten out the messes we find ourselves in.
In our Epistle Lesson for this morning Paul addresses a multifaceted mess at the church in Corinth, which has as a unifying core—namely, they are imperfect Christians, but Christians just the same.
Jesus Christ has jumped down into the pit and rescued them.
Therefore Paul confidently promises them that God will keep them “strong to the end, so that” they “will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
He is the Potter, we are the clay!
We are to depend on God’s boundless grace, and on God’s boundless grace alone!!!
A man who was having a hard time trusting in God’s grace was speaking to a Christian friend near a watermill.
The Christian friend pointed to the watermill and asked: “What turns that wheel today?”
“The stream,” the man replied.
“And what will turn it tomorrow?”
Again the man answered, “The stream.”
“And the day after that?”
The only answer there was to give was, “The stream.”
And that is what God’s grace is like.
It is our only answer.
The same grace that saves us today is flowing to keep us saved tomorrow—and the next day—and the next day—on until Jesus comes!
Do we believe that God is this faithful?
Do we believe that God’s grace is this immense?
If we do, we are making headway along this journey of the “now” and the “not yet.”
