All Things for You, Part 1

7/22/12 Title: “All Things For You 1” 1Cor.3:21-22; 2Cor.4:13-15, 6:8b-10
I. Introduction
A. Series, actually one sermon in two parts. The truth is too wonderful to cover in one sermon.
II. Read
A. 1Corinthians 3:21-22
1. Background: He was talking about the divisions that had sprung up in the church around various personalities: Paul, Cephas (Peter), Apollos. After chastising them for their divisive spirit, Paul concludes his argument saying:
2. “So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you.”
3. They are ALL yours.
B. 2Corinthians 4:13-15
1. Paul writes something similar in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians
2. Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
3. Probably when the Corinthians read this they harkened back to a similar statement that Paul made in his earlier letter (1Corinthians).
4. Paul here is informing the Corinthians of the fact that all of what he has been talking about – his bold apostolic testimony, his trials and sufferings, the future resurrection of believers and their presentation by the Father to His Son – is for their welfare and blessing: "For all things are for your sakes..."
5. It is hard to fathom, but it’s true! All things are for us! Everything that God has created, He created for us! It is all made for our good. It is all designed for our ultimate blessing.
6. Go outside and look at the stars in the sky. More than 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each. And they’re all there for you. God wants to show you His glory.
7. Look at the ocean and the sunsets and the flowers and the animals.
8. Look at your own body, "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14).
9. Look at everything you have and everything you see. They are all gifts of God for you.
10. The Bible, the mighty works of God, His commands, the Holy Spirit, the Church, the promises of a glorious hope: they are all for us!
11. “He will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly.” Psalm 84:11
12. 2Cor.4:15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
a. This is why we’re told this.
13. Once a person is linked up to Christ through faith, he partakes of all that Christ has achieved and will achieve. He delights in giving us all things and especially in how it moves us to lift up our hearts to Him in thanks. He has made us His delight and gives us all things so that we might make Him our delight (of course, He is worthy of our delight whereas we are completely unworthy of His delight — it comes only through grace).
14. It is astounding that He has chosen to love us and delight in us and glorify us! Truly His lovingkindness is better than life itself.
15. By grace we have become linked up with His blessed Son. Oh! may our attachment to Him grow ever stronger and firmer!
C. 4:8-12 "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 so death works in us, but life in you."
1. Paul in essence is saying here, "I am happy to die so that you may live."
2. The way Paul is dying for the Corinthians is different than the way Jesus died for them, of course. His is not an atoning death that takes upon itself the sin of others. Rather, Paul is embracing the constant death of self-denial, risk, rejection, danger, maltreatment, humiliation, physical abuse, etc. in order that the Corinthians may enjoy the life of living in the light of Christ, in wholeness and in hope.
3. This is what it means to walk in love. It means being happy to die so that my friend can live.
4. The spirit of Christ’s love says:
a. "I am happy to be inconvenienced if that will help you."
b. "I am happy to give up what is mine in order to benefit you."
c. "I am happy to go out of my way in order to bring you a blessing."
d. "I am happy to die in order that you may live."
5. No man ever lived as much as Jesus lived as He was dying on the cross.
6. What an extraordinary paradox the Christian life is!
a. Dying and living, having nothing and having everything, being hated and being loved, sorrowing and triumphing. It reminds me of Psalm 2:11, which calls us to rejoice with trembling.
b. This is the essence of the Christian life. If you think of it as only one or the other, you miss it. It is pleasure and pain. It is joy and sorrow. It is wealth and poverty. It is sickness and health. It is glory and humiliation.
c. This brings us to the next and final passage for this morning,
D. 2Corinthians 6:8b-10, where Paul describes the life of an apostle, which is a dramatic example of the life of the Christian.
1. “We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; 9 as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; 10 as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
2. “having nothing, yet possessing everything”
3. Even when we have nothing, we have everything!
4. In 1Cor.15 Paul says that if Christ is not raised we of all people are most to be pitied. But the fact is that Christ was raised, which means that we of all people are most to be envied!
5. In fact, we are so rich, that it takes a supernatural work of God to make us realize how rich we are!
6. I remember you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, and what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (Ephesians 1:16-18)
III. Conclusion
A. All things are for you.
1. Even your troubles are for you. The flood is for you and the drought is for you. They are not against you. God called them forth for your benefit, because He loves you (see James 1:2-3).
2. Even hunger is for you! — Deut. 8:3 He let you hunger, to humble you and teach you that man does not live by bread alone...
3. Sickness is for you. In other words, there is a sickness that is better than health. This is what the health and wealth folks miss.
4. Song in the car - All Good Things Are Mine, All good pain is mine
B. The right response to this: thinking of ourselves as rich in God.
1. Perhaps our greatest sin is the sin of self-pity. Imagine, people who have been given everything feeling sorry for themselves! God gives a precious gift and we resent it as if it’s sent for our destruction.
C. What a heart of love God has toward us! Is He not worthy of our trust?
1. One of the most painful things about being a parent is when you are acting to love your child and they accuse you of hating them instead.
2. Don’t do this to God.
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7/29/12 Title: “All Things For You 2” Romans 8:28-32
I. Introduction
A. Summary of this theme
1. If Christ is ours, then everything is ours, because everything is Christ’s.
2. 1Corinthians 3:21-22 “All things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you.”
3. It’s not just that you’re rich in heavenly things while poor in earthly things. All earthly things are yours as well.
4. 2Corinthians 6:10 “...having nothing yet possessing all things.”
5. The key to the Christian life is realizing how rich is the treasure of God’s blessing.
6. We deserved nothing. He gave us everything!
B. A message not often heard
1. It may even seem hard to believe, and yet there it is in the Scriptures over and over again.
C. Read Romans 8:28-32
1. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
II. Explanation
A. Romans 8:28 and 8:32: In one sense these are two ways of saying the same thing.
1. But you need them both to get the full picture.
2. Even bad things are made to be good for us.
3. “Delivered from the evil of afflictions” WSC XX:1
a. Not delivered from afflictions, but from the evil of them
b. Now afflictions are only agents of good.
4. But more than that. There is no good thing withheld.
a. Every good tool in God’s toolbox is used on our behalf.
b. Every good treasure in His treasure chest is given to us.
c. Every good deed which God could do toward us is done.
B. The cross is the proof: 8:32 “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”
C. This isn’t for everyone. James Boice: “God has done some things for all men, and all things for some men.”
D. When you know this, there’s no bitterness, no jealousy, no covetousness, no anxiety, no despair.
III. Questions
A. If it’s mine, why don’t I possess it?
1. Because God knows it wouldn’t be a blessing but a curse.
2. He loves us too much to give us something harmful.
3. If a son asks for a fish, would the father give him a scorpion?
4. But what if the son asks for a scorpion? Will the father give him what he asks for? Or will he give him what’s good for him even though it’s not what he wants?
5. Every parent has to take things away and say no to his child.
6. Jamie’s tract: The nail really is for her. It might be for hanging a beautiful picture up in her room, or to get in her room when she accidentally locks herself out. It’s just not for her in the way she wants it right now. The second it is good for her, it’s hers.
7. And every loving parent sometimes lets his child have things he knows aren’t really good for him, things which might hurt him, not because he doesn’t love his child, but because he know his child sometimes has to learn lessons the hard way. And so sometimes God lets us have things which are not good for us.
B. Or some might say, “But it’s not all for me, it’s for this giant group, of which I am only one.” Yes, but
1. It is for you in that the group is for you and the fact that all-things-are-for-the-group is for you.
2. If it would have been better for all to be for you alone and not for anyone else, then it would have been. But it is best for you if all things are for the group.
3. So, all things are for you.
C. How come it doesn’t feel like all things are for me? Why doesn’t it feel like I have everything?
1. Can you imagine a life more blessed than your own?
a. I sure can. I have a laundry list of things which seem to me like they’d improve my life.
b. I’d like to lose 40 pounds. I’d like for my kids to be always appreciative and respectful. I’d like for my church to be filled. I’d like for my team to win all their games. There are all sorts of jobs around my house I wish I had money to pay someone to do. And I’d love to get a new car for each of my older kids.
c. We all have laundry lists. Experientially, it doesn’t seem like I have everything.
2. Just because we don’t feel like everything is ours doesn’t mean it isn’t.
3. The experience of it as painful is also for you. He is teaching you to trust.
a. He has told us one thing and allowed us to feel another: Which one will we believe? In which will we put our confidence in?
4. Last week I said that the greatest sin is self-pity, or that all sin is a form of self-pity.
5. The first sin: Adam and Eve and the great lie: you’re deprived
6. Satan: God says everything is yours, but look at the fruit on that tree. It’s not yours, is it?
7. Let me ask you this: Why did God forbid Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
a. Well, I think that it was a matter of timing: that God would eventually have given them this fruit if they had succeeded the test of obedience. Everything was theirs. I would argue that even the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was theirs, though it was to be given to them at the right time.
b. But even if you disagree with this, one thing has to be true: whatever the reason God forbade them to eat the fruit, it wasn’t because God wanted it for Himself. It wasn’t because God didn’t love them enough to give it to them. It wasn’t because God wanted to hurt them. Somehow He was forbidding the fruit for man’s sake.
c. When God withholds things from us it’s because He loves us so much.
d. Satan wants to fool us into thinking that God withholds things because He doesn’t love us, because He’s a mean God who doesn’t give us His best. Ultimately Satan wants to persuade us that God is trying to cheat us.
e. And it often works! because when we don’t get what we want and what we think we need, it feels like it’s hurting us.
IV. Conclusion
A. "If God is for us, who (or what) can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Rm.8:31-32
B. Let us not grieve the Holy Spirit by grumbling: When the parent lavishes love on the child, but instead of being grateful, the child grumbles because of gifts not received, or because he wants everything NOW.
C. The older son feeling deprived: “Don’t you realize that all that is mine is yours?” (Luke 15:31)
1. This is what God says to you whenever you feel deprived or jealous of others: “Don’t you realize that all that is mine is yours?”
2. Don’t you know that I love you?
D. Why has God given us all things?
1. Because He loves us. Gifts are tokens of love.
a. The problem with all privileges as earned. Some privileges just show love.
2. So why has He so loved us? Grace. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)