Christ's Authority over the Church #2

Don't you remember? That who was it that died for you? In whose name were you baptized? Oh, it was Christ. It was Christ. It was Christ. That's right! It's about Christ.

It's not about men. We're so glad you've joined us for The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm Bill Wright, and we're moving further into our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace. Last time, Don began a message titled, Christ's Authority Over the Church. Recognizing his authority is rule number one for a true church.

After that, spiritual impact will be obvious. And Don gave us the first of five such signs. We speak with authority.

You'll learn four more signs on today's broadcast concerning unity, power, stewardship, and patience. Our text comes from the first chapter of Titus, so turn there in your Bible as we join Pastor Don Green now in The Truth Pulpit. First, we speak with authority. Secondly, we seek unity in Christ. We seek unity in Christ. Turn to 1 Corinthians 1.

We're going to look at a few passages here. 1 Corinthians 1. 1 Corinthians 1. We seek unity in Christ. What that means is that because we're servants, we are unwilling to rob our master of his glory, even if people are trying to share glory with us and to elevate us as individuals.

We refuse that. We say no to that because we recognize the preeminence and the authority and the exclusive privilege and prerogative of Christ in the church. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 10. Paul is writing, and he says, I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name, in the authority of Jesus Christ, here's what I have to say to you, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you. I mean this. It says, okay, let me be specific.

I'll tell you exactly what I'm talking about here so there's no confusion here. It says, here's what I mean by that in verse 12. Each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, or I of Apollos, or I of Cephas, or I of Christ. I'm a Paul follower. I'm an Apollos follower. I'm a Peter follower.

I'm a Christ follower. There's all these little divisions within the church of Corinth. And look at what Paul says about that. Look at how he responds and makes Christ preeminent and elevates the authority and prerogative of Christ as a means of dealing with that division and bringing people back to unity.

And this is so overwhelmingly powerful. Paul says in verse 13, has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he?

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? He's saying, remember who your authority is. Remember who your head is. Remember who the source of life is. Paul is not the issue.

Apollos, Peter, is not the issue. Don't you remember? Who was it that died for you? In whose name were you baptized? Oh, it was Christ. It was Christ. It was Christ.

That's right. It's about Christ. It's not about men.

It's not about speakers. It's not about books or any of this other junk. I'm a follower of so and so and so and so.

Oh, no, no, no, no. We all rally around and unite around the person and the authority of Christ because he is the one who died for us. He is the one who purchased us. He is the one who has all authority over heaven and earth. And all of this other stuff comes under that umbrella.

It is submitted to that until it dissipates into oblivion. It's all about Christ. And we unite around Christ rather than a particular teacher or pastor or preacher. And we do that because we are so concerned for the glory of Christ that we don't want anyone to have his eyes on us.

We want their eyes on the one who was elevated at Calvary and thereafter drew men to himself. And that unifies us. It's not John against Bob.

It's not Sarah against Susan. It's about an entire body of believers being united and devoted to Christ. And that unifies us. We set our minds on Christ's power.

Authority and power kind of go together. But we're talking about something a little bit different here. We set our minds on Christ's power. And here's what we mean by that. Christ builds the church by his authority and by his power, not by what we do. Oh, we're faithful to do what we do.

We want to gather together and preach and fellowship and observe the ordinances and exercise church discipline when that's necessary. We get all of that. But we understand that we're not driving that. We don't have the authority. We don't have the power. We don't have the ability to bring a single sinner to Christ. We don't have the power and the ability by ourselves to produce growth in any individual Christian.

That is just outside the realm of the power of man. And so what that means is that we set our minds on Christ's power. Look at chapter 2 of 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. Paul again is speaking. This is the Paul who is the servant of God, the apostle of Jesus Christ in the beginning of Titus. Well, how did that view of Christ, how did that role that he asserts there play out in the way that he conducted his ministry?

That's what we're interested in. What's the spiritual impact of believing in and honoring the authority of Christ? Chapter 2, verse 1. When I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men but on the power of God. Paul said, I didn't try to go through a bunch of rhetorical flourishes or to display myself as being a strong and mighty man and a strong and mighty speaker. He said, I came, I was trembling as I did it, but I just declared to you the crucified and risen Christ and I trusted God to display his power through the inherent intrinsic power of that message. He said, I was relying on the power of Christ as I ministered to you.

I wasn't doing it in my own flesh. Chapter 3, verse 5. Actually, let's pick it up in verse 3 because it will reinforce the point on unity.

We're on our third subpoint here. We speak with authority. We seek unity in Christ. We set our minds on Christ's power. Look at verse 3. This is a bleed over into point 2, which we've already finished, but that's okay. Draw a little arrow from your notes going back up the page or something.

That will help you out. Paul says, verse 3, you're still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am of Paul and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men?

You're looking at this from a totally human perspective. You're viewing this entirely wrongly because you don't have your mind on Christ when you're talking about who your favorite human teachers are. Paul says, he demonstrates that in verse 5, he's setting his mind on Christ's power rather than on what he is doing in the ministry.

Verse 5, what then is Apollos and what is Paul? We're nothing. We're just servants through whom you believed.

Even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. We're just servants. We're servants under the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's all we are. We're just a servant. So why are you gathering around and elevating the servant to the neglect of the glory of Christ, he says? You can feel the passion bleeding out of this because, beloved, get this, he so loves Christ and he is so enamored with the glory and the authority of Christ that the thought of someone ascribing something to him is utterly repulsive to him. He does not want that.

He says, I don't want you to be talking about like you're one of mine. I'm just a servant. And the Lord is the one who gave the opportunity. Look at what he says in verse 6, I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but God who causes the growth. That's what I mean by saying that he had his mind set on the power of Christ.

He says, as I see growth taking place, as growth was occurring in the realm of Corinth, it was not attributable to me. It was the fact that God was working through his appointed servants and through the appointed message and God was producing the results that he wanted. Therefore, stop setting your eyes on the human servants and lift your eyes up and set your mind on the power of God and the power of Christ that is at work in the proclamation of the Scriptures. When the apostolic message is preached, the one who sent the apostles is at work himself and we recognize his hidden hand and we give him the glory and disclaim any of it from ourselves.

We're not about gathering around men. We simply want to set our mind and affection and our love and our trust on the power of Christ. I think it was George Whitefield who said, his prayer was, let the name of George Whitefield perish from the face of the earth, as he was an instrument of sweeping revivals that have hardly been seen since his day. As the power of Christ was being manifested and people were being converted under his very Calvinistic preaching, his heart in the midst of it was, I hope my name perishes from the face of the earth, just so long as Christ is elevated and men come to him and love him and serve him as the one with authority. Beloved, that's not just an attitude for the preacher and the pastor.

Although it needs to start there, the preacher or the pastor has to have that embedded in his mind and always under the authority of that prevailing sentiment that this is about Christ and if there are results that come, it's because of Christ, not because of the gifts of the pastor. But what I want you to see, oh, what I want you to see, if you view this place and you say this is where I want to be, I want to be a truth community. I want truth community to become my church home.

I want to be with these people. I want to serve Christ here in this realm. What I want you to see is that the implications of that are is that it means that together we support and we speak with authority. We seek unity in Christ.

The thought of being divided against one another is abhorrent and it means that we're willing to step back and lay some things down in order to preserve the unity. Not at the expense of truth, mind you, biblical truth, but we seek unity and we set our minds on Christ's power. If the Lord continues to bless us and we continue to grow, we look at that and we say praise be to Christ. This belongs to Him, not to us. And see, what we want at truth community are people who share that heart passion, that heart desire, that heart understanding.

We don't want it to be about us because our minds are set on Christ's power. Fourthly, we satisfy our stewardship. We satisfy our stewardship.

Here's what I mean by that. That's your fourth point, the spiritual implications. We satisfy our stewardship. As servants, we do our job with sincere faithfulness. We fulfill the responsibility that Christ has given us until He calls us home.

Chapter 4, verse 1 of 1 Corinthians. Let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. Lord, if you're going to give us a ministry here, we just want to be faithful to it. We just want to be trustworthy. We just want to do what you've given us to do and be faithful to it. And at the end, we'll say, Lord, we were just unworthy slaves.

We only did what we ought to have done. Look over at 2 Corinthians, chapter 2. 2 Corinthians comes right after 1 Corinthians, for those of you keeping score at home. 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, you see the same principle. We just want to serve Christ with sincerity. 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 17. We are not like many peddling the Word of God.

Like three sermons that need to be preached on that, right? We're not like those who peddle the Word of God and try to make money off of it. But as from sincerity, as from God, we speak in Christ in the sight of God.

We're not trying to peddle the newest, latest spiritual potion of the most recent book. We just want to be sincere servants of Christ. And if we can be faithful in sincere service to Christ, then we're doing something of great, noble, profound, eternal significance, because we're doing it at the bidding of the eternal Son of God who purchased these people in Christ with His own blood to be His own possession. And if we can be sincere and faithful in that, then we have identified and pursued a lofty goal with which to devote our entire spiritual energies until Christ calls us home. We just want to satisfy our stewardship, that's all.

No one notices, no newspaper articles, no one cares. Because we just want to be sincere with the Word of God and watch Him work and grow His people and bring others to Christ according to His will. One final thing. We speak with authority. We seek unity in Christ. We set our minds on Christ's power. We satisfy our stewardship.

Fifth point. We suffer with patience. We suffer with patience. Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 12. This is my final passage. 2 Corinthians chapter 12. You know, as we say this, we realize that we don't know what the future holds.

We don't know what's going to come. But we trust the goodness and the wisdom of our Lord Jesus Christ toward us, even if serving Him brings us hardship, even if it brings difficulty, even if it brings blatantly satanic opposition and hardship to us. We trust Him and commit ourselves to suffer that with patience. 2 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 7. Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. See, He's appealing to the authority of the Lord. Lord, remove this thorn from me. This is unbearable.

This really is difficult. And Christ's response is, No, I'm content to leave that there so that you'll see that my grace is sufficient in your weakness. Paul, having appropriated that lesson, now says in verse 9, Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. You see, I'm just a servant. It's about His authority and His power, and what happens to me is incidental. Just so long as Christ is glorified through me, I will be glad and content, he says. Well, see, that's not just for Paul. That's for me.

That's for you, individually. And then corporately, we look at this and say, Oh, I start to get it. I'm not an isolated star circling around in the blackness of the universe.

We come together, as it were, as a galaxy, as a solar system of believers around the common core, the common son of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all of these things permeate our corporate life as well together. You see, we all share in this mindset that says we'll suffer with patience if Christ brings us suffering just so long as He is glorified. Look at verse 10. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses. Look at that. Look at that. Look at it. Look at it. Look at the start of verse 10 again.

Don't miss it. I am well content. I'm satisfied.

I can live here without complaint. Do you see it, beloved? Do you see what the authority of Christ means in the midst of our individual and corporate lives together? It means that I'm well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Suppose that we lived in a country that just overturned the definition of marriage and wanted to redefine that and all of that, and I'd get really upset about that. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

No. You know what? I can be well content even in that. I can be well content even in the difficulties that that presents in ministry.

I can be well content because if it makes me feel my weakness, if it makes me conscious of the fact that I'm not in control, if it makes me conscious of the fact that this world is not my home and I'm not comfortable here, I don't fit here, the people in power look at me and say, You're the problem. When that happens, we suffer with patience. We say, Well, it's my convictions about Christ that make this difficult that cause people to insult me. It's for Christ's sake. And even though I don't like it and I don't know what to do and I don't know what's going to happen, that conscious weakness is the place of my strength because it turns my eyes up to the authority of Christ, the one who said, I will build my church, all authority is being given to me, the one who is coming back, the one who is going to establish righteousness on the earth.

That's where I rest. My citizenship is in heaven and therefore I can suffer with patience without getting worked up, without panic, but I just come to the refuge of the authority of Christ who loved me and gave himself up for me. You know what? That's what it means to be a Christian. That's how Christians live. Because that's how Christians live, that's how a church lives. That's what marks the testimony of a biblical church speaking with authority, seeking unity in Christ, setting our minds on Christ's power, satisfying our stewardship, suffering with patience until Christ calls us home. Beloved, that's not going to get us any earthly applause, but you know what?

You know what? That is the most noble road that any man could walk on the face of the earth, is to walk under the authority of Christ and love him and serve him until he calls us home. When we're talking about a blueprint for a young church, talking about the authority of Christ and the church, that's what we're talking about.

That's what we're going to be about. If I may borrow an idea from the late John F. Kennedy, ask not what Christ's church can do for you, but what you can do for his church and for him. Pastor Don Green is laid out why this should be the case and what the fruit of that commitment will look like in the church. Next time, Don moves on to our Lord's purpose for the church as our series, Titus, God's Glorious Plan of Grace, continues here on The Truth Pulpit.

Do join us. Meanwhile, we invite you to visit our website, thetruthpulpit.com. There you can download podcasts or find out how to receive CD copies of Don's radio messages for your personal study library. And if you want to go even more in depth, you'll also find the link, Follow Don's Pulpit. That'll take you to Don's full-length weekly sermons, not subject to the time editing we need for radio broadcasts. And if you're in the Cincinnati area, check out the service times for Truth Community Church, also on our website, and we hope you plan a visit. We'd love to welcome you. Now for Don Green, I'm Bill Wright. We'll see you next time for more from The Truth Pulpit.