Pastor Dan Rogers’ message from Philippians 3:17 – 4:1 is titled: “Don’t
Be A Belly Worshiper! The Importance Of A Right Christian Example”.
His message is found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRNHd7_mhns
Pastor Dan had these comments:
What kind of letter is Philippians? Why did Paul write it? What is a
belly-worshiper? What is the best way to make disciples? When all is
said and done, what is Paul’s exhortation to all Christians? (Note:
it’s really important to avoid belly-worship.)
Praying for you.
Love and blessings,
Pastor Dan
Previous videos by Pastor Dan are here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCemAreRmMNXoBU-SJxbTRqg/videos
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The GCI Home Church message this week is presented by Jillian Morrison,
GCI Pastor in Glendora, CA. Her message is titled “Citizens of the
Skies” and covers Philippians 3:17-4:1.
Her message is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk4ozmT25nw
Previous messages for the GCI Home Church are available here:
https://resources.gci.org/media/gci-usa-home-church-archive
You can subscribe to these messages for the GCI Home Church here:
https://resources.gci.org/national-church-signup
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GCI New Life Fellowship services in Baltimore MD
Live Stream at 11:00 AM, recording available afterward.
https://www.facebook.com/newlifefellowshipbaltimore
https://www.youtube.com/@newlifefellowshipmd1769/streams
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GCI Glendora CA Videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/GCIGlendora/videos
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdsXRXFpUED_6cLP4lr3NIRA2lg6F9Xx1
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Revised Common Lectionary Sermon Outline for March 23, 2025 – Third
Sunday in Lent
The message below is from the monthly GCI E-magazine Equipper. You can
subscribe to the Equipper here:
https://equipper.gci.org/subscribe
Psalm 63:1–8 · Isaiah 55:1–9 · 1 Corinthians 10:1–13 · Luke 13:1–9
The third Sunday of Easter Prep. offers more preparation for repentance
and change. Regardless of our progress or slipups, we can count on God’s
mercy and patience. God’s faithfulness is our theme this week, and our
readings show us that while we think we want fairness and equity from
God, what we really want is grace. And because we want that for
ourselves, we should also want that for others. In last week’s sermon,
Paul encouraged Christians to imitate him as an example of spiritual
transformation in progress, never forgetting God’s nearness in all our
endeavors. This week, Psalm 63 offers praise for God’s companionship and
sustenance, both physical and spiritual. God’s faithfulness is expressed
in Isaiah 55 as God refuses to give up on Israel and offers his faithful
love promised to David. His word goes out and will not return empty. The
Gospel account found in Luke 13 illustrates our tendency to associate
cause and effect when it comes to tragedies that happen in the world.
It’s evidence of our unconscious belief that if we aren’t good enough;
God will abandon us. Jesus disputes this, pointing out that we are
subject to unwise decisions of others or unjust human systems, which
often result in harm that has nothing to do with our own personal
choices. Our sermon text in 1 Corinthians 10 talks about the problem of
arrogance and its harm to individuals and institutions and the hope that
even the harm is held within the loving and faithful arms of God.
When We Aren’t Faithful
1 Corinthians 10:1–13 NRSVUE
“King of the jungle” is a title reserved for lions because of their
appearance and hunting skill. One story about a lion who was proud of
this title goes like this:
The lion approached a bear and asked, “Who is the king of the jungle?”
The bear fearfully replied, “You are, of course, Mr. Lion.” The lion, in
search of more compliments, went to a tiger and a monkey and asked the
same thing, only to receive the same frightened response. Feeling pretty
cocky, the lion came upon an elephant and asked the question again, “Who
is the king of the jungle?” Instead of saying anything, the elephant
grabbed the lion with its massive trunk and slammed him into a tree
before pounding him on the ground several times and then throwing him
into a nearby pond. When the lion crawled out of the water, he said to
the elephant, “Just because you don’t know the answer is no reason to
get nasty about it!”
Our arrogance and pride often lead to a distortion of our perception of
reality. This is especially problematic for Christians because we forget
how much we need the grace and forgiveness freely offered to us through
Jesus Christ. We forget that we are to be dispensers of grace and
forgiveness to others, too, as image bearers of Christ. We forget we can
be agents of change to upset cultural practices and underlying
narratives that don’t reflect the equity we have in God’s sight. And
these are some of the predicaments the church in Corinth faced. When we
proudly think of ourselves as “the king of the jungle,” we set ourselves
up for a fall.
Let’s read our sermon text in 1 Corinthians 10:1–13.
The context of 1 Corinthians 10
The example of ancient Israel’s failure to follow God found in 1
Corinthians 10:1–13 is part of a larger argument about eating meat that
has been sacrificed to idols, beginning in 1 Corinthians 8:1–11:1. As
Paul explains, he isn’t concerned about eating the food sacrificed to
idols because the idols are powerless. He is worried, however, about
those believers for whom eating food sacrificed to idols was a part of
their former lifestyle and worship of pagan gods. The passage refers to
“weaker” members of Christ’s body, those whose faith and life in Christ
was new and tender and easily broken.
In 1 Corinthians 9:1–27, Paul provides the first example (himself) to
argue that knowledge and freedom in Christ do not have to be exercised
if they would be detrimental to others. Paul tells them that despite his
superior knowledge, faith, and mystical experience with the risen
Christ, he was willing to forego the freedoms he had in Christ so that
he didn’t interfere with others’ faith journey.
In our sermon text, Paul repeats this argument that knowledge and
freedom in Christ do not need to be exercised if detrimental to others’
faith. Paul uses the negative example of the Israelites wandering in the
wilderness for forty years after the exodus from Egypt. He compares the
Israelites with the Corinthians, who had their own share of
interpersonal and inter-community problems such as grumbling and sexual
immorality. Paul reminds them of Israel’s unfaithfulness.
For the Corinthian church, refusing to eat meat offered to idols was
also tied to the Roman class structure in place. Authors John Dominic
Crossan and Jonathan Reed write the following in their book, In Search
of Paul: How Jesus’ Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom:
Most of the problems at Corinth stem … from powerful patrons within the
assembly, important people both very good for help, support, and
protection, but also very bad for unity, equality, and commonality. It
was those whom Paul calls powerful who could take financial disputes
outside the Christian assembly and into the civil courts (1 Corinthians
6:1-8), who could countenance marriage between stepson and widowed
stepmother to protect patrimony (1 Corinthians 5:1-13), and who could
argue for attending celebratory meals in pagan temples, buying such meat
in the market, and eating it at private dinners (1 Corinthians
10:14-33). All such problems involved not just their position inside the
Christian assembly, but their contacts with friends, freedmen, and
clients outside it. Those were problems for the haves rather than the
have-nots (408-409).
In the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 11:17–34, Paul corrects the church
for their behavior at the Lord’s Supper where better food and wine were
served to those of higher social standing, but inferior food and wine
were served to those with lower social standing who arrived later at the
end of their work day. The Corinthian church was turning the sacrament
intended to celebrate Christ’s death until His return as another way to
lock the social and cultural classes in place, even within the church
which should have been equal and unified in Christ and not subject to
cultural norms:
There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there
is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28 NRSVUE
The context of our sermon text is very important; otherwise, it could be
used as manipulation to use the fear of punishment as a motivation for
obedience. [Examples may be helpful.] This twisted intent is far from
the argument Paul is making. Let’s understand the warning and
encouragement found in 1 Corinthians 10:1–13.
The warning of arrogance
The wisdom of Ecclesiastes 1:9 says that history can repeat itself:
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be
done; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9 NRSVUE
Wanting to do what we want to do is not new, and a valid argument exists
to enjoy the freedom we have in Christ. However, that freedom is
tempered by its effect on the community. Christianity was not intended
to be lived solo; it was meant to be lived in relationship, not only
with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but with other people.
Paul is making the point that the ancient Israelites participated in a
form of baptism by passing through the Red Sea and then [drinking] from
the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ (1
Corinthian 10:4). They witnessed the miracle of the Red Sea and manna
and water from the rock, and still it wasn’t enough to keep them from
arrogantly choosing to do whatever they wanted. Barclay’s Commentary
says that “it is to history that Paul goes to show what can happen to
people who have been blessed with the greatest privileges.” If the
ancient Israelites could get tangled up in their proud egos, then the
Corinthians were just as susceptible. And so are we. Note what Pastor
Scott Hoezee writes:
It’s all very disappointing on one level, of course, and that is perhaps
why this sobering and disappointing text is assigned for the sobering
Season of Lent. It was bad enough to watch Israel mess up again and
again. But at least you could comfort yourself a bit and say “Well, yes,
but then again, that was centuries before Jesus was born…” All true.
Except that the Church has very often proved itself fully capable of
wilderness-like shenanigans, and Exhibit A in the New Testament is
Corinth itself. We could wish it were not so but at almost any given
moment in any given congregation there is enough hurt, enough animosity,
enough complaints against the preacher, the praise team, the worship
director to tell us we’re never far from being tempted to do it wrong.
In truth, American evangelicalism has seen its share of scandals over
the past fifty years but none so insidious as our tendency to view
ourselves as Americans first and Christians second. This can lead to
national idolatry. In the New York Times bestselling book The Kingdom,
The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,
author Tim Alberta interviews the Michigan pastor, Chris Winans. His
church became divided over Christian nationalism, with most of the
congregants leaving to attend another church where conspiracy theories
and disinformation, rather than the gospel, were served up as the
sermon. Pastor Chris Winans said this:
If you believe that God is in covenant with America, then you
believe—and I’ve heard lots of people say this explicitly—that we’re a
new Israel. You believe the sorts of promises made to Israel are
applicable to this country; you view America as a covenant that needs to
be protected … [As a result,] you have to fight for America as if
salvation itself hangs in the balance. At that point, you understand
yourself as an American first and most fundamentally. And that is a
terrible misunderstanding of who we’re called to be” (qtd. in Alberta 28).
There’s a danger of losing sight of anyone who is different from us, and
we end up baptizing our own worldview and calling it Christian (Alberta 48).
Easter Preparation offers us a season of introspection to examine our
motives, desires, and personal opinions to see if they are founded in
love or arrogance. Professor Bryan J. Whitfield writes, “Our outward
expressions of idolatry may differ from those of the Corinthians, but
our desires for acceptance, power, prestige, wealth, and power betray us
still.”
The encouragement to be vigilant
The New Testament church had its share of problems, the same problems we
face today, but the Bible doesn’t attempt to whitewash them or diminish
reporting their effects on the congregations of that era. But more
importantly, our inability to be faithful has had no effect on God’s
faithfulness and grace toward us. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells of God’s
faithfulness when we are challenged with our egoist tendencies:
No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is
faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but
with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be
able to endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13 NRSVUE
Some mistakenly assume that the “testing” comes from God. However, James
reminds us that God does not tempt us:
No one, when tempted, should say, “I am being tempted by God,” for God
cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. 14 But one is
tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it; 15 then,
when desire has conceived, it engenders sin, and sin, when it is fully
grown, gives birth to death. James 1:13–15 NRSVUE
We are more than capable of deluding ourselves to believe we deserve
what we want or desire. This requires us to focus on self-awareness and
self-examination, two important Easter Prep practices, but useful for
any time of the year.
Professor of New Testament Carla Works summarizes Paul’s solution in
this way:
At the end of this larger argument on whether or not it is acceptable to
eat food that has been sacrificed to idols, Paul will give a guiding
principle: “do [everything] to the glory of God” (10:31). Like their
ancestors in the faith, this predominantly Gentile Corinthian church is
called to live in a manner that is faithful to the one who is the very
source of their life and existence. Living faithfully to this God
includes considering one’s witness to others for whom Christ also died.
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit offer us grace when we trip on our
fragile and self-centered egos. They are constant companions and deliver
us from our arrogance. When we aren’t faithful, we can rely on God’s
faithfulness and grace. God “will also provide the way out;” Jesus is
the way out.
Call to Action: As part of your Easter Preparation practice of
self-examination, consider if you have ever succumbed to arrogance and
offended others, whether believers or not. Practice recognizing slip-ups
such as these, asking God for a sensitive heart that is quick to
recognize and repent of arrogance and privilege.
For Reference:
Alberta, Tim. The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American
Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. HarperCollins, 2023.
Crossan, John Dominic, and Jonathan L. Reed. In Search of Paul: How
Jesus’ Apostle Opposed Rome’s Empire with God’s Kingdom.
HarperSanFrancisco, 2004.
Small Group Discussion Questions
How do arrogance and pride distort our perception of reality? How do
they disrupt relationships?
Is the larger context of 1 Corinthians, regarding the eating of meat
offered to idols, important to situate our sermon text? How have you
seen passages like 1 Corinthians 10:1–13 used prescriptively (i.e., to
dictate personal behaviors) rather than as an admonition of how easily
we can fall prey to arrogance?
The church at Corinth struggled with letting go of social class,
affecting their ability to care for others and convey the equity found
in Christ. In our modern context, are we hindered by cultural norms in
our efforts to care for others as Jesus did?
Paul admonishes us to “do everything for the glory of God.” Can that
help us analyze our motives, desires, and personal opinions and become
more self-aware of ways that we convey arrogance or an attachment to
social class and privilege?
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