Hidden Gems in the Opening (Because of the Gospel)

▶ 1:07:15

The service had opened with the Shema, and Matt's message turned out to be about the same thing from the other end: not what we owe God, but what he has already given. Before the text he spent twenty minutes on why he was preaching it — and that stretch is not a preamble either.

1. Phase two

▶ 1:07:51

Some months earlier, Matt said, God broke an addiction off him — compulsively scouring news and Twitter for whoever had the inside scoop. He had wanted to stop, prayed to stop, and could not; a prophetic word from a sister in Christ ended it. He wanted his free moments spent looking at his children rather than his phone. The challenge he has been repeating to the congregation since came out of that: open the areas where you have failed and wanted help and could not manage it, and let God do something.

▶ 1:09:51

Phase two, in his case, was fasting. He described himself, without much competition, as the worst faster of any pastor you have called — a friend once watched him at home and asked whether he was simply eating constantly. The excuse was always training. He looked up the science, half-expecting to find that skipping breakfast might kill him, and found the opposite: a cardiologist explaining that the body consumes what serves it least, that inflammation drops, that it is good for you. He got interested.

▶ 1:12:22

And then came the thought worth the whole story: this couldn't be for the Lord if I'm excited about it. “Of course, as you know,” he said, “the Lord's not pleased unless I'm miserable.” That was the hidden gem — not the fast, but the dark corner behind it where he had quietly assumed God did not want good things for him. It is the small assumptions, he said, that chain you down.

2. Reimagining spiritual warfare

▶ 1:15:33

Matt is glad the spiritual warfare movement reminded the church that Christian living has a spiritual dimension. His worry is what happens at the fringe, where the cross becomes the penthouse of your achievements instead of the ground floor — where you have to trace your ancestry to find out whose great-uncle visited a lodge. Legions of demons come out at a word. They pose no threat to him. Picking up what Brandon had said earlier in the service, Matt put the blood of Christ back underneath everything: you can walk in freedom because you have already been set free.

“The most fruitful and the most sophisticated aspects of spiritual warfare are when we let God wrestle ourselves,” he said — the fear, the unwillingness to forgive, the bitterness. Not foreign entities you can spit at, but things we hold on to tightly because of the security they give us. He would like us to reimagine spiritual warfare as God giving us treasure and taking our trash. Hardly something to boast about.

3. The greeting is not filler

▶ 1:18:42

That is the bridge into 1 Corinthians. The opening is not churchy noise to get through on the way to the good parts; the way Paul frames the letter is how he will handle every mess in it. Paul is “called by the will of God to be an apostle” — not a type-A personality who volunteered and climbed the religious ladder. Some readers find the New Testament too Pauline and want more James or Peter. That, Matt said, is God's doing, not Paul's; it is what he hired him for. Paul writes to the Galatians that if he or an angel from heaven preaches another gospel, let him be accursed — brush off the angel. When a man that certain talks about the gospel, listen closely.

▶ 1:20:16

And the gospel is not merely history. When Paul reminds them of it he says “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” — the event and its significance together. Which means you could memorize Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and still not know the gospel, because the good news is not only what Jesus did but what it means for you in him. That is also why Paul can speak of the day God judges secrets “according to my gospel.”

4. Said to those people

▶ 1:21:51

This is the letter that deals with scandalous, nutty nonsense, and Paul has the nerve to call them sanctified.

▶ 1:22:33

So Matt defined the word, because holiness does not mean purity. Picture a field of sheep and one perfect specimen among them — no blemish, no injury, the best fluff. It is a pure sheep and it is zero percent holy. What makes it holy is being given to the Lord, set apart for him. You could hold a flawless replica of a Tabernacle instrument, unscratched gold, and it would not be holy, because it is not being used in God's presence for him. Holiness is about belonging.

Which changes the direction of the whole thing. We are not working toward a day when God might finally arrive. “We are sanctified in Christ Jesus,” Matt said, “meaning his real presence is with us because of the gospel, right now.” The instinct runs the other way — fix this, restore that relationship, pray all night, and maybe qualify for a starter pack of the Spirit. But the Spirit came upon believers as a person in his fullness, not in percentages, sanctifying tax collectors and liars. So when we find ourselves in sin, he is the first one we go to, not the last.

5. Enriched, not earned

▶ 1:27:20

He is a proud father to a congregation that has gone off the reservation in serious ways, and he keeps naming the source of what they have. Later in the letter you can hear them: I am very spiritual, look at my prophecy, look what happens when I touch someone's headache. As though there were invisible scales in the sky and enough prayer points to reach the top shelf at Dave and Buster's. That is how man-made religion always sorts out — a ladder, and the quiet consolation of being further up it than the people behind you, under a message that only ever says do better.

6. Gifts confirm the message, not the man

▶ 1:29:02

The throwaway clause in verse 6 is the key: the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, said in the middle of talk about gifts of power. Paul says the same thing plainly to them later, and again to Rome, where he will speak only of what Christ accomplished through him by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders.

▶ 1:30:49

God's strategy is to use the Spirit's gifts to confirm the gospel, not to affirm anyone's ego. Which explains what Matt called the least instinctive move in the letter: to the very people puffed up about their gifting, Paul does not order a few months in spiritual gift time-out. He tells them to earnestly desire prophecy. Our instinct, when people get wacky, is none of it for anybody for a couple of years.

▶ 1:32:30

Two more things sit in verse 7. You are not lacking in any gift, because the Spirit has already been given generously — yes, to the basic enlisted starter-pack Christians too, which can grate on a person who has not missed a Sunday in decades. And Paul ties gift usage to waiting for the revealing of Christ, because the gifts confirm a message that includes a risen Lord coming back for his bride. Hence “let no one boast in men… all things are yours, and you are Christ's.” His divine power has already granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness. Foundation, not pinnacle.

7. Sustained to the end, guiltless

▶ 1:40:31

Not groveling and barely making it. Guiltless. Matt refused to decorate the line: “it's in the Bible, so don't blame me.” This is why he says things that sound backwards — that we are saved not because we gave our lives to him but because he gave his life for us, not because we turned over a new chapter but because he emptied the grave. Faith matters enormously. But there will be seasons when you look for your faith and cannot find it, and in those weeks it helps to remember that your trust is not in your trust. It is in him being trustworthy. The Old Testament stories are not a toolkit for succeeding where those men failed, as though the Spirit were a better set of tools for the same human-centered project. The old self was co-crucified with him — it cannot turn over a new leaf, because it is dead. The engine behind the whole endeavor is Christ, which is exactly why he can sustain us to the end.

8. Fellowship is the goal

▶ 1:41:19

Called into fellowship. If God wanted staff, Matt pointed out, he already has plenty, and by all appearances they are better at it — an angel in its glory looks like a competent employee, whereas he cannot find his keys or remember why he walked into the room. Why is Song of Solomon in the Bible? Fellowship is the goal, not a workforce. Yes, make disciples — but what kind? Clock-inners who make more clock-inners is a fruitfulness he does not want, and he suspects God sometimes withholds that kind of growth as a mercy. The old joke says if you want to get things done you need Marthas; but if the to-do list says love, love, love, then what you need are Marys.

▶ 1:44:30

“Our main task is to sit at his feet and adore him and to let him transform us with his love. We only love because he first loved us.” What if the deep satisfaction you are hoping is real is exactly what he promises to give you for nothing — not a loan at low interest, not at zero interest. The relationship is lopsided and always will be. He will always be better to you than you are to him. What if that is fine with him.

▶ 1:48:11

All of which is how Paul goes on to rebuke this church, and he does rebuke it. To the factions fighting over a slice of pie: all of Christ has been given to you. To the sexual chaos of people looking for connection: you are not independent, you belong more truly than you know. To the lawsuits over what I deserve: your cup overflows. To the arguments about what we are free to eat, driven by a fear of being controlled: the only real freedom is in him. And to anyone still treading water while eyeing someone else's giftings — “let me tell you how spiritual you are: because of the fellowship the Father has with the Son, you are accepted.” Christ is already risen, already building his church, and always interceding for people whose prayer life could use some work.