1Cor 15:58 Answers to the Christian’s Life Some of the most powerful truths in the Bible are found in a single verse. Consider John 3;16, 1John 1:9, and so many more! Pr 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. I do not know that this verse will impact your life as much as some others, but I know that it has more than enough meat to gnaw on for tonight. It answers three questions for the believer. I. Whats your motivation? A. What is suppose to drive the Christian. The Christian life is neither simple nor easy. 1. It is hard to be a disciplined Christian because the Christian life does take discipline. 2. God gave commands which involve the reshaping of the sinners being. a. Some commands require that we stop doing some things which we may want to do. b. Others require we start doing some things that we may not wish to do. 3. In this verse, Paul goes on to command us to do three things: be steadfast, be unmovable, and always abound in the Lords work. 4. Those may be short, concise statements but obedience to them will require much effort and work. B. What is to motivate us to do these things? 1. "Therefore" – Whenever you see the word therefore, look to see what it is there for. a. It connects what he is about to say with what he has said. b. He is telling us that based on what he has said, we ought to be steadfast, unmovable, and abounding in the Lords work. c. This is a big Book and Paul has covered a lot of territory. 2. What are the some of the things Paul could be referring to as our motivation? a. Chapter 15, this chapter, is the resurrection chapter. There are many truths about the resurrection that could and should motivate us. (1) How about the fact that Jesus could come at any moment? 1Cor 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (2) How about the fact that we are going to win? 1Cor 15:27 For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. 28 And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. (3) How about the fact that we serve a risen Lord? 1Cor 15:20 But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. b. Chapter 14, the last chapter, was the gift chapter. 1Cor 14:1 Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. (1) The word "desire" means want, envy, crave. (2) Why should you want spiritual gifts? To use! (3) Dont you want to find out how many gifts you have? How you have been blessed and endowed with abilities from God? (4) You are going to have to try to use them to find out if you have them. (5) What are some of the spiritual gifts? tongues, prophecy, giving, helping, showing mercy, organizing and leading. (6) But there are some physical gifts that God gives: building, repairing, painting, selling, sewing, designing, rearing, growing. c. Chapter 13 is the love chapter. (1) This chapter is not talking about Gods love for mealthough that should be a powerful form of motivation. (2) It is talking about my love for others. 1Cor 14:4 Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; 6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 8 Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. d. Chapter 12 is the church chapter. 1Cor 13:13 For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (1) I am part of some thing bigthe biggest. (2) I am part of some thing spiritual. (3) I am part of some thing eternal. (4) I have God the Holy Spirit to help me, friends I have never met in heaven rooting for me, and friends on this earth to work with me. II. Whats your duty? Paul listed three: A. Be steadfast and unmovable. 1. Both steadfastly and unmovable are words of position. a. "Steadfast" means to be rooted, sitting, sedentary. b. "Unmovable" means immoveable, incapable of being moved. 2. What is the difference? a. I look at steadfast as being stationary when you pushed by an outside party. b. Unmovable is you staying put when you are tempted to move. c. Together they mean that you dont want to be moved or to move. B. To stay steady when pushed requires deep roots. 1. Questions need to be asked here. a. How deep are we for God? b. How do we get deeper, stronger? c. There is not an individualized, written curriculum. 2. However, we have everything we need. a. There is a TEXT – The Word of God. Not everything about God is written in the Bible, but everything we need to go deep is. b. There is a TEACHER – The Holy Spirit. c. There is a TERM – Life. Every problem, every blessing, every event teaches us about God. 3. You were automatically enrolled into this course when you got saved. 4. The question is are you still learning? C. For us not to move on our own requires strength to stay put, determination, stubbornness on our part. 1. We know something about being stubborn but usually we are stubborn about the wrong things. We need to be stubborn about the important doctrines. 2. These are referred to as the cardinal doctrines. a. They are the most important doctrines for if given up, we lose the essentials of salvation. b. Different people have different lists but most of them center on the same topics: (1) The Bible – It is the inspired, preserved, inerrant Word from God. (2) The person of Jesus (a) He is God. (b) He was virgin born, lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary death, and bodily rose from the grave on the third day. (3) Salvation – It is a free gift from God to all who will believe on Jesus Christ and repent of their sins. c. There are some other important doctrines we need to stand for. We will call those secondary doctrines. What are they? Every other Bible truth. 3. There are three enemies seeking to move us. a. The World – It can shake us with defeat or success or a mixture of both. b. The Flesh – Our pride, offensive spirits, bitterness, fear, pleasure, and on the list goes. c. The Devil – The master shaker. He can use the world and flesh or he can pitch a new element into the brew. 4. Are you going to let yourself be shaken from love for Christ or from His service? C. "Abounding" – It means to flourish. 1. The opposite from being moved from our devotion and service to Christ is to cause it to flourish. 2. This text specifically says that we are to abound in the Lords WORK. a. We are often more diligent to guard our devotion than our service. Christ wants both. What have I done for for the Lord today? this week? this month? b. Lets not be so abstract. Its not all a spiritual warfare. How many minutes have I spend praying for others, witnessing, ministering to the saints, helping the poor, the widowed, the sick, the fatherless. \\#James 1:27\\ III. Whats your purpose? A. The Bible promises that our labor is not in vain. It will produce some thing. That is the purpose of obeying this command. B. What are you wanting to see God do? What is your purpose? 1. I want to know God better. 2. I want to have prayers answered. 3. I want to see souls saved. 4. I want lives to be helped because of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1Cor 15:58 Answers to the Christian’s Life Some of the most powerful truths in the Bible are found in a single verse. Consider John 3;16, 1John 1:9, and so many more! Pr 3:6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. I do not know that this verse will impact your … Continue reading “1 Corinthians 15:58 – Answers to the Christian’s Life – Bible study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}