Episode 290: Remain | Tim Henderson

Thank you, Babs. Did it seem like Blakely was underwater a heartbeat longer than you wanted her to be? Come up, come up, come up. It's good. She's fine. I'm sure she's doing great, so it's good news.

Well you guys, about six months ago, we taught a series on First Corinthians, but we didn't choose to finish it at the time. We took it through about half the book, up through chapter seven, but when we stopped, I let you know that we're gonna pick it back up. We weren't gonna just leave you there forever. So this summer, for the rest of the summer, we're gonna be in First Corinthians. If you wanna reread it or clue in and just take it as it comes, that would be great. We'll be beginning today in chapter seven. So if you have a Bible, I'd love for you to open to First Corinthians seven. But before we start, I wanna remind you a couple of things because it's been a while since we were there.

When we looked at First Corinthians, I let you know that Paul wrote the book to the Christians in Corinth to tell them: you need to act more like Christians and less like Corinthians. The reality is that we all, every one of us, has a version of Christianity that is actually a braiding together of genuine Christianity and our own cultural context. Corinthians was written to help them and us learn to unbraid the different strands of our faith, so that we end up with a more pure version. We want to be more like Christians and less like whatever we've merged it with.

Paul begins his case by talking about how completely strange Jesus was himself. If the Corinthians are gonna be more like Christians and less like Corinthians, they're gonna be unusual. But that's okay because Jesus was pretty unusual himself. In fact, he was thought to be a fool based on the things that he did, the way he lived his life. Rather than rejecting that, he just embraced it. You could think that he's a fool, and that's fine. By being a fool in their eyes, he was able to save the world. It was the king on a cross dying in his underwear that was so bizarre, no one saw it coming. Yet it was the means by which he defeated Satan, took on our punishment, and won us from our rebellion. We who have seen the crucified one in his lowly and gory glory accept not only him, but the strangeness that he invites us to walk in, that we would be more like him and less like the culture that we're coming out of. That's the big picture for Corinthians, and we'll see that manifest here in the second half of the book as well.

Second thing I wanna remind you of: a few weeks ago, I was teaching on this learning time and I offered to you that you have a few different jobs in this moment. One of them is that you're to be a builder. What I meant by that is that we all look at the world through a lens. You have a worldview, a framework that you use to determine what is true, and what is good, and what is beautiful. That framework for every one of us is in development. What I wanna invite you to do in this moment here is to see this as a chance to be actively involved in changing, modifying, improving your worldview in light of what God has said in his Word. When the Bible tells us something—and it does this all the time—that is different from what we already believe, we should sit under it, not over it. If we're willing to do that, then we will obtain the benefit of an improved worldview, of fixing and modifying and changing that worldview to now include what God is telling us.

I would suggest to you that today's passage is going to contain a fair bit of both of those two things. It's a strange text. It's a challenging text. It's weird to me. It challenges me deeply. So when I read this, I have to be like, okay, don't just turn the page. It's okay. We perhaps know, perhaps we've accepted that it's our job to be more like Christians and less like whatever we've merged our Christianity with. But Paul is gonna make some pretty strange arguments here. I know it's weird, but stay with it. Let's listen to what he has to say. I hope by the end of our time, you'll be more persuaded of the truthfulness of what he's saying.

Paul's Main Point

You already heard it read—Brenda read it for us—but I wanna show you Paul's main point, because he says the exact same thing three times. Take a look at it. First Corinthians seven, you can start at verse 17. Paul says:

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him. — 1 Corinthians 7:17

He's gonna repeat that in verse 20:

Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. — 1 Corinthians 7:20

And then again in verse 24:

So brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. — 1 Corinthians 7:24

Along the way, what he's gonna do is he's gonna illustrate this with these outrageously sweeping illustrations. You might feel like he's talking about the little stuff, like little itty bitty details, but he's not. He's saying, if you're single, don't try to get married, just remain as you are. To which we're like, what? What are you talking about? Or he'll say, hey, listen, if you're a slave, it's cool, don't sweat it, just remain in slavery. To which any normal person would say, what do you mean remain? No, I'm not gonna remain in slavery. Right? He is making these huge things, and I think this is all greatly at odds with the way most of us, including myself, tend to live our lives. And therefore, our inclination is just disregarded entirely. Like, I don't know what you're talking about, so you're probably not talking about anything at all.

You know this phenomena? We have this magical ability when we encounter things that we don't already agree with, we'll just dismiss them into oblivion. And it's probably the case that we have different things that we find disagreeable and therefore ignorable. Some of you might have one time read this weird thing also in First Corinthians, so we're gonna talk about it in a few weeks, about women wearing head coverings. And you're like, I don't know what that means, so it probably doesn't mean anything. Just skip it. Right? Or you might read this language that our wealth is to be shared with others, that God blessed you so that you could be a blessing to others. And you're like, well, I don't know what that means, but it's clearly not meant to be taken literally. So we'll turn the page on that. Well, you read this weird stuff about sexual purity, and you're like, yeah, whatever that's about. Maybe you found this passage in Ephesians about wives submitting to their husbands, and you're like, okay, that's just plain embarrassing at this point. Right? Or you came across this other passage right next to it that says that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church. And you think that's really lovely until you remember the cross, at which point it starts to feel a little bit extreme. Right? Maybe you came across the text saying that homosexuality is not a practice to be lived in. And you're like, dude, that's clearly out of step with the culture, so we can just ignore that one too. Different things seem ignorable to different people, but I think the phenomena exists across the spectrum, and probably for many of you, this passage is on the weird list. Because it does not fit with our existing schema, we're just like, turn the page. I don't know what that's about.

Overcoming Our Bias

I wanna suggest to you, in this instance and in all instances, we should overcome the impulse to turn the page, and be willing to lean in, do the work, slow down. Let's understand what does he say, what does it mean, and then accept what it means. Because his word is supreme, all the time, not just when it says what we already happened to agree with. We wanna sit under it, not over it. Now, figuring out what it really means might take some work. Right? And you wanna go into that conscious of your bias to make it mean what you wanted it to mean. Right? And the surface meaning may not be the proper understanding. This thing rewards diligent study, and sometimes you've gotta work to get past that surface thing. But the fact that you don't like it doesn't give you warrant to ignore it. We wanna say, Lord, this is a speed bump. This is gonna slow me down, and I wanna know what you really mean here.

This passage, I think for many of us, and certainly for me, is hard to accept because I think we've deeply internalized the idea that all of life is a great big bigger and better hunt.

I don't know if any of you guys grew up with a youth ministry or a Young Life thing, but do you guys know what a bigger and better hunt is? You get a group of kids, you divide them into subgroups, and you give each group a paper clip. And their job is to go take that paper clip and go knock on somebody's door and say, hi, I'm in a bigger and better hunt. Would you be willing to trade me this paper clip for something bigger and better? And then people—it's astonishing—people will say, okay. And then they go in their garage and they'll find you something. So you go out and they're like, well I have this old leftover baseball mitt that my kid hasn't played with in twenty years. You want that? And you say, deal. That is bigger and better than my paper clip. And then you go to somebody else's house and say, hey, I got a baseball mitt and I'm playing this game, it's called bigger and better. Would you be willing to trade me this baseball mitt for something bigger and better?

And they're like, I've got a broken dishwasher, deal. Okay? And we just—I have seen people bring back a functioning automobile from a paper clip. Okay? This whole game is ridiculous. Okay?

And the thing is, we have a tendency to think that life's a bigger and better hunt. Right? Why'd you buy this house? So that it would appreciate in value, so that I could buy a bigger and better house. What do you love about this job? Upward mobility. I can trade it in for a bigger and better job. We go through all of life. Whatever I want, everything in life is a springboard to the next step of greatness.

And Paul is saying, time out. Time out. Life is not a bigger and better hunt. Wherever you are, be right there.

What Paul Really Means by "Calling"

Now, what he's really saying is it's not a series of springboards. It's not a bigger and better hunt. Rather, it is an opportunity to live out your calling. If you're gonna make any sense of 1 Corinthians 7, you have to sort out what Paul means with the term calling. Look how often he uses it. It's over and over and over again throughout this passage. It's clearly the central term.

Verse 17: Each one should lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. Verse 18: Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? He who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freed man of the Lord, and he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. And then finally, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God. — 1 Corinthians 7:17-24

Over and over and over again. Okay? If you're gonna make sense of this, you gotta know what do you mean by that? The New Testament uses that word "call" in two different ways.

The first use, the primary use, the majority use, is that God has called us to himself. Okay? Over and over again, this is the number one usage of the term. It would be as if you were out in a field and I called you, hey, come over here. Come be with me. Or if you're in a crowd, and I were to call you out of the crowd, to be with me, to be near me. That's the primary sense of calling—that God calls you to himself, that you would be with him. When he does, he might call us to peace, he definitely calls us to holiness. But he's calling us chiefly and primarily to be with him. That's the number one sense.

The second sense is different. The second sense of calling is that God gives us an assignment. It would be like this: If I were to call you and say, Alan, come over here. Need you to help me with something. Right? Or if I were to say, Mickey, come here a minute. I want—there's something I want you to do. There's a task. There's a mission. There's an assignment. That's a calling. Okay?

He's called you to himself, and he has given you an assignment. And what Paul is saying over and over and over again in this passage is, in light of the fact that he has called you to himself—I.e., he's invited you to be with him—do not reject the calling, I.e., the assignment that he has given you.

Now, his assignment may very well involve things that you find difficult. It's almost certainly the case that for everyone in this room, there are aspects of your assignment that you are not fond of. Does that resonate? There are things that he's called you to. What Paul is saying, what God is saying, is if his assignment involves you working under a boss that you don't particularly like, that you should give yourself to it fully, you should accept it, and you should thrive where you are. Wherever you are, be all there.

He's saying if you're single, embrace the freedom that singleness offers you and vividly pursue him in it. Ring out every drop of your singleness because it's a gift. And it might not last forever, but there are things that you're uniquely able to do.

He's saying, if you have a child with a disability, that is a sacred calling. You have the opportunity in these tender moments to lean into it, to accept the assignment, and to be the best parent that you can be to this child because God is in that and he cares for broken people.

It might be that you have a disability, and you hate it, and you want it to change. I understand that deeply. There are plenty of things that I wish I could change, which is why this text is so challenging to me. But what Paul is saying is the circumstances in your life are part of God's calling on your life. It's part of the assignment. And there is something that he wants to do in your life through it, and he's inviting you to remain in it.

I wish I had the time, and I don't even have close to the omniscience, to put my finger on the specific part of each one's assignment that you are eager to change. But I don't need to because you know what they are. Right?

Just think about what are the things that you don't want to remain under, that you wish to flee from. Whatever that thing is, I want you to begin, hopefully in this text, to rethink it, to reframe it, and to see even that painful circumstance as part of his assignment.

Because what Paul is saying is: wherever you are, be all there. He has you there for a purpose. There's something he wants you to remain in. And resist the temptation to say, "I don't like this. I want a new assignment." Now, God might. He may. He often does give you new assignments, and he might do that. And if he does, at that time, then I want you to be all there, wherever he calls you to next. But he's inviting us to let go of the assumption that everything in life is a springboard to the next, bigger, and better thing. Rather, that we'd be willing and eager to remain in the situation to which God has called us.

Now Paul is clear to say, this is not absolute. If you fall in love, you're allowed to get married. It's not wrong. Everything's okay. And he even says to the slaves, "Listen, if you have the opportunity to gain your freedom, that's fine. It's not a problem for you to do that." But there is this tendency: as soon as we hear the exception to a rule, we're like, "Oh, great, the exception," and then it eradicates the rule. Don't let the exception eradicate the rule.

Do you have an orientation to life to say, "Lord, you put me here. This is the role that you have for me, and I want to find it. I want to discover it. I want to lean into it"? Or do you live your life seeing everything as a springboard to the next thing that you want to do?

Friends, God has given you an assignment. And for this season, it's this: you are called to remain in it until he gives you a new one.

The Chosen Clip

Now I want to show you a clip from The Chosen that I think illustrates this point just beautifully. It's about six minutes long, which is way too long for a clip in the middle of a sermon. But it's so good, and I didn't want to edit it. We're gonna show the whole thing.

The Chosen is a TV show about Jesus. It's fictitious. It involves lots of stuff that's canonical—that's in the gospels—and a bunch of stuff that's imaginary that's not. This is one of those things that does not occur in the gospels. Those moments make me a little bit uncomfortable because I think we can misconstrue who Jesus really is. But you guys, even though this does not occur in the gospels, it is absolutely spot on as a depiction of 1 Corinthians 7, and I think it's really beautiful.

It's a conversation between Jesus and James, whom he calls Little James. And James has a situation, a circumstance in his life that he wants to change. And in this conversation, Jesus is very tenderly going to explain to him why he wants him to remain in it. So though it's fictitious and not in the gospels, I want you to see it because it captures this beautifully.

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CLIP:

Little James: May I have a moment?

Jesus: Of course.

Little James: I am forgive me. I'm not always confident to speak. Slow to speak. It's a very good quality. I wanted to ask you a question, please.

Jesus: So you are sending us out with the ability to heal the sick and lame.

Little James: Yes, that is what you said.

Jesus: Yes. So you're telling me that I have the ability to heal. Forgive me, I just find that difficult to imagine with my condition, which you haven't healed.

Jesus: Do you want to be healed?

Little James: Yes. Of course, if that's possible.

Jesus: I think you've seen enough to know it's possible.

Little James: Then why haven't you?

Jesus: Because I trust you. What? Little James, precious little James, I need you to listen to me very carefully because what I'm going to say defines your whole life to this point and will define the rest of your life. Do you understand?

In the Father's will, I could heal you right now, and you'd have a good story to tell. Yes? That you do miracles. And that's a good story. But there are already dozens who can tell that story, and there will be hundreds more, even thousands.

But think of the story that you have, especially in this journey to come, if I don't heal you. To know how to proclaim that you still praise God in spite of this, to know how to focus on all that matters so much more than the body, to show people that you can be patient with your suffering here on earth because you know you'll spend eternity with no suffering. Not everyone can understand that. How many people do you think the Father and I trust this with?

Little James: Not many.

Jesus: But the others, there's so much more. So much more what?

Little James: I don't know. Stronger, better it is.

Jesus: James, I love you, but I don't want to hear that ever again. I know how easy it is to say the Song of David, that I am "fearfully and wonderfully made," but it doesn't make this any easier.

And in this group, it doesn't make me feel like any less of a burden. A burden? First of all, it is far easier to deal with your slow walking than it is to deal with Simon's temper. Are you fast? Do you look impressive when you walk? Maybe not. But these are things the Father doesn't care about. You are going to do more for me than most people ever dream.

So many people need healing in order to believe in me, or they need healing because their hearts are so sick. That doesn't apply to you. And many are healed or not healed because the Father in heaven has a plan for them which may be a mystery. And we remember what Job said:

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

When you pass from this earth and you meet your Father in heaven where Isaiah promises you will leap like a deer, your reward will be great. So hold on a little longer. And when you discover yourself finding true strength because of your weakness, and when you do great things in my name in spite of this, the impact will last for generations. Do you understand? Yes. Thank you, boss. A man like you healing others. Oh, out of sight. I can't wait to hear your stories when you return. Shalom, Isa. Shalom, and James, remember, you will be here. It's only a matter of time.

The world in its present form is passing away, and it will not be long. At that time, all assignments will be changed. But now, these moments, these days of infinite consequence are ours to live in the situations to which God has called us, to be faithfully present, to love him, to endure the things that he puts in our path.

It is a challenging word for those of us who think that every problem is meant to be solved. That is probably one of my deepest convictions in life. This studying for this, and preparing this, and thinking about this has been deeply challenging to me. But I wonder if you are able to say as David did:

Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Surely, I have a delightful inheritance. — Psalm 16

In Christ, we have the resources that we need to faithfully live out our callings. Not just to be content, but to be fully present, fully engaged. Wherever we are, we can be all there. We can do it, you guys, because we trust the giver of our assignment. Because we hear his call in our life. Because we remember that our primary calling is to him. He has called you to himself. And subsequent to that, he has given you an assignment.

I know it's true. Some of you have difficult assignments. All of you have difficult assignments. And I would invite you this morning, is there something that you have been kicking against and resisting and fighting and refusing to enter into? That today, right now, you need to say, "Lord, I surrender. I submit. I wanna follow you wherever you want me to go. I wanna fulfill whatever task you put in front of me."

There's an opportunity now you can come forward and just deal with it. Talk to him, and just say, "Lord, right now, I've been fighting this, but I embrace it. I accept it. I will remain where I am, and I'll trust you to walk with me through it. Give me eyes to see what you want me to do with this, and how you might be glorified in my life because of my willingness to accept and to praise your name in the situation you've given me."

I'll pray to that end as we get ready to go to prayer and then go to the table.

Lord Jesus, you are better than we are at this by such a wide margin. You had such an unbelievably difficult assignment. You were asked to drink a bitter cup and you remained in it. You were silent and you just took it. Lord, I pray that as we look at you and see not just that you were courageous and submitted, but that you were those things for us. It was for our benefit. It was in our place. It was for our good.

Would you resource us in that to trust you and say, "Okay, Lord. I see this is from your hand and I will walk with you in it." Lord, give us the grace because sometimes it's just really hard, and we are not like you. Lord, would you make us to be more like you? Would you live your life in us so that we could do the things that we just simply can't do on our own?

We love you. Amen.