Sermon Transcript
Uh, today, to close our series in 1 Corinthians, our scripture passage will be taught by Austin Ward, who is one of our elders here at Bridges. Austin has served as an elder for a little over 2 years already. Fun fact, Austin and I go all the way back to when he was in middle school. Uh, we, uh, we both came out of the same church, um, which is a little bit outside of Atlanta, Georgia, um, and I have known him for a long time, and it has been, uh, such a joy to see him progress through college. He was one of my students when I was a campus pastor at Georgia Tech, to moving out here, um, to meeting Ellen, getting married.
Um, now they have 2 young sons, um, Austin Ward is a software engineer in the area, and we are glad to hear from him today what the Lord has put on his heart. Let us hear our scripture passage from 1 Corinthians 16. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.
If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter so that you may help me on my journey wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me and there are many adversaries.
When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord as I am. So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers. Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity.
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, Act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love. Now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints. Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.
The churches in Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.
If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord come. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Well, I hope you’ve had a great week and that you got to spend some time with your family celebrating the birth of our Savior. Merry Christmas. Thank you. I know my family enjoyed time with grandparents and relaxing at home. This year, Dean, our 3-year-old, got a new Power Wheels Jeep, thanks to Gigi and Yaya, and that’s the name of my parents who live in South Carolina.
This Power Wheels is a new love of Dean, and he has already attempted to run over bushes, shrubs, and even other cars, so just watch out, we have a new driver. Uh, but hopefully he’s not on the roads. Uh, wherever and however you celebrated, I hope you also have had a blessed Christmas celebration. I’m honored to be here teaching on this final Sunday of 2024. This year has been a wonderful year full of lots of great lessons here at Bridges.
Uh, if you weren’t around earlier this year, there are definitely some good messages, and I think it’s worth digging into the archive on bridges.info to give them a listen. A quick recap of what we worked through this year. We started this year with our 40-day focus titled Exiled. Anybody remember that? That was a long time ago.
Living in a place that wasn’t home, or is not home. We talked about how the world, community, country, etc., is not what we are made for and not where we are destined to live for all eternity. Then we moved on to talking about God’s good creation and focused on the first parts of Genesis. We then ended springtime working through the entire book of Esther, a great story about a famous woman in the Bible. We then kicked off summer with a really cool series called This Is My Story, where many of our staff and elders, myself included, shared their testimonies.
And I have to say, this was one of my favorite series we’ve done in a long time. So many great stories of God working today and in the lives of people we know and can talk to. It was a great reminder that God is still at work and on the move in this time. We then kicked off fall discussing the fruit of the Spirit, which is always a great topic to dig into, and it’s a little convicting when you realize you have areas to work on. Moving on from fruit of the Spirit, we jumped into 1 Corinthians, Called Out, and I have the honor to wrap that series up.
So I do want to say thanks to Steve and Dan, wherever they are. For doing a great job walking us through some great passages. Some passages were, as the youth might say, a little spicy, but all of them were relevant and I hope everyone was blessed by them. Now it is up to me to close out this series in 1 Corinthians with our final chapter. And I have to say, when I was asked as a sports fan, I have to say when I think about the idea of closing this year in this series, I’m caught with 2 differing ideas because In baseball, a closing pitcher is a very valuable asset.
They’re the ones you want on the mound when the game is close and you need to get those 3 strikes. They maybe only pitch 1 or 2 innings in the game, but they are the ones you rely on to do a good job. They must excel under pressure and they need to be able to throw those clutch pitches to close the game and seal the victory. Unfortunately for me, I’m more of a football fan, and in football, you leave your starters in until the game is sealed. Then you put your second or third string in, so I’ve been a pew warmer most of my life.
Life, and today is my day to see what it’s like to play in the big game. Dan and Steve set us up this year and the series this year to be a great one. All I need to do is not fumble it. So if you’re new here, you probably have realized by now that I’m not normally the one speaking. I was honored to be asked to teach as part of my role on the Elder Board here at Bridges.
I pray that God will use me and my words to impact all of you here for his good and for his kingdom. Come back next week and you can hear from one of our regular teaching pastors, Dan and Steve. Actually, coming back is a great idea for all of us, not just if you’re new here, because next week we’re going to kick off our 40-day focus where all the church will be focusing on the same topics. We give our children, youth, adult life groups, and the worship service the same curriculum. So the whole church body is focusing on one thing.
This is a great way to ring in the new year, and if you haven’t found a life group, Now is the time to plug in. Reach out on bridges.info or find me and we can help you get plugged into a group. And if I can twist it a little bit more, if you have kids, we’d love to help you join a life group on Sunday morning by providing childcare. And I’ll say that I personally, my wife and I are happy customers of the nursery and preschool programs for our boys. So we all hope to see you and your children here next week as we kick off the series.
The series is titled Use It Well: Stewarding God’s Many Gifts. And we’ll be digging into the many gifts God has given us and how they can be used in meaningful ways. I hope to see you here all 6 weeks. So now let’s dig into today’s scripture, 1 Corinthians 16.
An overarching theme we see here in chapter 16 is that of connection, the title of this message. Connection is so important in human life. All of us have some need for connection. I see it all over, and even in the early stages of human life, Even my kids both long for relational connection. Dean is 3 years old and Jack is 17 months old, and they both commonly request to be held, to be hugged, played with, talked to, books read to them, and generally they just want to be connected to us.
They want to be doing what we’re doing. We all feel this, uh, whether or not you’re a Christian or whether or not you believe in this God. In Jesus or any God at all, uh, you have to admit that a life spent without relationships or connections is a pretty scary thought. Of course, some people are extroverts, and their idea is a big party with all of our friends hanging out and being loud. Uh, that’s usually me.
Uh, and others of us are introverts. Now, I’m told that introverts do not like big events with lots of people to talk to. Introverts’ idea of connection might be a walk with one other friend or maybe getting coffee. But we must admit, whether introverted, extroverted, young or old, single or married, we all desire meaningful, deep connection. But connection isn’t just being face-to-face or shoulder-to-shoulder with someone.
The connection that we desire is deeper. It requires conversations that go deep and make us feel seen and heard. It’s deeper than professional connections or the types of conversations you might have in a group project at school. Deeper than just, hey, lots of rain we’ve been having lately, or how was your weekend? It was pretty good.
Cool, cool. Deeper than that. It seems like we are wired for deeper connection, doesn’t it? We desire to be really known, and that takes time and intentional connection. Diving into the verse, the first few verses actually just concern giving.
Verse 2 is the gist. It reads, on this, on the first day of every week, you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up so that when I come, no collections will have to be made. And then verse 3 and 4 just kind of discuss the logistics of getting this money to the cause of Jerusalem. Now, we don’t know exactly what that money was for. But it does seem like from the writing that this is a cause or issue that the audience of this letter would be familiar with.
Some believe that this might be the famine that’s described in Acts 11, but really we aren’t completely sure. We do know that it was a— that it was the cause that the church was connected to. Perhaps it was because they knew people who were working on the issue at hand. Or maybe they had personal connections, uh, to, to the church. We, we don’t know, but we do know a few things.
One is that Paul told other churches to do this. We see that in verse 1. And 2, he told them to do it regularly, in this case weekly. Now, I don’t think the specific logistics here are the important bit for us today, but rather the idea that we should be given— giving regularly a portion of our income. In this case, it seems like their collection is for something external to them.
They aren’t running a building campaign or trying to pay the PG&E bill. In this case, it seems like this is more akin to what we would call mission, missions. I’d like to dwell a little bit more on this topic. Charitable giving is a gift that blesses all of us and can connect us to the causes both around us and globally. We give because God gives to us.
He gives us grace and redemption through his Son Jesus, John 3:16 and 17. And when we receive that gift of salvation, one response should be that we desire to join in God’s good works through giving. We can be blessed both by giving and receiving the fruits of other gifts. My family gives to Bridges and it helps us stay rooted in God’s work for us and feel part of the amazing ministries that are happening here, even if we’re not present. We also all can be connected to each other through the fruits of our giving.
In my life, I’ve been blessed many times over by God through the gifts of others that benefit me and my family. Just this church facility we’re in now, this complex that we have here, it’s the one where I’ve grown so much in my faith and I even met my wife. It’s a testament to the faithful giving of those who came before me. Uh, other giving can be obviously external to the church. My family also supports a local charity that focuses on supporting our homeless population here in the Bay Area.
Connecting to that charity has connected us to the challenge of homelessness and given us a look into the many complex issues surrounding it. Through giving, I can be connected and help participate in that part of the work of Christ.
Giving also helps me keep my priorities straight. It helps me understand that God is our provider and it helps preventing me from stumbling into treating money as an idol or rather as my identity. Now, I will mention I don’t receive any financial compensation from the church. So I’m not up here trying to say give me more money. I will say a few things about our church though, because as an elder, one of our functions is to ensure our finances, our finances, your giving, are used faithfully and in line with God’s instructions.
And I think we do a pretty good job here. I think we do a— we have a great church. We have a ton of ministries that work in our own community, whether it’s helping the homeless or helping people who come to us with real urgent needs, like the need for help with rent or groceries. We also have ministries that help others, like Baha’i Christian Ministries, who we heard from a few weeks ago. And we even have partners all around the world.
You can actually see all the mission partners on the, the new display in the lobby, which was done by our missions committee, some of you, uh, which helps provide stewardship and guidance to our mission commitments. Their hope is that this church can join us in prayer for all of our missionaries, and the board is out there to help us, uh, do that. The body is at work all around the world and is driven by your generosity saying, God has blessed me. I will bless others. Giving to this church is giving to a great ministry, if I do say so myself.
And then one final remark about giving is my friend Mark Liu, fellow elder and financial consultant, would love for me to remind you, I don’t know if he’s here today, but he’d love for me to remind you that you have a few more days to make charitable contributions for your 2024 taxes.
Heard an amen, all right. Anyways, even if you don’t give to Bridges, I hope you give somewhere. We’d love to be part of your giving journey, but most importantly, we hope you give regularly and generously as we are called to do as Christians. All right, so enough about giving. Onto the next sections, which in my Bible was headlined Plans for Travel, Final Instructions, and Greetings.
Here we see that Paul is talking directly to the church, and I view it as somewhat of a planning mode. Paul is doing something interesting here because remember, this letter was written sometime between 53 and 55. No, not 1953 and ’55, but AD 53, 55. So not only were there no cell phones, there was no landlines, fax, telegraph, car, there wasn’t even a printing press. So you can imagine that letters are a big deal.
Most people weren’t even literate. So you can— they were slow and expensive. So this actually leaves me wondering, why would Paul spend so much time talking logistics when a simple, I’m visiting soon, but don’t wait for me, would do. Who knows even when the letter would get there? The answer must be that this is important.
So we should pay attention to what Paul is doing here. It must be that Paul here is spending time discussing logistics of his travels because he is trying to show them he is connected to them and cares for them. Now, here at Bridges, we have a saying: people matter, truth matters, and the gospel is our only hope. Showing people that they matter is a focus of our church. It is something we see as sorely missing in the Bay Area.
Dan has spoken on this before, but in general, people here just don’t connect to each other. People here being in the Bay Area. You can live in an apartment or housing complex elbow to elbow with other families for years and not even know their name if you aren’t intentional about it. And I’ll admit, we’ve lived in our house for 2 years and not for lack of trying, uh, we, we don’t, we aren’t even sure if anybody lives in the house across the street from us. Uh, not for lack of trying, but it, it, it’s just everywhere you look.
Now, here at Bridges, we strive to make every person that walks through these doors feel like they are seen and that they matter because they do. And on top of that, for those who attend routinely, we strive to make them feel known, that they feel that this church is where they can come to do life with others. We can’t accomplish this until everybody buys in. This takes work from all of us. So please be intentional like Paul was doing.
Say hi to those around you that you don’t know. If someone is sitting in your pew spot, don’t get angry.
Don’t sit next to them and passive-aggressively talk past them to your friend on the other side. See it as an opportunity to get to know and connect with someone new. So say hi to someone you don’t know, get to know them. And if you don’t know what to ask, I came up with some sample questions here with the goal of starting a real conversation and establishing a connection. Here we go.
How long have you been coming to Bridges? What brought you to the Bay Area? How was your Christmas? What favorite traditions did you participate in this year? Uh, how will you spend the rest of your Sunday?
What’s your most common way of spending your free time? And then how can I be praying for you? And then pray for them. All this will help with connection. And these are just a sampling of questions that can hopefully lead you to deeper connections to those you are meeting for the first time, or maybe even someone you have known for a while.
And if we want to have a lasting kingdom impact in the Bay Area, which is so lacking in interpersonal connection, we must do this intentional work of connecting to others to show them that they matter on more than just Sunday morning. We need to do this every day in all aspects of our life, whether our— with our neighbors, colleagues, friends, everyone.
Alright, so it seems like this text kind of gets me on my soapbox between giving and being intentional in connecting. But clearly from how Paul is spending his precious time, paper, and words, we know that connection is important. In verses 5 through 11, we see him letting the church know that he wants to spend time with them and extended time. As he mentions in verse 7, this provides refreshment for both parties and provides time for connection. Paul even specifically mentions refreshment in verses 17 and 18.
When have you been refreshed by spending time with others? For me, I work a job that can be around the clock. I have colleagues all over the world. There really isn’t a moment even now where someone isn’t working at any point in time. West Coast, East Coast, Asia, Europe, Middle East, night owls and early birds, all hours.
It is so easy for me to get sucked in and spend tons of time and energy on work topics. Now, I will say that working hard isn’t inherently bad or sinful, but we all reach a point where we need rest. And for me, resting amongst family and friends is so important after a hard period of work. Weeks like this week, Christmas break, provide so much refreshment of my spirit. It’s like there is a separate battery in me that is not replenished by sleep, but by human connection.
We all have different levels of need for human connection, but everyone has at least some need to connect. And when we do connect, we can show others that they matter. Look at what Paul said, but also we should consider why he wrote it. Connection is intentional. It takes work.
It takes time. So I’ll ask, who could you connect with as we go into the new year?
Now we also see that connection requires vulnerability. We see Paul asking for help, both for himself in verse 6 and for Timothy in verse 10 through 11. In our culture today, asking for help is seen as a weakness. People who ask for help can be stigmatized. People will think they aren’t self-sufficient.
Or they don’t have it all together. And the biblical response to all of that is, of course they don’t. We all need grace. When we refuse to ask for or receive help, it isolates us. It is a seed that grows into pride.
Asking for help is a vulnerable thing. And as sinners, we are all vulnerable to something. When we share in a vulnerable way to others, we are showing our humanity to them. It makes them more likely to be vulnerable back. Asking for help, whether it’s prayer requests, counseling, asking for wisdom or advice for life situations, or physical or material help, it all helps with our need for connection.
Now I’ll share a deep personal story here. Uh, when we had our second child, my wife and I suddenly found ourselves with less margin for each other. It slowly developed into a relationship that was fractured. We weren’t spending the time we needed with each other to continue the connection we desired. But also, when we did spend time together, it just always felt like we were missing something.
We were missing each other. There was a moment where we looked at each other and literally said these words, we need help. And in that moment, there was vulnerability like I can’t explain between us. We prayed. We sought out Christian counseling.
We asked a few close friends to pray for us. Our counselor helped us, uh, work through this and connect to each other and understand the issues that were preventing us from connecting. And with our counselor’s help and lots of prayer, we emerged at the other end of a multiple-month process more connected than ever. That journey required a lot of vulnerability and started with a moment that realizing we needed help. Admitting that we could not do it ourselves.
So don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. It isn’t always the right thing to do with every connection you make. You do need to guard your heart. But next time, I’m going to challenge you to try to share a little outside your comfort zone and see how it feels. Paul asked for help and so can we.
Finally, we get to the end of the chapter, the finale. It’s called the salutation. This is the end of the entire letter. There are more greetings to other people and likely to leaders of the church that Paul knows personally. There’s some names in there, but then we end with, starting halfway through verse 22, our Lord come.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. While much can be said about those words, when we look at it through the lens of connection, We see that we have so much hope in Jesus. Dan talked a lot about this last week as well.
You should go to a— go give it a listen next time you’re in the car. Just pull up the podcast and hear his message. But as a recap, Dan laid out how Jesus’ resurrection gives us salvation and hope for the end. Jesus conquered death for all of us. Jesus’ sacrifice gives us so much to look forward to.
With salvation, we get to spend eternity with our Creator, connected with our Creator, the Creator of the universe who knows all the stars in the sky, the hairs on our head, the number of sands on the earth, who made the cosmos, the galaxy, and created all science and physics. Everything there is to learn, he created. God, the Creator of the universe, he knows us by name. He knows the darkest corners of our heart and through Jesus built a bridge to make us pure and able to connect and spend eternity with him. This is the connection we all long for.
The connection we feel in our deepest, most valuable relationships of this earth is just a taste of what is to come. Our eternal connection with God is the ultimate connection. The connection we were made for. The resurrection gives us this hope. Jesus conquered it all.
We celebrated Jesus’ birth this week. But the win, the reason we celebrate, the reason it’s a big deal that he was born, is that we get salvation and we get to be connected with our Creator because of the grace of Jesus and the resurrection.
So let’s pray.
God, we thank you for who you are, for your grace, and for the spirit of salvation you gave freely through grace. Thank you for our ability to connect with you in eternity, completely filling us. Help us use our time here on earth to connect with others in a deep way, showing them that they matter to you and to us. Amen.
