Abounding in the Work of the Lord
1 Corinthians 15:68-16:12
Let's look together to the Word of God this morning at 1 Corinthians, chapter 16. As I suggested earlier in the service, rather than returning to our study of Matthew, we thought it would be well to, having reflected last week on the past 25 years, perhaps look ahead to the next 25 this morning. As I was asking the Lord for a portion of Scripture for which to draw your attention to give us some focus, there were so many things that flooded my mind, so many different passages and portions, and approaches, and themes that we might have considered.
But I was drawn again and again in my thinking to this rather simple portion of Scripture that we pass over so very readily in Chapter 16 of 1 Corinthians. It is a portion that appears at first to be well, rather useless in terms of spiritual application except for the first few verses. But as we look deeply into it, it becomes a tremendously profound challenge to our thinking. Let me read for you beginning in verse 58 of Chapter 15. And I'll read through the 12th verse of the 16th Chapter. "Therefore my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. For as much as you know that you labor is not in vain in the Lord. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality under Jerusalem. And if it be suitable that I go also, they shall go with me. Now I will come unto you when I have passed through Macedonia, for I do pass through Macedonia and it may be that I will abide, yea and winter with you that ye may bring me on my journey wherever I go. For I will not see you now by the way, but I trust to tarry a while with you if the Lord permit. But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost for a great door, and effectual has opened unto me, and there are many adversaries. Now if Timothy comes, see that he may be with you without fear for he worketh the work of the Lord as I also do. Let no man therefore despise him but conduct him forth in peace that he may come unto me; for I look for him with the brethren. As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren, but his will was not at all to come at this time; but he will come when he shall have a convenient time." We'll stop there.
Now as you read through that, you probably not only were not profoundly blessed, you don't even remember what it was about. It seemed like a lot of rather busy details about Paul's goings here and there. And at first glance, that's exactly what it is. But at second glance, as you look deeply into it, you find that it reveals his perspective on serving the Lord.
Go back to verse 58 for a moment and we'll begin with the phrase, "always abounding in the work of the Lord." Now Paul gives us this very great statement that we are to be steadfast, that means consistently moving ahead, immovable, never distracted to the side, resolutely pursuing our goal and always abounding in the work of the Lord because we know it's not in vain when we know it's in the Lord. In other words, we are always giving ourselves to that which we know has eternal value. And we are to be steadfastly, immovably, resolutely committed to doing the work of the Lord because of its eternal quality. And we never waiver from that.
And you know, we sit at a time in history here in our church when so much has been done that the tendency for us is to simply ride out that which has been prepared for us with a lower level of commitment than those who gave us this legacy. That would be a tragedy. We must always, it says in verse 58, "always," at all times it means, "be abounding in the work of the Lord." Now the word abounding is a very important word, it means to overdo it, basically that's what it means, to overdo it, to go beyond. It isn't the idea of just doing enough to get by. It is the idea of doing, get this now, as much as is possible. The way to work the work of the Lord is to do as much as is possible, to go to the very extremity of your limits, to go as far as you can go, to do as much as you can do, as well as you can do it. So overdo it.
In Ephesians 1:8, and it tells us that God has overdone it in this way, "in which He has abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence." He didn't just give us enough to get by. He gave us as much as was possible for us to handle. Magnanimously did God give to us. In Philippians 1:9, Paul says, "I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment." And not just enough to get by, but more than is just enough. In 1 Thessalonians 3:12, it says, "The Lord is to make you to increase and to overdo it in loving one another and all men." In chapter 4, verse one of the same 1 Thessalonian Epistle, "We are to abound more and more." And in verse 10, it says the same thing, "We are to abound or increase more and more." And you'll remember that the giving of the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8, "Out of their poverty, there came an overabounding liberality." In other words, they did as much as was possible from their poor circumstance.
So the word means not to just do enough to get by, but to overdo it. And that's really I think what is the key to this church. The reason this church is unique, and the reason the church has become what it is, is because there were people who were willing to do more than what was just enough. There were people who were willing to do as much as they could possibly do. That's the calling of God to the work.
Now this entire passage, as we move into 16 then, reflects off of this concept. It's about doing the work of the Lord. You'll notice verse 10, it says at the end of the verse about Timothy, "He worketh the work of the Lord." So Paul is talking in verse 58 about abounding in the work of the Lord, in Chapter 16, verse 10 about Timothy doing the work of the Lord, and we assume then that the passage in between is about the work of the Lord. And having said we are to overdo it in the work of the Lord, He now tells us how to overdo it. And He gives us, and I'll give you about eight principals of abounding in the work of the Lord.
There's an illustration I want to share with you before that though. Turn to Philippians Chapter 2. And I think the life of Epaphroditus may serve to us as a graphic picture of what it means to overdo it. In verse 25 he mentions the name of this man, Epaphroditus to the Philippians. And he calls him a brother. He calls him a companion. He calls him a companion in labor. He calls him a fellow soldier. He calls him a messenger. And he calls him a minister, a tremendous list of credentials for this man.
And he said that "Epaphroditus longed after you," the idea there being of an aching heart. He had just an aching heart for the Philippians. He longed for them. "And he was full of heaviness." In other words, he bore a tremendous burden. He was, and it's really kind of a double statement in its fullness. Not only did he have heaviness, but he was full of heaviness. He was profoundly depressed, if you will, "because he knew that you heard that he was sick." In other words, his depression came not because he was sick, but because he was concerned that the Philippians would be sorrowful over his sickness. He longed for them so deeply that he did not want them to feel bad about him. Now that's a selfless man. He was sick, verse 27. "He was sick near unto death." He was deadly ill.
"But God was merciful, not only to him but to me also," says Paul, "because I didn't want to lose him or I would have had sorrow upon sorrow. And I have sent him to you eagerly so that when you see him you may rejoice," and so forth. "Receive him in the Lord with gladness, and hold him in high reputation." Now watch verse 30, "because it was for the work of Christ that he was near unto death." Now that's overdoing it. He didn't regard his life in order to supply your lack of service toward me. In other words to fulfill the service that Paul needed and that couldn't be rendered to him by the absent Philippians, Epaphroditus literally gave his life. He did as much as was possible.
You see, that's what it means to serve the Lord, not to do as little as is possible and get by, but as much as is possible to the point where you would even give your life. Now that goes against the grain of our leisure oriented society, and it's tough to get a handle on that concept on the day in which we live.
We are called to overdo it in God's work. Now what does that mean? Let's look at Chapter 16 and see what it means. And let me just mention this people. I really believe that we are living in an era when this is hard for us to grasp because most people don't know what it is to work hard. Sixty percent of our people in America, 60% of the employed people in America don't manufacture or produce anything. They're strictly involved in service activities. And in a sense, we've lost a sense of work and labor. And of course we get pumped into us forever and a day, the leisure approach to life. Now we're not living in a day when hard work was a part of life. And it's difficult for us not to see our Christianity in the same low level line of commitment that we tend to see everything else in life.
And Paul is trying to tell us something here that really speaks to our era. And I hope we can get a grasp on it. We tend not to be able to commit ourself unto death, as it were, to the cause of Christ, to the service of the Lord, to the work of the ministry. We are not, as Paul said to Timothy, "diligent to be approved of God, workmen that need not to be ashamed." We don't know really what hard work is.
We tend so much toward the ease of the flesh because that's what we're being told is right. And you know, you don't want to overdo it. You don't want to get high blood pressure, and so forth, and so on. And I might add that that doesn't come from work. That usually comes from anxiety. In fact the best thing for people may be exercise, as they're telling us now, when we have to exercise to compensate for the fact that we're not engaged in physical activity in our work. But going beyond all of those physical things and cultural things, the mandate of the work of God is that we are to overdo it, that we are to go to the limits, and the extremes of our capacities in working for the Lord.
Now let me give you eight things that are involved in that in Chapter 16. And we see them by illustration from Paul. They aren't commands. They're illustrations that we see in the flow of the text. Number one, if you're going to really do as much as is possible, you must begin with liberal giving, liberal giving. Verse one begins, "Now concerning the collection," sound familiar? We've heard that all our lives. Oh, another message on the collection. You know we sort of, whenever we hear somebody making a pitch for money, we sort of recoil a little bit. Sit on your wallet Martha. Don't let him get it no matter what he says. And we have a sort of a basic resistance to that.
And I really believe that the church in many ways, has resistance to that because it has been abused so much. So many of us have suffered for so long in situations where unbiblical approaches have been made to get money, that we feel like we're getting conned all the time. And maybe we have been. And that's not right. And really, people have become resistant to the appeal for money because it has been so abused.
But Paul says, "The work of the Lord begins here, concerning the collection." This must occur. Now look at the verse he says. "I have given orders to the church in Galatia, and I'm just telling you to do the same thing concerning the collection." Now what is he talking about? Now Paul was making a collection of money.
If you go all the way back to the day of Pentecost, you remember on the day of Pentecost of course there would be at least a million or maybe more, pilgrims in the city of Jerusalem. They were there for the feast times. They would come in. They would move into the city. And there were no inns or hotels or whatever to take care of them. And so they would stay in the homes of the people who lived there. And the government, the city, the actual religious community of the city would provide money to help those people accommodate strangers. There would be available water and food for them and so forth. And they would just move in during the feast time.
And of course when Peter preached and 3,000 were saved, some of those 3,000 were the strangers in the city. And then, the only church was the church of Jerusalem. So they didn't want to leave. They wanted to stay. Well that left the city with these rather poor people with no resources and no living there. And then the church grew thousands more, thousands more, thousands more.