1 Corinthians 14 (Part 3)

Last week, we covered the second half of 1 Corinthians 14, and we saw how the apostle Paul was giving direction to the believers in Corinth related to their gatherings because of the fact that the usage of spiritual gifts had become chaotic and disorderly in the church. Paul felt the need to bring order into their service. And you'll remember that we discovered a key verse. If you have your Bible open to 1 Corinthians 14, I want to remind you of verse 33. If you'll skip down to verse 33 with me. It's a verse that we emphasized last week, and I'm going to do even more so today. It says,“ For God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” Let me put on the screen how the NIV renders it. It says, 1 Corinthians 14:33 (NIV2011)

For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. You might ask yourself, wow, so the ESV says, “confusion,” the NIV says “disorder,” which one is correct? Well, they both are. You know what's interesting? When you look up disorder in the dictionary, it says a state of confusion. It's the same thing, confusion, disorder, it's talking about all that same stuff. Now, I don't know how, like, how much you like to get into Greek definitions. I do it in the course of my study. Let me throw this, I'm not even going to try to pronounce the Greek word. Greek Word: ἀκαταστασία Definition: instability: List of English words and times used confusion (1) disorder (1) disturbances (2) tumults (1)

I mean, I learned how to actually read those letters in college, but it's like a big deal! What you need to know is the definition of the Greek word that is translated as both confusion and disorder means instability. And there's a list of the English words, and how it is translated, depending on the context of the passage: confusion, disorder, disturbances, tumults. Bet you don't use that word very often; we were having a tumult in our home today. But I want to remind you of what Paul actually said in verse 33 here. He didn't just say, God doesn't like disorder. What he said was, "...God is not a God of disorder." Instead of referring to just how God feels about it, he basically told you and I that God's very nature, part of what defines Him, is not disorder, but peace. If you—and that's, so that's a negative—we call that putting something in negative terms when you say, "...God is not a God of disorder." That's negative. If you flip it around and you put it in the positive, we would say, "...God is a God of order" and therefore a God of peace. God is a God of order. I want you just to think about that for a while. We're going to think about it today as we go through this study. God is a God of order. And we brought out last week, the reason that Paul encouraged the church in Corinth to walk in order was because their gatherings, church gatherings, ought to reflect God's nature. If God's nature is that of order, then our meetings should reflect that same order. If there is disorder and chaos in our meetings, then we're not obviously reflecting God's character, since God's character is one of order. God is a God of order and so forth. And, that's why Paul ended this chapter. If you look all the way down to the last verse of the chapter in your Bible, it says this is why Paul ended this way. It says, " 40... all things should be done decently and in order.". All things should be done decently and in order, because you see, when things are in order, there is the most wonderful byproduct that actually happens. And we see it again in verse 33. Let me highlight it for you on the screen. 1 Corinthians 14:33 (NIV2011)

For God is not a God of disorder (the NIV renders it) but of peace. And that is the byproduct of order! It's a wonderful byproduct; there is peace in the order and beauty of God. Now we know from reading the Book of Genesis and the creation story that when God created this world originally, it was a place of beauty, harmony, and order.

And we're also told — we know it isn't today, by the way — but we're also told that one day when Jesus returns and establishes what we refer to as the millennial kingdom, we know that He's going to begin to restore that order. There will be incredible order during that restored time to the point where the book of Isaiah prophesies. I'm not going to put this one up on the screen for you, but Isaiah prophesies of the increase of His government and of peace; there will be no end, Isaiah writes (Isaiah 9:6-7). Why? Why is there going to be peace in that restored kingdom? Because there's going to be an order. There will be order! Jesus will restore order, and therefore there will be peace. And of that peace, there will be no end. We know that God's plan. You know, it was originally to create the world in order and harmony. We know that it got messed up royally by sin, and we know that God is going to restore this world one day to a place of order and harmony. Well, what do we find today in the meantime? It's, I mean, it's wonderful talking about what was; it's glorious talking about what will be, but guess what? You and I live in the nasty now and now. Don't we? I mean, this is the world in which we live, and it's a place where order, and therefore peace, is hard to find: Peace between nations, peace between people, peace between governments, peace between political candidates, peace in homes, marriages. What we find in the world in which we live is rampant disorder and therefore the opposite of peace, which is chaos. And it's all around us; brokenness to you and I is a common thing. We see it all the time, we see it in people, we see it in homes, we see it in marriages, we see it in families, we see it everywhere, and it becomes rather commonplace. Interestingly enough, nature is one of the areas where you can still see a pretty fair representation of God's order, believe it or not. In fact, as I'm sure all scientific evaluation is predicated upon the idea that things in nature are based on consistent patterns that we can observe again and again, and therefore understand from a scientific standpoint. Take, for example, sunrise and sunset; even though those things happen at different times throughout the year, they're always consistent. We know how long January 21st is going to be in 2056; we know how long - I mean, should the Lord Terry, I'm trusting he's going to come back before then, but the point is, should the Lord Terry, we can tell you how exactly how long that day is going to be down to the minute. Why? Because of the consistency and order that still resides in nature and it still can be seen.

The changing of the seasons is another entirely predictable, at least if you live in this part of the country. I mean, there's some areas of the world that have like one season. Talk about boring, right? When our youngest son Tim went down to Bible college in Southern California, he left in late August to go to school and he kept texting me about how much he missed fall. He was like, it's still hot down here. It's like November, and he's like, we're wearing shorts, dad, and he was, he really missed the consistency of seeing that because he knew that after summer, fall always follows. It's just the way it has always been. And same with the others: Spring always follows winter and winter follows fall and fall follows summer and on and on and on. It goes every year. There's no change. We may have a mild or moderate sort of a season, but they come and they go with great consistency and regularity and predictability. I once heard a comic comedian doing the yearly forecast. It was really funny. He was saying, and after it gets really hot, then it's going to cool down for a while. And he was giving, it's like, well, duh, we all know that this is what happens with the progress of the seasons. So, nature is pretty amazingly in order, but not all the time. When nature gets out of order, it becomes pretty chaotic and even dangerous. And the reason I know this firsthand is because I grew up in a region of the United States of America that is in an area which is referred to as tornado alley. Have you ever heard that term? Some of you guys are Westerners, and you've always lived here, and maybe never experienced the joys of a tornado. Let me put up a little map here for you.

--- You can see in the pink section in the middle of the map there, that pink area is considered Tornado Alley, and usually tornadoes begin in the Southern region down in Texas. And during the course of the summer, they work their way up to the point where in July and early August, there's activity going on. Where Sue and I were—and by the way, if you're wondering where Sue and I went to high school, it was right there. And even though it's just barely in Tornado Alley, according to this map, we saw our share of tornadoes. And I remember many times my parents getting us kids up in the middle of the night and heading for the basement to wait out a tornado. Are you ready for just a little quick science lesson? Because this is going to sound a little bit more like school than church, but if you're interested at all in how tornadoes form, it's an interesting lesson in disorder, because, and this is something you've probably seen in school. The sun shines on the surface of the earth, and because it heats up the surface of the earth, the air close to that area warms up, and that air then rises. Do you remember that from your school days? Warm air always rises, right? And so the warm air goes up into the atmosphere; it's cooled as it goes into that atmosphere, the cloud cover and so forth and so on. And then you'll, and then the air begins, it cools; since it cools down, it then falls. It comes back down to the surface of the earth, and you have these weather things, this airflow, that does this. But just remember, warm air always rises. That's why we get to see those things from time to time.

I've actually been up in a hot air balloon. Scariest thing that ever happened to me. I was trying to act really big and brave, and I was terrified. But when I got done, it was like, that was fun. But I can guarantee you if you put cool air in those, they don't go anywhere. They won't even sit up. It has to be warm air because warm air rises. Now, we know that this is normal: Warm air rises, cool air stays below. Guess what happens when that gets inverted, out of order? You get these bad boys, and that's a tornado. And essentially: I found an interesting and applicable definition of tornadoes online.

It says, Tornadoes form in unusually violent thunderstorms where there is sufficient (look at this) instability in the lower atmosphere. Remember that word that is translated, confusion and disorder, means instability. Instability refers to unusually warm and humid conditions in the lower atmosphere where they're not supposed to be. Remember, warm air is supposed to rise. And what also do you have? You have cooler than usual conditions in the upper atmosphere, which is not according to order; it's supposed to be below down at the surface of the earth. And you get, and that's a very simplistic definition. There has to be wind shear. There has to be some other things going on, but the result is things get out of order and you get a tornado. And that's what it causes; that's an actual picture of a neighborhood after it was struck by a tornado. And what do you have? You have devastation, and that's what tornadoes do; they leave devastation in their wake. In fact, I think that's more of an Oklahoma picture you're seeing right there. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? I've actually seen the devastation of a tornado afterward. I went to a relative's house just outside of Minneapolis a number of years ago when I was a young boy. And they had this home that was surrounded by this huge grove of trees. I mean, you couldn't see the house from the road. It was trees all around. And we went to visit them after a tornado. Not one single tree was left on their property. The house was still standing; it knocked over the chimney, and yet the house was still standing, but there was not one tree. It was weird; it looked like the landscape of the moon to me. And it was very eerie and creepy. ---

But if you've seen this kind of devastation, some of you may have even been in a tornado and seen the devastation firsthand. And it's truly awesome to behold. Here's the point that I want to make: Some of our lives look like that picture, some of our homes, some of our marriages, some of our minds, some of our finances; anything in our life can get out of order. And when it does, when things get out of order, it creates chaos. Chaos creates devastation. You with me? It's really, it's a simple domino, sort of understanding of life. And we seem to have a penchant for disorder because we live in the midst of it. And so we've created all kinds of names for it. In fact, I believe that people who have control issues, that's a very nice way of talking about somebody who has to control everything and everyone around them. But I believe that is a person just reacting to the disorder that is all around them, and they're so frightened and so fearful of what life might possibly produce. They've got to live life white- knuckling it all the way. And so what they do to try to maintain some sort of semblance of sanity in the midst of all the disorder is they feel like they need to control everything and everybody. And we talk about that person as having control issues. It's just, they're just responding to disorder. In fact, it's really very similar to people with fear issues. Somebody with fear issues might not necessarily be a control freak, but they're responding to the same stimuli, which is a world out of order, literally spinning out of order. And all of the chaos that can so easily and often does come from that disorder. And we look at that, and we're justifiably afraid. And so you see people who have all kinds of neuroses and all kinds of fear issues related to just life. And we're wondering, gee, what's up with you? Hey, they live in a disorderly world. What do you mean? What's up? What isn't up? There's all kinds of reasons why we respond the way that we do living in the world that we do. Think about it; even diseases and sicknesses are a byproduct of disorder. Your bodies were created pretty amazingly by God. The Bible says you're fearfully and wonderfully made people

People, do you understand that God never intended your body to get sick? He never intended you to have diseases, because we live in this fallen world that is touched by the disorder and the chaos that sin produced. One of the downfalls of that is that physically, our bodies break down; we get sick, we catch things, and sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's life-threatening. What is it? It's disorder. I mean, good grief, when you go to the chiropractor, if you do, you go to have your body put back in order because it's out of order. And when things get out of order, you suffer pain, right? When things are aligned and orderly, you have more range of movement and less pain. It's a really very simple sort of concept, and we deal with it every day, but we often don't think of it in terms of life in general. For example, too, when we talk about families that are out of order, what do we say? Well, our favorite word is dysfunctional. They're a dysfunctional family. Have you ever looked up dysfunctional in the dictionary? I love doing this. dys·func·tion·al (disˈfəNG(k)SH(ə)nl/) Adjective: not operating normally or properly Dysfunctional, not operating normally or properly. In other words: it's out of order. A family that is out of order becomes dysfunctional. There is an order that produces peace; there is disorder that always produces chaos and devastation. Are you bummed yet? Have I conveyed a sufficiently negative picture here for you? Ever since sin entered the human condition, we have, as a people, attempted to live our lives apart from the order and the wisdom of God's world. First of all, we are born into disorder, and then we take it a step further by beginning to live our lives after that same disorder of the world. We learn from the world, don't we? And we learn well. This is the way things work, or don't work, as the case may be. And so what have we experienced? We've experienced disorder, chaos, and wreckage—the wreckage of damaged lives. Like you saw that picture from that tornado devastation. That's what we experienced in our lives. There's wreckage everywhere. It's crazy to me that disorder can actually become normal to us. It never becomes orderly, but it does become normal. It's like the new normal God created—normal to be orderly. And we live amidst such rampant disorder and dysfunction that it just literally becomes normal to us. And we operate in it, like a fish in water. It's like, this is just the way life is. And then something incredible happens. We come face to face with the God of all creation, the God who made us, and we're shown from by Him just how sinful we really are and that our sin has separated us from knowing God and having any a relationship with God. And so what do we do? We repent of our sin. We turn away from it. We turn to Jesus to save us from it. And He does something really amazing. After He forgives us, He sends his Holy Spirit to live inside of our hearts. He literally takes up residence in us, as amazing as that may sound. And that this is the same God of whom Paul, the apostle, said, “Our God is not a God of disorder, but of peace.” That God, that one right there, now lives in you and me. And almost immediately upon inviting Him into our lives, He begins that work of addressing the areas of our lives that are out of order. And believe me, some of us present Him a lot of work to do, right? We offer up to Him an amazingly disorderly picture of what life can be, but He begins by grace and by mercy that work and to put our lives into order. And I got to be careful not to say back into order. He doesn't put our lives back in order because we never had it in the first place. He comes into our lives to put them into order. And this, by the way, this work of the spirit never ceases as long as we have breath in our lungs; you will never come to a place in your life where you say, I am perfectly in order. Never. And I don't know if that bums you out. But it's just another way of saying you're not going to be perfected this side of glory. God will always have things to say to you and I about areas of our lives that need to be surrendered and need to be given to Him that His work might be done in them. But one of the things that we need to understand about this work of the spirit, and we've mentioned this several times, and that is that the Holy Spirit is a perfect gentleman in our lives. He will not force Himself upon you and I to do that work of transformation from chaos to order, from devastation to peace. He's not going to force you. He will convict you. He will challenge you. He will constantly knock on the heart or the door of your heart and say, can I come into this room? Can I come into this one too? How about this room? And finally, and if you're like me, it takes a long time before I'll finally let him into a place of my heart. And then once I do, I'm so happy that I did. Because He begins that work of putting in order that which has been found there, which is rampant disorder. And I'm always glad; it's always painful. It's always difficult. It's kind of like, when your parents make you go into your room and clean it. And they came in; it's one thing you've ever noticed when your parents said, get in your room and clean your room. That wasn't so bad if you could go in and shut the door and just daydream and play with things that you found. Like, I didn't, I even had this, haven't seen this for six months. But then, it's terrible when your parents come into the room and want to oversee cleaning with you. Do you remember that? It's like, kill me now, because they're not going to let you stop and play or look around or anything. In fact, if anything, they're going to look at things that have been under the bed for six months and go, now, have you used that for a while? No, throw it away, and stuff like that. And it's just, it's brutal. It's a painful process having somebody oversee your life to bring order back into it.

And that's what God is doing in our lives. Of course, He's very gentle. He's not going to yell at you or anything like that. But He is going to say that needs to go. And that right there, that's just hurting you. That's hurting you more than you even know. And that needs to go. And that needs to, and that needs to go and that, that is not going to work and so forth. The question is, people, will we let Him do that work? That's the question we all have to answer today. Will we let? If it's anything close to what my mom used to do, I—the answer would probably be no, but now that I'm grown up and I understand that order brings peace, peace brings understanding. And I'm more likely to say yes, but still sometimes I don't even know that the area needs to be put in order. I want to show you a passage from Romans that I think goes very much with this study that we're doing. It's from Romans, chapter 12. Look with me on the screen. Paul writes and says,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God (to do this), to present your bodies as a living sacrifice (Presented to who? To God), holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed (the disorder of) to this world (I threw that in there because I think it applies. Do not be conformed to this world because it's disorderly and chaotic and produces devastation), but (rather) be transformed (so that you and I may reflect the order of God's wisdom and the peace that comes from it. How?) by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (and orderly). You see, the renewing of our minds that Paul's talking about here in this passage speaks of a process of, first of all, recognizing the disorder and chaos of our lives that we've received from the world and our own sinful behavior, and then presenting that chaos and disorder to God, that He might transform our lives into the image of Jesus Christ. And by the way, in case you're wondering, this is called sanctification, but rather than sitting here today and just talking about sanctification, I wanted to talk about it from the perspective of something that we all understand, and that's disorder and order. Well, we're learning about order, but it has to begin with the recognition of our part that we need God's order in our lives. And sometimes that's a hard thing to recognize, isn't it? You know, you guys that have been around for a while here at Calvary Chapel, that Sue and I came to a place about 33 years ago where we were forced to look upon the wreckage and devastation of our marriage. And we looked at it, and it wasn't a pretty sight, but we had allowed it to take place nonetheless and now here we were sitting there, like you see people sitting and viewing the wreckage of their neighborhood or their home after a tornado goes through. Have you ever noticed they have these blank, kind of almost like in shock stares as they just look at the devastation and they point things out, and they say, that was our bedroom right there. And that was where our living room was. It's not there now. It's gone. And over here was the garage. I don't know where that is. I saw her car down the street, but it's just devastation. And what was so much a comfort at one time is now gone. It's gone. And they're just... and that's the way it was for Sue and I, looking at our marriage. We just sat there on this heap of rubble and looked at it and said, look what we've done. It's gone. It's a mess. And we just as, have you ever, again, you look at those pictures of rubble after a tornado? Have you ever just sat there and just for a moment, just got this pang of just overwhelming, where do I start? I mean, where do you begin to take a town that has been decimated by a tornado and even begin to clean up, let alone rebuild? Where do you begin? And you look at the devastation of your own life. And that was the way it was for Sue and I when we looked at our marriage and what it now had become; it was like, this is overwhelming. Where do we even begin? We didn't have any idea where to begin, or what to do if there's anything we could do related to our marriage or anything like that. And all we could do was get down on our knees and ask God to have mercy on us. That was it. That was all we could do. It's like, God, have mercy. I mean, all we could do is say, Lord, take this devastation. And if you're able to do something with it, fine, because we're not. And we learned over time. And it's one of the reasons I'm standing before you today. That if we are willing to humble ourselves, God is able to take the devastation of our lives and transform it into an image that is absolutely amazing. So, how exactly do we allow the work of God to bring about His order into our lives? Well, I, again, I believe it begins by recognizing and confessing the reality of the disorder that has touched our lives. Recognizing it and confessing it. It's real. Now, in my case, that's never been really hard because there's usually been so much wreckage that it was undeniable. But sometimes, you can't smell it on somebody's breath or you can't see it in their walk, or they even come to church and they smile and somebody says, How you doing? And they're like, oh, I'm good. Thanks. God bless you. And there's, and there's, and they shake hands and there's devastation on the inside, but you just can't see it. It's devastation of an emotional, spiritual, physical, addictive nature, or whatever the case might be. You don't know it, you can't see it right there, but it's, but it is there. And for them, it's the same as somebody standing in the aftermath of a tornado and denying what took place. Hey, you guys want to come over for dinner? Come on over, we're going to barbecue some ribs tonight. You don't have a house left! Your barbecue grill is under tons of rubble in another county and you're pretending like nothing happened or that it's not an issue or something like that. But we do that sometimes. We actually do that. We can deny the devastation. We can deny the wreckage, the brokenness, the dysfunction, we can just smile our way through it. Yeah, I'm good. I'm fine. Thanks for asking. How are you? And all the while we're standing amidst brokenness and devastation that we refuse to see for what it is. And because of that, we refuse God's help and that's one of the things that needs to happen: our eyes need to be opened. God open our eyes to what's really going on in our lives. Open our eyes to what's going on in our hearts. Next, I believe it's important to recognize is that God desires to do a work of bringing order into your life. And that may sound like a really simple statement, and I've already made it in the course of this message. But I think for a person to really, truly say to themselves, God wants to change this. God is willing to enter into the reality of the day-to-day struggle of my life and help, and to bring order into the disorder' is an important thing to say. I mean, sure, seeing the brokenness and the devastation of your life is one thing but believing that God wants to help is a completely different matter altogether. And understanding that He's the only one who can do it is the other thing. I want to show you another passage that is very vital in this study, and that is from Colossians, chapter 1.

Where Paul says, “He (That’s Jesus) is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth. visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.(And look what else it says here.) And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Now keep that verse up just for a second; when the Bible says that in him, all things are held together or hold together, Paul means all things, not just some things; he means all things. Those of you who have ever studied science and life at the molecular atomic level, you know mankind doesn't know why atoms won't fly apart. We figured out how to make them fly apart, and that's where you get the atom bomb. But we don't know why atoms don't just go, pewkk! Except, the Bible tells us, says in Jesus, all things hold together. And people, that includes our lives, that includes your life, and that includes my life. He holds all of us together, and He specializes in taking the broken pieces of our lives that have flown apart due to all the disorder and all the chaos that we've embraced. And He gently and masterfully puts those pieces in order. And Jesus wants to do a work of bringing order into your life to bring your world into harmony with His wisdom. It doesn't mean problems are going to go away. It doesn't mean pain is going to go away, but nonetheless He desires to bring order out of the chaos. But it's also important to realize that the devastation that results from disorder came about because mankind originally said to God, you know what? I think we can do this on our own. And this is a constant temptation. We come to a place of recognizing the disorder of our lives. We recognize the devastation. We recognize that God wants to bring order into our lives. And then, and we even, perhaps we'll get to the point of inviting Him to work his order into our lives. And then what do we do? We start fiddling with His work. We start trying to do it on our own.

--- It's interesting, Adam and Eve thought they were smart enough to bypass God’s Word. And the same mistake has continued to be repeated ever since, and we continue to repeat it. And at some point, we've got to surrender control. At some point, we've got to just stop and lay it down and say, I can't do this. It's not going to happen if you don't do it, because order never comes naturally. Why? Because we live in a disorderly world. Don't sit around and wait for order to create itself. It's not going to happen. It's only going to happen as you and I surrender our lives and those areas of disorder into His hands so that He might bring order into our lives. Whenever I think about this idea, I always think about one of the most insightful Bible passages in all of scripture, when Jesus spoke to the Apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians 12:9 (ESV)

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect (how?) in (your) weakness. Not in your busyness. And God didn't say to Paul, no, listen here, Paul, I really need your help with this. He said, no, my power actually is perfected in the process whereby you recognize your weakness and you surrender these areas of your life to me that I might be able and be free to do the work that I want to do in your life of bringing about order. And it's so important, people, that we admit: I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't bring about order in physical, emotional, spiritual— even unbelievers understand the disorder of this world. They don't; we totally disagree on what to do about it. They're into holistic healing and meditation, and you've got to, you've got to get your mind and your body in harmony with the cosmos and become one with the elements and understand the true divine power within you, which of course is all rubbish. And you and I know that. It's coming to God and saying, I can't, I can't do this, You can. I am a product of disorder, and I come to a God of perfect order and harmony, and I ask you to infuse that in me. I invite you into these various compartments of my heart where I have kept you at bay for far too long. And I say, Lord, I'm going to crown you Lord of that room too. And I'm going to give you that place in my life and allow you to be strong. And I'm just going to sit here and be weak. ---