Our scripture reading this evening is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and I'd ask you to turn there with me. First Corinthians, we take up our reading in chapter 3 at verse 16, and we'll read down through chapter 4, verse 20. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, beginning at verse 16, let us hear God's own word. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. for God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God, for it is written he catches the wise in their craftiness, and again the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future. All are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of students, stewards, that they be found faithful. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself, for I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted, for it is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness, and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast? as if you did not receive it. Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich. Without us you have become kings. And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, But we in disrepute To the present hour we hunger and thirst We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless And we labor working with our own hands When reviled we bless When persecuted we endure When slandered we entreat We have become and still are Like the scum of the world The refuse of all things I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you, Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in Christ, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk. but in power. So far the reading of God's Word. This is a remarkable passage of Scripture, and I want to look at just one little verse in the middle of it, a verse that has long intrigued me. And so finally when I got invited to preach, I thought, well, maybe I can study this verse and see if I can figure it out. I wasn't sure exactly what I'd do if I couldn't figure it out, but I think I have. So it's 1 Corinthians 4, verse 6, where Paul writes, I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us, and now the words that particularly interest me, not to go beyond what is written. Not to go beyond what is written. That has intrigued me, not because the words seem so difficult to understand. They've intrigued me in part perhaps because they sound so very Protestant that we stick with the written Word of God. But they've intrigued me because Paul really doesn't seem to be talking about the Scripture in this section of his letter. And so why suddenly does he bring up this matter of what is written? What point is he making? What does he want to teach us? What does he want us to learn. And I think, having spent some time studying this, it's really very helpful, very encouraging, very important, and I hope I'll be able to convince you of that. To see what's going on in this verse, we have to look at the context, really in a sense, of the whole letter. This letter is an important letter, isn't it? And when we study it, we often break it into sections, and by break it into sections, we can sometimes miss the coherence of the whole. Paul is writing many important sections of this letter to a church he knew well. He was the church planter in Corinth. That's described for us in Acts chapter 18. He spent 18 months in Corinth establishing that church. That's a long time for him. And after he left, over the period of the next three or four years when this letter was written, he has stayed in touch with his church. If we read this letter carefully, we can see he'd already written at least one letter to this church earlier. Clearly, this church has written to him because this letter is responding to questions they've put to him in a letter. And he not only has received their letter with their questions, but he begins by saying that he's received reports of them. So he's continuing to hear news. That's the way it is with churches, isn't it? News often gets from one congregation to another. It's the Aunt Bessie method of communication, I always say. Somebody has a relative, and Paul, through the chain of movement, is staying in touch with this church, and they have a lot of needs. They have a lot of questions. They have a lot of concerns, and those concerns lead Paul, later in this letter, to write very important teaching that in some cases we don't have anywhere else in Scripture as clearly. He writes that wonderful chapter on the resurrection. That's the most detailed and lengthy reflection on the resurrection of Christ and what it means for Him and for us anywhere in the New Testament. He writes about the meaning of the Lord's Supper, doesn't We read that passage every time we have communion. Again, it's probably the most detailed reflection on the meaning of the Lord's Supper that we have in the New Testament. He writes on spiritual gifts in a very helpful way, particularly for us in our time when there's been a lot of interest in spiritual gifts. And what do they really mean? What should we think about them? What should we anticipate about them? He talks about church discipline and its importance in the life of this church. So there are all these sections of Corinthians that are very, very important to the life of the church and to our understanding of the gospel. But he begins this letter addressing a problem that maybe at first glance we would think is not of the highest importance. He says in the middle of chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians, I hear there have been divisions and quarrels among you. Well, we read that and say, well, it's not good to have divisions and quarrels. But when we compare that to thinking about the resurrection or thinking about spiritual gifts or thinking about the Lord's Supper, a little bit of quarreling, is that really all that significant? Well, what we see is that Paul does think it's significant. It's very significant. He gives from the middle of chapter 1 through chapter 4 to addressing this problem in Corinth. That's about 20% of the letter. And he really hauls out major theological artillery to face this problem. Paul is very concerned about these divisions, about these quarrels that are taking place in the Corinthian church. Now, we don't know how large that church was. It's been in existence, as I say, maybe four years. Probably, it's not more than a few hundred people. What could they have to quarrel about? What could they have to fight over? It's one of the great mysteries of sin, whatever form it takes, how really stupid it is. But the stupidity of sin doesn't make it any less serious, any less problematic, any less destructive. And what Paul is laboring with these Corinthians is to say, this division among you reveals some very serious spiritual problem in you. Because these divisions are all about power and all about pride. It's all about who's better. It's all about who has more spiritual gifts than anybody else. It's all about who knows whom. I follow Paul. I've memorized his letters. He stayed in my house. I'm really somebody important. You think you're important? I know Apollos really well, and Apollos can preach circles around Paul. Apollos is the kind of preacher every church would want to have. He was the Chris Gordon of the first century. Huh. Paul and Apollos are all right, but Peter, you know, is the prince of the apostles. He's my buddy. And besides, I speak in tongues and you don't. Oh, but I have the gift of healing and you don't. It's so petty when we rehearse it, but it was so serious at this time. These people were so proud of who they knew and what they thought they had accomplished as Christians. They were arrogant. They were puffed up. They were envious, and it led them to despise fellow members of the church. And Paul is really saying to them and to us, that kind of attitude will be so destructive that I have to address it in the most intense way and to use my strongest theological arguments to oppose it. He's promoting what, in a sense, is a very simple goal, that Christians should be humble. not proud, that Christians should be servants, not power-hungry. And he does that with very powerful arguments. Why should you be humble as a Christian? Well, first of all, because Christ was humble. That's why Paul in this section says, I resolve to know nothing among you except Christ and Him crucified. Now, that's not all Paul knew among them, is it? He writes a whole glorious chapter on the resurrection. His point here is not that he's not ever going to talk about anything but the crucifixion. His point is, in light of the problem of your sin, of your pride, of your power-hungry attitude, I need to remind you of Christ on the cross. He did not go to the cross for power. He did not go to the cross for His own glory. He did not go to the cross to show that He was better than other people. He humbled himself to the cross. And so Christ on the cross calls all of us to be humble. And then he says, don't think just about Christ and him crucified, but think about the Spirit. How does the Spirit work? A spirit works quietly and subtly often in our hearts to turn us and to change us. That's the real demonstration of the spirit. That the gentle work of the spirit bears fruit in the hearts of his people. Or think about the real character of the leaders over whom you are dividing. Paul and Apollos and Peter, what should you think of us, Paul says? You should think of us as servants, not as lords. You should think of us as fellow workers with you. You should think of us as stewards, not as owners. You should think of us as fools in this world. So Paul really has been pulling out the heavy artillery, hasn't he? Why should you be humble? Well, because Christ is humble, and because the Spirit is humble, and because your leaders are humble. And then it's as if he caps this argument with verse 6. You thought I'd forgotten chapter 4, verse 6, hadn't you? It's as if the last big gun he hauls out, having talked about Christ and the spirit and the leadership of the church, he now talks about what is written. That you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written. The commentators, some of them really scratch their heads over this verse and are uncertain what it means. I sometimes become convinced that the commentators look so narrowly at what's in front of them that they sort of miss what's going on all around them, which is why I tried to summarize what I think is going on in this chapter. Paul is reminding them of how as a teacher he has always turned to the Scriptures and what is written. And he, here in verse 6, is referring, it seems to me, in the first place to a proverb that he expects them to know. It's a proverb that the translators don't really help us to see. And if we translated this section of verse 6 more literally, we would read it this way, that you may learn by us the not beyond what is written. That you might learn the not beyond what is written. Not beyond what is written is being proposed by Paul, being presented by Paul as a proverb that he expects them to know. In Greek, having put in the little word the before these words, not beyond what is written, it's like he's putting quotation marks around them. Now, that's a proverb that we don't find exactly anywhere in the Old Testament. You know, we have a whole book of proverbs in the Old Testament. And that book of proverbs helps us to see what a proverb is. What is a proverb? It's a brief arresting statement of the truth. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's a proverb. And there are many others in the book of Proverbs. This proverb is not found there or anywhere else in the Old Testament, although it reflects exactly Old Testament teaching, doesn't it? Over and over again in the Old Testament, we find various ways in which we're taught and instructed to stick by the Word. In Joshua 23, verse 6, Joshua says to the people near the end of this ministry, Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the law of Moses. keep and do all that is written. That's what Joshua says. And Joshua is reflecting what Moses had written in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 11, Deuteronomy 8, 11, take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His rules and His statutes which I command you today. Then your heart will be lifted up. That's the Hebrew way of saying then your heart will be proud. Just the problem the Corinthians had. Then your heart will be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth. Stick by the word so that you don't become proud. Or in Deuteronomy 32 verses 46 and 47, Moses said to them, take to heart all the words that I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that you may be careful to do all the words of this law, for it is no empty word for you, but your very life. And by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. We could go throughout the Old Testament and in many places in the New Testament as well to find this point made over and over again. we're to live by the Word of God, we're to listen to the Word of God, we're to follow the Word of God. And it would seem that somewhere along the line in the preaching of the apostolic church, this proverb was developed, not beyond what is written. I was going to say maybe they had a hymn that they sang that to as a refrain. Except you all know they were psalm singers. Not beyond what is written. We don't know whether that's a proverb that Paul made up and used in his preaching or whether it was a proverb that was more broadly used in the early church. But Paul cites it here with the assumption that it'll be familiar, it'll ring a bell, it'll resonate with these Corinthians. That when Paul says, not beyond what is written, these Corinthians will think to them, I say, oh, we heard him say that often among us. We understand what he's saying. We have to stick with the Word. And this proverb is being cited by Paul because he's confident it's such a practical help for the Corinthians. What is written is always a practical help for the people of God. The tricky part is sometimes knowing what part of what is written to turn to to help us in our specific need. But Paul, in these early chapters of 1 Corinthians, in chapters 1, 2, and 3, has quoted the Old Testament six times to the Corinthians. From Isaiah, from the Psalms, from Jeremiah, from Job. Six times he's quoted the Old Testament as he's gone along urging humility on these Corinthians. and I think maybe one of our faults as Bible readers is that when we come to an Old Testament quotation, the New Testament, we go, yeah, yeah, and move on. If we're pious, we say, yeah, okay, and then we move on. Maybe we don't pause as we ought to see the importance the apostles themselves are placing on bringing the Old Testament to bear on the teaching that they're presenting. The apostles were absolutely convinced that what they were teaching was the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament had anticipated. In that sense, they were not teaching anything new. they were teaching what the Old Testament had always anticipated. And Paul, in his six quotations, is showing the Corinthians and showing us that the call to humility, the call to servanthood, the call to a completely unworldly notion of power and authority, is something that had always been taught in the Old Testament as well. And so the scriptures that he cites promote exactly the points that he is making to encourage us as Christians to be humble. He shows us God's commendation of humility as a virtue. He shows us that God's wisdom was always regarded as foolishness to the world. He shows us that God's weakness is stronger than the world's strength. He shows us that God's power displayed on the cross is the opposite of the world's notion of power. You know, we are so familiar, I think, many of us with the powerful phrases that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 and 3 about foolishness versus wisdom, about weakness versus strength, about the power of the cross being the real power, not power to be found in eloquent words. But maybe we miss that each of those points that Paul is making are points that he shows us were already taught clearly in the Old Testament. And so what he's saying to those Corinthians, and he's saying to us is, you know, it's not just the example of Christ or the work of the Spirit or the character of leaders in the church that should lead us to humility. But what is written in the Old Testament should lead us to humility as well. And that's why I said to you, not beyond what is written. Not beyond what is written. Stick to it. Hold to it. It draws us in the most practical way to the very heart of the gospel. It draws us to the cross of Christ. they're the foolishness of God in providing salvation in the weakness of His Son is on the clearest display. And they're any notion that we as Christians should want to set ourselves above someone else, that we should think our wisdom or our power or our strength is of any significance, must be utterly defeated. And that's what God has written. That's what God has taught us. Not beyond what is written. That will make us humble. That will be the solution to the pride and the arrogance and the divisions that is besetting the Corinthian church. But I think what's important for us to recall, since I don't feel we're a church with a lot of divisions and quarrels, I think we're a church where there has long been a wonderful level of humility and love and service among us. But the continuing usefulness of this principle is that it really applies to every area of Christian life and thought, isn't it? It's not just on the virtue of humility that we're not to go beyond what is written. But whenever we try to think through an issue of spirituality, of Christian living, of Christian theology, we want to stick to the principle that Paul has summarized in this powerful proverb, not beyond what is written. If you study the history of the church, and I recommend it to you, if you study the history of the church, where does the church get in trouble? In all sorts of ways, it gets in trouble when it goes beyond what is written. Think of the sad state of liberal Protestantism in this country. I can remember 50, 60 years ago, it was fairly regular that if some moral issue came up in the country, some television reporter might interview some liberal Protestant minister to find what Protestants thought about the issue. 60 years later, liberal Protestantism feels like it's all but disappeared as any sort of influence or presence even. The liberal denominations have shrunk dramatically and the figures they report are figures of who's on the rolls, not who's in the pews. And what is the great problem with liberal Protestantism? It has gone beyond what is written. In fact, it's gone against what is written. Quite a while ago now, I happened to be in San Francisco once and went on a Sunday, I probably shouldn't have done it, to Grace Cathedral, the great Episcopal church on Knob Hill. Magnificent building. Oh, it was an impressive service. Very impressive music. A long procession of the clergy into church, all decked out in various kinds of finery. And there was one man holding a big, handsomely bound Bible up in the air as he walked in. Oh, you'd have thought these people were the strongest supporters of believing the Bible that you could ever imagine. How the Bible was honored, beautifully printed, majestically carried, solemnly read. The only problem was it wasn't believed. And Paul would have said, not beyond what is written. We live in a world where some Pentecostals have exalted the Spirit in a way that goes beyond what the Scripture teaches. Some Pentecostals declare that they have apostles among them. And what would Paul have said? Not beyond what is written. Mary Ellen and I had the opportunity to be in Rome a few weeks ago. It's a fascinating city, and there's a huge church, it seems like, on every corner. And those churches are magnificent architecturally and have treasures of art in them. And you go on, go in, and there are most of the decorations in many of these churches is Baroque from the 17th and early 18th century, and it's vivid, it's sort of overwhelming. Everywhere you look are these images of one sort or another. And you're left asking, where's Jesus? Where's Jesus? 90% of the images, 95% of the images, 98% of the images are not of Jesus. Where's Jesus? Now, I wasn't looking for an image of Jesus. But again, would Paul not have said, not beyond the what is written. How do we know what to think about any sort of truth claim? We need to submit it to what is written. And we as the people of God need to be committed not to go beyond what is written. This is the very essence of Protestantism. If people ask you, what is a Protestant? A Protestant is one who does not go beyond what is written. And whenever anybody says, well, you Protestants are all divided amongst yourselves, you should say, not really, because we're all committed to sit down and ask what is written so that we won't go beyond what is written. And if you're not really willing to do that, you're not really a Protestant. Not beyond what is written. Paul seems to use it here in 1 Corinthians 4 almost as a throwaway line. Unless we really stop and follow his line of thought, unless we really meditate on what he's saying, unless we really reflect that this proverb that he's reminding the Corinthians of is at the very heart of true religion. is absolutely essential to maintaining the gospel. It is not by our wisdom, our strength, or our pride, or our power, that true religion is maintained among us. It's by the humility that says we will not go beyond what is written. May God give us that grace as a church, as he has through our whole history, to be committed to the Word, to have confidence in the Word as Paul had confidence in the Word, and not to go beyond what is written. Amen. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we are so thankful for the Scriptures, for what is written, because we are not wise in ourselves, but fools. We are not strong in ourselves, but weak. We are proud, and we want to follow our own imagination. But teach us not to be wiser than God. Teach us not to go beyond what is written. Teach us to delight in that written word, and seek to have every thought captive to the truth as it is in Christ and as it is preserved for us in the Holy Scriptures. Bless us to that end, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.