A Surprise Ending?
June 1, 2025
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 16:5-24
5 I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, 6 and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. 8 But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.
10 When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. 11 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.
12 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.
13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.
15 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— 16 be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. 17 I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, 18 for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.
19 The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. 20 All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
21 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. 22 If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! 23 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 24 My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Back in September, Pastor Ron began our sermon series through the letter of 1 Corinthians. Nearly forty sermons later, we arrive this morning at our last sermon. When a church comes to the end of one of Paul’s letters, as we do this morning, pastors tend to handle the preaching in different ways. The right decision might be to pull the ending of the letter close to our faces, and see all the intricate details, and thus preach three or four, even five, sermons on the ending. That’s certainly a valid approach.
For our part this morning, I want to end by standing back and looking at not only the last chapter of the letter but the letter as a whole, all sixteen chapters. And when we do that, a wonderful and surprising picture emerges. Perhaps another way to express this would be to use the analogy of a museum and a collection of an artist’s works. You can stand close to one painting and look at the brush strokes, textures, and details. Or you can stand back from the collection and see, across the whole, what patterns and themes emerge. As I did that with this letter—as I stood back and looked at the first fifteen paintings, so to speak—it made something about the last painting super surprising. Let’s pray again, asking God to help us see what we can see.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
In the services today we have child dedications. Across the two services, there are sixteen parents on stage, with eight children being dedicated, along with four older brothers and sisters who were previously dedicated.
Zak and Alanna dedicating Declan Casey, with older sisters Clara and Noelle. Jeff and Kate dedicating Autumn Hope Clark. Brandon and Meghan dedicating Logan Hamm. Eric and Rachel dedicating Cora Murr. In second service we have Kevin and Abbie dedicating Paige Clancy. Matthew and Abbey are dedicating Josiah Giordano. We have David and Kara dedicating Corbin King. Corbin’s older brother Grayson was dedicated previously. And finally Shane and Stephaine are dedicating Lila Stone, with her older brother Eli also being previously dedicated.
In all, that’s twenty-eight names, twenty-eight names representing unique hopes and prayers and longings and eternities, unique stories of birth, some adoptions, some who struggled with infertility, some into families where a child has a special needs—and all loved by the heavenly Father and all belonging in a meaningful ways to our church.
Unless you’re very new to our church, you probably know a few of the families, at least I hope you know a few of the families. But I suspect most of you don’t know all of them. If we were to read these names at Brookfield Church, just up the road, or we read them at Trinity Church, Grace Bible Fellowship, or Living Waters—all wonderful churches nearby—because the Christian community in Harrisburg is not all that big, I’m sure someone would know someone. Of course we’d suspect that once we left our church, the knowledge of one another would decrease. We’d read the names, but we wouldn’t really know one another.
When we come to 1 Corinthians 16, we come to a list of names from another church: Eight names, actually ten names if you count the names Paul and Jesus (which I think do count). We have two households, five mentions of “brothers” (sometimes meaning probably just brothers and other times meaning both brothers and sisters); one mention of Prisca, a very important woman in the New Testament, along with her husband; we also have four specific regions or locations mentioned, and at least four markers of time. We have several churches mentioned, including one reference to plural churches in a region and one specific house church.
5 passing through Macedonia… 6 … spend the winter… 7 … 8 … I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 … 10 When Timothy comes… 11 …expecting him [Timothy] with the brothers. 12 … our brother Apollos… other brothers…13 …14 … 15 … brothers… the household of Stephanas … first converts in Achaia, … 16 … 17 … Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus… 18 … 19 The churches of Asia … Aquila and Prisca, together with the church in their house… 20 …the brothers … Greet one another… 21 I, Paul, write this greeting … 22 … Lord… 23 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. 24 My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Lots of names. Lots of places. Lots of time markers. What are we to do with this list? In many ways, this is like if Brookfield Church or Living Water Church brought their child dedications here on a Sunday morning. We could smile and pray for them, rooting for them; but we don’t really know them, not in a meaningful way. Who is Stephanas or Achaicus? Apollos and Prisca seem like big deals, but we don’t know much about them.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s harder to love those people we actually know and who actually know us. I think we sometimes kid ourselves, saying that if we really knew these people, then, of course, we would love them and root for them. Instead, I think it can be easy to harbor resentment in our hearts toward those people we know best and those people who seem to require the most effort. If we really knew these people, I’m not sure we would expect Paul to write the ending of the letter that he did. I’ll explain.
1. The fractures that sin puts among the flock (chapter 1–15)
If you have your Bible open, I want to go back through each chapter of the book, giving perhaps just a few sentences or two for many of the chapters. And I want to highlight the many ways that sin had fractured this flock of believers, and the many ways sin can, if we’re not careful, fracture us. Look at chapter one. Specifically, look at vv. 10–12.
10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”
This is one of the classic fracture passages. Imagine the dysfunction if our church had a team of pastor-elders made up of volunteer shepherds and paid shepherds—which we do—and you, our membership, said, “I follow this one” and “I follow that one.” I’m not saying no one should never have a favorite preacher or prayer or favorite person to lead a funeral or wedding or small group or sing a song or whatever. This was more than having favorites. They were looking at godly teachers and saying, “I can’t learn from him; I can only learn from him.” That’s super fractured and super dysfunctional.
In chapter 2 we get a sense of the culture of celebrities and traveling speakers that we’ve discussed. We also learn that Paul was, apparently, not such a great public speaker. Many in the church despised him for that. You and I might think of him as Paul, the Great Apostle and Missionary. For some of them, if Paul’s name came up in conversation, they might have shrugged and gone, Meh, I’ve heard better.
In chapter 3, because their spiritual vital signs are so weak, we read that Paul is unsure whether they are spiritually alive. Maybe they are; maybe they are not. Look at 3:1–3.
3 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? (3:1–3)
In the middle of chapter 4, rather than Paul’s tent-making labor being a sign of his love for them (that he would work a second job), they take it as a sign of his inferiority. They look down on him for having to supply his own needs. In v. 13 he says that he has become to some of them “like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.”
Chapter 5 surfaces several doozies in their relationship together. It’s the chapter about church discipline. In their church they have a prominent man who is sleeping with his stepmother. And rather than being ashamed, they actually boast about it. We read,
5 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (5:1–2)
In chapter 6 we read that there are lawsuits among the church. The same people taking communion together on Sunday might be in court against each other on Monday.
In chapter 7 we learn that their church had all the same struggles with divorce and singleness that all churches have. They had, as we have, husbands and wives who used to love each other and now struggle for one reason or another to make it work.
And they had people who desperately wanted to get married and struggled in singleness. They had still others who could have been content to follow the Lord in singleness, but the rest of the church was so consumed with marriage that they struggle to be content, you know, with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and fifteen child dedications, all which seem to suggest that if you’re single, you don’t belong here. Of course, that’s not true, but here we are, and there they were. This makes it hard to love one another.
I won’t look in detail at chapters 8, 9, and 10, but it’s here that we see a long conversation about food sacrificed to idols. That’s not necessarily a question we are asking, and we made that point when we preached it. However, you and I often wonder what freedoms we have as Christians and how those freedoms relate to others in the church. I’ll put it like this. If we’re honest, sometimes what others seem “free” to do bothers us. Some of the things that people we know post about on social media bother us because we don’t think a Christian should feel that way about a topic or a political candidate or that a Christian should go to that movie or that concert and so on. The freedoms of others tend to bother us. This was their challenge too.
In chapter 11, at the Lord’s Supper, Paul actually says he’s not sure he can call what they do the Lord’s Supper because of all the malpractice. The rich members go through the buffet line and get fat and drunk, while the poorer members are left with leftovers.
In chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14 there’s a larger question of how men and women celebrate one another’s spiritual gifts, and who should speak in church, and when and how much.
In chapter 15 we have an awesome chapter about our hope in Christ. But when you press into the details of the chapter, you realize that this wonderful chapter about a topic Paul describes as a matter of “first importance” arose because… why? Well, some of them were denying that there even was a resurrection. They didn’t understand how their pagan beliefs, if they continued to fully embrace those beliefs, would unravel the entire hope of the gospel. The same happens for us. Many of us have unconsciously adopted secular beliefs that undermine our hope of forgiveness in Jesus, but we don’t see it clearly because our secular beliefs feel common sense and feel compatible with Christianity, even though others (like your pastors) see that they can’t mix.
This is quite the art gallery of a fractured flock, isn’t it?
From time to time, I receive an email about a church seeking a new pastor, inquiring about whether I know anyone who may be interested in leaving to join this other church. The pattern seems to be that the bigger the church is that is looking for a pastor, the more detailed the packet is about what that church is like, how great it is, how many services and campuses it has, and why some new pastor should come and lead them.
Well, that’s fine. I know why they do that, and I don’t fault them for it. Here’s my point, though. If you were emailed a packet of this church in Corinth, would you want to go be their pastor? How bad would your church have to be for you to look at this church in Corinth and say, “Yeah, maybe that grass is greener?”
I don’t know about you. I might just reply, “Dear Church, the Lord bless you and keep you (because I’m not sure I want to bless you and keep you).” In other words, you might expect the last chapter of 1 Corinthians to be missing warmth and affection and brotherly and sisterly love. As I said, it can be easy to harbor resentment in our hearts toward those people we actually know best and who seem to require the most effort.
But that’s not how this letter ends. Jesus really changes people. Jesus changes who we love and how we love. Jesus changes his sheep. And for this reason, the letter doesn’t end the way I might have expected it to end.
2. The love that God puts among the flock (chapter 16)
If you had asked me back in September what the most supernatural chapter of 1 Corinthians is, I would have said, I’m not sure. The book has several chapters about spiritual gifts, the spiritual gift of encouragement and leadership and administration and speaking in tongues and speaking prophecies and all of that, and you might want to know which chapter I think addresses all that in the most supernatural way. Now, if I were thinking clearly, perhaps I would have echoed what Paul says in chapter 13, the chapter often called the love chapter. Paul calls love the greatest supernatural gift, so I guess the most supernatural chapter is chapter 13.
But in chapter 13, the idea of love is abstract. It’s easy to talk about love. It’s easy to love those we don’t really know, those we don’t really worship with or meet in small group Bible studies. Sure, if we read the names of children dedicated in a church seven hours from Harrisburg, we could smile and pray for them. It would be really sweet. We would love them.
But that’s because we don’t really know them. We haven’t been in a small group with them. We haven’t seen them come late to every meeting. We haven’t seen them never make brownies but always eat all the brownies everyone else makes. We haven’t seen them dominate the time of sharing when we desperately want a turn to ask for prayer.
It’s easy to love people when you don’t know how they voted or what movies they watch. It’s easy to love people when we don’t see the ways their secular beliefs are undermining the gospel. But what happens when you get to know someone at church who thinks he has the gift of prophecy, but you think he’s just an arrogant jerk? What happens when those people are you? And me?
Do you see what I mean? I’m trying to say, that I’m a little shocked when I read chapter 16 the way God inspired Paul to actually write it. Having now studied the whole letter in detail, having looked closely at the art gallery and seen that this church is a piece of work, I’d call this last chapter of the letter the most supernatural of all the chapters. Because over and over we see how God has put the greatest spiritual gift, the gift of love, among this flock. The gospel of Jesus has really changed them—as it changed Paul and it changes us.
Look at just a few examples from this chapter as we close. If you look at vv. 5–7, Paul speaks of wanting to spend not a little time with them but a whole winter.
Then Paul writes about Timothy and Apollos. Lots could be said, but they hope to visit as well. And Paul wants those visits to go well. Think about that. In their culture of “I follow him but not him,” those visits could have been a competition. Yet Paul reminds them that they all are doing the Lord’s work.
If you look at v. 15, you’ll notice something neat. Paul says, “You know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia.” Now, you might expect that if a group of people were the first ones to know the Lord, the first ones to plant a church, the first ones to be really important, then you might expect them to wear that as a badge. “Look at us,” they could say. “We were first.” Paul finishes the thought saying that those who were first have become those who “devoted themselves to the service of the saints.” The first among them have become the servants among them.
Then in vv. 17–18 Paul speaks of three people who visited him. And Paul says he rejoiced at their coming. And that they refreshed his spirit. Paul knew the joy of the living Jesus better because people from their dysfunctional church visited him.
And in the final verse, what does Paul write? Another person was physically writing the letter as Paul spoke. But at the end of the letter, Paul takes the pen and writes the last verse. What does it say? “My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen” (16:24).
Does this ending, does the content of chapter 16, surprise you? It surprises me.
But then I remember other words throughout the letter. I remember the bigger story that God is telling, and it seems, rather than surprising, it seems fitting. I guess I come to the end of this letter, and I’m more in awe of the way Jesus changes people.
I want to close reading a key passage from the book about the way that Jesus changes people. It’s from chapter 6:9–11. Paul writes,
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
I suppose I could have given a sermon with ten ways we can love each other better. And that wouldn’t have been wrong. My thought this morning was to do something a bit different. As I said, I think it can be easy to harbor resentment in our hearts toward those people we know best and those people who seem to require the most effort. In other words, it can be hard to love churches and church people. And, if we’re honest, we can get cynical and bitter. And if there is anything unchristian and secular we could become, it would be if we became a cynical and bitter people. The letter of 1 Corinthians certainly agrees real people are hard to love. But the letter also shows that the Jesus who saves us, is also the Jesus who can change us. Let’s pray and invite our worship team to lead us in song.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Discussion Questions
Do you find it hard or easy to love your church? Why or why not?
Do you find it easier to love coworkers or family members? Why?
Have you left churches before with unresolved conflict? How has that affected your ability to join a new church without being cynical?
Would you say we are good at loving people at our church? Why or why not? Are there types of people that our church struggles to love? Why do you think that is? If you are honest, are there types of people you find difficult to love?
Reread 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. How does what Jesus has done for you in the gospel make the love of brothers and sisters possible?
What were some of your favorite takeaways from our study in this letter?
