Growing in Hearing the Voice That (In)Forms - 1 Corinthians 4:1-17
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 4:1-17
Series: Hearing From God
Preacher: Russell Smith
Date: June 21, 2026
Church: Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio
Theme verses: 1 Corinthians 4:3-5, 6-7, 14-17
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Who Has Helped You Hear the Voice of God?
This sermon continues our Hearing from God series as we prepare for July’s Sabbath month, a retreat in place centered on seeking God’s wisdom. Each of us carries a problem, question, crossroads, or challenge where we need direction. Through July we will read a chapter of Proverbs each day, beginning with that question and gathering the wisdom God may apply to it over time.
This month we have been asking what it means to hear from God in a noisy world. The first week considered the many voices that clamor for our attention, seeking to sell us something, enroll us in something, or enlist us in somebody’s cause. Last week we considered one way to assess whether we are actually hearing God: look at the fruit of our lives. This week we consider how God gives us other Christians to sharpen us and teach us how to hear his voice.
The question matters because the Corinthian Christians also lived amid competing voices. Stoic philosophers, Epicurean philosophers, sophists, and pagan religions all offered their versions of success and the meaningful life. Paul is trying to help a young church hear the true voice of God above that noise.
God helps us hear through people who have learned to listen. None of us does this alone. We stand on the shoulders of giants: people who have invested in us, blessed us, and taught us not simply by communicating information but by the quality of their lives. Who has helped you hear the voice of God? Think of mentors, fathers and mothers in the faith, brothers and sisters, and perhaps someone who appeared only briefly but helped you hear more clearly. Give thanks for their names.
Learning to Listen to an Audience of One
Paul is writing to the church he planted in Corinth, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city with many competing voices. The immediate preceding passage addresses the factions forming around Paul, Apollos, and Peter. Some of the young hotshots in Corinth are saying, “I follow Paul,” others, “I follow Apollos,” and still others, “I follow Peter.” Paul will not let those teachers become idols. They have one aim and one goal: they are servants of Christ, entrusted with the mysteries of God, and required to prove faithful.
Then Paul says something remarkable: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.” Paul is not defending his innocence. He knows he has failed; we all fail. His conscience is clear because he has entrusted himself to Christ, who gave himself on the cross to cleanse us. He does not have to be perfect in order to stand before God. That is a world of difference.
“Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time,” Paul continues. “Wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive praise from God.” Paul points us toward a life that is not consumed by the judgment of other people.
We are social creatures, wired to be aware of our status and position and to wonder what others are thinking. If you are at all like me, you can get caught in that swirl: Have I offended? Will they like this? What is the impact of what I am saying? Paul is saying that, more and more, we can be freed from that when we learn to live for an audience of one.
I first encountered that phrase in Os Guinness’s book The Call. Guinness is one of the great contemporary Christian thinkers, an evangelist and apologist whose reflections on calling are deeply helpful. He writes: “Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or another. The question is not whether we have an audience, but which audience we have. A life lived in response to the decisive call of God is a life lived before the one audience that trumps all others: the audience of One.” Every one of us has a personal calling from God. The audience-of-one question reaches into that calling: whose approval finally directs the way we live?
That crystallizes what Paul is getting at. Paul has been living his life, as best he can, for an audience of one, and he invites the Corinthians to do likewise. Think of the people who have helped you hear the voice of the Lord. Perhaps they have shown you what it is to live that way: a certain freedom from the judgment and opinions of others, a freedom from every current wave of media and the zeitgeist, perhaps even a playfulness and joyfulness because they are not so hung up on their worries and anxieties.
None of us lives this perfectly. Christian living is not an on-off switch; it is a way of growing. So I ask again, who has shown you, even imperfectly, what it means to live for the audience of one rather than the multiplicity of audiences clamoring for your attention? Paul is saying: learn from those who have learned to listen.
Learning to Listen Beyond the Noise
Paul then turns to the noise of the world and grows a little snarky with his Corinthian readers. “Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us!” He is responding to Christians who have positioned themselves as though they have already figured it out, already arrived, already become spiritual masters.
Paul answers with the image of a Roman procession and arena. In the ancient world, criminals, prisoners of war, slaves, and the condemned could be made spectacles for entertainment. Professional fighters and captives could be sent into the arena, even thrown to animals, because the Empire regarded them as expendable. Paul says the apostles are like the people at the end of that procession: “We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!”
He continues: “To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world.” For a long time, I heard this as Paul complaining. But in reality, he is teaching. He is not trying to say, “Shame on you, foolish Corinthians.” He is saying: do not be seduced by the voices that tell you that following Jesus will inevitably produce wealth, prosperity, and all the trappings of worldly success.
Those voices are not terribly different from the voices of our own culture. In Corinth there were Stoic and Epicurean philosophers, sophists, pagan rituals, and pagan worship, each offering a version of success, self-gratification, and a meaningful life. Today the influencer of your choice can promise to help you advance, become healthy and wise, and have your best life. Paul asks us to question that. Worldly success may come, but worldly success is not the goal. The abundant life that Jesus offers is not merely a matter of material gratification.
Success literature often assumes that success means more money, every toy we ever wanted, leisure, gratification, and fulfillment. It rarely asks us to ask God what success means. In contrast, Paul’s witness is more bracing: the faithful life may include hardship, and it is likely that we will be required to be thought foolish. The point is not to seek suffering, but to refuse to make the avoidance of suffering or the accumulation of comfort our final guide.
Living for the audience of one means that you grow in not caring whether people think you are wise or foolish. It means being prepared for the fact that parts of the Christian life involve suffering. It means discovering, with Paul, that even when life is painful and difficult, Jesus is still worth following. We need living examples who show us that.
A Living Testimony of Faithfulness
I attended this summer’s Faith at Work Summit, to which a congregation member invited me. Faith at Work is an international movement of ministries helping Christians live their faith in the workplace—not merely on Sunday, but at home, at work, at Starbucks, at the gym, and everywhere else. The conference included a panel on the movement around the world. There were compelling stories from India and Australia, but the speaker who brought a hush to the room was a soft-spoken Christian man from Pakistan. I will not share his name or identifying details because his life could be in danger.
Pakistan is a majority-Muslim country, and in many settings Christians face marginalization and persecution that we can scarcely fathom. He told of working for a large corporation where Fridays were the worst days. Others went to the mosque while he remained in the office. When they returned, he could feel their hostility because he had not gone to worship with them. Christians were passed over for promotions, relegated to lesser work, and found it almost impossible to advance into management because they were not part of Islam.
He also told of a Christian friend who had opened a shoe shop. A Muslim competitor wanted to drive him out and stir up the community against him. One morning the Christian owner found a torn Quran on the doorstep of his shop. He had nothing to do with it, but the competitor accused him of blasphemy. The marketplace mob did not care that the accusation was false. They beat him to death.
The Pakistani speaker did not tell that story merely to recount horror. He spoke of continuing in faith because he had found something of greater worth than worldly success or advancement: his relationship with Christ. He now leads a company, and he seeks to show the love of Christ to his Muslim employees. They begin the workday in prayer, and his employees gladly join in. He practices integrity, loves his neighbors as himself, and embodies a faith that is not confined to Sunday.
He has a joy that rises above the competing voices, above the voices that say, “You are the scum of the earth. You are not worthy. You are a fool.” He is a living example of hearing above the noise and hearing the voice of Christ. We need people who exemplify that persistence in following the Lord, especially when it is hard. They teach us.
Learning Through Living Examples
Paul returns to the personal purpose of his letter: “I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children.” He frames the relationship intimately. He has known them, invested in them, and become a spiritual father to them through the gospel. “Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ,” he says, “you do not have many fathers. Therefore I urge you to imitate me.”
We learn faith not simply by oral transmission or intellectual concepts. We learn faith by walking alongside someone whose faith is living and visible. That person is not a perfect example—none of us is; that is why we need grace—but we see a relationship with the living God and a life being transformed by grace. We find ourselves saying, “I want to be a little bit like that.”
Paul then sends Timothy, “my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord,” to remind the Corinthians of Paul’s way of life in Christ Jesus. Paul does not only send a letter; he sends another living example. That highlights three kinds of relationship God gives us as we learn to listen: mentors, peers, and people in whom we invest.
Who is someone further along in faith from whom you are learning? I am still learning from people such as my mentor Dave Workman, the former pastor of Cincinnati Vineyard, and from many others—my colleagues on staff, my prayer partners, and many of you. Who is a peer in faith beside whom you are learning? Together we are peers, helping sharpen one another; iron sharpens iron. So let me ask you: who is your protege in faith, someone in whom you are investing and helping to learn a little more about hearing from God?
God gives us to one another so that we can help one another learn to hear his voice.
A Reader Invitation
Take a quiet moment to consider who has helped you hear the voice of God. What have they shown you about living for the audience of one, listening beyond the noise, and following Christ when it is difficult? Listen for the small step of faith God may be inviting you to take: receiving guidance from a mentor, drawing nearer to a peer, or investing in someone else.
Questions to Consider
• Who has helped you hear the voice of God, and how might you give thanks for that person?
• Where are you most tempted to live for the approval of many audiences rather than the audience of one?
• What worldly definition of success do you need to question as you learn to listen beyond the noise?
• Who is a mentor from whom you are learning, a peer beside whom you are learning, and a person in whom you can invest?
This sermon is part of the Digital Discipleship Resources of Madeira-Silverwood Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. We create resources to help people take their next step of faith with Jesus.
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