"A Study of 1 Corinthians" by Neal Pollard - Part 1

There is a class in the adult classroom this quarter. It's going to

be taught by Barrett Hammer and Grant Wilson. I think Barrett's teaching

this morning. And so if you're in that age group,

it's the adult classroom, room 114. They are doing studies

from the Psalms, devotional studies from the Psalms. And so feel free to

be there in class. There's also a college

class this quarter. Joey Morgan is teaching that, and the

subject of that is sin struggles. And so, if you're in that post-high

school age group, you may also go there.

In this class, Hiram and I are going to be co-teaching on

the subject of, you can see it on the PowerPoint in front of you,

Studies in 1 Corinthians. I'm not trying to name this class. Hiram may

think of a better name for it. It does seem to fit with what we're

going to be studying today in chapter 1,

calling it same mind and same judgment. I thought that the way that

we might, especially I'm thinking about Cumberland

Trace as we are today, and maybe it's always been this

way to an extent, but at least since I've been here, we are a congregation

of people who have come from a lot of different places and who have a

lot of different experiences. And so, out of your past,

there may be some unique answers that you have. I do ask

in the question I'm about to answer that we don't want dirty details.

And so keep that in mind. Keep it vanilla and generic if you would.

But why do people leave a church?

Why do people leave congregation A and go to congregation B?

Okay, hurt feelings. All right? In fact, it's one of the

jargon terms of our time, church hurt. You'll run across it a lot

in social media. People will talk about how they've suffered that. And so hurt

feelings, we could drill down on that without getting

beyond the vanilla. Maybe it was a brother or sister

in Christ. Maybe it was the preacher. Maybe it was the

leadership, somebody, or maybe it was more broad than that, by a

group of people from which they felt excluded. Hurt feelings.

Okay. All right. Needs are not being met.

And that oftentimes can be frustrating for leadership because it's not more specific

than that. What needs? And then the answer that's followed up is still

aggravatingly nebulous. Andy, do you have a— Okay.

All right. There are certainly circumstances where something is being taught

or maybe there's a focus on something where there's a hobby horse.

And so it could be a doctrinal issue from the right hand or

the left. Okay. Lack of

connection. I just don't really feel like I'm apart, or it

feels odd. It just doesn't work. It doesn't fit. All right,

Alice. Okay, preacheritis.

That's not relevant at all to 1 Corinthians, but yeah,

have you ever seen that? I mean, it's very rare that people just

love a preacher so much that they— I've even— you ever see anybody who follows

a preacher from church to church to church to church to church?

Boy, now we're going to meddling. All right.

Uh-huh. Okay. Sometimes, like, if you have kids and

you, like, you're in a smaller congregation and there's nothing for

your— that your kids can grow, or there's nothing for the youth,

then you move more. Exactly. Okay. I'd say we would— if

you didn't hear what Shedona said, that's a very common reason that people give.

Uh, it's, uh, it's kind of that idea of the rich get richer and the

poor get poorer. Um, you're in a small congregation and maybe you are a,

uh, a family with children and there aren't other children

and you go to where there can be children. Okay.

Anything, can you stitch together any kind of commonality in

all of these things? Well, let me ask this.

Is it ever, even in the answers that were given, is it ever a good

idea to go from one church to another?

And all— yes, sir, Roger, go ahead. Somebody mentioned doctrinal issues.

If you leave because of a solid doctrinal issue that

you find great opposition to, but certainly you're Christians, then it would be the right

thing to do. Yeah. I'll give you an example. I think it's still pretty

vanilla because I'm not going to give any names. My sister and her husband had

been a member of a congregation in, I'll just say Alabama, for many

years. And the frog had been boiling in the pot for a long, long time.

And then all of a sudden they had a seminar one weekend where the speaker

was teaching on demons. And as he was delivering

that seminar, which is a great subject, spiritual forces in the world, but he

actually saw one in the corner while he was delivering one of his

lectures. And finally, that was just the straw on the camel's back.

There were a lot of other things that had preceded that, and they said,

we need to find somewhere else. And it was a good move. Where they are

today, we wouldn't recognize them as a New Testament church anymore.

Doctrine. I think if you have a

place where something is being taught that you know that is doctrine in

your own mind, And you need to go to the elders

and to these— whoever is doing it. Okay,

yeah. Try your best. Try everything at all

possible to get that over through— over to them

and to— and get it straightened out before you leave. That's great.

That's a— that's a fine point, and it really helps us to move closer

to 1 Corinthians. Miss Dolores said, I think in most of these

cases, maybe even in a doctrinal situation, before you just pick

up stakes and you go somewhere else, that if there's— if there are elders,

you go to that leadership. It's a lot harder if you don't have elders,

and to address your concern and say, hey, what can be done? Or if it's

perhaps a teacher, you go to that teacher. If it's the preacher, you go to

him and express that concern and try to do things in a biblical way.

Would you agree with me that sometimes we get a little hasty?

I think about— this is the first time I've ever lived in what's truly

considered the Bible Belt where the Lord's church exists in abundance, and I think that

there's a struggle that we deal with

here more than we do in places to where there's— the next

church is fit— and there's a lot of places in the country where it's this

way, where the next church is 50 or 60 miles,

and you really got to buckle down and try to make it work and to

try to overcome whatever the friction, whatever the struggle

is. I'm going to make a generic

answer. If you've moved from one church to another, I'm not talking to you necessarily.

I might be. But there is a consumer mentality

that exists that is expressed in a lot of the answers

that you gave where my needs have not been met.

What are you doing for me? How does this benefit me?

Which runs contrary to the Christ life and being a disciple and follower

of Jesus, which is a life of self-denial, taking up our cross and following him.

When we look at the study we're going to be engaging in in this particular

quarter, there are difficulties. I don't know what kind of reprisal

they had. Could they go? How many churches were meeting in Corinth at

this particular point? A lot of them met in houses, and so maybe multiple

locations, but there was a problem of

folks who were struggling with being one.

Now, let me ask you this question and then we'll get into the content.

Why do churches divide? Sometimes most people

leave, they cause a mess on the way out. Okay, sometimes just regardless

of the reason, People will leave with a big hook and they'll drag

it, you know, they'll take people with them as much as they can to reinforce

their case. And a lot of times you didn't say it, that might be pride.

If I think something's wrong, you ought to think it's wrong. And we're going

to see if we can't rally the troops and go with us. All right?

Yeah.

Yes, ma'am. And it's not the only time. That's tragic.

What Miss Doris has not said, it's implied, is that

when she and her husband obeyed the gospel because of their race,

there were folks that left because they were upset at that.

And now we live in a different time, thankfully, but I can tell you

I've lived long enough to where I've seen the same thing happen. Yes, ma'am.

Okay. Yeah. It involves

judgment for sure. Yeah, I don't know.

And those are all subjective things. You know,

what's dying, what's dead, you know, and that sort of thing. But that's a factor

for sure. Any other reasons why churches divide?

Go ahead. We're at a point we've got to figure out, is this a conservative

church problem? Liberal church problem?

Are women leading the service? Okay, so are you speaking— Okay.

Okay. Okay. So that's— you're

saying churches divide over doctrine. It could be.

We'll explore that further. But the things that you mentioned, I would

put in the— at least the one thing I heard was doctrinal. If women are

leading the services, that's not a matter of judgment. That's tied down

in Scripture. And so if that's happening in a church and it divides over that,

then certainly that's a reason why churches divide. Mike and then Hiram.

Nope, Mike has observed the Passover.

Hiram? Personalities. All right, let me ask you this.

We could give a bunch of answers. I really want to get into 1 Corinthians.

In the totality, the mosaic of

church history, do you think Let's just go in modern times, that more churches have

divided over doctrine or personalities?

Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay, I thought I was going to have to make my case.

We divide over personalities.

Maybe sometimes there's some central core issue that needs to

be resolved that maybe has some manner of importance, but when

we don't follow the Lord's template for how to— and what Miss Delores said,

when we go to the person and not make this World War III, but we

start small and we try to get this thing resolved, Maybe we can get through

this, we'll be in a better place. But there's this tendency

for us to be drawn towards certain people and not be drawn toward others.

And within the context of church dynamics, we find ourselves not

meaning to, but pockets develop. And some of that's

natural, some of that's fine, sometimes it's not. And the next thing

you know, that's not— that's my guy or that's my people

and that's your people. And we're all supposed to be the Lord's

people. And united in Him. Now,

if you can— if you have an appreciation for that out of your background,

then you're going to appreciate 1 Corinthians because

this is a church divided. And we're going to talk about

what they were divided over. And we're going to see what Paul says, proposes,

especially as this letter starts to help them to get over that.

Now, when you think about Corinth, what comes to your mind?

I don't know why I can't hear you, Kevin. Idols. Okay,

I-D-O-L-S. All right, idols. Idolatry, yes,

was very much part of Greek Gentile culture and certainly was

in Corinth. Immorality.

All right, and we'll say a little bit more about that in a moment.

What else? Philosophy. We're going to see that at the

end of chapter 1, worldly wisdom, earthly wisdom.

Preacheritis, certainly so. But if one word captured

all of that, what would the word be?

Okay, worldly, certainly. It's a mess.

These are great words. I think the word that I would say is

division. They're divided. Man, we're going to see all the

different ways that they're divided. There are going to be a lot of individual subjects

that the Apostle Paul is going to address throughout this letter,

especially from the beginning of the letter through chapter 14. There's a very optimistic and

hopeful end the book of 1 Corinthians, but first

we got to deal with all the different ways that this church is divided.

And frankly, there are ways in which we find ourselves divided today.

And so when you think about that, I would say sexual immorality

and division come to the top above even more than that. But it's

also possible, as you remember what we studied last quarter,

that the second missionary journey comes to mind. Who establishes

the church at Corinth? Paul.

Paul and his coworkers, they go into the city. And when you think about

the work that Paul had done there, he had just had what we might by

earthly standards say was a failed mission in

Athens. Very few people seem to believe and to follow the Lord.

And he's appalled by the idolatry that's in the city there.

And this is before the 3 years, the longest tenure of

Paul's ministry where he goes and has this relationship

with the church at Ephesus. But in between, we have those 18 months

where Paul finds himself at Corinth. And as he works with them,

we begin to see the success that he has. You remember one of the last

things we saw in the class last quarter was that Paul was afraid.

And in his fear, he didn't know how he was going to be received.

And the Lord says in Acts 18:9, I have many people in this city.

Acts 18:9

And so he stays there, he buckles down, and he works with the church until

he's finally pressured to leave. 18 months later. And we think about some

of the folks that are converted. There's Crispus and

his household. In fact, Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 is going to talk about some

of the folks that— excuse me, he himself baptized.

It's a relatively small group that includes Gaius and just

Stephanas and not many people at all. But here's Paul who's

working and maybe they're captured in Acts 18:8 where

Acts 18:8

Paul says, that many of the Corinthians believing were baptized.

And so as we think about 1 Corinthians, I don't want you to forget

what we saw in Acts chapter 18. Paul helped

Acts 18 · chapter mention

to start the nucleus, the foundation of the work that exists

now as we read 1 and 2 Corinthians.

It's going to be written about 56 AD. So we're talking about a short span

of time in which the Apostle Paul is writing to a church did

have many people, apparently, enough people that they were dividing under

the banner of different folks who were dominant personalities

in the church. And so Paul is going to be focusing that.

You remember some of what was involved in that work, but I want to say

a few things about the history and geography of the city so that we can

get into 1 Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

Corinth, yes, it was an immoral city. But it

was also a wealthy city. It was a

city that was strategically located. I think we've said this before,

it's on this isthmus where it had access to 2 seas.

And with a port like that, you find yourself really attractive to

traders all over the world. And so people are coming in from everywhere.

So when you begin to think about a couple of things that that impacts,

first of all, total population. This is a strategic place to

try to plant the seeds of Christianity. Because there are so many

folks there. When you start taking the population in the first century

world, you start with the fact that there are 200,000

free citizens, people who are from Italy, people who are from Greece,

Roman soldiers who have come,

business people who were wealthy enough and merchants that they were able

to live there freely and considered freely, whether they had to purchase their citizenship

or if they were freeborn. And there were a lot of folks from Near Eastern

nations, and among them, there were a great many Jews.

This is the free population, 200,000.

This does not include, the census did not include the slaves.

There are 500,000 slaves

in Corinth, 2.5 times more bonded

than free. And they have come because there is

a robust slave trade because of the port city, because slavery

was practiced throughout the Roman world. Was the

pipeline that got those out to the different places where slaves were

held by the Romans. 700,000 people,

a great many of them who were portable. Man,

you think about how the Lord says, Paul, you're my man.

Acts 9:16, you're going to take the gospel all over the Gentile world.

Acts 9:16

And as he does this, he's teaching somebody who maybe is in

Corinth for a month or two, or maybe on a port stopover. And after

they're converted, they go far-flung all over the world.

No wonder Paul would say what he says in Colossians 1:23,

Colossians 1:23

that the gospel was heard by every creature under heaven.

Now, when I say port city,

think even in modern times, anything come to mind?

What would happen in a port city even today?

Okay, all right, seedy behavior. Levi says

prostitution, and it was, and idolatry and the practices that they're

bringing from all over the world. They're all accumulating in

Corinth. And maybe that's one of the reasons, you've heard this in other classes before,

that Corinth was so bad that they

used the term to Corinthianize, which meant to be sexually

immoral. And so Paul is writing, and so we're not surprised that Paul is going

to spend a couple of chapters, we have them divided into chapters, but a portion

of that letter is devoted to sexual immorality.

But with all of this hodgepodge of beliefs and people coming from all over the

place, you already have a tendency, an inclination

toward division, but you also have, somebody said it,

worldly, fleshly. When you're guided by your flesh

and by your desires, man,

it's going to be very easy for division to occur. And so Paul's going to

spend a lot of the time talking about that.

But the biggest, it's seen by this idea of unity,

division is captured in a lot of different ways. It's in

the plain language that Paul uses, but it's also found even in some of

the keywords that you'll find in the book. And I'm not going to try to

give you all the number of times that they occur except on a few occasions.

The word wisdom is going to be a keyword in

1 Corinthians, 28 times it's going to occur. The word knowledge

is going to be found 66 times across that 16-chapter

book. The word gifts is going to be found several times.

The word brother, it's going to be found 40 times.

You'll find the word weak and spiritual and judge.

Now I want you to think about all of those words in the light of

what we are seeing and what we're going to see as we go through 1

Corinthians. Wisdom, there's more than one kind.

Knowledge, there's a lack of it, and that could be a problem. There's the

wrong kind of knowledge that can lead to difficulties.

Gifts, whose gifts are better, my gifts or your

gifts? Whose is more important? Whose does the Lord need more than

anyone else? Brother, am I going to be focused on my brother or do I

want my brother to be focused on me? Who's weak

and who's strong? Who's spiritual and who's

fleshly? Who gets to be the judge in

a particular matter? And so Paul is setting up what this

letter is about as we see in the keywords, but then there's also the word

body. It's found 47 times in 35

verses. And when you think about a body, a body is, and Paul's going

to talk about this in 1 Corinthians 12:12-14, the body

1 Corinthians 12:12–14

is not one member, but many.

And you think about just in the last time you experienced any

kind of a trauma or any kind of a difficulty in one part of your

body, you know, we'll put it in the daily bread, we'll mention it in the

announcements that so-and-so is having a, a surgery or a

procedure on X part of the body. It could be

seemingly relatively minor or very important.

But you see, the body is working in concert. It's not— no part of

the body is out on an island by itself. And so Paul

mentions this body metaphor to say, look, we're like the

physical body. We are supposed to be united,

working in the same direction, doing the same thing. It's a powerful,

And so Paul has 2 major purposes in

this letter, not to oversimplify, but it seems

like his major purpose is to address the division that's running

rampant in the church in Corinth. A church is not going

to be what God wants it to be that is distracted by division. Do you

agree? If we're caught up in our camps and our problems with

one another, there is no way we're firing on all cylinders.

Now, his secondary purpose is to apparently answer some

questions. It's going to be signified, especially in the second

half of the book, with the phrase, now concerning.

There's apparently questions that they have, but this even relates

to unity, doesn't it? Because we're going to find that maybe there were different

points of view with regard to the positions that they held.

And so Paul is going to say, look, in these things that we're addressing,

I'm going to be very mindful of my brother, and I don't want to do

anything that makes my brother to stumble, 1 Corinthians 8:13. When it

1 Corinthians 8:13

comes to our gifts and our abilities, yours are not less

or more important than mine, 1 Corinthians 12— 14:12,

it's for the good of the body. Let everything be done for edification.

And so Paul is going to deal with that. Now, how does he do it?

That's what we're going to look at in the rest of the class as we

go through chapter 1 this morning. First of all, Paul is going

to challenge them to be of the same mind and the same judgment by focusing

on a calling. This is how the letter begins.

Notice it with me in verse 1 through 9.

Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ

by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church

of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ

Jesus, saints by faith, calling with all who in every place

call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord

and ours. Grace to you and peace from God

our Father and our— the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always

concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus,

that in everything you were enriched in him, in all speech and

all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you're

not lacking in any gift, Awaiting eagerly the revelation of

our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end,

blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful through

whom you were called into fellowship with His Son,

Jesus Christ our Lord. Now we have a distinct

advantage. How would this information originally

have been disseminated in the congregation?

Well, it's going to be read out loud.

Okay, and so you're going to have a brother who's going to stand before the

congregation and he's going to begin reading. He's going to read

what is one of the longer letters of Paul, but this

is all you've got so far. I mean, you think, pause your brain for a

moment. This is all you've heard. You've not heard verse 10 through

the end of chapter 16. What impact,

what effect do you think that would have on you? First of all, do you

think they knew what was coming? We have no reason to

believe that they did. So what effect does

this— well, and let me ask you this. How would you assess these

first 9 verses? How would you characterize them?

Any words come to mind? Positive.

Yeah. And why is it positive?

Okay. You can see the love. There's getting

ready to be a negative. Oh, okay. Now he'd

spent 18 months there. So you're thinking, oh, we've heard Paul preach before.

Wow, this is sweet. We must be about to be hammered by something here,

right? And so they perhaps know that about Paul.

We know that looking at the corpus of Paul, all of his writings,

that except for Galatians, he sets them up.

He says the sweet and wonderful things that he actually feels,

To let them know, look, that kind of goes to the first answer.

I love you. You're wonderful. So how

would this beginning help with

the subject that he's about to hit, which is be

of the same mind, be of the same judgment?

These problems have taken them away from— I absolutely

do. Laura said, is it that he's trying to remind them

of who they are and who they are to be, who God

has called them to be? Yes, go ahead, Andy. And here

he's emphasizing unity beginning

not just with the congregation but the entire Christian body, because he

says, with all who in every place called Good.

So you think about what Paul is doing right at the very beginning. Big picture,

because when I'm divided, you know what? I have this tunnel vision and I am

just looking, everything, everything gets

put through the prism of the thing that I'm focused on. You ever thought

about that? Every word that's said, everything that's done,

it must have something to do with my issue that I'm focused on.

And so I hear it in the prayers, I see it in the things that

are said, and boy, that's it. So what do I got to do?

Step back. I'm a member of a church

where there's a lot at play.

I'm a part of a brotherhood throughout the world.

And so I've got to make sure I remember who I

am in the context of that. And who am I? I'm a

part of the body that's trying to help it to grow and to be

strengthened. So that's a great point is that I've got

to see about the church everywhere, but also I've got to remember who I am.

And so Paul really focuses in on that. And I think he does that,

by the way, the word calling is found 6 times in this one

chapter, all from the same general word family.

And Paul focuses on his calling, He focuses on

their calling and the calling of all Christians,

and he focuses on God's calling them.

And so there's this idea of a calling. So what do we mean by calling?

Okay, a divine purpose, a divine mission.

What else? We're called to honor the name of

our Lord Jesus Christ. Okay. All right,

so we can look at— here's the technical definition. It carries the idea of urgently

inviting someone to accept responsibilities for a

particular task, implying a new relationship

with the one who does the calling. Hey, I need you to

be a part of this. And as the result of your accepting this responsibility,

it changes your relationship with me.

Now that works in 2 ways. If we all accept the calling,

does that change our relationship with one another? If we accept

that calling, does it change our relationship with God? Because ultimately God's the

one doing the calling. He may do it through the calls that come through

the preaching of the gospel, through the interactions of

the church leadership, but you have this calling.

Now, Paul focuses on his calling. Why would he start there?

Paul called to be an apostle. What's the

significance? Gives him authority.

Okay. So he establishes his authority.

All right. So what written scriptures do they have access to when Paul

writes 1 Corinthians? I mean, I don't

know how quickly they're beginning to circulate, but this is pretty early. This is 20

years from the time the church is established. So mainly,

if not exclusively, the Old Testament.

Now, even Gentiles, if they come into a saving relationship with Christ,

are they going to revere? Are they going to see the Old Testament as authoritative?

Yes. That's why even when you're writing to Gentile congregations,

you say, this is what Isaiah meant. This is what David was saying,

because they recognize the authority. They're obedient to the gospel because they see that.

What about Paul's words alongside of the Old Testament?

Less than, equal than? It's the same.

And so Paul— so you think about what Paul— really nice in the first 9

verses, but when he gets down to the heart of the letter, going to be

some things hard to swallow. But they don't have the— they don't have

the right or the option to say, eh, that's just Paul.

Now, I want you to think about that. There are going to be some classes

later on, we get to chapter 7, where there's some great misunderstanding

where people go, oh, well, that's just Paul's opinion. Paul is an apostle

and what the words that he is writing, and I think as we wade through

some of that somewhat difficult material, we'll see that there's no inconsistency

here, that Paul is an inspired spokesman for

God and his word must be accepted the same as any other place in the

Bible. Yes, sir, Mike. Yeah, Paul, where he's talking

about 12 wars and he says sometimes he gives his opinion,

But then he says, I don't say this,

God says this. And then he turns around and he says,

but I have the will of the Lord in mind.

So he always goes back to authority when he says that. That's going

to be a fun chapter. I don't know, Hiram, if we're going to cast lots

or do rock-paper-scissors for that one. I don't know if we want it or if

we want the other guy to have it. I don't know. That's a tough chapter,

but yeah, that's a great point. There's maybe another reason

why Paul points to his apostleship. What did his apostleship lead

him to do? Remember, let's go back to Acts 9:16.

Acts 9:16

What did Jesus say he wanted Paul to do? What was his mission?

To the Gentiles. As part of being faithful to that mission, what does Paul

do? He comes to Corinth for 18 months. He works among

them. He spends time with them. He develops relationships with them.

That builds a bond. I want you to see the softer other side of this.

When Paul talks about his calling as an apostle that led him to spend

the second most time really intense, involved,

he stays there. He starts there as a tentmaker so he can be there with

them. And then when the others come with the contribution from

other congregations, Acts 18:5, 2 Corinthians 11:8,

Acts 18:5 2 Corinthians 11:8

he dedicates himself full-time to ministry. And so he's saying,

look, I have the right as an apostle, but I love you.

I care about you. We've done life together.

So when we— when we hit some speed bumps, some difficult things

that are to come, I want you to remember that. It's important.

Absolutely. Oh, okay. Yeah, sure,

sure. Maybe we don't hear about that as much as the Gentile world, but maybe

they were afraid of Paul on some— to some degree, maybe so. Now I

want you to see after Paul deals with his calling, he deals with their calling

in verse 2 through verse 9. And so,

by whom were they called? Verse 2,

verse 9. It's right there in the text.

Somebody said it, I think. By God. All right. So this

is not something you slough off. God is the one who's doing the calling.

To what were they called?

Look at verse 2, to be set apart.

Notice he kind of doubles down on that, doesn't he? He says, to those sanctified

in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.

What does that help them with? What was the culture

like around them?

Unholy, unrighteous, immoral. You've already

said that. He says, hey guys, God has you here in this part

of the world called out of all of that. Now,

maybe they can see that more clearly with immorality than they

can with the other big, huge elephant in the room. The division.

Press pause for a moment. Do we have a pretty

clear picture on immorality? I'm going to talk about it in the sermon this morning.

Big, big sins, do we see it? If we

had a rampant sexual immorality— I'm going to tell you this. I won't even tell

you where. There was a work my dad preached a lot of different places.

There was a work my dad preached at where there was— it was— you

older folks in here, it's before my time, but I know the phrase, Peyton's Place.

It was one of those people chuckling, the folks who know what that was.

I think that's like real immoral, bad, you know, people who maybe looked

respectable on the surface, but there was a lot of sin going on. If that

were a part of our congregation, man, it'd be pretty clear.

How easy is it for us to see the worldliness of division,

of people camping out in allegiance to people

who are boasting about their gifts? I mean, these are,

These are a little harder to detect, aren't they? A little bit more subjective.

How do I know? Oh, I know, I can see it in you, but it's

a lot harder for me to see it in me. And so Paul is saying,

you've been called out. The culture is always divisive.

Think about our world today. Is our nation divided?

And it doesn't matter who's occupying the White House or which party is in charge.

It just seems to be going from bad to worse all the time.

And if you happen to be on social media, is social media world divided?

I mean, you just think about wherever you want to look in our culture.

And so what does God expect of us in the

midst of all of that? We are saints by calling,

sanctified by our Lord Jesus Christ. We're called out

of all of that into something different.

All right, and then when were they called? Boy, I'd like to spend more time

on this. When were they called?

What does verse 2 say?

What did they call on? They called on the name of

our Lord Jesus Christ. When did that happen? At baptism.

Okay, alright, we have to do some leaps and I wish we had time.

We will have more chance to talk about that. Acts 2:21, whosoever calls

Acts 2:21

upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That's in the first sermon.

We get a sample of how— what that means more specifically in

Saul's conversion when Ananias comes to him and he says, and now why do you

delay? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins,

calling on the name of the Lord. It's appealing to the Lord. 1 Peter 3:21,

1 Peter 3:21

out of a good conscience saying, I depend on your grace and I depend on

your mercy. 1 Corinthians 12:13 says, they were all baptized into

1 Corinthians 12:13

one body. And so, So that's when they came into

this new relationship. They left the world, and now they were to be different

in the way that they behaved. Why were they called? We would

spend more time on this, but I just want to kind of give you this

out of verses 8 and 9. He says, you were called

to keep you firm, to endure. The Lord wants

you to make it. He wants the problems that you're having to be

resolved. He wants you to be firing on all cylinders, to be growing,

to be thriving, to be deepening your influence in the world, He wants you

to be like that church in Thessalonica, 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, where your faith is

1 Thessalonians 1 · chapter mention

known all over the world. He wants that for you and

he wants you to be blameless. That doesn't mean sinless. It means that when you

stand before the King of Kings, the verdict is that you're not guilty.

And he wants this— you've been called to

have fellowship with Jesus. You're not just called out or

away from something. Towards something,

and that something is someone, Jesus Christ.

And when I'm called to, when I'm pulled into relationship

through obedience and submission into a relationship with Christ, and I'm really focusing on

that, and I'm really working on that on a day-by-day basis to be better,

to be stronger, to be more like him, what kind of impact am

I going to have on the local church? I'll be reflecting his

character. What is Paul going to say? 1 Corinthians 11:1,

1 Corinthians 11:1

Imitators of me as I am of Christ.

That humbles me. Here's the

way it sounds coming out of my mouth. Be imitators of Neil even as Neil

is of Christ. Now put your name in there.

Does it work?

And if it did, would we be more united or

would we be more divided? All right, so he focuses— before he—

we haven't even gotten to the problems yet. He focuses on the calling.

Man, see this not for your glory, but for his

glory, this elevated state in which you have found yourself

by being in Christ. All right, but then, oh, here it is, the heart of

the letter. There's a correction. Verse 10 through 17,

now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you

all agree, that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete

in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I've been informed concerning you,

my brethren, by Chloe's people, that there are quarrels among you.

Now I mean this, that each of you is saying, I'm of Paul, I'm of

Apollos, I of Cephas, and I of Christ.

Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he?

Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized

none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one would say

that you were baptized in my name. Now I did also baptize the household of

Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other, for Christ did

not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of

speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. Now, we've talked

about this before, but one of the ways you can establish the purpose of a

letter, sometimes there's a purpose statement. John says,

these things are written for this reason. 1 Timothy also does that.

Now, when we did Into the Word last month,

when Hiram started off chapter 4, he highlighted that

there are 2 petition verbs. And in Greek letters, they were really like

neon signs. And that petition verb is I urge, I beseech.

And depending on what version you have, you'll have a different word

I exhort, I appeal, or I plead. You'll see it there in verse 10.

And so Paul is saying, this is the occasion. This is the reason why I'm

saying all these things because Yodia and Sintike are divided.

It's causing problems in the church. Now in 1 Corinthians,

we find it right here at the heart of the letter. He says, I urge

you that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly

joined together in the same mind and the same judgment. What Paul is saying is,

Here's the roadmap. This is why I'm writing this,

because Chloe's people have come and told me that you're divided

to the point that you're standing behind different people, and Christ is not

divided. You weren't baptized in the name of any man.

You're forgetting Christ in all of this. And so he says, there's a

problem we need to correct. And man, you can walk through, here's a kind of

a roadmap of the rest of the letter. How was the division seen in 1

Corinthians? It was seen through their division by being— having

an allegiance to different men, chapter 2 through 4.

It is seen through their moral sin. He's going to talk about that in chapter

5 and verse 6. It's going to be seen in their marital strife in

chapter 7. It's going to be seen in matters of judgment in chapters 8

and 9. It's going to be seen in the mistakes by Israel

that they were mimicking, chapter 10. It's going to be seen in their misunderstanding

of gender roles in chapter 11. Chapter 11, verse 1 through 16, their abuse of

the Lord's Supper, chapter 11, verse 17 through 34, through their

mishandling of their spiritual gifts, chapters 12 through 14.

And so Paul is going to go through all of that and he says,

I want you to be one, that there be no divisions, because they were divided

in each and every one of those particular matters. So here's

the problem. How do you correct it? Even before

we get to the individual topics, He tells them how to do

it. Number 1, be complete. Now,

how would they do that? How would they be complete?

All agree, be of the same mind and be of the same judgment. Does that

mean that we all have to have the same opinions and the same preferences?

I say the New American Standard Bible is the best.

Hiram, I don't know, what would you say? The ESV is the best.

A lot of you would say the New King James is the best. So here's

what we got to do. We got to be of the same judgment. And so

nobody can use any other Bible but the New American Standard.

I don't know, whatever it is. Can't we— can't— is that what he's— is that

what Paul's saying? That you've got to walk my line?

We got to be of the same mind? Who determines that? What does Paul mean

when he says be of the same mind? Whose mind does he have in mind?

Christ. How do we know that? We're skipping ahead because we

have the whole letter. Chapter 2, verse 10 through 16, we have

the mind of Christ. How do we have the mind of Christ? How do you

know what the mind of Christ is? Well, that's what 2:10 through 16 is

about. It's about the revelation of the Word. And so we know. And so what

does it mean to be of the same judgment? How do we get there?

What if our judgments are different and not in the realm

of doctrine,

Okay, I agree with that. We have to read what God's Word has to say,

but God's Word has a lot to say, but does it

say, ladies, whether you should have a hat on

your head or not? What's the

judgment call? Does it say whether you need to have one One

cup or several?

It doesn't matter. But how do we get to the

same judgment? We use the same mind,

right? So it's going to form not just where places

are tied down, but when it's not tied down, it's going to help me to

know how we navigate that together without being divisive with one another.

And so that's how we're made complete. We need to see Christ

correctly, verse 11 through 13. And so he puts Christ in the center,

and we've got to focus on the gospel and on the cross,

on the right message and on the right man. So here's the template.

Maybe this is a good place to stop because starting in chapter 1, verse 18,

we're going to see the cross as part

of the solution, at the heart of the solution. When a church has problems,

what it has not done, it has not sufficiently looked at

the cross of Calvary. If we will, then we'll resolve a lot

of the problems that we have. Hiram will talk more about that next week.

Thank you very much for your attention this morning.