5 First Corinthians video

So the first thing I want to talk about today a little bit is why we're having to do what we're doing and talk about maybe a little bit about tribulation. You know, like it or not, our Father is in charge and He rules over all of His creation. And the difference is that when He allows something like this to happen, He is in control of this. but it plays different for different people. And what I mean by that is, if you're not of the body of Christ, it has a much different effect on you than if you are a member of his body.

Because we know that tribulation is a school that we all have to go to as believers, and at first we think it's really distasteful, but it's It's a really cool school run by the Lord himself in love and grace. It's secured for us and it's safe. It has blessings that accrue to us eternally. and it carries on a work within us. So we as believers shouldn't be surprised when we find ourselves operating in the school of tribulation like the whole planet is right now. I find it interesting how quickly the life on the planet can change. In two weeks, look where we are. He does a lot of cool things positionally for us, but also this school of tribulation, He enables us during our journey here through this wilderness, because we do live in a wilderness.

We always try to make it look better than it really is, but it's a wilderness. And He wants us to realize our blessings here as we walk through this wilderness. we might be inclined as believers to think, well, perfect peace with God with regard to the past, unchanging divine favor as to the present, and a secure hope of glory in the future for all eternity. Would I want more than that answer? Well, there is something more, and the something more It's the Father in His unsearchable wisdom and grace and love has something else in store for us. And it's not up there. It's down here in the wilderness.

And not only so, but we rejoice in our tribulation. There's something beautiful to rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's really great. Don and I were talking this morning about maybe God is setting everything up and He's going to come soon, and we're very hopeful about that. But there's something even better than that, and better than that is to be able to rejoice in tribulation.

It's a very different thing than rejoicing in hope. I'll give you an example. The Israelites sang a great song and they praised Jehovah when he had taken them through the Red Sea and their feet didn't even get wet. They get all the way through and they're able to turn around and watch the waves come down and wipe out Pharaoh's army. Chariots, horses, all of them. And they're singing and they're very excited but that wasn't the end of the chapter.

By the end of the chapter they had come to Mara. Remember what Mara was? They came to Mara and they couldn't drink the waters of Mara for they were bitter. So what did Israel do? They started murmuring. That's what they're great at, murmuring. What about us as heavenly people? How much nearer than that of Israel is our relationship to our Father? Quite a bit. How much higher and more perfect is our position, our profession, our hope? And how incomparably greater are our blessings than those of Israel? You can't compare them. And the difference is just as wide as between heaven and earth.

And have we, when coming to Marah, murmured like Israel? Yes, we have. At least I have. Maybe you don't. or perhaps having such a hymn of praise at the Lord's table or the resurrection or the day of the Lord and soon after that we murmured in the next hour because we were complaining about something we didn't like because we'd come up to some bitter water that we have to drink. So it's really a great thing when you can rise above the pressure of the circumstances and the power of faith and you see a lot of that going on right now with You know, this morning I noticed on the internet there were lots of preachers and pastors who were praying and I like to read people's prayers because it tells me a lot about where they are spiritually. But it's quite another thing to bend in patience under them and learn what we would call Christian endurance, which can only be made our own in the Father's school of tribulation.

Flesh and nature don't relish this crucible. No kidding. And to those who have not peace with God, the tempter often whispers. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, and I found a dialogue, listen to this, in your ear. God is against you. He deals as judge with you and your sins, which proves that your sins are unforgiven, and that you are not his child. This is only a foretaste of the eternal judgment awaiting you. If you should die with this illness, or if your heart should break under this crushing blow God has inflicted upon you. What's a believer's answer to that? Not at all. The child of God rejoices and says, my father is for me. And for this very reason he has sent me these trials. For whom the Lord loves, He chastens. And what son is that of the Father He doesn't chasten? Every single one of us. And He's dealing with me as a father, not a judge.

So that's my thoughts about what's going on in the world. We should set our affections on things above and not on things of the earth. Okay. in the middle of setting our affections on things above, maybe we have a trial. And we all have it. And there are trials around us. And so what the Lord is doing is making us more fit to be the inheritance of the saints in light, so that we can enjoy Him more now and greater later.

Today's lesson. We finished the book of Galatians. We're starting today on 1 Corinthians. And I thought we'd do a little introduction on the book of Corinthians and kind of set it up a little bit. I'm going to read some scriptures to you which I think are kind of important. But basically, you ask yourself, well, who wrote this book? Well, it's the Apostle Paul.

And it has to do with his relation to the Church of Corinth. And that relationship is really laid out pretty neatly in Acts 18, 1-18. And as we go through the Epistle of Corinthians, it will be laid out even more. But what I thought, and I don't normally do this, but what I thought is I would go through those 18 verses and kind of paraphrase them and talk them as I go, but they'll give us a good idea of how Corinth became an issue, why he was there, how he got there, who he met there.

So in Acts 18.1, after these things, he left Athens. So he was up in Athens, and that isn't very far away from Corinth, and he went to Corinth.

And when he got to Corinth, he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, so he's a Jew living in the Roman Empire, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla. And why did they come? Because Claudius, who was emperor, had commanded all the Jews must leave Rome. If you're a Jew, you have to get out of Rome.

So he came to Corinth, and he came to Paul, and because he was of the same trade He stayed with them and they were working for, by trade, they were tent makers. So how did he meet this couple? He met them at work. He's a tent maker, they're tent makers, and they're at work and they discover that they're believers. And so they become fast friends. That's the way the Lord does things, you know.

And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath. and trying to persuade the Jews and the Greeks. So Paul on the Sabbath, on Saturday, would go over to the synagogue and he would, because he's a rabbi, and as a rabbi he can go into any synagogue and they have to give him the floor, and they do. He uses the floor, though, to try to persuade Jews that Jesus is the Messiah. And from that platform and other platforms, he was speaking to Greeks. And then, in verse 5, when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the Word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.

So now he's probably not working. Now that Silas and Timothy are there to help him, he can concentrate on what God has called him to do. But here's how that was received. But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your head. I'm clean. And this is a really critical phrase for us. From now on, I'm going to the Gentiles. The Jews rejected his message.

And then he left there and he went to the house of a man named Titus, Titus Justice, a worshiper of God, whose house was next door to the synagogue. Don't you love that, that the Lord put his house right next door to the synagogue? Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household.

And many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. So Paul's ministry is effective. There's a lot of Jews converting and he's staying at the house next door to the synagogue and he's talking there and he's talking whenever he gets a chance. Lots of people are beginning to come.

And the Lord said to Paul, now this is really interesting, up until this time Paul had had several problems. One, he'd been really sick. Two, he'd been stoned and beaten. But the Lord comes to him by night in a vision. Here's what he says to him. Don't be afraid any longer. That assumes that he was afraid. Don't be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and don't be silent, for I am with you, and no man is going to attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city. Boy, what a, what a, imagine an Apostle Paul who's He's a bold man, but he's suffering physically because of his ministry. And the Lord tells him, no one's going to touch you here because I've got a lot of people in this city. That's kind of a cool message. And he settled there for a year and six months. So because of that, he stayed around for 18 months. It's a long time. And he taught the word of God from 18 months among them. That's what he was doing. But while Gallio was pro-council of Achaia, Gallio was like the governor of the state of Achaia, and he was a Roman. He was just like Pontius Pilate was in Palestine.

He's the head guy, you know. And so he's the guy that's in charge of keeping order, and order was a really big thing in the Roman Empire. if you were one of these governors you did not want this order because the Roman army would come down and fix it and you might be out of a job minimally out of a job so here's what the Jews do the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat so Galileo has a judgment seat just like Pontius Pilate has and they say this man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law And when Paul was about to open his mouth, so Paul wants to stand up and give his defense. But just as he's about to open his mouth, Gallo says to the Jews, if it were a matter of wrong or of vicious crime, oh Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you. That's his attitude about them. He's putting up with them. That was Pontius Pilate's attitude, too. He was putting up with them.

But if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourself. I'm unwilling to be a judge in these matters." And he drove them away from the judgment seat. So he said, you know, it's like you go to court and the judge throws you out and says, I'm not going to rule on that. Give me a break. That's not worth my time.

Well, here's what the Jews do. And so they took a hold of Sothenes, the leader of the synagogue, and they began beating him in front of the judgment seat. But Galio was not concerned about any of these things. So Sothenes, I don't know if Sothenes and Crispus are the same guy, but Sothenes is the leader of the synagogue, and they beat him up. Why? Because he's a believer. He's a believer.

And Paul, having remained many days longer, took leave of the brethren and put out to sea of Syria, and with him were Persilla and Aquila. In Cheria he had his hair cut before he was keeping the vow. So those verses kind of set up what's going on at Corinth in Paul's life, what's happening with him. At best we think that the epistle was written in 59 AD and at the close of Paul's three-year residence in Ephesus, which you can look up in Acts 20-31.

And also when we get to 1 Corinthians 16, he'll talk about that. So let's talk about the theme. There's various subjects treated, but if you wanted to put them in one sort of loose heading, you would say he's going to talk about Christian conduct. That's pretty much what the whole epistle is about.

It's written to a group of believers who are described. Now here's how they're described. This is really important to understand. You know in Galatians we talked about the influence of the Judaizers coming down from Jerusalem to try to put legal restrictions, Jewish legal restrictions on believers. Well that's not the problem in Corinth.

The problem in Corinth is that In 3.1 and 3.3, chapter 3, verse 1 and 3, he describes who his audience is in Corinth.

The first, he says they're men of flesh. The second thing he calls them, that they're babes in Christ. And the third thing he says, they are still fleshly. So one of the things we're going to study is what do those terms mean and why does Paul have to address that or why does he? He deals with the problems that rise from the condition and the conduct of these believers. That they're fleshly, that they're babes in Christ.

The occasion of the epistle, why did he write it? A couple of reasons. There was an inquiry from Corinth concerning marriage. Somebody had sent him a letter and said, well, can you give us some instruction about marriage and the use of meats offered to idols?

And that's in chapter 7 and 8. But the apostle was much more exercised by the reports that there were big divisions, deepening divisions in the church, and there were increasing contentions in the church. And there was a big case of incest And the incest didn't bother him, it was the fact that they weren't doing anything about it. And he'll address that in chapter 1 and also in chapter 5.

These factions that were showing up in the church weren't because of heresies. They were because of the carnality of what I might call the restless Christians. And here's the thing about Greeks. They love wisdom and eloquence. And so their admiration for wisdom and eloquence, their focus started to go off of the word and on to wisdom and eloquence.

So the leadership around the city of Corinth and beginning to creep into the church began to be more human and less spiritual. about the things of God, and Paul's going to admonish them about that. Now, I find it interesting that at this time, if you were attending a church in Corinth, probably every single person in that church would be a believer. Wouldn't you think that? That's not true today. So many churches have more non-believers in them than they do believers. So there's a whole different viewpoint here.

Now, in addition to that, there were minor disorders like vanity, yielding to childish delights and tongues and sign gifts, and we'll go through all of that, rather than to be soberly instructed. So the reason he goes about defending at the beginning of the book his apostleship is the same reason he did it in Galatians. And that is, it has to do with the authority God gave him to be the teacher of the gospel. If he can't stick to the message that he has, then he starts to lose his authority. And God gave him that authority, and he's the one with the new message.

One other thing, you can't do a rigid analysis of Corinth because it's not really a theological treatise, not like part of Galatians, and certainly not like Romans is. So what's happening here is that Paul is concerned about the behavior of these believers, and he's really in holy indignation about it. So, if you were to talk about it and divide up the epistle, I think the following analysis would be helpful for us to understand, and your handout has this information on it. Introduction, which 1 Corinthians 1-9, which we'll talk about next week, and the other interesting thing, there's a real A really neat little phrase in here that really is relevant today.

Notice in verse 7, it says that they were fully gifted. You know what that means? That means that they had every spiritual gift operational in their church. Now there are those today that would say to us, well if you're fully gifted, you shouldn't have any problems. They had plenty of them. It shows you that spiritual gifts, especially the signed gifts, don't necessarily lead to spirituality. They don't. So we'll deal with that probably next week.

The second part of the epistle from chapter 1 verse 10 to chapter 4 verse 21 It contrasts of their present divisive state. We'll show you how the divisions are showing up in the church. The third section is immorality is going to be rebuked. Discipline will be instructed.

And that's chapter 5, verse 1 through verse 8. Then the next group is the sanctity of the body, Christian marriage. That's chapter 6, verse 9 through 7, verse 40. The fifth one is meets and the limitation of Christian liberty. This is a very interesting study, especially Christian liberty.

It's chapter 8 through the beginning of chapter 11. Next group is spiritual gifts in relation to the body. the church and the Christian ministry, chapter 12, 1 through 1440. In chapter 15, we talk about the resurrection from the dead and the gospel, the clear laying out of the gospel. And the last part is special directions and greetings, chapter 16, 1 through 24.

So that's kind of how the book is laid out. And we'll in either greater or smaller expansion of that will be what we'll be teaching over the next however long it's got. There are 16 chapters. The book we just finished is only six. So but I think this will probably go faster. All right.

A little historical background. Corinth had a long history stretching back to the Bronze Age, 1200 BC is when the city was founded. In Paul's day, it was a Roman colony and the capital of the province of Achaea. The population consisted of Roman citizens who had migrated from Italy, native Greeks and Jews. and other people from various parts who chose to settle there. Now, I found this map, and I'm hoping that you can see this at home or in your handout. I want you to notice down on the left-hand side, it says Greece and Achaea, and below that, you'll see Athens and then you'll see Corinth.

Corinth is strategic because It was an ideal situation for commerce. It stood just southwest of the Isthmus of Corinth, a land bridge that connected northern Greece and southern Greece. And it was about three miles wide. And it was called the Peloponnesus. And this site made Corinth a crossroads for trade.

It's like the Panama Canal would be in our time. And you for land north and south as well as the seas east and west. In Paul's day what would happen is large ships would come in on one side, they'd take all the cargo off of it, move it across and put it in another ship and off they would go.

And you know we talk about the word reckon. This is a good example of how the word reckon works. If you have a ship on the one side, and you unload everything, somebody's got to account for every box that's unloaded. And then when they take it three miles and put it on the other ship, they reckon that the same amount of boxes came off as went on. That's what reckoning, that's what that word logitimae means. It's a really good point when you see that word. Now, if you were a small boat, they might drag you that three miles. They'd drag you over the dirt. I'm sorry, it's four and a half miles. It's four and a half miles.

So what it did was, it did away with the long voids all the way around down by Sparta and all the way around up to the other side. And what's interesting is that the Greeks started to cut a canal through there and link the two gulfs. They started that canal in Paul's time. You know when it got completed? I found 1893. So they started it 1,800 years ago and it finally got completed in 1893. Because of the strategic location, this was a very wealthy town. And all that goes with wealth is there. There's a steady stream of travelers, merchants, there's all kinds of vice there.

On Paul's day you could say that all the religions were there too. And one of the part of the religions was there was a temple to Athena that we hear the term a thousand prostitutes I don't know if they had that many but fornication was flourishing everywhere there wasn't any fidelity at all as a matter of fact old Corinth had gained such a reputation for sexual vice that Aristophanes in 450 or 385 BC coined the verb I can't say but what it means is to act like a Corinthian means to commit fornication That's not a very nice term. Oh, you're a Corinthian. Oh, I get what you're about. The old city had the most wicked city in Greece and perhaps the most licentious city in the whole Roman Empire. So this was not a really nice place to go on vacation.

The Temple of Aphrodite is the temple that had the prostitutes. And it was on the top of a 1,900 foot mountain just south of the city. and these female slaves who would come down and they would prostitute themselves to raise money for the temple. That's how they did it. Other major deities in Corinth include the Melchorites, the patron of seafarers, the Poseidon, the sea god, there was a lot of them there.

All this evidence together that Paul's Corinth was One man put it this way, it was like New York City, Los Angeles and Las Vegas all together. That doesn't sound like a fun place to go. And that's when Paul arrived there the first time. That's what he faced. There they were right there. Now, you know what's interesting about that?

The church prospers here. And you hear a lot of complaints today that, boy, if the morality of our country doesn't improve, the church won't prosper. Well, I'm not so sure that's the right outlook. I think the right outlook is, well, let them do what they're going to do.

We represent a safe harbor from all of that. We represent a safe harbor today from this isolationism. You notice that what this is really all about is to separate us? This flu and all that's going on, it's designed to separate us, yet the Lord tells us Don't forsake gathering together. We need to be together. And the reason we need to be together is we are separate from them. We are different. So Paul preaches a gospel, plants a church there, and he meets Priscilla and Aquila, who are Jews, but they're believers. They all get expelled from the synagogue, and they all move into the house next door to the synagogue. I like that one.

Paul ministered there 18 months, as we talked about, and he left. So he returns to Ephesus on the third missionary journey, Paul did, and he made the city the base of his operation for almost three years, from like 56 to 59. He was there three years and he was operating, sending messages out to all the churches in Asia Minor.

And that's where he starts hearing the disquieting news about what's going on in Corinth. And so he wrote a letter to Corinth Not to tolerate such conduct and this letter isn't part of scripture It was the first letter written because it's referred to when we get to chapter 5 verse 9 But it doesn't exist today But he'll refer to the fact that I got your letter and we talked about it and some of you have responded some of you haven't and then he heard from what we're going to find out is Cleo's people and the factions that were developing in the church. So he's hearing things, and people are coming to him and telling him what's going on. And he received a letter from the Church of Corinth requesting his guidance in certain matters, and this prompted him to write the book of 1 Corinthians. Marriage, divorce, food offered to idols, exercise of spiritual gifts in the church, collection for the poor saints in Jerusalem, all those kinds of things were part of the questions that they wanted to have answers to. And those who carried the letter to him talked about the conditions being really bad at the Church of Corinth. The discipline of immorality, Christians suing one another in pagan courts, and disorder at church meetings.

So, all of those factors led Paul to write this letter. That's what prompted him to do it. And he addresses all of those issues, like when I went through the outline. He addresses every one of those issues. And we're going to see when we go through it that his answer to a lot of these things are not the answer that you would come up with from an earthly perspective. His perspective is always heavenly. Always heavenly.

The next thing that was going on, it sounds like that there was a conflict brewing or developing between the Church of Corinth and its founder, Paul. Because of the initial strife, the epistle makes clear, however, the large problem seemed to be that some in the community were leading the church into a view of things that was contrary to what Paul was preaching.

Boy, doesn't that sound like today? We just modify it a little, and modify it a little, and modify it a little, and pretty soon they're not teaching Paul. One of the ways that I think that you can always tell A church that seeks to teach the truth is whose epistles are they teaching? Where in the Bible are they teaching from? If they're teaching from Paul's epistles, they're probably on it. But if they're teaching Old Testament and the Gospels, they're probably not on it. Like I said before, this challenge of Paul's teaching actually was a question of challenging his authority as a preacher of the Gospel. So the issue here But Paul's answer is always going to be, what does it mean to be spiritual? What does that mean? And what are the elements of being spiritual? So that you'll see his answer come that way.

First Corinthians is not the fullest expression or example or statements of the entire gospel. Those of us and everybody in this room and everybody watching, I'm sure, have spent a lot of time in the book of Romans. That's where the expose of the doctrine is. It misses it. It's not like it's laid out in Romans. Sometimes it shows Paul's heart about things, and sometimes not real clearly. Paul's heart will be shown when we study 2 Corinthians. That's where you really see his heart. You don't see it a lot in 1 Corinthians. But it shows, too, one other thing.

There's a great value in how Christian doctrine works. how it's intended to be used in the lives of believers, in restoring people from sin and establishing them in their position, how doctrine really plays a big role. It's addressed to two groups, the Church of God, which is at Corinth, and to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. So he's addressing it to the Church of God, which is at Corinth. The church of God. There are two entities here. One is the church of God and the other is where it is. So he's talking about a local church. He's not talking about all of Christianity. He's talking about this church in Corinth. However, the church of Corinth should mirror the overall church and vice versa.

We should all be on the same page. we should view in this epistle is not the universal church but local. The two churches are really not to be different from each other like they are today. The local church is micro from the universal church and the universal church is a macro for the local church. What is true of one should be true of another.

And Paul is going to make that point. The New Testament constantly speaks of the church as people and not buildings. not denominations. Our identification is as people. And Paul always addresses us, believers, as people to the church of Corinth and those that are in Christ Jesus. That's who he's addressing. Because we share the life of Christ, because the Holy Spirit indwells us and indwelled them.

They were people whom God had commissioned to carry out the gospel to every creature. We need to keep in mind that as we read this epistle that it is the Church of God, I would rather say Church of Jesus Christ, but the Church of God at Corinth. The marks of the city of Corinth, now here's the contrast and I'll close up with this.

Corinth as a city was totally ignorant of who the true God was. They were entirely self-governing as a Roman colony and that was rare. They governed themselves. They lived and operated in a totally self-centered world. These traits marked the lives of individual unbelievers in Corinth as well. So the city was going in the opposite direction from the direction God had called the church to go.

So as hard as we try, I think, as human beings sometimes, modify the gospel to be more appealing to the world. No, we stand here in Christ inviting others to come to him, out of the world to him. We're not to modify the gospel in any sense. We're to invite them to come to Christ. As we go on now, Christ will assure us that, Christ assures them that they are believers because he says to them, that you're in Christ Jesus. He assures them that that's where their position is. And although he's going to come and use carnal terms about them later, he's talking about their position.

So he's going to focus on spiritual problems of the carnal Christians and the divine solutions to all of these problems. So I think as we study this, it's going to be kind of cool because There will be problems presented, and then solutions offered. Spiritual solutions, which are really good ones. And a lot of times problems are presented, and earthly solutions are presented. And Paul is going to say, no, this is his church, and he's God, and he knows how to solve and fix every one of these problems.

And usually it's based on your position and all that we have in Christ Jesus. So let's close. Dear Father, how we thank you for your word. How we thank you for the opportunity to begin and study through the book of 1 Corinthians. And we thank you for the opportunity to, if we can't gather together, that we can meet like this and hopefully we get better at this as we go on. And I personally want to thank everybody who zoomed in today and hopefully you were edified. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.