The Person and Work of the Holy Spirit lesson 25
JD McCulley · Apr 24, 2022
Holy Spirit (2021-23), No. 58
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261926437084

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're on lesson 25. It's been a while. We had a bit of a break there with the Easter weekend. So we're going to start off with question one here. Some of this will serve as a bit of a review and that's okay. We'll hit it from some different angles. The first question says, uh, quote the verse that Paul uses to demonstrate the positional oneness of the Corinthians. So I'm going to, I'm not going to ask you to quote it, but we'll, we'll go through it together.

So we're starting out here in the book of first Corinthians and we see Paul addressing the church and he says, 1 Corinthians 1 verse 2, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. What's kind of interesting about these opening letters from Paul is they reveal a lot about how he thinks about the church. There are some key phrases in this first so if you don't have your bible open first readings one chapter one first two do that now because i want to ask you a few questions about it i want to ask about some subject matter here who is he talking to who is paul talking to here the corinthians corinthians all the corinthians those are sanctified Okay, so now we have Corinthians that are sanctified.

And I would suppose to all Christians in every place. Okay, so who does the church belong to here? The Church of God. Is that the name or the title of the Corinthian church? Let's go, we're a local body at Corinth and we're going to go to the Church of God. Why do we not call our church the Church of God? We should. We should? Well, I don't see why that shouldn't be in the next elders meeting. We'll come show up and maybe we'll have a vote. I just give you good ideas.

What's interesting is that here Paul is talking to the church of God, which is at Corinth. So could we, what could we see here in relationship to Holly Hills? How might we rephrase that to us? Church of God at Holly Hills. Or at Denver, one of them, right? We say Holly Hills because it happens to be the by street, you know, the crossroads. But we don't think about that often. We think about Holly Hills as the body. Holly Hills.

Or is it, you know, Cornerstone Bible Church in Lubbock, Texas? Everybody's got a different name. But it's interesting, Paul is distinguishing these local believers as the church of God at Corinth. And he goes on to explain that those who have been sanctified, what does sanctified mean here?

Okay, it always means set apart. That's our first answer. The second part is set apart to what? And Russ, you're right. Whose righteousness? Christ's righteousness and that's evident in the next portion of the verse that says Saints by the calling all who in every place call on the name of our so there's a possession a shared possession Our Lord Jesus Christ their Lord and ours So we see that sanctified here is we're set apart as a possession Have you ever thought about that the church is the possession? Lord Jesus He really is. We're set apart here. We belong to God as his possession.

So one of the burdens of Paul's letter here was that the Corinthians' practice would closely match their position. What does that mean? What is he talking about there? He's talking about their calling. He's setting them apart as saints, as members of the church of God at Corinth, And he goes on to talk about how they're set apart and how they serve from every place. We're gonna come back to that. They call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. So here you have a possession.

There was a teacher that, this was back in the day when flip phones were a big deal, and turning off or putting on, you know, do not disturb. And every time a phone would go off and he was teaching, he'd say, the Holy Spirit is speaking. Can you tell us what they say? What he says.

No, it's just a funny way of dealing with that. But yeah, so what is this idea of, is this lordship? Because we're gonna get into what is called sectarianism, right? We're going to start looking at, some started following Paul, some started following Apollos and so forth. But what we're establishing at the beginning of this verse is that Paul didn't have any idea, or didn't have any intention of communicating any kind of sect, meaning division amongst the church. He's referring to them as one. He's saying that the possession is of God, you belong to God, and you're sanctified, you're set apart. In this case, there's this concept of potentially lordship. But why do we get a little bit antsy when we start talking about the lordship of the Christian faith?

Why? What kind of baggage happens in that terminology today? Have you made Jesus Lord of your life today? Because that would sanctify you and separate you from me if you had or if you hadn't. Is that true? Think about that. Some would establish a church membership or a church gathering around the idea of whether or not you are honoring the lordship of God. Have you made him lord of your life today? Have you ever heard that? Sure. Sure? Yeah. Have you guys online here? Oh, yeah. Heard that? Yeah. So how does that compare to what Paul's saying here? He made him lord of your life? He's saying no. That's the name that we call upon.

And from every place. It's not just at Corinth. You're part of a larger body. But I'm addressing you in Corinth right now because you're dealing with certain things. And what were the Corinthians dealing with? Sectarianism. They were dealing with sectarianism. That's right. They had some other issues too, didn't they? You think this issue of if it were coined lordship was an issue for them?

We use lordship as a way of talking about sanctification. Now what is sanctification? How does it differ from salvation? Salvation is by faith. Sanctification is by works, right? You're not getting by with that. I can't slide that in here? If sanctification isn't by works, then how are you not supposed to be able to make him lord of your life today? Well, and if you are MacArthurite.

He puts lordship salvation as part of salvation. That you have to, part of the salvation message is to make Jesus the Lord of your life. The problem with that is that salvation is a gift, grace, and The only activity I have involved in salvation is to receive it by faith, which is a non-meritorious act. To add making Jesus the Lord of my life to that gives me a meritorious act. That's right.

So what we end up with is in certain reformed camps that are more familiar, mostly because today we're inundated with literature, right? There's a book about that. You wanna start a study, you gotta find the book that you're looking to teach on, right? I remember working much through my young Christian life through the Mardels Bible Bookstore. And I was, I ended up in One Natureism for a while because the book cover looked really good.

And I read it, and it made a little bit of sense. And it was like, okay, we're, you know, we don't have a sin nature anymore at all. And that's an evidence of my sanctification. The less that sin nature shows, the more sanctified I was based on the fact that the sin nature was not, I had to believe that it was not present anymore. Not that it was separated and crucified, but that it was not in, literally physically or spiritually a role, had a role in my life any longer.

When we talk about the deposed monarch that Miles Stamford often refers to, he talks about the sin nature being that ship commander that is, or maybe it's not commander, but- Captain. Ship captain that is shackled in the bowels of the ship, but still yells out constant demands, right?

And so I ended up taking things of the scripture and evaluating them through these books. And one of the things that popular Christianity has led us to, or evangelical Christianity in terms of its publications, is this idea of lordship. And we apply it to salvation. And so you're not really saved until you have made the Lord Jesus Lord of your life. But we know that salvation is by faith and that sanctification is also by faith. So the issue of lordship in a believer's life did not qualify that person to be a part of the body of Christ. What did qualify him or her to be a part of the body of Christ? Their faith. That's right, they called on the name of the Lord Jesus.

My, the same Lord that I believe, you believe. And based on that, there is a basis for unity. But yet there were the Corinthians who were looking for ways to get behind certain teachers. And so we see that, we see that as believers got a hold of the word of God, it was their natural It's in nature to start compartmentalizing it to, I want to follow Mike. I want to follow Roger. I want to follow Bob or Tom or whomever. And it's because I like the way he teaches. Or I like the personality of this person. Is that a real thing? Yes. It's a real thing. We can absolutely gravitate towards certain personalities.

But the Corinthians got away with that, and I think we could get away with it some too. The second question says, the author uses three men, Paul, Apollos, and Peter, as characterizing needed gifted men in the church. Describes each man's contribution to the unity of the local body.

So, what was Paul known for? How did Paul, and we're looking for Paul and Apollos and Peter, and we're kind of looking for what were their pillars, what were their bedrocks? What was Paul's ministry? Obviously these were all gifted men used for the purposes of building up the church, right?

So we have to look at it through that lens. But Paul was gifted in the sense that he was the greatest doctrinal teacher for the church. Do you agree? Where do we get 95% of our doctrine? For the church. And he's an evangelist because he's an apostle. He has the doctrine right. Absolutely. And we're not to say that these men didn't have different aspects or different engiftments, right? If you want to use that term. But there was something that was kind of that central pillar to their ministry.

And if we want to use the term identification truths through doctrine, then we might even get more specific about what Paul taught. He wanted you to know about the Lord Jesus, but more specifically, not just know, but know who you were in Christ, who you are in Christ, right? The death is a personal, it's not just the death of Christ, it's your death. The burial is not just Christ's burial, it's your burial. The resurrection is not just Christ's resurrection alone, it's your resurrection in Him. So this concept of, for Paul, in Him, is threaded throughout all of his establishing doctrines for the church. What about Apollos? We don't see a whole lot, but what do we see about Apollos?

I think it says he was very well versed in the scriptures. He was a fervent teacher. Well-versed in the scriptures? Yep. He was the watering guy. He was the watering guy. Are preachers watering guys? Yeah. If they're good, they are. If they're good preachers, they water a lot. I turned on my sprinklers yesterday. I got a broken sprinkler head. Huh? Oh, and my puppy got out while the sprinklers were on and decided he could drink directly from the head of the sprinkler. Needless to say, he turned out a mess.

But yeah, Apollos was a watering. So Paul planted the seed. Apollos, what? He nurtured it through the water. And so we get this idea of confirming and establishing. You know, Paul was a doctrinal establisher. Apollos came along and took that doctrine and cultivated it and watered it and nurtured it as a preacher or as a teaching elder would do, right?

And Cephas, what did Peter, or Cephas, what did he stand for in a church specifically? He had that other side of the pastoral role. It's not just about nurturing and establishing, it's also about order. Establishing order, administering the functions of the church, ensuring that those that needed care, had care, the financial aspects. We don't see Peter necessarily taking care of all those things, but that was the general sense of what he was there for, to establish administration to the church. Right? Do you think all local bodies of believers will have men like this? So the question is, will every church, local, have a Paul, an Apollos, and a Cephas? What do you think? Well, the church in the New Testament had it. What do you think?

Are we covered with Mike and Roger is the question he's really asking. Well, and not just us two, but others. And others, that's right. I'm just kidding about that. But it's a valid question. Well, I know in our experience in local churches here, there's not a lot of watering. There's not a lot of establishing. There's just not a lot of anything, you know. Most of the churches we've tried to, you know.

In a healthy local church, I think, but it's not always, I don't know. Sometimes the body of Christ is spread pretty thin in some places. It's just not, I don't know. No, I completely understand where you're coming from. I mean, we do get spread thin sometimes. So what happens in a church body where you don't have a Cephas?

You don't have order and administration, so to speak, as an example, right? because of being involved in this place for a long time and watching how the Lord works, he raises men up to do certain jobs. And I think, you know, one of the issues that you see, no matter how small a church is, there should be teachers, at least one or maybe more teachers. There should be an administrator, someone who understands also understands the doctrine, but his goal is to administer. And there should be people that, everybody in the body should be evangelizing just by the way they live, but there are different functions. Because the church belongs to the Holy Spirit, belongs to the Lord, then I have always thought it's up to him to raise up the guys and to bring them. and to nurture them and get them ready to fulfill the roles. And the problem I see in Christendom is that eldership has become a temporary votable office. A votable office. Or, well, you know, these guys get to serve for three years and then they're out, we gotta get three other guys.

And a pastor usually has, to him, what he's doing, it's a job rather than, shepherd situation. He doesn't have a heart for the sheep, you know. So elders don't, in a lot of cases, don't teach, can't teach, are not familiar with God's Word at all. So there isn't any watering, like Miles is saying, there isn't any watering going on.

Right. Like if you You know, if a person comes to Christ who happens to be a teacher, oh, well, he's going to Sunday school right away and teach. Why? I'm not ready. And the same thing with administration. There's somebody that the Lord will raise up that fills the roles. I think you have to look at it that way. I think you're right. Let's take that and flip it around.

What about those that are sitting out in the pews, so to speak? What happens when you have a rotating group of elected elders that are moving in and out? We could talk about church leadership in a different setting altogether. It's a different subject.

But to take it back to what was happening in the Corinthians, I mean, Paul was moving in and out, wasn't he? He was establishing doctrinally. So he's moving in and he's moving out. So if they really got into Paul, like, yeah, Paul's our guy. Oh, Paul's gone. Now we got Apollos.

A little bit of Peter here, you know? And if you get these rotating personalities and they're not grounded in the word of God, what do you create? You create what we're talking about here in terms of sectarianism. You start rallying around people as opposed to the person of the Lord Jesus himself.

And so when we see these men being raised up in the local body, do they all have to fit the description of a Paul? Do they all have to fit the description of an Apollos? No. No. So what we're saying is that these gifts are not concrete and defined in these men. But the point of what Paul is referring to here is that You're missing out the idea that we're all, every place Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1-2, all who in every place call upon the name of the Lord. They may not even know your personality. And in terms of that, they're not part of the Paul club. They're not part of the Mike Club or the Roger Club, so to speak, or any other personality. Now, is it unique that God puts a plurality of men together to lead the local body? Is that unique? Why is that unique? Why is that biblical, do you think?

Go ahead. I think it goes back to the fact that when you read, especially Paul's officials, when you read them in John, that it's the Lord who gives gifted men to the body. It's his church, and he's in charge of it. And so I think every local church should have what Paul describes as these certain people involved. Me can do it, we're 20 people, you know. But we're so, I think we sometimes think we're so eager to get organized, especially if we're a denomination. Of course, they've already got their sectarian thing already laid up, laid out. You know, you've got to fit into whatever that is, rather than trusting the Lord to create and maintain the local body that you're in. I think you can trust them with that.

Yep. Yeah, I think that the plurality of elders is really essential to balance one another out, right? Not each individual has the Paul gifts of doctrine or the Apollos gifts of watering The plurality covers the breadth of those roles, right? I agree.

It's similar to a marriage, right? A man and a woman when united are capable of performing the role of being parents and husband and wife in a way that, it's not all about mom, it's not all about dad, it's about mom and dad, right? And they perform the role of raising us together and they parent us together. And what was happening in Corinth was they started choosing sides. They started getting really picky about, I'm not wasting my time with that guy, I'm more into tune with this guy. Again, that happens naturally. We all gravitate towards certain speakers. We gravitate towards certain types of teaching.

But the heart of what Paul is talking about here is that regardless of those personalities and regardless of the gifts that they were given in establishing the New Testament Church, they all were united in the spirit, right? There was a unity of the spirit. We talked about in our last lesson how factions and frustrations and disagreements in the church are real, they happen. And they produce a lack of unity. And so in this last couple lessons, we've talked a lot about this unity of the spirit. And we get this idea that if a local body of believers is focusing on the Word of God, there's no disunity because they're united in the Spirit.

Is it that simple? Yes. Yes? Well, I was just going to say that it kind of comes down to are you self-centered or are you relying on Christ? Christ is the head of the church, so we need to go to Christ for everything we do in our organization of the body of Christ in the church. And then it simplifies everything if we believe that he's going to act on our behalf, and we do. It is that simple.

Why are we complicated? That's my question. Why do we complicate it? Self gets in the way, I think. Self gets in the way, okay. Yeah, I think you're right. So number three, question three, what happens when we force any one side of divine truth to the exclusion of the others? So here it is. I'm going to just say it this way and then we'll go into it. If I take a truth of God's word and push it to the exclusion of others, what happens? I start a sect. I start a group, a faction, right? And maybe it's not even intentional at first. That gets a little steam.

You throw in a couple of attractive group Bible studies where you offer a really great dinner. And you start to add all the embellishments to the fact that you've got some unique kind of teaching. I focus on these types of things. And I start to add all the things to it.

And all of a sudden, it's well marketed. It's well communicated. It's well documented. Now it goes into a book maybe. There's a lot of great teachers that end up traveling around teaching their books. Is that wrong? I can't find that in the scripture that that's a process of edifying the body because we're talking a local church here and gifted people to that body. But it also says in every place. Yeah. All who in every place. The apostles were travelers. They were travelers. They really were. All of them were. I think what we need to distinguish here is that there are great teachers who create great works of teaching. Books that we all have on our shelf. And we have our go-to stuff, right? I know I do.

But what I have to be aware of is that that truth, while as unique, and maybe it is something that we often talk about Miles Stanford in that way, Did God give him this ability to communicate identification? So was it just his, or did he just happen to see it in the word of God and brought it to light? Or was it his own little makeup? I like to think the latter. He saw it in the word of God, and oftentimes that happens, right? Certain times we go through the scripture and we're like, I never thought of it that way. It's really unique. And all of a sudden it impacts us.

And certain teachers have that ability, but what we're talking about in the local body, that that should not lead to a following outside of the rest of the body, because our unity is in Christ. It's in the word of God. So what we like about what Miles says is amazing. And all the other Brethren writers that support the content of the hungry heart and so forth, we're motivated by things like that. But they're not to create those kinds of factions in our mindset, because again, we're talking about the unity of the spirit here. You know that, we were talking about Miles when he first came on the scene around here, he showed up in Denver.

There was a sectarian group that formed around him. Yep. And they were insufferable people. Because if you went to a Bible study that a couple of them were at, you were corrected and how you phrase things, because it didn't line up with the way Miles would say things. Yet if you knew Miles Stanford, he disappeared from that. He wanted to be as far away from that as he possibly could be.

Sure. But it happened. It happened to Paul. Yeah, it did. It happened to Apollos. Yeah. Right? Cephas, and so it happens, but the reason it happens is because we, as those being fed or watered, start to take that nurturing and confine it to a brand, right? And we get into this brand mentality.

I mean, how often do you, when you shop the grocery stores, do you choose a Kleenex over a tissue? Why? Kleenex isn't even a thing, it's a brand. You just happen to associate it with a tissue. But now you get Kleenex instead of that, you know, whatever off-brand is, because it's not as soft on your nose.

You've been branded in your life over thousands and thousands of things you encounter. Your car, your choice of clothing. I mean, we oftentimes fall into a world where we've been marketed specifically. I work in a world where segmentation and demographics and analytics get me to the right person at the right time with the right message so that I can make a dollar bill, or maybe a lot more than one. But we've got a million different people that I'm targeting, and $1, you get the point. So the world is based on analytics. and defining things to the point where I get you the kind of thing you want at the right time and in a way that you can actually make the decision to purchase something for me. And we can take that same business mindset into the church where we're going to market and target and focus. We're even gonna run polls. What do you want? What do you want from this church? What's that? When Saddleback Church was getting going in California, what's that guy's name?

Rick Warren. Rick Warren, yeah. He actually put a survey out and mailed it to everybody in Orange County. We're a new church. What would you like to hear? That's what he built his ministry on. Is that interesting? To know the answer to that question? It's pretty interesting. Well, it's very interesting.

What does it do, though? If you go on, we call these felt needs. What are your felt needs? The problem with marketing in the church is that marketing is built on felt needs. I'm gonna speak to you about what you feel like you need, because that makes you happy.

It tickles your ears, and it gets you back next week. Plus I deserve it. Plus I deserve it, obviously. I mean, I've spent a lot of time getting ready for this thing, so let's go. That's right, so what marketing does is it appeals to your felt needs, the things that you feel like you need. And if I can meet you where you are, then I can sell you something.

Even if it's the scripture. The difference is, is that scripture focuses on core spiritual need. Not your feelings. Your feelings follow. Faith in the tracts, so forth. Feelings follow, right? It's like the trail of tracts and feelings follow. But we start with the feelings and then we try to back channel some facts in there. And oftentimes, go ahead. Somebody have something there?

Okay, sorry. So when we focus our teaching and in an effort to build unity around something that is focused on felt needs, like a survey and me responding to your survey and teaching you what you wanted to hear, I'm missing out on the things that God says you need. I don't want to survey you about what you need. I want to survey God about what you need. That's true nurturing.

You're sitting there as a little seedling trying to grow, and you say, I'd really like some sunlight. Well, you need water first. No, but I really want sun. So OK, I'm going to tell you all about the sun side of it and leave the water out. I'm going to give you what you need.

Well, it's not the kind of nurturing that God says is appropriate. You need the combination of both. And so it's not me as a teacher or any other teacher coming to you and trying to understand what it is that you feel like you need. It's about what God says you need.

Because if I start focusing on those feelings, guess what? You're going to get a bunch of other people that have those same types of feelings and all of a sudden you're going to have a little sect rises up and is focused on that thing. This really appeals to me. I love the way that they do worship. I love that the way that person delivers the message. And you may very well, and it is okay to like those things, but not at the expense of unity in the spirit being defined in the word of God.

What really brings, what unites us all as believers? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit and what is... The Holy Spirit does the uniting, but what is the object of the uniting? Christ. The Lord Jesus through His Word. So we've got that beholding Him through His Word. That's what produces unity. And that just doesn't cut it today. There's got to be something more to it. We've got to be able to do more. That's not what Paul wanted to see happen.

And so This idea in the church where, okay, you've got this group and I've got this group, can't we just agree to disagree? Is that possible in the local body? Certainly happens, so it's certainly possible. What's wrong with it? Let's just agree to disagree. What does that presuppose? What are the things that you have to believe are true in order to agree to disagree? Well, in order to disagree with someone, I have to have a different view than they do.

Okay. And so, if it is one of us or both of us, our views aren't scripturally sound, then we end up with a sect. The problem you have, I think, is what if one is scripturally sound and the other one isn't, or on a particular point? Because you can talk to Christians all the time about different things. You start laying identification, that kind of thing, on them, and they don't understand what you're talking about. Well, we're definitely a cult, an identification cult.

Right. And if we disagree on something, I think that the answer to that is that the re-in mindset, you need to go in the Word and find out. What I think it says doesn't really say that, and I can be dependent on the Spirit of God to show me one way or the other. I've got to be open to that, I think. Is there a situation where that person knows so much more than me, I'm just going to buy into that? Shouldn't. Shouldn't? Do you do it? Uh-huh. I do it all the time.

The problem with that is that that's not the kind of attitude that produces unity. It's less of, well, that person must know much more than I do, so I'm just gonna believe that and fall in line with that, and maybe even corral around it to the point where it becomes, like what we're seeing here, is sectarianism, but I'm not taking the time to trust the Holy Spirit to illuminate me in the scriptures myself. Oftentimes we take the best arguments from two different views and we look at them and we compare those two arguments.

There's nothing wrong with that, but what about your role as a Berean, right? So there's a lot of different things that produce sectarianism. For the Corinthians, it revolved around personalities. What would we say is the scriptural definition for sectarianism? when we say scriptural definition, it's not outlined in such a way, but I think we could say a failure to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Break that down for just a second in your mind. Sectarianism is a failure to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

So what's the answer to this stuff? How do we prevent sectarianism? I was just thinking that if you have a disagreement with a brother, which is not in and of itself wrong, as long as you both have the Spirit, let's go to the Lord and the Scripture about what we disagree on.

Let's both go to the Lord. Let's have that spirit of unity. I may not believe exactly how you're interpreting the word. Let's both go and pray to Christ about that and see what He says. Keep the bond of peace if you have the right conscious and part about it.

And I'm going to let Mike, you're up next, who's up next? Probably I am. I'll let Mike handle the issue of what happens when you disagree in the body and how you settle those I always say that because I'm talking at the body level. I gotta let Mike talk about the individual level.

No, you're exactly right, Jimmy. The very first place that our mind should go with regards to any kind of distinction of teaching, whether it be an individual that we are encountering, a friend or another member of the body, or a larger group of people, in the case of the Corinthians, the very first place we should ask ourselves is, are we looking into the word of God for unity, or are we looking into the words of men for unity? Because words of men are clever, and they're presented in ways that can tickle our ears in so many different ways, but Jesus communicates the fact that you have unity in me through my word, right? Any final thoughts before I close?

And I'll let you deal with how to handle a brother that you agree to disagree with. My final thought is if you let the old man have a seat at the table, it's the beginnings of creating disunity. Love it. That's absolutely 100%. And you know when that old man was sitting at the table, don't you? Yeah. And that's part of it, too, is recognizing that. Because we all fall into that. yelling captain of the ship that's shackled down below. Right? So, okay. Let's go. Father, how we thank you again for your word, and we thank you for just the truth of who we are in Christ, and that we have a fell-proof system. It doesn't mean that we honor it through faith.

We have a fell-proof system of unity, and it's done through the word of God, and illumination of the Holy Spirit. And Lord, as we look at the growing body and how the New Testament Church functions, we just pray for our own body, that we would have unity in the Spirit, that those areas where there are lack of clarity, we pray that you would bring clarity. And where there are lack of of gifts, Lord, that you would raise them up and place them in such a way that we would be complete in and of ourselves, not just as a local body, but as believers all in every place. And so, Lord, we just look to you for that unity. We pray in your name. Amen. Amen.