Bible Survey - 1 Corinthians

We're in 1 Corinthians here, and one of the things we want to talk about is that studying the contents of what we call 1 and 2 Corinthians makes it apparent that there was at least one prior letter before 1 Corinthians that we don't have, and then 1st Corinthians, and then another letter we don't have, and then 2nd Corinthians. So, if we had them all, it wouldn't be 1st and 2nd Corinthians, it would be 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 4th Corinthians, right? And what we call 1st Corinthians would be 2nd Corinthians, and what we call 2nd Corinthians would be 4th Corinthians. So, anyway, as long as that's clear, we'll proceed.

What you have in the first slide there is the timeline of Paul's first missionary journey, his second missionary journey, and then his third missionary journey. The first missionary journey took him largely into the cities of Galatia. They went through Cyprus and then the cities of Galatia. And then on his second missionary journey, he went through Galatia again, this time carrying the contents of a message from the apostles from the council in Jerusalem in Acts 15, taking that message into the churches of Galatia that had been established before and up to Antioch, and then on into the European continent. And then the third missionary journey going again to many of these same churches. Paul went to Corinth on his 2nd and 3rd missionary journeys. So it was only the 2nd and 3rd missionary journeys that we have Paul having contact with those believers in Corinth. He wrote 1st and 2nd Corinthians while on his 3rd missionary journey.

The simple outline we have in the next slide over here is In 1 Corinthians, Paul alternated between addressing oral reports, things that were given orally to Paul, told to him, and things that were written. So they had some things that were written that were like questions, we got this question, and this question, and this question, and then things that were told him, when the letter was delivered. So he alternates back and forth between those things that were told him and the things that were written in terms of questions. So that's the outline for 1 Corinthians in terms of the oral and written, alternating between them.

One of them, let's get our Bibles here, one of them is in 1 Corinthians 7, and people are often puzzled by this, The ESV, the English Standard Version, that's more recently been developed, I think punctuates this correctly. But this is one which often gets confused because people don't understand this was an oral report or an oral question.

Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me, and it should be comma, quote, you wrote to me, it's good for a man not to touch a woman, right? It's good for man not to touch a woman. So we have, that is a statement not from Paul, but from the Corinthians. See, the Corinthians were famous for being more immoral than the immoral pagan culture in the Roman Empire. They were famous for being more immoral. So some of the Christians said, I know how to fix it.

Let's just tell all the Christians you never touch a woman. Tell all the Christian men, never touch a woman. Well, Paul says, that isn't right. So then he writes the rest of 1 Corinthians 7, where he tells them, nevertheless, because of sexual immorality, which there was lots of in Corinth, but each man have his own wife and each woman have her own husband. And no, you don't, between wives and husbands, you don't carry out this, don't touch one another.

So, that's an example of where he had something in writing coming into him as a question. Alright, let's take a look at some slides here, just to kind of get the context. Here is Corinth. Corinth was right on a small section of land called Ithamas, right? So what they would do at Corinth is instead of having people have to go all the way around in order to get to the other side, if they were shipping people and goods, they'd have ships come up to one side, and then they'd have put things on carts and whatnot, carry it across this small piece of land, and then put it on a ship on the other side. And so that's why Corinth was there in great part. you know, shortening the sea travel. And that also was a way, of course, to bring it into land as well. So getting things across from one side of the peninsula to the other, and then taking things up into the rest of Greece and Macedonia. So, at any rate, that's why Corinth was there and a lot of activity centered around that.

Here are the city streets and ruins. What you see here, here's the city street and a lot of the buildings in some state of decay. And then up on the hill here, we'll take a look at that a little bit more. That was what's called Acrocorinth, upper Corinth and they would go there for defending against military attacks. So you had the city which was quite open and then you had the kind of the fortress up on the mountain right up above there and that's where everybody would run if there was a military attack and they would defend themselves from there. Here is the marketplace, the Agora. So any major city would have its marketplace. Here are the temple ruins at Corinth, a pagan temple of course. And you can see a part of the upper city in that view.

What was their language? Were they Greek? They spoke Greek. Now one of the things we'll talk about is they were a Roman colony. So you're going to have a Greek like Philippi was a Roman colony and their population consisted significantly of people who were Roman soldiers, retired Roman soldiers, Roman officials, and that sort of thing. And Roman colonies got special treatment and special funding in order to kind of establish Rome culturally and militarily in different places. They had Roman rule, but they had a Greek language there. And even in the Latin speaking area, Farther to the west, even in Italy, many people knew Greek. As a matter of fact, we have some record of Augustus Caesar making Greek plays on words in jokes. So yeah, Greek was widely spoken here even though it was a Roman colony.

Just like in our youth, French was the language that we were encouraged to learn because if you were cultured and intellectual, you could learn. Yes, and I think that's true in a lot of parts of the world where having more than one language was common.

And then here you have, here's upper Corinth, the defensive structure that's right up, see up here at the top. And looking down from there, you can see here's the city and the ruins of the city over here. So here is the upper structure that was obviously in some state of decay, but that was a defensive structure. That's where they would retreat to if they were attacked militarily. Here is more shots of the upper defensive structure. By New Testament times, that defensive structure had been sort of laid aside.

Why? Because the Romans were the ones in power and all the attacking and everything had already been done. So it remained up there but it wasn't anything that was in anybody's mind because after all it had this made into a Roman colony and a lot of Roman soldiers there anyway. So being attacked wasn't an issue. Alright, let's get back to here.

Now, the keys to understanding 1 Corinthians, a few different things. The social ladder key to understanding the church at Corinth. Corinth was at a crossing point of land and a crossing point by sea, offering financial opportunity for some Corinthians. If you were one who got this kind of shipping and land transfer of goods, if you got on the right place in that business-wise, you could do well.

So they had people who were well off, they had people who got money from Rome for being a Roman colony, and then there were others who were very poor. So it's very stratified economically. Some were well off, but most were poor, and many were very, very poor. Hardly having what it takes to live, just barely scraping by, was common. Those who are more well-off, who are in a constant battle for social status, trying to climb the social ladder by human wisdom, public displays of generosity, oratory, lawsuits, and putting down the poor. So here's a great culture.

Oh, and by the way, just throughout the Roman Empire and the pagan culture, whether you're Roman, whether you're Greek, humility was not looked upon as a virtue, but a personality defect. And that's one of the reasons you'll find often in Paul's letters, he'll talk about humility and he'll approach it sometimes in different ways. But he'll talk about humility and putting that up as a virtue, because the common culture wasn't going to do it. The common culture wasn't going to do it. You were supposed to be proud and boastful and building up your own status. That was the culture's message.

The next one, the ethnic key to understanding the Church of Corinth. Most of the people in Corinth were Romans, having been established as a Roman calling. But the area around Corinth was from Greek backgrounds, so both Latin and Greek were spoken. In Corinth, there was a minority of well-established Jews who had integrated themselves into the generally Roman culture, even having passed along Old Testament stories to the Gentiles. So the Gentiles would be accustomed to hearing some of the Old Testament accounts.

Next, the religious key to understanding the Church Accord. As with much of the Roman Empire in general, people were free to mix and match between a variety of pagan religions. and gods, as long as that included worship of the emperor. So the Roman law was you can have whatever gods you want. You can pick and choose and mix and match and have several, that's fine, as long as you will acknowledge the emperor as a deity. And a part of that was acknowledging the emperor as a deity was a statement of patriotism. So for the Christians not to acknowledge the Emperor as a deity would be seen as what? Unpatriotic. What's the matter with you? You don't acknowledge the Emperor as a deity? You must be against us, right?

That's right, the Emperor worship thing, very similar, that was patriotism. I think how similar we are to faith. Religious freedom is exactly that. Anybody can practice whatever religion they want. Except we don't have the worship of the deity, but we do have the patriotism and the nationalism that is very similar to that. We have patriotism and nationalism and what's happening too, I mean we still have prudent money that says in God we trust, but a lot of the people that carry those things don't believe in it, right? So we have secularism being put up as, you know, that's patriotic, but being Christian, not so much. That's historic, but not current. That's the way we're sliding. Okay, so then the pagans all carried out their religions in temple buildings, but not the Christians.

And that's the other thing is, the Jews have what visible evidence of their religion? What visible evidence that the Jews have? They had the circumcision, alright, what else? They had the temple in Jerusalem and of course Jews would make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. So there was something visible about the religion. Did the pagans have their visible evidences of religion? Yes they did. In fact we looked at one of those pagan temples right there.

So the pagans and the Jews had visible evidence of their religion, the Christians did not. Christians would gather together and pray to a god that there was no temple. They didn't, you know, do sacrifices and things of that sort. And so neither the Jews nor the pagans could see any evidence that these people are religious. They must be atheists. Right? Okay.

So Paul tells the believers at Corinth that they are each a temple and that they are all a temple. Each a temple, chapter 6. All a temple, chapter 3. You're the temple. You're the temple. The next one, the immorality key to understanding the Church of Corinth.

Corinth as a culture was generally more sexually immoral than the already immoral culture of the Roman Empire. They even had a verb that was based on the name Corinth. for immorality. So the believers were inclined to be more tolerant of sexual immorality as they listened to the culture. But there was also a tendency to overreact as if holding the opposite view was somehow even more spiritual than the biblical view of human sexuality.

Which is why it's better not to touch a woman. That message came across. So you have Christians trying to correct the problem of immorality by saying, you know, guys shouldn't touch gals. And Paul says, whoa, wait a minute. Sounds like that class of rabbis that kept their eyes down and closed so they wouldn't look at a woman. Yes, yes. Yes, yeah, we've got our rules to keep you from falling, right? Alright, so let's look at the flip side here. Having that perspective and that background on Corinth, let's kind of walk our way through the outline on page 2. You get the introduction, the Apostle Paul verses 1-9 is writing this introduction.

What's amazing is here is a church that has lots and lots of problems. And most of the problems come from absorbing the culture or trying to, in some human or fleshly way, correct what's wrong with the culture. Most of the problems stem from one or the other of those.

But Paul writes to them and says, you're sanctified. And he does so, he does so in the perfect tense. So here is this church with lots of problems, but he says, you're sanctified. That is, you've been set apart for a specific and godly and holy purpose. And it's already completely done in their position. So he starts off the book with that. And God is faithful. He'll pull it off. He'll make it happen.

Then comes the report, oral report, again, of divisions. There are divisions within the Bible. Why would there be divisions among the Corinthians? Yeah? Because of their diverse background. Yeah. One of the things, you've got different groups in the world, right?

And people, well, Christians can sometimes recognize those differences, worldly differences, and make those primary. One of the issues that I saw over in Uganda was that Christians would sometimes get it confused. Now what's a higher priority? Is it that I'm a Christian or I'm of this tribe? And they would get that mixed up. And they would emphasize their tribal background above their being Christians. And that's a problem.

Here in Corinth, what was happening, remember everybody is trying to climb to the top of the social ladder? Well everybody who's trying to climb to the top of the social ladder is creating a division. I'm of this group and I'm of that group and I'm trying to get people to follow me. And so there'd be divisions among all these Corinthians trying to get people to be in their social ladder. Alright, so divisions. Then he addresses in the next several chapters the reasons for the divisions, and those break down into three things. One, misunderstanding of the gospel message. Misunderstanding the gospel message. Of course, we don't have a problem with that in our Christian world today, right? Not so much, okay?

People will say, well, you've got to make a commitment to Jesus. Is that going to save you? No, that's not going to cut it, is it? Got to make a commitment to Jesus. How about, I have to invite Jesus into my heart. Is that going to save you? No, it's not just that Jesus is in my heart. And by the way, how does Jesus get into your heart? Does he get there by invitation? Christ is placed in the heart of the believer once that person believes. It's believing, not invitation. So we can have false messages.

One of the more common ones that's come up in recent decades is Lordship Salvation. You have to make Jesus Savior and Lord, or you're not saved. So that's another distortion of the gospel. So he's got here, you know, look, you misunderstand the gospel message. And he's going to address that with them. The next one, misunderstanding of the gospel messenger. Who brought the gospel here? And do you understand, you know, that we came here to bring the gospel, and this is the gospel, and you're not only mixed up about what's the gospel message, but you're mixed up about, you know, who's the messenger? Alright, and then the third one, misunderstanding of Paul's ministry. Misunderstanding, you know, why did Paul come here?

And people trying to guess about his motivations? Right? So he straightens that out. Okay, so he gets done with that, the divisions and the reasons for the divisions. Now, part two, he goes into moral issues. And what he deals with in chapter 5, initially, is here's a guy who is being intimate with a stepmother. And they think that that's okay. And Paul says, uh-uh. Not even the people out in the world think that's okay. And then, separate yourselves from immoral believers. That was one of the things that he addressed with them.

Then the next thing, those who had good financial resources within the culture, it was common to have among these people lawsuits. And particularly, you could have lawsuits of someone who was wealthy suing someone who was poor. And they looked at that as sort of a recreational thing. And the person who is poor, what resources do they have to defend themselves? Nothing.

And so it makes the person who brings the lawsuit and therefore wins the lawsuit, makes them look in the culture's eyes as, boy, this guy, you know, he won and he really did a good job and nailed this other guy. And they would do it between believers. And that's what he's pointing out here. Yes.

In the Portals of Iron, Sarah Caldwell, who wrote that big, long 800-page book about the Roman Empire, she went into how the Roman Senate was actually using suits to sue the poor people to take their land so that the money then would go to the government.

Cicero was one of the few lawyers who actually was fighting for the cause of the lowly and he ended up with his head on the Senate door because he fought for the people. There was nobody fighting for the people. It was very unpopular and in matter of fact risky Not just socially risky, but risky of your life to try to stand up for the poor. So abuse of the poor was very common all the way from the top.

And it's interesting that it always works out. That's why it's so important to have people, you know, people who have the right outlook and political higher positions. Because even though they don't, you know, maybe change a whole lot of things. It's the image and their lifestyle is what's promoted down to the rest of the people that are below them.

And that's what was happening with the Emperor, because he was so morally screwed up. I mean, his powers were pathetic and awful. And the Senate was just about as bad. And if you look at our government today, I mean, Looking at the situation here, the whole Roman culture was set up with a very unfair, very inequitable court situation and the culture was behind it. It went along with not being humble. Humility looked upon as a character flaw.

So what you have here is the cultures leaking into the church, instead of the church having an impact on the culture. This is a big issue. Much of Revelation chapters 2 and 3 to the seven churches is dealing with that same issue, that the world is seeping into the church instead of the church having an impact on the world. It's a thorny issue.

But the previous church that a bunch of us came from, the pastor did something that was unethical, we believe illegal. And we wrestled with this. Yes. And eventually brought a lawsuit. And one Sunday morning, the pastor stood up on the platform and brought up the church. leaders and stand with them and read this section of Don't take your brother to court. It was a very awkward situation and I'm still not sure what would have been the right way to handle it.

You know, once you get believers stepping outside of what's biblical, whether they're in the leadership or otherwise, you get into a mess. Because what's happening is instead of what should be going on in the church body, right? Instead of what should be going on in the church body, you have at least some element of it which is unbiblical. It's sort of like when it says in other places in scripture when it talks about a person going outside the bounds of Christian liberty and the procedure of church discipline, that there is a biblical way to handle it as opposed to various cultural effects.

Now, it says the next part there under 2 is number 3, Roman numeral 3, warning against sexual immorality. And he has warnings against sexual immorality. He lists different kinds of sexual immorality that was going on. And what's interesting is both the female role and the male role of homosexuality is brought up in that section, among other issues.

And in the end, what does he say? He says, you individual believers are a temple of the Holy Spirit, right? You're a temple. And he says also one other thing, and he says it in chapter 6, and then again in chapter 7, you are not your own, you have been bought with a price. You're not your own, you've been bought with a price. And that's a message that much of the church has lost. People are out there trying to build up their own empires, and you've got pastors going out and teaching prosperity doctrine. It's very selfish, right? prosperity doctrine, and so you end up having a great deal of false teaching and tensions in the church and emphasis on the wrong things because people don't understand you're not your own, you've been bought with a price.

You're not free to just kind of make up your own stuff. Yes? Question on verse 6 and 9. It says neither fornicators nor idolaters Sodomites, blah blah blah, will inherit the kingdom of God. Now is that, I'm sure you'd say that's not a salvation thing. As a matter of fact, that same kind of statement gets made two other times, including in Galatians. And Paul is very consistent about that. But in those same books you can find evidence that it's not a matter of losing salvation. What he's saying is, first of all, what's the kingdom of God? What's the kingdom of God? Shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Pardon? Yeah, in other words, this is the coming Millennial Kingdom, right? And so what he's talking about there is those who are practicing such things will not have an inheritance in, and those who practice such things, you know, chronically and consistently are the unbelievers, have no inheritance there. Let's also ask one other question. Is the believing Jews' inheritance in the Millennial Kingdom the same as ours? No. So the believing Jews in the coming Millennial Kingdom will have one inheritance, and that's in the land. And blessings for them will be physical blessings. For us, our inheritance in the Kingdom, will we be there in the Millennial Kingdom? We will be there with Christ. But we will have a different inheritance, and it won't be the land, and it won't be physical blessings. It will relate to Christ Himself.

Anyway, quick response to your question. In verse 4, 16 says, I urge you to be imitators of me. Right. And in what respect? I mean, they're not going to jump on a ship and travel all over the place. No, and it's a consistent message because it's throughout the New Testament. Imitators is one of the words that's used. It's mimetists. We get our word mimic from that. And the other word that goes along with that in a couple of places is also used is examples. Examples. And so you look at it, is he looking for superficial imitation? Well, he says it in a different way in one of the other letters where he says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. Yes, yes. As I'm following Christ's lead. What's the imitation? I see Paul ate tacos and so therefore I'm going to eat tacos. Paul has got a white robe on and he's got a little red thread that goes along the collar and so I'm going to be sure I wear that.

He's not looking at superficial imitation. The imitation is imitation of dependence. The imitation is looking at what's the deep message, not superficial copying, not just mimicking. And it's also not an acting job. One of the things I point out, Anthony Hopkins, a great actor, and he played C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands. He did a fantastic job pretending to be a Christian. He did a great job.

Is that what the Apostle Paul is asking us to do? No. We're not just to be acting like a Christian. But it's looking at the Apostle Paul's dependence upon Christ. When Christ was here, where was his dependence? On the Father. In Philippians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul gives Christ's example of humility. Here he is deity, and yet he set that aside. He didn't set aside his deity, but he set aside the privileges of deity in order to visit Christ. So here's an exhortation to humility, right? So here we see the culture, is it going to support humility? Uh-uh, not even close. But here, here's an example to imitate of Christ being humble.

Paul comes among the Corinthians and other groups and does he go in and say, now you guys need to be, I'm an apostle and you guys need to be supporting me and I should be sitting pretty because I'm an apostle, right? And no, that's not what he does. He goes in there and he says, you know, I'll make tents into the night in order to support myself so that I'm not, you know, being a burden on anybody.

Okay, let's look at the next part. Part three, marriage, church body issues, and resurrection is the next part. So he has counsel concerning marriage. We talked about the introduction to that. He's answering written questions at that point. He talks about the principles of married life.

He talks about, also is one of the key passages about the gift of singleness and the gift of marriage. Both of those are gifts and we may have different gifts at different times. We're going to be having a single seminar again on October 18th and we'll address that in more detail. The gift of singleness and the gift of marriage. and then even the principles for remarriage that he brings out there. Then the next thing is the council concerning things offered to idols. And so he goes and spends several chapters there.

The bigger picture with that is learning the Christian principle of not stumbling my brother. not stumbling my brother. And one of the things that people often times misunderstand, they think grace means that you can just, it doesn't matter about sin anymore. The reality is grace, which is, it shows up in not stumbling my brother, grace may require things of you that the law never even dreamed of. Grace may require something of you the law never even dreamed of. He uses a terminology there that I really like. Knowing these things, knowing about grace, puffs up. Knowledge puffs up. Just knowing something by itself doesn't do it. But love edifies it, love builds it.

You see, there's something the Apostle Paul has to communicate about the Christian gospel that's radically different from anything in the pagan world. Let's ask this question. Did the pagan gods love the people? Not at all! You had to go and do things and make sacrifices and whatnot to get the gods' attention. Because otherwise they really didn't care about you. And the gods never blessed anybody.

So here Paul can start off, you know, Ephesians, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. That just blew their circuits. What? Here is a God who loves me, and has kindness towards me, and will bless me with every spiritual blessing? To them, that was mind-boggling, because the pagan gods never did that.

I just love the difference between being puffed up and being curved up. Yes. Even today, think of our secular world out there. The secular world doesn't want you to talk about God. So what it says is, there is no God of love in the secular world. So the Christian message starts out with an entirely contrasting message. There is a God and He loves us. There is a God and He loves us. Which the secular world, no, that's not there.

Then there is counsel concerning public worship. They have principles of public prayer. They have a rebuke regarding the Lord's Supper. He gives some instructions regarding the Lord's Supper that we use when we have the Lord's Table. Right? The Lord's Table or the Lord's Supper or something called communion. When we do that, we'll use that out of 1 Corinthians 11.

But he also gives them stern warnings. Some of them are, what's happening to some of these believers? What's happening to them? regarding the Lord's Table. But we don't have their priorities. They're coming there as an evening drink, but not to celebrate the supper. It's not just remembrance. It's actually a satisfaction of their own. Yeah, it's selfish, right? But that's what the pagan world is telling them. It's selfish. We only come next week for the potluck and not for the sermon. Yeah, that's right. We come for the potluck and not the sermon.

And so the thing that we see in here, some of them were actually getting sick and actually dying. And by the way, this is under grace. This is under grace. Some getting sick and some dying. Was that just sort of an accidental thing? Was it just, you know, a tow-mane poisoning? What's the reason for it? Yeah? Yeah, consequences. Consequences. And I think it's often misunderstood that under grace it doesn't mean there aren't consequences. Right? There may be consequences and it may even be the Lord acting in a miraculous way. to bring consequences, to discipline.

Then he goes into 12-14 talking three chapters about spiritual gifts. Chapter 13 is between chapter 12 and chapter 14, and frequently it's taken out of context. The truth is that chapter 13 is about spiritual gifts. That's what it's about. He's dealing with the spiritual gifts issue. Now, why would he have to put a focus on love between chapter 12 and chapter 14?

Why put the big focus on love? What's the problem? Well, exactly as you said earlier, it was a foreign concept to them. They didn't have any idea that love was a motivator. It was social prestige and power. That's right. How do I make myself good? How do I build myself into the social ladder? How do I show up looking on top in everybody else's eyes? And love was not a factor. Neither was humility in the pagan culture. I was going to say, the Roman culture having the emperor as the object of worship, obviously there was no love coming from the emperor toward the people.

What you said earlier about their viewpoint of God, Well, it's me first and then God second. So again, it's not a God of love, but it's a God of supplying needs, demands, all this other kind of thing. So he's got to define what love actually is. So this God that we're worshipping as Christians is a God of love, which is a very unique concept. You know, it was in the ancient world. Here's an idea that contrasts with the world. And as our culture gets more and more secularized and mixed with other religions, the concept of there is a God and He loves us is all the more unique, even now. Yeah.

Now, it's so reversed in some of the cultures that love is what they promote to get you into it. We love you no matter what your beliefs are or what your sexual orientation is or what you've done or whatever. We are a church of love. So y'all come and we'll give you hugs and we love you. No matter what. No matter what. No commitment. Just big love.

The last part of it, let's look at chapter 15, which is Roman numeral 4 here. Council concerning the resurrection. He has a fairly lengthy chapter, 58 verses, dealing with the resurrection. And it's a phenomenal chapter. The first part of it, the first few verses, he gives the gospel to be believed in order to be saved. He lays it out. Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Do you believe it? You're saved. That's the gospel. Real simple. Didn't even take 15 seconds. Right? That's the gospel.

But he goes and deals with other issues. And one of the issues he has to deal with in there, there are some of the Corinthians who are starting to slide back in the idea, eh, not so sure about this resurrection thing. And he's saying, if Christ was not raised, you're still in your sins. That's a position statement, isn't it?

If Christ is not raised, you're still in your sins. Aren't sins dealt with on the cross? So why is the resurrection essential? Why is the resurrection essential? Why would they still be in their sins if Christ wasn't raised? Death was not conquered. Death still has the upper hand unless Christ is raised.

Exactly. And by the way, if Christ died for your sins but didn't resurrect, what good does that do me? What good does that do me? I need the resurrection in the picture in order for Christ's death on the cross to mean anything at all. It's part of the whole package. Yes. We don't use this for the later part of it. Okay.

So the last chapter then, he has counsel concerning collections for Jerusalem and he's going to continue on with some more instruction on that in 2 Corinthians. So he covers a lot of issues, a lot of issues with the church here in the first Corinthians.

There are some key insights here in this book, even though he's dealing with some really troubled saints. And a great deal of it comes up because the world is getting absorbed into the church. And in fact, that's a problem today. The world getting absorbed into the church is a huge issue in the church today. Yeah, we're going to start accommodating the world in one way or another. That's right.

How do we grow? I look at a lot of this church growth stuff. I have a master's degree in business with an emphasis in marketing. I look at that and I say, well, that's all the stuff I learned in my business school. How spiritual is that? Right? Yes, it's a marketing approach that says, how do I get the world to come, you know, support what I'm doing in church? Well, that's not the message at all. That's right. We start asking the world what they want. And then we make the church according to that. Nuh-uh.

It doesn't work. So about ten years ago I was at a Christian conference down in Texas and I said to everybody, you know, all this stuff about church growth, I said, I learned that in business school and there's nothing of it that squares up with the Bible. So don't go there.

Let's pray and close out our time here. Lord, we thank you for what you've put in 1 Corinthians here, things that instruct us and give us insight. and insight into the nature of our relationship with you, insight into the nature of our walk with you, but also insight into what ought to be the character of the church, that we ought to be looking at ourselves individually and the entire church body as the temple and a holy one. And we just thank you for what you've revealed here in your word. And we just pray, giving thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.