1_CorinthiansEEBOOKMOBIL/L?LOL_LoLLLL L L L L LLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLL L!/L"?L#OL$_L%oL&L'L(L)L*L+L,L-L.L/L0L1/L2?L3OL4_L5oL6L7L8L9L:L;L<L=L>L?L@LA/LB?LCOLD_LEoLFLGLHLILJLKLLLMLNLOLPLQ/LR?LSOLT_LUoLVLWLXLYLZL[L\L]L^L_L`La/Lb?LcOLd_LeoLfLgLhLiLjLkLlLmLnLoLpLq/Lr?LsOLt_LuoLvLwLxLyLzL{L|L}L~LLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLL L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L L L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L L L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L L L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L L L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L LLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLL L L L L LLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLL L!/L"?L#OL$_L%oL&L'L(L)L*L+L,L-L.L/L0L1/L2?L3OL4_L5oL6L7L8L9L:L;L<L=L>L?L@LA/LB?LCOLD_LEoLFLGLHLILJLKLLLMLNLOLPLQ/LR?LSOLT_LUoLVLWLXLYLZL[L\L]L^L_L`La/Lb?LcOLd_LeoLfLgLhLiLjLkLlLmLnLoLpLq/Lr?LsOLt_LuoLvLwLxLyLzL{L|L}L~LLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLLLL/L?LOL_LoLLLLLLLLLL L L /L ?L OL _L oL L L L L L L L L L!L!L!/L!?L!OL!_L!oL!L!L!L!L!L!L!L!L!L"L "L!"/L""?L#"OL$"_L%"oL&"L'"L("L)"L*"L+"L,"L-"L."L/#L0#L1#/L2#?L3#OL4#_L5#oL6#L7#L8#L9#L:#L;#L<#L=#L>#L?$L@$LA$/LB$?LC$OLD$_LE$oLF$LG$LH$LI$LJ$LK$LL$LM$LN$LO%LP%LQ%/LR%?LS%OLT%_LU%oLV%LW%LX%LY%LZ%L[%L\%L]%L^%L_&L`&La&/Lb&?Lc&OLd&_Le&oLf&Lg&Lh&Li&Lj&Lk&Ll&Lm&Ln&Lo'Lp'Lq'/Lr'?Ls'OLt'_Lu'oLv'Lw'Lx'Ly'Lz'L{'L|'L}'L~'L(L(L(/L(?L(OL(_L(oL(L(L(L(L(L(L(L(L(L)L)L)/L)?L)OL)_L)oL)L)L)L)L)L)L)L)L)L*L*L*/L*?L*OL*_L*oL*L*L*L*L*L*L*L*L*L+L+++ƨ,p,,*_MOBId4 REXTH@,2 @1 Corinthians

Information. 2

Chapter 1 - The Reason It Was Written. 3

Chapter 2 - Grace Greater Than Their Sin. 13

Chapter 3 - Dealing With Division - Part 1. 23

Chapter 4 - Dealing With Division - Part 2. 32

Chapter 5 - The Foolishness Of God vs The Wisdom Of Men. 41

Chapter 6 - God's Wisdom Understood. 51

Chapter 7 - Baby Christians. 62

Chapter 8 - Built To Last For Eternity. 72

Chapter 9 - Needed Knowledge For The Church. 82

Chapter 10 - The Servant Of Christ 92

Chapter 11 - The Difference Between Those Who Think And Those Who Are - Part 1. 102

Chapter 12 - The Difference Between Those Who Think And Those Who Are - Part 2. 111

Chapter 13 - Discipline In The House Of God. 120

Chapter 14 - Revelation Or Litigation?. 130

Chapter 15 - Christian Liberty And The Christian's Purity. 140

Chapter 16 - Marriage: To Be Or Not To Be?. 150

Chapter 17 - Marriage Matters. 160

Chapter 18 - Stay As You Are. 170

Chapter 19 - Advantages Of Singlehood And Advice For Widowhood. 180

Chapter 20 - Light, Liberty And Love. 190

Chapter 21 - The Worker's Rights. 199

Chapter 22 - The Wisdom Of A Master Soul-Winner 208

Chapter 23 - Discovering Discipline. 217

Chapter 24 - A History Lesson In Holiness. 226

Chapter 25 - The Saint, The System And Sin. 236

Chapter 26 - How To Use Your Liberty For The Lord. 246

Chapter 27 - Questions And Considerations On Coverings. 257

Chapter 28 - Celebrating The Supper Of The Lord. 269

Chapter 29 - Testing The Spirituals. 279

Chapter 30 - The Origin And Intention Of Spiritual Gifts. 290

Chapter 31 - The Variation Of Spiritual Gifts. 299

Chapter 32 - Bodyworks. 310

Chapter 33 - The More Excellent Way. 321

Chapter 34 - Corinthian Confusion vs God's Commission Of Tongues. 332

Chapter 35 - The Commission And Command Concerning Tongues. 342

Chapter 36 - God's Order 352

Chapter 37 - The Evidence For The Resurrection. 362

Chapter 38 - The Repercussions Of No Resurrection. 371

Chapter 39 - God's Resurrection Programme. 381

Chapter 40 - Our Resurrection Incentives. 391

Chapter 41 - Our Resurrection Bodies. 401

Chapter 42 - The Death Of Death. 411

Chapter 43 - Concerning Collections. 421

Chapter 44 - Men At Work. 432

Chapter 45 - Learn From Your Mistakes. 443

Chapter 46 - Some Last Lessons In Love For The Lord's People. 454


David Legge studied at the Irish Baptist College, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly. He now serves as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall, and resides in Belfast with his wife Barbara and their daughter Lydia.

The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.co.uk) or by request from info@preachtheword.co.uk

All material by Pastor Legge is copyrighted. However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all.

1 Corinthians - Chapter 1

"The Reason It Was Written"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

Acts 18:1-11; I Corinthians 1

1.      A City Of Degradation

2.      A Church In Division

3.      A Crisis Of Doctrine

Now as you can see from your study sheet, we're starting to read from Acts chapter 18 - you might think it's a bit strange to be reading from the Acts of the Apostles when we're starting a study in the book of 1 Corinthians, but what I want to do for you, as your title outlines, is explain the reason that this book was written: "The Reason It Was Written". It's important, I believe, to lay a foundation, a contextual foundation in an introduction to this book of the Bible. So much of the false doctrine that is around today is because of men, some very sincere people, even believers, who take verses out of context, but we want to settle down the historical and biblical context of what we find here in the book of 1 Corinthians.

So let's read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles chapter 18: "After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; And found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome:) and came unto them". Scholars tell us that this was approximately AD50-51, and of course you will know that Paul is now on his second missionary journey. As he goes on this journey, he comes to the city of Corinth and he meets two people, two Jewish people, a man and his wife: Aquila and Priscilla. He joins with them - they are Jews who, verse 2 tells us, have been ordered out of Rome because of the anti-Semitic policies of the Roman government at the time, Claudius the Governor had cast all the Jews out of Rome. But Paul has been drawn to these people because they are Jews, and also, as we read on in verse 3, they were also tentmakers - they had the same trade as the apostle Paul. "And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers". So he stayed with these two, and he worked with them making tents day after day. If the timetable that we have in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul as he's in the city of Ephesus is something to go by here, we can tell that Paul probably finished his tent making at 11:00am, and he began preaching the Gospel right through to 4:00pm in the afternoon. We know that because of the certain places that Paul was preaching the Gospel during the day, he could only have been there in the afternoon. So he was plying his trade tent making very early in the morning, and then at about 11:00am he would go and preach the Gospel right through the day until 4:00pm - and you know the apostle Paul, he wasn't a well man, and to be doing that in the heat of the day under the Mediterranean sun was something else, yet he did it and God blessed him in it.

So we read on: "He reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ". When Silas and Timothy came Paul give up his tent making, and he began to rely upon their support, and both of them in the synagogue ministered to the Jews. But as we see from verse 6, when the Jews opposed themselves, and blasphemed themselves, against Paul, "Paul shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean: from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles". The Jews, as Paul and Timotheus and Silas went to them in the synagogue, were hostile and blasphemous toward the Gospel. So Paul left the Jews and decided that he was going to preach... he said: "henceforth I will go onto the Gentiles. And he departed thence, and entered into a certain man's house, named Justus, one that worshipped God, whose house joined hard to the synagogue. And Crispus, the chief ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his house; and many of the Corinthians hearing believed, and were baptized". So Paul, as he was preaching the Gospel now to the Gentiles, was finding that there was fruit for his labour - there were people believing the Gospel and there were people getting baptised as a witness of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But despite the success of the Gospel among the Gentiles, the next verse that we're going to read insinuates and implies that Paul was downcast for some reason - some scholars would even say that perhaps he had a touch of depression. He felt apprehension at the great task of going to the city of the Corinthians and preaching the Gospel, and he needed a touch from God, he needed encouragement, he needed strength - and by the very hand of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself we see that that is exactly what he got. Verse 9: "Then spake the Lord" - that's the Lord Jesus - "to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city". The Lord told him: 'There's nobody going to hurt you', and I believe deep down in my heart that Paul feared getting stoned again, getting beaten as he had done many times in other cities preaching the Gospel, sometimes left for dead. He was going into a city, as we'll see a little later, which was one of the most ungodly cities on the face of the earth, and he feared the consequences of his preaching the Gospel - even though it was beginning to bear fruit and people were being baptised and coming to Christ. Well, we read in the next verse: "he continued there a year and six months", he spent 18 months or so in that place of Corinth. Day by day as he ministered among those who were believing in Christ, and he was getting more and more encouraged, it says 'teaching the word of God among [those who believed]', his heart was being knit together with those who were coming to faith in Corinth one by one.

Now a massive clash was inevitable. I want you to picture this: the apostle Paul is coming in as the first preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ into an extremely pagan and idolatrous, and immoral city of Corinth. It was inevitable that there was going to be a power encounter, a clash between godliness and ungodliness. Paul was coming preaching the straight and the narrow way, the way of God - yet Corinth was a city that stood for the broad way that leadeth to destruction, the way of sinful flesh. Hallelujah! We've got the hindsight tonight in our Bible study to know that truth won the day. The church of Jesus Christ was formed, a little assembly, and as we read through the book of 1 Corinthians especially, we find that it wasn't too long until this little newly formed church began to bear the marks of the surrounding Corinthian lifestyle that they had known before their conversion. The church of Jesus Christ in Corinth that was meant to stand for righteousness and truth and sanctification in the Holy Ghost, was beginning to mirror the city that it was based in. As Horatius Bonar, that great saint of God, said: 'I looked for the church and I found it in the world; and I looked for the world and I found it in the church'. That is exactly what happened to the church in Corinth. They began to resemble and assimilate the city in which they lived, and all the sins that went along with it.

Three years later, after Paul had visited this little place on his second missionary journey, as he was in the city of Ephesus, he received a letter from the church of Corinth. They were describing to him the awful difficulties that they were finding, facing the world and all the flesh and the devil that they had to grapple with in their own hometown. Now the book of 1 Corinthians that we have before us tonight is Paul the apostle's reply to that letter he received from the church of Corinth when he was residing in Ephesus. It is also a reply to the verbal account that he received from the house of Chloe that we read about later in this book of 1 Corinthians, that there were divisions among the people in this church, and it was brought him by word of mouth, a messenger of three people.

I want us to look this evening, because we often hear this cry among the church of Jesus Christ: 'Let's get back to the New Testament church'. My question is: 'Do you really want to get back to the New Testament church?'. Of course we want to get back to the ideals of what is laid down for the principles of the New Testament church, but if we were to go back to the reality of what the New Testament church was like - specifically in the book of 1 Corinthians - we would be in serious trouble! Not only where there troubles known within the church, among the church, there were troubles known to be in the church by the world outside - they knew that the church in Corinth was a shambles, and it was only reflecting the sinfulness that was outside in the town of Corinth. It was defiled, they were wrapped up in immorality, they were wrapped up in drunkenness, they were wrapped up in what we called 'antinomianism' - which is simply 'against the law' it means in Latin, which means that they believed that the principle of grace that we have in the Gospel could let them do as they liked. As Paul addressed it in Romans: 'Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?' - they thought because the slate had been wiped clean, and they'd been forgiven, that they could go out and do what they wanted because God had forgiven them - and it brought such immorality into their lives and into the church.

In chapter 1 of 1 Corinthians, if you turn to it, and verse 12, you will see that there were divisions in the church - we'll look at this, probably, next week - but there were at least four factions, political sects if you like, coming through in the church. They all had their leaders and they were following them. It was a defiled church, a divided church, and it was certainly a disgraced church - because the church exists, 'ecclesia', the Greek word for 'church', are the 'called-out ones' to be a light and to be salt in the generation, to be a witness to the glory of Jesus Christ in a dark and a dead world, but this church was disgracing the name of Christ.

I want you to imagine a church like this. This is a church that is wrecked by divisions. Powerful leaders promote themselves, they have a band of loyal followers, they're charismatic personalities. One of those leaders, probably, is having an affair with his own stepmother - and instead of disciplining that man, the church of Jesus Christ, some of them at least, boast of the freedom that he has in Christ to do such a thing! 'He's forgiven! He's a child not of the law but of grace, and he can do it!'. Some of the church were suing each other in the secular courts before men in the world, some of the church liked to visit prostitutes. Of course, they weren't all that bad, in the other side and faction of the church they made a backlash against this awful immorality and sinfulness, and they went to the other extreme and said that because of their brethren's immorality men and women in Christ should remain celibate, they should not touch a man or a woman, they should have no sexual relationships and that ought to be the Christian ideal. Among that church the debate raged about how far a man or woman who is converted should break their associations and their habits from their pagan sinful past, and how holy they really should be.

We move from immorality and we look at church practice, and we see that among them there were disagreements about the role of men and the role of women in the assembly which only served to add to the confusion of how the church operated in Corinth. We read later on that there were alleged prophecies in the book, people who were speaking in tongues - or at least reported to be speaking in tongues - yet they were doing it on a regular basis, but they weren't doing it according to the biblical plan and principle that the Holy Spirit had laid down. All it was doing was adding chaos to the church! If you think that all that wasn't bad enough, you find, as we get to chapter 15 of the book, that there were even those - and mind they were believers - who did not believe in the bodily resurrection, future tense, of believers; nor did they believe, past tense, in the real bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a church of Jesus Christ, and I would hazard a guess that there's no modern church upon the face of the earth that has such a cluster of problems facing them all at one and the same time - but this church did.

What a church as an example of how we ought to behave, how we ought to be holy, how we ought to regulate ourselves in an ungodly generation - because our generation is filled with drunkenness, they are drunk on wealth, alcohol, intoxication, drug abuse. They intoxicate themselves with every type of immorality and vice, and we as believers find ourselves a little bit sympathetic, I hope, with the Corinthians in the first epistle, because we too are trying to live godly, Christlike lives in a world that is full of ungodliness and wickedness. The first thing I want you to see in our introduction tonight is the city of Corinth that Paul is writing to, and where this church resides. The first thing about it is this: it is a city of degradation. There are three ways in which we find this as we look into historical records. Now, by the time that Paul actually came to the city of Corinth - he arrived here in autumn AD50-51 - it was a Roman colony. Now you will know, if you know your atlas, that Corinth was in the middle of Greece, and it once was ruled by the Greeks - it was a great city when they ruled it - and then there was a revolt against the Romans, and they lost the revolt and Rome took over the city of Corinth. When Paul comes to the city of Corinth, Rome has been ruling in Corinth for over 100 years.

Now as we come to it, Corinth is a strategic commercial harbour - that's the first thing I want you to take down on your notes - it was a strategic commercial harbour. The location of Corinth on the map was the secret of its opulence and its financial and material success. Now I want you to look up here on the screen - I had a laser pointer, I'm trying to keep up with technology, but some of you are that blind that you couldn't see it up here on the board, so I had to get a stick, and there's a white bit on the stick for those of you who are blind so that you can see it! Now, if I can get my bearings, you can see over here that this is Greece - OK? And that little dot, the number 5 there, that little black dot is Corinth, and you can see that Corinth is just on a little peninsula that joins the ocean to the west - the Adriatic Ocean or the Ionian ocean - and the Aegean Sea over here. Now what that means, simply, is that Corinth was a harbour for both the west ocean and the east ocean. People who were travelling from the west on trade would come and they would dock in the harbour of Corinth. People who were coming from the eastern world would do the same. People who were travelling down from Athens, the capital, would come right through Corinth to travel down into this region that is now part of Greece. People who were coming up from the South would also go through Corinth. So you had all the nations of the world, if you can zoom in there David, you would see it maybe a bit clearer - you have all the nations, almost, of the known modern world coming through this little metropolis of Corinth - it is like the centre of humanity and civilisation of its day. It's controlling these two seas, the Aegean Sea and the Ionian Sea, all the traffic - and you can imagine the goods that were pouring through the gates of the country through Corinth, coming on into Greece. Dean Farer (sp?) writes in his commentary about it, listen to this: 'Objects of luxury soon found their way to the markets, which were visited by every nation in the civilised world. Arabian balsam, Phoenician dates, Libyan ivory, Babylonian carpets, Selician goat's hair, Lyconian wool Phrygian slaves'. In fact, he calls it 'the Vanity Fair of the east'. Some men in the day called it 'The Bridge of Greece', and you can see why it's called that - it's bridging the two peninsulas together, but it's almost bridging the whole known world together. Someone even called it 'the lounge of Greece' - everyone went to Corinth to rest and to live it up, it was an extremely wealthy place, it was populous, and it was a pluralistic city.

If you go to chapter 1 you will see this, that it talks about Jews, it talks about Greeks, it talks about Romans - the whole book talks about a man called Gaius, which is a Roman name; Crispus, Justus, Fortunatus, Achiacus. If you look at chapter 1 and verses 26 to 29, Paul says: 'For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise'. Now we know that this part of Greece, Corinth, was an extremely intellectual place; it was an influential city in the whole of the Mediterranean world, the aristocrats lived in it. Not only where the the rich and the high-fluting, the first-class and upper-class of society, but Paul tells us that there were also slaves, poor people and the uneducated. It was a hotchpotch of every aspect of a cosmopolitan metropolis that you could imagine, and the population is reckoned to be around 500 to 700,000, which in its day was an extreme population when you consider that this little piece of land is only about four miles wide - 500,000 to 700,000 people.

Now, it was a strategic commercial harbour, but I want you to see the wisdom of the great apostle here because Paul was not just rolling the dice or casting lots to go to Corinth to witness and to preach the Gospel, because he knew that if he could have a Gospel base in Corinth every Tom, Dick and Harry from all over the Mediterranean world would be passing through it and would have an influence of some kind in the Gospel. There was wisdom to the apostle Paul's missionary journeys, you should note that. It was a strategic point for the Gospel, and one of the reasons why Paul is writing this letter is because the Gospel witness was at stake because of the behaviour of the church at Corinth at such a strategic point. People were going away, and what kind of a perception of Christianity were they having when they were looking at the Christians from the city of Corinth?

It was a strategic commercial harbour, but it's also strategic for the Gospel - but the second thing I want you to see about the degradation of this city is that it was a hotbed of heathenism, a hotbed of the heathenism. Corinth, and Greece of course, had many gods - but probably the most famous god of them all was Aphrodite, the goddess of love. If you go to the next slide there David, you will see - this is an old picture of Corinth, I don't know whether you can see it clearly - but you can go to Greece and you can see this today, this is the ruins of Corinth. It's called Acro-Corinth, and this is a hill up here which is called the Acro-Corinth Hill - scholars tell us that on top of that hill was the temple of Aphrodite. She was worshipped by these people, and I don't want a go into too much detail, but I have to do it for your understanding of this book - the cult of Aphrodite has been called 'a cult dedicated to the glorification of sex'. It's something akin to the worship of Baal and Ashteroth in the Old Testament, and in the old Corinthian city that was owned by the Greeks it's said that up in that temple to Aphrodite there were 100 vestal virgins, a hundred ceremonial religious prostitutes, and they would be serving Aphrodite the goddess of love there - and if you wanted to bring devotion and worship to that goddess you would go and copulate with those prostitutes in that temple. The historians tell us that at night those prostitutes, all 100 of them, would come down from that temple and they would infiltrate the whole of the town, and they would ply their wares at night for money, and then in the morning they would go back to the temple.

That is the kind of city that Corinth was, that is the kind of heathenism that was apparent in that particular day. One Greek proverb came out of the practice of these prostitutes, and went like this: 'It is not every man who can afford a journey to Corinth'. In addition to the temple of Aphrodite there was the temple of Apollo - this is the temple of Apollo, you can see it today, that's the ruins of it. The temple of Apollo is right in the city of Corinth. If you thought the worship of Aphrodite was bad, Apollo was the god of music, the god of song, and the god of poetry - but he was also the god of ideal beauty for the male sex, the ideal figure, a kind of Adonis. We're told that there were nude statues of Apollos everywhere around the city, and they were in sensual poses. It's very difficult to believe, but the devotee's of the god Apollos were encouraged to have physical displays of their devotion with what was called 'the boys of Apollos'. You can read between the lines, but it's safe to say that Corinth was not only a centre of prostitution, but Corinth was a centre of child abuse and homosexuality in the first century world.

The reputation of Corinth was so bad that there was a term that was coined out of 'Corinth' which meant 'to fornicate', 'to Corinthianise'. They took the name of the city and used it for that awful sin, or a person who was called 'a Corinthian girl' was said to be a loose woman. Aelian, the late Greek writer, said that if ever a Corinthian was shown upon the stage in a Greek play he was always shown as being drunk - to be a Corinthian was to be a man, a caricature that was reckless, riotous, full of debauchery and immorality. Not only was there a temple to Aphrodite, not only was there the shrine and temple to Apollos, but there were many other gods and religious shrines - most notably Aesculapius, the god of healing, as well as sites of worship for the god Isis, the Egyptian goddess of the seafarers. They even borrowed other gods from other countries, and there was the Greek counterpart of Isis, Poseidon - you may have heard of the film 'The Poseidon Adventure', the Greek god of seafarers.

Perhaps you weren't religious like that, and you didn't follow any of the gods in Corinth, but even if you didn't 'a little bit less than religion' was the philosophy that pervaded in the society. There were, pervading people's minds and hearts, the average 5'8" Joe Bloggs in the street, the ideals of individualism: 'I am who I am. I will do what I want. I will do everything my way'. The ideal of equality: 'We are all equal and we can all do as we like'. The ideal freedom without any restraints or laws, just freedom and liberality to excess - and significantly in Corinth there was the ideal of distrust of any authority whatsoever. I hope you're beginning to paint in your mind a picture of the city of degradation, Corinth.

The third thing: it was a strategic commercial harbour, secondly it's a hotbed of heathenism, but thirdly it was also a centre of athletics. If David goes to the next slide you'll see here an actual town plan of Corinth, and there was in Corinth what is called the Ithsmian Games, and they were second only in importance to the Olympics, and you know how popular the Olympics were in Greece - well this was the second best. It was held every two years in the city of Corinth, it lasted several days, it took up athletics, equestrian, and musical competitions. It was conducted in Corinth's huge stadium, and I hope you can see it there - that's it there, the massive outdoor stadium at the top left, and some of them were held in the indoor stadium just below it. The outdoor stadium seated 18,000 people, the indoor stadium held 3000 people. So this was a city that wasn't just popular for sin and for trade and for religion and for excess, but it was popular for everything, it was the place to be! Even at this great athletic event there was great extravagance and licentiousness. Corinth, in the Mediterranean world in the time that we're looking at it, it was beginning to eclipse - I believe it had already eclipsed the city of Athens that we all know too well. Gordon Fee, the commentator 1 Corinthians, says this: 'At once Corinth was the New York, the Los Angeles, and the Las Vegas of the ancient world'. Charles Swindoll says: 'It was a sailor's favourite port, it was a prodigal's paradise, it was a policeman's nightmare, and it was a preacher's graveyard'.

Do you want to know what Corinth was really like? Turn with me to Romans chapter 1 for a moment - David, you can turn that off, I think that's all the slides for tonight, I'm doing that so that you can really get a picture of this in your mind before we launch full scale into the book. Now of course Paul is writing in the epistle to the Romans to the church in Rome, and he's categorising the various sins that are found in the church of Rome, but what you have to remember is where Paul was writing this epistle from. Does anybody know? Hazard a guess! Corinth! Paul was writing this epistle from Corinth to the church at Rome, and as he writes it I wonder was he looking out of his window - and remember that Corinth was a colony settled by Rome, and people say that when there was a colony settled by Rome it was like a little Rome, all that happened in Rome was happening in the colony. So we read, verse 18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them".

Do you think he was thinking of Corinth as he was writing to Rome? You might say is it any wonder that Paul in chapter 2 and verse 3 of 1 Corinthians, if you look down that it, he says: "I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" - wouldn't you be if you were called to be the missionary and the evangelist to the city of Corinth where there's no other believer? The modern-day Sodom of the world - 'So what?', you might say, 'What are you telling me all this for? Why are you going into so much graphic detail?' - the reason why I'm telling you all this at the beginning of our study is that if the love of God in Christ Jesus could take root in a place like Corinth, it can take root anywhere! It was the most populated, wealthy, commercially minded and sex obsessed city of Eastern Europe, but it was the most powerful witness of the Gospel when Paul the apostle was there, and it proves that the Gospel is powerful anywhere! Paul, who is writing the book of the Romans, could also say that where sin abounds, grace doth more abound! Does that not encourage you? You wouldn't think it to look at some of you! Does it encourage you?

A city of degradation, yet God moved in. That's why this epistle was written. The second thing I want you to see on your sheet is, the reason why the book written: because there was a church in division. In 1 Corinthians 1 verse 26 and following we read about division. Verse 13, if you look at it, he says: 'Is Christ divided?', now why does he ask this? Because the church is the body of Christ. Paul says in the verse before: 'Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ'. Is Christ divided? Are there factions in the body of Christ? 'Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?' - there were divisions.

Let me give you a bit of a background about Corinthian society and culture. In the city of Corinth there was what was known as 'patrons', it came from Roman society to have a 'patron', and it was just someone who was well-to-do, he was an influential person who took care of individuals and families, and perhaps even at times entire associations of people. He would call those people he was in charge of his 'clients'. So there were these patrons in charge of people, they were rich, wealthy, intellectual, influential, and they would look after little plebs of society. They were people who would provide land, provide jobs, provide money, and even provide legal protection if necessary for the less well-off in their society that were their clients. Now if they did that, if they scratched their client's back, their client had to scratch their back - they had to in some way reciprocate the favours that these patrons were giving to them. With various services including political support and positive public relations, they would try their best to keep well in with their patrons. If you like, if I can make a modern illustration, it's a bit like politics today. You've heard about the 'cash for questions' scandal, that's exactly what was going on in Rome. If you wanted to get something done you paid your patron cash, or you looked after him, or you advertised and gave him free advertising, and he would look after you - he would even fight your case in law if you did what was right by him.

Now, Paul seems to indicate, I believe, that this was beginning to enter into the church and it was causing disunity. There was arrogance among men; men standing up and saying: 'I am on behalf of Apollos', 'I am on behalf of Paul', 'I am on behalf of Peter', 'I am on behalf of Christ' - arrogance and immaturity. They were standing up pretending and setting themselves forth to be the most mature, the most spiritual of the church of Jesus Christ in Corinth. But what I hope most of you know by now, if you're not too old in the Christian faith maybe you don't know it but you'll learn it very soon, sometimes the most immature are often the ones who think that they are most mature. That's why Paul gets sarcastic in chapter 4 verse 8, he says: 'Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you'. He's being sarcastic, 'You don't need the apostle Paul any more, you don't need anybody else, you're great mature Christians in your arrogance and even in your immaturity'.

I believe that their arrogance probably came from the flowery rhetoric that they were able to use, these were great orators that Paul is preaching to here in the church of Corinth. You see, what was in Corinth and in Rome in these days was, if you like, the philosophy of the Sophians. Now, I don't want to blind you with science tonight, but it's important that you know what the Sophists are. You've heard of the name 'Sophia', it's the Greek word for wisdom. The Sophists were people who thought they were the wisest all, wiser than anybody else, and they proved their wisdom by their oratory, by their flowery rhetoric, by how they could speak. To have wisdom was to be able to stand in the great amphitheatres and to speak with great authority and beauty, and they emphasised not so much the content of what they were saying, they didn't look at the truth and the arguments and even the philosophy, all that they were concerned about was the form and how they delivered those things.

Can I remind you, and perhaps jog your memory, that in chapters 1 to 4 what does Paul address? It is the preaching of the cross that we believe in as the church, which is foolishness unto the Greek, and a stumbling block to the Jew, and we don't preach it with - what? Wisdom of words! Lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect. It's not how we're preaching the message, it's the message, the foolishness, literally, of the message that is preached that is the power of God unto salvation - first to the Jew and also to the Greek! Do you see it? These men thought that they could take Paul on, and I believe there's fair evidence in this book that one of the divisions was caused by these Sophists. Go into chapter 11 about the Lord's Table, and we see that some people were eating it before the rest - and it was probably the rich who were eating it before the poor, they thought they were greater than the poor, greater orators, flowery in their rhetoric. As we find Paul refusing the money that the church at Corinth wants to give him, you find in their reaction that they can't understand why he'd want to do that, because that's that they live for! They live for material possessions! We find as we go through into the book that believers are taking one another to court, and the likelihood is that it is these patrons that are representing the ordinary believers before the court, doing them favours because these believers were doing them favours in return.

You move on and you find that perhaps there were also sexual favours that were being given, but the main point of all this and me telling you is to show you that these patrons, in fact these leaders of the factions, had a great reluctance to break from the social conventions which served their own interests and reputations in their pagan past, but as they were converted they couldn't let go of it. I believe that above everything else in this book, it is more than likely that it was the social elite that was behind most of the problems in this church!

A church in division, and as we move on through the book we'll look in more detail at that division - but let's look at the third point, because it was not only a church in division, but what sort of filters out of that is the fact that it was a church that had a crisis of doctrine. As we look, and I have been looking at this book, and you know it's heavy stuff, and there's a lot of controversial issues even in Christendom today within this little book, there's a lot of deep subjects. We're going to spend I don't know how many weeks on it, digging and trying to get the answers - no preconceived ideas, but coming to the truth of God. As you look at all the different and varied subjects - there's marriage, there's divorce, there's incest, there's the Lord's Table, there's the headcovering, there's resurrection, there's giving, there's all sorts of things - and you wonder: 'Well, what's the common denominator? Is it possible to have a common denominator? Was there one specific problem in the whole of this book?'.

I believe if you look closely you can find, yes, there is. It can be split into a couple of things, but ultimately it could be defined as this: their pagan religion. They had never let go of the remnants of their pagan religion. Now let me prove this to you, most noteworthy: there was a philosophy in Corinth - now stay with me, because this is important, don't say it's too difficult, some of you can watch a detective film for three hours and don't find out the result until the end, but you stick in there, so stick in here tonight and you'll be blessed. There was a philosophy called 'dualism'. Let me explain it to you: it put the material universe on one side, that means things, your body, things that you can touch, the sensual universe on one side; and it put the spiritual universe on the other side, things to do with God and eternity. It said that essentially the spiritual was potentially good, it was good; but the physical, the material universe, was bad - that's what's called 'dualism' and it was deeply embedded in Greek philosophy, particularly from the days of Plato on, and eventually culminating in what is called 'Gnosticism' which was often the heresy that Paul was speaking against in many of his epistles.

They believed that the body was bad, what the body did was bad, the earth was bad; but the spirit was good. Now you might find a bit of sympathy with that kind of deduction, but I want you to see that that is of the devil himself. The majority of the common people took the view that the body was bad, the majority thought the body was bad - now that leaves a question for us all: what do you do with the appetites that your body has? You have to eat, you have to drink, you have to rest, you have to walk, you have to keep moving to keep alive, there are certain natural affections and instincts that we have also that many of us, if not most of us, have to execute at some time in our lives. So what did they do? Well, there were two different groups who dealt with this problem differently. Most of them in society decided: 'We'll not touch these things at all. We'll not ever eat food, or try to eat as little of it as we can. We'll lock ourselves up from the world, and keep away from all the influences of the world. We'll not ever get married, we'll be celibate for the rest of our days, and we'll suppress any sexual passions or nature that we have and ignore it, and try to work it all out of us and get all of this bad physical stuff away - because it is bad matter'.

They denied themselves, they're called ascetics. We have them with us today, they're called monks. They lock themselves away from the world, because they think that by getting away from the world they can get away from sin - but the fact of the matter is: sin is in the breast and in the heart, and it's not matter that is inherently evil, it is the soul, it's man's nature. But the common people, now I want you to note this in the light of 1 Corinthians, the common people decided to address this problem a different way. They thought to themselves: 'Well, if everything in matter is bad, and everything in the spirit world is good, eternity is the spirit world, heaven, and God, and everything that will happen after death is the spirit world, so we'll not be taking the physical into the spirit world - so why not indulge it as much as we can now and live it up? Because there's a day coming when we'll never be able to do it, and there'll be no consequences anyway because the world to come is spiritual!'. The common people followed that philosophy, and let me tell you this tonight as we begin this book: all the major problems in the book of Corinthians come from either one of those two positions. One position that says don't touch the things of the world, the body, material matter, because they're evil; or the other extreme that says: 'Well, we're in the spirit and we can just live it up, the matter's gonna be all burnt up one day, so let's sin and enjoy it!'.

Is it all coming together? Let me prove this to you. This living it up and indulging is called 'hedonism', the love of pleasure. If you go to - we don't have time to look at it, but just record this in your memory for future days - if you go to chapter 5, chapter 6, Paul talks about immorality, those who were indulging in sexual immorality for pleasure. If you go to chapters 8 through 10 he talks about men who were eating food that was sacrificed to idols, just indulging because it's not of the spirit, it's matter, it's evil, it's going to go in the end. In chapter 11 at the Lord's Table verses 17 to 34, people who were getting drunk at the Lord's Table because it didn't matter - it's matter! All of them indulging their bodily appetites, indulging them! Then if you go on in the book you find that it comes internally, where people are asserting their own rights and having little regard for others. You have the law of the weaker brother, they don't care about weaker Christians, they don't care that they will look at their example and fall into sin. If you go into chapter 6 it talks about lawsuits, they don't care that they're taking their brother or sister in Christ to the law in front of the world around them. If you go to chapter 11 about the headcovering, you find that the people are flaunting the social conventions of the day with respect to that, they don't care what the convention is! There's competition and chaos with regards to spiritual gifts, they want to do what they like, they want to indulge it all.

Then if you go to the opposite extreme, not the love of pleasure, but the shunning of pleasure - asceticism. You find it also in this book, the other faction in Corinthians, they were saying: 'You need to be celibate, that's God's ideal - don't get married! That's how you'll not fall into this sexual immorality' - chapter 7's all about Paul addressing that. Perhaps the greatest evidence of how they believed anything of the body was wrong is chapter 15, on the resurrection. They've got to such an extent of believing that the flesh is wrong that they don't even believe that there's any place for the body in the resurrection. Do you see it?

Now as I close tonight I want to tell you this as we start our studies: the relevance of this epistle is overwhelming to me, because tonight as we speak the church of Jesus Christ seems stronger than it has ever been only if your sole criteria is the value of its material assets and the number of bums on the pew, if you'll excuse the phrase. Someone has said of America: 'The church in the US is 3000 miles wide, and yet only half an inch deep'. So few of us in the West have experienced persecution, so few of us have experienced what it is to suffer for the Lord Jesus Christ, and even you find in the church emerging today there is a hedonism. There is a desire, it's called the 'health and wealth gospel' - 'If you please God, if you have faith, name it and claim it, take it, whatever you want - millions of dollars, millions of pounds, and it will be yours'. It's all revolving around me, mine, self - indulging in materialism!

You get these leaders coming up in the church and all they have is management skills, and it's plaguing the church - models of church planning, how you can make your church effective from the business world's perspective. The church-growth manuals are full of all the principles of secular growth! Patrons! Yet what is lacking in the Western church today is an exhibition of compassion, of forgiveness in the personal relationship every day, the coal face of relevant faith - not a parody of Christianity, but real Christianity in shoe leather that weighs up to all the evangelical verbiage that we bandy about our mouths! What this world needs, and what Christ wants - this is the message of Corinthians - is a Christian that says they're Christian and acts like a Christian! Not an ascetic revolt that reacts against the immorality of the day and abstains from things, and defines themselves as a Christian by what they do not do - but what this world needs and what Christ wants is a Christian defined not by what he doesn't do, but what he is!

William Baird in his book 'A Biblical Approach to Urban Culture', listen to this, says: 'Paul's principles in Corinthians are a paradigm for how to minister among Urban churches and areas today' - and I believe he's right. For if people in this district get saved, the problems that we are dealing with in Corinthians are the problems that we're going to face - but let me tell you this: our church, and every church, stands in the west at a crossroads, and it must decide whether to institutionalise its Christianity or whether it is going to personalise its Christianity! What our community needs today is the personal touch... the personal touch.

Father, we thank Thee tonight for the wondrous gospel of grace that can reach to the very depths of humanity, and can raise to the very heights of heaven the one who has faith in Christ. But Lord, we know that that grace also brings with it sanctification, that is also by grace, but we have the responsibility to walk in the grace of God. Father, we, as the Corinthians, have been called to be saints, sanctified saints. Father, we pray that as we go out from this place, as we reside as a church in this area, that we will not institutionalise ourselves but that we will personalise the gospel and touch the men and women around us with the grace of God unto salvation, because we must remember: such were some of you. Help us Lord, we pray, for Christ's sake, Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - September 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 2

"Grace Greater Than Their Sin"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 1:1-9

We're turning to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. You remember that last week we looked a little bit into the book of the Acts, and we also looked at a few verses of the book of 1 Corinthians, and we got a real feel for the place - the reason why this epistle was written, at least one of the reasons, was the city of Corinth. We looked at a couple of the other reasons, and we'll be teasing them out in the weeks that lie ahead. We begin to read at verse 1 and we'll be reading right through to verse 9:

"Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord".

Our title tonight is "Grace Greater Than Their Sin". You'll remember last week that we looked in some detail at the city of Corinth, and we found out that it was a strategic commercial harbour with regards to the Mediterranean world at that time. We saw on the map that we had in front of us how every point on the compass, almost, had to come through the city of Corinth on their journeys of trade and business. From the North, from Athens; from the south, the little peninsula of Greece; right up from East and West - everybody in the known world came through this city of Corinth, it became a kind of metropolis, a place where people stayed, and because of that there was a great wealth and opulence in the city of Corinth. So much so that in trade you could get absolutely anything under the sun in the markets of Corinth. Because it was a centre and a commercial harbour, it also became a city of real vice - a hotbed of heathenism. We saw the various temples, the various gods that were worshipped, the awful devotion was given to these gods in all kinds of sexual immorality. We found that this was a centre of immoral fornication, a centre of homosexuality, and indeed as Paul wrote Romans chapter 1 from Corinth - and that's important to note - I believe he was looking out of his window as he thought of the Roman sins that were beginning to bear on this great city. We heard about the thousand prostitutes that would come down from the Acropolis and from the temple, and would infiltrate the whole town in the evening.

It was a terrible place of sin, so much so that the name 'to Corinthianise' was a synonym for the sin of fornication and sexual immorality. Gordon Fee, the commentator, said: 'At once this was the New York, the Los Angeles, and the Las Vegas of the ancient world'. I didn't tell you last week that archaeologists have found, in the modern age, clay models of the human reproductive system that were actually offered as sacrifices unto the god Aesculapius, who was the god of healing. We read between the lines, and we suspect that the reason why these clay models of human genitalia were given to these gods was because of the venereal disease that was incurred because of their awful immorality.

It was also a city that was a great mixture of nationalities and religions, and cultures and peoples. We see it particularly in the church of Corinth: there were Jews, there were Greeks and Gentiles, all sorts of them, and various people from various parts of the world. There were poor people, there were very rich people; there was the middle-class; there were patrons and there were slaves. But one thing that we do gather from the book of Corinthians is that the church was a mirror of the world at this time, the city of Corinth. Not only in their present walking away from the ways of God, not only in the fact they were falling back into the sins that they were saved from, but they too had this real multicoloured spectrum of immorality in their lives before their conversion. Perhaps some of the most famous verses in the book of Corinthians are found in chapter 6, if you look at it, and verses 9 to 11 depict the lifestyle of these saints before they were converted: 'Know ye not', verse 9 of chapter 6, 'that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God'.

These people had this type of sinful background that we find in the culture of the city of Corinth. I heard of one man that went away from the Bible reading last week and said that he was going to christen the city of Belfast 'Corinth'. It's true, isn't it? As we look down at the characteristics of the city of Corinth in its day, we can see great parallels and similarities with our own society, our own nation, and indeed the Western world that we live in. But the difference between us and Corinth in its day, to a large extent, is that we as the church of Jesus Christ in our particular circumstance and environment are somewhat sheltered from the type of sins that the people in Corinth experienced. We, as Christians today, to a large extent - I don't want to generalise - but most of us have never known the horror of interacting with the type of sins, and people committing the type of sins, that we find in the city of Corinth. We, to a large extent, are not on the coalface of real life as it is in our society. We don't face the problems of immorality that people have to face on a daily basis. We could spend all night going into the reasons for that, but perhaps one of the greatest reasons is the fact that most of us in the Western church are second generation Christians. Certainly, I would say, a lot of us in this church have been born into Christian homes - not all of us, but many of us. That is a great blessing, we don't seek to underestimate what that means - to be brought up in the fear and admonition of the Lord, but what it can also mean is that we're not exposed to the horrors and the ravages that sin has on normal lifestyles. We've never experienced first-hand, perhaps not even second-hand, what sin can really do in the home and in the personal life.

I wonder, as I'm looking and studying this book of 1 Corinthians during the week, if the unconverted - if you like, the great unwashed and unchurched around us - were to get saved and were to come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, could we really handle it? Could we handle the dilemmas, the knots that seem to be untieable of immorality, personal problems? I think we would be faced with real dilemmas and real headaches. There are problems coming from that type of background, there's no doubt about it. These Corinthians came to Christ, and many of them brought those problems with them - although they were immoral, they were fornicators, they were effeminate, and Paul said 'such were some of you', some of them found it very difficult letting go of the baggage that they had before they were regenerated by the Spirit of God.

But do you know something? In the study that we're going to look at tonight there's a commendable feature that comes with people who have been forgiven out of great sin. That's right! A commendable feature, something that great sinners have that is a great feature. It is simply this: great sinners tend to respond to great grace. I want you to cast your mind back to the Gospels, to Luke chapter 7 - you don't need to turn to it - and verse 47, as the Lord Jesus Christ is in the home of Simon the Pharisee. There is a tremendously immoral woman that comes to the Lord Jesus, she bows down before Him and she weeps at His feet, and washes His feet with her tears. Then she takes her hair and dries His feet, and she kisses His feet, and Simon the legalistic Pharisee, in his own mind, is saying: 'Surely, surely the Lord knows, even by the demeanour and dress of this woman, what type of a woman she really is?'. Of course, the Lord knew Simon's thoughts and replied to him: 'When I came into your house you didn't anoint My head, you didn't wash My feet with your tears. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little'. The antithesis of that is that to whom much is forgiven, that person loves much. The person that has had a great volume of sin within their life, when they turn to Christ and that volume disappears there is a great capacity in their heart left to love God and to accept the wonderful grace of God that is greater than all their sin.

With the past of great sin that these Corinthians had there was, I believe, a greater capacity for them to grasp the great grace of God that is greater than all our sin. That's how Paul, believe it or not, reacts to this very sinful immoral church. He reacts in grace! I want you to grasp this this evening. You heard last week of the type of city that these people were living in, you heard about the type of sins that the church of Jesus Christ was imbibing and was filtering into their everyday practice, and even their sacraments - as they broke bread they were getting drunk! They made holy things unholy, yet as Paul comes to write to them in a letter of instruction, what is the first thing that he brings to them? Grace!

How would you react if you were asked to address these problems? I know how I would react! I would get pen to paper very quickly and say: 'Dear Corinthians, are any of you saved at all? Corinthians, you call yourselves Christians? You can't be Christians unless you behave like Christians!'. But what does Paul say? As he writes to them in the first nine verses he's basically saying: 'Look, look at what you are! Look at what you have in the Lord Jesus Christ!' - and it's only when he tells them what they have in the wonderful riches of the grace of God that he then moves on to exhort them and to encourage them and to rebuke them in the ways that they should be going. Look at verse 10, after talking about the great grace of God he says: 'Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind', and he goes on right through the whole book starting to correct their inaccuracies in the understanding of the spiritual life and the carnal life, their sinfulness, their backsliding. But note what he does: he comes to them first of all and he ministers to them the great grace of God.

Now, if it wasn't the apostle Paul I would say that that was madness. It wouldn't be my first instinct, but what you've got to see is that there is method in the madness of Paul - if we can call it madness at all - because this old man knew, in all of his godly given wisdom, that these people would listen to him more carefully, that they would take his rebuke of their lifestyle more readily, if they got a fresh glimpse of the grace of God toward them. Now listen, yesterday we began a study in the book of Philippians, and we saw in the first two verses that in the very introduction of the book there's like a little microcosm and model of the theme right throughout the whole book and we unpacked it yesterday, we saw that Paul even in his introduction was showing them what he wants them to know. It's no different in the book of 1 Corinthians, and I want us to do this tonight.

You remember I told you - if you weren't here yesterday, I was telling the people that a Roman letter in the ancient Greco-Roman world, when Greeks and Roman were writing letters they always began with a salutation, with a greeting. Now we normally end our letters with 'Yours Sincerely', 'Hope You're Well', 'God Bless You', and all the rest at the end of the letter - but in those days they began with the salutation, and it usually began with the writer identifying himself; and then it followed on as he told them who he was addressing it to, the recipients of the letter; and then it usually tailed off, before he got into the guts of the letter, with a general greeting. If he had heard that the people were well he would praise his God or gods for the fact that they were doing well, and hoping and trusting and praying that they would do even better in the days that lie ahead. Now Paul, generally in all of his letters, follows the normal Greco-Roman convention in writing letters. He doesn't do it in any particularly different way, but what he always does is he usually adds to it.

There are usually differences and digressions, and I want you to do a wee bit of detective work like you did yesterday morning and look for what these differences are. Just look at the first verse first of all, he says: 'Paul, called to be an apostle' - now there's the difference. He's defining who he is and what his calling is. Usually it would just be 'Paul', but Paul the apostle is saying: 'I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God' - there's another difference. He's qualifying where he got his apostleship from. So there are three differences: he says that he's called; he says he's called to be an apostle; and he says he's called to be an apostle in the will of God. So the first thing that Paul is doing that's different than ordinary letter writing in this type of ancient world is: he is asserting his apostleship - that's very important. He's showing these people in the church of Corinth who disputed that he was an apostle - and we know that from chapter 9 verses 1 and 2, if you care to look at it: 'Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are not ye my work in the Lord? If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord'. There were people teaching, disputing, perhaps some of these leaders in the factions in the church, who were doubting, disputing whether Paul was really an apostle. But Paul, right at the outset of this letter, is establishing, re-instituting his authority as an apostle.

Now what is an apostle? It's a sort of emissary of the Lord, a representative of the Lord, a person who's coming and is an ambassador for the Lord - and specifically a person who has the right to speak for the Lord and on the Lord's behalf. Now if you didn't know the background of this letter you would think that Paul was being a bit proud, and revelling and glorying in the fact that he was an apostle - but you'd be wrong if you fell into that assumption simply because Paul knew that he needed to communicate to these Corinthians that he had a right to speak about what he was going to speak about. He had a right to put them right, he had a right to teach them because God had chosen him in Christ as an apostle, and specifically the apostle to the Gentiles. Now you can reason that in your own mind, even if you looked at our own present-day and you thought about a doctor or a person who claimed to be a doctor, but they had no medical degrees, they'd never been trained, they'd never had any experience in operating upon anybody or treating anybody. If they went along to a conference, to speak at a medical conference, they wouldn't get a hearing - why? Because they have no right to speak on the subject, they are not an authority on the subject. Paul, right away, wants these people to know: 'I am an authority on what I am about to say'.

There were various reasons why he did that, not just the fact that people were doubting his apostleship, but also the fact that he was not one of the twelve - I'm talking about the twelve disciples that we read of in the Gospels. The apostle Paul was not one of that number - so some people doubted, because of that, that he was an apostle at all. Of course, there were some false teachers coming into the church saying that he was not an apostle, and they were saying that they were apostles - so Paul had to counteract their accusations and claims. There are three things that he really wants to lay down as he says that he is an apostle, called of Jesus Christ by the will of God - it's the fact that he is related to Christ as an apostle, he is in communication and has the authority of Christ in what he's saying to these people. He's saying also that he is related to God, it's 'by the will of God' - God has chosen him as an apostle, and God is bringing this message to the church at Corinth. But perhaps the most immediate and specific to these people is the fact that as he comes to the church, he has authority over the church in the name of God and in the appointment of Jesus Christ to set them right in their doctrine and in their practice.

Now we know from the history books that when the Jewish Supreme Court, which you know was called the Sanhedrin, was asked to arbitrate in a serious dispute or to give an interpretation regarding Jewish law or tradition, they sent a messenger along who was called 'apostolos' - that's the word we get 'apostle' from. He went along with the message and the verdict of the Sanhedrin, and as far as he was concerned he had the full authority of the Sanhedrin, and he wasn't speaking for himself, he was speaking for the Sanhedrin and he brought their message - but he was more than a messenger because he had the authority of the body, and it meant that he was an ambassador. Representing and bringing the message and the mouth of God - that's what of Paul was doing. That's why, in 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 20, he says: 'We are ambassadors unto you in Christ's stead, pleading with you: be ye reconciled to God'. In Ephesians 6 and verse 20 he said: 'I am ambassador in bonds', as he's writing from prison the book of Ephesians. He's a representative of Christ even in prison!

So you see how important it is that he asserts his apostleship as he brings this message to the Corinthians. But not only does he mention his apostleship and assert it, but he also asserts how he was called to be an apostle. This is very important, he says: 'Paul, called to be an apostle'. He's saying: 'Look, I haven't appointed myself; I haven't been appointed by the Sanhedrin, or a company of Jews, or a company of Christians, or a hierarchy of a church, or by a bishop, or by a pope; I have been appointed and called by God to be an apostle'. I want you to note and ring - if you ring or mark your Bible, ring these words - look at verse 9, he mentions this word 'called' many times in chapter 1: 'God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord'. Verse 23: 'But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God'. Verse 26: 'For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called'. In fact, the word 'church' - I've told you this many times - 'ecclesia' in the Greek means 'the called out ones'. It's commonly understood that it means 'called out of the world', but that is not what 'ecclesia' and 'the church' means, to be called out of the world. They are called out of the world, but it means to be called unto God, to worship God. To be brought out of the world, yes, but specifically to worship God. Paul is saying in the same sense: 'I have been called to be an apostle', but he's going a step further and he's saying: 'In the same way that I have been called to be an apostle, God has also called you to be saints'.

You see, what you have to understand about the Damascus Road experience that Paul had in the book of the Acts, it was recorded in the book of the Acts - Paul had his salvation experience and his call to service experience at the one and the same time. Did you ever notice that? What Paul is saying here is: 'In the same way that I was called to be an apostle through the will of God on the road to Damascus, at the point that I was saved, the call for you to serve God and be a messenger of God and ambassador of God is something that happened at one and the same time, simultaneous to your conversion'. You can't split the two: you're saved to serve.

Paul adds just a little name to this introduction that is very intriguing, just to prove that our service comes at our salvation - no matter who we are, whether we're an apostle, or whether we're an ordinary disciple. He says this: '...through the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother'. There's a whole debate goes on about whether Sosthenes actually wrote this book or not - of course he didn't, Paul wrote the book, but he may have been the scribe, he may have been Paul's personal secretary. He certainly was Paul's companion as he's writing this book, as he names him, and I have little doubt that he's the same Sosthenes that you find in Acts chapter 18. We don't have time to read that, but let me give you a bit of his history. He was a leader in the synagogue, you may remember that Crispus was converted in the book of Acts chapter 8, and Crispus was the leader of the synagogue. When Crispus was converted and left Judaism as a whole to follow Christ, Sosthenes took Crispus' place as the leader of the synagogue, and it caused great unrest - as you can imagine - when this man Crispus was converted. But how much more unrest can you imagine was created when the second replacement, Sosthenes, was then converted to the Lord Jesus Christ? I was reading David Prior (sp?) today on the book of 1 Corinthians, and he was relating how he was at Oxford University at the time, in the early 1960s, when it was the heyday of the Humanist Society. The president of the Humanist Society in Oxford University was converted to the Lord Jesus Christ, there was a real uproar, there was an extraordinary business meeting that took place as they thought about the successor. They appointed a successor, and to their astonishment the one who had been elected to the new presidency of the Humanist Society was converted again to Christ! There was another General Meeting, but the uproar was immense - how all their philosophy and their way of life, and their understanding and world view of God - whether He's there or not, or what our purpose in life is - was just turned on its head. Exactly the same thing happened when Sosthenes came to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the book of Acts we read that this was an enemy of the Gospel, if ever there was one. Sosthenes is recorded as being beaten for his involvement in bringing Paul the apostle to the civil court in the city of Corinth. Now we don't know why he was beaten, there are some ancient manuscripts that tell us that he was beaten by the Jews because they thought that he didn't make a good enough case before the magistrate, some manuscripts say that he was beaten by the Greeks because they felt that he was wasting their time over a flimsy item of Jewish religion. But no matter what it was about, this man was so opposed to the Gospel of Christ and Paul the apostle that he was willing to get beaten up for it all and his opposition of it! But what a triumph of grace that this man Sosthenes is converted, and is now mentioned in the epistle to Corinth, who once was the leader of the synagogue in Corinth! Paul says of him: '...and Sosthenes our brother'.

Was he an apostle? No. I learn a wee bit about how God works, because Paul, in the reproductive system of spirituality, was giving birth to his own likeness, wasn't he? A man totally opposed to the Gospel, a man who was a zealot for Judaism, a man who was trying to bring Paul himself before the civil court, yet that man is gloriously converted by the grace of God. We can produce like people who are converted in the same way as we are, but what I want you to notice is simply this: Sosthenes was not an apostle. Paul was an apostle, but it didn't matter to Paul whether you were an apostle or not an apostle, you were still a brother and you could still serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's banish this absolute nonsense that you have to be a pastor, that you have to be a preacher, that you have to be a missionary, an evangelist, to be able to serve the Lord Jesus Christ - we've got to get out of this ecclesiasticism!

I heard of a man today who waters his grass with a big sprinkler system that is the state of the art. You've never seen anything like it, it waters every single blade of grass in the whole garden. One day his little daughter was wanting to help him, you know what it's like, and she got her little watering can, and she filled it up and she was going around watering all these little bits of grass, helping her Daddy. You might say: 'What a comparison! There is no comparison at all between a little watering can and the sprinkler system', but here's the thing: to a parched little tuft of grass, what does it matter? Whether it's Paul the apostle, or Sosthenes the unknown to the 21st century, to men and women who are dying in their sin it doesn't matter who gives them the water of life, as long as they get it and as long as they drink it and as long as they're satisfied!

Well, what a lesson Paul has given us in the first couple of words. What is the lesson? Oh, it's grace! For in verse 3 we have it: 'Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ'. He's changed here the conventional Roman greeting, instead of just saying: 'Greetings', he's using the word 'grace', he's saying 'peace' because that's what comes when the grace of God is shed abroad in your heart. Then from verses 4 through to 9 he's giving that prayer, the wishing of well to the person he's writing to. In this second section he's giving thanks to God on the behalf of these Corinthians for grace. Now are you asking yourself - I hope you are, because I was certainly asking this today - how can Paul be so positive, how can Paul be so thankful, when there's such trouble rife in this church, when they're divided, when there's so many abuses of holy things and so much immorality? How can he do it? This is how he can do it: because he knows and has a grasp of the character of his God. We'll see this, and we'll tease this out, but chiefly it is this: our God is a God of grace.

In spite of their sin, they were these things...let's look down the list: one, citizens of heaven. Verse 2, first part: 'Unto the church of God which is at Corinth', the church of God which is at Corinth. Their identity was not 'Corinth', their identity was the fact that they were the church of God. Our identity as believers is not the city that we live in, the country that we belong to, it's not a certain preacher or theologian that we follow and adhere to, but our identity is with Jesus Christ for we are in His church. Every church, indeed every Christian, has two addresses: Corinth and Jesus Christ; Thorndyke Street, Templemore Avenue, and Jesus Christ. What this message is communicating to the Corinthians specifically, and to us today, is: no matter if you live in a little hellhole like Corinth, a place of immorality and godlessness, you can live in Jesus Christ a holy, a sanctified, and a spiritual life - and if it can be lived in Corinth it can be lived anywhere, do you agree?

Now, if I was to tear out of my Bible the first nine verses of the epistle to the Corinthians it would be very difficult to say anything good about this lot, wouldn't it? In fact, I wouldn't be preaching to you a message of grace, it would be a message of instruction - but the amazing thing that is in the first nine verses: Paul sees these believers in Christ. Isn't that the way we are? For if you took Christ away from you, the first nine verses of your epistle written unto men, if you took Christ out of your life what would you be? Just like the Corinthians! You mightn't have committed any of their sins, but you know that you of all men are most miserable in your heart without Christ, without the glorious life of His resurrection. We have the same weaknesses, the same flaws and vulnerabilities of other people who are blind without Christ. I wonder are you here tonight, and maybe you're discouraged, maybe you're downhearted, maybe that temptation that you continually succumb to and fall underneath is just getting the better of you more and more and more - and you wonder when it's all going to end. You need to see the grace of God afresh.

Church life is difficult at times, and sometimes when there are problems in the church - the way it is in the church of Corinth - the grass can be greener on the other side. If you were in Corinth and you were trying to live the life of the Lord in that little church, I'm sure the temptation to church-swap was very real to you. But the amazing thing is: Paul first and foremost sees this church not in their sin, but sees them as being in Christ. Let's face it tonight: every church has its problems. We've got our problems, the churches down the road have got their problems, but equally every church - if it is the true church, made up not of bricks and mortar, made up not of a denominational connection, but made up of living stones that have been hewn out by the Spirit of God and set in place by Him, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb - they're in Christ! No matter how much sin they're in, they're in Christ! It's hard to think of that, isn't it? But in spite of their sin they were still citizens of heaven.

Secondly, in spite of their sin they were still sanctified in Christ and called to be saints. The second part of verse 2: 'church of God which is at Corinth to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints'. Now 'sanctified', some people tell us, happens to you after you believe six months down the line, a subsequent experience to conversion, and it makes you holy. Now, could you say that these people were holy? Practically, were they holy people? Of course they weren't! But Paul was saying: 'You are sanctified' - positionally he's talking about, they're in Christ. They've been set apart for Christ and to Christ, and they needed many things in their life, but they were set apart for God and for His glory. A better translation of 'called to be saints' is 'saints by calling', that's what he means. You are saints by divine calling, it's not something that you're going to try and attain to, it's not something that is only for dead Christians who did a great thing in their life, and hundreds of years later the church of Rome decides to canonise them and make them into saints - that is rubbish! It's something that is in your life, that is a living reality where you realise that you are a saint, and you've been called to that reality.

Now look down at the Authorised Version, because you will see that 'to be' is in italics, isn't it? Now that means that it's not in the original scriptures, that the translators have put it in so that we can understand what is trying to be said. But you could literally read it 'called saints', called saints! What Paul is saying is: 'You've been sanctified, you've been set apart, you are now called saints - when are you going to live up to your calling?'. This is a favourite phrase and name for Christians that Paul uses, he uses it 60 times or so in all of his letters, and it's talking about what we are positionally in Christ. It's not a matter of good works - oh, I wish I had time, I never do have the time, but sure Hebrews 10 and verse 10 tells us, listen: 'By the which will we are sanctified' - how? By trying your best? By doing good works? - 'through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all'. Verse 14: 'For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified'. We are sanctified by the blood of Christ, that's our position, now that's different than practice and holy living, and living up to the name that we have as saints. But Paul's exhortation is exactly that: if this is what you're called, if this is what you've been made by the grace of God, you've got to live up to your name, you've got to be seen to be set apart! Everything's going for you: Christ has saved you, Christ has given you a new nature, what's stopping you living as saints?

The purpose of being in Christ is to be like Christ - that's what this epistle is all about. Now you're sitting here tonight saying: 'Look, how can I live like Christ? It's hard for me, you don't realise what I'm up against. I'm wrestling against sin daily. I can't get over this temptation', and for somebody like you it's extremely hard to imagine yourself as absolutely pure, spotless, holy, unimpeachable and without blemish, isn't it? Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles that people have getting saved, and even Christians have grappling with in their own life, is resting in the peace and the security and the satisfaction of knowing that you are accepted with God in the Beloved. Presidents don't always act presidentially, diplomats don't always act diplomatically, kings don't always act kingly; but they're still presidents, and they're still diplomats, and they're still kings - Christians don't always act Christlike, but they're still saints, that's wonderful, isn't it? It's amazing! This is the message he's coming to these wicked people with!

Thirdly, in spite of their sin they were still members of the body. He says: 'with all that', verse 2, 'in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours'. You're not an individual, everybody saved is sanctified in Christ - it's not just the Iron Hall that's sanctified in Christ, we know that. It's not just the fundamentalists, or the premillennialists - do I have an 'Amen'? No, I don't?! All in Christ - Paul didn't agree with these ones, did he, on everything? We mightn't agree with some people on everything, or anything, but if they're saved by the grace of God they're still saints. We're united in a body, it's nothing to do with a particular persuasion, it's nothing to do with what you are as an individual, it's nothing to do with the party that you belong to, or the faction or the political movement or the theological doctrine that you hold, it's because you're in Christ.

We've got to move on. Fourthly, in spite of their sin they were still recipients of God's grace. I'll tell you, my heart has been warmed today - verses 3 and 4: 'Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always' - every time I get a chance, it means - 'on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ'. Do you know the grace of God is wonderful? It has past benefits, it has present benefits, it has future benefits - and they're all found in this passage. The past benefits are here: the grace of God which was given to you - not as the Authorised 'which is', the Greek is 'which was given to you and confirmed in you'. The Greek tense literally means, it's in the oris (sp?) tense, an action completed at a particular definite moment in time - grace! You don't work for it, you're not going to get it some day and qualify for it, it's been given to you at conversion!

What's grace? It's favour, unmerited, unrepayable - it doesn't need to be repaid again to God, He doesn't expect it to be repaid again, and in fact you cannot repay it again. Let me tell you this, maybe there's somebody in this gathering tonight and they have never really known the joy of the grace of God, the unmerited favour, not of works lest any man should boast. Let me tell you tonight that the grace of God cannot coexist with three things: one, guilt, it cannot coexist with guilt. God is not up there saying: 'One false move, my boy, and I'm finished with you'. If you're in Christ that's not the way God works. He's not up there in heaven, He's not saying 'I'll save you only if you try never to sin again, if your life weighs up to it'. Let me tell you what the word of God says and what God is saying from His heart: 'if you're justified by faith', Romans 5, 'you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience'. It is the grace of God that we stand in, and you've got to accept the reality of the joy of God's forgiveness and enjoy it and rest in it!

Grace cannot coexist with obligation: 'Right, He's saved me and now I have to try and repay Him'. That's not grace, you can't repay the grace of God - it's not a loan, it's a gift! It's free for the taking, and of course we serve God with all our heart, and we owe a great deal of love toward Him in service, but it's not through trying to repay it's because we belong to Him, it's because we have a new nature. We're children and we're trying to obey and please our heavenly Father! Thirdly it cannot coexist with human merit. You know, there are a lot of people, poor Roman Catholic people, people in the cults, people in many religions that are trying to work their way to God, and they believe that it is through human merit that they will get to heaven. Grace cannot coexist with human merit. Some people believe you only get grace when you're good enough! How can that be? The Scriptures teach that our righteousnesses are as filthy rags in the sight of God! The good things that we try to do don't impress God. How does that type of mentality of salvation weigh up with the tax collectors and the drunkards and the sinners and the demoniacs and the prostitutes that the Lord Jesus went about preaching good news to and forgiving their sins? It doesn't weigh up! The thief on the cross hadn't that privilege that perhaps you want to have! What about the Corinthians, the ones Paul is extending the grace of God to? Think about it...

We sit down and we watch the television and the news and we see starving people in Africa, we see poor people in Afghanistan, we see people losing their homes through floods in Vietnam and in Asia. We say: 'How come I'm so comfortable? How come I'm so happy? How come we don't get any of this in our country?'. When you ponder it for a moment, do you suddenly go 'Oh, eureka, I deserve it and they don't!'? Is that the way it is? No, it's not the way it is. We don't deserve anything, and that is what the grace of God is: that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.

We've got to move on, we've so much to get through. Spiritually gifted, also in spite of their sin, verses 5, 6 and 7. This is present grace, God lavishes on them a provision, everything they needed! This phrase 'not lacking any spiritual gift' could also mean 'you are not deficient in the exercise of your spiritual gifts'. It's not that they had them and they weren't using them, boy were they using them - to excess, that was one of the problems causing chaos in the church! But they had things, spiritual gifts, that God had given to them - he lists speech and knowledge. They had been endowed with eloquence, flowery preaching; they had been given the teaching of Paul and Apollos and other great preachers; they had great knowledge given to them - but still they were disobedient, but Paul didn't ignore the fact that God had blessed them richly.

Now you remember from last week, I hope, that there were people running around believing that they were the elect - the only ones that had the knowledge of God. It was the seeds of Gnosticism, people who were believing that they had a special light of God from heaven and they knew a little bit more. They were going around like prophets revealing things to people. There were the Sophists, Sophia, who believed in wisdom and flowery speech - not so much the content of what you were saying, but the way you were saying it was what was important to them. Here you have those two things: speech and knowledge, but Paul is making a bit of sarcasm, and he's saying that the grace of God has given all of you speech and knowledge! Not just these high and mighty people that are claiming to be over you all in the church, but everybody in the church has been given the speech necessary - the word is actually 'logos', the word of God that was with God in the beginning. Everybody has been given in the church 'gnosis', that's the word that we get Gnosticism from, it's not just a select few but everybody has been given it - you don't need a guru, you don't need a modern-day prophet or a priest, all you need is Jesus Christ and to be one of His children and you've got everything you need.

They had spiritual gifts, and verse 6 tells us that that was proof of their testimony. I would have been running here with both feet in my mouth and saying: 'You don't have a testimony', Paul says that they had miraculous spiritual gifts that proved they had a testimony. Sixthly they were awaiting Christ's return. The Greek literally means, if you look at verses 7 to 9, they wait with eager anticipation and with activity. They were revelling in the gifts that they had, and Paul later on tells them that what they have today is nothing compared to what they're going to get one day. Do you remember it? Tongues shall cease, remember that passage? 'Tongues shall cease, then that which is perfect shall come; you see through a glass darkly now, but then you shall see face-to-face'.

In spite of their sin they were eternally secure. Verse 6 mentions the word 'confirmed': 'Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you', it's the same word in verse 8, 'Who shall also confirm you'. It is absolutely definite, it's a legal term in the Greek language which is a guarantee that settles a transaction. God is saying through Paul: 'God has settled the contract of your salvation'. Can I ask you tonight: if God has told you in His word how to get saved, if He tells you it's through grace alone by faith alone in Christ alone, and He tells you that after you're saved He will perpetually cleanse you in the precious blood of His Son - will He abandon you? Will He let you go? Will He go back on His promise? Never! Why? Verse 9: 'God is faithful'.

This is imputed righteousness, and how often Paul mentions in this book and in his epistles the phrase 'in Christ'. Look how many times he mentions Christ in this first chapter, what's his argument? It's all about Christ, it's not about you Corinthians, even the awful life that you're living - it's about the grace of God unto salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that, eighthly, he is confident of their perfection. Imagine! He's telling these people: 'One day God is going to have you presented before Him absolutely blameless, unimpeachable, faultless!'. For those He predestined, He called; and those He called, He justified; those He justified, He glorified - and that's all at the one and the same time, you can't separate them. If you are justified, my friend, there's a day coming when you will be glorified. He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.

I'm finished. How can he be so optimistic? I'll tell you how he can be so optimistic: because he is confident in the faithfulness and the grace of God. Friends, do you know what we need? We need to get our eyes off our human frailty, and we need to get our eyes onto the faithfulness of our heavenly Father.

Let me finish with this story, if you have to go you can go. Some people will say: 'But is that not a licence to sin?'. There was a pastor out on the golf course on one occasion - too many of them are out too often! But he was out there anyway, and he got a phone call on his mobile and it was a police officer to say that his young son was down in the prison jail and he needed to be bailed out. He thought it was a joke and he took some of his pastoral staff with him from the golfing green, down to the place, and what embarrassment he had when he saw it was his own son. One of the first things that those pastoral friends said to that son was: 'How could you do that when you know who your father is?'. If he was feeling guilty, that made him feel all the more guilty. What is Paul saying in these first few verses? 'This is who your Father is, how can you do it?'.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - September 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

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1 Corinthians - Chapter 3

"Dealing With Division - Part 1"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 1:10-17

1.      Listen To The Plea For Unity (verse 10)

2.      Locate The Parties Of Division (verses 11-12)

3.      Learn The Principle Of Oneness In Christ (verse 13)

4.      Labour The Priority Of Preaching The Cross (verses 14-17)

First Corinthians chapter 1, then, is our reading for this evening. If you can remember, two Monday nights ago we looked specifically at the city of Corinth and all that it meant for Paul to be writing a letter into such a situation as was going on the city of Corinth - and we thought of it under the title of "The Reason It Was Written". Last week we looked specifically at the grace of God that Paul ministers to these great sinners, and if you're familiar with the book of 1 Corinthians - and I would urge you, please, to read all of it in the subsequent weeks - you will see how far this church had backslidden, and indeed imbibed the culture and the morality of the city of Corinth. There were many many problems - I don't think there's ever been a problematic church just like the church at Corinth - yet Paul came, and before he corrects them and ministers to them he gives them the grace of God that is greater than all our sin.

We're going to look tonight at the division that was in the church and how Paul dealt with it, and how Paul exhorted them to deal with it, and indeed how we as believers in this modern contemporary age ought to approach and face division within the church Jesus Christ. We're beginning to read at verse 10: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions", or strife, "among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect".

One of the reasons, I believe, the cults are so successful in recruiting people in the day and age in which we live, is because of the tremendous unity that they experience in their ranks. Disunity and lack of harmony is not tolerated whatsoever, you're just simply put out. In the world in which we live, particularly in the church in which we live and move and have our being, many folk who name the name of Christ are disillusioned with the division and the lack of unity there is among those who name Christ Jesus as their Lord. It seems that, in the church at large today, and as a little microcosm in local churches right across our land and across the Western world particularly, division is a great problem. Strife is rife within the church at large, and within local assemblies. Now, if you've lived upon this earth for any length of time, you realise that quarrels and problems and troubles and arguments are a part of life in general - you can't avoid them. From your infancy and youth you stamp your feet, you throw your toys down, and you have quarrels right from the very beginning. You go through your teenage stages and you fight, and you rebel against authority and your parents. There are so many aspects of quarrels in life - in the sports field, in the office, between businesses, in politics - we see it in our own land, and even between nations that we're seeing on a larger scale in the day and age in which we live, between Islamic nations, particularly Iraq and the United States and our own United Kingdom. Strife is a problem right throughout the whole spectrum of life's experience, on small levels and on large levels. But the church Jesus Christ is not exempt from it, the reason why that simply is is that the root of all strife and contention and quarrels is sin.

You don't need to look any further than the church of Jesus Christ at Corinth to see that the church is made up of saints, yes, as we saw in the first verses of this chapter, but saints are not people that are portrayed on stained glass windows, but they are simply sinners who've been saved by the grace of God. You remember last week we could look at the list of the lifestyle of what these people lived in before they were converted. There were homosexuals among them, adulterers, idolaters, thieves and murders, and all kinds of wicked people - but God had saved them by grace. The problems that the church is facing in Corinth are because they're still sinners, and the root of all quarrels and strife is sin. The root of all sin is self-will, because from the day that we are born until the day that we die the real seed of sinfulness is ego - looking after number one, putting yourself first and before other people. That's the real motivation behind sin, right from Adam and Eve in the very beginning, they thought that God was robbing them of something. Satan came along to them and said: 'Yea, hath God said? If you eat of this fruit you'll be as gods - God is trying to deny you of something that is your right!'. And because they felt: 'Well, I've got to look after number one, not look after God or worship God, but look after me', sin came upon all flesh, and death because of that sin.

If we look at the book of James, if you'll turn with me to it, the epistle of James chapter 4 verse 1. James tells us where problems come from in life in general, and specifically in the assembly, he says: 'From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not'. Strife and war and problems and quarrels come about in an assembly, and indeed in the whole universe, because of people looking after their own self interests, looking after ego, number one.

John MacArthur, the expositor and preacher, has said this about strife in the local church, and I think it's tremendous - listen very carefully: 'Strife brings fractured fellowship into the church of Jesus Christ, which robs Christians of joy and effectiveness. It robs God of glory, and it robs the world of the true testimony of the gospel - a high price for an ego trip'. It robs Christians of joy and effectiveness, it robs God of glory, and it robs the world of a genuine authentic testimony of who Jesus Christ is in the world today. I think, and I hope that you agree with me, when I say tonight that there are few things other than strife in the church that will demoralise Christians, that will discourage them, drag them down, will weaken the church of Jesus Christ. One of the biggest problems we face today in Christendom in the West does not come from that big bad world outside that we're all so afraid of, but it comes from within! Bickering, backbiting, fighting - few things so effectively undermine the testimony of the gospel before the world than the behaviour of believers who are quarrelling and fighting among themselves.

Now, I know this is the way preachers always get on about quarrelling and fighting, but I want you to see that Paul had great sins to deal with in the church at Corinth, you know all about them: incest, getting drunk at the Lord's Table, all sorts of adulteries, worshipping idols, many great sins that we put at the top ten of transgressions as we know them - but what is the first sin that Paul deals with in this epistle? Divisiveness, and of course the problem of divisiveness is the problem of people. You go to your work - maybe you don't work, but you live in a neighbourhood, you rub shoulders with people day by day - and you've heard the saying that where people are there will be problems, and that is exactly the same in the church of Jesus Christ. We've got problems because we're ordinary people with ordinary problems, and we're just sinners, we're trying to conform ourselves by the Spirit of God more to the image of Christ day by day as we get to glory - but we're still people, we're still human beings! Now we all know the promises that the Lord Jesus gives us, I quoted one of them in our prayer, that He will build His church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We were singing in our first hymn about the unity that there's meant to be within the church of Jesus Christ. In the prayer that is commonly called the high priestly prayer of the Lord in John 17, He prays that all of God's children, the church, would be one and would reflect the glory of God in the world today. We've got to ask the question: with so many divisions, so many quarrels and differentiations of doctrine and practice among those who name the name of Christ, has the purpose and the plan of Christ and God in Christianity been frustrated? Has the plan been shattered?

Conversely we have to ask: is it impossible that it should ever be fulfilled? Will we ever get to the realisation of a united church of Jesus Christ, united in truth and grace and in love? Well, my simple answer to that question is: no, it's not impossible; and no, Christianity and the plans of God in His church are not frustrated. I quote this man, a very wise man, Roy Lauren, in his answer to that question: 'But as long as Christians behave as humans and not Christians, it will be impossible' - did you get that? As long as Christians behave as humans and not as Christians, as long as they remain under the dominion of the flesh and refuse the dominion of Christ, there will be the kind of factionalism that existed in the church of Corinth.

There are two types of men mentioned in the book of 1 Corinthians. There is the carnal man, and there is the spiritual man; and the carnal man deals in division, and the spiritual man deals with unity. Paul, in these comments from verses 10 to 17, outlines for us a wonderful plan of how we in our day and age ought to deal with division. The first thing that he tells us to do is listen to his plea, and indeed the plea of the Holy Spirit through Paul, for unity within the church. It's found in verse 10: 'I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment'. What an impassioned plea gives! 'I want you all to be unanimous in your faith for the Lord Jesus Christ'. Now this is something that can't be created by a basis of belief, or by a constitution of doctrine, or by the commandments and regulations of men, but Paul tells us that this is something that begins in the mind and moves on to the heart. Verse 10, at the end: 'that ye be together, joined in the same mind and in the same judgment'.

As we've been going through the book, the epistle to the Philippians, on Sunday mornings, one thing that we touched on particularly yesterday morning was that in relation to humility in the church of Jesus Christ and unity among Christians, one thing needs to be established in the Christian mind and the Christian heart, and that is called 'attitude'. Walking through the town sometimes I see these teenagers with this on their T-shirt: 'I have an attitude problem' - I was thinking of buying maybe a hundred of them for some people, Christians, that I know! 'I have an attitude problem' - they don't need a T-shirt because it's written all across their face! An attitude will determine first of all, not a constitution, not a doctrine, but what is our attitude to life, what is our attitude to other believers, what is our attitude to the Lord Jesus Christ and His Lordship in my life - that will determine whether we are united or whether we are divided in the church!

Now people get this idea of Christian unity that we have to surrender our minds up to somebody else, that we have to give our wills over to some church leader, and we're not allowed to think any more for ourselves, and somebody else acts on our behalf. That is the thing of cults, strange Eastern religions, that is not the unity that Christ speaks of in His word - the unity in the Spirit. It's not some kind of dictatorship, but it is a unity nevertheless, but a unity that is based on the common leadership of the Lord Jesus Christ - a surrender not to a human being alone, but a surrender to Him, to His word, and to His Spirit as His Spirit guides us through the word to its precepts and principles.

Let me illustrate it to you like this: in 1887 a very famous musician by the name of Leopold Damrosch organised a musical festival in the city of New York. He trained so many groups, there was going to be a massive orchestra that would come to this festival, and singers that were going to join in, that he had to train them in various different cities at different times, all separated. There was a choir in New York, there was a choir in Brooklyn, in Newark, in Philadelphia, and Albany - and they were all drilled separately and taught separately, and trained, but they were all brought to concert perfection in their abilities. When they were all brought together into New York for that final grand finale of a festival and celebration concert, they all sang in perfect harmony - what was the reason? Because they were all drilled by the same leader to the same pitch and the same note. When that is done there will be harmony! As Paul says in verse 10, we will be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement.

Now verse 10 really begins the proper letter that we have before us. We've got past all the introduction and the salutation of the letter, and he's now breaking the letter into two parts. The first part, in chapters 1 through to 6 verse 20, is a response to the problems that Paul heard about by word of mouth. There were three messengers that came to him, hearing from the house of Chloe that there were problems in the church, and in chapters 1 through to 6 Paul addresses those verbal problems that have been relayed to him. Then in the further chapters, in chapter 7 through to the end, chapter 16, he deals with the problems that were written to him specifically by the Corinthians on a previous occasion. They wrote a letter to Paul outlining all the problems that they had. So the part that we're entering into tonight is Paul dealing with the problems that he'd heard verbally from the house of Chloe.

Let me give you a little lesson before we go any further, because there's a great principle here about how to deal with problems and divisions within the assembly. I'm not getting at anybody tonight, because I haven't the mind to even remember if anybody has done this, or who they were anyway, but people at times have come to me and said: 'Now, I'm going to tell you something here, and I don't want you to tell the person that I've told you this..'. Have you been there? Chloe didn't do that - 'I'm going to tell you something, but I never want it ever to come out that I've told you this, and it's awful, you're never going to believe it, and the testimony of this brother has been just brought down and you men better do something about it, but I don't want you to tell anybody that I've told you this' - Chloe, whoever she was, and we know very little about her, but I know this much: she was upfront, and she didn't mind her name being put to this accusation, because she was determined that the problems in Corinth would be sorted out. She wasn't dealing in tittle-tattle, she was dealing in the welfare of the testimony of Jesus Christ in Corinth, which was a strategic place for the Gospel to go right across the whole Mediterranean - that's what was in her heart, that's what ought to be in our heart! Not pulling someone else down by gossip!

What a lesson we have here, that we ought to face problems like men! Deal with them like men! Some of the men running around are more like women, the way they get on, the way they talk, the way they gossip! Friends, we need to stand up to the problems that we have within our assembly, within the people within our assembly, if we have them we face up to them in the right way - that is what Paul is pleading with the Corinthians to do: face your problems. That's why he uses the word: 'I exhort you, I beseech you'. Now the Greek word for 'beseech' there, or 'exhort', is the word 'parakalio', which is the word we get 'parakletos' from, which is the word we get 'the Holy Spirit' from. I told you recently, I can't even remember when it was, that 'paraklete' means 'to come alongside', and that's what the Holy Spirit does for us - He comes alongside, He helps us, He strengthens us, He takes our arm and helps us through. That's what the Lord said in John 14: 'I'm going away, but I will not leave you orphans, I will send another parakletos unto you, another comforter to come alongside you and carry you and help you'. In 1 John 2 verse 1 it's translated 'advocate', one who represents you, one who defends you and stands on your behalf.

Now why does Paul use this word here? He says: 'I want to help you. This is my motivation, I'm not coming to hammer the living daylights out of you because you've failed, but I want to come alongside you to exhort you and to help you and to build you up'. That displays his spirit, doesn't it? Paul knew their sins, boy did he know them, and we had a little glimpse into them - nothing like what Paul knew them as - but yet he comes to them, and not only does he say 'I want to help you', but he calls them brothers! We saw earlier, in an earlier study, that he calls them saints; and then we saw last week that he ministers the grace of God to them; and then in verse 10 he now calls them 'brethren'. He's showing them affection and love, that he's concerned, that he wants to come alongside and lift them up by the arm. But that's not all he's wanting to communicate: remember in the first verse he asserted his apostleship? He was wanting to declare to these Corinthians: 'I have authority, I've got a right to tell you these things', but now in verse 10 he's no longer asserting his authority, but he's coming to them and he's moderating his harshness, and he's showing them that he is a brother just like them, but go a step further: this is the implication of being brethren in Christ, you've got to act like family members.

There's got to be that filial love, treat one another in a brotherly fashion, with a brotherly love. Look at verse 9, he says: 'God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord'. 'You've been called into the fellowship of His Son, but now I also implore you by the same name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you fellowship with your brothers and sisters, that you agree with one another, and you eliminate any division with one another'. He uses the name of the Lord Jesus Christ because the basis of his plea for believers to be unified is the fact that we are all one anyway in Christ! Do you see it? We're all unified, we're all stuck together in the body of Christ. We've all different jobs, we're different members, but the basis for his plea for these Corinthians to be united together is because ultimately not only does it dishonour the witness of the church, but it dishonours the name of the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I could go on a long treatise about denominationalism, and there's a great danger of denominationalism in our world today, but that's not specifically what this passage is talking about because Paul is writing into a local assembly, a local church situation. He's telling believers in a church just like this: 'I want you all to agree'. Did you hear that? I want you all to agree! Now, are you saying in your head or in your heart: 'Well, that's impossible, there's no way that that can be possible, how could it even be possible in a church like Corinth'? But do you know something? God doesn't give us the word of God and these standards on the basis of our human ability, He gives us commands, He gives us promises on the basis of divine provision. God never ever, right throughout the Scriptures, demotes His own standards and practices because of our human limitations, but He does the exact opposite: He provides the strength and the ability that we need to do what He commands - that is the miracle of salvation in Christ! He can make us into something by grace that we could never of ourselves ever be!

It's not impossible, it's not impossible that we should all agree, it's not impossible - as he says in verse 10 - that we should all speak the same thing. All speaking the same thing! I think nothing is more confusing for new Christians in the day and age in which we live and even unbelievers looking from outside inside through our glass windows at how believers fight in the local church, how they bicker, how they all seem not to be saying the same thing but saying different things altogether! One thing is for sure: a church locally cannot be spiritually healthy, it cannot be harmonious and effective in the world, unless they have unity in love and in truth of doctrine in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in unity with Christ, in unity with His word, His ways and His will.

Now the problem in Corinth, and the problem with many of us today, is that there were divisions. Paul says: 'I want there to be no divisions' - the word for 'divisions' is the Greek word 'schismata', which is the word we get 'schism' from that we were singing about in our first hymn: 'The Church's One Foundation'. The word 'schism' simply means 'to tear, or to rip apart'. Physically it means to break something to pieces, but there's a deeper meaning than just to separate, there's a metaphorical meaning: the difference of opinion that can come between two people - schismata - a division of judgement, dissension. Let me give you an example of this within the Gospels. Remember the Lord Jesus came to the disciples and said: 'Whom do men say that I am?'. The disciples said: 'Well, some say you're Elijah, some say that you're another great prophet, some even think perhaps you are the Christ'. Then of course you know what ramified, that Peter was asked: 'Whom do you say that I am?', and he said: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God'. But John reports that after that there arose division in the multitude because of Him, John 7:43, and the word for 'division' there is 'schisma' - there arose a schisma in the multitude because of Jesus, and there are still divisions today in the world - the greatest division of all between the saved and the lost, because of the division that Christ makes. You remember He said Himself that He had not come to bring peace on the earth, but to bring war, to bring division in the household between a father and a son, and a mother and a daughter, and a husband and a wife.

Sadly, even within the church of Jesus Christ, there is this schismata, this separateness, division of judgement and dissension - and particularly in relation to doctrine. Turn with me to Romans 16 - it's just across the page, of course, from 1 Corinthians - verse 17. Paul tells the church of Rome: 'I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them'. One of the greatest threats to the church of Jesus Christ is schism over doctrine. There should be unity in our doctrine, I'm talking about fundamental doctrine not secondary points - although I believe in the local church there should be unity upon those things for the working of the wheels of the mechanism of how we practice things according to the word of God. But on fundamental issues there ought to be unity, we ought to be saying the same thing - but I would take it even further and I would say that there's got to be unity in decision-making within the church of Jesus Christ. There's got to be unity among the elders who make the decisions, there's got to be unity among the church that the elders make the decisions, there's got to be a confidence in the elders that they are godly men, and they are making decisions in prayer and supplication, and that they are seeking God's will by the Holy Spirit. We need, even on that level, to be thinking the same thoughts, to be speaking the same words, and to be all agreeing - and I say this: if we are not all agreeing, it is divisiveness!

I've heard, I don't know who it is, I know nothing about it, I just bring these things to you - if the cap fits, wear it! - but some people have favourite elders. Favourite elders! 'He's my elder' - I probably don't fit into any of your categories it all! - but you'll see later this is exactly what Paul is reprimanding within the church of Corinth. You don't have favourite anything! You're all the one thing, you're the body of Christ, you've all to think the same thing, you've all to speak the same thing, for you are the same thing! There are to be no schisms among us, and that's why he tells you: 'You're to be perfectly joined together', verse 10, made complete. Now that word in the Greek is used in classical Greek and New Testament Greek, and in the New Testament Gospels it's used of mending nets. In Galatians it's used of bones, dislocated joints, being joined again. It's spoken of as broken utensils being mended, and torn garments being darned. We're to be joined together, we're to be made complete - not just externally, that's to happen, 'in the same judgement' Paul says; but also internally, 'in the same mind'. We're not to walk around saying: 'Oh, I agree with him' - in the same mind, internally. We are to be bound together according to the will of God, and it all comes down to attitudes - attitudes!

Are there any attitude problems in this assembly? From the top down, when a decision is made and you don't think it's the right decision, that you quibble with it? You maybe even quarrel over it, you discuss it with other people, you don't come to the people who make the decisions and face them with it like Chloe did? You have your own little 'Councils of Jerusalem', maybe over a cup of coffee! This is division! Division is carnal! What happens when there is division in the church ought to be what happened in Acts 15. Let's take a little bit of time, I'm never going to get through this tonight, but Acts 15 verse 2. There arose a controversy in the city of Antioch over Judaising, those people who said: 'Well, you can get saved, and Christ died for you, but you still have to keep the law, you still have to keep the commandments and be circumcised and go through all the ritualistic ceremonies of Judaism'. Of course, this caused a great fiasco within the church, and many of the epistles are written into this situation. We see it in verse 2 of chapter 15: 'When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question'. So they went to the apostles to ask them what they thought of this dissension - now note, please, they went to the right people first! They didn't go and tittle-tattle, they were concerned, and this is the sign of whether you're really concerned about the work of God - who you go to with the problem!

So we find that the apostles met over this matter, they discussed it, we read on in the chapter that they prayed and they settled it. Their decision was put in a letter and it was circulated around the churches that were involved, and this is what they were able to say at the end of it all, and this is the way decisions should be made in the assembly - verse 28: 'It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things', and he lists for them all the requirements that need to be made. But look at what they say: 'It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, here are the directives that we have found as we have given ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the word of God'. If there's a problem bring it to the elders; if there's a problem, elders, pray over it, seek the Holy Spirit - but one thing's for sure: if both of us do that, the church of Jesus Christ will be of one mind, they will be saying the same thing, thinking the same thoughts, there will be no schisms among them but they will be perfectly joined together - just like the early Church at the beginning! It was said of them in Acts 4 and verse 32: 'And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common'.

How do you deal with division? Well, you need to listen to God's plea for unity in the church, but secondly you need to locate the parties of division. If we look at verses 11 and 12 we find that Paul gives us and defines for us various factions that there were in this church. The strife was being caused, the disunity, by loyalty to men rather than loyalty to God. These men were vocal in their opinions, they had little mottos that they shouted all over the place that showed who their identity was to: 'I am of Paul', 'I am of Apollos', 'I am of Cephas', 'I of Christ'. Now let's take a moment to look at each of these, because it's important that we understand what Paul is saying.

First of all he says that there was the 'Paul Party', his own party. If you turn to chapter 4 and verse 15, Paul says: 'Though there are a lot of teachers coming to Corinth and telling you what to do - though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel'. Paul led these Corinthians to the Lord Jesus Christ, in the year and a half ministry that he had in Corinth he preached to them the gospel of the liberty of Christ, that they could be set free from all their sin, and set free from any legalism or any laws that their religion was binding them to, and they came to know Christ through the apostle. Probably because of that a lot of people put him on a pedestal, and began to follow the apostle. Some scholars believe that the licentiousness that was in the church at Corinth, the fact that they seemed to be doing all sorts of things that Christians ought not to do, this antinomianism as if the laws of God didn't exist and they were just living it up and going into all sorts of sins, that this was coming because they were misunderstanding the grace of God in salvation. In Romans 6 Paul says: 'Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?' - some people believe that they thought the grace of God allowed them to abound in sin, and it was probably the little group that followed Paul, Paul preaching the gospel of grace.

Well, we don't know about that, but one thing we're sure about is this: differences in churches usually grow around personalities. Is that not the case? Oh, eventually they become articulated around some matter of doctrine or a dispute of some kind of theological importance, but the likelihood out of all the schisms and divisions is that they originate with a personality clash. There may well be theological disagreement, but the strife emerges because personal relationships are not good! If we were all giving in to the other, if we were all giving in to the Lord Jesus in our attitude, in our understanding of the word of God, in our surrender to Him and one another, there would be no personality problems, there would be no divisions.

But then there is the 'Apollos Party', it's interesting to me that three out of the four parties are all against Paul, and he was the one that led them to the Lord Jesus in the first place! The 'Apollos Party' - Paul left Corinth after year and a half ministry there, and then Apollos arrived. We read in Acts chapter 18 all about him, if you look at Acts chapter 18 for a moment you see what a great man this man Apollos was. Acts 18 verse 18: 'And Paul after this tarried there yet a good while, and then took his leave of the brethren, and sailed thence into Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila; having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow'. So he left, and we read on in the passage, we don't have time to read it, but verse 24: 'And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John'. And we read on that in his eloquence he was able to persuade many men to trust Christ.

We know that this man Apollos came from the city of Alexandria in Egypt, which probably was the most respected university city in the modern world of that day. He was intellectual, he was extremely scripturally astute, he was eloquent in his delivery of the word of God and in his preaching, and I'm certain that the Greeks - who loved eloquence, remember the Sophists that we talked about in weeks gone by who didn't really care what you were saying as long as you said it the right way - they would have just lapped up Apollos. They were enamoured with rhetoric and with argumentative skills, and we read later on the Paul even admits himself that he wasn't a great preacher in style that came across, that perhaps the language that he used, or the tone of his voice, he didn't impress the Greeks - but this man Apollos did. If Paul, perhaps, was the source - I don't mean the direct source, it wasn't Paul's fault, it wasn't Apollos' fault - but these people's misunderstanding of their preaching, of their eloquence, led to their licentiousness, doing all sorts of things in the Paul camp, and then in the Apollos camp it led to elitism: 'We want to be the best preachers, we want we to be loved by everybody for the way we preach, or the way we sound, by how intellectual we are'. We know that in the church at Corinth there was this intellectualism that had arisen, probably from the Apollos faction.

Then we move on to the 'Cephas Party'. 'Cephas' is an Aramaic transliteration of the word 'Peter', it's the apostle Peter that is being talked about here. We don't know if Peter ever visited Corinth, but one thing is for sure: I'm sure the church had heard about the apostle Peter, the great pillar of the church, the great apostle to the Jews, one of the original twelve - Paul wasn't one of the original twelve, neither was Apollos - oh but this man was, Cephas! 'He's the best out of that three, that's for certain! We'll follow him, he saw the Lord, he walked with the Lord' - and no wonder, with all the credentials that Peter had, that a personality cult arose around him, probably mainly of Jewish believers. We know from this book that there were people who were falling into the Judaising camp, legalists believing you had to obey the law, believing that you had to withdraw from the world, you had to remain celibate, and they probably came from the Cephas Party.

Then fourthly there is the 'Christ Party', and this takes the biscuit, this is the best of them all! 'I of Christ' - at a quick glance you would think: 'Well, they're quite commendable, they're saying we don't want to be led by any mere man, we're too holy to get into all this party political staff within the church of Jesus Christ, we are people that want to be taught directly from the Lord. The Lord is our Leader, the Lord is our Captain!'. They probably thought that human authorities of any kind were unnecessary, that you didn't need to follow elders or deacons or anything like that - but instead they claimed: 'We belong to Christ'. That's what it means, these men are in as much fault as the other three, because in theory what they're saying is not: 'We belong to Christ', but 'Christ belongs to us and not you other three'. We don't have to go very far till we find that spirit, do we? David Prior speaks of it like this: 'Their emphasis and their language are usually above reproach, and their hotline to God can be very intimidating. The net result of their presence in the church is that most other people feel spiritually inadequate - 'We don't get clear messages from the Lord, we have no comparable sense of immediacy in prayer, we cannot match such unswerving certainty about the will of the Lord' - and there is always a faint but discernible error of spiritual superiority when members of this group are present, and it is not easy to cope with their comments such as 'The Lord has told me that...''.

There was a group that later became the Gnostics, who believed that they were the elite, not that they belonged to Christ but that Christ belonged to them - and you had to be one of them, you had to be enlightened just like they were, or you wouldn't be saved. Do you know what is a tragedy of this church at Corinth that is brought to us in AD95, 40 years after Paul wrote this letter? Clement of Rome, a Christian in the early Church, says that these cliques and these divisions were still in the church, and he mentions the party of Paul, he mentions the party of Apollos and Cephas, but strangely he doesn't mention the party of Christ. Do you know why? Because these are usually the ones who say: 'This church isn't holy enough for me, I've got to move on', and they break away - and here they broke away.

We have to close all this up tonight, but what have we learnt? I'll tell you what we've learnt: we need go no further in this book to realise that spirituality produces humility, spirituality produces unity, but it is carnality that produces pride and division. Someone has rightly said: 'The smallest man in the church is often the biggest problem'! That man who's never been big enough or mature enough to be trusted with anything in the church is able to tell you how to run the church! Carnality that leads to pride and division, small statured Christians who are Christianity's biggest problem. It is not the giant critic from without that is the problem, but the little contender that is within that is the problem. We have a danger in this church, in churches like our church, and in the West in general with all the wealth that we have of becoming sermon-tasters who follow after men and lose our focus, what it ought to be.

What ought it to be? Turn with me, and we read this for our final statement tonight - Hebrews chapter 12. Keep your study sheet for next week. Hebrews chapter 12, and before I read it can I ask you: where is your focus? Is it on a pet doctrine? Is it on your favourite preacher? Is it on your particular tipple of theology? The writer to the Hebrews says in verse 2: 'Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God'. Did Paul die for you? Let us fix our eyes on Jesus.

Let's bow our heads: Father, we pray that You will deliver us from Christian celebrities, from putting men on pedestals and following them, bringing obeisance to them. Father, would You protect us from division, Lord, that we will be of one mind, that we will speak the same thing, that we will speak the same words to one another, that we will seek guidance of God and know that the Holy Spirit is leading us. For Lord, we know all too well that when this world looks at the church and sees all the divisiveness and bickering and quarrelling they can't see Christ, because they can't see past the Christians. Lord, how will they ever see Christ if we don't fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith? Lord, lift our eyes upon Him, to look full in His wonderful face, that the things of earth - the carnal things - may grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and His grace. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 4

"Dealing With Division - Part 2"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 1:10-17

1.      Listen To The Plea For Unity (verse 10)

2.      Locate The Parties Of Division (verses 11-12)

3.      Learn The Principle Of Oneness In Christ (verse 13)

4.      Labour The Priority Of Preaching The Cross (verses 14-17)

We're turning to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 again. You didn't receive a study brochure tonight because you were meant to keep last week's one, and I hope you did, if you didn't there are probably some spare ones about, you can get them on the way out. I'm sure somebody beside you will share theirs with you if you haven't got one. We only got through the first two points of our message last week, and we'll deal with the latter two again tonight, but we'll read all the verses as we read them last week from verse 10.

"Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions", remember we saw that the Greek word is 'schismata', which we get the word 'schism' from, or we often use the word 'split', "no divisions among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment". That phrase 'perfectly joined together' was a phrase that was often used of the knitting of broken bones together again, or the sewing of garments - "joined together in the same mind in the same judgement. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions", or quarrels, or strife, "among you. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius; Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect".

Our title last week was: 'Dealing with Division', and we'll look at the second part this evening - but last week we meditated for a few moments on the fact that there are few things that so effectively undermine the testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world today as division among those who call themselves Christ's ones. If you look down at your sheet you'll see that the first way that Paul exhorts those in the church in Corinth who were in division, to sort out the division and deal with the division, was first of all to listen to the plea of God's Holy Spirit for unity through the apostle Paul. He pleaded with them that there be no schisms, no divisions, verse 10, among you but that you all be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgement - you all think the same thoughts and speak the same words. Remember that this is something that can't come about by church constitutions, or even by basis of belief or the commandments of men, but it's something that begins in the mind, it is something that evolves out of a heart that is in a right attitude toward Christ first and foremost, and also in a right attitude to our brethren and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. That will only happen when we hear the plea of the Holy Spirit through the word of God, that we all be perfectly joined together and that there be no divisions among us.

The second way that we saw that we deal with disunity within the assembly and within the church at large is to locate the parties of that division, whatever the division may be. In Corinth, specifically in verses 11 and 12, we see the parties outlined very clearly. Paul had got word from three messengers from the house of Chloe that there were strifes and quarrels among them, and chiefly there were four parties that had evolved in the church at Corinth: those who were saying 'Well, I of Paul', probably those who followed Paul's gospel of grace but followed it into licentiousness and antinomianism, which means that they lived absolute liberty to the excess, where they were indulging in all sorts of awful sins because they felt that they could do that because God had forgiven and God would cleanse all their future sins too. So they plunged themselves into the varied sins of Corinth. We don't know whether that's a fact, but it's probably the case. Then there were those who said 'Well, I am of Apollos', he was a great orator, he was the intellectual one from Alexandria in Egypt. He was the one who the Greeks would have loved to have listened to in all his eloquence and flowery speech. That's probably where the piety and the intellectualism within the church at Corinth arose, from this sect of those who followed Apollos. They weren't as concerned about what Apollos was saying, as much as the way he was saying it. Then there were those who said 'I am of Cephas', the Aramaic word for 'Peter'. These were probably Jews, those who wanted to still follow the law, who wanted to still get all men circumcised and go through all the Jewish law and rituals of ceremony and practice, but of course we know that that is contrary to the gospel, and the book of Galatians teaches us that. Then there are the most pious and pompous and hypocritical of them all who say 'I am of Christ. We do not follow a man, in fact we don't follow the authoritarianism or a hierarchy of any men, we belong to ourselves but we follow Christ. We are above all the rest in our sort of spiritual knowledge, and first-class special experiences'.

So these are the parties that Paul could locate in the church of Corinth, but really we could narrow it all down to this: Paul is telling them that there are two types of people in this church of Jesus Christ in Corinth, and indeed in the church of Jesus Christ today worldwide, there are those who are spiritual and there are those who are carnal. The spiritual's spirituality will be evidenced in humility and in unity; and carnality will be evidenced in pride and divisiveness. It all comes down to where your focus is, and the verse that we ended with last Monday evening was Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 2. We're not to look unto Paul, we're not to look unto Apollos or unto Cephas, but we are to look unto Christ: 'Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross'. If our focus is on the Lord Jesus we will not have loyalty to mere men.

Now the context of all the teaching and practice and principles that are found in the letter of 1 Corinthians obviously is written into the situation of a local church, and we must always apply it to our modern-day situations in our local churches. But I believe that the principles that are applied to the local church here in our text, verses 10 to 17, can also be applied to the present situation within the worldwide church and the divisions that are found in it. So we don't just apply these truths to our own specific locality and assembly, but they must be applied to the church of Jesus Christ at large because we must remember - as this book and as the book of Ephesians specifically outlines for us - that the mystery of the church that was revealed to Christ was for one worldwide church where there were no barriers and no schisms and no denominations. I believe that that was the spirit that many of the great reformers had, and many of the historical Christians that we call the heroes of our faith all down the years had within their hearts and minds.

Martin Luther said on one occasion: 'I pray you leave my name alone, do not call yourselves Lutherans but Christians'. John Wesley said, the founder of Methodism: 'I wish the name Methodist might never be mentioned again, but lost in eternal oblivion'. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who was a Baptist, said: 'I say of the Baptist name: let it perish, and let Christ's own name last forever. I look forward with pleasure to the day when there will not be a Baptist living'. What did Paul say? 'Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?'. Now I want, tonight, to deal with the party spirit and divisions within the local assembly, but I also want us to apply within our hearts and minds this divisiveness that there is that pervades within the worldwide church of Jesus Christ - because ultimately all divisions, whether they're local or whether they're worldwide, all come and stem from the same fundamental problems in the body of Christ.

Let me say right away, before we enter into these verses, that the Bible does not aspire or teach false ecumenism. False ecumenism is simply to deny our fundamental differences and creeds with regards to the gospel and salvation. A prime example and illustration is how many in the Protestant faith are denying the Protestant heritage and the gospel of justification by faith, by grace, ultimately, through God and through the Lord Jesus Christ, and His imputed righteousness unto us, not of works lest any man should boast. They are smudging the demarcation line between that and a gospel of works, a gospel of ritual and religiosity that we find in the Roman Catholic Church. They're saying very sincerely, and with a very loving but misguided spirit: 'Let's all come together and deny our fundamental differences, and let's fellowship one with the other' - even though both of them have two different ways of getting to God, and even two different understandings of God and His salvation. We deny that tonight on the authority of the word of God, we do not countenance or bless any false ecumenism, and I don't want you to misunderstand anything that I'm saying tonight - but let me say this: in our opposition to false ecumenism, we as modern-day Bible believers must stand and be seen to stand with historic biblical Christianity and affirm what is to be known as true ecumenism.

There is false ecumenism, but there is also true ecumenism, where genuine Bible believers who are born-again by the Spirit of God are able to come together in fellowship. The irony today is that those who probably opposed false ecumenism the most vehemently are those who are the most vehemently opposed to true ecumenism. It's strange, isn't it? It's strange that many fundamentalist Bible believers today probably couldn't have fellowship with Luther if he was around today. Many of them couldn't fellowship with John Wesley, or with George Whitfield, or with C.H. Spurgeon. Many of us quote him, many of us read their books, we even wish that we were a bit like them and follow after their standards and the example that they set for us - but yet if they were around today many of us would feel an inability to fellowship with them for one reason or another. It is even more ironic that those, perhaps, who oppose the segregation of Christianity today and delineation of denominations, are those who are the most exclusive and those who are the most divisive themselves.

We must address this according to the word of God and find out where the biblical balance is between false ecumenism and true ecumenism, which is Christian unity that the Bible teaches and which Paul is specifically teaching in these seven verses that we've read together tonight. Anthony T. Evans said these very telling and prophetic words: 'The church of Jesus Christ worldwide today remains the most segregated aspect of Western society'. The church of Jesus Christ today worldwide remains the most segregated aspect of Western society. I hope you will agree with me from your reading of the New Testament that when God had the first thought of the church of Jesus Christ, and revealed that great mystery to Paul, that it was not in view that He would have many things in one place, many churches in Belfast or in Corinth or in Ephesus, but one thing: the church of Jesus Christ in many places right across the globe. You notice that, that these letters are addressed to the church of Corinth, the church at Ephesus, not the first or the second or the third, but the church of God at Corinth.

Let me say that, if you look in the Encyclopaedia Britannica you will find this was the early dream and idealism of the Brethren movement - that labels would fall. For a short period of time in their history it was realised, where there were men and women - clergymen from Anglicanism, ministers from Presbyterianism, Baptists and all sorts of people from different backgrounds who met together and united just under the name of Christ, around the table which was not Baptist or Brethren or Presbyterian or Anglican, but which was the table of the Lord. They fellowshipped without any man-made restrictions or rules - but the massive irony of their history was that that idealism and that biblical dream was shattered by party spirit and by loyalties to men.

The principle that we find within this text here guard us, any of us, against schism in the local assembly and indeed in the church at large. We want to deal with our last two principles that will help us deal with division and indeed prevent division in the assembly. The first that we find is in verse 13: 'Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?'. Here it is: we need to learn the principle of oneness in Christ, we need to learn the principal of oneness in Christ, and Paul uses three rhetorical questions, and the answer to those three questions are 'No' every time. Verse 13: 'Is Christ divided?', the answer is 'No'. 'Was Paul crucified for you?', the answer is 'No'. 'Were ye baptized in the name of Paul?', the answer is 'No'. The implication of those three rhetorical questions is this: if Christ is not divided why are His people divided? If Christ is not divided in body at Corinth, why are there four factions among the church, probably meeting in four different locations, four different houses?

This ought not to be the case, and the central principal: 'What I, Paul, say, is this: is Christ divided?'. It is the unity of the body of Christ, that we as believers are all one in Christ, and if that is the case we never should be instrumental in disrupting or destroying the unity that is in the body of Christ. We saw last week that the embers of their strife and quarrels and cliques was fuelled by combustible pride. There was pride welling up, and as we saw from the book of James, strifes and quarrels and contentions among all believers start from pride within. Lust - we lust after our own name to be seen, to be proud, for people to follow us, to adhere unto us, to bring us obedience. Exactly the same thing happens here, because men had become more concerned with not the issue of baptism, but with who baptized you. They were running around, we believe, boasting about who baptized them. It wasn't the fact that their faith was made authentic by baptism, but they seemed to go a bit further and say how authentic their faith was with regard to the person that baptized them. Whether it was Paul, whether it was Cephas, whether it was Apollos, whoever it might have been - that was what became more important to them, not their baptism but their baptiser!

We find out in the first verse that Paul asserts his apostleship, and he's showing them his authority, but you've got to understand that at no point did Paul the apostle ever seek to bring men and women to himself - he is always bringing men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ. He wants people to know that when they're converted, no matter who they're converted through, no matter what denomination or organisation they come to Christ through, no matter what man or woman baptizes them - it doesn't matter, we are all united and one in Christ, and we ought not to be divided - why? Because there is this principal of oneness in Christ, it is a contradiction to think that the arm of the body of Christ could be severed, or the eye could be plucked out, or the nose could be taken away, because we are all one body.

Doesn't the letter of 1 Corinthians bear that out? Turn to chapter 6 verse 17, he says: 'But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit'. We aren't 110, or 115, or how many people there are here tonight, we aren't 115 spirits. We are joined to Christ and we are all one spirit. Chapter 12, if you turn to it, and verses 12 and 13: 'For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit'. It is a contradiction to have a local church schismata, a split, it's a contradiction! I would go further to say it is a contradiction to have splits in the worldwide church of Jesus Christ. It weakens the witness and testimony of the Gospel, and worst of all it grieves and brings shame to the One who bought them, the One who died to make them one. Let me say to you tonight, no matter who you are or where you come from: if, like these Corinthians, you have to be baptised by a certain man, or you have to be baptized in a certain water - whether it's the Lagan or the Jordan - or you have to be baptised on a certain day, no matter what holy day it is, you have lost the plot! The spirit that is found in the Corinthians here can be found right across Christendom today, and the tragedy of it is this: many are willing to split local churches and schism the fellowship of the church of Jesus Christ at large over mere trivia!

Of course it's not trivia to them, it's fundamental to them, and that's the sign of their Corinthian spirit - when people make things that are non-fundamentals into fundamentals it is a sign that they have lost the plot! Now can I address our folk here in the Iron Hall for a minute, because I'm glad as your Pastor tonight that I'm not a Baptist. I didn't hear any 'Hallelujahs'! I'm not Brethren. People say to me: 'What are you people in the Iron Hall anyway? Are you Baptist, are you Brethren, or are you somewhere in between?'. They want to pigeonhole you, they want to put a label on you - I'm not Baptist! Even when I was in the Baptist, I'm not a Baptist! I'm not Brethren - though people would like to make us Baptist, and some of you might want to make us Brethren, we're not! But there is a danger that when we stand in the position of non-denominationalism that we also fall into the position of the party in Corinth that said: 'We are of Christ, we're not Baptist, we're not Brethren, we're not Presbyterian, we're not Church of Ireland, we're not any of these factions - we're of Christ'. We have to guard against not only denominationalism but making our own denomination of the little Iron Hall! 'We alone are right', and if an H-bomb fell on the Iron Hall we'd all have a dilemma about where we're going to go on Sunday morning, because the Iron Hall was the only place that was right! We need to guard not only against that, but against little denominations within the Iron Hall! That's what Paul's talking about: little factions that break out, subdivisions and parties and doctrinal beliefs. We all have our different beliefs over many things, but what Paul is preaching against is making a schismata, a division without or within according to these secondary differences.

I'm not unaware of the fact that the local assembly has to have practical consensus, and as Paul says himself we all have to have the same mind and we've got to think the same thing with regards to doctrine and with fundamental truth, and even with secondary issues. There are practical things that have to go on the assembly, and we have to try and understand the word of God - hopefully being led by the Spirit of God - and come to conclusions on certain things. Paul is saying that that is what you ought to do, the elders ought to do that, it ought to filter down to the deacons and down to the members - but don't make divisions! Surely these truths must still affect our relationship in the Gospel with those who are not of our persuasion? There's this thing in Ulster, I don't know where it comes from - maybe it's our Celtic blood, or something to do with the Scots or the Irish or whoever we come from - sometimes I wonder who we're coming from with all this fighting going on. What is it that we can't just hold our convictions, we've got to hold them and hammer everybody else around us! Why is that?

In 1730 a 26-year-old by the name of George Whitfield, he was already famous in England for his evangelistic preaching, and he arrived in America. He was a Church of England cleric - never forget about that - and he was welcomed in the Americas by his co-labourers, and do you know who they were? They were Baptists, they were Presbyterians, they were Quakers, they were Lutherans, they were Congregationalists, they were Dutch Reformed, and anyone else who - as far as he was concerned - preached the Gospel and preached an individual, personal conversion. As he crossed the Atlantic he wrote to one of his clergymen friends in England, and he said this: 'The partition wall has for some time been broken down out of my heart, and I can truly say that whoever loves the Lord Jesus, the same is my brother and sister and mother'. I can say 'Amen' to George Whitfield, and if you can't you're not standing with historic biblical Christianity, if there is a wall of partition in your heart!

Lucian, the unbelieving Greek writer who lived in AD120-200, he observed the Christians around him and the fellowship that they had one for another, and he wrote this: 'It is incredible to see the fervour with which the people of that religion help each other. In their wants they spare nothing. Their first legislator', and in brackets he put 'Jesus', 'has put it into their heads that they are brethren', and because they knew that they were brothers and sisters in Christ - what was it? It was the principle of the oneness in Christ - we are one in Christ, and we are brothers and sisters in Christ no matter what divisive names we use.

Let me say that the best way of maintaining unity in the local assembly and in the worldwide church of Jesus Christ is our fourth point of dealing with division: it's to labour the priority of preaching the cross. Verses 14 to 17 outline it, but specifically verse 17: 'Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect'. You see, what happened was they lost the plot in Corinth because they got waylaid from the Gospel, from the cross. They got taken up with not just the issue of baptism, but with who baptized them, with what sect they were in, and they got on their little hobby horse - perhaps the sect of Paul was their licentiousness and the efficacy of grace; perhaps the sect of Apollos was their intellectualism and their flowery oratory; perhaps the sect of Cephas was their legalism and their Jewishness; and the sect of Jesus was their gnosticism, how they were the chosen of God, how they knew everything and they didn't follow men. But whatever it was they each had their little hobby horse, but the danger of hobby horses is this: it eclipses the cross!

I don't know whether you've ever heard the Southern Gospel song: 'What kind of church would my church be, if every member was just like me?'. Do you know what some of their churches would be? Sitting at home with me, I, and myself! The 'David Legge denomination', just me. There was an old Quaker on one occasion and he left that many meetings, one place after another, that a man said to him: 'What church do you go to now?'. He says: 'Well, I've found the true church at last!'. 'How many belong to it?', he said. 'Well, just the wife and I, but I'm not sure about Mary...' - that's the way some of us are, isn't it? Now listen, don't misunderstand what I'm saying tonight, because you know me all too well - I hope, at least, maybe you think you don't really know me - but the word of God teaches, and I will teach from this pulpit, that doctrine is important. If the book of 1 Corinthians teaches anything, if you turn to chapter 11, it outlines that doctrine is important. Chapter 11 and verse 18: 'For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it'. So there are certain divisions that are necessary, why? Verse 19: 'For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you'. There are certain divisions that have to happen because it's the division between truth and error! We have to make a division when truth and error are opposed to one another, and we must always use the truth. But the antithesis of that, and the other side of the coin that we are not exempt in any shape or form from ignoring, is the fact that we must also unite together over truth and the truth that is the fundamental truth.

In this assembly we must continue to maintain biblical practices and principles and standards. For the practical and sensible working of the local assembly in every sphere there has to be accepted doctrine and practice, even in secondary matters, but Paul is still saying to us that we should never allow carnal things to divide us internally or to divide the church externally with other true believers in Christ. It never ought to be done! Why? Paul said, verse 17: 'I have always kept the main thing', the main thing - that was my wee paraphrase, it wasn't based on the original Greek - keeping the main thing, the main thing. 'I did not come to baptise, it's important, but what is all-important? You're divided over baptism, I'm telling you not to be, what I'm telling you to be is divided over the cross'. That is the demarcation line for the church of Jesus Christ, the only thing that we should divide over is truth and all that truth enshrines. In verses 14 to 16, if you look at it, you see, as we said, they were idolising the baptiser - and Paul gave a great sigh of relief. He says in verse 14: 'Thank God I never baptised hardly any of you, but Crispus and Gaius, and maybe a few more - the household', verse 16, 'of Stephanas: besides I can't even remember, and I thank God that I can't remember, who I baptised' - do you know why? Because they all would have been running away and idolising: 'Do you know who I was baptised by? The apostle Paul! What do you think of that?'.

In John's gospel in chapter 4 and verse 2, do you know what we read? That the Lord Jesus never baptised anyone, what a temptation it would've been! Imagine, if you had been baptised in the water by the Lord Himself you wouldn't have needed to set yourself apart, people would have done it for you! They'd have been whispering: 'He was baptised by the Lord Himself!'. They would have made you into some kind of saint, put you in a glass window, maybe even have worshipped you! Paul is in danger himself of creating a cult around himself, and he says: 'I thank God I didn't baptise any of you'. Now listen, I don't want to create confusion, but I just want to challenge any misunderstandings that any of you have with regards to what the Bible teaches. You might be asking in your mind: 'Well, what are the things that are essential and the things that are not essential to our position as Christians and Bible believing Christians? What grounds should we separate from others upon, and what ground should we definitely not separate on?'. I cannot answer all these questions tonight, it would take another 50 minutes to go into this, but I hope to go into it probably in the rest of our studies throughout 1 Corinthians. But let me say this: what was characteristic about the Corinthians was that they were dividing over non-essential matters. Now listen: they were dividing over carnal matters, they were forming sects around the personalities of men - Paul, Apollos, Cephas - and we must never do that, for that is carnality. No personality cults, no Christian superstars. One woman got up in the middle of a Sunday morning church service and objected and complained and shouted out loud that she was hearing more every Sunday about John Calvin from the pulpit than she was hearing about Jesus Christ!

There's a danger that we fall into this trap of following men, no matter how great these men may be. We're not meant to preach men, we're not meant to stand behind men. We're not meant to divide over carnal matters, like the rich and the poor that the Corinthians were dividing over. Those who were full, and those who were hungry at the Lord's Table, they weren't even waiting on one another, they were just feeding themselves and getting drunk - and there was this carnality that was entering into the church, and it ought not to have been so. We must never divide over carnality. Then there was intellectualism - not intellect, there's nothing wrong with intellect, God gave you it, so you use it - but intellectualism, where the intellectual were looking down on those who didn't know as much as they did. Sometimes we can do that, people who haven't had the privileges that we have had in the word of God and the teaching that you have had, and we can look down at them, and we can even think that it's a ground to separate from them - and it's not! Then there was false spirituality, because as you come near the end of this book you find those who, because they had certain spiritual gifts, they believed that they were more spiritual than others.

We all fall into this trap of sometimes thinking that because of our persuasion, because of our denomination, because of our creed, that we are more spiritual than other believers. Is that right? Is it right? It's not right! Why? Because we're all one in Christ, and unless there's a better Christ that you've got that I haven't got, or somebody down the road hasn't got, that's the only moment that you'll be better than anybody! Martin Lloyd-Jones, who I respect, and who's teaching I have benefited from on many occasions, on one occasion preaching in Bethesda Chapel in Sunderland on the 4th of November 1970, urged the British Evangelical Council not to let non-essential matters divide their united witness to the world. He outlined the book of Corinthians for them in an hour or so, and he said that from chapters 1 to 14 these Corinthians believers were urged by Paul not to divide over silly non-essential matters. Then in chapter 15 he began to expound that great chapter on resurrection, and he outlined for them the things that we ought to mark ourselves out as different in, and things that we ought to divide on, the things that we ought to stand for. It's not that the other things aren't important, they are very important for the working mechanisms of a local assembly, but for our witness to this world who only see faction and division and schism, these are the things that we ought to stand for!

Turn with me to that passage, and I want to take you through the points that Dr Lloyd-Jones made - chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. Here it is, and Paul is literally doing this, he's saying: 'These are the things that you've got to make your stand for, these are the things that you've got to divide in Corinth over'. "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures'. He saying: 'This is what's important!' - it's not that the other things aren't important, that's why he's writing to them, to sort them out. But this is the issue that divides, this is the issue that you will stand or fall at: one, the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures - he doesn't just throw that in for some kind of pietism, to show that he was an apostle - that is the foundation of all that we believe. This gospel, our teaching, is according to the Scriptures; it's crucial; it's fundamental; it's essential. Our foundation - now this is a fundamental to divide on - our foundation is the word of God, not tradition of men! Whether it be Evangelical tradition, or Roman Catholic tradition, or pseudo-catholic tradition, or Protestant tradition, we know no tradition but the tradition of the apostles. That is a fundamental: the tradition of accepted Biblical doctrine - why? Because the word of God is inspired - it is revelation, it's not opinion, it's God's revealed word and truth. It's authoritative and we must believe it - and the word of God, if we take it and put it into our lives, and into our churches, and into the worldwide church, it would dispel liberalism on one side that denies the word of God, and it would dispel ritualism and traditionalism that equally denies the word of God!

That is the position we ought to stand in, and secondly he says: 'I deliver, first of all, all that which I also received, but I declare', in verse 1, 'unto you the gospel'. I declare the gospel - what is the gospel? It is the fall of man, it is the fact that man needs to be saved; and the fact that man, if he is not saved, is abiding under the wrath of Almighty God - that is a nonnegotiable of Christianity, that we need salvation, the fall and its consequences if we don't get salvation: hell. The Scriptures, the fall, and thirdly God's plan of redemption: 'Christ', verse 3, 'died for our sins according to the scriptures'. That is the only message of hope that is revealed in the Old Testament, right through all the prophecies and all the ritual and all the signs and typology, right into the New Testament where we meet the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.

One, the Scriptures; two, the fall; three, the plan of redemption through the blood of Jesus Christ; and four, the Person of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is central to everything that we hold and believe, and it's interesting that in chapter 15 and verse 7 Paul links this fundamental belief in the Lord Jesus with His glorious resurrection. Look at it, verse 7: 'After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles'. Why does he link the centrality of our belief in the Lord Jesus with His resurrection? I'll tell you why: because of the seed of man He was born of David but, as Romans chapter 1 teaches us, 'He was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead'. It's not the fact that He lived a perfect life - all-important that that was - for us, but that's not what saves us, but it's the message that Christ died according to the Scriptures. We must stand and be divided, but also be united with those in Christ, with those who hold to the substitutionary effective death of our Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary. We must stand with all those who believe in the bodily resurrection of our Lord Jesus, we must stand with all those who believe in the glorious hope of His returning that we read about in verse 28: 'And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all'. We must believe that the consummation of all things will be in God through Christ.

He is God, and He is God's Son - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we believe in the Triune Godhead, three Persons, one substance. There we stand with the apostles, and there we stand with the Reformers, there we stand with Christians of every age, and we ought not to be divided if we stand with them on these things. The emphasis of Paul in his message to these Grecian Christians in Corinth is significant, as significant as his message was to the believers in Rome. I don't know whether you've ever seen this or not, but in Rome people were vaunted with great power and might. It was a centre and the seat of the power of the world, the great empire that spanned the whole of Europe as we know it, and as Paul comes to them with the gospel - what is the note that he strikes? 'I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ', why? 'Because it is the power of God unto salvation to all that believe, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek'. Then he comes to the Greeks in Corinth with all their boasted wisdom and culture, and he strikes the theme of his message in these words that you find in chapter 1 and verse 23: 'We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men'.

To Rome it was the gospel of the power of God, and to Greece, to Corinth, it was the gospel of the wisdom of God - and, my friend, it is the gospel that this world is crying out for! But it's the gospel that they cannot hear, because of our divisiveness! I am not calling for some kind of flower-power, happy-clappy smudging of convictions and principles, and I say with Martin Luther: 'Cursed be that unity for which the word of God is put at stake' - cursed be it! But equally, my friends tonight, before the word of God, for the gospel's sake, let us have unity in the truth! The best pulpit for the gospel is Christian unity in truth.

Can I read you in closing a story that I read recently that spells it all out? Listen to it very carefully. Someone has imagined the carpenter's tools holding a conference. Brother Hammer presided, and several suggested that he leave the meeting because he was too noisy. Replied the Hammer: 'If I have to leave the shop Brother Screw must go also, you have to turn him around again and again to get him to accomplish anything'. Brother Screw then spoke up: 'Well, if you wish, I'll leave, but Brother Plane must also leave too - all his work is on the surface, and his efforts have no depth'. To this Brother Plane responded: 'Brother Rule will also have to withdraw, for he is always measuring folks as though he were the only one who is right'. Brother Rule then complained against Brother Sandpaper: 'You ought to leave too, because you're so rough, and always rubbing people up the wrong way'. In the midst of all this discussion in walked the Carpenter of Nazareth. He had arrived to start His day's work. Putting on His apron, He went to the bench to make a pulpit from which to proclaim the gospel. He employed the hammer, the screw, the plane, the rule, the sandpaper, and all the other tools. After the day's work, when the pulpit was finished, Brother Saw arose and remarked: 'Brethren, I observe that all of us are workers together with the Lord'.

We need to focus on the One whose glory we share, and who in what is known as His high priestly prayer in John chapter 17 prayed: 'For the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one'.

Father, with every fibre of our being we abhor false unity, false ecumenism that denies the gospel and denies the glorious work of Thy Son. Father, we know that what fellowship is there between light and darkness, between God and Belial. We would not seek to have such fellowship, but yet, our Father, we acknowledge tonight that the church of Jesus Christ is worldwide; the communion of the saints is a mysterious reality; and Father, we are not divided, we are all one in Christ no matter how we feel or how we think. We know, our Father, that one thing that this old world needs to hear tonight is the united cry in the gospel. Oh, Father, that You would know nothing in us save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. We pray that men and women from all backgrounds would lay down their tradition, lay down their preconceived ideas, and take up the word of God, and take up the gospel of God alone without labels and without restrictions and loyalties to men, and go and preach it - and that there would be no uncertain sound that would come from this church. Lord, in a day that is yet to be, may there be a certain cry from the city of Belfast, that men and women will hear and see that we're all thinking the same thing, and speaking the same words, that Christ Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 5

"The Foolishness Of God vs

The Wisdom Of Men"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 1:18-2:5

1.      The Gospel's Message Is The Opposite Of Worldly Wisdom (1:18-25)

2.      The Gospel's Grace Is The Opposite Of Worldly Pride (1:26-31)

3.      The Gospel's Power Is The Opposite Of Worldly Persuasion (2:1-5)

First Corinthians chapter 1, and we are in our fifth study tonight - we took a break last week, and were mightily blessed through the ministry of our brother Bill Freel. We're taking up again, and we're hopefully finishing the first chapter of 1 Corinthians and entering into even the second chapter tonight, God willing, if time permits us. So we want to take up where we left off in the last study two weeks ago, but we'll just read the last verse that we studied on that last week, verse 17, to get the flow right through the whole of this chapter and the first five verses of chapter 2.

Verse 17: "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God".

So we look tonight at this study under the title of 'The Foolishness of God vs The Wisdom of Men'. Several weeks ago I give you a bit of a biography of the Moravian people, that great movement of Jesus Christ that was moved of God to take the gospel right across the world - they were really the beginning of the modern missionary movement as we know it today. You remember that they had that 100 year prayer meeting, where 24 women and 24 men separated themselves and took an hour each and each day worked around it; and everyone that was sick, someone took their place; and everyone that died, someone stepped into the gap - and for 100 years they had this prayer meeting that gave birth, for 300 years, to missions right across Europe. Well, I was reading about the Moravians this week, and one thing I picked up was that when they were beginning their mission in Greenland they found that the natives were so ignorant that they were at the end of their tether as to how to share the gospel with them. Because they couldn't even understand language, or they couldn't read or write, they decided that they would first and foremost educate the people of Greenland. The results were so disappointing, they felt they were banging their head against a brick wall, that they decided to give up and pack up and leave Greenland.

While one of the missionaries was awaiting a ship to take him home he began to translate a portion of the Gospels in the New Testament. After he had finished translating that portion, he decided that he would test the translation by opening the word of God and reading it to the native people. As he did that he read to them about the death, the crucifixion, the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. After finishing reading the portion of Scripture in their own native tongue there was a pause and there was silence for a period, and after that period of silence the chief of the tribe stood up and asked that the missionary would read the portion of the gospel again. After he finished reading it again the chief said: 'Is what you read true?'. He said again: 'Is it true?'. When the missionary replied: 'It is true', the man from Greenland asked the question: 'Then why didn't you tell us this at the first hand? Why did you have to leave it until now? We will listen now to the words of this Man who suffered for us! You cannot go, you will have to stay and tell us about this suffering Man who suffered for us!'.

What I want you to see is simply this: that even way back hundreds of years ago, and even in the passage that we're reading tonight, Paul could testify, the Moravians could testify, and we ought to be able to testify tonight in our gospel outreach and proclamation that the cross always conquers where the wisdom of man fails. Paul, in this passage, is addressing those in Corinth who claim to be wise - of course, they're in the church of Jesus Christ, but they're very proud of the human worldly wisdom which they have. In fact, if we reminisce to the previous weeks of our studies, you'll remember that they were using this worldly wisdom to divide the church and to promote personalities - even their own personalities, to push themselves forward in the place of Jesus Christ. But Paul is showing them, and we'll see in this study this week, that their so-called worldly human wisdom means absolutely nothing - it is worthless in the sight of God. The reason why he says that is: one, that wisdom that they have and are purporting and have pride in cannot save anybody, and that wisdom cannot further the cause of Jesus Christ.

In fact, the wisdom that they are purporting to have does the exact opposite: it destroys things. It's destroying this church in Corinth. Those who are saying: 'I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ', it is bringing division into the church of Jesus Christ - but we'll see it's more sinister and devastating than that this week, because it actually opposes the tenets and the fundamentals of the gospel of God's grace that is in Christ. Paul is saying that to adhere to such worldly humanistic wisdom is to oppose, is the exact opposite and antithesis of everything that the gospel is, and the gospel of Jesus Christ stands for. Their fundamental problem was that they misunderstood what true wisdom really is, the nature of true wisdom. Paul was telling them right at the outset: human wisdom, the wisdom that they are priding themselves in, the wisdom that they are using to divide the church of Jesus Christ, is based on human arrogance and leads ultimately to destruction - but true wisdom, the wisdom of God, is based on the gospel of Jesus Christ revealed from heaven and that gospel is the only thing that leads to life and leads to health.

I hope you see the difference. In verse 17 he tells us quite clearly and categorically: 'That is the reason I did not come to preach baptism unto you, but I came to preach the gospel, and I didn't come to preach it with the method of wisdom of words' - why? 'Because I didn't want the cross of Christ, the message of the cross, to be of none effect. I didn't want you to miss the point, because the most important thing of all that I will preach is the cross - and if you miss that you will miss the wisdom of God!'. Corinthians, Paul is saying, Christians tonight in Belfast, never ever allow human wisdom and human eloquence to obscure the power of the cross. Make sure that you don't have human wisdom, even theological wisdom, make sure that you have the wisdom of God because there is a difference! We're going to see the difference in the three points that you have before you, which really outline the chapter that we've read together.

The first difference is this: the gospel message is the opposite of worldly wisdom. The gospel message is the opposite of worldly wisdom. What we have to realise, and this is elementary stuff but it's necessary to lay down this foundation, is that there's only two types of people in this whole universe. I don't know whether there's anybody here tonight that's not converted, but you need to hear this and I want you listen specifically to this: there are only two types of creatures, those who are perishing and those who are being saved. In verse 18 Paul tells us that: 'For the preaching of the cross is to them that are perishing foolishness; but unto us which are being' - literally - 'which are being saved it is the power of God'. Those two positions - those who are perishing, and those are continually being saved and going to glory - are two diametrically opposed positions. They are not the same, they cannot be merged, the lines of demarcation cannot be smudged. They are two black-and-white, fundamental absolutes that are not the same and cannot ever be confused.

One of the fundamental evidences that they are not the same, that they are absolutely different, is because they have two different responses to the gospel of the cross of Jesus Christ. If you want to know whether you're saved or not you don't ask the question: 'Well, do you believe in God? Do you believe the Bible? Do you believe Jesus was a good man, a prophet, or even the Son of God?'. Those aren't the questions, the great demarcation line that will decide whether you're among those who are perishing at present and will perish in the lake of fire or those who are being saved by the grace of God at present and one-day - ultimately their salvation is now sealed, but will be realised in a future day - is: what do you think and what is your response to the cross of Christ?

Of course these two groups respond in two absolutely diverse ways. For those that are perishing their human wisdom that they stand upon, that they use as the foundation of their life, causes them to conclude that the cross is absolute foolishness. You see, human wisdom is for those who are perishing, and if you stand upon intellect or reason or rationale, you must know that you are perishing! That is one good reason for not choosing human wisdom, because it ultimately leads to the place the Bible calls hell. But those, the Bible says, who the Spirit of God is working in, has initially done a work in salvation and is doing a work in day-to-day and ultimately would bring to fruition when we go to glory and are made to be perfect in the image of Jesus Christ, their whole perspective of what wisdom is has been changed. The Spirit of God has wrought a work in their mind and in their heart so that they're changed from this camp of those who are perishing, who see the cross as foolishness, and they begin and are brought by the Spirit to see the cross as the power of God unto salvation!

I'll tell you this: that change cannot be made by anything or anyone but by the Spirit of the Living God, for that is the greatest change, the greatest turnaround, the greatest transformation that is known in the universe. What is the point that Paul is making? He's saying that the wisdom of this world is diametrically opposed to the very message that saves! He is appealing to the Corinthians upon the grounds of the message that you have believed, and that has saved you and has placed you in the church of Jesus Christ, and has set you on your way to glory: 'I plead with you, you're now believing something that is totally opposed and the opposite and antithesis of everything that has saved your soul from hell!'. To support that claim he appeals, and he quotes the Old Testament as he often does, he quotes Isaiah chapter 29 verse 14 and verse 19. If you look at verse 19 of this passage, this is him quoting it: 'For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent'. He's quoting how Isaiah was speaking to the Israelites of old, and whenever they were in trouble, when they were facing judgement and wrath from other nations, what did they do? They failed in this as well, rather than looking to God in faith for help, what did they do? They looked to their own human worldly wisdom, as James calls it: earthly wisdom.

So in verse 20 he asks these questions, the first two are inferring, talking about the Israelites: 'Where is the wise man?', Isaiah 19:12, he mocks the Egyptians because they thought that their wisdom was as great as the ways and wisdom of God. Remember Pharaoh and all Pharaoh's magicians before Moses, they thought that they could reciprocate the great wisdom of the God of Israel, but God is saying in Isaiah and also through Paul: 'Where is the wise man now? Where is the scribe? Where is the scholar?'. Isaiah in his book also ridiculed the Assyrians because they had great arrogance, they thought that they could outwit the God of Israel, that they were cleverer. I think Paul is alluding also to the Jewish scribes that were probably in the camp of Cephas in this church specifically, who were still adhering to the law of Moses - circumcision and all the rest of it. Paul is saying: 'Where is the scribe? Where is the legal scholar of Judaism now before the wisdom of God?'. It's all the wisdom of this world.

He goes on: 'Where is the disputer of this world?'. Some translations but it: 'Where is the philosopher of this age?', and this is specifically contemporary to Paul's day, for he's moving now within the Greek world of Corinth where there's all the philosophers standing in the marketplace, philosophising and debating about what is truth and what is the universe that we live in. Where are they now? This is all human wisdom. So Paul asks the rhetorical question to end them all, and of course the answer to it is 'Yes': 'Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?' - has He not? Did He not in Isaiah's day? Of course He did! He defeated the Egyptians, He defeated the Assyrians, and there's a day coming when He will defeat all of the wisdom of this puny little futile world! One day, praise His holy name, everything that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, everything that sets itself up opposed to the revelation of God's word and God's gospel, will be pulled down and will be frustrated finally! Isn't that wonderful to know?

I'll tell you something even better than that, for us presently at least, it's this fact that Paul is telling us in Corinthians: that all the wisdom, the human earthly wisdom of this world, is confounded and frustrated here and now in the person and in the truth of Jesus Christ. It's already defeated! That's what Paul is really meaning, that's what Paul is really getting at. One day, finally and ultimately, all human wisdom will be frustrated - but today as we, week after week, faithfully we hope, try and preach the gospel, we are frustrating the human wisdom of this world - why? Because the human wisdom of the philosophers, of the scholars, of the Judaisers, of the intellectuals, all over this world in Paul's day and in today's day, would never ever lead them in their mind to the conclusion that God, to save human beings, would send His only begotten Son to die on a cross, to bleed, to be buried, and to rise again the third day - never happen! That is how God frustrates today the wisdom of this world, the wise ones who exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. Do you see the wisdom of God? This is tremendous, that actually by acting in this way God is frustrating human wisdom, because they label this gospel of a dying Redeemer as foolishness! In doing so God has actually frustrated their human wisdom!

You'd be forgiven for thinking: 'Well, if these wise men are really seeking after truth surely whatever path they follow, whatever religious path or philosophical path or scientific path, would ultimately lead them to truth?'. What is God doing? He sees that ultimately in the depths of their heart there is a depraved, rebellious human nature - and professing themselves to be wise, if they continue to lean on their own understanding and rely on all their intellect and all their prideful human wisdom, their mind will never ever bring them to the truth of God - why? Because to their wisdom it is folly! Do you see it? I do not think I am wrong in saying that God is actually confirming man in his sinful rebellion by choosing something that the wise think is foolish. Making their wisdom foolish...and as Romans tells us 'professing themselves to be wise, they are made fools'.

Verse 21 tells us that: 'For after that in the wisdom of God the world by its human wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe'. Isn't that wonderful? They're all sitting in their seats of learning with their beards to their feet, and philosophising about what is truth, when we will know God, when we will be as high as God, and in a carpenter's shop in Nazareth the God of heaven has come to dwell with men and they're missing it because they can't get off their high pinnacle of human learning and get down to God's foolishness which is above their learning! T. S. Eliot, the author who was not a man of God, far from it, said in a poem: 'All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, and all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, but nearness to death no nearer to God, where is the life we have lost in living?'. That is where the wisdom of men leads you. It's not that men can't know about God, Romans 1 tells us that we can know about God from creation around us, the law of God is written on our hearts - but what it's talking about is in their own wisdom they couldn't be brought into an intimate knowledge of God, a relationship through salvation, and cleansing, so God chose a way that confounds their wisdom - what is it? It is the way of faith. It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. Not 'that think', not 'that philosophise', not 'that intellectualise', but those who believe.

In verse 22 he expands this assertion and he says: 'For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom'. These were the particular ways that their various versions of worldly wisdom had been foiled through the gospel of Christ. The Jewish standard of what was wise was to be able to see signs. You remember when the Lord was on the earth the Jews were always asking Him for a sign, you can read about it in Matthew 12, John 2, John 6. Even when He performed signs, He never performed them at their bidding, but even when He did perform them it didn't satisfy them - and they thought to themselves: 'I think if He's really Messiah, He would never deny the Jewish people a sign to show that He is who He says He is', so they rejected Him! What upon? The grounds of their own worldly wisdom. So He became a stumbling-block to them.

The Jews required a sign, the Greeks seek after wisdom - what was the wisdom the Greeks sought after? What was their foundation of human understanding? Well, it was the exalted standards of the pagan philosophers, the poets. They thought it was absolute idiocy to think of a suffering God. How could God suffer? It's not rational! They wanted a gospel that was based upon their own human intellectual speculation, but the gospel that Paul is preaching, the gospel that is in the word of God is not down to speculation, it is revelation! 'Can I have no part in it?', the Greeks thought to themselves, so they rejected it too.

But here we have the wonderful contrast, and praise God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that we are found in that contrast tonight. Verse 23: 'But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness'. What did Paul do? Did he intellectualise the gospel for the Greek? Is that what he did? Did he Judaise the gospel for the Jews? Did he make it more acceptable? Did he do signs and wonders to prove that he was an apostle of God? Did Christ pander to all their fleshly lusts to see with their eyes rather than to have faith? No, what did Christ say? 'An adulterous and perverse generation seeketh after a sign', but what did he do? He preached the message that had been delivered unto him of God, and he didn't change it one iota!

Oh, we need to hear this message today! He didn't dilute the gospel, he didn't reduce the message to something that they could accept, but it was a stumbling-block and he gave it to them as a stumbling-block - a 'scandalon', that's literally the Greek word. It was a scandal to them, the Jew, to think that their Messiah could be nailed to a cross, because Deuteronomy 12 told them that cursed is anyone that hangs upon a tree, he was a malefactor, he is a criminal, and my Messiah could not die in that way! Boy, was it a stumbling-block for a Jew to die on a Roman cross. To the Greek it was foolishness to think of this little Jew, as far as they were concerned, dying as a common thief - not even able to overcome His human enemies, yet it is testified that He's overcoming sin and death and hell there and He's saving the world from all their sins? Foolishness! It cannot be!

Well, thank God tonight that there was one group that embraced it. Look at it, verse 24, and you mark every word in this verse and don't make any mistakes about it: 'But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God'. The only difference between those who rejected the gospel and those who accepted the gospel was the power of the Holy Spirit in their life calling them! How does a person change from being one of those who are perishing to one of those who are being saved? I'll tell you what has to happen: the grace of God through the Holy Spirit has to touch their understanding and make it melt until they no longer see the gospel as foolishness, but they perceive it as the power of God unto salvation, and they believe!

Thank God that He touched me, and I can accept that - I don't understand it. Do you understand it? Why there are millions out there who have never been touched, but you're touched? I can't understand it, but do you know why I can believe it? Because of verse 25: 'Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men', and the is fact that I can't understand it unless I'm God, and my ways become His ways, and my thoughts become His thoughts, I'll never understand it! But thank Him I can believe it! As the song says: 'Because He touched me' - He touched me! I no longer see Him as a fool, I no longer see His message as foolishness, but I see Him as the Christ and I see His message as the power of God unto salvation!

I hope you're seeing the difference tonight that the gospel message is the opposite of worldly wisdom, it turns worldly wisdom on its head - and we shouldn't be afraid that we don't understand everything to do with the gospel or God or salvation! Do you understand it all? Talk to me afterwards if you do, 'cos I'd love to have a chat with you! I'll never understand it, but would there not be something wrong if we believed in an omniscient, omnipotent Deity and we could understand it all? Sure that would be a contradiction in and of itself. Those who know the reality of the wisdom and the power of the gospel, do you know what they will never do? They will never exalt man's wisdom over it.

Let me ask, we're going to fly on here, but let me ask: in our methods, how we present the gospel, do we reflect this? Do we? Or do we find ourselves finding in our hearts, or even in our actions, trying to marry in some way Christianity to the world's beliefs or to the world's value systems or standards, when it is utterly and diametrically and fundamentally opposed to everything that this world has or believes or stands for? It's not the world's standard that we need to adjust to to give them the gospel, it's God's standard! We ought to be changing, we ought to be changing, but not to the world, to the standards of God. I heard a story today about a man hanging on a cliff shouting for help, and a voice from heaven said: 'Let go'. He shouted back: 'Who's saying that?'. The voice came back: 'God'. He thought for a minute and then he shouted back: 'Is there anyone else up there?'. God tells us to give the gospel, He tells us the way to give the gospel, He tells us what the power of the gospel is, and we ask: 'Is there not another way?'. Surely this isn't working, surely there must be other wisdom - listen tonight: the gospel message is the opposite of our worldly wisdom!

Secondly, Paul develops his argument in inviting these believers to look now at their own personal experience of what their conversion was. He shows them that the gospel's grace is the opposite of worldly pride. Verse 26: 'For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called'. 'Remember when you were called, Corinthians, there wasn't many of you who were wise in worldly standards, very few of you were influential, very few were noble' - now that doesn't mean that not any noble, or any wise, or any of these types of people can be saved, you need to think of the Moravians themselves and Count Nicholas von Zinzendorf, and even Lady Huntingdon who in the 1700's was a great force for good in our land, and we could name many others. In fact Lady Huntingdon said that her salvation was owed to the letter 'M' in this verse! 'Not many', it doesn't say 'not any'! But generally speaking Paul is saying: 'Look, you're the big men now, you're putting your chest out and asserting your authority in the church, and you're even using this proud worldly wisdom to divide the church of Jesus Christ - but you weren't like that when you were saved! The world wouldn't have looked at you when you were saved'.

Well, that brings them down to size because they had forgotten what they really were, and they had appealed to human wisdom. You see men like that in the church, they get saved and all of a sudden they get into some dry theory of an argumentation about some insignificant doctrine, and before you know it they lose their zeal and they lose the simplicity that is in Christ, and they get this sort of aura around them: 'I know more than you because I have this doctrine!'. It's sad because the experience that we have when we are saved is forgotten, and this makes clear in this passage the way that God sees us all at conversion and right throughout our lives, and this is it - now you mark it, if you've got a superiority complex you watch this, and if you haven't watch it because you should have because we've all got one - it's called an old nature. 'But', verse 27, 'God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are' - that's how God sees you!

People who the world wouldn't have respected before you were saved, God still sees you like that! Do you know why? We often think: 'You know, this grace business, God chose me and it means that I don't really know why He chose me', and that's true in the sense that there was nothing in you, qualifications or attributes or morals, for God to choose you and say: 'Well, there's a good man, I'll have him, he's useful to me'. That's not the way it works - but I'll tell you this: there is a reasoning behind why God chooses you, but you're not going to like it! It's because you're base, it's because you're wicked, it's because you're despised, it's because you would never get anywhere outside the church of Jesus Christ! And do you know what ultimately the reasoning of it all is? To shame the things in the world that profess to be wise, God takes up an old sinner and uses him, and that is the greatest confounding of worldly wisdom that you will ever see!

That is the only basis for boasting. Paul is not trying to belittle these believers, he's trying to remind them that their only basis for boasting is the fact that God chose them to shame the wisdom of the world. When you first experience grace, you don't feel superior, do you? When you were saved at first did you feel superior? If you did you're not saved at all! Because it is that humility that comes through the mourning, the sorrow that leads unto repentance with the weight of your sins, conviction upon your shoulders and the guilt and the blame that makes you cast yourself on God for mercy rather than judgement! Now here's the question: how do you feel tonight? Do you feel a little bit better than you were then? Do you? You might know a bit more, you might have learned a bit more, you might be a wee bit more mature, but do you know what the grace of God teaches us? You're no better, and if you think you're any better the possibility is that you're worse.

Oh, there ought to be no superiority complexes, from God's position and perspective nothing has changed. Rather He has chosen the lowly, why? To confound the things that are mighty, why? Verse 29: 'That no flesh should glory in his presence', that no-one should glory! If you're elect of God, you're called of God and you've put faith in God, that's who the Bible calls the elect of God - it doesn't mean the elite of God! You're not anything special, only that God has made you special by choosing you and by saving you! I praise God tonight, if there's anybody in this meeting and they're not converted, they're not saved, and they're a deep-dyed sinner just like all of us - for there is no difference, and all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God - is it not good news to you tonight that God chooses the weak, God chooses the despised and the wicked things of this world! Those are the people He saves!

To dispel any remaining pride or doubts in their minds he reminds them why they believed in the first place. I think there were some of them walking around thinking: 'Well, I know it was grace, but I really believed because I was wiser than those people out there, I sought after God. I sought God's way. I was more powerful, I was powerful enough to receive salvation' - but do you know what verse 30 says? 'But of him' - of Him - 'are ye in Christ Jesus'. The reason why you're saved is not because you had more sense, or you were wiser, or you were more powerful, but by grace were you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves - but because you are put in Christ by His grace, the wisdom of God to us is Christ, and it is of Christ and His God and Father Jehovah that you are saved! It is of Him!

That means we ought, as believers, to stop following worldly wisdom and recognise that it is in Christ, He is the total and utter embodiment of all divine wisdom. The wisdom that He engenders, it produces in verse 30: righteousness, holiness and redemption - and if you want to have any of those things it's not through theology, although theology is good, it's not through learning, but it is through a relationship where you become more conformed to the image of Jesus Christ through fellowship with Christ and in Christ! The purpose of all that is verse 31: 'That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in his learning'? 'Let him glory in his denominational persuasion'? 'Let him glory in his theology'? 'Let him glory in his great preaching ability'? No! 'Let him glory in the Lord'!

The Gospel's grace is the opposite of worldly pride. Thirdly and finally, the gospel's power is the opposite of worldly persuasion. You see this all affects the way that we present this message. Paul tells us in the first five verses of chapter 2 that this message is not to be presented according to the world's wisdom. If it's the opposite of worldly wisdom, if it's the opposite of worldly pride, therefore it's the opposite of worldly persuasion. You don't present it the way that the world would present it! The Corinthians were obviously, like those in their world, presenting it with logic and argument and with rhetoric. They were more interested in the way they were doing it rather than what they were saying. But Paul says that if you're presenting the Gospel here's the way to persuade people: focus centrally and fundamentally and essentially on the message of the cross!

Is that not what he said first of all in verse 17? 'He sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest' - what? - 'the cross of Christ', it's a synonym for the Gospel. It is the gospel! I have to be careful, and I didn't want to allude to it last night in the Gospel because we have to beware but we say in front of unbelievers, but there are certain methods today on television and in the media to get people to believe the Gospel and to persuade them, and I have no doubt that God in His sovereignty can take up absolutely anything. In Philippians He took up people who were preaching Christ in contention and saved people through them - but I'm telling you this: this is not the method that we are to adopt, to tell people 'Oh, you'll have a better life, you'll fill the void within your soul, this is what you've looking for, you would pay a million dollars to get it but you can get it by faith in Christ and all your worries will be away!' - this is a gospel about blood! It's a Gospel about nails, pain, anguish, wrath, hell! It's a gospel about taking up that cross and following that crucified Christ! It's no picnic, but I'll tell you this: that's where the power of God is, in that cross.

Paul says this is the divine mandate and design that I have been given to preach this gospel, and he was fulfilling it right across the Mediterranean world and he wasn't going to stop with the Corinthians. It was the opposite of the message that those who were splitting the church were preaching. They had all their difference slants on the Gospel, their different slants on God's truth - but what does he say? Look at verse 1: 'I declared unto you the testimony of God'. Oh, let's be done with worldly wisdom, let's be done with the methods of worldly persuasion, and let's take God's design - it's not the foolishness of preaching now, literally it's the foolishness of the message that is preached, the foolishness of this cross, this blood, the judgement of God upon His Son - take it! Why? Because the power is in it, that is what will save people: the cross! If you present a message in arrogance like the Corinthians, or in eloquence like the Sophists, people may be swayed by your rhetoric or your sophistication or your method, but Paul is saying they'll not be swayed by the Holy Spirit!

We need to avoid this today - I love singing, and you know that, and we could do with a bit more lively singing sometimes in this place - but I'll tell you this: you see working people up into an emotional state with music, and then coming and lingering with them and pleading with them over and over again, and almost in a sort of hypnotic trance moving them emotionally to the decision? That is not the Holy Ghost! It's taking the testimony of God, and I'll tell you: if you take the testimony of God the best thing that you can do is just give it and walk away, and leave the Holy Spirit to do the work.

Well, in verse 2 he says: 'For I determined' - you can't get much clearer than this - 'not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified'. Jesus, He's central; the cross is central in all of its magnitude, yet in all of its simplicity - this is the most effective dimension of the gospel, and what is this that he took? This is what he presented to the Greeks, not some kind of intellectual argument, he presented the cross! What did he present to the Jews? Did he go into the tabernacle? He went to the cross! He went to the cross because it is the most offensive dimension of the gospel. Isn't that amazing? We shy away from preaching hell, but you know that's not the most offensive thing about the gospel, the cross is because that was hell on the Son of God! Perhaps that's why people aren't preaching it today. I happen to agree with C.H. Spurgeon when he said: 'Whatever text I preach the gospel from, by hook or by crook I will find a way to Calvary from it'.

Friends, we need to preach the cross, and we need to be assured of the effectiveness of the cross because it alone is the power of God unto salvation. In verse 3 he personalises it, he says: 'When I was with you, you can't deny that when I was there that this was the message I preached, this was the message that you first believed. I didn't come in arrogant pomp and pride, not in human strength', but what does he say? 'In weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching', verse 4, 'was not with enticing or persuasive words of man's wisdom', but what was it in? 'The power and the demonstration of the Spirit of God'! Do you know what that word 'demonstration' literally means? It's a technical legal term to describe an irrefutable evidence offered to a court, and Paul is saying: 'You saw it with your own eyes'. The power of God!

I must close, but do you know something? Don't misunderstand me, but we don't need to resort to the arguments of worldly wisdom to get people saved. In fact, if we're doing that that's maybe why people don't get saved. We don't need pop stars that are converted, we don't need actors or sports personalities, we don't need to sit scientists in the pulpit and get them to argue to show us that science is wrong and the Bible is true - we don't need that, why? Because the cross is the power of God unto salvation, this is supernatural! But also you don't just want anybody to preach the cross, why? Because it has to be preached - and God help me here - in the demonstration of the power of God! E.M. Bounds, that great man of prayer, said: 'The preachers who are the mightiest in their closets with God are the mightiest in their pulpits with men because our sufficiency is of God'.

I have to close but I've one story to tell you, and this details it all. Before I mention these men I want to say to you, you've maybe heard of D.L. Moody, you've maybe heard Billy Sunday, you've maybe heard of Billy Graham, and all these men if you listen to them there's nothing too spectacular - and I say this humbly, knowing my own station - about these men and their preaching. I've listened to tapes recorded years ago in the Iron Hall of Pastor Tocher, I've listened to W.P. Nicholson, and I'll be honest with you: my heart dropped when I heard them. Not with wisdom of words...so what was it about them? The demonstration of the Spirit of God!

This is the story: G.H. Lang in his book 'God At Work In His Own Lines' tells of an illiterate draper in Cornwall called Mr Gribble. Mr Gribble invited people into his home and he used to read a penny sermon to them, and there were people saved. After a while he got confidence and he was able to say a few words of his own free will, and there were hundreds of people getting saved. J.M. Darby wrote to S.T. Trigilles (sp?) in a letter, and he wrote this: 'There are few men who can preach the gospel more fluently then you and I can, and we see few souls saved, and they tell me there is an illiterate brother called Gribble, and when he quotes scripture there are people swept into the kingdom'. G.H. Lang in his book says: 'Mr Darby's question is well worth pondering'. Why? Because the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.

'Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness,

My beauty are, my glorious dress.

Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed,

With joy shall I lift up my head.

When from the dust of death I rise

To claim my mansion in the skies,

E'en then shall this be all my plea:

Jesus has lived and died for me'.

We love Him, Father, because He first loved us. We pray that we will see His dying love and boast in nothing but that cross, and take up that cross and follow Him, and lose our lives of earthly wisdom down here, and gain a life of heavenly joy up yonder. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 6

"God's Wisdom Understood"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 2:6-16

1.      God's Wisdom Is Hidden From The World (verses 6-9)

2.      God's Wisdom Is Revealed By The Spirit (verses 10-16)

                                                                                                            i.      Through Revelation (verses 10-11)

                                                                                                          ii.      Through Inspiration (verses 12-13)

                                                                                                         iii.      Through Illumination (verses 14-16)

3.      God's Wisdom Is Received By The Regenerate (verses 14-16)

First Corinthians chapter 2, and our portion for study tonight is verse 6 through to verse 16, but we'll read from verse 1 just to get the flow of the chapter as we left off last Monday evening.

Verse 1 of chapter 2: "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought: But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ".

Last week we looked at the subject: 'The Foolishness of God vs The Wisdom of Men', and tonight after spending some time on that subject we want to home in on the wisdom of God specifically, and God's wisdom understood. I think every parent at some time in their life, and I'm waiting for the day coming up in the not-too-distant future, will hear the famous words: 'That's not fair!'. Whether it's to the stamping of feet, or to the screeching of a voice, in teenage years or early toddler years, the terrible two's or whatever it may be - sometime you may hear those words: 'That's not fair, everybody's doing it, why can't I do it? It's just not fair!'. Even when you seem to explain, as an adult in child's terms, 'Son, it's for your own good', or 'Love, it's for your own good. Listen to what I'm saying', it just doesn't seem to make sense at times to children, the reasoning and the decision-making process of the adult mind.

You know better than I do that it may even take years, maybe even decades, for those children to see the sense in your adult decision-making. It's not particularly because they're rebellious or iniquitous, or terribly sinful, although that comes into it, but it's probably more to do with the fact that they're just too immature to understand the human wisdom or to grasp your reasoning in coming to the decision that you have made. They just see a thing that they want as children and they want to get it, they don't think of all the implications, and they don't have particular wisdom to make a decision upon. They don't understand your adult wisdom probably primarily because they are immature.

Really what Paul is saying in this passage specifically tonight is that the wisdom of God is only for the mature, not for the immature but for the mature. Now you know that you see things clearer in your adulthood than you did when you were young, and I'm still waiting for the day when things are going to become clearer and clearer to me in future! But what is the case in the natural realm, Paul is simply saying that it's no different in the spiritual realm. There is spiritual immaturity, and those who are spiritually immature cannot grasp the wisdom of God. There is a process of development, a process of sanctification, a process of maturity, and Paul speaks here of a wisdom for the spiritually mature - a wisdom that they can understand.

So he has already said that the wisdom of God is not something that the wise men of this world will understand. In fact they think that God's wisdom is foolishness. But there is a wisdom, it's not that God's wisdom is in essence intrinsically foolish, it's not that the gospel is foolish or God is foolish, it is foolishness to those who do not believe - but to those who are mature it is the wisdom of God, and they understand it and perceive it and can conceive it as such. Now what is the relevance of all this to these Corinthians? Well, you know as well as I do in chapter 1 we saw that in verse 13 of the chapter Paul was asking the question: 'Is Christ divided? Some of you are saying that you're of Apollos, of Cephas, some say 'I am a Paul', some even say 'Oh, I am of Christ, I'm not of a mere man, I'm of the Christ of God''. But really the basis for all their pompous pride and divisiveness and schism was upon their own human understanding, and their claiming to have human wisdom: 'We're wiser than the group called Cephas, we're wiser than those adhering to Apollos, or Paul, we're wiser than those adhering to Christ' - but it was all based upon the foundation of their human wisdom.

They were showing evidence, according to Paul, and it's still seen in the church of God today, of believing human wisdom rather than divine wisdom. The irony of it all is that they thought that they were wiser than anyone else, but really what they were doing was showing their spiritual immaturity - and the proof of their spiritual immaturity was that they were using the wisdom that they had to divide the church of Jesus Christ into schisms. Whether it was human allegiance to a philosophy of a man, or a particular leader they were following and adhered to and idolised, whatever it was their self-exalting human wisdom was causing immature division within the church of Jesus Christ - and it was ultimately keeping them from God's divine wisdom. They thought they were wise, but they were making themselves fools, because in their immaturity they couldn't see the divine wisdom of God that unites the church and does not divide the church. Ultimately they were forfeiting spiritual growth and spiritual unity, so Paul has to come again and remind them of what true wisdom is: 'Sit up, Corinthians', he says, 'True wisdom is not to be found in the world, it is not to be found in philosophies of men, it is not to be found in following a human leader - but the wisdom of God can only be given through Christ and through the Spirit of God'.

Let's follow his reasoning in this thesis that he gives. The first thing that he says in verses 6 through to 9 is: God's wisdom is hidden from the world. That's the first reason why you shouldn't go to the world, that's the first reason why you shouldn't depend on human wisdom even if the person is a Christian, because God's wisdom, true wisdom, divine truth, is hidden from the world. Now I believe that one reason Paul was addressing this is because he didn't want them to fall into this trap of thinking that the Christian faith is in itself, in essence, foolishness. It is foolishness in the eyes of the men of the world, but Paul is reiterating to them: although it's foolishness to the world, it is only revealed to those who are truly mature, those who are truly wise. Look at verse 6: 'Howbeit we speak wisdom', we do speak wisdom - it's not that we're always talking foolishness, but we do 'speak wisdom among them that are perfect'.

God's wisdom is only to be understood, Paul says, by those who are perfect. You might say to yourself: 'Well, is that not a bit elitist?'. Surely this was one of the problems in the church of Corinth? One was saying: 'Well, I'm better than you because I am of Paul, I am of Cephas, I am of Apollos, I am of Christ' - is this not just engendering and breeding even more their elitism? Who are these perfect people? Is this a special spiritual superclass that is in the church of Corinth, those who are more spiritual than another? Well, if we look at the Greek word for 'perfect' here, it's the word 'telios' which has been translated in other places in our New Testament as the word 'complete'. Some translations translate it as 'mature', it came to mean 'a member', being fully initiated into some kind of an organisation or a group or a club. Really what it is saying is that this wisdom of God is for those who are spiritually mature, and it doesn't mean those who are more spiritual than the low Christians, but what Paul is actually saying is: those who have come to full spiritual life in Christ, those who have been inaugurated into the church of Jesus Christ and been given the life of God.

Remember last week that we saw that there are only two different classes of people, spiritually speaking, in this world. There are those who are saved and those who are lost. Those who are lost see the wisdom of God as foolishness, they don't understand it, it's ridiculous to them - whether they're Greeks or whether they're Romans - for the Jew it is a stumbling-block, for the Roman and the Greek it is foolishness that this One dying on a cross could bring redemption. So what has to take place is a supernatural act of grace whereby God's Holy Spirit changes the perception of a creature, so that what is previously foolishness to a man becomes the wisdom and the power of God. That is who Paul is talking about when he speaks of those who are perfect, of those who are mature - well then, why is he telling the Corinthians to do it if they're saved? Simply because they are not living up to their name. They ought to have been mature in their faith, not looking after the wisdom of this world, human wisdom which is foolishness unto God, they should be looking for divine wisdom because that is what they were saved through first of all - they ought to be mature Christians in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul, in Galatians 1 and verse 4 reiterates that when he said: 'Christ gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil world according to the will of God and our Father'. It is God's will, and it was Christ's purpose in going to the cross, to deliver us from this present evil world - so how could anybody be said to be a mature Christian who is living in the world, hankering after the philosophies and the wisdom of man's human ability and aptitude? Paul is more or less saying: 'That's not what saved you, Corinthians, so why are you starting to look after man's wisdom now?'. Paul is saying that a worldly Christian, a worldly-wise Christian is foolishness of the highest order and extreme, and he's rebuking them for seeking human wisdom. In fact, what he does is he takes the terms that they themselves use in human wisdom and he redefines them. He uses the word 'wisdom', he's using now the word 'mature', he uses later the word 'mystery', the word 'secret' - he uses even the word 'spiritual' that they used of themselves to set themselves above other believers whether they were in the other camp or the other schism or the other faction.

Paul takes these words and he applies them to ordinary believers, to show them what true wisdom is. He was trying to teach them that wisdom is not acquired, the wisdom of God is not something that you climb up a ladder and you qualify to be given because you're something special as a believer, that you're a cut above the rest. It's not acquired, but the wisdom of God, he says, is revealed! It is something that is given to us by grace through faith in the Spirit of God. Well, you might think that that's obvious, you might even think that that's not what he's talking about here - but I want you to note the difference: in chapter 3, God willing, that we'll start to look at next week, he does talk about two types of Christians, and anybody familiar with the book of 1 Corinthians will know that he speaks of the carnal Christian and the spiritual Christian. But that is not the difference and the contrast he's making in chapter 2, don't fall into the mistake of thinking it's the same, but this is a contrast totally different for it is a contrast between the Christian and the non-Christian, the child of light and the child of darkness, the one who sees the Gospel as foolishness and the one who sees the Gospel as the power and the wisdom of God. That is the difference, and that is all the difference in the world, and that's why Paul says: 'Don't be running to the world as children of light to get wisdom, because God's wisdom is hidden from the world!'.

Isn't that enlightening? Especially for young people, to know that the worldview, whatever the world perspective on things: morality, immorality, or in our age amorality - whatever their perception is of God and faith and religion and the church, whether it changes from age to age it doesn't really matter: ultimately the worldview of our age contemporary to Paul, or our age contemporary to us, is opposed, diametrically opposed and different and other than everything that is divine truth and the revealed wisdom of God. You remember that! Always be careful what you hear espoused in the world, because most of the time it will be contrary to God's wisdom and God's Word. That's why it is foolishness to try and assimilate the world into the church, and try to bring the church up to speed with the way the world thinks.

Just to prove to you that this is what Paul is saying he gives a tremendous example of how these two wisdom systems are different, the human wisdom system of the world, and God's wisdom system of divine truth. He talks in verse 6 of the princes of this world, look at it: 'Yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought', or come to nothing. 'Princes', it's a word that simply means 'rulers', those who are powerful in our society: our political leaders, our Prime Minister, our Kings and Potentates. Now as you look at them, look at Tony Blair and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and President Bush, and you can go through them all - even members of Parliament, you tend to look at them and feel that they are important people, and it's right that we should do so because we're to respect the powers that are ordained of God. But we can look at them as items and idols of success, the epitome of what it is to be wise, what it is to get to the top echelons of society - but Paul is saying the opposite here, he says: 'No, princes and rulers, potentates and political leaders are not the epitome of wisdom'. They may be the epitome of human wisdom, but if they have rejected the Gospel they are foolish!

This wisdom, he says in verse 6, is not the wisdom of princes and potentates and political leaders. Now let me give a little bit of rebuke and encouragement to your mind here, because I feel that too often we look at the world and we judge them as the normal ones, don't we? It's as if we're looking into the world from outside, from Mars or outer space or something. Now we know we're all different, we know we're not the same as the hoy-polloy that are on their way to destruction, but we look in on them and we think they're normal in what they do, what they say, the way of life that they live - but it is the exact opposite! We need, in our minds as believers, to change our perspective and our worldview - they are not the elite ones, whether they're Prime Ministers or Kings, they are not the high-flyers! We're not the odd ones, we are the ones who are right with God! It is the opposite, you've got to turn it on its head - they're the ones to be pitied, they're the ones to feel sorry for! Whether they've got power or authority, or prestige or kudos, it doesn't matter because Paul is saying that without God it is all foolishness! Ultimately, in verse 6, he says that when Jesus Christ comes to this earth again, in His ultimate return when His feet stand upon the Mount of Olives, all of their earthly, human, wise achievements will come to nothing!

Well, that levels the playing field a bit doesn't it? We shouldn't envy those who are in the world, we shouldn't envy those who are in the high echelons of successful society. Why should we not? Chapter 1 and verse 25 is why we should not: because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. The foolishness of our God is greater than the position and prestige that they have been given, that only men can give to them! The weakness of our God is stronger than the power that even the great President of the States has with his little red button! You shouldn't envy them, at the same time we shouldn't be intimidated by them. Paul uses a metaphor for their immaturity, and he's almost saying: 'Look, you're like children in your hankering after wisdom. Your wise thoughts are like the little playing games of children, simplistic reasoning of a child'.

You see that this is a theme in this epistle. If you turn to chapter 13 Paul says of his own experience in this great chapter upon love, and in verse 11: 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things'. He wants the Corinthians to mature, to not hanker after the wisdom of men and human wisdom, but the wisdom of God - to grow up! If you don't think that's enough, if you turn to chapter 14 and verse 20 he spells it out categorically: 'Brethren, be not children in understanding: howbeit in malice be ye children', in the wisdom of the world be children, 'but in understanding', the understanding and wisdom of God, 'be men'. Their trouble was they had imbibed and assimilated the world's philosophies in Corinth, and the way people lived and way people practised in their lives, all that they had to do, that they didn't know any longer where to find the true wisdom of God - they had become ignorant of it.

So Paul reiterates for them in verse 7: 'We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory'. This wisdom of God is not like human wisdom, but it is mysterious wisdom. It is the wisdom of the Gospel, it is a wisdom that is so mysterious that it's still hidden to unbelievers today. It is a wisdom that is so mysterious that in the Old Testament it was hidden, and it's only been revealed in the New Testament through our Lord Jesus Christ, and specifically in Paul's epistles. All the mysteries, look at the book of Ephesians, it's only revealed there - but there was a time when it was hidden, and it's still hidden to those who are in the camp of the foolish wisdom of this world.

When Jesus came He revealed that He would have to die on the cross, and three days later He would have to rise again - but no-one knew about that before He came, did they? In fact, in the counsels of God before He planned the creation week, it was there, according to this verse in verse 7, ordained before the world unto our glory. God had predestined in His eternal counsels before time began that this is the way it should be! Hidden before even creation was planned or made! These things are hard to understand, aren't they? But the fact of the matter is this: that this is above human understanding, and the wisdom of this world which is only temporal leads to destruction, but Paul is saying in verse 7 that the wisdom of God ultimately leads to life, eternal life, satisfaction. It leads unto our glory.

Paul brings a masterful illustration here to hammer this point home, and we're going to get it tonight no matter how long it takes us getting it. It's a perfect illustration because it comes, it's plucked straight out of the Gospel in the last week and the last days of the life of our Lord Jesus. Look at it in verse 8: 'Which none of the princes of this world knew', this wisdom of God, 'for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory'. None of the powerful rulers of Paul's day, none of the powerful rulers of our day - if they do not trust in Christ - have the wisdom of God. But it was exactly the same when the Lord Jesus Christ stood before Herod and Pilate, they did not have the wisdom of God. There they were at the pinnacle of society, they had as far as the naked eye could see everything that this world and money and pleasure could offer - but they didn't have the wisdom of God, because if they did they would not have crucified the Lord of glory!

Now what an illustration is that! Herod did not understand, Pilate did not know God's true wisdom. Why did they not know? If you look at chapter 1 and verse 23, the preaching of Christ crucified, that was standing before them ready to be crucified, to the Jews - Herod a Jew - it was a stumbling-block. 'How could He be Messiah, King of the Jews? I'm going to put Him to death! Cursed is anyone that hangs upon a tree, Deuteronomy says'. Pilate, the Roman, the Gentile: 'It's foolishness!'. He couldn't see any fault in this man, but foolishness to think that this man could reign as a King, He could die on a cross, He could rise again one day! They did not have the wisdom of God, and even though they had everything that human hands and philosophies and esteem and pride could pander to them, they did not have the wisdom of God.

Some commentators believe that when it talks about princes here that we could even interpret and go into the spiritual realm - and you know and I know both, that we would have to say that behind Pilate's hand and behind Herod's hand there was the hand of evil itself directing the affairs of the crucifixion. What God meant for good, we know and believe Satan meant for evil - but you can find times within the Gospels where the devil doesn't really know what he's doing, because one minute He's saying: 'Come down from the cross if you're the Christ', and the next minute he's trying to stop Him going to Calvary through Peter: 'Oh, You're not going to die, Lord - far be it from Thee! Put it out of Your mind!'. In one sense what it's saying here is that even the spiritual, demonic realm does not have the true sovereign wisdom of God.

That's a blessing to my heart, I can tell you that! For we attribute to the devil and to his hordes and demons, I believe, at times far far too much. Do you see what this passage is saying? Do you see what Paul's illustration from the crucifixion of Christ is really saying? We said it last week, you would nearly think to hear some Christians that if you really sought after wisdom and you became so intellectual and you tried to find out with your mind what true sincere truth really is, you would find God. That's not what the Bible teaches. Do you know what the Bible teaches? The exact opposite! If you use all the human wisdom that is available to you in this earth, not only will that lead you into foolishness, not only ultimately will it destroy your eternal soul, but it will lead you to the crucifixion of the Lord of glory - because that's what it led Herod and Pilate to! Isn't that astounding stuff? Do you see the impact of what Paul is saying? You Christians who have been saved by the Spirit of God and the grace of God, what are you doing now? You're running after the world for human wisdom - do you know what I'm telling you? When you run after the world for human wisdom, you're siding yourselves in the camp of the crucifiers!

Devastating, isn't he, to any seeking after worldly wisdom? That's why I say to you tonight, Christian, don't be intimidated by this world, don't be intimidated by their so-called wisdom - because wisdom without God leads the world to crucify the Lord of glory. And if He was here today they would crucify Him again, over and over again and again, because that's all the wisdom they have and that's all that their wisdom leads them to. You hear some of the wisest people in the world, it seems that when they go into University - some of them - and get to the highest pinnacles of learning in Oxford and Cambridge, I don't want to just pooh-pooh those universities, but in all their universities, the more men learn at times the more antagonistic and blasphemous they come before the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Is that not the case? Professing themselves to be wise they become absolute fools, and what it really betrays is, as it betrayed in the person of Pilate and the person of Herod, that the more of worldly wisdom and human esteem that you heap upon yourselves it proves that you've no wisdom at all!

Paul is laying down the law that human wisdom had no place in the church, for it is human wisdom that crucified the church's Lord - and if you crave human wisdom it places you among the company of those that crucified our Lord. Now you might say: 'Well, Paul wasn't there, how would he know?'. Well, apart from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that we'll look at later, Paul experienced this in his own personal conversion. If you turn with me to 1 Timothy - we haven't got time to look at all the portions speaking of Paul before he was converted, but you know he was a Jew of the Jew, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, in the law he was blameless as far human beings can be spoken of. But in this chapter, 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 12 and 13 he says: 'And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief'. All of his human wisdom, yes even his religious wisdom, did not lead him to the conclusion that Jesus was the Christ and God's salvation was by grace through faith, it led him to persecute the church in ignorance!

Paul knew what he was talking about here. Now let's ask the question for a moment: what are the apparatus of human wisdom? What are the faculties that men and women use to bring themselves human wisdom? Paul gives us it, verse 9, and let me say this is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted verses in the whole of Scripture. It has got absolutely nothing to do with heaven, nothing to do with the future or the eternal state, more it has got to do with today: what is the believer's today through the wisdom of God. Verse 9: 'It is written', he's quoting Isaiah, 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard', back to Corinthians now, 'neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him'. What are the human faculties of learning? Eye, ear, and heart. That word 'heart' is the Greek word that also means the mind, we could say: eye, ear, and the mind - that is how men learn, the human faculties alone that they can bring wisdom to themselves. But Paul is saying that if that is all that they use they will never ever perceive the mysteries of God.

The scientist can use his eye and observe experiments and nature, but he will never just with his eye bring to him the wisdom of God. A philosopher can listen to arguments of men, philosophies of men, theories and hypothesis of men, but he will never just through listening or even through looking learn the wisdom of God. A mathematician can use his mind, a theologian can use his mind and even use the word of God with his mind, but that alone - to think with the mind - will never bring to him the wisdom of God. The senses alone that men use for human wisdom cannot perceive God's wisdom. Neither can a man know God externally. We have evidences of God in the lights of the sky, the stars, the trees, nature - but he can't really know God fully through nature. Nature will not save you, neither can man know God internally, although Romans tells us that God's law is written upon our hearts - we have something in us that is, if you like, on God's side, a conscience no matter how seared or buried it may be - but a conscience cannot save you!

Man cannot know God internally or externally, he cannot know Him objectively or subjectively, he can't know Him experientially with the eyes or with the ears, he can't even know Him rationally with his mind. The greatest two human resources that men have: experimental resources, rational resources, mean absolutely nothing in the sight of God! Isn't that astounding? Ultimately what it will turn out to mean if you seek after these things is that you will reject God's truth and turn against God's truth, and crucify the Lord of glory. I say to you again, I hope the message is getting through here, don't be intimidated by the wisdom of this world. Don't be frightened by what they say about God. I don't care whether it's Stephen Hawking, he talks about a Big Bang, and he's been the most famous man in this particular century perhaps for the fact that he seems to have found some kind of a scheme in his mind to explain it, hypothetically speaking - you can't prove it, it's only a theory. He believes he's denied the existence of a personal God. Einstein said that his discoveries and the discoveries of science have obliterated the idea of a personal God. They may believe in some kind of a force out there other than ourselves, but it's not a personal God that we can know, and we can love, and that we can be near and will ultimately save us.

Don't be worried about Charles Darwin. On Sunday nights I believe there's this programme going on, and it's the top 100 or so Britons. Darwin, I believe, is going to be right up there at the top of it, he's going to be up there. He's on our - is it our five pound note, or ten pound note? - he's on one of them. Don't be intimidated! This is the wisdom of men, this is wisdom divorced from God. What Paul is actually saying to the believers was: 'This is the wisdom that you're dividing over!'. You're on shaky ground to have your viewpoints adhering to men, to your dogmas devised from men, because God hides His wisdom from men. He hides His wisdom from those who are wise in their own eyes, He frustrates men's wisdom, He confounds men's wisdom, He pulls down men's imaginations that exalt themselves against God!

I'm glad I'm on God's side, I can tell you that - are you not? If you turn to Matthew chapter 11 we find that Paul is only saying what the Lord Jesus spoke of. You remember He upbraided the cities where most of His mighty miracles were done, Chorazin and Bethsaida. He said that it would be better for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgement than it would be for them. They were so puffed up in their knowledge, they believed that heaven had come down to dwell with them - but the Lord actually said that they were practically in hell because of their rejection of the Messiah. But do you notice what He says as He lifts His eyes to heaven in verse 25: 'At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes'. It seemed good in God's sight that that is the way things should be done.

If you turn to chapter 13, now this is very perplexing but this is the truth of God and we must accept it, in verse 10 he says: 'And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand'. The Pharisees and the Scribes, men and women that were listening to Jesus' words, seeing His great miracles, were only using the faculties that they had of human wisdom - the eyes to see with, the ears to hear with, and the mind to think with, but it was not God's wisdom and that was proved in them concluding the gospel of Christ as what? Foolishness.

Dr William Ostler visited, as it was in that day, a very modern and new hospital in the city of London. The staff were proudly showing him around all the new equipment and beds in every part of the building, and Dr Ostler picked up some of the patients charts detailing all their conditions. He noticed on the charts a system of abbreviations, and one of them was 'SF', scarlet fever; another one was 'TB', tuberculosis; and 'D', for diphtheria; and so on and so forth they went on in their abbreviations. But finally he saw these initials: 'GOK', and they were all over these charts - 'GOK', and he didn't understand what it was. He was a great doctor himself, and so when he got an opportunity he turned to one of younger doctors and he said: 'Doctor I say that you've a sweeping epidemic of GOK in this hospital, because it's written all over the charts. I'm unfamiliar with this term or what it means, can you tell me - what is 'GOK', G-O-K?'. The young doctor says: 'Well, when we can't diagnose what a disease is, we just say 'God Only Knows, and we put 'GOK''. 'GOK', God Only Knows.

My friend, listen, if our nation and our people could get a good dose and epidemic of 'GOK', that God only knows, it would do them all a world of good - because man needs to admit that he doesn't know anything without God! Well, it poses a fundamental question to us: well then, how can we know God? If you can't know God with your eyes or your ears, or with your mind, if you can't bring yourself to God in any way through human understanding or learning or intellect, how can we really know God? It must be impossible! Well, if it were left entirely up to yourselves, yes it would be impossible - but hallelujah, in verse 10 of our passage it says this, I love this word 'but' - don't you? Right through the Scriptures? - 'But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit'.

God's wisdom, is our second point, is revealed by the Spirit. You see, maturity cannot be found by human wisdom because salvation is not found by human wisdom. These Corinthians started off in the Spirit of God being saved, and they were trying to mature in their Christian faith through human wisdom and it wasn't possible because they weren't saved by that in the first instance. But not only is it impossible to be mature and to be saved through human wisdom, it's not necessary! Because God hath revealed unto us by His Spirit the wisdom of His own heart, and man cannot come to God on his own, but - praise God - God has come to man! The Spirit of God has invaded the world, the territory of man. The Spirit of God has saturated this world with the gospel of God and the knowledge of Christ, and has shown God to men!

This is tremendous, isn't it? You wouldn't think it to look at some of you, but I think it's tremendous! Now how has God revealed this through His Spirit? Well there's three things in these verses that we have to notice. Verses 10 and 11, through revelation. Look at verse 10: 'God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God' - but it's that wee word 'revealed', you could circle that. 'Revealed', where we get 'revelation' from - and that is what the Bible is. The Bible is God's revelation, and notice that it says the Spirit searcheth all things - Psalm 131 tells us that: you can't escape the Spirit of God, the presence of God. He knows everything, He is everywhere, He can absolutely delve into all things and all people's minds and the dark places, the chambers where polluted things hold empire o'er the soul - He knows! But not only can He delve into all things in this universe, He can plumb and fathom the depths of the deepness of the mind of God! That's amazing! The deep things of God are known by the Spirit.

It's hardly surprising when He is God Himself, how anybody can argue that the Holy Spirit is not God - He's some kind of fluid or influence - He knows all things because He shares divine omnipotence with God the Father and God the Son. I was thinking today how much I know of God, or how much we know of God, I imagine it's definitely less than 1% - wouldn't you agree with me? One per cent - probably 0.0000...whatever% - I don't know if you could even put it in percentages, but everything is known by the Spirit of God - everything! There is not a thing about God that is God that He doesn't know, and therefore, Paul is saying, He is a reliable source of human insight into God's wisdom. If you want to know about God go to the Spirit of God who is our Teacher.

To support the assertion he uses the analogy of the illustration of our own spirit. He says the Holy Spirit is a bit like your own spirit, what does he mean? Well, I can't read what you're thinking - maybe it's: 'When's this guy going to finish, he's always going on too long and never gets through his sermons' - I don't know what it is, but I can't read what your thoughts are and you can't read what my thoughts are. But my own spirit knows exactly what my thoughts are, and what Paul is saying here is that you can't peer into the mind of divinity with your own futility, you can't do it! But there is One who, like your own spirit knows your thoughts, the Spirit of God knows God's thoughts, and the Spirit of God is able to reveal God's thoughts unto us. That is what revelation is, the Spirit of God is the Godhead's agent of transmission and communication. The first step in that communication of His truth and wisdom is revelation, it is the Bible.

Isn't it true? The Holy Spirit is the Author of the word of God, isn't He? He has inspired these pages, He has given us the word of God, and that's why He knows what the mind of God really is. He used human agents, He used the apostle Paul, and James, and He used other writers in the Old Testament, the prophets, all sorts of men and apostles and prophets to write the word of God - and although it was human men writing with human words, it is still the pure word of God! It is a revelation of God from God! Now how could the Corinthians be proud of their own wisdom when they had been given the wisdom of God from the hand of God, and it is the word of God? Oh, that these men could get this, oh that we could get this in our day: wisdom is not acquired, wisdom is revealed. Do you see the difference?

It's revealed by revelation, secondly it's revealed through inspiration - verses 12 to 13: 'Now we have received' - there's the word. 'Revealed' in verse 10, there's the word you need to circle: we have received through inspiration. How the Bible came - how did we get this revelation? Well, it came through inspiration. This is the process of communication, the communication is the Bible, the revelation - but the process of how we got the revelation is inspiration. This wisdom cannot be discovered, you can't dig in some spot with an 'X' on it on a treasure map and find the wisdom of God. You can't acquire it, neither can you discover it, it can only be received - it can only be given and received.

Now if something is received it must be given, and we find it the end of this verse: 'we might know the things that are freely given to us'. Isn't that wonderful? We can receive the word of God and the wisdom of God, why? Because it has been freely given unto us. It was given unto the apostles, the apostles and New Testament writers wrote these things down so that we have God's revelation - and praise God's name, they didn't write down their own ideas and their own interpretations, but they wrote down what God gave them, and that is why scripture - all scripture - is given by inspiration of God, all of it!

There's so much misunderstanding about the word of God today, especially in theology. Liberal theologians and even neo-orthodox theologians are now saying: 'Well, the Bible contains the word of God'. 'It contains', notice the subtle difference - 'Well, we don't know that every bit of it is the word of God, but the word of God is in there somewhere!'. It doesn't contain the word of God, it is the word of God! Every word of it is the word of God, not some kind of subjective thing, but everything they wrote. Remember what the Lord Jesus said to the devil went he tempted Him? 'Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word, every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'. That's why he nails it here in verse 13: 'Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth', not in their words. God didn't communicate divine ideas to men and they wrote it down in their own words - no! God communicated divine thoughts, and those thoughts were transmitted through divine words. There's a difference, and you must note the difference: God gave God's word in His own words.

We believe in verbal inspiration - we don't believe in it - we believe in verbal plenary inspiration - look at your basis of belief - which means not only that this is the word of God inspired of God, but every word is inspired of God, and even the very order of the words, in the original languages now, is inspired of God! We're not talking about translations, sure it's different in every single language where there is a translation! But in the original scriptures written by the apostles delivered unto the saints every word was from God.

Revelation through inspiration, but it's necessary, if we're to understand it, to have illumination - and that's how God's wisdom is communicated to us today. Verse 14: 'The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ'. I wish we had time, but did you know it's possible to read the word of God and not understand it? Remember the eunuch? Philip said: 'Understandest thou what thou readest?' - he didn't understand it, Isaiah 53. It's no surprise that you still don't understand it today, because they have eyes to see but they see not, they have ears to hear but they hear not, they have minds to think but they think not.

This isn't human wisdom, this is divine. In John chapter 5 we find there that the Lord Jesus said that the Scriptures were where the Pharisees would learn of Him, but they were experts in the Scriptures and they couldn't see Him. Now you explain that! We need illumination to understand the word of God, that's why theologians who are liberal and churchmen and cultists don't accept it, it doesn't make sense to them - yet the fact is that because men do not believe the word of God, because they believe the Gospel is foolishness, they are confirming themselves in the realm of the natural not the spiritual! Because they are natural they cannot appraise or appreciate or discern the wisdom of God - that's why it's dangerous to listen to natural men, no matter how clever they are, because we need God's illumination.

I love McCheyne, and on his daily reading notes - I don't use them now, but I used to - he used to quote Psalm 119 and verse 18, what is it? 'Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things in thy law'. We need God to open our eyes. He has given the revelation, it's by inspiration, but we need illumination - and there were a few people who were inspired of God to write the word of God as we have it, but Paul is saying all men who have the spirit of God and who are in Christ can see the illumination of God. We don't need a modern discovery, we don't need a special man to interpret it, we don't need an organisation - no church, or cult, or movement has an exclusive right to the pages of this book, or authority exclusively to interpret this book. There's no special mystical key or experience that men need to have, they just need to have the Spirit of God - it's not a private interpretation!

Well, we must finish tonight, but let me say this: I believe that even for a man to be saved he needs to be illumined of God. Don't think I'm on a hyper-Calvinistic bandwagon here tonight, because I'm not. Even old Wesley believed that, and he was an Armenian if ever there was one: 'Thine eye diffused a quickening ray; I awoke, the dungeon flamed with light; my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed Thee'. Don't let that frustrate you - can I just say before I close, don't let it annoy you or confuse you, it's a different perspective altogether. The Father's perspective of my salvation is that He chose me in Christ before the world began, that's His perspective. The Son's perspective is that I was saved at Calvary where He shed His precious blood, and rose again the third day. The Spirit's perspective is when He convicted me and then He regenerated me, He saved me there and then at that moment. What's my perspective? When I heard the Gospel and I believed it, that's when I was saved! When is it? Do you know what the answer is? It is an eternal salvation, and it's not finished yet.

That's the wisdom of God and men can't understand it unless they can understand the mystery, because God's wisdom is received by the regenerate. I have to finish, the question is asked: who knows the mind of God? Do you know what the answer, I believe, to that question is? Humans don't know the mind of God, but how does Paul end? 'We have the mind of Christ', do you know what that word for 'mind' is? 'Nouse' (sp?) - did you ever here the slang 'nouse'? Do you know where else it's used? In Luke 24 and verse 45 where it says of the two on the road to Emmaus, that Christ drew beside them and opened up their 'nouse' that they might understand the Scriptures.

We had in this chapter the teaching of the Gospel, its agency and propagation, its preaching, its instrument of understanding, its revelation - and it reveals God to man, and man to himself, and the crux of it is the cross. Apart from this Gospel there is no message or meaning to life, and apart from the cross there is no meaning to the Gospel - and I say in conclusion to all these two chapters: God forbid that we should glory in anything except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 7

"Baby Christians"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 3:1-9

1.      They Are Never Ready For Meat (verse 2)

2.      They Thrive On Strife And Quarrels (verse 3)

3.      They Enjoy Factionalism (verse 4)

4.      They Exalt Man Above God (verses 5-9)

a.      Not understanding the Spirit's sovereignty

b.      Not understanding the Lord's method

c.      Not understanding the Body's co-operation

d.      Not understanding the Labourer's reward

First Corinthians chapter 3, and we'll take time to read the first few verses right down to verse 9. The subject this evening is 'Baby Christians'.

Verse 1: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one: and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour. For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building".

'Baby Christians', a baby is a person, a little person who is utterly dependent upon another. It is a person who is amused, often times, by rubbish - you can give it the box of the toy and not the toy, and it will be more amused with the box than the toy. A baby is a creature that seems to put into its mouth anything that it finds lying on the ground. As that little baby gets older - and it doesn't need to get too old, I can tell you, to go into little tantrums when it doesn't get its way. When we look at the figure, or the metaphor, or the illustration, the analogy that Paul gives us of baby Christians, we see that he's talking about people who are always dependent upon others, who never learn to have spiritual independence and growth individually. They are often amused by rubbish, by things that don't really matter, they'll put anything into their mouths, they'll feed themselves on anything except the word of God, and they are often - within the church of Jesus Christ - prone to tantrums. That's what a baby is like, and if you can imagine what an adult like that would be, you have now imagined what the Corinthians Christians were like in the days of Paul.

Imagine the tragedy of an adult, a grown man or woman, that behaves like a baby! A man who has never developed, a man who has never grown! There are several genetic and medical conditions that actually realise this awful tragedy and monstrosity of a nightmare for people, when they see children that do not age, that don't appear to age at least - they are ageing in years, but they never grow, they never mature. It's a tragedy to see. What is further a tragedy to see is if you went to China, which I mentioned in my prayer, and you see there parents who take their little children and they put shoes on their feet that are too small for them because they believe it's great have small feet, something beautiful to have small feet - so they force their children not to grow by putting shoes on them that are too small so that they'll have small feet. It's a tragedy, isn't it?

But imagine: not something genetic, not something that is forced upon you by another, but something that is actually an intelligent reasonable choice - to choose to stay a baby! To choose to never grow! Imagine, if you will, a 40-year-old man turning up for work with a dummy in his mouth and his favourite toy underneath his arm! Someone related to me today what it would be like to see a 70-year-old man in a play pen with a rattle in his mouth and toys around him. What would it be like? It seems absolutely ridiculous, and it is ridiculous! But what is more ridiculous than that human illustration, Paul is saying, is a Christian that has at his disposal all of the power and riches of God; yet he fails, willingly, to grow and to mature - he is still a babe in Christ.

The awful fact that we have to face tonight is that there is a reality called 'Baby Christians'. There is such a thing as an underdeveloped, immature Christian. Paul speaks to these people in verse 1 and he says: 'Brethren', he looks upon them as believers, brothers. This is the staggering thing about it, that he's not saying, as he said at the end of chapter 2, that these people are natural, they're not even saved, they're not living like Christians so they're not saved, that's not what he's saying! He says that they are babes in Christ, positionally they are in Christ, and he calls them brothers - they are real Christians yet they have never developed. I believe that he calls them brothers because he wants, as he did in chapter 1, to show them affection, to show them grace before he comes in very hard and rebukes them. He wants them to realise that his strong words of exhortation and rebuke are coming from a heart of strong affection and love and compassion towards them - and let me say before I go on any further that I hope you understand in some of the rebukes and exhortation and encouragement that I give to you tonight, and I have been before the Lord, this is from a heart of love, it is from a heart of compassion toward you, it is from a heart of a shepherd - I hope - that wants God's best for you, and wants you to enter into the joy of the Lord that He has prepared for you, and the maturity and the growth that He wants for you.

We must not, tonight, miss the import and the significance and the magnitude of this illustration that Paul is giving to us. Look at verse 1: 'I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ'. Now I want you to note that Paul, I believe, is speaking about the first time he was with the Corinthians. He is speaking of when he came to them and he led them to Christ, and then they were babes in Christ, they were mere infants, and he says: 'You're carnal'. Now that word 'carnal' simply means 'fleshly', it means 'worldly' - the opposite to spiritual, to be rooted down and have your tent pegs in this world, to be a fleshly Christian. When these Corinthians were first converted, like many people - and some of you can testify to this tonight - when you're first converted you don't really understand everything that takes place in your conversion, you don't understand and are given a great revelation of all things spiritual that God ever wants to reveal to you right throughout your whole spiritual life and pilgrimage. Even when you get converted, although you don't know everything, there's still a baggage of worldliness that often comes into your new life in Christ. You don't let go of everything that you had in the world and it takes a little bit of time.

Some Christians get saved and they think, initially, that they're going to live just as they lived before, in the same sort of way. When Paul first ministered to these believers in Corinth he realised that the process of sanctification had only started, and that there was a long road ahead of him - they had not yet naturally developed the way that the Holy Spirit would develop them one day. So I want you to see that: that when they were first converted they didn't know everything about salvation and sanctification, and they brought with them much of the baggage of the world before their conversion. Then when we go into verse 2 - now don't worry about the lights flashing, they're not bothering me until I can't see the Bible, so don't you worry about them either - verse 2: 'I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able'. So when he first came to them and they were converted - and he realised that they could never be, right at conversion, fully spiritually developed - he knew that they couldn't take the meat of God's word, he had to feed them with milk, not solids. Like a baby, a baby would right away choke on solids if it was fed with them from birth - all that he could feed them with and all that they were able to receive and digest were the simple basic truths of the word of God. They were not ready for anything else, and there's a lesson in that right away, because there are many people that I see coming in and out of this church and they get so taken up with the depths of prophecy, the intricacies of Scripture, and they have not yet learned the basic simple truths of the milk of God's word - and some of them are backslidden tonight who used to come to this Bible study. It is important to realise, when you're first converted, that you will never understand everything and there's a lot of growing process that has to come to pass.

These Corinthians, like all people converted, were not ready for anything else, and it was fully understandable and it was appropriate for their condition at that time as babes in Christ - but the dilemma and the difficulty for the apostle Paul was this: they were still there as babes! That's what they were like when he first led them to Christ, that's what they were like when he was revealing to them the basic ABCs of the Christian life and faith and truth, but they're still there! And they still weren't ready, the apostle said, to receive the meat of the word of God! I don't care what way you look at this, this is abnormal. It is just like the little child that has never matured, never grown up - but it's more than that, it's something that is not genetic, and it's not even forced on them by another, it is voluntary - they are choosing not to grow as believers, they are choosing not to take the meat of God's word but to still feed on the milk! It's abnormal and it is unnatural, it's a lack of natural development.

So Paul is distinguishing that there are two different types of Christians. In chapter 2 he talked about the spiritual man and the natural man. The natural man is unconverted and does not perceive or discern spiritual things, and the spiritual man is a man who is regenerated by the Spirit of God and made alive to God, and made to be able to see the truths of God and see the Gospel as the power and wisdom of God - it no longer is foolishness. But now, as he's coming into chapter 3, he's not talking about the saved and the unsaved, but he's talking about spiritual Christians as opposed to carnal Christians. So he says that not only are there two camps in humanity between those who are saved and are lost, but there two camps even within Christendom - those who are carnal and those who are spiritual. It's not that you're spiritual and then you stay spiritual the rest of your life, and it's not that you're carnal and you have to remain carnal - sometimes you can be spiritual one day and carnal the next day, and vice versa. You can go into bouts of each of these conditions: spiritual and carnal. But what I want you to see is that Paul sees those who are spiritual not as the ones who are extraordinary, he sees the Christians that are carnal and fleshly as the ones who are out of the ordinary because it was abnormal, unnatural development - they should have grown!

They are Christians, but Paul says they are still men of the flesh. Now let me reiterate tonight, if you're a young believer, that the Bible does not expect young Christians to be spiritual instantaneously - but what we have here are Corinthian believers after they were converted, after they were feeding upon the milk, they failed to move forward and they frittered away their lives and remained babes still in flesh. Now although it takes a little bit of time to mature, to become spiritual believers, to grow up from being babes to adult Christians, it doesn't take as long as many of us think. It doesn't take as long as some of us think it should and ought to take, because as you look at Paul here you find that these Corinthians - and you know the background that they had, we went into that in our very first study, they were from an awful, pagan, immoral, amoral background - and the probability is that since Paul led them to Christ, and is now writing this letter, there are only 3 to 5 years maximum that have passed. Note that: 3 to 5 years, yet Paul is expecting natural spiritual growth in these believers - in fact he thinks that at this stage they should be spiritual and not carnal, yet they are still babes. Do you know what he's saying effectively? 'You've remained babes too long, it's time you were spiritual!'.

Challenging stuff, isn't it? When you think about it, this is why the Lord Jesus shed His precious blood at Calvary, isn't it? He didn't just shed His blood to save us from the penalty of sin, but He shed His blood to save us and deliver us and emancipate us from the power of sin in our lives, so that we could become conquerors through Him that loved us. He died that we might have removed in our lives all of the hindrances to the Spirit's power and effectiveness in our testimony. Yet it's sad to find today, Christians who achieve no progress year after year after year - the tragedy of even decade after decade, 40, maybe even 50 years without any progress whatsoever since the day that they first believed! Believers are even filled with amazement when they see a young man or a young woman after three years of conversion going upward and outward, breaking out and for God - they think it's out of the ordinary, it's abnormal, it is not normal! That is normal, that is natural! Let us change our perspectives if they are unbiblical, and I believe that they are - this is not unusual, to see a man or a woman break through for Christ after a couple of years in the faith.

In the light of that, can I ask you all here this evening - and I plead with you to recognise that this is coming from a heart of compassion and concern, and I have been asking myself this before God in the place of prayer - how long is it since you have believed? How long since you first fed on the milk? And here's the next question: are you, today, spiritual? I put it another way: are you, today, normal in the sight of God? Paul is saying that we all ought to have an insatiable passion to grow and to not wait for another - to grow and to seek God until we see that growth, such a growth that we become spiritual and mature! We need to ask several questions of ourselves tonight, and one of the questions that we need to ask as the church in the West and in Ulster this evening is: why does this not happen? Why is it that so many believers are saved and still on milk, and do not develop to maturity on to meat, and become spiritual people but remain carnal? Why is it?

Well, I can't enter into it all tonight because I want to do with the whole of this passage, but there is a twofold answer I believe: first and foremost, carnal Christian leaders allow carnal Christianity to happen. That may be because the elders, I mean the older people, not the oversight but the older people, do not instruct the younger as we find in Titus 2 and various other passages. But it may be, and I think this is the probable reason, that these leaders, a great number of them, are unspiritual themselves and are carnal and cannot teach spirituality! The second reason is most likely also the mirror image of this, that there is no appetite, or at least generally speaking to a large extent, there is not an appetite within believers. There is not a desire within Christians to seek after God's truth, God's meat, God's maturity, spirituality - and if there is that desire, there's not the willingness to pay the cost, to pay the price! Because of that and many other reasons, the consequence, as Watchman Nee said, is that the church is overstuffed with big babies. The church is overstuffed with big babies.

What we want to do tonight is look at the characteristics of what a baby Christian is. We find them all in this passage, the first is found in verse 2 as we have already alluded to it: they are never ready for meat, they never get ready for meat. Because they stay babies too long they get to such a stage that they are unable to absorb spiritual, real spiritual teaching and truth. We can see that at large in our nation today, where the word of God and the preaching of the word of God is relegated to epilogue status - it's put at the end of meetings, it's shoved out of the way, as little as possible. Now Christians can watch a 3 and a half hour long film, an epic, sit before it and take it all in, follow the plot - but they can't sit for half an hour or 45 minutes or even an hour under God's word and think about it!

There is a famine in God's word and there is a famine in doctrine, doctrine is diluted and made to seem unimportant - but that is not, I believe, what Paul is talking about here. I'll tell you why: because the Corinthians, above perhaps every other church that Paul had ever written to, knew a great deal of spiritual truth. Remember the wisdom that they were priding themselves in? If you look for a moment to chapter 1 and verse 5 you can read it for yourself, Paul was rejoicing, remember, in grace for them '...that in every thing they were enriched by Christ, in all utterance, and in all knowledge'. In all likelihood, when Paul came to them and taught them spiritual truths, they were able to grasp it, they were able to understand what the great apostle said - but the problem that they had that distinguished between spiritual Christians and carnal Christians was that that understanding was purely and only in the mind. They knew everything, but what made them carnal was that they didn't have the power to express in their life that which they knew! That, perhaps, is the fundamental distinction between those who are spiritual and those who are carnal - it is not how much you know, it is how much you implement of what you know!

We are plagued today in the church of Jesus Christ in the West with people who can grasp so many things so well, and can even teach and preach them well, but they themselves are unspiritual! I'm not setting myself up as some kind of Pope or Ayatollah to hammer everybody else in a pulpit; but I'll tell you, as I move among some men I find them extremely unspiritual. Spirituality doesn't lie in some kind of a wonderful mysterious thought or thoughts about Christ or about prophecy or about the old or the new covenant, it doesn't rest in that. It rests in actual spiritual experience, not just what you know, but how what you know has affected your walk and how you have experienced God in your life! Cleverness does not matter, even eagerness for the truth are useless because the essential path that God blesses and God deigns to be spiritual is the path of obedience to the Holy Spirit of God - now you mark that! He, the Lord Jesus said, would not leave the disciples comfortless, orphans, but He would come - and what did He say He would do? He would lead them into all truth.

All else apart from that path of obedience is simply a transmission of knowledge from one mind to another - I hope that that's not what I'm engaged in every Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Monday evening: just transmitting what I have learnt in the study to you, and you go home and maybe even transmit it to someone else. That is carnality of the highest kind - and what many people today, especially in our circles, need is not increased spiritual teaching, but an increased obedient heart to the Spirit's command. In fact, if you don't have obedience to the Spirit's command in the teaching of the word of God, the more teaching you get the more carnal you get! Does that mean we need to stay away from meetings and start to consider for a while whether we've put into practice what we believe and have been taught? Well, I'm not espousing that, I want to get you to the meetings - but sometimes I wonder!

Carnality, to heap to ourselves some kind of a knowledge, and then we begin to believe and deceive ourselves into thinking that we're spiritual because of what we know. We say: 'Well, how else could I possibly know so many spiritual things unless I myself were spiritual?'. But that is not the touchstone of spirituality, rather it is: 'How much do I know from life experience?' - and if it's only in the mind it is merely Corinthian, and it is the carnal product of the mind.

What I'm talking about is...you talk to some people, and I'm not being ostentatious here, but you talk to some people about certain spiritual experiences that either some other man has had that you've read about, or that you have had, or a friend of yours has had, and they look at you and they go: 'Aye' - ever get that reaction? 'Aye' - it's foreign. Oh, the truth's all there, but ask about experience and reality - and do you know the only conclusion I come to? It's this: some believers never grow up! They never mature! Now the Lord knows my heart tonight, and if you are carnal I pity you - like a child gazing into a cage where there's a stray puppy confined that can't get out, and the child has pity on it. I pity you. I have been praying before God for a heart of grace and love, for you to realise that by remaining carnal and a babe in Christ just feeding upon milk, you limit your own spiritual capacity because you refuse to grow. You fit, you fit into this definition of a carnal Christian. Listen what Roy Lauren (sp?), the author says: 'Many Christians are parasitic consumers' - you know what a parasite is, something like a leech that latches onto you and sucks life from your life - some Christians are like parasitic consumers. He goes on: 'They have arrested their own development because they have ceased to search for food themselves. They are content have someone else find it for them. They have also ceased to pray, being satisfied with being prayed for. They do no form of spiritual work since they pay their preacher to work for them. In other words they live off another, they nurse off another, they are being fed by another, and they never come to spiritual maturity, they are never ready for the meat'. Is that you?

Let us move on to the second characteristic in verse 3: they thrive on strife and quarrels. This is another evidence, he talks about envying among them, strife and divisions - jealousy is another translation of it, jealousy and strife. He mentioned this as the cause of division in Corinth in chapter 1 and verse 11, and two more times he's going to mention it: chapter 3 verse 22, and chapter 4 verse 6. He's always coming back to the fact that they are divided because of their humanistic wisdom and reasoning, because of their carnality! He says: 'Even the ones that are saying, 'I am of Christ', the motivation behind it is jealousy and strife'. They're trying to set themselves up as spiritual when they're carnal! As one man has said: 'The fact is this: any sectarian boasting is but the babbling of a babe' - any sectarian boasting is but the babbling of a babe!

Now listen, this is extremely important, because those who are never ready for meat, and those who thrive on strife and quarrels - essentially those who are carnal, they are babes in Christ - they have a camouflage so that others do not see, or at least they think they do not see, that they are only babes. They know deep down, they maybe don't admit it, but they know that they are essentially unspiritual so what they do is they get a camouflage, and it's usually a little crusade, a little hobby horse that they like, that gives them a feeling within their heart of rightness - 'I'm right!'. It's not righteousness, it's just rightness. Have you ever met these people? They are 'one issue people' - one issue. They fight for that little issue, they would die for that little issue it would seem, they turn every conversation round to the hobby horse or this issue of contention - and I ask you tonight: are they are not babes? Are they not the ones who never grow up? And I'll tell you, as I've been before God for grace, sometimes I feel it hard and my patience wears thin, and I could grab some grown men and shake them and say: 'For God's sake, man, grow up!'.

Some of us are no different than politicians in the lobby of Parliament arguing party politics, men - and I say it reverently - men in a pub fighting over a horse or a dog that they've put a bet on. If you think that I'm being too low or too hard, Paul says that when you do these things - look at the end of verse 3 - you walk as mere men! Now you might put some kind of a facade and an air of respectability on your particular quarrelling and arguing, because you're doing it over so-called spiritual matters, but Paul says it's no different. It's all from the same source! What is the source? It is the flesh! Now it doesn't matter if it's the flesh of party politics, it doesn't matter whether it's the flesh of sinful revelling, even if it's spiritual argumentation from a motivation of pride - it is the flesh!

This is devastating stuff, because Paul says you are living like mere men. What is a mere man? It is like the natural man in chapter 2, without the Spirit! He says you're living like a man that doesn't even have the Spirit of God! What could be more awful than to conceive in your mind of a Christian who had to live without the Spirit of God? Yet there are many people in our churches today and they're living as if they didn't have the Spirit of God in their life, because the churches are wrecked! I wonder if there's a church this side of Iceland that has not had a split in it within the last ten years or so? It is all from the flesh, ultimately from the flesh, the quarrelling over these things, the strife, the envy - it stems from jealousy! Imagine, could you tonight, I ask you this from the depths of my heart: could you be living as a Christian as if you didn't even have the Spirit of God? A mere man.

Let me ask you it in this simple question: you live in number 32, and next door to you in number 34 there's a man who is not a believer, and his whole family aren't believers. You've got a nice house and he has got a nice house; you've got a good job and he's got a good job; you've lovely children and he has lovely children, they're all going to good schools, they've got prospects ahead of them. You go to church because you're a Christian, but he goes to church yet he's not a Christian. Can I ask you a simple question: what's the difference? You're not going to tell me it's because you're saved, are you? Is that difference enough? Paul is saying: 'No it's not' - it's not different enough. You've got to be seen not to just walk as mere men - what makes us distinctive as believers? What are we living for? He's saying your life will tell what you're living for!

People come in and out of church, and they show their face once in a blue moon, and they don't do anything in the assembly, and they watch others breaking their back working for Jesus, needing help and they won't give any hand - and they think that they're fooling everybody going in and out week after week! We can see where their priorities lie! You're not fooling anybody! I can see right away when a man's priority is his work - and we all have to work, and I am in a position where I can say certain things and I have to be careful. But I know other people, even people in levels of Professorship in medicine, but they chose not to go all the way up the ladder, not to be one of these people that never had an hour to go to a prayer meeting, or never had an opportunity to take free time to give out a tract, so they chose a job between 9 and 5 - they excelled in it, so much so that people were showing documentaries about them on the television, Professor Verner Wright (sp?). They made a choice that showed where their priorities lay, and it marked them out as spiritual.

You're not fooling anybody. The tragic fact is that this baby Christian generation, if the Holy Spirit were withdrawn from much of the church our lives would just go on as usual. Are we living just like mere men? These baby Christians, they're never ready for meat, they thrive on strife and quarrels - verse 4 says that they enjoy factionalism. These splits, they thrive on it! It's not something that they put up with because of truth or martyrdom, they want to see it, they love a good fight, a good argument! These are the people, I think, that take their stand when there's nothing to stand on, when there's nothing to stand for or fight for. They love to divide on a point of rightness, not a point of righteousness but a point of rightness - usually because it's a point of pride and it makes them feel better than the next one! God give us more protestants in the truest sense of the word, pro-test-ants, who'll stand up against error and against untruthfulness. Sometimes I feel that some of these so-called Protestants, I define them as pro-pest-ants! They're a nuisance to God and to His church and to the witness! 'Everything's an issue to die for', and much of it - and this is what I want you to see tonight - much of this is just to cover over that they have nothing else worth fighting for! Only human wisdom, human personalities, human parties - they are trying to camouflage, to cover over that they don't have a real spiritual vital walk with Christ! Someone has said: 'Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people - all to hide carnality'.

The fourth characteristic is that they exalt man above God, verses 5 through to 9. The reason why they exalt men above God, first of all, is because they don't understand the Spirit's sovereignty. They see a man with a gift, a tremendous gift that the Lord uses, and they set him up on a pinnacle over another man that doesn't seem to have as much of a flamboyant gift - but they are priding the man, ignoring the fact that the Spirit is the one who has given the man the gift. These people are not demi-gods, they are servants, Paul says: 'I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase', and in verse 5 he says: 'Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers' - now that's not an ecclesiastical title, that is the description of a servant of Christ, one who ministers to others.

Now what makes them different? What makes one man different from another in his gift? It is simply this, look at the end of verse 5: 'even as the Lord gave to every man'. Another translation puts it: 'even as the Lord has a sign to different men'. Now worldly leaders, what do they seek? They seek fame and prestige, and they force their own ways upon others, and they force their face into the limelight - but Paul is saying Christian leaders shouldn't be like that, they should seek only to serve and follow the will of God. We should never make preachers or teachers into celebrities. We are not to celebrate the servants of the Lord, but the Lord Himself! If we recognise the sovereignty of the Spirit we will realise who makes one Christian to differ from another. Paul says: 'I am what I am by the grace of God'.

If you turn to chapter 12 of this epistle he talks about spiritual gifts, and we'll come to it in a later study, in verse 11 he says: 'All these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will' - as the Spirit wills, the sovereignty of the Spirit. In chapter 4, if you look at it, and verse 7 he addresses it specifically: 'For who maketh thee to differ from another? And what hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?'. You're glorying in men's gifts as if they had achieved it, but God has given them it! We will exalt men when we don't understand the Spirit's sovereignty.

They also exalted men because they didn't understand the Lord's method. He used an agricultural metaphor, he says: 'I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase'. Paul planted the seed when he shared the Gospel with them, and then Apollos came along when Paul had left Corinth and he watered, he discipled them and taught them the ABC, he fed them on the milk - but what he is saying is: 'Although I planted the seed and Apollos watered, it was the Lord who made the fruit grow! It was the Lord who gave the life. Our human leadership that you're hankering after and following and worshipping, it accomplished absolutely nothing apart from the Spirit's power that unctionised it'.

Now I want you to note something here, because there's a danger when we talk all about the sovereignty of God, and last week we were talking about inspiration and illumination and so on, that we sit back and we say: 'Well, that's the way it is. You sow the seed, somebody comes along and maybe says another wee word that builds upon yours, but you've got to stand back and God will do the rest. God will do the rest, sit back and God will do it all!'. The answer is: God does it all, but He does it all through us - and God wouldn't have given the increase, I believe, if Paul hadn't planted and Apollos hadn't watered. What Paul and Apollos could do God wasn't going to do, because He commanded them to do it. That's important, as we heard at the Breaking of Bread yesterday morning Florence Nightingale said that she worked very hard, very very hard, and yet she did nothing, God did everything. As another has said: 'There is only one way to make dreams come true: wake up and go to work!'. We can't attribute any blessings that we have in the church to mere men, but we recognise when God works through men that it is God that giveth the increase - and it should bring loyalty not to the men, but loyalty to God.

Well, thirdly they exalted men above God because they didn't understand the body's co-operation. In verse 7: 'Neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one'. They're working together, they're not opposed to one another! They're like a team working for the one purpose, united, serving the same Lord. What Paul is effectively saying is: 'The basis of your division is that Paul is saying something different than Apollos, and Apollos is saying something different from Cephas, and Cephas is saying something different than the Lord Himself - but the basis of your division is wrong because we're all saying the same thing! We are all working for the same Lord, so you shouldn't be divided at all!'.

They didn't understand the body's cooperation, and they didn't even realise - as verse 9 says - that they are fellow-labourers with God, they are a team working for God, that the church is God's field, it's not our field, it's not the Iron Hall's field, it's God's building! He has a unified field, not divided into sections! He doesn't have a building that has a segregation down the middle, but it's one building, one field, and it's all God's and He's the leader!

I heard a story about a lovely old lady who was well past her threescore and ten, and she came to her Pastor's door and knocked on it. He opened the door, and she had a big basket of fruit and vegetables, and she just handed it to him and said: 'Pastor, something the Lord and I raised for you' - something the Lord and I raised for you! Imagine being called fellow-labourers with God! God does all the work, but the mighty thing about it is that all His work that He does, a lot of it is through us.

Fourthly, they didn't understand the labourer's reward, they didn't realise that they would be rewarded. Three marks of spirituality that we've seen as we've been going through this epistle, and the Lord has in a wonderful way married it all with the book of Philippians, is that spirituality is marked by maturity, unity and productivity. The three things: maturity, unity and productivity. Productivity is our work for the Lord! If we work it is duty, but if we stay it is mutiny - and I ask the question to you tonight: are you a worker, a fellow-worker with God; or are you a waster?

You know there's this air of pretentiousness today, where people will not work unless they get a pat on the back, unless they get recognised - when it is an invitation to work with the Almighty! But we want the praise of men...strange, isn't it? Do you know that you're saved to serve? Do you know that if you don't use the abilities God has given to you, you might lose them? You could stay as a baby right throughout your whole Christian life! Do you not realise the passion and the pleasure and the power that there is in working for Christ, and even the joy that there is in it of itself? No matter about people getting saved, no matter about the blessing it incurs, the joy to serve the Lord! Let me read you a poem that I read today, and boy it did me good, listen to this - it's called 'Work', it's by an unknown author - and I haven't finished yet. Listen:

'Work!

Thank God for the might of it,

The ardor, the urge, the delight of it -

Work that springs from the heart's desire,

Setting the brain and the soul on fire -

Oh, what is so good as the heat of it,

And what is so glad as the beat of it,

And what is so kind as the stern command,

Challenging brain and heart and hand.

Work!

Thank God for the pride of it,

For the beautiful, conquering tide of it.

Sweeping the life in its furious flood,

Thrilling the arteries, cleansing the blood,

Mastering stupor and dull despair,

Moving the dreamer to do and to dare.

Oh, what is so good as the urge of it,

And what is so glad as the surge of it,

And what is so strong as the summons deep,

Rousing the torpid soul from sleep?

Work!

Thank God for the pace of it,

For the terrible, keen, swift race of it;

Fiery steeds in full control,

Nostrils aquiver to meet the goal.

Work, the Power that drives behind,

Guiding the purposes, taming the mind,

Holding the runway wishes back,

Reining the will to one steady track,

Speeding the energies, faster and faster,

Triumphing over threatened disaster.

Oh, what is so good as the pain of it,

And what is so great as the gain of it?

And what is so kind as the cruel goad,

Forcing us on through the rugged road.

Work!' - listen to this last verse:

'Thank God for the swing of it,

For the clamouring, hammering ring of it,

Passion of labour daily hurled

On the mighty anvils of the world.

Oh, what is so fierce as the flame of it?

And what is so huge as the aim of it

Thundering on through dearth and doubt,

Calling the plan of the Maker out.

Work, the Titan; Work, the friend,

Shaping the earth to a glorious end,

Draining the swamps and blasting the hills,

Doing whatever the Spirit wills -

Rending a continent apart,

To answer the dream of the Master's heart.

Thank God for a world where none may shirk -

Thank God for the glorious splendour of work!'

You will be a carnal Christian if you don't realise that work for God will be rewarded in glory.

As I close I want to say in one or two minutes: how do you come from being a carnal Christian to a spiritual Christian? What's the problem? The problem is the flesh. What can we do with the flesh? Maybe you're a young Christian, and Christians struggle with the flesh, they try to beat the flesh and conquer the flesh and tame the flesh - but you can't do it. Can I say a startling thing tonight? Even the blood of Christ can't cleanse the flesh - do you know what the only answer for the flesh is? Crucifixion. Where was the flesh crucified? Calvary. Crucify the flesh, the lusts thereof. It's irredeemable, you can't make it better. Don't pray for God to make you better, pray for God to make you dead - that old nature crucified with Christ, that the life of Jesus may be manifest in our bodies. Is it any wonder he said: 'I am determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified', because it's the answer to everything.

Our Father, Thy word testifies very clearly that they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and the lusts, and we are to live in the Spirit, and if we are to live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit. Thy word tells us on another occasion that he who has died is freed from sin, and we thank Thee that One has died on our behalf, and we can sing with great might: 'My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin not in part but the whole, is nailed to His cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord oh my soul!'. But our Father, all of us on a daily basis struggle with the old man, the old nature, the sinful flesh, but Lord help us as Paul has instructed us to reckon it dead because it has been crucified with Christ, there's no longer power in it over us. Lord, let some soul tonight, ravaged with sin and temptation, hear this: 'Sin shall no longer have dominion over you'. Let us all move from our carnality into God's spirituality, to the glory of Christ we ask it. Amen.

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Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2002

www.preachtheword.co.uk

info@preachtheword.co.uk

1 Corinthians - Chapter 8

"Built To Last For Eternity"

Copyright 2002

by Pastor David Legge

All Rights Reserved

I Corinthians 3:10-15

1.      The Labour

2.      The Foundation

3.      The Excavation

4.      The Materials

5.      The Examination

I want you to turn first of all 2 Corinthians chapter 5, of course we are still in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, but we want to take a few preliminary readings of the Scriptures - just a couple of verses that will help us in the understanding of our subject tonight 'Built to Last for Eternity', or if you like 'The Judgement Seat of Christ'. Second Corinthians chapter 5, and just one verse, verse 10 - and remember now that, the same as 1 Corinthians, the book of 2 Corinthians is written to believers, to Christians in the little town of Corinth. "For we must", verse 10, "all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad".

Then going back a couple of books to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 14, and again the same theme in this verse, Romans 14 and verse 10 - lifting it out of the context of Paul rebuking these Christians for judging their other brothers in Christ in the church, but he puts it within the context of the judgement seat of Christ, and he says: "But why dost thou judge thy brother? Or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ".

Then one more reading before we come to 1 Corinthians again, Revelation chapter 22, Revelation 22 and verse 12. The Lord Jesus is now speaking in His revelation to John: "And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be".

Now, over to 1 Corinthians now for our text this evening, 1 Corinthians chapter 3. You'll remember in the last study we were looking at 'Baby Christians', the carnal Christian and the spiritual Christian, that there are two kinds of Christians. We'll read from verse 10 which is our text for this evening, verses 10 through to 15 - verse 9 to get the context: "For we are labourers together with God: ye are God's husbandry", or you are God farmers, but here's another illustration: "ye are God's building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire".

It's very easy, I think, in Christian service and in Christian work to get discouraged and to be too negative. We live, as it were, in a day of small things in these days, and there's not too much of revival around us in the West at least - and you can become very negative and very discouraged, but it is important not to be foolish also and to be realistic, and to face the problems that we have honestly and with a degree of realism, and ask the question: 'Well, why are these things happening?'. One of the questions that we ask within the Christian church as Christian leaders and as members of the church is: 'Why is there so little commitment today with regards to Christendom and membership within the assembly?'.

You could say: 'Well, it's symptomatic of what is at large. People generally don't commit themselves to anything'. You only need to look at the institution of marriage and you see that people want all the perks, all the buzz of what it is to be married, live together and have a sexual relationship, yet they don't want the commitment - so they live together to see if it seems to be alright with them, if they fit one another, just like trying on a new shoe, and if the size doesn't fit, well then they'll move on to someone else. They want the buzz without the commitment, but you know friends I think there's a deeper problem with regards to the church of Jesus Christ, why there is not the commitment - we could go a little further and say, why is there not the sacrifice. Why are we crying out for workers? Why is the mission field crying out for missionaries? Why are pulpits crying out for preachers, Pastors and teachers? I think that at the crux of it all there is a fundamental problem, a common denominator.

I wouldn't be so general and silly as to say that there is only one problem - I think there is a myriad of problems. But I believe that certainly part of the problem is that the church of Jesus Christ, especially in the West, has lost the true vision of what the judgement seat of Christ really is. Now note what I say: the true vision - because much of the church believes in the judgement seat of Christ, of course part of the church lump it altogether into one general judgement, which is incorrect according to our understanding of the Word of God at least, but apart from that even those who believe in the judgement seat of Christ which is purely for believers, they lack a true vision of what that will really be like. You know what the Word of God says, that without a vision the people perish - and I believe that there is a perishing within the church of Jesus Christ, among God's people, because they lack a true vision of the accountability that they will have in eternity for the works that they have done in the flesh, before Jesus Christ, as believers, whether they be good works or whether they be bad.

I fear that there is this perception within the mind of many that the judgement seat of Christ is some kind of Sunday School prize-giving, that we're all going to get a pat on the back. If you were at most Christian funerals today, without being too harsh and insensitive, everybody, it seems, gets the 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant' when they get to glory. But in the understanding of the whole gamut and balance of Scripture, these things cannot be, and there's something missing! Why is it within a society that people can profess faith, and as one pastor said to me recently it's discouraging that so few are coming to Christ, but those who are coming to Christ don't seem to go on well with Christ - why is this? Why is it that people think they can come to Christ and live as they like? We have this great doctrine of eternal security, and we believe that once we're saved, once and for all we're always saved - but you have in the whole of East Belfast maybe hundreds of people who would testify that they're backsliders, and they seem to be content to sit in their sin having professed faith in the Lord Jesus, but continue a life of habitual sin which is contrary to the Word of God!

Sometimes, I think, in error, a good dose of saved and lost would do some of them a bit of good! We don't believe in that because it's not in the Word of God, but the sentiment of it seems to do people good - and some of those in the holiness movement, and the 'saved and lost' movement are some of the most sanctified people that you could ever meet. Now, they're in error, but we've got to ask the question - looking at them - is there something missing in our theology that can guard against this mistake of professing Christ and thinking that you can live as you like in grace? I believe here it is, this is the missing piece - of course once you're saved you're always saved, that's in the Word of God as clear as you can read those words on the black-and-white pages that you have before you, but my friend it is not like this: that as soon as you're saved you can live as you like, as soon as you're saved the whole slate is wiped clean and there's no accountability for you - that is not the Christian faith! There is the judgement seat of Christ, and it is no Sunday School prize-giving, rather it is a fearful testing of the works that you have done for Jesus Christ, and the life that you have lived.

Friends, the reality of the Word of God brings you firmly down to earth with a bump, with regards to the judgement seat. It's for believers, that is very clear, we've read that already in 2 Corinthians 5, speaking to believers in Corinth he says: 'we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ', so this is for believers, not for those who are not saved, but for those who are saved. That's who it's for, you ask the question: 'When is it?'. We read from Revelation 22, the Lord Jesus said: 'Behold, I come quickly; and I bring with me my rewards'. We believe, according to the Word of God, that the judgement seat of Christ will take place after the rapture of the church - as soon as you are raptured. Who would say here tonight that they're looking forward to the coming of the Lord Jesus? That's the way we ought to be, every day looking out the window expecting the Lord: 'Perhaps today, perhaps today Lord'. But never forget, in all the euphoria and ecstasy, that in the twinkling of an eye that we are taken up to be with the Lord, we will be in the air for the divine tribunal of the judgement seat of Christ! The question is: are we looking forward to that?

Where will it be? Well, specifically the word for judgement seat is the word 'bema', it was a raised platform that was used during the Olympics and the athletic games. It was where the umpire would sit and distribute the prizes for those who had won first, second and third prize. Another word it has been translated as: 'a footstep', it can also mean a footstep, in other words that our footsteps as Christians, whatever we've done, wherever we've gone, whatever we have been will all be scrutinised with the all-seeing eye of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, before I go on any further, I can't go into all the judgements that there are in the Word of God, but I want to say categorically and clearly that the judgement seat of Christ is not a judgement upon our sins. It is not a judgement upon our sins. The reason why I say that is because - Hallelujah! - our sins have already been judged. Two thousand years ago, 30AD or thereabouts, on a hill called Calvary, upon the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is and was the Lamb of God, our sins were judged - Christ died, and result of His death was that we are justified, we are cleansed and made perfect in the sight of God. At that moment when He cried: 'It is finished!', our sins were all judged, and the judgement of our sin was exhausted on the Person of the Lord Jesus. Now, that is what Paul means when he says in Romans 5: 'Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God'; Romans 8 'Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ' - no condemnation, or if you like no judgement of sin for those who are in Christ.

So, if you're sitting here fearful, and you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, don't be worrying about being judged for your sins one day - that will never happen! Your sins are under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the danger is that we do not realise that although, as believers, we'll never be judged for our sins, the Bible is extremely categorically clear that we will be judged upon our works - not judged for salvation, but judged according to service! Now a lot of people have got problems with this, and some of the Christian paperbacks that I read in these days about grace find it nearly impossible to marry the principle and the idea of grace with being judged for your works, it just doesn't seem to come together for them. Maybe that's a problem with you, you wonder: 'How can you be saved by grace, and God accepts you no matter what you have done, yet on the other side of the coin - although it's nothing to do with salvation - one day you're going to come before the Lord Jesus Christ and He's going to judge you according to the works that you've done in the flesh, whether they be good or whether they be bad?'.

Well, one of the theologians that many of these people that believe in such a strong view of grace, one of their pet theologians is John Calvin - who was one of the greatest ever of the Reformation. Now listen to what he says about this matter: 'There is no inconsistency in saying that God rewards good works, provided we understand that nevertheless men obtain eternal life gratuitously'. Did you get that? There's no contradiction, as long as we can see in our minds that to be saved, to get eternal life, God gives us that gratuitously - that means He gives it to us and He expects nothing back. He indulges us in salvation with His grace, and He asks nothing in return - but when it comes to our service, that's a different matter, and He will judge us according to our works.

Now, already in this chapter Paul has been using the illustration and the analogy of a farmer. He has talked about how he went out and he planted the seed, and sowed the seed, Apollos came along and he watered the seed, and then God gave the increase. He's been using how the Christian servant, and individual Christians, are like farmers; and now he comes to another analogy and he talks about the church and individual Christians as a building. You see that in verse 9: 'Ye are God's building'. What he's saying now in this analogy is: be careful how you build your building! Now listen, Iron Hall, tonight: Paul is saying to us as an assembly, to elders, to deacons, to members: 'Be careful how you build this building' - now not the building across the street, the building that is the church of God, lively stones, people - be careful how you do it! Then he homes in, and we can apply it in this way as individuals: be careful how you build your own personal building, your personal life before God - why? Why be careful? Because there's a day that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is going scrutinise how we've built the building of the Iron Hall, the people, and how we've built our lives individually - that's the reason why we must be careful!

Now the first thing we get out of Paul's analogy is this: the labour, that's your first point. 'According', verse 10, 'to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon'. Now the whole Bible is full, the New Testament especially, of analogies and illustrations of Christians as people who are expending themselves, and putting all their energy out in such an elasticity to win a prize - now you can't miss that. You get the picture of a runner running a race, you get the picture of an athlete wrestling, the analogy of a warrior fighting until he wins the battle; you've got in this chapter itself a farmer sowing, you've also got a mason, a builder, building in places, you've got a fugitive fleeing for his life and existence; in other places you've got a besieger coming and storming the heavens for the riches that are there for him! But in all of the analogies that you have of a Christian running the race and living the Christian life, there's a strenuous activity that is careful - why? Because, as Hebrews chapter 11 verse 6 says: 'God is, and is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him'.

Now listen, banish the thought - banish the thought! - that there is any type or conceivable Christian existence that means you are saved and you do nothing for Christ! There is no such a thing! I'm not saying you can't be saved and be static, you can be saved and be static - and that's what we were reading about, about these carnal Christians - but what I'm saying is that that is not in the perfect mind of God for you, that's not what He wants for you! Rather God wants you to be a labourer, and the sense of this illustration in this verse is 'a life-builder'. God wants you to be a life-builder in the church of Jesus Christ, here in the Iron Hall; but He wants you to be a life-builder in your own personal capacity, building up yourself for God. Let's move away from thinking that this is primarily to Christian workers and professional Christian servants, like missionaries and Pastors and evangelists and teachers, and people that are on a payroll of some kind, that has got nothing to do with this verse! This is general to every single believer that is born-again of the Spirit of God: 'Therefore', the Spirit of the Living God says to you tonight through Paul, 'take heed how you build thereon'.

Now this is my question before I go any further this evening: are you careful how you are building up your life? How careful are you? Or are you careless? Do you give any thought to the fact that you are creating a building to the glory of God, or at least you're meant to be? One day that building is going to be scrutinised and analysed by the Son of God, are you diligent making your living, or are you diligent making a life, building a life for God? Now I would be bold enough to say tonight that if you're not, it's because you're not living in the light of eternity; and if you're not, it's because you're not living in the light of the judgement seat. That's the first thing I want you to see tonight, that you're a labourer.

The second thing that Paul tells us is that he has already laid down for this church in Corinth the foundation. Look at verse 11: 'For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ'. Now you would be tempted to say that the master-builder is the Lord Jesus Christ, and in one sense that's true; but Paul in verse 10 actually calls himself the master-builder. In this sense, as an apostle, he had a unique ministry in laying the foundation of the church, the early Church, and here in Corinth specifically, he laid down the foundation of apostolic Christianity - and no human being could ever re-lay that foundation. Remember that people in Corinth were saying: 'Well, I'm wiser than Paul, and we follow Apollos, and Cephas', and even 'we follow Christ' - they were following the human philosophies and wisdom of Corinth and all the rest of Greek philosophy, but Paul is saying 'That is not the wisdom and the foundation that I laid down, but I laid down for you, as God's master-builder, one firm fundamental foundation, and that is Jesus Christ'.

Now this is very important in the days in which we live, I'll tell you why: because there are little churches, new churches rising up here and there - and there's nothing new under the sun, the prophet says - but they seem to be new to the eye. There's even one down the road, and they have along the top there at Hollywood Arches: 'The Church of Christ' - to be a church of Christ, you have to have the foundation of Christ, and that has to be the foundation of Christ that the master-builders, the apostles, laid down in the church - which has been laid down, past tense, and does not need to be laid down again! Young people, understand this, this is fundamental - and if anybody springs up and says: 'I have discovered something new about Jesus Christ, I have discovered a new message, a new revelation about the Lord Jesus', they are laying down a foundation that is opposed to the foundation that the master-builder has already laid down, which cannot be laid again - that is so important! The church of Jesus Christ must always be built on Jesus Christ's work, and Jesus Christ's Person. You will find, I believe with most of the cases, if you analyse some of these new movements, new cults and new churches, the very thing that they do is demean the work and the Person of Jesus Christ. They demean Him to be some kind of a prophet, not the Son of God; demean His work as having to be added to by your own good works, and by joining their particular cult or religion. So beware, and also realise in this charismatic age of confusion, that the foundation of the church of Jesus Christ has been laid in the apostles and in the prophets.

But you know, we can err on this side too, because many evangelical churches are built on the reputation of a famous preacher, or maybe even a special method of evangelising or teaching people, or maybe even a doctrinal scheme, a prophetical scheme - and all these things are right - or a scheme to do with salvation, the way you understand salvation, we need to have all these things to understand the Word of God and they're so important - but let us never forget that the church is not built on a personality! That is why the Corinthians needed to hear this: it's not about Paul, it's not about Apollos, it's not about Cephas, it's about the foundation that the church is built on - Jesus Christ, and you can never lay another foundation, it has been laid! If you're laying another foundation, you're building a church contrary to Jesus Christ and to the will of God.

But let's go a step further, because this isn't only fundamental for the church, like our church here, but it's fundamental for your own personal growth in the Lord Jesus - because if your life is to adequately stand before the judgement seat of the Lord Jesus, it will not be able to stand on anything but Jesus Christ Himself. Now I don't want to confuse judgements here tonight, but I'm just concerned that there's maybe someone here that's not a believer: you will not have a leg to stand on when it comes to your judgement if you're not standing on the foundation of Jesus Christ. There is no other foundation to be laid for eternity only the Lord Jesus Christ, and if you're not standing on Him tonight, I urge you, I plead with you to stand on that solid ground! The ground of His death and His resurrection, and faith alone in Him as the only Saviour, the only name given amongst men whereby we must be saved!

But let me take it a step further to you believers: this passage teaches us that you can stand on the foundation of Jesus Christ, but not have a good building. You mark that. You can be saved, you can be redeemed, you can be safe for all eternity, rescued and redeemed from the fires of hell, standing in the promises of Christ your King, through eternal ages let His praises sing - but your building is derelict! That's why I believe that, reading in between the lines in these verses, what needs to happen is excavation.

We've looked at how we are labourers, and there needs to be this foundation, but that foundation has already been laid. Before you build upon that foundation, in fact even before you build that foundation there needs to be excavation - when you first get saved, you have to dig up all the filthy, rocky ground to lay a perfect plot to put the foundation rock in. But you know sometimes as Christians things can grow over our foundation, a bit like those in the minor prophet's day where they took so long building the temple that all the moss and the weeds had grown over it, and God was saying how they had lovely sealed houses, they had beautiful luxurious houses, but the house of God was lying waste - the foundations had already been built, but they hadn't gone any further! What needed to happen was that all those weeds needed to be cleared away.

Let's me show you what I mean. The Master-builder, the Lord Jesus, talks about this in Luke chapter 5, turn with me for moment. Luke chapter 5 verse 36: 'And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish'. Now, what's the Lord Jesus talking about? He's saying that if you get a really bad rip on an old shirt, you don't get new material and cut a piece out and put it onto the shirt, because the part that you sew around will rip away again and you'll have another hole - you get a new shirt! Friend, if you want to be saved - maybe you're not converted - you can't reform your life, you need to be given a new life! Equally, believer, if there are over growing weeds over the foundation of Jesus Christ, and your building is derelict, I'll tell you what you need to do: you need to go and excavate that site again, you need to dig it all up - not build on rocky foundations, but come again and realise that you stand upon the only foundation which is Jesus Christ, and start building again!

Now maybe you think that I'm reading too much into this, but you need to remember that when the Lord Jesus was talking about the wise man and the foolish man in the Sermon on the Mount, He was talking to those who followed Him, He was talking to believers. He said: 'If you don't dig down deep your foundations till you come to the granite rock, and build on that rock alone, when the storms come your building will come down!'. I believe that primarily what the Lord was talking about when He was speaking of storms was judgement storms. When the judgement storm comes, it can apply to unbelievers, but we need to apply it to ourselves tonight: are we on a rocky foundation that is overgrown with sins? Is this not what the Old Testament prophet said in Hosea 10? 'Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy', now we have the farming analogy, 'break up your fallow ground' - excavate! - 'for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you'.

It just may be that we as believers, when we're contemplating the judgement seat of Christ, that we need to clear away all this nonsense of overgrown weeds in confession and in cleansing, and putting away the old nature as far as we possibly can. Never let it be said, I hear it said in the churches today, 'Oh, we're of such-and-such a persuasion, that's not the way we understand it, and the Word of God says clearly that that is the way to do it' - let us never say this in the Iron Hall! 'We don't do it this way' - what does the word of God say? In anything that we do, if we have to go back to the balance, back to basics, and excavate and find our true foundations, we need to do it!

Personally we need to do it, and that is why Paul says: 'Take heed how you build!'. I'm told that the Post Office has a department in it called 'Dead Letters', and whenever mail is miss-sent or has the wrong address, or no identification at all, it's sent to this Dead Letters department. On one occasion, one year in the United States, there were over 14 million letters that went to the Dead Letter department - one out of a thousand letters that were sent ended up there. I firmly believe that there are 'dead letter' Christians - what do I mean? I mean people who have never ever arrived at what God wants them to arrive at. Now I know that we all cannot say that we have arrived, and even Paul said in Philippians: 'I have not apprehended that for which Christ has apprehended me', but what I'm talking about is a certain extreme of maturity that God wants for us - they've never got there! I wonder is that you? You're a frustrated messenger of the good news, you're a letter that God has told to go out and you've never gone out, you've never found your destination - you're sent, but maybe you haven't even gone! You've been dispatched but you've never arrived at your intended destination, and you're sitting here tonight static as a Christian, and you've no purpose! That's why Paul says: 'Take heed how you build!'. Could it be that we, or you, or me, need to start digging rather than start building? Start breaking up old ground and finding the foundation again that we ought to be building on.

Now we're getting to the crux of the matter, because Paul comes now to the materials that we ought to build with, verse 12: 'Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble'. Note that those aren't one whole material, as if you could see a mud hut with diamonds and gold sticking out of it - there are two different buildings. One building is of gold, silver and precious stones; and the alternative building is of wood, hay and stubble. But here's the point that Paul is making: you, as a believer - now remember what he's been talking about at the start of the passage, carnal Christians and spiritual Christians - you as a believer have a choice of what materials to use.

When Paul wrote to Ephesus and when Paul wrote to Corinth, he knew that there was a great difference between the rich and the poor, a greater difference than there is in our day. The rich and the poor would live close to one another, but the differentiation between their two houses was absolutely unbelievable. The rich would live in great houses of marble, gold leaf over it, precious jewels and all the rest; and then the poor would be in some kind of a mud hut shack with walls of plywood, and they would put stubble in for installation, and have a thatched roof. But the image that Paul is giving us here is, to the Corinthians who live in a situation such as that, if there was a great fire that went through the whole city of Corinth or went through the whole city of Ephesus: what would be left standing? The great palaces, the houses of the rich and the prosperous! But those who were built with wood, hay and stubble would be exterminated.

Two classes: precious stones, precious metal, things of this earth that are worth nothing. To build with one and not to build with the other, Paul says, for if you build with the other it will all be going up in smoke one day at the judgement seat of Christ. What Paul is saying is that it's possible to have a life that is well-founded on Jesus Christ, but is badly built - so take heed how you build! Be careful what materials you use to build with!

So what are these materials, what do they represent? We're not really told what they represent, but certainly we can say this much: that the gold, silver and precious stones are imperishable objects; then you go to the wood, the hay and the stubble, and you see that they are the opposite, they are the perishable things. Now for imperishable objects like gold, silver and precious stones you have to go down under the surface of the earth to get them - you have to dig deep. There's no easy access for these things, there's no quick fix to get gold and silver and precious stones, you have to hunt them out, you have to dig up ground - and then when you dig up gold and silver and precious stones, they have to be heated and smelted and refined, then when that happens they become valuable, they're very costly and expensive, and they are also durable and non-combustible when they go through the fire. They cannot be manufactured by a man, they're something out of this world, if you like, other-worldly: gold, silver and precious stones.

But then when you come to the perishable objects: wood, hay and stubble - those are things that are found on the surface of the earth, aren't they? Things that are easy to find, they're in plentiful existence, they're close at hand, they can be gained at the minimum of labour. They are common, they are cheap, they are ordinary, they can even be ugly - and they are combustible. If you like, they are products of nature as we know it and as we can see it. Do you see what Paul is saying in the depth of his teaching here? If you really want something spiritual that will be able to withstand the judgement of Jesus Christ upon believers at the bema, you need to dig deep in your spiritual life - don't just take what's on the surface. It will not be easy, it's not an easy road, but you'll have to hunt these things out, you'll have to dig up the sin in your life, you'll maybe have to go through the furnace, the smelting pot, you'll have to be refined, it'll be costly for you, it'll be expensive - but it will stand at that judgement day!

The choice is yours, Paul is saying, the best things are not always the easiest things to acquire, they cost you. You'll have to labour for them, you'll maybe even have to give much sacrifice for them, you'll maybe have to pass through fires of purification and refinement to get them - but on the other hand, the most common things are never the best! They cost so little, they're no trouble to procure, and you can even weave them together and paint them and make them attractive into lovely patterns, and polish them with bright surfaces, but the final test that God will give to these products is not the test of appearance but the test of endurance!

I hope you would agree with me when I say that perishable objects are in the majority, aren't they? But imperishable objects are in the minority. You have imperishable objects in small quantities in restricted areas - they're hard to find - while perishable objects are found in large quantities, in promiscuous abundance everywhere, you don't have to search for them. Let me illustrate it like this: if I was to bring into the meeting tonight a hundred pounds worth of stubble, and a hundred pounds worth of gold. The hundred pounds worth of stubble would maybe need one lorry, maybe three lorries, to be brought into this building - but the hundred pounds of gold could be held in your pocket. You have to search this out, it's costly, it's not everywhere, you're not seeing it in every Christian that you look at around you in the church. The world that we live in, the human wisdom that Paul is speaking against in this epistle, is impressed with quantity, but God is impressed with quality! As D. L. Moody used to say, he would rather weigh his converts than count his converts! How deep they are, how heavy they are!

When God is judging, on this judgement day at the bema, our works, it doesn't say that He will judge how many there are of them, but He says that He will judge what sort they are! What sort they are! We believe in democracy in this country, but I'll tell you with regards to spiritual matters on the best issues the majority are usually wrong. If you want this deep spiritual life, if you want to stand and endure the furnace of the judgement seat of Christ, I'm urging you in the spirit of Paul - which is the Spirit of God - to choose with care, to take care as you build upon this foundation already laid, because there are few people even in the church today who have the courage to live with the eternal goal in view. Now what is the motivating factor in all of this? This is the motivating factor: the final examination, the final divine inspection.

Now I want to read a translation to you by Arthur S. Way of verses 13 to 15, and listen to them very carefully: 'The great day shall make it plain, and the revealing agent is fire - yes, what is the true quality of each man's work, that fire, nothing less, shall test. If any man's structure which he has reared on the aforesaid foundation stands the test, he shall receive his work's wages; but if anyone's structure shall be burnt to the ground, he shall thus forfeit his life's work, though he himself shall be rescued' - now mark this - 'yet only as one who is dragged out through the flames of a burning house'. That's serious stuff, isn't it? I want you just to imagine, and come with me for one moment, to a moment in eternity - no-one knows where, no-one knows when - when you will be shut out to all realisation of anything but the holiness and the all-seeing eye of the Lord Jesus Christ scrutinising your work and everything that you have done in His name. Just you and Him, and you're naked in your soul before Him, and your life's work is being reviewed. Paul says every man's work will be scrutinised - now not the man, the man will not be scrutinised, your salvation and your sin. Salvation is something that is received, but your works is something that will be rewarded, and this is what Paul is talking about: on that day, the judgement seat of Christ, the fire will come down - for our God is an all-consuming fire - and whatever is perishable will burn, and whatever is imperishable will stand. The fire is not there to cleanse or to purge our works, it is there to try and to test our works - and it will destroy whatsoever is perishable.

Paul says that our life's work will be rewarded. Verse 14, if your work abides you will be rewarded; verse 15, if your work is burnt up you will suffer loss - a reward of gain and a reward of loss. Listen, let's get personal tonight: how are you building? How are you building? What will stand? What will fall? What will be burnt up? Or will you stand there on that day and feel lost? What will be lost? You'll not be lost, it says that you will be saved, you still will be saved, the man will be saved - but imagine what it would be to see all your labour for Christ, all your possessions that you thought you'd achieved for Him, and all the fruit of your labour burnt up before the holiness and the righteousness of Jesus Christ - a saved soul but a lost life!

There is no glory in such an end, but I'm telling you this upon this passage of Scripture: that will be the end of many. Not the end of them in salvation, that's not what we're talking about here this evening, but it will be the end of their building! Do you know what the picture is here? Fireballs from heaven raining down upon your little house that you have laboriously built and constructed by yourself, and you're within it, and all of a sudden you're overwhelmed by a sudden burst of flame - and you decide you better escape! You escape down a blazing corridor and get out, just about by the skin of your teeth! Is that the way we want to go before the Lord Jesus? Let me say this this evening: this is not a matter of misfortune, this is not a matter of privilege or responsibility, this is a matter of your choice! Will you make choices in time, for eternity? Imagine this for one moment: that you are actually putting, word by word into the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the very sentence that He will say to you on that judgement day, by the life that you are living. You are telling Him now what He will say, it's in your control! You are manufacturing, as His servant, His own adjudication.

Do you remember in Corinth - and we'll get to it in the not too distant future, in chapter 11 - that they were eating and drinking damnation unto themselves around the Lord's Table, and many were weak and sickly among them, and many slept? Do you remember what Paul said to them? If you would judge yourselves, you wouldn't be judged. That's what the Lord is saying to His people tonight, that's what He's saying to you and me individually: if you would only set up a bema in your own heart, a judgement throne; if you would adjudicate for your own actions, your own feelings, your own footsteps, a self-erected judgement seat, you would be delivered! Call yourself to account before God, before God calls you to account before Christ.

Can you imagine this for one second: that somewhere in the universe, perhaps existing in the mind of God, there is a draft that says what you could have been for Jesus? Blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, given such a dispensation of the Holy Spirit and all of His fullness, that you could be filled with all the fullness of God and have the glorious power of His resurrection that brought Him back from the dead - all of this at your disposal, and God knows what you could've been, and He will judge you through Jesus Christ on that day according to what you've become rather than what you should have been!

Chopin, on one occasion in a concert, which no-one knew was full of mistakes, had a standing ovation from the audience because the audience couldn't tell - but there was one old man in the audience who wasn't clapping, and that was Verdi, his old instructor and teacher - why? Because he knew his mistakes! No-one else could see it, but he could see it! In the service that you give for the Lord Jesus, maybe other people can't see it and you're calling their bluff, but there's a day coming when every man will give an account and all these secret things will be made manifest in the sight of the Lord Jesus.

We don't have time to go through all the crowns that are available in reward for those who have been faithful to the Lord Jesus, but I ask the question of you tonight: there is the incorruptible crown for a victor - if you're not victorious over temptation, could you ever hope to get the incorruptible crown? There is the crown of rejoicing for soul-winning - if you don't regularly win people for the Lord Jesus Christ, can you ever hope to have the soul-winner's crown of rejoicing? There's a crown of righteousness for those who love the Lord's appearing - if you're not looking for the Lord's appearing, could you ever hope to get that if you're living just for the here and now? There's a crown of glory for the shepherds - if you're not shepherding the flock, could you ever hope to get that? There's a crown of life for the martyrs, not just for those who die in Christ, but I believe for those who have died internally for the Lord Jesus. The poet put it like this:

'He would have me rich, but I stand there poor,

Stripped of all but His grace.

And memory will run like a haunted thing

Down the years that I cannot retrace,

And my penitent heart will well nigh break

With tears that I cannot shed,

And I'll cover my face with my empty hands

And I'll bow my uncrowned head'.

You say: 'David, my chance is gone, I missed it. My life is gone, I had to look after someone who was ill and I couldn't do what I wanted to do for the Lord Jesus, circumstances have changed in my life'. Listen this evening to the Lord Jesus Christ, the woman that came and wept at the Lord's feet and dried them with her hair, and anointed that ointment upon them, what did the Lord Jesus say? 'She hath done what she could'. Have you done what you could? What can you do for Him now in your retirement, in your studies, in your prayer life at home that's maybe all that you've got? Listen to the words of the Lord: 'She hath wrought a good work on me, because she did what she could'.