Greg Robinson - God Hath Made Foolish the Wisdom of this World - Class 1 - The Wisdom of Man

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:04

   Thanks Mark. This is Watch on Lake Bible School 2022. Our third speaker for the week is Brother Greg Robinson on God has Made Foolish The Wisdom of This World. This is his first class entitled The Wisdom of Man and our reading was First Corinthians 1 verses 1 to 11. Brother Greg.

2. 0:36

   Thanks, brother Josh, good evening, my dear brothers and sisters. It’s a pleasure to be with you tonight. Just a little bit of a clarification from remarks last night. So you remember I was talking about working at CHS. And then you probably also remember that I was talking about having all sorts of struggles and all sorts of problems and all sorts of issues.

3. 0:59

   OK, Two totally different places. All right, so just remember that, all right? I don’t want to get in trouble from from my CHS boss, Jason Hensley. It would be a really bad thing. All right, so tonight we’re going to be looking at the wisdom of man. And tonight our job is to understand the problems that the brothers and sisters in Corinth were experiencing. That’s what we’re going to try to accomplish tonight as we look at First Corinthians chapter 1.

4. 1:28

   Our title tonight is The Wisdom of Man. And you can see the other classes that we’re going to be looking at this week. And The Wisdom of Man I think is a very appropriate title tonight because the world of Corinth was one that did not have the influence of God in its city.

5. 1:48

   In the city of Corinth. There were some Jews there. There were some, some Christians that had just formed there in the ecclesia, but the society was based completely on human thinking and human morals. That’s important for us to understand as we begin this and as we begin to try to understand what Paul and the brothers and sisters were going through in the the problems that that they faced.

6. 2:12

   We want to understand this also because it’s it’s a lot like the world that we live in today. Now, many of us have experienced a world in, in years past where there was some influence of God. But if you look around, you’ll notice that the influence that God has had in the world is, is disappearing.

7. 2:30

   And we’re, we’re soon going to be in a place where what is happening in Corinth is very similar to what is happening in the world that we live in today. So probably some things that were worse there and some things that are worse here. But that’s why we entitled this class the wisdom of man, because that’s the environment that the brothers and sisters were living in, and that’s the environment that we’re living in as well.

8. 2:54

   Our structure. What are we going to do tonight? How are we going to go through this understanding to get to this understanding? Well, the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to look at the background of the city of Corinth. I’m going to tell you a few things about the city of Corinth that maybe help us to understand why the problems that were happening there were happening.

9. 3:12

   We’re then going to look at the problems in the ecclesia almost one at a time. As we go through the city, we’ll see that those same problems were were surfacing in the ecclesia itself. And then we’re going to take a look at the situation in the ecclesia as Paul presents it to us in his letter. And at the end of our class tonight, we’ll we’ll hopefully have a good feeling or a good understanding of what Paul felt about the brothers and sisters problems in the Ecclesia of Corinth.

10. 3:44

    So that’s what our objective is. We’re going to start with the first one then, which is the background of the city of Corinth. So there’s the city of Corinth as it looks today. Paul was actually the brother that started the the ecclesia in Corinth. Does anybody know what journey Paul was on when he went to Corinth and and got the ecclesia started there?

11. 4:07

    Does anybody know, like you got a few guesses, right? So, so second one is the right answer. Yes. So he’s on his second journey and he spent, there’s been how long he spent there on that second journey. He spent a year and a half there. So he spent a lot of time there.

12. 4:26

    That was a big part of his second journey. So when Paul writes to the Corinthians, it’s about four years later, somewhere around there. And Paul’s about 50 years old. So Paul’s still just a youngster. I better say that, right? Paul’s still pretty young guy at the time when he writes this and he writes to the brothers and sisters while he’s on his third journey. And there’s a, there’s a bit of a debate as to exactly where he’s at when he writes, but he’s on his third journey. And we know that the, the focus of his third journey was in Ephesus.

13. 4:57

    So when Paul writes to the Corinthians, he knows the world that they live in because he’s lived there for a year and 1/2 he came there, he preached there and, and the ecclesia started because of his efforts. So he know what it was like. He knew what it was like for them. He knew what they were facing, He knew what their children were facing. And that’s an important thing for us to keep in mind as well. There’s also this, this channel of communication between Paul and the brothers and sisters in Corinth that, that that seems really strong.

14. 5:26

    We’ll look at just a couple of the, the verses that show us this in one verse 1. So first Corinthians chapter one verse one, it says, it’s been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe’s household. So he’s got this information about what’s happening in the ecclesia at Corinth from Chloe’s household.

15. 5:49

    In chapter 5, verse 1, he said it says it’s actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. So that report was coming to Paul as well. In seven verse one, it says now concerning the things which you wrote me. So there were letters that were going back and forth between Paul and the ecclesia.

16. 6:09

    So Paul was in in close communication with them and there were also people that were traveling back and forth and communicating. So here we have in chapter 16, verse 17, I’m glad about the coming of Stephanus Fortunatus and a chaos. So Paul was very aware what was up in the Ecclesia of Corinth and that’s important as well because Paul, what Paul prescribes and what Paul says here shows that he was in tune with the, the environment.

17. 6:39

    All right. So that’s an amazing picture to me when I first saw that picture of what the city of Corinth, they think looked at about the time that Paul was there. It’s a, a, a really big city. The Romans took over the city of of Corinth in 146 BC and they made it into a very, very successful city. It’s thought that at the time it had a population of about 600,000 people and that’s big for those times. It would have made it the third largest city in the Roman Empire, so behind Rome, Alexandria and then the city of Corinth would have been the number three city for population in the Roman Empire.

18. 7:24

    It was one of the coin minting cities of the Roman Empire just to show the respect that that Rome had for the city. And the city of Corinth had a very, very unique asset, a geographical asset. It was a city that had not just one port, not just one harbor, but it was a city that had two ports or Two Harbors. And I’ll show you hopefully in in this map here what that looked like there.

19. 7:51

    So if you’ll see there, the Isthmus of of Corinth, the city of Corinth was located on that isthmus, it’s a hard word to say, right? Located on that chain of land there that crosses over. So the city was located there and there was actually a port in the Gulf of Corinth as you see there and on the Saronic Gulf as well.

20. 8:15

    So there were two ports that were about 7 miles from each other and the city of Corinth lay right between those two. If you go there today, you will actually find that they’ve actually created a channel. They dug a channel between those two ports. So now ships can actually sail all the way through between those two.

21. 8:36

    Also, interestingly, just a historical point, in the the 1st century, a lot of the Jews that were taken captives by the Romans were taken here to help dig this channel because they thought even back then that it would be a wonderful thing to connect these two gulfs. They didn’t succeed until I think that the 18 or the 1900s, but that was one of the jobs that they they had set out for the Jews to do that were captives there. So these two ports, they were really, really important because what would happen is if you were sailing in from Italy to the left there you could come and you could unload your ship in the Gulf of Corinth and your, your, your products could then be remixed.

22. 9:17

    It was like a mixing warehouse at this point and then put on a ship on the other side on the Saronic Gulf. So in those days they didn’t have ships with with big diesel engines on them. They had ships with rowers. They had ships that that went by wind. So if you had a shortcut like this, it was a very, very valuable thing. So a lot of cargo went through this port in the Port of Corinth.

23. 9:45

    What would it be like today? So if it was around today, this would be like having Vancouver, which is a port on the Pacific Ocean, also be a port on the Atlantic Ocean. Does that give you a bit of a perspective as to what, what it would be like? And, and probably if you had such a thing in these days, there would be Amazon warehouses, right, all along that whole gulf there on both sides as they were mixing products to be, to be shipped from one side to the other. So it was just a very, very prosperous city #3 in the empire, a great economic advantage over the other cities. It was a place where people went to make money. It was a place where people went to get ahead. So this is a, a first Class, A world class city of the time. And that’s something that I really didn’t understand about Corinth when I first started to look into this. At the same time, if you went to the city of Corinth or if you lived in the city of Corinth, it was like the whole world was passing through your city every day because there were so many people that were travelling through on ships. There would be passengers, there would be sailors. These people were coming and going all the time. And so the cultures of the world, the the ways of the world were, were known in this city because they came there every day on the ships that travelled through. As a result, there was another problem that came up for the brothers and sisters in in the area and that was that many different gods were worshipped

24. 11:16

    in this city. And one temple stood out in the city of Corinth. And we have an idea what that temple was. Anybody know what that was?

25. 11:29

    Temple of Aphrodite. Anybody know what the Goddess Aphrodite is all about? What’s that? Yeah. OK, so, so the goddess of love, if we were to say it right, that’s the that’s the goddess of love. And do you see where the the the temple was positioned, was, was placed? It was on a on a rock 2000 feet up above the city.

26. 11:57

    And it said that in this, in this temple, there were 1000 female temple slaves which were dedicated to love. And we’re a part, a part of the cult that they they had up there that they practiced in the name of religion. The city then was big on human pleasure. We had all these people coming and going.

27. 12:18

    You had all of this money, you had all this prosperity. And the people capitalized on that. And especially this, this temple to the goddess Aphrodite was in this place. Now Aphrodite is also known as the goddess Venus, the Roman goddess Venus and the city of Corinth actually it’s name became famous as a representation of immorality to Corinthian eyes was to practice sexual immorality. The Corinthian core was a word that meant a Corinthian girl, which meant that a girl that was one of the priestesses in that temple.

28. 12:59

    So Corinth was one of the leading cities of the world at its time, and it was known for a very, very sensual way of life. Now, there’s a brother in in Southern California that always when he talks about the city of Corinth, he always says in his next sentence, it was a city just like Los Angeles.

29. 13:21

    OK, I think you get the idea. It was a city that was catering to the world’s desire for these type of things. That’s what was happening in the city of Corinth. Now how did that impact the ecclesia? What do we find happening in the ecclesia because of this environment? Well, let’s take a look.

30. 13:39

    Go over to 1st Corinthians chapter 5. First Corinthians chapter 5. This is one of those sections where Paul was getting communication from what was happening in the city. 4 year old ecclesia he’d set up, he’d left. He says in First Corinthians 5 verse one, it’s reported commonly that there’s fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. So there was fornication there even even beyond the normal fornication.

31. 14:22

    And that was happening in the ecclesia. So the immorality of Corinth was having a big impact on the ecclesia and many people in the ecclesia were struggling with this. It’s mentioned a number of times. Fornication is in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. It’s a very, it was a very real problem for them back then. And I think it’s safe to say that it’s a very real problem for our world today and for brothers and sisters as well. Today, you see, in Corinth, fornication was accepted as just a normal practice.

32. 14:56

    It’s just what people did. It wasn’t something that was that was wrong. It wasn’t something that was unusual. It’s just a part of what people did. It was a part of the wisdom of man. It’s what man’s life or man’s way of living actually had come to. Now, you might remember the Jerusalem conference.

33. 15:17

    You remember at the Jerusalem conference there was a discussion as to whether or not the Gentiles needed to be circumcised. And the conclusion was no, they don’t need to be circumcised. But then there were some other things that they were told that they should abstain from. Do you remember what those were? And really, I’m only looking for one, but you could give me the other ones here too, right?

34. 15:37

    What was that? Yep. OK, so we had meat, Alfred, the Idols was the one. We had blood, right? We had food that were things that were strangled. And then of course, fornication was the 4th thing. So this was something that was well known as as being a problem or a way of life, I guess, depending on your perspective. For the Gentiles, this was something that that was a problem in the ecclesia in the 1st century and it in Corinth, probably worse than other places because of the environment that they were, they were in.

35. 16:07

    There was no reason for a, for a Gentile to abstain from fornication. Man’s wisdom said, that’s fine, that’s good. Do what do what pleases yourself. But they did they, they just didn’t understand really the, the, the negative impact of that on their lives. And it’s probably like the world today. So I think it’d be fair then to compare our world to the world of Corinth in this way anyway, as the world moves further and further away from God.

36. 16:37

    Now come over with me to 1st Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 13. It’s one of those verses in Corinth or in the Corinthian, the 1st letter to the Corinthians that you read and you go, I’m really don’t have any idea what this is talking about, right? You read it, you do it in the readings and you think, so this is talking about fornication, of course, but it says in First Corinthians 6, verse 13, meats for the belly and the belly for meats. So what Paul’s doing here, what he’s doing here is he’s actually answering an argument that had been brought to the ecclesia by some of its members, and he quotes their argument. He says the reason you give for fornication being OK is meats for the belly and the belly for meats. And really, really all that he’s saying here is that that fornication is a natural process. It’s like eating food.

37. 17:35

    It’s something we shouldn’t even worry about. And it should be OK in the ecclesia because there were some that were actually promoting that or trying to make that OK for the ecclesia to to participate in that. And so Paul has to write to them about that. They were saying that fornication was OK.

38. 17:55

    So how did that happen? How did it get to where the ecclesia actually thought that fornication was OK? What was happening is, is that the the, the ways of the world, the ways of Corinth were pushing into the ecclesia and the reasoning of the people of Corinth was actually rubbing off on the people. So what does Paul say in at the end of the verse there? He says, but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord and the Lord for the body.

39. 18:30

    So Paul says satisfying our sexual desires is not like satisfying our hunger for food. He says, let’s get that straight right from the start. Our bodies were made for the Lord, but of course the Gentiles of the time didn’t think anything of that. But that was part of the human wisdom that they had to live amongst and part of the human wisdom that we have to live amongst as well.

40. 19:00

    But the Gentiles and the Gentile world was one that really didn’t have any respect for God. In Romans chapter 1, and we won’t look this up, it says they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. They didn’t look to God for direction in their lives. They didn’t look to to God to help him to decide what’s right or what’s wrong.

41. 19:25

    Instead, they relied completely on human thinking. They even made-up all sorts of of of gods to legitimize their practices. What do I mean by that? How did the gods and the, and the cults that they belong to, how did they legitimize their immorality? But we just saw it, didn’t we, in the temple of Aphrodite?

42. 19:50

    They, they made it so that it was actually a part of the worship of their God. And they, they serve their own pleasures rather than than doing the right thing and following the morality of God. So the city of Corinth was full of these gods. There’s a writer, historian at the time that says that there were at least 26 sacred places of devoted worship. In the city of Corinthus, 26 of those and most people would worship the God that that fit with what their life outlook was or what their desires, what they were desiring to do. They look for a God that would give them protection, but that would also allow them to to live the life that they wanted to live.

43. 20:37

    So here’s another one of the temples. This is the temple of Apollo, one of the chief gods of the city. The commerce of the city, as we said, brought many different religions to the city. And when the Greek and the Roman gods didn’t meet the needs of the people, what they would do is they would adopt another God.

44. 20:55

    So there was the cult of Isis, which was also adopted in the 1st century, an Egyptian goddess. And the Egyptian goddess was thought to be able to convince, convince Osiris to send a person’s soul to a place of reward. That was one of the the goddesses that they worship. The cult of Mithras was a Persian God, a sun God, and that was the one that was popular with the soldiers because the push of this God was to be courageous. And courage was worshipped in the soldiers. And some of these cults actually worked their way into the ecclesia.

45. 21:33

    And some of the ideas of these cults work their way into the ecclesias. There was a cult for the Greek God Dionysius and it was associated with drunkenness. Here’s what it says about that. It says the Dionysian mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trans inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state.

46. 22:06

    I love that. Return them to a natural state, Right? So what was that practice? What was the practice here that was bleeding into the ecclesia? What’s the connection that that we’re probably aware of, right? Come over to 1st Corinthians Chapter 11. So this drinking and this feasting that was a part of that cult also found its way into the brothers and sisters experience at their breaking of bread. 1st Corinthians 11 verse 21 Paul says for an eating everyone taketh before other his own supper. One is hungry, another is drunken. What have you not houses to eat and to drinking or despise ye the ecclesia of God and shame them that have not. What shall I say to you?

47. 22:53

    Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not so we see how that was it was a part of it as well. There was also First Corinthians 7 verse one where where they were asking questions to Paul about celibacy and there were different cults that that were that were teaching that celibacy was required for a person. And so that worked its way into the ecclesia. Now these cults, these cults were, were more than just worshipping another God.

48. 23:24

    They gave the people a sense of structure in their daily lives. They gave them a sense of belonging. They would share meals together, they would share ceremonies together, They would have rituals together. It became of their their religious life. It became part of their political life. It became a part of a person’s identity.

49. 23:42

    Which culture, sorry, which cult you belong to? And most of social life was, was actually centered around the idols temples in the city of Corinth. These temples had eating facilities. They had theaters for entertainment. They had idol displays. There was feasting, there was drinking. And often there were places for immorality inside of these temples, and it was very difficult for the believers to separate themselves completely from everything that was linked to idolatry.

50. 24:16

    Business would be conducted in these in these temples. Coworkers would get together after work in these temples. Social events would take place, family events would take place in these same temples. And yet it was the very same place. These everyday practices were happening and there was all this immorality that was taking place. At the same time, there was another peculiarity about the cults of the people of the time, and that was they were very flexible about their beliefs and many people belong to multiple cults.

51. 24:51

    Here’s a quote from Wikipedia. It says many priests of ISIS officiated in other cults as well. So you could belong to multiple cults. You could have a flexible belief and have different beliefs in different cults that you belong to. I’m going to skip down there to the bowl that says mystery initiations thus did not require devotees to abandon whatever religious identity they originally had.

52. 25:18

    So you could cross the line and you could belong to different religions. Let’s sum up what it was like then for these, our brothers and sisters at this time.

53. 25:34

    First of all, we talked about the fornication, didn’t we? The pursuit of pleasure. Fornication was accepted and the practice. It was an accepted practice and was a source of income for the city. There was a social structure that was built around the cults, and if you belong to a cult, it didn’t matter if you were just belonging to 1, you could belong to multiple cults and it was actually common to belong to several of them.

54. 26:05

    The third thing that we didn’t talk about was the Judaism and Christianity were looked down on because they rejected the gods of the other cults and only worshipped Yahweh. Is there anything common in that statement that we find in in religion today? Is there anything that we see that’s common? Isn’t that exactly the way that it is with religion today? Really?

55. 26:27

    Most religions, it doesn’t matter really what you believe, but if you actually believe in one specific God, if you have one truth, is that frowned on? Is that admired by others? No, that’s looked up on it as something that’s that’s a problem because you are too exclusive. You’re not. You’re not inclusive enough of other people’s beliefs and other people’s thoughts.

56. 26:51

    So the Judaism, the, the Jews of the time and the Christians of the time would have had to deal with that. All right, so we have a real mess, don’t we, of what it was like in the ecclesia at the time. All right, So put yourself now in the shoes of Paul. What are you going to say in this letter that you’re going to write to the brothers and sisters in Corinth?

57. 27:15

    What are you going to tell them that the solution is what’s the, the, the, the sanctuary that they have away from this world of the city of Corinth? What would you say to them? Well, let’s go to chapter 1 and let’s see what Paul says. You know, often times when we read the first few verses of Paul’s letters, we think, OK, that’s the greeting that Paul has. He’s just saying hello to them.

58. 27:44

    And let’s get down to the meat of what he actually has to say. But what Paul says here is so important to the problem that they face. It is so different from the world that they live in and so different from the religions that they had been used to before that. It’s worth spending a few minutes just taking a look at this. Before we get down to the real problem that they faced. Let’s take a look at what the ecclesia should have looked like.

59. 28:11

    So first Corinthians chapter one verse one, it says Paul called to be, excuse me, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God and Sosthenes our brother unto the ecclesia of God, which is at Corinth. Now that’s a great contrast right from the start because Paul says I was called, excuse me, I was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God.

60. 28:46

    So all of the other cultures, all of the other cults, it was just just nothing. They were fake gods. And Peter, Paul says here I was called by God to this position and he also says to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, what does it mean to be sanctified, separated? It means to be separated. And he says to them that they were actually made holy in Christ Jesus.

61. 29:17

    They were separated for a certain purpose that God had for them, He says, called to be Saints. What’s a St. I say to somebody that again, that’s set apart for a certain purpose for doing the work of God. And so these people, the brothers and sisters, were called to be Saints. They were set apart for God’s work.

62. 29:43

    There was a specific reason that God had chosen them. He says with all that in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. What does it mean to call on the name of Jesus Christ? What does that mean? I remember reading that back in the Old Testament with the family of Shem, they began to call themselves by the name of Yahweh. I remember reading it about Abraham. He began to call upon the name of Yahweh, and now here we have it with all that every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

63. 30:25

    Well, if you look that word up and you do enough digging, what you find is that the word there is the word surnamed. These people have been surnamed with the name of Jesus Christ. Now what does that mean to be surnamed with the name of Jesus Christ? Because that’s a really important thing we think about Abraham.

64. 30:47

    He was surnamed with God’s name. We think about Shem recognize the fact that they were surnamed with God’s name. What that’s telling us is that they were a part of God’s family. And what this is telling us is that these brothers and sisters were a part of the family of Jesus Christ. They had taken on the name of Jesus Christ. Now, what is that talking about?

65. 31:14

    The idea of taking on the name, well, if we go back all the way to to the beginning and we look at what God’s purpose was, God’s purpose from the very start was to have a family. His purpose when he created Adam, when he created man, He created down him in His likeness and in His form.

66. 31:38

    He created man with the ability to develop a character that was like his own. That’s what God did. And the reason that God did that is because God intended to have this family of his own. So God did this. He created man in this way of the image and in his image and in his likeness. And he said for those people that are willing, that are willing to use this image and this likeness to develop a character like mine, he said, I will give them eternal life and they will be fully a part of my family because they will have immortality.

67. 32:17

    So in the Bible says there’s no other name under heaven that we could be saved at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is that saying? It’s like there’s no other family that we can have access to God’s family than taking on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that’s really, really powerful what he’s saying here to the brothers and sisters. He’s saying words to them that are absolutely solid. He says, our Lord, sorry, our Lord, both theirs and ours in every place.

68. 32:55

    Sorry, I skipped that part. He says in every place our Lord, both theirs and ours. So this brotherhood is is around the world and we have our Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, our brother Simon talked about this a little bit last night, probably talked about this a little bit this morning. What does the word Lord mean? What would you say the word Lord means here in the New Testament? Master, if you look up that word, you find that it means master or supreme authority.

69. 33:30

    So all of us, all of them were under their Lord. They had joined his family and they had become servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. It continues in verse five. He says that in everything ER enriched, you’re made rich by Christ in all utterance and in all knowledge. How are we made rich by the words of Christ?

70. 34:02

    What would you say? How does that make us rich? We’re all here tonight. Do you feel the power of being here tonight, of being here at Bible school of of hearing the word of God? And do you feel what that does for you in your life? Can you feel what that’s like? That’s what he’s talking about here.

71. 34:26

    He’s talking about how our lives are completely changed and were made a part of his family in verse six he says even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you so they could see that the words of Christ actually had an impact on their lives that it had an impact on the brothers and sisters in the ecclesia. Verse seven he says so that she come behind in no gift waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word gift there suggest that he’s talking here about the Holy Spirit gifts.

72. 35:07

    The word there, charisma, it’s a present. It’s, it’s, it’s a power that they were given. He’s telling them. So why were they given the Holy Spirit gifts? Why would a young ecclesia like this need to have the Holy Spirit gifts in this time period? Why would why would Paul need to be able to give them those gifts or to show them those gifts?

73. 35:33

    What was that, Mike? Yeah, it was a testimony. It was proof that he was speaking on God’s behalf. Verse 8, it says, who shall also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So what’s he saying to them there? He’s saying all of this, all of this organization, all that’s been done for you up to this point is to bring you to what?

74. 35:59

    To being blameless, to bring you to the forgiveness of your sins. It’s to save you and to take you back to which was God’s purpose in the very beginning, which was to make you a part of his family and to build you into that. I think that’s amazing. That’s how he starts that. That’s how he addresses them.

75. 36:22

    One more verse that that shows the power of what he’s saying here. Verse 9 he says, it says God is faithful by whom you were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Does anybody know what that word fellowship there means? It means partnership isn’t that powerful. You’ve been called to the partnership of the work that Christ is doing, the work that God had set out for him to do, and we are a part of that partnership, and we have a Lord in that partnership, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s put it all together.

76. 37:17

    It’s going to visually look at what we have so far. So we have the ecclesia and the strength of the ecclesia, this group of people is the fact that they were set apart for God’s work. They were set apart to do and to complete God’s plan. Paul says you’re also part of Christ’s family. You’ve taken on his name, you’ve been surname a part of that family.

77. 37:47

    He says you’ve been made rich by Christ’s word to the end that you’ll be blameless at Christ’s return. And then he says in you’re a part of a partnership with Christ. And then he says, and you’ve got Jesus Christ as your Lord. So that’s the strength of the ecclesia. That’s the purpose of the ecclesia. That’s where that’s where we’re trying to get to. Now imagine that sanctuary that’s up on the screen there right now.

78. 38:27

    Imagine that sanctuary, because that sanctuary is strong enough to defend itself against the pressures of the world around us. That’s what it was designed by God to do. And that is the ecclesia that we all belong to. We all belong to different eccleses. And then if we move that to the top, I think we finally have the complete picture with Jesus Christ as its Lord. We have a strong defense then against the world and against the wisdom of man, this fortress. So that’s what Corinth was supposed to look like. So that’s why Paul starts this way. And he says this is what has been done for you already. This is what’s been set up for you. And this is what I would expect to see when I come to Corinth. Let’s come to verse 10.

79. 39:27

    Because that’s not what he finds in the city of Corinth. Verse 10 says, now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing. He says, I beseech you, I beseech you means literally to call near, to call you alongside to exhort you. He says there’s a problem, and I need you to come over here because I’m going to tell you what the problem in the Ecclesia is all about. It’s a letter, but Paul has this closeness with the brothers and sisters, and he says by the name of Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing.

80. 40:12

    I want you all to agree with each other. You know, at first those words come across as a soft words, but those words are urgent words that Paul’s speaking to them. Imagine the ecclesia. Imagine they’re sitting there and they’re listening to the words of Paul, and they’ve seen this picture that Paul’s painted of the ecclesia.

81. 40:33

    And then Paul says, but there’s a problem. And the problem is, is that I need you all to speak the same thing. And the brothers and sisters would, would, would look at each other, and they probably have a good idea about what he was talking about. He goes on, he says, and that there be no divisions among you.

82. 40:59

    And the word there for divisions is the Greek word schisms. It’s a powerful word, right? The dictionary says that a schism is a split or a division between strongly opposed sections or parties caused by differences in opinion or belief. That’s what the ecclesia had. It had these divisions that were forming in the ecclesia and these divisions needed to be corrected.

83. 41:32

    They needed to become of the same mind. And so Paul says, but that she be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.

84. 41:48

    There’s only one way of thinking, he says, and that is with the mind of Christ. He says that she be of the same judgment. There’s got to be proper decision making in the ecclesia, he says. Now, how would the brothers and sisters feel at this point when they hear this come out of Paul’s letter, when they hear these words written, read to them?

85. 42:15

    Because these divisions in the ecclesia that Paul speaks about here, we’re causing huge problems, potentially catastrophic problems in the ecclesia. They couldn’t agree on how to deal with the problems of the world around them. They couldn’t agree on what was right and what was wrong. They all had different ideas.

86. 42:40

    Verse 11, it says for a death have been declared to me of you, my brethren by them, which are of the House of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. The word contentions there means strife. There’s strife, there’s quarreling and there’s rivalry. They’d argue about issues. There was animosity between the brothers and sisters, and as a result they couldn’t agree on how to solve problems.

87. 43:11

    There was a lot like the God Supper and the feasting and drinking. They used the spiritual gifts, the Holy Spirit gifts to glorify themselves and they questioned the resurrection. Those are some of the problems that they faced. And because they weren’t united together, they couldn’t deal with them. They couldn’t handle those problems.

88. 43:35

    And so verse 12 says, now this, I say that every one of you said I am of Paul and I am of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ. He says you guys are actually dividing yourself into these factions and these factions, these parties in the ecclesia have leaders and these these leaders have followers.

89. 44:05

    And people would say I am of this brother and I am of that brother because I follow this brother or I follow that brother. We have to be careful, I think, with the way that we read verse 12 here because when we read through the rest of, of First Corinthians, it’s quite clear that the leaders that these people were following were not Paul, Apollos, Cephas, and Christ.

90. 44:30

    That’s not who he’s talking about here. In this case, he’s saying that he had actually used those names to represent the, the, the leaders that they were actually leading the ecclesia into these factions that were taking place. Come over with me to chapter 4. We’ll get to this, Lord willing, by the end of the week, but I think it’s important to recognize this right now, that these factions were being led by brethren, and these brethren were not Paul, Apollos, Cephas in Christ, but that they were actually other brothers that were leading these groups. And what Paul does is Paul actually uses these names in order to not have to name the actual leaders by name. All right, So First Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6 it says. And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another. So Paul was not talking then about the divisions in Corinth being caused by himself, by Apollos, by Peter, or by Christ. He’s talking about that these were caused by other brethren. He actually talks in chapter 4 about these leaders reigning over the people, and he uses the fact that they were being made rich by these people.

91. 46:08

    So Paul didn’t want to put these names, the names of those brethren in his letter. And so he uses the name as it says here in a figure, he uses the name Paul, Apollos, Cephas in Christ. All right, so if we come back then to chapter 1, verse 12, let’s analyze the problem and let’s see if we can get our handle a handle on the problem.

92. 46:34

    And then tomorrow, Lord willing, we will see Paul’s steps towards the solution. So here we have what the ecclesia should have looked like. We’ve got Christ at the top, and we’ve got this sanctuary that’s set up by the purpose that the ecclesia should have been following and doing the work of our Heavenly Father organized with Christ as the Lord of this group.

93. 47:01

    But what did it actually look like? That it almost disappeared, that it almost gone away, and that had been replaced instead. But what we’ll call leader one, leader 2, leader 3, leader four, and the dot dot dot, because who knows how many leaders there actually were in this case. And each of those leaders had people that were following those leaders, and they made-up these factions in the ecclesia.

94. 47:30

    And what Paul tells us is that because of these leaders, these factions formed. There were divisions and there were contentions in the ecclesia. Then the world came. The wisdom of man came in to the ecclesia and it set itself up. We have envying strife and division. We pride and we have arrogance. We have permitted fornication to continue.

95. 48:07

    We have wronged and sued each other. We have questioned the resurrection, we’ve turned the Lord’s Supper into feasting and drinking. We’ve used spiritual gifts to glorify themselves. And finally, we have questioned the need for head coverings. And that’s just a list that we have tonight. But there’s more things that were happening in the ecclesia.

96. 48:33

    And why were all of those things happening? Because they had these factions that had taken root in the ecclesia. So that’s what the Corinthian ecclesia looked like. And now I imagine Paul at night laying awake, trying to figure out how he was going to fix the problems in this young ecclesia that was allowing the world to just walk right in the front door.

97. 49:03

    It was almost as if the ecclesia had taken because of what’s happening here at taking their force field down, and the world could walk right in. What would you do?

98. 49:15

    What would you do if you were Paul and you wanted to try to fix this problem? How would you solve the problem? Well, that’s what we’ll talk about tomorrow.