John Martin - Class 1: I Have Much People in This City

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

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   I have much people in this city. Brother John Martin. My beloved brethren and sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, brethren and sisters, as we meet here on this weekend with this book open before us, in relative peace and quiet, we must all be very acutely aware that outside those walls, this world is reverberating with the noise of war and bloodshed.

2. 0:27

   Yahweh has promised, brethren and sisters, that he would raise up a whirlwind from the coasts of the earth. And south of the southern tip of South America today, mighty men are being woken up. And weak are saying, I am strong. And the prophecies of God's word have taken charge of this world as have never taken charge of it before.

3. 0:57

   And that conflict, which has arrested the attention of the world, brethren and sisters, will pale into absolute insignificance and look like a Sunday school picnic when the ramifications of what Israel are doing in the centre of the earth become apparent to the world. And we, all of us, brethren and sisters, must be in a state of absolute fervour of excitement.

4. 1:25

   If we've got any truth in us, whatever. Because I do believe that we're only weeks away from the kingdom of God on this earth. That we are all about to look into the eyes of him with whom we have to do now. And we're going to see shortly, I believe, brethren and sisters, God's son.

5. 1:48

   And we shall see him as he is. And every one of us ought to be on our absolute tiptoe with expectancy and excitement at this moment of time. And I would seriously suggest that if there's a brother or a sister here who doesn't feel that way, then they have big problems as far as their attitude of the truth is concerned.

6. 2:19

   I don't say that as a criticism, dear brethren and sisters. But I do believe that we are weeks away from destiny. The whole course of our life is about to change. We're going to pass from death to life. From mortality to immortality. From dishonour to honour. From weakness to strength. And we shall go forward with our Lord Jesus Christ to bring this world to God.

7. 2:44

   And to teach every man, woman and child the glories of that book. And I feel tremendously excited. Though every one of us, of course, would feel somewhat afraid at the prospect. Because we know, do we not, brethren and sisters, how unworthy we all are of that wonderful calling. And a mixture of fear with excitement surely must be in our hearts and in our minds.

8. 3:12

   But God is faithful who promised. And he will complete in us that work he begun. And if, brethren and sisters, we are conscious of the fact that all we are or ever will be is of God, then he is faithful that promised. And he will bring us, I believe, eventually to glory and immortality.

9. 3:31

   It is a wonderful thing. And you know, brethren and sisters, as the days come upon us, you become more and more aware of the pettiness of human life and of the ecclesial problems which rack ecclesias today with all the anguish and heartache that goes with it. And you stand and gasp at it and say, how is it that we, human beings called by God, that such a sublime destiny could ever be affected by the pettiness of this world?

10. 4:05

    And yet, brothers and sisters, everywhere, everywhere, the marks are appearing, the hallmarks of weakness, the marks, brethren and sisters, of decay are everywhere. Problems are on the increase. Problems of such magnitude that would years ago have left a sensational aspect of the ecclesia. Today are passed over because there's so many of them that they're almost old hat.

11. 4:37

    And you cry about it and you weep tears of blood because of the situation that's upon us. We've got to rise above these things, brethren and sisters. And as you grow up in the truth and you become immersed in that book and you know that God is God and you see the majesty that he is and the glory of the character of his son, the truth isn't just a set of doctrines, brethren and sisters.

12. 5:01

    It's the pulsating vibrancy of God's spirit itself that raises us above the level of humankind, above the pettiness of this world, above all the criticisms of flesh, above everything, and enables us to look with that confidence of the future whereby we know that the Lord Jesus Christ will take control completely of this crazy world and bring a set of morals into this world.

13. 5:30

    God-honoring morals where people can feel some measure of respect for their fellow man and they can learn to love, brethren and sisters. They can learn to love as they've never learned to love before when they see the attributes of the deity flowing from his son in Jerusalem to all the world and drawing people into a discipline of life which when they have been subjected to it will produce a wholesome life, a happy life, sparkling and bubbling in those glorious things that God is known for and he's the source of and that all the world will become incorporated into him.

14. 6:15

    That's the wonderful prospect, brethren and sisters, that's almost immediately before us. Whether we pinpoint this prophecy or that prophecy and say, well, those words of the prophet that apply to this situation, we've got to appoint, brethren and sisters, where it doesn't really matter anymore because we know that whatever prophecies apply or don't apply, the world cannot go on.

15. 6:36

    It's got to blow up and the world out there knows it's got to blow up and there's a pall of gloom over the world because they know that World War III is coming. It's unavoidable and we look forward with a confidence to it that the world cannot look to. And as we therefore open up our studies, brethren and sisters, we haven't come to study the word of God as a question of mere interest.

16. 7:01

    We want to so improve our standing in the truth that we are in that kingdom and what else matters. Whether we prove our point now in our arguments one with the other, whether we have a status before our brethren and sisters, who cares against the fact that we've got to get into that kingdom because that's the immediate prospect ahead of us.

17. 7:24

    God's kingdom and to stand before that judge on that awe-inspiring day and we hope to hear those words. Well done, good and faithful servant. And to know, brethren and sisters, the complete unworthiness of ourselves in that respect that that in itself might be the final thing that we really need to bring out in us those ascriptions of praise which all this world can't give and will only come from immortal lips that know they are not worthy of the greatness of the calling to which we have been called.

18. 8:07

    And if we know those things and if they are all that means to us anything in life, then we will not be caring about the things of this world but we will concentrate our attention upon the things of God's word to make that calling and election short. And we live in a Corinth.

19. 8:28

    We hope this afternoon, brethren and sisters, to paint the background to the epistle to the Corinthians. In the course of our studies we will be dealing with the first four chapters of the first epistle. Please don't think that because that is the case that this is a piecemeal study that we are not really going to do Corinthians because you are going to do Corinthians.

20. 8:50

    Because you see, Corinthians is like no other epistle. You can take sections of it and deal with it as a whole because the apostle writes concerning certain questions and those questions to which he addresses himself are complete in themselves. So when he wrote about married life and the problems of marriage, chapters 5, 6 and 7, now concerning the things that she wrote unto me.

21. 9:13

    And so he completes that section. Comes to chapter 8 and he says, now concerning the things offered unto idols. And chapters 8, 9 and 10 deal with that subject completely. In 1 Corinthians 12 he says, now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren. And chapters 12, 13 and 14 of course deal with that monumental question of the gifts of the spirit and their use.

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    Again, a section complete in itself. From chapter 15 of course we have the terrible matter of wrong doctrine on the resurrection of the dead and so on. So we do have in the first letter of the Corinthians at least those sections which enable us to take certain sections and to say, yes, we can study that and it is complete in itself.

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    And the one we are going to consider of course the section from chapters 1 to 4 concerns a matter of which no ecclesia is exempt. The question of divisions in a meeting. And there wouldn't be an ecclesia exempt in some form or another according to the intensity one from the other of that problem of divisions of thought.

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    And we would like to go away brethren and sisters feeling that we've gone some way to contributing to a spirit where they shall be all perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. The theme of all Paul's words in both 1st and 2nd of Corinthians is to do all to the glory of God.

25. 10:46

    A monumental statement. We live in, as I say, in a Corinth. You know, how often is it a brother stands up and he says this section of the word suits our generation. And we think to ourselves well is that just a cliche? Is he just saying that? But you know it's so true.

26. 11:07

    Human behaviour is such brethren and sisters that it doesn't alter. Whether you address it in a form of clothing of the east or of the west. Or whether it comes from this culture or that culture. Or that nationality or this nationality. Human behaviour is the same from Adam and Eve onwards. It doesn't alter.

27. 11:29

    And you stand back on all the kaleidoscope scene of the ecclesial life with all its hues and colours of problems and you can see in it a trace in it a pattern of human behaviour that's exactly the same. Because all humans are the same. And when we talk about our society being a society of Corinth so it is.

28. 11:51

    But it's more remarkable brethren and sisters because of the comparisons that do exist. Corinth of course was a great city down here on the Isthmus of Corinth. A great cosmopolitan city. It was almost midway midway between the trade from Europe to Asia. From Italy across. It was about midway of the trade routes of course and of the ships that plied the seas in those days carrying their cargoes of commerce and dispersing the wealth of the world.

29. 12:23

    And Corinth straddled that wealth brethren and sisters as a sparkling city on the end of that Isthmus on the southern southwestern end of that Isthmus. And because it was there of course and because people passed through it and through it and through it and they came down from north of course sweeping down this way the whole of the population of Corinth a large city was very cosmopolitan in character.

30. 12:47

    There was every cast and colour. There was every form of language. Every form of culture was there. There were rich and poor. There were middle class. There were all classes mixed up in that great city. It was a teeming swarming population of people whose backgrounds were absolutely different. And out of that city the Lord Jesus Christ was to tell the apostle and I believe to speak into startled ears I have much people in this city.

31. 13:21

    Paul would not have thought that. It was a city of course of sexual immorality. It was the centre of it brethren and sisters was this great city of Corinth. It was the city of international sports. It was the centre of the Isthmun Games which were held every second year. when all the world's attention was concentrated upon the great athletes that gathered in the international sports arena.

32. 13:50

    And those concentrations being brought upon the human mind made it world nigh impossible for God to rather the word of God to penetrate those minds because they were so battered into insensibility by the very psychological pressures of that society. Have you ever been in a big city? of cosmopolitan character such as Hong Kong.

33. 14:16

    You just spend a day in the streets of Hong Kong and you go home into your hotel room at night and your head is just rubbing with it and you're almost beaten into the pavement by the psychological impact of that city and all the vibrancy that throbs its streets and the difference you see there.

34. 14:36

    And if you lived in Corinth brethren and sisters you'd be swept up in the tide into which that city was caught absolutely swept up in the tide of it immorality. My word it was immoral. You probably can't see it from where you're sitting but there's a little map there you'd like to have a look at it later on.

35. 14:59

    It's a map drawn up from the ruins of Corinth where they've of course excavated those ruins from the dust of antiquity and they've set this out as something like the city of Corinth would have looked like. And there was in that city brethren and sisters on top of the Acre Corinth the mountain of course which overlooked Corinth 1880 feet above sea level right up there on this tall mountain which looked right down upon the city it was crowned with a glorious temple.

36. 15:28

    It was a restaurant overlooking the city. Restaurant come temple worship all mixed in together. Where of course the worship was there for the devotees of the goddess the Aphrodite the goddess of immorality of sexual immorality and they made a pound out of it too by turning it into a restaurant and the restaurant was presided over brethren and sisters by a thousand priestesses waitresses we'd call them I suppose today all of them dedicated to the oldest profession known to womankind.

37. 16:03

    shocking place that overlooked that city. It was the centre of that sort of thing and down there of course was the sports arena. The sports arena. What's wrong with sports? The fervour of sports brethren and sisters can absolutely take charge of you and don't tell me I don't know that. don't tell me I don't know that and we don't get a paper in our house because of that problem because I know what happens to my mind who came out of that world and I can't get it out of my head but I was in that world brethren and sisters cracking into the top of that world when I came into the truth and I can tell you this it is a rotten filthy egotistical world and there are brethren whose minds can hardly centre on the emblems because of the tremendous climax of the game that went on the previous day today and you know I've had brethren come to me and they say I'm not affected by that.

38. 17:15

    My answer to them is this try stop not listening to it or going to it. Try it. Try it. Make a conscious endeavour to put it out of your mind like I had to and see how affected you are by it. You're almost as bad as the fanatic on the mound who can think of nothing else morning night and noon and Corinth every second year the city was taken over with the fervour of those games.

39. 17:48

    Paul wrote about them in the first Corinthians chapter 9 he spoke about the racer and the runner rather and the boxer because he knew the impact of those things upon the Corinthian mind and they are things brethren and sisters that will intrude into your mind and you know you cannot fix your attention upon that book.

40. 18:07

    No good saying I can spend an hour here and the rest of my time there because you don't do that. Because even though your mind is on that paper nothing comes up to the mind because God's ways are not the ways of this world. His thoughts are not the thoughts of this world and the concentration upon that book brethren and sisters has got to be intense enough that we've got to change our thinking and if our concentration is not long enough and is diverted every now and then to something else then there's no way in the world we're going to understand those words.

41. 18:45

    We need to take charge of these things in our life and to learn that we are in a Corinth and we need brethren and sisters to concentrate more than ever before upon that book. Let me say this that you know as I speak to you now and as we do speak to you brethren and sisters as I've told you before we're not here just to give you a study in the Bible as such.

42. 19:10

    We believe the spirit of the truth has got to be brought into our hearts and that's what's lacking. Pardon me for saying it but it is lacking and of all the problems that we've got be they the sexual vice of this terrible world which captures the minds of people. Be the great things we can do.

43. 19:30

    All the materialism, the big money that clutters up our spiritual existence or the fervor of sports activity which dominates our thinking. Brothers and sisters, the greatest problem that I find today is ignorance of that Bible.

44. 19:56

    It is unbelievable to me of some of the comments that we get lately from people who have been listening to studies for years and it is obvious that they're not getting down to that Bible.

45. 20:13

    And to me there's no wonder why. We can't stand still let alone sit down in a chair. We got locomotion today like we've never had it. Young people today got money falling out of their pockets. No problems whatever. And they're here, they're there, they're everywhere. Our ecclesial life is so organised that it's organised us almost out of the truth.

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    And where is the young man or the older brother to be found at his desk hour after hour after hour after hour quietly thinking about that book. And with all our computerised study, and we've even got it now computerised, we can look up Hebrew and Greek words like we've never been able to look them up before with all our helps.

47. 21:30

    Where? Where, oh where are the young men appearing who have not only looked up those words, but actually thought about it. And there, brothers and sisters, is the great problem.

48. 21:52

    And I don't know of any other way to get me into the kingdom but that book. I don't know of any other way. And the older we grow in years, what we learn in youth, that we need the word of God, it may have been a cliche then, today, brethren and sisters, it's a desperate need.

49. 22:11

    And I don't know anywhere I can get myself into the kingdom through God's grace than that book that he's given to us. And I see, and other brethren see, that the great problem we have is we're not getting down to that book and all we ever hear today until I am fed up with hearing it.

50. 22:32

    We want to be simple. We want to be simple. We want to be simple. We want to be simple. We want to simplify this, simplify that, simplify something else. Paul wrote the Hebrews and he said, brethren, the time come when you ought to be teachers, you have one that needs teach you again of what be the first principles of the oracles of God and are become such as of need of milk and not meat.

51. 22:57

    And you know, brethren and sisters, Paul told the Corinthians in chapter 3, you're carnal because I've got to feed you with milk. And you tell me, answer the question for yourself. Do you really think that Jesus Christ, God's son, the word made flesh, is going to come back to this disastrous world to put it right for his heavenly father?

52. 23:24

    Do you really believe that he will select men and women from this race who are sucking bottles like babies to rule the world? I don't think he will. I don't think he will at all. He will select those men and women. They may not be amazing Bible experts, brethren and sisters, in turning up all chapter and verse.

53. 23:54

    They may not understand a lot of the technicalities of Hebrew and Greek words, but whoever goes into God's kingdom, if I've read the word of God correctly, will be a class of people who know the spirit of that book.

54. 24:14

    If you think any different than that, please show me where that says it in the Bible. And we need therefore to come together with an urgency such as never before. We tell the stranger it's urgent as far as he's concerned. Let's tell ourselves, brethren and sisters, just how urgent it is for you and I to get down together to this book.

55. 24:39

    As we therefore plunge our way into those chapters in Corinthians and lose ourselves, as it were, in the drama of those words, let's live those things in our mind, brethren and sisters, so that we might feel the import of what the apostles are trying to say to these people who made up that Corinthian ecclesia, which was so volatile, so vulnerable to the things of this world.

56. 25:08

    You know, it was said that to Corinthianize a person was to corrupt him. That was a common term of the day. As in that cosmopolitan society, all forms of human corruption were refined on the streets of Corinth.

57. 25:28

    Let's look at some of those characteristics, brethren and sisters, which are so evident in the epistle of what our brothers and sisters were like who met at that ecclesia. You know, people talk about backgrounds. Look, it's so easy to form a background. All they're going to do is take the words of the apostle and you can see what he's saying.

58. 25:45

    You can see the background to it. It's so obvious. So what were they like? If we walked into the Corinthian ecclesia, we'd find a very large meeting, brethren and sisters. How large, we wouldn't know. But the Lord had much people in that city. And the Jerusalem ecclesia, of course, by the time you get to Acts 5, there would have been about 12,000 believing Jews and Gentiles in Jerusalem by the time you get into the fifth chapter of Acts.

59. 26:10

    They wouldn't be anywhere near that size. But nonetheless, they numbered, of course, in those days, their converts by the hundreds. Here's a very large meeting. And as we walk into this very large meeting, we would be struck of the character of that meeting. for you see your calling, brethren. How that not many mighty, our eyes would sweep around the room, we think, well, look, we haven't got any of the nobles of the city here.

60. 26:39

    Not many high breads were there. As a matter of fact, when we did look at the population of that ecclesia, we found the things which were rated by this world to be base and dishonorable, people, and to use a word that Paul used, whose very family backgrounds were unknown,

61. 27:01

    some of them born and bred in the gutter. That was the character of the Corinthians. and they streamed in to the warmth of the gospel light from the cold world which had shunned them and which had set them apart, ostracised them and branded them as shameless things in this world. And what was one of the problems?

62. 27:28

    What would you expect in an ecclesia like that to be one of the problems? Well, human behaviour doesn't change. You see it every day of your life. You get a society like that, but all of a sudden, they're given status in Christ Jesus, they get elevated in their mind, which in itself is a wonderful thing, but they couldn't handle it, brethren and sisters.

63. 27:54

    They didn't understand that before. They felt now an importance beyond the importance that God had put upon them. They had an importance of their own. And naturally, people who had been uneducated in the world, the base and dishonourable of this world, who didn't have the advantages of the rich, when they came into the truth, and study was the thing to do, as we're doing today, it was almost inevitable that they would rise up in their midst, party factions following the best teacher.

64. 28:26

    So that a person feeling insufficient in themselves to grasp the details of the word, having no status in life, suddenly found a status in Christ Jesus, saw the need of study, couldn't really feel he could raise himself to the ability that it was necessary, so he would line up behind somebody else and say, he's my champion.

65. 28:48

    And he would bask in the sunshine of someone else's eloquence. And he would feel that that at least matched the status that God expected of him, which he now had in Christ Jesus. And so the party factions grew and grew and grew into four great divisions, which we will speak of a little later in our second study.

66. 29:13

    And that's the first problem that Paul deals with in the Corinthian epistle and that's the one to which we will address ourselves the whole of this weekend. There were other problems. They came from a licentious background. immorality, of course, which subconsciously had reduced their attitude to morals. You see, brethren and sisters, we say the world affects the ecclesia.

67. 29:40

    So it does. It's not that the ecclesia says, oh, look, I want to do the evils because the world does it. Oh, no, none of us would want to go out and be a drunk. We wouldn't want to go and mix with the immoral people of this world. We don't want to be caught up in society or business at the detriment of the truth.

68. 29:55

    We all would say no to that. But you see, we can't help it. Or can we? But the world about us, brethren and sisters, is of such a pressure that the morality is lowered in our mind. We get a subconscious attitude towards morality that we don't even realise is being degraded all the time.

69. 30:17

    Witness, witness, 10, 15 years ago, or go back, say 15 years ago in the truth, if a message came into our ecclesia that a brother or a sister had marital problems, it would be nothing more or less than sensational.

70. 30:42

    Today, it wouldn't ripple the water. People would shrug their shoulders and say, huh, another one. And in five seconds flat, completely forget it. You see what's happened. It's absolutely tragic. You know, that's the world of our young people. You get your children and sit them down, you talk about morals and they look at you with a quizzical look in their eye.

71. 31:12

    They don't necessarily disagree with you. They don't understand you. They think you're a bit daft. They genuinely do not understand you. And when the Corinthians were taken from the background that they were taken, fornicators, murderers, idolaters, and such were some of you, said the apostle. So they had in their meeting a man living with his own mother.

72. 31:48

    And, says Paul, some of them were proud of it. Can you understand it? I can, because I can see it happening in this world. So there was a big problem. The problem was to create a moral aura where moral values subconsciously would rise. And when the Lord Jesus Christ comes does away with all the hotels, casinos, and other places of ill repute that I don't want to mention.

73. 32:19

    And he decently dresses people. And people walk around in society among people who are respectful. Moral values will rise. Not only because the Bible says so, but because the subconscious impact of that will make people's values rise. and you can imagine therefore the problems that the Corinthian Ecclesia had being brought from the world that they had been brought to.

74. 32:46

    And moral values hadn't risen. The sanctity of marriage? Goodness me, brethren and sisters, read the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of the first Corinthians. Look at the things that Paul is talking about in those chapters. And they are things which are fundamental as far as God's attitude was concerned. but they didn't see it because they had been brought up in that world.

75. 33:10

    And if we feel that I'm being a bit extreme, and I know I'm not because I can show you it all in that book, what does he say about the memorial meeting? We all read the first Corinthians chapter 11 of a Sunday morning. Very rarely is it left out by the presiding brother.

76. 33:28

    And Paul talks about the memorial meeting being nothing else but a riotous exhibition of gluttony. so the whole of the memorial meeting was in an uproar. Why? Because these people had led a frivolous life. That frivolity and looseness of life had led to excess and gluttony. They came into the truth and all many of them did was to change the name of the feast from an orgy to a love feast.

77. 34:01

    Or they may not have introduced the other immorality with it. But Paul points out there were some people there going home hungry, others were filled, there were divisions of thought over food. And he had to point out it was nothing else but a gluttonous feast. And that's the Lord's table. Why, brethren and sisters?

78. 34:18

    Not because they didn't understand that the Bible had spoken against those things, but their society had branded them with that. They had to get out of their society. They had to get their minds into a wilderness of life where society didn't exist. Christ, and look into the pristine blueness of God's character, and to see in those heavenly things, brethren and sisters, a morality which was so inculcated to impress them with the holiness of their God, and then to learn that thou shalt be holy as Yahweh thy God is holy.

79. 34:55

    And that's what we've got to create in our ecclesias and our young children. people say we're hard. People say we don't understand the love of Christ. Brethren and sisters, the love of Christ demands that we do his commandments, doesn't it? For if we love him, we would do his commandments. Is it love?

80. 35:13

    What is love? What is Bible love? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that we might be saved, brethren and sisters, and when his son came into the world, he said a lot of uncomplimentary things about me. I find the words of the Lord Jesus very hard. He doesn't compliment me or say to me that I can do what I like and pat me on the head and say you've been a naughty little boy.

81. 35:39

    No, brethren and sisters, his words are direct and sharper than any two-edged sword. And I see in the sharpness sometimes of our Lord's words and of the heavy rebuke that is contained in those words, I see a love that's beyond the love of indulgence, brethren and sisters, because it's a love that God is trying to show me that I want to see you alive forever more.

82. 36:03

    And so the apostle had to bring home to those Corinthians the need for discipline, the need, brethren and sisters, for decency and integrity and decorum in those meetings. the spirit gifts were given. Look at the problem in that meeting. As I said before, people who had no status in life and God's spirit comes into that meeting in nine different ways.

83. 36:31

    Nine different ways. Divine activity converged on that meeting to give nine different gifts to activate brethren, to speak, to heal, to believe, to inspire, to interpret, to teach, to do whatever that God would want them to do. With the import of course that ultimately those nine gifts would converge into the one body of Christ.

84. 36:56

    What did they do with them? They went berserk. And they all went, brethren and sisters, crazy over the one gift, which was spectacular and showy, the gift of tongues. So that Paul pointed the finger at the ecclesia and said, look, it's a lunatic asylum. If someone comes into your meeting, they'll say, you're mad.

85. 37:20

    You're mad. And that's a Christadelphian hall. And strangely they're coming in and saying, these people are crazy. That's what they were doing in the Corinthian ecclesia, brethren and sisters. No wonder the apostle had problems there. And it went further and further. after a while, of course, the division sifted down and from the four early divisions where they were following four different men, they compounded into two great groups and the ecclesia gradually, and then I believe more swiftly, parted its ways and went in two opposite directions.

86. 37:59

    So ultimately they were standing over here, a group who says, we know what the Bible says, we're the strong. And there was a group over there and they said, they're ignorant. They wouldn't have a clue what they understand. And so they grew up the weak and the strong. And they were poles apart.

87. 38:17

    And so the so-called strength of the mighty over here led them, brethren and sisters, to this conclusion. That because to the pure all things are pure, because we know the word of God and can quote chapter and verse, we can adventure into life, because we're safe from the temptations of this world.

88. 38:43

    And they fell. Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. On the other side of the ledger, the ignorant, the weak, felt that they were so weak that it would be better for them not to go near anything that was tainted with idolatry, to keep themselves closeted up. And you know, brethren and sisters, by the time that Paul got to the end of that section, the weak had become the strong and the strong had become the weak.

89. 39:23

    What he was trying to get them to do was to meet together for the ignorant to learn about the Bible and for the strong to learn about the spirit of the Bible. And meeting together, they might all keep themselves separate from the world and inculcate into their midst an attitude of mind which would be to the glory of God.

90. 39:49

    That was in the Corinthian Ecclesia. Sisters in the meeting. There was a woman's liberation movement in the Corinthian Ecclesia. Make no mistake about that, whatever. Because you see, it was a custom of those days for women to be covered. And you know, brethren and sisters, there was an outstanding exception to that in Corinth.

91. 40:16

    And everyone could see it because it was right on top of the hill. And those thousand priestesses, the mark of their profession was to go uncovered in society. and there were sisters in the meeting who wouldn't want to be like them. Oh no, no way in the wide world they want to be like them.

92. 40:35

    They'd be horrified to suggest that. But you know, because of their own form of pride, they were nonetheless doing those things in the Ecclesia with the head uncovered, which every young sister in the meeting seen, could only take out of that license to do what they were doing.

93. 41:01

    They were very foolish sisters indeed. And when Paul wrote to them about the oneness they had in Christ Jesus with their husbands, he said, there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free.

94. 41:16

    He didn't say, male or female. He didn't. Because he knew exactly what they would take out of that. And it's absolutely eloquent that he didn't say that concerning those sisters, what he told the Galatians. You know, brethren and sisters, never mind what you and I think is alright, or what we can think we can justify.

95. 41:43

    If there is anything that we do, that in any way, shape, or form, or even remotely suggest, a relationship with the world, then my answer to that is, do all to the glory of God.

96. 42:06

    And if we do all to the glory of God in a positive way, we won't have to be told what not to do. And those are the things that Paul had to deal with in this society. As I said before, he had a very serious doctrinal matter on the resurrection of the dead.

97. 42:26

    If anything was fundamental, that was. And then behind it all, beneath it all, through it all, was one awful problem. One awful problem. You might say, brethren and sisters, it was the cancer of the first century ecclesia, and has ever been a cancer. It was, I believe, a worse problem in many ways than all the immorality that was ever mentioned by the apostle in the Corinthian ecclesia.

98. 42:57

    And that cancer was Judaism. And that was to cause the heartache in that ecclesia. And whereas in the first epistle, you've got Paul answering questions on various matters of morality, the second epistle is almost totally consumed with a passionate appeal to the Corinthians, not to be taken in by the cancer of Judaism.

99. 43:28

    As one would fully expect that down there in the Corinthian city, you would find the Jews. Wherever the blood flowed through the arteries of trade and commerce, Jewish corpuscles dominated the veins. And you would find them there congregated in Corinth, thousands of them. And there was their synagogue. And they came into the truth, many of them.

100. 43:53

     And they brought in with them their strictures and disciplines, not according to God's word, but according to the traditions of men. And they tried to superimpose them upon a people by the force of words, brethren and sisters, a people whose lives had been anything else but that sort of discipline, and they tried to discipline them for the wrong reasons and didn't give them the right reasons, didn't inspire them with the love of God and with the vision of the kingdom.

101. 44:18

     And it wasn't as if God didn't expect them to be disciplined, for Jesus, God's son, said, except your righteousness, exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees, ye will in no wise enter the kingdom. But he wasn't talking about that form of righteousness which they had by their own traditions, brethren and sisters. He was talking about that form of righteousness which ostensibly they conveyed of dignity, of respect, of love, of consideration, which ostensibly was shown on the streets of Jerusalem, but in their hearts full of dead men's births.

102. 45:00

     Nonetheless, if our righteousness does not exceed theirs, we will in no wise see God's kingdom. But these people were trying to subject those Corinthians to those sort of strictures with the wrong reasons and they couldn't stand it any more than the Jews could stand the yoke of the law. And Paul found brethren and sisters a tremendous battle.

103. 45:21

     I would like to tell you of the background of the second Corinthians, of the heartache that he felt about that, of the pains that he went to try and beat that problem in that ecclesia. And how that he couldn't even go there himself on certain occasions because he was non-persona grata, because the Judaiser had slapped him in the face and turned the door on him and had hoodwinked the Corinthians and set them against the apostle.

104. 45:44

     Such was that problem. And that was the cosmopolitan manner, aspect of that ecclesia, brethren and sisters. every conceivable human problem was in that meeting. And the apostle left there by God to do a great work in bringing those sort of people to the kingdom. You ever wondered this, you know, you read in that 18th chapter of Acts which we read together, that the Lord appeared to Paul in a vision.

105. 46:13

     Fear not, Paul, I have much people in this city. Why did the Lord appear to him there, brethren and sisters, in that city? Because it's obvious. It's obvious. Paul would be laying on that bed at night thinking to himself, as fast as I can get out of this place, I'm gone. There's no good staying here.

106. 46:31

     Useless. And the Lord had to appear to him. Look, I believe if Paul's mind had not have been that way, the Lord would not have appeared to him. The Lord didn't appear to Paul on too many occasions, and the few occasions that he did were critical times in Paul's life. And it's obvious that Paul wasn't thinking like the Lord was.

107. 46:47

     He was ready to depart that city and give it up to itself. But he was stopped, brethren and sisters. And when he came there, he told them, I came among you with fear and with much trembling. He didn't understand how it could be that God could work a great work, but he believed it.

108. 47:08

     And he went into that place to do what he could. And he wasn't left alone there, brethren and sisters. You know, as he came down this area, they came through Berea, where they were studying the Bible fervently. But he had to move on because of his life. But he left little Timothy there, weak, shy, sickly little boy, emotional, weeks out of his home from grandma and mother.

109. 47:34

     He left him there struggling with those people and fighting for his life. Where's the teenager today that would even match the kid? Twelve years later, Paul wrote that says, no man despise thy youth. Work out how old he was. Left on his own with Silas to battle out the problems there. As Paul came down to Athens and walked into the university city and thought, here was the seat of learning, surely I'm going to get a response intellectually here, and went up and gave an eloquent speech on Mars Hill.

110. 48:05

     And it fell flat and came despondent and depressed into Corinth. Depressed out of mind from the idolatry of human, the worship of human intellect from Athens, he came into this sink of iniquity and Paul's spirits were low. But the record says that when Silas and Timothy came, Paul was pressed in spirit. Oh, brethren and sisters, oh, look, if you've ever been in a situation where you've needed your brothers and sisters and you know the truth of that, and you can imagine Paul in that city just about at the point of despair, and little Timothy turns up with Silas, and the presence of those two men, a man and a boy, the RSV says he was urged on in the word, and I can imagine Paul taking courage, extracting it from the frame of that little boy, and charging into that work again, fearless and unafraid of all the difficulties, because of the spirit of two men who knew their Bible, and who knew the spirit of their Bible, and a quill and a priscilla he'd met there, chased out of Rome because of persecution there over one crestus, which many historians say is a mistaken term for Christ, be that as it may, if it was, they were obviously persecuted out of Rome because of their belief, and the Judaiser would have his part in that, and do you know brethren and sisters, this married couple, who evidently didn't have any children, and therefore were mobile as far as this life was concerned, ever after, they met the apostle as tent makers, they are found scattered through the record of God's word, champions of the Gentile

111. 49:50

     cause, and of those Gentiles who sought refuge from the horrors of Judaism, because they knew the spirit of the word, and they protected those who would have been brutalized into that way of thinking, such was the spirit of Aquila and Priscilla, and the other character who came to Corinth, Apollos, oh, can you see the problem that it would have arose, look, brethren and sisters, look to me this background is alive with characters, you know he comes to Ephesus, they go off to Ephesus, there's Paul and Priscilla and Aquila, they meet Apollos there, what sort of a man is he?

112. 50:29

     Eloquent, and mighty in the scriptures, can you imagine him? Educated in Alexandria, the second biggest city in the world, and what was Alexandria noted for brethren and sisters? It was noted for all the education in the sciences, all the great libraries was there, the Ptolemies had built enormous libraries there, every book conceivable with the hand of man was in Alexandria, if you wanted to learn the sciences you went to Alexandria, here's a man who went to Alexandria to learn about John the Baptist, think of the impact of John the Baptist a fellow down in the wilderness who had nothing but a leather skin on his back brethren and sisters, and there's a school on him in Alexandria in the seat of learning talking about him, and arising out of that place came Apollos, and he was skilled in the science of John's teaching, categorised as the Greek word used in Acts 18, he spoke diligently, the word means exactly, so he was one of those brethren who may not have been very profound in the great profundity of God's word, but you put him in a debate on the immortality of the soul, the trinity, the diabolos, or a host of other questions, some of which of course were not current in those days, but whatever the question was, put Apollos up there, as I say, he may not know the profound things of the prophets, of the Psalms, and so on, but you give him the opportunity on the fundamentals, and he would absolutely slay them hip and thigh, a tremendous debater, and he turns up in Corinth, can you imagine the Corinthians, their mouths

113. 52:15

     would fall open, and when he went to Corinth, the record says he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, to put it more explicitly, the Greek says he publicly confounded the Jews, now can you see him, with the Corinthian ecclesia watching him, questions firing him from the audience, answer that one, answer this one, answer that one, turn that up, look at that, here, there, everywhere, and he had it all categorized, reeling it off, with the eloquence brethren and sisters that stunned his hearers, and there arose in the ecclesia, a party called the Apollos party, was almost inevitable wasn't it, and Paul took him, and himself, and he transferred, the folly of that ecclesia, into a figure, and he applied it to him and Apollos, and he stood them on the stage before that ecclesia, and said you've made us, you've made us opponents, but we work together, you're attracted to him because of his eloquence, but though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, you haven't got many fathers, and in those words Paul was trying to tell them that he whom they deemed whose speech was contemptible was the one they really needed, but they didn't think that, and as for Apollos, the bigness, brethren and sisters, the greatness of Apollos comes out in a few words in the Corinthian epistle, when Paul said I besought our beloved brother Apollos that he might visit you, and his answer was I will come when I have a more convenient season, and I believe that the heavy implication of those words is that Apollos saw that he wasn't good for that meeting, that his work was

114. 54:15

     elsewhere, and the Corinthians brethren and sisters didn't have to learn eloquence or brilliance so much, but they had to learn before they learned anything else, that as dear children they would follow their heavenly father, and Paul stood before them in that capacity, you may have 10,000 instructors in Christ, he said, but you haven't got many fathers, and with those few words, brethren and sisters, about the background, we're going to study the first four chapters, God willing, of this epistle, I'd like you to remember some of what I said, and try and regurgitate in your minds over tea, and during the course of this weekend, the whole background of that epistle, to see that ecclesia, with all its seething problems, and yet to know this, that no doubt at all, that when our Lord Jesus Christ comes, many, many, many of those brethren and sisters, I believe, will be in the kingdom, for when the Lord said, I have much people in this city, I think he meant that in the ultimate sense, I don't think that he meant it, that they were merely going to be put on trial, I have much people in this city, and it'll be one of the delights of the age to come, which I believe is absolutely imminent, that among other things which we will find plenty of time to do, brethren and sisters, there'll be no haste or panic, one of the great delights will be to talk to some of the Corinthians, and to learn with them what it was that got all of us through an age which was so similar, with all its subtle influences,

115. 56:10

     all its brutalising forces upon the mind, and I believe that when we talk to them, the answer will always be the same, that the only thing that ever got us through was the voice of Almighty God. There is no other answer, brethren and sisters, but that book, and when we come to grips with that, we will eventually give our attention to it, as we've never given to it before.