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Hi, this is Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to the beginning of a
study. We are studying the book of 1 Corinthians beginning today together. It's
an awesome book about how God can make a difference in and through anyone and
everyone's life, how he can make a difference in and through your life.

I want to begin by reading the first three verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 1. It
begins by saying, "Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of
God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those
sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those
everywhere who call in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours,
grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. " You get
the setting, you get the idea from the very beginning.

Paul is writing to the Corinthians. More specifically, Paul is writing from
Ephesus. He's on his third missionary journey.

He's going around traveling through, encouraging all the churches that he's
ministered to before. And in the midst of that travel in Ephesus, which has
often been a base for him to write and encourage others, he writes the
Corinthians. He writes, he says, with Sosthenes.

Who is Sosthenes? Well, we're not certain of this, but when Paul had earlier
visited Corinth, there was a man by the name of Sosthenes who was a leader of
the synagogue, who actually got beat up by the crowd for letting Paul preach
about Jesus in the synagogue. We're not sure it's the same Sosthenes, but I
believe it is.

The same man who now we see, because Paul calls him my brother, has come to know
Jesus. He's a fellow believer in Jesus. He's a brother of Paul serving together.

It would have been important to the Corinthians that Sosthenes was with Paul
because they would have known him. Paul, the apostle, the servant of Jesus, is
writing to Corinth. Corinth, a city where the opportunities for change and
ministry just abounded.

So many people in Corinth, so many people going through Corinth. The east-west
traffic of all the Mediterranean goes through this, at this time, the time of
Paul, goes through a four-mile-wide isthmus, sort of an ancient Panama Canal,
only this was obviously land. And Corinth was right in the middle of all this.

If you didn't take this shortcut, you'd have to sail around the southern tip of
Greece. And the saying in that day was, "A man should make his will before
sailing those waters. " This four-mile walk saved a 200-mile dangerous sea
journey.

So there were many people going through Corinth, many people living in Corinth.
It was the center, it was the hub of activity. But the needs for ministry there
were not only about the number of people, but also the morality of that city.

Corinth was a city that needed the good news. There was a saying in that day to
Corinthicize, and it meant to live a drunken and immoral lifestyle. It was a
city that was filled with selfishness.

And the worst of the atrocities in all of Corinth was a temple to Aphrodite, the
goddess of love. Its 1,000 priestesses were essentially prostitutes, and they
made worship no more than just an excuse for immorality. They trampled on the
holiness of God every single day.

God had given to Paul a great work in this wicked city. You can read about it if
you want to back in the book of Acts, Acts chapter 18, verses 1-17. 18 months in
Corinth are told in those 17 short verses in Acts chapter 18.

But those verses do hit the highlights of what Paul did while he was in Corinth.
They talk about the joy of working with Aquila and Priscilla, some good faithful
friends of Paul who served together with him there in Corinth. They talked about
how Paul was rejected in the synagogue.

He went and preached there first, only to have a man by the name of Titus Justus
offer a house right next door to the synagogue where he could just keep
preaching. And they tell about how his synagogue ministry wasn't in vain.
Crispus, the leader, one of the leaders of the synagogue, began to meet and
immediately began to believe.

Some people think Crispus and Sosthenes are the same man. I happen to think
they're two believers out of that synagogue who came to know Christ. Things
started so well in Corinth.

It was just explosive what was happening. There had been a few problems along
the way, but overall the growth in Corinth had been good. But then, while Paul
is in Ephesus on this missionary journey, he receives some news.

And this news caused him to sit down right away to write to them. Chloe, a
Corinthian woman, brought word to Paul of a divisive spirit that was in the
church. And then she told Paul that they were making Apollo, so a good teacher
of the word, and even Paul and even Jesus, a cause for division rather than a
cause for working together within the church.

At the same time, Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaeus also came. And they
refreshed Paul's spirit, but they also brought questions and deep concerns about
the church. They had concerns about the immorality that was going on within the
church.

They had questions. They had a letter from the church asking about, "What should
we do about this? What should we do about that?

" And so Paul sits down to write and to address their needs and to answer their
questions. Now as you read 1 Corinthians, it reads in many ways like a question
and answer session with the Apostle Paul. In fact, the outline of the letter in
very many ways is this question and answer session.

There's three major sections in the book of 1 Corinthians, and they all have to
do with Paul answering questions. Section 1 are questions about relationships
with other believers. And in that section, Paul begins to talk to them about
disagreements they're having with one another, and sin that's in the church, and
lawsuits amongst one another, and what do I do about marriage, and how do I make
sure I keep my rights, or when should I give up my rights as a believer?

Paul talks about all of those things in this first section of the book of 1
Corinthians. And then he turns to questions that they had asked him about
worship. And in this section, he talks about order in worship and submission to
one another in worship.

He talks about the Lord's Supper. He talks about use of God's gifts in worship.
He talks about love being the ultimate expression of worship.

That's all in this section where he's answering questions about worship. And
then at the very end of Corinthians, he answers some questions about what
happens after you die in chapter 15. What's it going to be like?

What's my body going to be like? What's going to happen? Some of the most exact
answers in the entire scripture about what's going to happen to us and our
bodies and our spirits after we die.

Very clear answers from God. So as we get into 1 Corinthians, here's how I want
you to think of it. Think of it like you've come into a room and it's a question
and answer session about the Bible, sort of a Bible answer man.

But the Bible answer man in this case is the Apostle Paul. And as the Apostle
Paul begins to give answers in this case, you realize that's more than just the
Apostle Paul answering. The Holy Spirit is inspiring these answers in a unique
way, and he did.

This letter is in the scripture because it's inspired by the Holy Spirit. It's
not just the answers of Paul. It's the answers of God's Spirit for all of these
things that you're concerned about.

So as we jump into 1 Corinthians, we're going to be talking about the everyday
things that you and I live with. We're going to be talking about how do you
handle it when you disagree with someone in your family or in your small group.
We're going to be talking about how do you handle it when you know someone's
going the wrong way.

How do you warn them? How do you get them back in the right way without being
judgmental about it? We're going to talk about very practical things.

What if a Christian wrongs you? Is there ever a right time when you could sue
them when they wronged you, or is that always wrong? What does the scripture say
about that?

Practical questions Paul's going to answer. When should I get married? When
should I not get married?

When's the right time to get married? Also questions about divorce. Is divorce
right in this circumstance or in this circumstance?

Paul's going to answer practical questions about our relationships concerning
how do I treat someone else when I feel like I may be a little ahead of them
spiritually and they're like keeping me back because they've got all these rules
and regulations that they're still having to try to live by. What do I do about
that? Paul answers all of that.

He answers all the questions you might have about what about the different gifts
in the church, the miraculous gifts like speaking in tongues or healing. What
does the Bible have to say about that? What about the gifts of teaching?

What about the gifts of helping? What about the gifts of encouraging? What does
the Bible say about that?

How are these gifts supposed to work together? How do they work in the way we
serve one another? How do they work in the way that we celebrate Jesus in the
worship service?

If you've ever had a question about what your life's going to be like in heaven,
when we get to chapter 15 you're going to hear some answers about what life's
going to be like in heaven. These are answers about the very common questions I
hear every single day as people are exploring what does it mean to serve Christ?
How do I have faith?

And how do I live this out? And yeah, I could give you my answers, but my
answers need to be based on Scripture. During these next few weeks together,
we're going to have the opportunity not just to hear some person's answer or not
just some person giving you what Scripture has to say.

We're going to hear Scripture's answer. We're going to go straight to the source
and hear what God has to say about these most important questions of life. So as
we prepare to do that, I want to pray, I want you to pray with me that God will
use the answer that we need to encourage us and then he'll use the answer that
we need to be given to encourage somebody else.

Let's pray that very specifically as we begin this study of 1 Corinthians.
Jesus, that's my prayer. That's our prayer.

We need answers. We sometimes don't even know the answers that we need because
the circumstance hasn't happened yet, but we need answers. We need answers from
you.

We want to know what to do. We want to know which direction to take. And I pray
that this study through 1 Corinthians would show us which direction to take,
which decision to make.

Give us the answers we need from your word, Lord, the wisdom we need to live the
kind of life that you've given us to live. Lord, not only give us the answers,
but I pray you'd also give us wisdom in answering other people with humility,
realizing we all have the same struggles. I pray that something that we talk
about together these next several weeks, you'll help us to share it with
somebody else in a way that's an encouragement, an encouragement to see, yeah,
that's God's direction.

And yeah, he can give me the strength and the power to do that. We ask all these
things, Jesus. In your name.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to look at the question, what does it take to really
make a difference with your life?