This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

(upbeat music) - Welcome back for day two of week two of our look through the
New Testament. We're doing a book a day, Romans Yesterday, First Corinthians
today. First Corinthians is a book about how we live by God's principles in the
real world, in our contemporary world.

And if you read through the book of First Corinthians, you're going to notice that
the word Lord is prominent. The way to live by God's principles is by knowing
that Jesus is Lord, because he's greater than the world that we live in. And so
he can help us.

He can strengthen us to live by God's principles. This is a book that was
written by Paul to Corinth. Now, let me just ask maybe an obvious question.

Why is it important to know anything at all about the cities that these letters
were first written to? Since actually we're reading them for what they mean to
us today. So why should we even care about Corinth except that it's the title of
the book?

Here's why it's important. The Spirit moved Paul and others in the New Testament
to write to specific cities, to write to specific people. And then as they were
writing, the Spirit empowered their writing in such a way that they wrote in
perfection.

Everything Paul wrote wasn't perfect, but a few times that he wrote, he wrote in
perfection, 'cause the Spirit inspired the words. But the Spirit, I believe,
also inspired who he was going to write to, because the Spirit knew the issues
at those places that Corinth faced. And that those issues were the same issues
that Christians were going to face for 2,000 years.

They're the same issues that we're facing today. They were the very issues that
God wanted to address for 2,000 years. So although Corinth might be in the
title, the address really should be every Christian that's ever lived, because
the Spirit knew who he was writing to as he was writing.

So it starts with Corinth. And as you hear about Corinth, you can begin to
recognize our world today, and the world today in so many times in history.
Corinth was a Greek city, which meant it glorified human wisdom.

So they had some issues around that. It was a strategic city. Just a glance at
the map tells you that this was a city that was made for strategic greatness.

It was in the midst of a four mile narrow strip of land that if you took that,
you could save a 200 mile journey around the Cape of Malia, a very dangerous
journey. So it was well traveled. This was an amazing shortcut in the ancient
world.

It was also, because it was well traveled, a rich city. It had a lot of luxury.
And maybe because so many people were coming through, it was a travel city, it
was a trade city.

It was also an immoral city. It was dominated by the worship of a false god,
Aphrodite, the goddess of love. It's interesting.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul wrote to those who were surrounded by the false
worship of this goddess of love to tell them some of the most famous words ever
written about the truth of God's love. If I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, but don't have love. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 to 10, Paul writes and says to
those in Corinth, when he's talking about the immorality of our present world,
and such were some of you.

These were people that were one to Christ out of this lifestyle of immorality
and their lives were being changed. And God had given Paul a great ministry in
this wicked city. You can read about the beginnings of it in Acts chapter 18,
verses one to 17.

18 months of ministry in Corinth are told in just 17 short verses. Verses that
hit the highlights, like the joy of working with his friends, Paul's friends
Aquila and Priscilla. Good, faithful friends for many years in ministry.

How Paul was rejected in the synagogue only to have Titus Justice offer the
house right next door so that they could have Bible studies and worship together
there. How the synagogue ministry wasn't even in vain, even though they were
kicked out, that Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, began to meet with this
new group of Christians and believed in Jesus Christ. So in Corinth, things that
started extremely well had been growing.

There'd been a few problems, but overall the growth was good. Paul leaves, goes
to minister other places, and later on, while on Ephesus, Paul received some bad
news about what had been happening in Corinth. A group from Corinth arrived with
news and also they had a list of questions from the church about what God said
about certain things.

So Paul sat down right away to write to them and the Holy Spirit inspired his
words as he wrote. Corinth reads in many ways like a question and answer session
with the Apostle Paul. The outline of the letter to the Corinthians is very
simple.

It's all about questions. First section is questions about relationships with
other believers. That's chapters one to eight.

And then you have questions about worship, chapters nine to 14. And then third,
questions about what happens after you die in chapter 15. Very simple outline,
but Paul goes very in depth into some of the most important issues of life.

First Corinthians talks to us about questions about relationships with other
believers. And in chapters one to eight, he talks about the disagreements that
they were having in the Corinthian church, the sin that they were allowing in
the church, the lawsuits that they were bringing against one another in the
church. He talks also about issues related to marriage in the church and also
how and when you should insist on your rights as a Christian and whether maybe
that insistence could hurt another believer or help another believer.

This is a church that was filled with disagreements with sin. We often talk
about the New Testament church and wanting to get back to being like the New
Testament church. The church in Corinth was a New Testament church that we would
not want to copy.

Maybe it reminds us too much of too many churches today. Paul writes in the
first chapters of Corinthians about divisions that were going on in the church.
And if you take a close look at what he writes in those chapters, you see that
the divisions came out of three types of selfishness, self-admiration,
self-will, and self-indulgence.

Self-admiration, they admired their own intellect, so they thought they were
smarter than anybody else. Self-will, they wanted their own way, so they thought
they knew better than anybody else. And self-indulgence, they wanted what they
felt like they wanted.

Henrietta Mears used to say, that great Bible teacher used to say, "It's
wonderful when a ship gets into the sea, "but it's tragic when the sea gets into
a ship. " It was all right for the church to be in Corinth, but it was fatal
when Corinth got into the church. And the immorality of the city was getting
into the church and causing these divisions.

And so Paul writes to say, you need to understand where this is coming from. The
divisions amongst you are not because you have different ideas. Christians can
have different ideas and not be divided.

So if you feel division in a church or with another Christian, never think it's
because of the idea. For 2,000 years, we've been able to have different ideas
and not be divided. It's because of self, selfishness.

It's because of self-indulgence or self-importance or all those selfish
decisions that we can make. As he talks about their divisions, he then goes on
to talk also about their relationships. He talks to them in chapter seven about
marriage and what they should do.

And he talks in that chapter about the current circumstance. Apparently there
was some persecution that was going against the church. And Paul advised, maybe
you shouldn't get married right now because of the persecution that you're
facing.

We're not exactly sure what the situation they were facing in Corinth was at the
time, but we know what his advice was. And then in chapter eight, he talks about
the power of love over knowledge. That just because I know something more than
another Christian doesn't mean that I'm loving them in that situation.

And then the second section, he turns in chapters nine to 14 to talk about
questions about worship. He talks about what to do with the order of worship and
submitting to each other in worship and how to do the Lord's Supper and how to
express our gifts in worship and how to share love with each other in worship.
Now, as you read, starting from chapter seven really on, Corinthian sometimes is
like listening to one side of a telephone conversation.

Understanding the other side is extremely important, but we don't always have
the other side. So if you heard just one side of somebody talking on their phone
and they said, I really think it would be wrong to get married in view of the
present circumstance. You'd want to know what's the present circumstance and
should I get married?

Should I have gotten married in view of the present circumstance? And unless you
heard the other side of the conversation, you wouldn't really know totally what
the conversation was about. And that's what happens with the Corinthians.

There are one side of conversations in it that we have to sort of assume what
the other side was, but we also have to be humble enough to know we don't know
totally what the other side was. And I've found in that case, when you're
studying the Bible and there's a lack of understanding, it's better to admit a
lack of understanding than it is to force the Bible to fit your understanding.
Some people, because they can only hear one side of the conversation, if Paul
says something about being baptized for the dead or something like that that he
talks about over in chapter 15, they decide, I don't understand what that means,
so I'll apply my understanding to it.

That doesn't ever work. Because guess what? I don't know for sure.

So you have to be very careful about that. Approach the Bible very humbly. Now,
let me just say one other thing about this section, very important.

There's value sometimes to looking at an entire book of the Bible. And one of
the greatest values is seeing where the most powerful passages that we know from
that book, where they fit within the book. 1 Corinthians 13 is probably the best
known chapter in Corinthians, maybe, in the entire New Testament.

It's called the Love Chapter. It's not in the midst, if you take a look at the
book of Corinthians, it is not in the midst of the discussion of marriage. That
happens back in chapter seven.

1 Corinthians 13 is in the midst of a discussion of spiritual gifts, and
particularly worship and how we exercise our gifts in worship. In a worship
service, the greatest gifts exercised without love, Paul says, are entirely
meaningless. So the best singer without love is meaningless.

The best preacher without love is meaningless. That's why 1 Corinthians 13 one
says, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I'm
only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Now, of course it's good to apply
these verses to marriage and to every other relationship, but don't forget that
the first and most primary application of this is the way we worship together.

We gotta love together as we worship together. That's one of the most powerful
witnesses for Christ in this world. Then we come to the third section of 1
Corinthians.

Chapter 15 is all about questions about what happens after you die. The
Corinthians were confused. They thought since some believers were starting to
die, that somehow that meant they weren't going to get to go to heaven, or
somehow they weren't going to have a resurrected body, and Paul writes to describe,
no, that's not at all what's going to happen.

And there's this long description of the resurrected body that we are guaranteed
in Jesus Christ. Because of his resurrection, our bodies, even our bodies will
be resurrected. And then Paul says, I know you're interested in that.

You're going to want to go and read 1 Corinthians 15 to hear more about that. But I
want to go to the end of the chapter where Paul says, and so, because he's saying,
and so because of all this I've said about resurrection, and so my dear brothers
and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord.

For you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. So what is the
personal application today, in my life, in your life, of this wonderful truth of
our future resurrection? Well, it's not to be proud about it.

It's not to be worried about it. He says, here's the four things you do. Because
you know that Jesus is going to resurrect you.

He has promised it. You can count on his promise. Four things, first, be strong.

You can stand on that one, no matter what's hitting you. Be immovable. You can
trust in that one, no matter what lies are told to you.

And then he says, always work enthusiastically. Even when your physical body
lets you down, you're looking forward to a resurrected body someday. And
finally, he says, know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

It might seem useless to you, but when you get in that resurrected body, you're
going to know that nothing you did for the Lord, nothing you're doing for the Lord
today is ever useless. You can count on that. In fact, let's end by praying
about that.

Our Father, we count on you. When we have questions, like the Corinthians had
questions, and we have problems, like they had problems, we count on you.
Because you're the answer to all of our questions.

You're the solution to all of our problems. You're the hope that we need, the
love that we need. So Lord, help us this day to be strong, to be immovable, to
work enthusiastically, and to know that nothing we do for you is ever useless.

We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow we're going to look at 2 Corinthians,
the letter that some call the autobiography of the apostle Paul.