1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5 Understanding Our Mission

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

The Church’s Need for Unity Around Christ

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here. If you can find your seats, there's still people filtering in. Glad that you're here this morning. It is Mother's Day.

And as I say, every Mother's Day, I encourage you, if you are able to honor your mother today, it's a wonderful thing that our culture still acknowledges the value of moms. And so I encourage you to reach out if that's a phone call, if that's a trip or whatever it might be to honor her today.

And that was Elijah Potter.

He's going to be leading us in worship. Dave and Rachel Bund are out on a much-needed, much-earned vacation. And so they're going to be gone the next couple of weeks. We're very grateful for Elijah stepping in and leading us in worship this morning.

If you, as you walked in, you received a worship folder. In there are a couple of QR codes. I think there might be in some, I don't know if there's going to be some instructions on the screen. Not really.

If you need any help though out at the welcome table, they would be willing to show you how to use those QR codes to get a download of our app and a download of our weekly email that goes out and a way to sign up for that there.

And then there's a connection card in there. Whether you're new or you're kind of just figuring things out here or you've been around for a while, that's still a good means of communicating with the office and with the elders here.

We love to pray for people. We do pray for you. And it's just straight up a question of whether we're praying the right things. And if you are willing to share that on those prayer, on the back of that connection card, then we can pray for you knowingly.

And that's always helpful. There's also a place for you to share your information if you're willing. And we won't spam your email address, but it just gives us a way of getting in contact with you if we need to.

And then the last thing that you received when you walked in was an offering envelope. We don't pass an offering plate. We really, truly, genuinely believe that your giving is a spiritual thing, but it's between you and God.

It's not between you and us. And so whatever is given in those envelopes, we consider given to God for the benefit of the blessing of the work that he's doing here through us in this community. And so there's a slot out in the welcome table where you can give that if you would be led to this morning.

I'm really glad to be together with you this morning. I absolutely love Recast Church. I love the things that God has done here in our community, building us up together in his word. And I think it would be helpful to introduce the text of scripture this morning by clarifying something that has likely become so much white noise for most of us here in this gathering.

If you've been around for a while, you will notice that I get up here nearly every Sunday, and it's been years now that I step up here and I introduce myself as Don Filsick, the lead pastor here. And for many of those years, I was the only full-time paid pastor.

And it might actually cross your mind at times, why in the world does he say the lead pastor? Why doesn't he say the pastor? We have Ben Wainwright, who's currently a pastor intern, and the goal is to take that title intern off and have him be a full-blown pastor.

He's going to go through the theological gauntlet later on in the summer. And before the elders, and we're hoping to confer on him the title of pastor. But why do I add the word lead when it appears to be that I'm the only pastor here?

And this is a good time to clarify this in introduction to this text, because I believe this text exists to give us all pause to consider leadership. As we read it, you're going to see what I mean. But our evangelical culture has seen its share of rock star solo pastors rising up only to crash and burn, right?

Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about when I say that. You read and you're aware, and if you're online at all, you have seen your share of pastors rising up to beat their chest only to fall off the stage and be done.

And many of you sitting here have been victim of more local than that. You've been a victim of abusive leadership in just a local church. Like you're here, and I know you, and you've been wounded, and you've been injured in the past by abusive leadership, and you're reasonably gun-shy about leaders.

So this seems like a good time to explain that I am not the only pastor here. We have a board of pastors that meets once a month. We call them elders, which is the biblical word for the leadership of a church, but elder and pastor is used all throughout the New Testament interchangeably.

When we say elder, we mean pastor. When we say pastor, we mean elder. I happen to be a full-time paid elder, but we have a group of guys here who care for you, who love you. You see them up here praying for you and praying for the church every Sunday.

We kind of have a rotation, and you'll see them come up here and pray. You see them in the back each Sunday there to serve you, there to answer questions, there to reach out to you, there for you to share your requests with, there to even pray with you if you have a need on the fly, and they would love that.

But I'm confident that our pastors here, this is what I mean, church. I'm confident that our pastors would do just fine if I got hit by a bus tomorrow. And as a matter of fact, I would be shocked and surprised if I was removed from the equation, I would be shocked and surprised if one of them didn't take over where I'm at today.

I'd be surprised if it wasn't somebody within this church that God has been raising up to replace me in my absence. And that's my hope, that's the desire for Recast, is that we're a self-replicating church, that within us is the ability to train up leaders who will be able to carry on.

And continue to care for you. I'm saying all this because it's a good place to address this reality of the way that we're structured as a church, but also to highlight something just at the stage for this text that we're gonna read here in a moment.

And that is that there's a tendency in every human heart to obtain for ourselves teachers and spiritual guides. As a matter of fact, the book of Timothy says that in the end times, they are gonna long for teachers and gathering teachers to themselves that say the things that we wanna hear.

And is that not our culture today, church? Is that not finding its way within the confines of the church? Is that not kind of the way that we roll, accumulating teachers who will tell us and affirm us and tell us the things that we desire?

We have to be wary of allegiance to a favorite author, a favorite preacher, blogger, podcaster, or celebrity preacher. We have to be careful of that. Now, in all of this discussion and kind of introduction, I wanna clarify, and I mean it sincerely, I am no rock star.

I don't have any aspirations for that. I know that I'm not a celebrity preacher. And I'm hopeful that I'm gonna make it out of life as merely a small town pastor. Thank you very much. I hope that that's all that God has.

This text is not merely for my benefit as if what I'm gonna do here is kind of spew my own therapy session out on you as if this is a text that's only for pastors, only for leaders. This is not merely for my benefit, but it's written, we're gonna read and study this morning, it's written to correct a tendency that is in every single human heart that will take every single church in the wrong direction if given the chance.

If given freedom to breathe and to flame the things that are natural in our hearts, it will lead us in the wrong direction, church. Our fallen sinful hearts will be tempted to follow charismatic teachers.

Hear me carefully. We will be tempted to follow charismatic teachers instead of attaching ourselves to right teaching. We will fall in love with the teacher and not with the word. Are you getting what I'm saying in that?

That's the way our hearts are bent. We like charisma. We like energy. We like excitement. We like humor. We like, like, like, and there's all these things that we like. And the question, church, is do we love the word?

Do we love his word?

And more fundamentally, do we love the author of the word? That's my goal is to point us to the one who loves us, who created us, who is redeeming us. Now we're tempted by glitzy flash and the glamor of humor and creativity and powerful manipulative rhetoric and we can become a follower of an earthly teacher at the loss of the message and the gospel itself.

And that's what's happening in Corinth. That's what's happening in this church that Paul is so concerned. Now, how many of you might be tempted, like in that day and age, like if Paul was the guy who started your church, you might go like, Paul's a big deal.

Like he wrote the majority of the New Testament. Like I might be some temptation to follow him and go like, okay, whatever he says, I'm gonna listen. And even that, Paul is saying, don't do that. Don't do that to me.

You see, the church was dividing along lines of their favorite teachers and the gospel was being left behind. And so Paul accuses them of a pretty harsh thing in this text, dismembering the body of Christ, dividing the body of Christ, parting it into pieces.

So let's open our Bibles or our devices or your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians chapter one. We're gonna read just a shorter section, verses 10 through 17 this morning. And let's see the first of many issues within the church of Corinth that God has been faithful to reveal to us.

Don't forget, church, that as we're reading this, the title of the sermon series is Sinful Church, is it Glorious Gospel? Yeah, Sinful Church, Glorious Gospel because this church that we're reading is indeed, reading about is indeed sinful, but the gospel that saves is indeed glorious.

So recast, this is God's holy word. Take it in, give it your attention for these next couple of minutes. I appeal to you brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there's quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Cephas, I follow Christ.

Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

I thank God that I baptized none of you.

Except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. Oh, I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your word that is faithful to meet us in the moments of our real life. I just see our culture all over this text. I see a tendency in my own heart and my own brokenness to accumulate for myself who would just be sounding boards for my own theology, sounding boards for the things, just extreme confirmation bias, reading the authors that I love that will say the same things and not challenge me and not press me.

And Father, if we're not careful, we will become so independent in our intakes that we will no longer value the gathering together of your people. It'd be so easy for us to be divided here without a divisive word that each one sits in their own little bubble here in these chairs and no one just bouncing off of each other, doing our own thing, listening to our own teachers, listening to our own sermons, listening to our own stuff out in the world and not sharing in life vitally together.

But Father, I thank you that you have called us to more. You have called us to unity. You have called us to say the same thing that Christ is our Lord. You have called us to worship you. In the gathering together of your people, we rejoice in that opportunity we have right now to sing songs before you in this gathering, uniting in saying the same things, united in mind, united in spirit, united in the worship of you through your son, Jesus Christ.

And it's in his name that I pray.

Amen.

All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated. But do make yourself comfortable if at any time during the message you want more coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that back there. And do please reopen your Bibles or your devices or your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians 1, verses 10 through 17.

That passage that I read earlier is gonna be the text that we're gonna walk through. What we're gonna see in the start of this text is that Paul gives the prescription before declaring the illness. That starts off right away in the text.

But let me start by reminding us what Paul has already said is true of the Corinthian church so that we don't go astray in our thinking that this is just merely now just something that we're supposed to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do.

Like as if all of 1 Corinthians, if you get into the latter half of it, you're gonna get to a place where you're gonna think, okay, there's a lot of instructions here. There's a lot of declaration of things that you need to do.

But he's already began with the gospel. And that's why I wanna bring us back to the gospel. And I'm gonna be doing that regularly during this series is to remind us who we are in Christ first,.

Like Paul does.

So then we can take on the instructions of our Lord and Savior who has loved us and given himself up for us. And so he is, just a reminder, he has called them saints. He is saying that they are those who have been saved and rescued from the consequences of their sin by Jesus Christ.

They are awaiting the return of Christ. All of the stuff that he mentioned in those first nine verses of the book, he called them saints who are being sanctified together. He knows that through their confirmation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they are set apart to live for Jesus, to love Jesus.

They've been equipped with all the things that they need for life and godliness in the church through Jesus Christ. And so once we've established those instructions, that these instructions throughout the book, rather, are for the blessing of those who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, then I think it's safe for us to go on looking at the reformation projects that God desires within his church.

These are the things that God wants to work in those who love him and are called according to his purposes. This is so important that we get this right, church, because a failure to understand this has resulted in many people thinking that our message to the world is just reform your behavior.

Just get it right.

Just start acting the part. Just start playing Christian. And you don't start, how many of you know you don't start with rules? You start with Christ. You come to a savior, not to a list of rules and cleaning up your act.

But that's what so much of the world has heard from the church. They've heard it inadvertently from us because we love the latter half of the letters, but not the earlier parts where the gospel is clearly conveyed.

The Bible is not calling people first to a lifestyle change, but first to a savior. A savior who is our master and Lord who will then initiate for us life change. Paul begins right away in verse 10 with a proposed change for the entire church of Corinth.

Our structure for the text is a rather unhelpful outline. It's a funny outline, but it's the way that Paul writes. Verse 10, the remedy. Verses 11 through 17, the illness. We got one verse on the remedy and then a bunch of verses that are describing the illness that the remedy is there to solve.

And so we can tell something about an illness even by studying the remedy. So we start off with seeing the things that God desires in Paul's writing to give to the church. He begins with an appeal to the brothers and sisters in Corinth and he appeals to them by the Lord Jesus Christ.

By the Lord Jesus Christ, I appeal to you. Now the word appeal and urge is a more gracious word than the word command. Paul doesn't say definitively, I command that you do this. He says, I appeal to you.

What's he appealing to? He's appealing to them who love Jesus. I appeal to you on the basis of your declaration that you love Jesus he's your Lord, he's your master, he's bought you with a price with his great love and his blood shed on the cross for you.

So I'm appealing to you on that framework. And I want to point out that we are no longer those who relate to God on the basis of command. That's kind of the idea of the old covenant law versus new covenant grace.

And we are those by, how many of you are just glad that we live in a covenant of grace? That we don't have to jump through all those hoops. I didn't have to get up here and sacrifice a lamb this morning, amen?

Like we didn't have to do all of that. We don't have the curtain that separates us at special people who have to have their quiet time on our behalf or something like that. Or only person who can go to God is the priest and you have to go through them and all of that rigmarole.

No, we live in a day and age of abundant grace as revealed in his word. And so he is indeed, I want to be clear, he is indeed a master and Lord, but he is a master and Lord over those who love him and have experienced his love.

And if we love him, then we will want to obey him. Thus appeal, thus an urging from Paul. I urge you by Christ who has purchased you to clean up some things. And I want you to think about this appeal from Paul as a way of highlighting a subtle truth for each and every one of us here, the way that he appeals.

The true follower of Jesus Christ can be moved toward obedience by mere appeal. If it takes more than subtle and clear declarations of the will of God to move us toward obedience, then we need to be concerned for our spiritual health.

How much does it take to convict our hearts? How much does it take to go, oh, that's what Christ wants for me, then I want that too. We all have sin, but as children can be easily convicted of sin by loving appeals.

And here the appeal is for five very related things in the text. In English, they are these. He's appealing to a church, a group of people, not just an individual. And he's appealing to us as a church, to the Corinthians as a church.

And he's saying, I appeal to you to have agreement,.

No divisions,.

Unity, sameness of mind, and sameness of judgment. Now those seem to be very related. There seems to be a lot of overlap in English about the way that we think of those different things. No division and unity seems like, well, that's different ways of saying the exact same thing.

But in Greek, we see the words,.

The word same three times. We only see it twice in English, but the word same occurs three times in these five things. And these words are nuanced enough to need our attention. They need a little bit of explanation.

It's important to get this right, by the way, because these are things that God is calling us to exhibit as members of his church. The first is that all of us agree. Now that seems like a tall order, right?

All of us agree.

Right off the bat,.

You're like, agree about what?

And in what way are we all to agree? In Greek, this is a phrase that literally means, it's a very direct statement. It means say the same thing. Say the same thing is exactly what it says literally in Greek.

We translate it that all of us agree, but this is that we say the same thing. So Paul is asking the church in Corinth, could you all get together and say the same thing? It's very clear that Paul does not expect everyone in the church to be clones of speech and conduct and actions.

He doesn't expect us to all walk around like robots saying exactly, identically the same thing every day, all the time.

Not at all.

This is clear by the freedom he allows, specifically over gray areas, area issues of the faith. He referred to Romans 14 for a lot of freedom that we have to disagree. This is kind of like saying, are we all supposed to agree about homeschooling?

Are we all supposed to agree to send our kids to public school? Are we all supposed to agree about Christian school? Are we all supposed to agree about whether we can drink alcohol.

Or not drink alcohol?

Are we all supposed to agree about everything? Are we all supposed to say the exact same thing about every nuance? Well, Paul in Romans 14 says no. So what is he asking of the church in Corinth here? Saying the same thing is the idea of being unified around a common belief.

Not saying everything the same, but realizing that it is because we can say some exact same things in this gathering that we have unity. It's the fact that we can declare some things together in unison.

That matters.

That is what it means to be a church, and we need to be able to say some same things. Do you agree with me on that? In order to call us a church, there must be some things that we say the same. And so I'm going to encourage us all to practice.

The very act of unity.

That Paul is asking right now by saying one thing in common this morning. I'm only asking of us to say one thing. I want you to only say it and declare it if you mean it. Here's what I'm going to ask us.

All to repeat.

I'm going to count to three and then I'm going to ask you to say it. And I'll give you the phrase in advance. Jesus is Lord. That's what we're going to say together here in a moment.

When I count to three.

Now, I only want you to repeat it.

If you believe it.

But if you believe it,.

I want you to say it like you want Matawan to know it. Okay, can we do that together? We might have to do this a couple of times because I have a feeling the first time you're going to be a little shy.

Second time, you'll probably be a little louder. Third time, you'll be like, Don, let's get over it and you'll say something loud. Jesus is Lord on three if you mean it. If you are united in that truth, then let's say it.

One, two, three.

Jesus is Lord.

That was actually pretty good the first time.

But I'm going to ask it.

I'm going to ask us to do it again because it gave me chills. Jesus is Lord on three. One, two, three.

Jesus is Lord.

Amen.

Jesus is Lord. We have done more than merely say the same thing. I hope your heart is as encouraged as mine is in this very moment.

Hearing that.

I'm not alone.

I'm not the only one out there in this community.

Who believes that Jesus.

Is worthy of my affection, worthy of my life, worthy of my worship. But you do too.

Amen.

Oh, that is encouraging to my soul.

And that's the kind of unity.

That Paul is driving for. Can you say the same thing? Because if you can say that, then we're on the right track.

Toward the Lord Jesus Christ.

Is he your Lord? Can we say it together? Yes. We've declared a common thing we believe together that goes beyond mere theory into the fabric of knitting us together in common truth. Second, he not only reminds us that we are knit together by a common confession, but he further asks that in light of this confession that unites that we have no divisions among us.

Now, I want to point out that this is less about theology, theological divisions, and more about individual exclusivity and individualized allegiances. You'll see that as we go through this. Later in the book, he's going to identify some of the divisions that are going on in Corinth and they have nothing to do with theology.

They have a lot to do with wealth and classism. The wealthy are doing one thing and they are subjugating the poor in their midst and looking down on them and that has nothing to do with theology. It has straight up to do with their social classism and stuff like that.

Well, I guess it kind of does, everything kind of touches on our theology if we think we're higher than others.

Or something like that,.

But not a direct theological disagreement, but more of a sociological disagreement. As we're going to see, there's some sociological things going on here in this paragraph as well. There also seems to be, as we're going to see in a moment, individual favoritism forming around favorite teachers.

All of these teachers.

Proclaiming Christ. It's not as though Apollos was saying one gospel and Paul had another and Peter, Cephas had another gospel and they were all in disagreement and they were wrangling with each other.

No, all of these teachers were proclaiming Christ, but some teachers were gaining a following based on other criteria, like how gifted they are at speaking. Some gained a following among those they had baptized.

Well, Apollos baptized me, so I follow him or Peter baptized me or Paul baptized me and so they're my homeboys. They're the ones that I follow and so there was division centered on that as well. So Paul is calling them together under a common confession.

He says, stop dividing up around secondary issues and third, he wants them to be united. Sounds the same as no divisions,.

But this word in Greek.

Is a picturesque word. It's actually a medical term. It's found in ancient medical documents from the Greek known world and it is from the ancient Greek context and it is a medical word for setting straight a broken bone.

It's straight up about resetting something that is broken. I had a compound fracture in my right arm, both ulna and radius when I was about seven years old. I'm grateful that the doctor united those bones back together.

That probably wasn't a fun procedure. I don't really remember it super well. I remember cracks and noises and that's about it. But I'm grateful that the doctor realigned my arm in unity. You get what I'm saying?

In this sense, Paul is both acknowledging that something is broken in Corinth and it needs to be set right. There is a disconnect and he wants them to pull back together and heal together. The fourth thing that he says is having the same mind.

So united is that idea of setting a broken bone. The fourth is having the same mind. Paul is not calling us to the Borg where we all have a hive mind and resistance is futile. But same mind in Greek has the nuance of being centered on focus.

We have one focus. Does anybody want to guess who ought to be our one focus?

Jesus, that's right.

Always give. The Sunday School can't answer if you don't know. Always give that one, right? Like who died on the cross to save us?

Who built the ark?

I gotcha. It's not always the right answer,.

But deep down we know he is the answer because he told Noah to build the ark or whatever. I always think that's funny. But yeah, you ask the kids in Sunday School and it's like, Jesus.

Yep, we're going to give you that.

We're going to give you credit for that. Further, the last remedy given in the text is that we would have one unified judgment. Again, a Greek word that has just a whole breadth of meaning. It's a phrase for united purpose.

I read this week that this phrase bleeds over into will. That is our active center of who we are, the part that actually puts things into practice. So you have both a motivation. Right now, you're not doing a whole lot.

You're just like literally sitting there listening, right?

I think.

Maybe you're playing a game on your phone.

I don't know.

But you're not doing a ton right now. So what you're doing is you're fueling your motivation. But how many of you know that tomorrow you're going to do some stuff? This afternoon, you're going to do some stuff.

And that's where the will begins to be enacted, where we are to have a common, a commonality in our desires and the way that we act, not just merely common thought and theory, but a common way of living this life.

Are you getting it? That's what it means here, this idea of same judgment that's translated same judgment there. It doesn't mean, by the way, that we all do the same things, but rather that we have the same goal and motivation in the things that we actually do.

Some of you are going to spend Monday corralling kids, some in a classroom, some at home. Some of you are going to be delivering packages. I'm going to be studying for a sermon and meeting with people in coffee shops and in my office.

And yet, as we disperse to our extremely varied weeks, we can even then have the same mind and same judgment by doing what we do from a heart that desires to worship our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the day-to-day of the things that we are dispersed from this place to go do.

And what we do, we have a common way of doing it.

It is worship to God.

Are you getting what I'm saying? So that two people who are nurses here might actually discharge their responsibilities.

Very differently,.

And yet both be in the worship of God in their hearts toward Him.

Does that make sense?

There's all different kinds of ways to do that, but our heart is the same in its desire to see Christ elevated and lifted up. Paul wants us to consider our unity beyond this Sunday morning gathering, church.

We are salt and light in this world, and I find great joy knowing that there is salt and light.

Wherever our church disperses to go.

And we are together in the purpose to glorify God in that as a church spread throughout the community. Paul is calling them to a radical and glorious unity in Christ because they have been dramatically pulling apart that unity through divisions and individual favoritism and wayward allegiances.

There has been values in their heart and default settings in their heart that has been warring against the kind of unity that he's calling for here in verse 10. And he knows this because Chloe's people tattled on everyone.

It says right there in the text, tattletale. The interesting thing is they even tattled on themselves. We're a little unsure who Chloe actually is because she's a given in the text, and the fact that she's a given in the text and without introduction, without explanation of who she is means that she was close to the Corinthians.

They didn't need an introduction. They didn't need any explanation.

Which Chloe?

What Chloe are you talking about? No, they would have known right away what Chloe, and that implies that she was likely a part of their church. And she reports to them.

It's likely, by the way, that there was a lot of business travel.

Between Ephesus where, I know that that's true, there was a lot of business travel between Ephesus where Paul was writing from and Corinth, and so it's likely that some of Chloe's people came to Ephesus to give Paul a face-to-face report.

I mentioned that I already assumed that Chloe is a member of the church in Corinth and maybe even a hostess of one of the many house churches that met there in that city. She's well-known. She needs no introduction, as I said, and she and her people are loyal enough to Paul to report to him about the divisive nature of the church.