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If you'll remain standing and open your Bibles with me and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians, find your place at chapter 1 and verse 1. If you are in our Pew Bible, it's on page 1210. And thus it reads, Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the receiving, revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful by whom we were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I pray now that as I seek to give an exposition of it, that you would keep me from error for Lord.
I know that I am capable of error and I do not want to preach error for the sake of your people and their hearing and for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of your blessed name. Father, keep me from error.
And I pray, Lord, that as we begin this new series in the in the opening of a new year, looking at the book of First Corinthians, father, that we would see in this book, as it were, a mirror of those things.
Which we as a church need to address those things, which we as individuals in the church need to address those things, which as believers in Christ, we always need to address. And Lord, help us to always, as Paul does so beautifully in Corinthians, point us to the gospel as the answer to our problems.
In Jesus blessed name. Amen. Please be seated. Well, every year on the Sunday prior to New Year's Day, I preach a sermon intended to look over the blessings and issues of the previous year, as well as look forward to the year to come with a theme and an expectation of what we're going to try to accomplish in that year.
And this year I have a goal that I want to share with you all, and I'm going to make it part of the introduction to the sermon. My goal this year is to preach through the book of First Corinthians all the way through in this year.
Now, you laugh because I know you've been here with me and you know that in the past 12 years as being your pastor, I've preached only a couple of books all the way through, and it took me several years for each one.
I think I was in Hebrews for three years. I was in Acts for three years. I was in Luke for two and telling you that I want to get through an entire book in one year may sound a little bit like I'm biting off more than I can chew.
But I want to tell you why this is sort of on my heart. My wife and I spend time, my wife is actually a great help in preparing messages. She and I talk a lot about the needs of the body, and she has insight that I will never have, and she's wonderful in giving me thoughts.
And one of the things that we've discussed is that we don't want to rush through anything, but also we don't want to belabor something that we could get to and move through. And as I said, I'm not doing this to rush, but I don't want to impose some type of artificial end, but what I want to do is I want to think of these books of the Bible sort of the way that they were written.
You understand that 1 Corinthians was sent to a church to be read in one sitting. It was sent to a church to be read all together at once when the church gathered, and it doesn't hurt to sit and spend three, four, five years studying it, but isn't it nice to think about the fact that we ought to actually consider what it's saying and move forward with it, not belabor it and push it out.
This was sent to a church that had needs and problems, and it was meant to deal with those needs and problems, and they didn't feel the need, I don't think, to sit there and read one verse at a time for four years.
And another thing that caught my attention, I thought about this, is I have certain goals in ministry, and one of the goals I have, I'd love to preach all the verses of the New Testament. I know that's a big thing to consider.
John MacArthur is the only minister I know that has preached every verse of the New Testament. It took him 40 years. And I thought about this. If you were to only preach one book of the New Testament per year, it'd still take 27 years to get through the whole New Testament.
So as I was thinking about what I've been able to accomplish and what I want to accomplish in the future, I said, I don't want to rush, but I don't want to belabor. I want to get about the business of moving through the text.
I've preached Luke. I've preached Romans. I've preached several books. I've never preached 1 Corinthians, and the beauty of it is this. If I don't get done by December 31st of this year, guess what? We'll just keep going.
I'm still going to be here, Lord willing, unless he calls me home. So we'll just keep going. But what I'm going to do this year that's different is I'm not going to take time off. I'm not going to have a special sermon for Mother's Day or a special sermon for Easter or a special sermon for Christmas.
I'm just going to preach through the text. And some of you might say, well, I don't like that idea. Here's the thing. I believe God's going to bless that, and I believe on those days God's going to put me right where I need to be in the text, and I think it's going to work fine.
So we're just going to preach through it. We're going to focus on this book for this year. And my goal for us as a congregation is to center us in the Word and studying together. Because here's the beauty of it.
You know where I'm going to be. And you can read ahead. And you can come with your questions. You can come with your thoughts and your ideas, and you can actually invest in this study with me. One of the most precious things I get during the week is calls.
Well, sometimes it's the hardest part of my week. But some of the most blessed things I get is people who call me and say, Pastor, I was reading the Bible and I didn't understand this. Can you help me?
And if I know we're all studying the same thing, this is going to be a great year. So I want to invite you to study this with me. Let's do this together. Let's make this year a year of study. And somebody might say, well, why did you pick 1 Corinthians?
Why this book? Well, I want to say this in no uncertain terms. And I say this not to offend anyone or surprise anyone. Our church has problems. Some of our problems are big. Some of our problems are small.
But in case you wondered when you came in today, we are not a perfect church. And the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians is a church that was facing serious problems. After 2000 years, it reads as timely and as relevant today as it did then.
And I got to tell you, there is no such thing as a perfect church. In fact, if you find a perfect church, please don't join it. Because you will ruin it. It's just the truth. Churches are made up of imperfect people.
And thus, they are constantly dealing with the problems of imperfect people. I heard something this... It was actually two weeks ago. And it really... It got my heart so consumed. Brother Mark Chansky is a pastor who I am connected with on social media.
And he was visiting Mark Dever's church. How many of you have ever heard of Mark Dever? Nine Marks to a Healthy Church. That's a book, Mark. It's a great book. It's a very helpful book. He's the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D .C.
Not exactly the bastion of all things conservative and or Christian. And yet, he has a thriving church in the Capitol. And every year, he has a minister's conference where ministers come to Capitol Hill.
And I've never been. But I want to share with you what Mark Chansky, who went there, what he shared. And I heard. And it touched my heart. He said about 150 pastors went to Capitol Hill Baptist Church for this pastor's conference.
And they all arrived on Thursday evening for the first session. And the first session of the event was an elders' meeting. All of these 150 pastors got to go to an elders' meeting. Now, I don't know about you, Jack and you, Richard.
But it would be kind of intense if we had 150 people surrounding us in our elders' meetings, staring at us while we addressed the issues of the church. But that's what they did. 150 people sitting around with notes, listening.
There's 24 elders in this church. Now, it's a much larger church than ours. 24 elders sat, and they discussed the issues of the church. And here's what Mark Chansky related to me. And I was so amazed.
He said, they had the same problems of any other church. They numbered people so they wouldn't give the names away, sort of like Dragnet. The names were changed to protect the guilty. But they started talking about issues in the church.
Well, this person's upset about this. And how are we going to handle this? Or this person's dealing with this sin. How are we going to address this with them? How are we going to begin the process of possibly even having to bring church discipline?
Well, how are we going to do that? And this is a ginormous church. One that you would think had everything right. One that you would think, man, this church has it all together. No, they didn't. Because they were a group of people.
A group of imperfect people. And that group of imperfect people had problems. And so even in that gigantic church, which no one would argue is in a wonderful place, there were still problems. And I felt a sense of relief.
And that's added. I was like, wow, they have problems too. Their pastor has moments where he wakes up at night concerned as well. So while I know we can't ignore and shouldn't ignore any problems that we have or pretend they aren't there, we mustn't allow them to take our eyes off the ultimate goal of ministry that Christ has given to us.
We need to admit. We need to confront. We need to rectify. But we also need to constantly move forward in our pursuit of Christ. 1 Corinthians. I want to just give you a quick outline. I want to give you an outline of some of what they deal with.
Because this is Paul writing to a church that he founded. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about the history of Corinth in a minute. But just to give you just a quick snippet of history. Paul founded this church in Corinth, which was the modern day Las Vegas of the Greek world.
The Greco-Roman world. It was the modern day area where people went to enjoy themselves and to have a place of revelry. It was a port city. It was an isthmus. It was a place where men went from one side of the water to the other side of the water.
Through this place, it was a place where money was spent. Pleasure was enjoyed. And they celebrated the goddess Diana, who was the goddess of lust and sex. Just to give you an idea. So Paul deals with...
Well, I have it broken down into 8 different things. Ungodly division among its members. Members couldn't get along. Can you believe that? A church with people who argued and didn't get along. He deals with hero worship.
Oh, I follow Apollos. I follow Paul. I follow Jesus. Oh, how spiritual. You follow Jesus. He deals with sexual immorality. He deals with legal battles. Christians that couldn't solve their own problems, so they wanted to take each other to court.
Marital problems. Not knowing what to do about divorce and remarriage. And what do you do in that situation? Accusations of idolatry. Should we this? Should we not? What if we offend someone? Regulations of spiritual gifts.
What about the tongues? What about the gift of prophecy? What about women in the church? And how are they to be different in men? And is there such a big difference? There was even an uncertainty about the life to come.
And even if there was going to be a resurrection. Remember the whole 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians is Paul addressing the fact that some of you are saying there's not even going to be a resurrection. And if you don't believe in a resurrection, you can't believe in Jesus because you have to believe He didn't raise.
And if He didn't raise, we're all liars. And we've misrepresented God. In verse after verse after verse, Paul is addressing the problems of the Corinthian church with the love of a pastor. Why? One might wonder why so much devotion to such a wayward congregation.
Well think about it. This is a church Paul planted. Remember I planted, Apollos watered, and God brought the increase. This is the church. He planted the church and Apollos was the pastor. And he had watered it and strengthened it, but God had increased it.
And again, as I said before, I don't think that this was meant for just the Corinthians. I think this was meant for us too. I think this, as the Holy Spirit wrote this through the Apostle Paul, I think this is intended for all churches of all ages because there's no such thing as a perfect church.
And we're all dealing with problems. And so we come to this book and we see how do we address the problems. In Romans, Paul is the church's theologian. But in 1 Corinthians, Paul is the church's pastor.
In Romans, he deals systematically with her doctrinal foundations. But in 1 Corinthians, he lovingly points out the problems and directs them to the gospel as the solution for those problems. So as we open our study today, I want us to go back again to verse 1 and I want to read through.
But I want to focus, if you're taking notes or you're underlining your Bible, my intention today is to focus everything around verse 4. Because the introduction is very similar to Paul's other introductions that he does in his other epistles.
He says, I, Paul, rather not I, but he just says, Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Now, I have to say this. I hope that the Apostle Paul doesn't need a lot of introduction here.
If you're unsure or don't know who the Apostle Paul is, maybe you're new to Bible study. The Apostle Paul was a Pharisee. He was a man who hated the church and hated Jesus Christ. And he made it his mission to imprison and to punish those who were serving Jesus Christ.
And he was on his way to Damascus. And Jesus Christ appeared to him, blinded him, and converted him. And since that conversion, the Apostle Paul has changed from a God-hater to a God-lover. He went from hating Jesus to loving Jesus.
And now he serves Christ with all his heart. And he considers himself to be what he describes as an apostle born out of time. Meaning that he wasn't one of the original twelve. He wasn't one that Jesus had appointed while in his earthly ministry.
But he appointed him after. But there's another name mentioned here. It says, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes. Now I think if I were to have like a Jeopardy game and I wanted to really trick people, I'd ask them who was Sosthenes.
Because I don't think he's got, he just doesn't have as much of one of those names that sticks out like Peter, James, and John in Sosthenes. He didn't really go along with our list of people. But if you want to know who he is, I will tell you who I think.
And I think that I'm right, or I wouldn't say it. In Acts chapter 18, we see Paul's introduction to the church at Corinth. Paul had been in Athens. And remember, Athens was the intellectual capital of the Greek world.
And when he was in Athens, he was there on Mars Hill, and he proclaimed the gospel to all of those erudite philosophers. Some of them believed him, some of them disbelieved, and some said, we'll hear you later on this matter.
You remember that situation. That's Acts 17. In Acts 18, the Apostle Paul goes from Athens to Corinth. He goes from the city of wisdom and philosophy to the city of sex and philandering. Corinth. In fact, if you want to know anything about Corinth, know this, at the time in history that this is, a Corinth or Corinthian person was a person of bad reputation.
Rather than calling a woman a prostitute, she might be called a Corinthian woman. That's how synonymous the name was with that type of behavior. So Paul goes from Harvard to Atlantic City. And he goes into the city, and he's preaching the gospel, and he's trying to reach the synagogues as we know, and what happens is the synagogue ruler converts to Christianity.
And another synagogue ruler takes his place, and his name was Sosthenes. That man takes the place of the original leader. And they try to get Paul in trouble. They take him to court, and they try to get him pushed out of the city.
And the court official doesn't want to hear anything about it. He says, this is your laws and your rules. You do with him what you want. And they push him out of the courtroom. Well, that man Sosthenes is then beaten.
We don't really know everything that happens, but if you read through Acts 18, I encourage you to do that as a foundation for this. You go back to Acts 18, you'll see Sosthenes is beaten, and that's the last we hear of him.
But then in this book, 1 Corinthians, he is called a brother. Now some people think that's a different Sosthenes. I don't think it is. I think it's the same guy. I think that the leader of the synagogue in Acts 18, who was beaten, later became a Christian.
And he became a Christian of such notoriety that he was known so well by the Corinthians that when Paul is in Ephesus writing to Corinth, he says, I'm writing to you, and I'm with our brother Sosthenes.
I'm writing with this person who's now a leader. Not a leader in the synagogue, but a leader in the church. Our brother, Sosthenes. You say, why does this matter? I'm going to tell you what I think, and again, it's worth what you pay for it.
It's not worth much, but I'll tell you what I think. I think Sosthenes, after his beating, was loved and cared for by the believers, and I think that may have been what led him to Christ. Now I can't prove that.
That's not in the text. I'm making a conjectural thought because he is not a believer. He's beaten in the midst of believers, and the next time we see him, he's a believer. Could it be that the love and compassion shown him by the church was what God used to bring him to Christ?
I don't know. But I certainly think it's within the realm of possibilities. Because it's the only time we see him in the Bible is he's not a believer here. He's beaten, and he's a believer over here. As I said, we don't know.
But that's who this man, I believe that's who this is. I don't think it's a random Sosthenes. I don't think it's another guy. I think this is the same guy from Acts 18. And then it says in verse 2, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called together to be saints, with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
One commentator writes this, and I love this quote. He says, It's encouraging that there is no place on earth too immoral for an assembly belonging to God to be established. There's no place in the world too bad that God can't have a church there.
Because like I said, Corinth was the Vanity Fair of that world and that time. And Vanity Fair, if you're unfamiliar with that term, some of you may be thinking of the magazine, Vanity Fair. But Vanity Fair actually finds its source in the book that we actually gave away last year, The Pilgrim's Progress.
You remember in The Pilgrim's Progress, every city had a name, and the name referenced what it was about, because it was an allegory. Well, in the book of Pilgrim's Progress, there was the city of vanity, the city of self-love, and what was always happening in the city of vanity, a fair.
It was always a fair. It was always amusement. It was a place where you turn off the mind and turn on the senses and enjoy what's happening. Vanity Fair is a place of an over-the-top urban lifestyle, a place where merriment reigns.
And if a correlation could be found today, we could say all around the world, we look and we see places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City. But are they not just examples of what happens in our own nation everywhere, where satisfaction and lusts are met at every turn?
Yet even in the midst of this Vanity Fair, there is a place where people are called together to be saints. And they're called saints. It's the church of God in Corinth. This is amazing. This is God's people, God's church is in the midst of this place that is a sinful place, and yet God's people are there.
And He offers them a proclamation of grace and peace, reminding them that such comes from God the Father through Jesus Christ. And then in verse 4, and I said this was the verse I wanted to focus on, He says, I give thanks to my God always for you.
Now stop right there, because as I said before, this is Paul addressing a church that had problems, idolatry, immorality, factions, misuse of spiritual gifts. Do you know they even had people who when they had their agape feast, which is a meal, they didn't have communion like we have communion, where we set up a little table and we all gather around the table and we share communion.
No, they had a feast after their worship, and then in that feast, they would share the bread and the cup. And that was called the agape feast. And you know there were people in that feast who would bring food, and they wouldn't share it with others.
They had their own little cliques and their own little groups that they would be, and they would divide out from... Can you imagine a church that just won't eat with each other? As I said, this is not a perfect church.
This is a church plagued with internal problems, and yet Paul gives thanks for them. Let's meditate on that for one second. Paul gives thanks for a church with problems. He gives thanks for an imperfect church, because why?
They're still God's people. This really hits me hard because I've experienced what it's like to be in the trenches of church-related issues. I've seen backbiting, I've seen gossip, I've seen misuse of scripture, mistreatment of one another.
I've seen people live willfully sinful before God without any desire to repent. And this is what Paul is facing in this book. And yet... And he's about to wage verbal war, by the way. You're going to see in 16 chapters, he is going to say some things that are hard to hear.
But he doesn't start without saying, I want you to first know that I love you and that I'm thankful for you. He doesn't forget who he's talking to. He's talking to God's people. They may be broken. They may be embattled.
They may be embittered. But they are God's. And he loves them, not for their sake, but for God's sake. As I said, as I was preparing this week, as I was thinking about the message and praying, meditating, writing my notes, I just couldn't get over the fact that knowing what he's going to say, knowing what he's facing.
And by the way, this isn't his first letter to Corinth. Later in the letter, he's going to reference a letter he already sent once. That's not scripture. We don't even have it. We don't know what it said.
But he points in chapter 5 to a letter he'd already written once. This is the letter that we have as scripture. It's what God has preserved for us. But he points to the fact that this isn't the first time he's addressing these issues.
But he still gives thanks for that. And he gives thanks for them because of the grace God's given to them. That in every way, verse 5, you were enriched in him and all speech and knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed among you, so that you're not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful. By whom you recall into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Corinth had a lot of problems, but they also had a lot of blessings. Paul said they weren't lacking in any gift.
And later in chapter 12, he's going to explain all of the gifts are at work in Corinth. All of the gifts were functioning in Corinth. Even in the midst of the problems, they had gifted people. Pastors, teachers, preachers, deacons, servants.
And I want you to notice between verses 5 and verse 9, Paul did not lose any optimism for them. Even in the midst of their problems, there was no loss of what God could do through them. And would do through them.
God knows that in this church, there are his people. And for those people, there is nothing that's going to thwart his purpose for them. He said he will sustain you to the end. He will sustain you guiltless in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful. We aren't faithful. We want to be faithful. The Bible says we should hope that when we see our King come, that he find us faithful. And what is it we want to hear when we see our King?
Well done, my good and faithful servants. I mean, we know that. But we also know our propensity for failure. So whose faithfulness do we truly cling to? Ours or God's? His. Obviously. Because the psalmist tells us that God's steadfast love extends to the heavens and his faithfulness stretches to the skies.
So Paul is beginning this letter with a reminder. One, that he's thankful for this church. Even though he's about, in some ways, to provide a verbal lashing, in some ways to provide them with severe rebuke, he tells them first, I'm thankful for you.
Because I know God isn't finished with you. I know God's not done. And I know God has a plan, and God is working out that plan. He's going to sustain you to the end, and he's going to sustain you without guilt, and he's preparing you for that day when his Son will return, and you will be ripe to meet him as one of his good and faithful servants.
Not because you were faithful to him, but because he has been faithful to you. So even in the midst of a church with problems, Paul had reason to give thanks. I want to draw to a close, and I want to ask you this question.
If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ today, if you know Jesus Christ, do you have problems? Do you fight spiritual battles? Do you fail to perfectly live out the life that God has called you to daily?
You either said yes, or you've convinced yourself of something that isn't true. 1 John 1 .8 says, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not within us. Likewise, do you realize that this church is made up of imperfect people, and thus it has problems too?
In Christ, believers are positionally sanctified. That's one thing else about this passage that we ought not miss. He calls the church sanctified. That means set apart. This church is sanctified, but practically we still are being sanctified.
We're being cleansed. We make mistakes, we err, we need to grow, because none of us has arrived at perfection yet. So if we're believers and we know we have problems, and we know that we're a group of believers, so as a group of believers we have problems, then we need to know where to go to find the answers.
And the answer is the gospel. I'm going to tell you this. I don't care what the question is in this book. 1 Corinthians. And we're going to be in this all year. We're going to be studying this verse by verse, going line by line through this book.
I'm going to tell you the answer. I'm going to give you the cheat sheet right now. The answer will always be the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now how you understand it, how it works in that situation may differ.
How it contextualizes into that moment of what the problem is. But the answer to the problem will always be Christ. Because I'm going to tell you something. If you came here today and your problem is, well, pastor, I don't even know if I'm saved, then your answer is Christ.
I'm going to point you to Christ. If you came here today and you said, pastor, I think I'm saved, but I have these doubts and battles that I fight, the answer is going to be Christ. Or if you came here today and you said, pastor, I'm very prideful of myself, and I know that I'm saved, and I never questioned it ever.
You need Christ because you probably got a problem too. The answer is always going to be Christ. It's always going to be pointing to Him. It's always going to be. Because as we know, we sing this song, we're worthless worms, man.
Without Jesus Christ, we are nothing. Great God, how infinite art Thou. What worthless worms are we? Let the whole race of creatures bow and pay their praise to Thee. Why? Because He is what makes me worth.
He is what gives me worth. He is the answer to my need. And I'm going to tell you this, and this is how I'll finish the message very quickly. One of the issues of Corinth, and we're going to see it as we go.
One of the issues was that there were people in the church who were members of the church that weren't saved. They'd heard the Gospel, they'd heard Paul preach, but they did not believe it. They hadn't trusted in Jesus Christ.
They might have made a verbal profession, but let me tell you something, a verbal profession is not worth anything without an internal possession of Jesus Christ. If you don't possess Him, you're not His, and He's not yours.
So my concern for you today, and as we go into this new year, my concern for this entire year is I point you to the Gospel. If you believe the Gospel, then I point you to it as the answer. But if you don't believe it, if you don't know it, here it is, it's very simple.
You are a sinner before God, and you have broken His law, and you stand before the judge of the universe guilty of having broken His law, and He sent His Son, and His Son died on the cross and took the penalty of the law that was broken by every person who ever believed on Him, and the Bible says if you will repent of your sins, that means see them the way God does, see them as things that you want to turn from, and turn from them, and then love the Lord Jesus Christ, and put your faith in Him for what He did on the cross, then you will be saved.
It's not workspace righteousness, it's something you can't earn for yourself, it's something that's given to you as a gift, and it's given to you as a gift when you place your faith and trust in what He did on the cross.
That is the answer. You came here with problems, I came here with problems, but I know the answer. It's not in human psychology, it's not in human wisdom, it's in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's in His name.
Let's pray. Father, I thank You for the opportunity to preach today. I thank You for what we are learning and are going to learn in this book of 1 Corinthians, and I pray that in the weeks, months to come, that You'll open it to us afresh and that we will see new, that even though we as individuals have problems, even though we as a church collective have problems, Lord, the answer is Christ.
May it be that every time we go to this book, we see the answer as Christ, because He is our all in all. We pray it in Jesus' name and for His sake. Amen. Let's stand together and sing and prepare our hearts for communion.