What Have We Learned? An Overview of 1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 1:10 and the Call to Unity in Truth

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to 1st Corinthians chapter 1. We're just going to read one verse, but we will be all through the book of 1st Corinthians today, so keep that in mind that you'll probably want to keep your finger in your Bible as we study today.

1st Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 10. 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.

May we pray. Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. We come to you today asking for your mercy as we seek to study your word. I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach. I pray that you would open up your people's heart to hear your word, especially those Lord who do not yet know you.

Lord open their eyes to see, open their ears to hear that the word might penetrate the mind, go down even into the heart and the soul of the person. I pray Lord that you would give me strength of voice, clarity of mind, most of all Lord, that you would fill me with your Holy Spirit, that he would speak through me, that he would be the one who gives the lesson for apart from the spirit there can be no true instruction.

And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Please be seated. Well, it is my sincere hope that I won't be doing that for the next 45 minutes. Professor Howard Hendricks wrote the book that we are currently using in Sovereign Grace Academy for our study and in that book he tells a story of a time when he was asked to come and preach at a little church and when he was asked to preach he he asked the people inviting him, well, I'd be happy to come preach.

What would you like me to preach on? And they said, well, pastor, it's up to you. You can preach on whatever you preach on. However, we want to ask that you not preach on Ephesians. And he said, okay, I have to know.

Why don't you want me to preach on Ephesians? They said, well, our pastor has been preaching Ephesians for the last two years and he's not yet into chapter 2. Well, Dr. Hendricks was interested in that and so he asked them, well, let me ask you a question.

Do you know what the major idea and theme of the book of Ephesians is? And they looked really bewildered. He said, do you know the major thrust of the book and why it was written? They looked confused and he said, well, there's a problem.

I thought a lot about that story as I was preparing to end my series in 1 Corinthians. We have done a lot of digging. We have done a lot to take apart various portions of the book. In fact, we have spent entire weeks, we've spent several weeks on just a few words in a few passages.

We've excavated, we've investigated, we've constructed, we've erected, we have looked, we have sought, but oftentimes digging as we have into the parts can cause us to lose sight of the value of the whole.

Have you ever heard the phrase the whole is more valuable than the sum of the parts? That's an important phrase and one that I would commend to your memory. The whole is more valuable than the sum of the parts because if you think about it like this, imagine you had all the parts that made up a watch.

You had all the gears, you had all the springs, you had the little hands and the dial and you were going to go and sell all those little parts and you could probably sell them all and you might make a good return if you took all those watch parts and sold them.

But if you actually had the watch, it would be much more valuable than just the parts. That's what it means when we say the whole is more valuable than the sum of the parts. The whole has a quality. The whole has a different quality than just the pieces.

So today as we conclude 18 months of study, we've examined the parts of 1 Corinthians. I want us to step back and look at the whole. I want us to step back and ask again the question, why did Paul write this?

I want us to look at what we hope we have learned. What are the themes of 1 Corinthians? What is the main idea which flows under the whole book? And what is the thread of thought which is contained throughout?

And I realize some of you weren't here when we started this series. So some of you haven't even got all the parts. Maybe some of you were here and you don't remember 18 months ago is a long time, especially the older I get, the more 18 months.

I mean, it goes by in a flash, but I don't remember yesterday, much less 18 months ago. I could probably start this series again, preach the whole thing again, and you guys would be just as satisfied, because you probably don't remember everything that I preached.

But I want to remind you of a few things about Corinthians that we should know before we leave this book. Paul planted the church in Corinth during his second missionary journey. We read about this in Acts chapter 18.

Corinth was a commercial metropolis because of where it was located. It was in what is called an isthmus. That means it's a very narrow strip of land that connects two larger pieces of land. Greece to the north, and what was known as the southern Greece or the Peloponnesus was to the south, and that piece of land was about 250 miles around.

And so this little small strip of land which connected northern Greece to the Peloponnesus, right in the center of that was Corinth. And so anybody who was going to the north had to go through Corinth.

Anyone who was traveling to the south had to travel through Corinth. And most ships, instead of going all the way around that 250-mile trek, which is very treacherous. In fact, some of the sailors would say, before you make that trip, you better write your will, because it was very dangerous.

So instead of making that 250-mile trip, they didn't have a Panama Canal like we have. So what they would do is they'd take the boats up. They would take all the stuff off the boats, which would lift it higher out of the water.

They'd put it on rollers, and they would skid it across that four-mile land piece, and they would put it back in the water on the other side. And so Corinth not only was a place where travelers to the north and travelers to the south would have a place to stop, but it was also a place where seafaring men would have a place to stop.

So you had people coming from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south. And so Corinth was a metropolis, and it was a melting pot of cultural differences, and vice was rampant in the Corinthian community.

It could be compared, as I've said in the past, to modern-day Las Vegas or Atlantic City with its opportunities for sin and vice, prostitution, to give a sense of how decadent it was in the ancient world if someone was known as a person who had Corinthianized, or if you were known as a Corinthianizer, you were known as a person who was a person of debauchery.

To Corinthianize was to live a life of excess. These things are important for us to understand why Paul would spend more time here than any other of the churches that he planted except for Ephesus. And by the way, Ephesus is where he's writing from.

He's writing to Corinth from Ephesus, and these are two major places that he spent time. Paul spent 18 months. Interesting, it took us 18 months to get through this series. I'm not applying any type of weirdness to that.

I'm just saying it took us 18 months to get through it. That's how long Paul was there, preaching. And at the outset of this series, I entitled it something. I don't know how many of you remember this.

I've mentioned it a few times along the way. The title of this series is A Church With Problems. My reason for titling this series that was because that's what Corinth was. Corinth was a church with problems.

In fact, that's why I chose to preach it. I chose 1 Corinthians a little less than two years ago because I think it is valuable for us to see that the early church had problems. I think we get somewhat of a Pollyanna view of the early church.

People always talk about, oh, we need to be like the early church. We need to be like that first century church. We need to have the spirit and the momentum and the drive and the power of that first century church.

Well, let me just remind you that they experienced problems too. And I wanted us as a church to see what those problems were and see that they're not unlike some of the problems that we still face today.

We are a church with problems. If I couldn't get an amen. Nobody wants to amen that, but it's true. You will not go to a church that doesn't have problems. I know I've said it before and it's a little humorous, but if you ever find the perfect church, don't join because you'll ruin it.

You'll bring your problems and there it's not perfect anymore. We are a church with problems. And so if I were going to give a subtitle to 1 Corinthians, if I said it's 1 Corinthians, apostolic answers to a church with problems.

Apostolic answers to a church with problems. That's what 1 Corinthians is. What were some of the problems that Paul addressed? That's what we're going to do today. I'm going to break the book of 1 Corinthians down into three sections.

Now, I want to say this about that. I could have done this any number of ways. I could have given you 15 sections. One for each chapter and then the last chapter is 16. I could give you 16 sections. But I didn't feel like people would hang well with 16.

I could have broken it down to 8 parts and I still felt like that might be a little much to chew on. I tend to work in threes. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just the way my mind works. I don't know. I tend to work in groups of three.

And so I, in my mind, have broken the book of 1 Corinthians down to three major sweeping sections. And I'm going to put them on the board for you on the overhead. There are three major sections. The first one is chapters 1 to 4 where Paul deals with the division in the church.

The next part is the longest section where he deals with the deviation in the church. And by that I mean places where they had deviated from the truth. Or they had deviated from his apostolic instruction.

Or he's answering questions about their deviant behavior. So we see the whole, almost whole of the book, chapter 5 through 14, is majorly on deviations. And we're going to look at some of those. And then chapter 15 and into chapter 16 deals with really the only doctrinal issue.

And that's the issue of the resurrection. So we see division, chapters 1 to 4. We see deviation, chapters 5 to 14. And we see doctrinal confusion in chapter 15. So let's look first at the division. Open your Bibles again with me.

We've already looked at chapter 1, but go back to verse 10. We're going to look at the division. What was the division that was happening? Paul says, and we read this as our opening passage, 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.

I really believe this is the thesis statement for the book. And at the end of today's sermon I'll show you how I think it all ties up. But I think that this is the thesis, sort of like in Romans, where you go to Romans 1 and you read where Paul talks about the gospel as the power of God and the salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and to the Greek.

That sort of sets the theme of the whole book. I'm not saying every particular verse falls under that rubric, but what I'm saying is that's a thematic verse that sort of sets the stage for all of Romans.

I think this passage sort of sets the stage for all of the book. Because what we're going to see is this church is divided all through the book. We're going to see they're divided over how they handle sin in the church.

They're divided over how they handle legal matters in the church. They're divided over food offered to idols. They're divided over how to handle the Lord's Supper. They're divided over whether or not men and women should wear different types of clothing.

They're divided over how the spiritual gifts ought to operate. They're divided over whether or not they believed in the resurrection. The church is divided through the whole book. And so Paul is calling them to unity.

But here's the thing, my friends. He is not calling them to unity at the sake of truth. That's the key. When Paul says here, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree.

He's not saying that I want you to give up the truth. What he's saying is I want you to agree on the truth. Because later in the book, in chapter 11, he says this, he says divisions will exist between you because it will show the difference between who is true and who is not.

He said I hear, in chapter 11 he says I hear there are divisions among you and there must be because they show who is genuine and who is not. Paul is not calling for unity at the sake of truth. He is calling for unity in the truth.

And so he goes on to say that all of you agree that there be no divisions among you but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. What mind and what judgment? The mind of Christ. Paul tells us elsewhere we are to have the mind of Christ.

And we are to judge according to the truth of Christ. We are to have discernment according to the word of God. That's the truth that we're supposed to judge by. That's the way that we're supposed to unite.

Churches have today become places where anything goes. No one is to have any opinion that is to rock the boat. And if you have something that you just have to be quiet. We're going to allow every sin and vice into the church.

We're going to allow every abominable thing into the church because we do not for the sake of unity want to bring any words of condemnation. That's not unity. It's false unity. It's a lie. And so Paul calls the church here to unity but not false unity.

He calls the church here to unity but not to unity which is based on lies. This past week I watched as several marches were happening all around our nation for various things. They're happening all the time.

It wasn't just this week. But a lot of them were spillovers from last month's pride events. And I saw a man dressed in a clergy collar walking in a pride parade with his purple shirt and his short shorts and his flip flops.

Not that flip flops matter. Just painting a picture for you. But he was walking along praising the homosexual community in the name of Christ. Beloved, that's not the unity Paul's calling for. Paul is not saying that we roll over and play dead when sin is in the camp.

In fact, that's the very next thing we're going to talk about when we get to deviation. The very first thing, I think he changes direction in chapter 5 because he starts dealing with their problems more so in chapter 5.

And the very first thing is, I can't believe you've got sin in your midst and you're not dealing with it. There's a man who has his father's wife, which there's a lot of different interpretations of that.

I like to think it's probably a stepmother-stepson issue. Hopefully nothing worse than that. That's bad enough. But it's weird. Paul says it's so weird that not even the pagans do this kind of weird stuff.

I may have to keep Foskey paraphrasing, but that's what he says. He says, there's such a sin among you that it's not known even among the pagans. You're weird. You're being weird. You're letting weird happen.

And nobody's saying anything. So do not take this call to unity as a call to give up the standard of the gospel. Somebody asked, why do you pick on the homosexual issue? I don't know any other sin that's having parades.

I mean, if they were having a parade for murderers, I'd be down there preaching to them too. Now they do have parades for the abortion, and that's bad too, and so we stand against that. But if there was a big parade for thieves, and there was churches that were welcoming the doors and said, we are welcoming our doors to all the thieves, and we're saying thievery is no longer a sin.

That's the problem. It's not that this sin is the sin of sins. The problem is we're being told it's not sin. And when you go that direction, that's the danger. As soon as you say it's not sin, then you've lied.

You've lied to the person. You've set them up for destruction. And you've now paved the road to hell so that they might walk even more easily into it. Paul is not calling for unity for the sake of truth.

He's worried about division in the church. Now let's, real quick, let's, being fair to the text, what divisions is he worried about? He's worried about divisions over leadership. He goes on in the same passage.

He said, it's been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is 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? This is the issue, he says, right now there's divisions among you, and there are leaders that have grown up among you.

And there's dividing the church. Let me tell you something. I don't know for sure that people were really, and I want to say this because this is a little different when I preached it. I want to just share something I think I've realized in studying.

I'm not sure that people were really saying, I'm a Paul, I'm a Peter, I'm Apollos. It could be that they've got other names, and Paul's just inserting his name and Apollos' name and Peter's name. We don't know for sure.

But I do know this. There was divisions in the church, and they were based on false understandings of leadership. This is the danger, and the elders and I have talked. This is the dangers of elder leadership, right?

Because somebody may come along one day and say, you know what? I'm of Andy, or I'm of Mike, or I'm of Jack, or I'm of Keith. Meaning that, you know, I've got my elder, and he listens to me. And he's going to take my argument before the council.

You know, he's going to be my man and do what I say. You know what I'm saying? That kind of danger of dividing the church over pettiness is very serious. In fact, I want to show you one verse. Just hold your place in 1 Corinthians.

Go over to Titus chapter 3. Go over to Titus chapter 3 and verse 10. Now, Titus is a different epistle, of course. It's still written by Paul. It's written to a minister, Titus. And he's talking about the ministry of the church.

And he says this in Titus chapter 3 verse 10. As for a person who stirs up division... So, who's the subject? A person stirring up division. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned.

Warped, sinful, self-condemned. That is the danger of people who try to lead God's people into division. That is the danger of people who try to bring in ungodly divisions among God's people. It's happened here in the past, and praise God we've seen our way through it.

But that is the danger. What does it tell us? What does Paul tell Titus? He says, when this person is stirring up division, you warn him what he's doing. And if he continues to do it, don't have anything else to do with that person.

That person is warped. That person is sinful. That person is self-condemned. Why? Because of the danger of division in the body. A person who sows seeds of discord is what Proverbs talks about. The person who sows the seeds of discord.

For what reason? It can be a myriad of different reasons. Sometimes people sow seeds of discord because they simply want something to do. Some people are so disappointed in their own life that they want to make other people unhappy just so that they can share in their misery.

The old misery loves company. Or they're so unhappy that they're not getting what they want that they want everybody else to be unhappy that they're not getting what they want. And as a result, the whole church suffers.

How does this type of division start? It starts with yakking. It really does. I mean, I hate to be so silly talk, but it is. It starts with those words. Did you know that such and such did me this way?

Have you told such and such? Nah. Wouldn't do any good. They don't listen. Right? That's what we do. The sowed seeds of discord come in. They divide the church, and then you end up without a church. You end up with a group of cliques that gather together once a week.

They'll break their own arm patting themselves on the back, but they wouldn't lift a finger to help one another. That's ungodly division. That is what Paul is concerned about. He's concerned with ungodly division in the church.

And I promise this is, again, what I think is the thread that runs through the whole book. Because I want to move now to the deviations. Let's go back to 1 Corinthians. I want to look really quickly through the, again, we can't do any type of exposition this way.

This is an overview. This is telescopic reading. Those of you who've been in Sovereign Grace Academy, we talked about reading telescopically. Take a step back. Look at the whole. This is looking at the whole.

So Paul is, he's warned them about division. That goes, again, he says in chapter 1. He says it again in chapter 3. Then in chapter 5, he begins to deal with deviation. He deals with deviation on the subject of sexuality.

We already talked about the man who had his father's wife. He deals about the subject of sin in the camp. That's the later part of chapter 5. He deals with the issue of taking people to court. Why would anybody take anybody else to court in the church?

Well, we don't know why, but he says, some of you are taking others to court. He says, why not come before the church? Come and have your matters settled before the people of God. Why would you go before the ungodly rulers?

Why wouldn't you just come before the people of God if you've got an issue that needs to be settled? He said, well, they're not qualified. Let me talk about qualifications. It comes to qualifications.

People ask me all the time, are you qualified to give advice? No. I'm qualified to tell you what the Word of God says. That's what I'm qualified to do. I don't give you advice. I tell you what the Word of God says.

And then you do with it what you're going to do with it. I'm not a philosopher. And when I counsel, it is with the Word of God. And when decisions are made by the elders, we seek to make them with the Word of God.

That's all. And so that's the answer here in Chapter 6. You know, the issue of dealing with people that are having legal disputes. And I can't even imagine, but I guess it's possible that we could have a legal dispute in the church.

Somebody get mad, somebody bump into another person's car. Lord, don't let it happen. They'll think I've caused it. But somebody bumps into another person's car, now somebody wants to sue somebody in the church.

And again, what is he dealing with? Dealing with division. Division over things that don't matter. Wouldn't it be better just to be wrong than divide the church? Oh, not me, Pastor. I can't be wrong. I cannot be slighted.

I deserve an apology. I deserve recompense. Don't you know who I am? See the problem? That's the problem. I am more important than you. That's the problem. That's the whole book. You run to Chapter 11, and you see those rich people not willing to give their food during the Lord's Supper to the people who didn't have food, and you tell me that the problem was that I think I'm better than you.

You go to Chapter 12, and Paul having to explain, can I say to the ear that I have no need of you, and not say that the problem wasn't that people felt they were more important than the person sitting next to them?

It's the whole book. Does it deal with other things? Yes. Is there a thread? I think there's a thread. One of the most important passages in the whole book we had read to us this morning by Brother Steve.

And if you want to talk about, I say I think the thesis passage is Chapter 1, verse 10, but if I say there's a passage that's just a bright light in the middle of the book, it's Chapter 6, verse 9. So turn there with me real quick.

I want to just remind you of this monster passage. If you memorize text, this would be a good one. If somebody came in and hit a car today, I want you to know I do not bear any responsibility. That would be the best, worst thing that could happen.

Somebody just got... Let's go back. I don't know what's going on out there. Hopefully nothing. Don't pay attention to that, please. Let's focus on the Word. Verse 9, Chapter 6, verse 9,. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

That by itself is enough. That by itself is enough. If you're witnessing and you can't think of something to say, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And then he goes on to say, Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, Go check my wife, see if she's... Brown Dodge truck.

Oh, got it. Thank you. Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Okay, so he says, The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. What's the question? Who are they? Well, here they are. And he gives a list. Now, this isn't an all-encompassing list. This is a list of high points.

This is a list, what we call a vice list, or a list of sins. And he lists some things here that I've already mentioned homosexuality earlier, but he mentions other things here, reviling. That's hating people.

That's treating people awfully. That's talking about people. There's a lot that can fall under reviling. There's swindling, greed and drunkenness, thievery, adultery, idolatry. And notice what he says, verse 11, most beautiful of passages, Such were some of you.

Notice he doesn't say, such are some of you. He says, such were some of you. But you have been washed. Actually, he says, you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified. I watched an argument this past week between two people where the argument was whether or not God can change the heart of a homosexual.

And the person was a Christian saying God can't do that. He said, God can't change a homosexual into having anything but homosexual desires. That's not what sanctification is. He won't get changed until glorification.

And he was trying to make a theological argument. And he was saying, no, no, no. Until he is glorified, he will continue to have homosexual desires. God can't change his heart. And I thought, what God do you serve that he can't change a heart?

Now I want to say this. I want to add to that. If you're a person who has battled with homosexual desires and you still battle those as a Christian, God can change your heart. You may still have a struggle.

I'm not saying you might not have a struggle. I have a struggle with sin. You may have a struggle with sin. But I'm going to tell you this. He can change your heart. Don't think that God doesn't have the power.

That's what this guy was saying. God doesn't have the power to do that. I've seen God take dead drunks and turn them into godly men. I've seen God take people who had track marks in their arm and turn them into preachers.

I've seen God do miraculous things. Don't tell me God can't change a heart. And I've seen him take gay men and make them solid male Christian men with families. Don't tell me God can't do it. Such were some of you.

So again, I just want to mention that passage because I think it's a light in the middle of the book. Memorize it. And when you're talking to people about the gospel, use it. The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Who is the unrighteous? The passage tells us. But the passage also tells us what God can do. God can take the unrighteous and He can apply the blood of Jesus Christ and He can change that person. And He can change you.

Because God is not bound by our limitations. Now again, He goes on and He talks about a lot of other deviations. I do want to mention one other thing in this chapter since we're here. Go down to verse 18.

Since we're on the subject of sexual immorality and the book deals a lot with that. Again, what was Corinth? Corinth was a place where literally the cults had prostitutes. The temples. People would go to the temples to have sex with cult prostitutes.

This was a place where it was a religious activity to go have sex with a prostitute, y 'all. A place. So, Paul says in verse 18, flee from sexual immorality. And I want to mention something here because he says, every other sin a person commits is outside the body.

But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. People often argue that all sin is the same. Let me say this. All sin is sin. All sin is breaking God's law. And James makes the argument that if you break the law at one point, you've broken the whole law.

So you can't say, just because I haven't broken that law, I'm not a lawbreaker. Right? But that doesn't mean that all sin is the same. Paul makes the point here that when we sin sexually, we're actually hurting our bodies.

And there's something different about that. Not that it makes you more worthy of hell. One lie makes you worthy of hell. But that there's a destruction and a danger which comes with this type of sin that we need to run away from.

Flee sexual immorality. Because every other sin is outside the body, but this one, this is in the body. This is done with the body. And he goes on to say, and don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?

So he goes on to talk about several other things. He talks about marriage. I did a whole section on marriage. I don't want to go back through it all, but I do just remind you a few things about marriage.

One, he encourages intimacy in marriage, which if you're in a marriage where you've abandoned intimacy, I would say that that's harmful to your marriage. If you can't be intimate with one another, that's not good.

Paul discourages that type of pseudo-celibacy. But he does encourage celibacy for people who are not married and who can live that way. So all of chapter 7 talks about marriage and the different things.

It talks about what would happen if you were a woman or a man who'd been abandoned by a spouse. He talks about what happens if a spouse dies. So I would encourage you to go back and read those, especially if you have questions about marriage or the issue of marriage.

But one thing that the big point of chapter 7 is this, try to be content. If you're married, be content in your marriage. And if you're not married and you can be content to not be married, be content.

But if you want to be married, there's nothing wrong with it. And you should be. You should rather be married than to burn with desire, he says. So there's a lot of great advice about marriage there in chapter 7.

A lot of things that are confusing and because we live in a different time, there's different types of marriages then. A lot of people lived in slavery and so sometimes they'd be in different relationships where they'd be moved around and so might be married to two or three different people.

And the question is, what should we do? If I've been married three or four times, what should I do? So Paul sort of deals with that and deals with the culture that they're in. But again, what's the underlying point?