2 Corinthians 1:1-2 (Introduction to 2 Corinthians, part 2, Jeff Kliewer)

Mutual toleration, says Wikipedia. However, from the book itself, Celsus responds to Christians by deriding our insignificance, compares us to a swarm of bats, ants creeping out of nests, frogs holding a symposium around a swamp, and worms in conventicle in a corner of the mud.

Sound pretty tolerant and inclusive? Wikipedia might be wrong on that.

On the doctrine of true, on the true doctrine, he writes, if they refuse, referring to Christians, refuse to render due service to the gods, let them not come to manhood, or marry wives, or have children, or indeed take any share in the affairs of life.

But let them depart hence with all speed and leave no posterity behind them, that such a race may become extinct from the face of the earth.

Sounds tolerant, right? Celsus was a major enemy of Christianity.

He hated the Christian religion primarily because the Christians would not bow to the idols of the land.

He was fine with them worshiping Jesus Christ. He just wanted them to participate in Roman idolatry and to join in the worship of idols.

In the 1500s, Europe was covered with darkness. But a great light burst forth in 1517 with the

Reformation. And the cry, one of the cries of the Reformation, besides the five solas, was post -Tenebrous

Lux, which means, some of you know, out of darkness, light. And the four great reformers,

William Farrell, now that's not the Will Ferrell of elf fame. This is a different William Farrell.

The reformer, and John Calvin, and Beza, and Knox, these four have statues in the city of Geneva.

I got to go to Geneva in 1998 and saw this. It was amazing. But what

I noticed about Geneva, even as far back as 1998, it's probably worse now in 2019, is that rather than post -Tenebrous

Lux, it's post -Lux Tenebrous. After light, darkness.

The church came as a great light to Europe. But if you were to travel to Geneva today, or really any part of the

European continent, you would discover that the light has been extinguished, all but extinguished.

There is a remnant. There always will be a remnant. But after light, darkness has settled on the land again.

The church, the lampstand of the church, has by and large been removed from the continent of Europe.

After light, darkness. In this country, if the

Equality Act passes, which was proposed by some leftists, the preaching of the

Word of God will be prohibited in its fullness.

There will be things that preachers are prohibited from saying, which are merely the teaching of the scriptures.

Darkness could very well fall on this land. And so in the culture in which we live, seeing what happened to Europe, remembering what has been the normal treatment of Christians for 2 ,000 years, from the days of Celsus through the persecutions of the

Romans, through the Roman Catholic persecutions of the Reformers, to what is happening today in the bloodiest century in the history of the world for Christians, in places like China and India, Sub -Saharan

Africa, on that border where Islam and Christianity are clashing with Boko Haram in Central Africa and Nigeria, Christians are persecuted all around the globe.

And what we've experienced here in America is the aberration, not the norm. To live in peace, to have the freedom to preach the gospel unadulterated, is a luxury that most

Christians have never been afforded. And so we look out at the world and we see the outward assault on the church, and we anticipate that it's only going to get more intense.

But this morning, I don't want us to think about what's coming at us from the outside, but rather to take heed about the dangers that could truly destroy the church.

Europe did not lose its light because of persecution from the outside. In fact, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

Persecution cannot extinguish the light of the church. The light of the church only goes out when it grows dim, and then fades, and then goes out from within.

So what we really need to pay mind to is the dangers within the church. 2

Corinthians is a book where Paul contends for the church of the living God.

He's writing to the Corinthians, but enlarges that to appeal to all Christians in the same way, that the church would become mature, and robust, and strong to resist the temptations and the wiles of the devil.

2 Corinthians, we saw last week, as if you can open there now, 2 Corinthians in the first verse, we see

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. And last week, believe it or not, that's as far as I got.

A few expressions, and so this week I need to continue where I left off last week, and do another introduction to the book, because I feel like if we don't get the big context of what we're dealing with in the book of 2

Corinthians, we're going to miss the big picture. And then by virtue of that, miss the main point of what the author is saying at any particular point.

So last week we said Paul, he was the example for Christianity. He is the model.

We're to imitate Paul as Paul imitates Christ. We see that again and again in 1

Corinthians. Next, an apostle of Christ Jesus, that speaks to his authority. As he writes, he's not writing as an ordinary man, although he is that.

He's carried along by the Holy Spirit, and what he writes is from God. The authoritative word of God, which is what we have in these two letters, 1 and 2

Corinthians. And then third, we spent a lot of time last week talking about the will of God. What is the will of God?

We did a study on that last week, and saw that very often, as in this case, Paul uses the will of God to refer to his sovereign plan and purpose that cannot be thwarted.

It was impossible that the Apostle Paul would be anything but the Apostle Paul. He, in himself, was a rebel against the true

God, a persecutor of the church. But in God's plan, his purpose, all of that worked together to bring him up as an apostle, abnormally born.

So I said, understanding the will of God, trusting his sovereign plan, is the key to suffering well.

And maturity is suffering well. Think about that for a moment.

Who among us is the least mature? Wouldn't that be infants, babies?

When a baby experiences suffering, let's say a wet diaper, or the slightest bit of hunger, what does a baby do?

Cries and hollers and screams, completely focused on himself or herself.

The baby is a picture of immaturity. But maturity is the contrast of that, and no shot at Joshua in that, by the way.

That was all of us when we were born. Immature by birth, but maturity is something we grow up into.

Learning to suffer well, and the will of God is the key to this. Understanding that what comes against us is not just the attacks of people from the outside, it's not just temptations from within, but anything that comes to us is allowed by God within his overarching sovereign will.

And so if I can see that God is allowing this temptation or trial to come into my life, I trust it as coming from his hand, whether the thing itself is good or bad.

If it's an attack, the thing itself is not good. If it's sin, it's not good in and of itself.

But God is allowing that thing for a purpose in my life. He's conforming me into the image of his

Son. And maturity comes through this process of suffering well. Learning to trust him in adversity, not breaking down at the first sign of difficulty.

Maturity is suffering well. And so we're going to move on now in 2 Corinthians. We see Timothy, our brother.

Notice he's not called an apostle, and I think the indication from this is he is a brother, as all of us are.

But Paul is asserting his own apostleship. Timothy is a good brother. Timothy then becomes for us an example of how to imitate

Paul. This young man from Lystra, even as a teenager, beginning to follow in the steps of Paul.

And Paul will mention Timothy in 10 of his 13 letters. A key person.

He for us is an example of one who imitates Paul, who imitates Christ. And that's the teaching of Philippians 3 .17.

We're to join with others in following the example that Paul set for us. So Timothy is doing that.

And here's where we're going to spend our time today. To the church of God that is at Corinth.

With all the saints who are in the hole of Achaia. Guys, we cannot just dive into 2

Corinthians without spending a little bit of time in 1 Corinthians. Because there's a context to what

Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians. So today we're going to camp out in 1 Corinthians to lay the groundwork for what we have in this study going forward.

So guys in the back, if you could pull up the map that we have of Corinth. The church that is at Corinth.

Paul in his second missionary journey made it not just through modern -day

Turkey, which is what is being called Asia here. That was the northern part of Turkey was Asia.

He traveled then across into Neapolis. That was the Macedonian call where Paul went to Philippi.

Remember this from Acts chapter 16. And then came down through Greece all the way down through Achaia.

Somebody's got the cursor there. Good job, by the way, for following this journey. And then through Corinth into the

Peloponnese. How do you say that? That lower island region that's attached to the mainland.

That line there between the bay on one side and the bay on the other is only four and a half miles apart.

So this is a very short route. And the journey to go down around the Peloponnesus is very treacherous.

The winds that would kick up would very often do in a lot of the ships, shipwrecks on the beach.

So what would happen is they would sometimes carry ships across the strait, or they'd catch another ship on the other side.

But this was a major travel route from east to west. Corinth was at that crossroads.

So Corinth was a very important city in the ancient Roman Empire. Now, the word

Corinth became for the people of that time an adjective for fornication.

To Corinthianize meant to commit adultery. So the reputation of this particular city was very seedy.

It was not good. The people of Corinth were visited by the Apostle Paul on his second missionary journey.

And the issue that you see in the book of 1 Corinthians is Paul fighting to get

Corinth out of the church, not take the church out of Corinth. They are called to be the church in the city of Corinth in this terrible place, which one commentator

I was reading described as kind of like a combination of Las Vegas and New York and Los Angeles. So not exactly a flattering description of this town.

The Corinthians were known for debauchery. So turn with me now. Here's what we're going to do today.

We are going to grab a few verses from the main sections of the book of 1

Corinthians. So we'll do kind of like a flyover to understand what 1 Corinthians was all about.

This is crucial because if we don't understand the context of Corinth, we'll never be able to know why

Paul is arguing the way he does in 2 Corinthians. There's a battle for the very maturity and life of the church.

So pick up with me in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Paul addresses the book called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother

Sassanides to the church of God that is in Corinth. He calls them sanctified, called to be saints.

And beginning in verse 4 going through verse 10, he writes a commendation of them, a thanksgiving to God on their behalf.

Very positive if you notice. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.

At the end in verse 8 and 9, he talks about how God has them. He will sustain them.

The genuine believer will not be lost. This is the perseverance of the saints. But then beginning in verse 10, the first of 10 correctives that Paul needs to issue.

So think about this. Paul begins his missionary career around 48 AD. He starts his second missionary journey and in 51

AD he reaches Corinth. This is only three years later.

And all of the problems that we're going to see today have crept into the church. Within those three years from 51 to 54

AD in the writing of 1 Corinthians, Paul now has 10 major things to deal with.

He's moved on. He's probably in Ephesus at the writing of this letter. Writing a letter back to correct the problems.

But consider what they are. Here's the first one. We're going to go through these 10 quickly today. Spend about three minutes on each one.

But notice the first one. 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 is quarreling among you, my brothers.

What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul or I follow

Apollos or I follow Cephas or I follow Christ. So the issue here is cults of personality.

The Corinthians are fascinated by the personality and the eloquence of certain teachers that they're devoted to.

We could have the same danger of trusting implicitly in some great religious leader of our day.

We could find John Piper infallible or John MacArthur infallible or David Platt or whoever the great teacher is.

We could be so devoted to that person that we would in fact be following him rather than focusing on Christ.

There's a danger for us in that. But here the teachers that are listed are probably not part of the problem because as you study through the book of First Corinthians, Paul will later mention in First Corinthians 16 that Apollos is on another mission trip and he's been talking to him.

There doesn't seem to be any friction between Paul and Apollos. Rather what's happening is the Corinthians themselves are elevating the person to an unholy place of devotion.

The problem is with the Corinthians and what we learn as Paul unfolds this argument for the first four chapters of First Corinthians is that they have begun to delight in Sophia.

Not my my dog. My dog is named Sophia. But Sophia meaning, right, wisdom.

Wisdom, eloquence, the Greek value. The Athenians for example would all sit around and do nothing but debate and talk about the newest ideas of the day.

They were in love with the elegance and the eloquence of the teachers. They looked for wisdom.

The Jews on the other hand looked for signs. And so Paul steps into this. Turn with me in to 1 .18.

Paul will say to them, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

And the argument that unfolds, we don't have time to get into it in depth here, but just listen. Paul will say to them, the plan of God was nothing that the wisdom of man would ever have imagined.

The plan of God was scandal to the wise man.

Scandalon, a stumbling block. A scandal meaning this idea that the coming

Messiah filled with power, the deliverer that they've been waiting on, would be crucified.

It's a scandal. Makes no sense to their modern minds, to their enlightened viewpoint.

That the power of God would be displayed in weakness. That the coming king would be displayed on a cross.

That he would be lifted up and shamed. According to the Old Testament, a true thing, cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree.

How could Messiah be cursed? How could the powerful deliverer be hung on a tree to die?

This was the wisdom of God. That in his wisdom our sin would be imputed to Christ.

He would be cursed on our behalf, becoming sin in our place. That we in him would become the righteousness of God.

No human philosopher could have imagined it. And then grace comes to the

Corinthians, and it's not the enlightened ones among them. Paul's argument will be, look who among you was even noble?

But didn't he choose the foolish and the weak things of the world to shame the wise? So that grace would come and bring this message of the gospel, and bring enlightenment to their hearts.

That grace was able to overpower the unbelief of man. And then third, he'll turn to himself and say, look at myself.

When I came to you, I was at my lowest point. Paul came to Corinth at the end of his rope.

We learn about this in Acts 18. He's about to break. He's been beaten everywhere he went, stoned and left for dead.

Now he comes to Corinth and he can take no more. But God in his mercy says to him, for these 18 months, nobody will touch you.

Nobody will break you. And even when the ruler of the synagogue rose up against Paul in Corinth, and tried to have him killed, instead what happened was the proconsul turned against the

Jewish synagogue ruler, and that guy got beaten. And Paul was left free. He was at the bottom of his rope, and God knew that he couldn't take anymore.

So he, God gave him a respite. They saw Paul in his weakness, in his fear, in his trembling, and he didn't come preaching with the elegance of the sophists.

He didn't come like one of the great philosophers. He wasn't that impressive as a speaker.

And this is what so encourages me as a preacher of the gospel. I don't need to convince you with rhetoric, with stories, with language, with skill.

All I need to do is preach Christ crucified, because the power is in the gospel itself.

This message that God sent his one and only son, and he died, but he rose from the dead on the third day, and he reigns as king.

And I proclaim that, and that is the deeper thing. See the

Corinthians at this point were looking for something deeper. They were ready to move on from the weak and suffering

Messiah. Move on to something more wise. But there is no moving on.

Brothers and sisters, there's no graduating from the gospel. The gospel is the wisdom and power of God.

So Paul deals with that first. Second, there is actually some anti -Paul derangement syndrome going on in Corinth.

Look at this. First Corinthians four, he begins to address a certain party, probably not all of them, because some follow

Paul, some follow Apollo, some Cephas. In first Corinthians four, verse 14, he says,

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. He's reminding them that he's the one that reached them with the gospel in the first place.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ through Jesus, in Christ Jesus, through the gospel.

I urge you then be imitators of me. Now look at verse 17. That's why I sent you

Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church.

He's setting himself up as the example. Why? What's going on? Verse 18. Some are arrogant.

There is a contingent in Corinth that are described as arrogant, as though I were not coming to you.

They figure Paul's moved on. He's gone on to Ephesus. He's going to the ends of the earth.

We're done with Paul, and we're taking this thing to the new level. Forget about Paul. Let's move on to something better.

There is an anti -Paul element at Corinth, and what we will find in second Corinthians is this problem comes to a head.

To the point where at the end of second Corinthians, Paul takes it on head on. He derogatorily calls this group the super apostles.

The super apostles. They thought they had moved beyond Paul. They were better speakers.

They were more eloquent. They had Sophia. So the second problem here is you have an anti -Paul derangement syndrome.

I would call the red letter Christian movement in our country anti -Paul derangement syndrome.

What they do is they take the red letters of Jesus and they want nothing to do with the black by implication.

That the black is somehow lesser than the words actually spoken by Jesus. Never mind the fact that Paul wrote these letters before Matthew, Mark, and Luke wrote the gospels.

And far before John in the 90s wrote his gospel. The key to understanding scripture is that every word is theanusta.

Every word is from God. God breathed. The black letters of Paul's 13 books are no less authoritative than the red letters.

It seems that the Corinthians wanted to hold on to their understanding of Jesus, but without Paul.

But brothers and sisters, we need Pauline theology. We need to understand the meaning of the cross.

The book of Romans explaining who God is and how to come to him in faith. Correcting us when we miss that path.

We need the writings of Paul to understand humanity and everything that's described there.

So here is a major problem in Corinth. They're turning against Paul, but he is an apostle who writes scripture.

Big mistake. Problem number three, and you guys have seen this, I'm sure, because I've seen it dozens of times.

Sexual sin ruining churches. Many saints that we know, their personal faith has been shipwrecked through sexual sin.

But entire churches have been brought down for the same reason. Turn with me now to chapter five. The third problem.

This church is a mess. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans.

For a man has his father's wife. So his mother -in -law, there's some kind of incestuous thing happening here.

But notice in verse two, and you are arrogant. The problem is not only that there's sexual sin.

That will happen because people are sinners. The problem is tolerance.

What do I mean by tolerance? Look at verse one. Of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans.

And the rest of this chapter. First Corinthians five. Paul will make the argument that we are not to judge those outside of the church.

God will judge them. But within the church we have to deal with sin. We can't wink at it.

We can't laugh at it. They're arrogant to the point where they think it's no big deal and they let it go.

Maybe this guy is singing in the worship team. Maybe he's one of the sophists that's up here preaching.

But the church is not dealing with sexual sin in first Corinthians five.

And it's destroying the church. Guys, you've seen it over and over again.

In fact, I would say that this particular problem is not only the death of individual churches.

It's the death of entire denominations in our country. Recently the

PCUSA began to ordain homosexual ministers. And marry homosexuals in the church.

But this argument that Paul is making. He picks back up on it in first Corinthians chapter six verse nine.

And he says, Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

This is one of the verses that many non -Christians say, Well, you know, you Christians, you have your smash verses.

Your Bible thumping verses. And it's just not tolerant and it's not right. And even recently

Beth Moore took one of her writings from about two decades ago. And scrubbed out the language where in it she said that homosexuals can be delivered from that sin.

And now says, now says more that there is no evidence that that's the case.

She evidently doesn't believe that anymore. So the new tolerance of the left says that you are never to say that God can change someone who's experiencing homosexual attractions or behaviors to heterosexuality.

That's the mantra of our culture. And to say otherwise, the

Equality Act would outlaw. But brothers and sisters, look at the next verse.

First Corinthians 6, 11. And such were some of you.

Such were some of you. Referring back to that list, not just homosexuality, but all kinds of sin.

The power of the blood of Jesus is greater than even this.

Such were some of you. Were indicating that God has changed some of them.

And I know many of you know this. And I know Christians who at one time in their life were entangled in homosexual sin, but have been completely set free by the power of Jesus Christ.

The culture denies it. The Bible teaches it in black and white, in black letters.

And such were some of you. Churches that are denying this essential truth, this truth that's written in scripture, are dying in our country.

Their light is not being extinguished from the outside culture. It's being extinguished from within.

Teachers among them saying the opposite of what God says. And that one church that I referred to, a

PCUSA church, I saw it almost die on the vine. Split because of this issue, and then dwindle.

And that's the case nationwide with mainline denominations that have turned left on this issue and departed from the

Word of God. Paul would have none of it. Fourth, lawsuits. This is chapter 6, verse 1.

When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

Evidently, in these three years since Paul planted the church, there have been such deep divides among some people that some of them took it to the local magistrates and sued other

Christians. We saw this happen in Chicago. A church of 30 ,000 this year completely decimated because there was a blog written against the leadership of that church, and they resorted to suing the people who wrote the blog.

Took them to court. And before long, this whole thing escalated to the point where the entire church blew up.

And you know what? I love that pastor. I thought he was a good teacher of God's Word. But I think they disobeyed this very passage.

And it's sad because the devil hates churches. He wants to steal and kill and destroy the church of the living

God. He looks for every possible way to weasel in there and destroy what

God is doing. But if we'll hold on to the Word of God, we'll continue to be safe in Christ.

So we move on now to the sixth thing, 1 Corinthians 8.

The issue here, sorry, chapter 7. I skipped a chapter.

Chapter 7. He moves in his argument not from what

Chloe has reported to him, Chloe's people when they came to see him in Ephesus, but now to what they had written him about.

So he's going to begin to answer their questions. So he says, now concerning the matters about which you wrote.

Notice the quotation marks here. It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.

He quotes that because they wrote that to him. His answer then in verse 2, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

Here we have the importance of the family, the family unit. And Paul will go on to teach that there is such a thing as a gift of singleness.

Where God has chosen to give the gift of singleness, but it's not something to be imposed from without, like a stricture.

We saw the Roman Catholic Church do this in the 1100s AD. Rather than obeying 1

Corinthians 7, what did they say? All priests must be celibate. Imposing as a stricture upon them this prohibition to marriage.

And the results that the Catholic Church have reaped because of that disobedience to Scripture have been devastating.

Now, of course, the Catholic Church continued to depart in a number of ways. Became so sacramental that they lost the gospel of grace through faith alone.

But this symptom that you're seeing in the culture, the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church through the sexual immorality of priests who are forbidden to marry is because of a direct violation of Scripture.

The husband and the wife, pictured here as God's plan.

And guys, I also was an inner city minister before coming here in 2016. And if I had one way to describe what's gone wrong in the churches that I saw in the inner city, it's the destruction of the family.

It's not oppression from the outside, although there could be aspects of that to some small degree in comparison to the destruction of the family.

Where you have fathers who are standing up and leading in a covenant relationship with their wives, raising children in the knowledge and fear of the

Lord, you have healthy churches. But where that family breaks down, see the result.

It'll make you cry. Just go see the result of the breakdown of the family.

Follow Paul in this teaching in 1 Corinthians 7. Next, we're moving on to the mistaking of freedom for license to sin.

What do I mean by that? Chapter 8, now concerning food offered to idols.

We know that all of us possess knowledge. This knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

Here's a question. Can a Christian eat meat that had been sacrificed to an idol?

Paul will make the argument that this meat is not magically defiled by the pagan who offers it to an idol.

Nevertheless, holiness means that as Christians, we refrain from eating that meat if we know it's offered to an idol, so as not to stumble another brother.

In other words, to eat that meat's not going to hurt you because you're in Christ and greater is he who's in you than he was in the world.

Even if it's offered to demons, they can't touch you. But Paul says in verse 13, if food makes my brother stumble,

I will never eat meat lest I make my brother stumble. Then he goes on in chapter 9 to give other examples of this principle.

I have the right as a minister, says Paul, to receive my living from preaching the gospel.

But when I came to Corinth, I decided not to use that right because of the situation that we were in.

He says, I have the right to take along a believing wife like Peter does and Apollos and other apostles, but I've never used that right, says

Paul. He gives example, example after example, of how he didn't use the freedom that he has in Christ, but rather for the sake of others restrained himself from doing that.

Nowadays, we have in churches Christians who will go to the bar, come this close to being drunk, and study the

Bible together to show that they're cool. You know what?

The Bible does not say you can never have a drink of wine. Bible says do not get drunk on wine, but it also says avoid even the appearance of evil.

And if you know you have a brother who may stumble because of drunkenness, why not have that Bible study in the church or in your house instead of at the bar?

You don't just use every freedom that you have in Christ. That's Paul's point. Love comes into play.

And that brings us into the next section. If you go to chapter 11, he says,

Be imitators as I am of Christ. The next issue comes up, the tradition of women wearing a head covering in order to pray or prophesy.

I want us to focus here on verse 3. I want you to understand that the head of every man is

Christ, and the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.

We can do a study on this passage another time and go in more depth, but I want you to understand that Paul is clearly affirming gender as given by God and as good.

And the complementarity of man and woman in different roles equal before God.

He'll go on to say, Man comes from woman. We're all born of woman. So we're not, there's not a subordinationism where men are greater than women, but there are roles where men are to take the lead.

And that includes preaching in pulpits. Paul will say in 1 Timothy 2, 12, that he forbids a woman to teach or exercise authority over men.

And yet we have churches that have female pastors. I just heard about one the other day. This is horrifying.

She's asked everybody to send in their purity rings, to throw away their purity, and she melted those down and made an inappropriate idol out of them.

Melted those down and made a disgusting idolatrous thing, and gave that to Gloria Steinem.

This woman wrote a book called Pastrix. I don't even want to say her name, but I'll tell you this.

The Bible defines roles for men and women. And the role of preaching and teaching, according to this headship principle in 1

Corinthians 11, 3, 1 Timothy 2, males should be preaching and not females.

The role of elder in the church does not demean women in any way, shape, or form.

It's God's complementarity by which he has designed the church to be like the family.

Does that mean that women can't rise up in the public world into incorporations? No, that doesn't mean that at all.

We're talking about in the church and in the family. And there could be principles and carryover that comes with that into other spheres of life and how we treat one another.

But the admonition here, the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is

God. Churches are dying for rejection of the word of God.

There's one more in chapter 11. We'll be quick with this one. Beginning in verse 17, going through 34.

There was an abuse of the Lord's table. What was happening? And again, this is only three years since Paul planted this church.

So things can go awry very quickly. What were they doing? The richer among them were gathering early and eating all the food of the communion meal and drinking so much wine that they were getting drunk on the communion wine.

And others came late. Maybe they started this thing a little earlier than expected. By the time they got there, there was nothing left for them.

They weren't regarding one another. They had no concern for the one another's of Scripture, for love.

And Paul says, because this is surrounding the Lord's table, the very sacrament, not sacrament, the very ordinance that reminds us of the shed blood of Christ, this wine, this bread, his broken body, it's a sin with a high hand, numbers 15.

And Paul says, that's why some of you are sick and some of you have even died because of this abuse of the

Lord's table. So we have two more. And verses 12 to 14, chapters 12 to 14 is probably the biggest one.

Why do I say that? Because when Paul gave his introduction, chapter 1 verses 4 to 9, he talks about how spiritually gifted they are.

They're spiritual gifts. And then in chapters 12 to 14, he addresses spiritual gifts run amok.

And the emphasis seems to be on the gift of tongues. This particular spiritual gift,

Paul doesn't throw it out the window, but he does say that whatever gift a

Christian is using needs to be done in love. And that's where we get the famous love chapter, 1

Corinthians 13. Faith, hope, and love. If you look at the end of chapter 12, it says, earnestly desire the higher gifts and I will show you a still more excellent way.

The way they use their gifts to edify and to build up. And then in chapter 14, verse 1, pursue love and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

He doesn't say especially that you may speak in tongues. In fact, the rest of chapter 14 contrasts speaking in tongues and prophesy.

And what's the difference? Prophesying was speaking in such a way to console, to encourage, to build other people.

Whereas speaking in tongues was just meaningless babble, unless there's an interpretation so other people can understand what you're saying.

Love would demand that you exercise spiritual gifts in the church in such a way that it builds other people up.

And this is where the Corinthians had gone wrong. But there's something slightly more complicated going on here.

If you notice in chapter 13, verse 1, tongues is referred to in reference to angels.

As if in the Corinthian understanding, speaking in tongues was to speak the language of angels.

With the head covering passage, angels were mentioned. A couple other places, angels are mentioned.

What is going on in Corinth? I think we can draw all of these issues together in this idea that the

Corinthians have misunderstood what spirituality really is. To be pneumatikos, to have the spirit.

What does that look like? Their understanding, it's to go so deep with God that you're speaking the language of angels.

You're speaking in tongues. You no longer need marriage because you've risen above that need.

All of the spirituality of the sophists of 1 Corinthians 1 and 2, their sophistry is built on this higher knowledge.

And it has something to do with angels. Tapping into them, becoming like them.

They feel like, kind of like the Gnostics did. You learn about from Qumran and all the

Dead Sea Scrolls. In a similar way, they feel like they've tapped into something much more spiritual than Paul brought them to.

And Paul calls them back down to earth. Spirituality means love.

Love in your relationships that you actually care about each other. And you look after the poor who's not getting anything to eat while you're getting drunk and overfed on the communion meal.

Love trumps what you call spirituality. And again, there's a in chapter 15, the last issue, they're denying the resurrection.

So evidently, they have this dualistic idea. And we're done with this thought. This is the last one.

This dualistic idea that the body is evil and the spirit is good. That's why they could wink at sexual sin.

Because the sins of the flesh, of the body, in Greek philosophy, the sophistry would say that that's no big deal.

That's just the body. But what's done in the spirit is what really matters. And that dualism of the physical versus the spiritual comes into play in chapter 15.

Because these teachers in Corinth are denying that there will be a resurrection of the physical body.

And Paul goes on to say, look, the very gospel itself teaches us that there will be a resurrection of the body.

Because if there's no resurrection of the body, then Christ himself did not rise from the dead.

But if Christ didn't rise from the dead, then you are still in your sins. It calls it back to the gospel, the core issue.

Many churches have departed from these core issues. But I'm telling you this right now. If you deny that God came in the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, you've left the gospel and you're still in your sin.

If you deny that he died on the cross and rose from the dead, why did he die? To be a substitute for our sins, substitutionary atonement, the resurrection, the authority of God's word.

You deny these essential truths. You're still in your sin.

Now, there are areas of disagreement that are allowable in the Christian faith. These are called the adiaphora.

These are lesser issues. How you baptize, by what mode. Although I think there's a right position and a wrong position, it doesn't mean that everybody who disagrees on things like that or eschatology, that they are no longer children of God.

But Paul connects this doctrine to the essential doctrine of the gospel.

If we depart from the essential doctrines of God's word, we leave

Christ and we're still in our sins. So in closing, this is

Paul's fight for the Corinthian church. He is fighting for their life.

Any one of these 10 things can completely shipwreck their faith if left unchecked.

And it's love that compels him to speak hard truth into the lies that they believe.

And my question to you, brothers and sisters, are you willing to join Paul in this fight? Are you willing to fight for the truth of God's word?

And that doesn't mean that I'm calling you into the culture war. Let God judge those outside.

I'm saying, will you fight for the life of your church? Cornerstone. Will you fight for the life of God's church universal?

When you're debating with Christians, when you're loving Christians, when you're having conversations, will you uphold the writings of Paul?

These 10 things can shipwreck the faith. But we're still holding on, aren't we?

Because greater is he who is in us than he was in the world. Let's pray. Worship team, come on up.