Saul & the Corinthians Now Called | Sermon 08/18/2024

All right, if you would, please turn with me in your Bibles to the letter of the

Corinthians, the first letter to the Corinthians. We're going to be in verses one through three today.

And the sermon title is Saul and the

Corinthians Now Called. Saul and the Corinthians Now Called.

So starting in verse one of the first letter to the

Corinthians from the Apostle Paul, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true

God. Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Sosthenes, our brother, to the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.

With all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus ends the reading of God's holy and magnificent word.

Let's pray once more as a church. God, we come before you today, starting this new series,

Lord, seeking to learn from your word, recognizing that this is theanoustos, this is

God -breathed, this is divine. This is from you, Lord. This isn't simply a private letter to a holy man, to those in a religious community,

Lord. We know that these words are living and sharper and active than any two -edged sword.

We know, Lord, that these are your words. And so,

God, we ask today that you would illuminate them, that you would, by your Holy Spirit, cause us to know them in the deepest part of our beings, and,

Lord, that we would leave from here today knowing your word and knowing you ever more deeply.

So God, please help us to begin this series in such a way, Lord, where we're ready to learn and to receive by your

Spirit all that you have in the rest of the letter, Lord. This is the beginning of seeing what an early, primitive

Christian church community was like, and in many ways, there's nothing new under the sun.

There's so much that we're going to learn from this, Lord, so please be with us. God, please guard us from the enemy, keep our focus on you, and,

God, please keep us from error, especially me, Lord. Keep us from error in your word, that we may know the truth and it may set us free.

Pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I remember the first time

I got a letter when I was a child. We lived on a Barrington Court in Newbury Park, California, and that sounds really extravagant,

Barrington Court, but it was just a regular old suburb. And we had our mailboxes weren't at the street, they weren't in the community box.

We had a mailbox right next to our door, okay? And so the mailman would come up, deposit our mail in the box, and you could kind of even hear it, since it was right next to the door.

And there's something about being a child, and someone has considered you important enough to write to when you're little.

For some of you, maybe the first card, the first letter you got in the mail was a birthday card.

That's the first one that you can remember. But I imagine that you were still excited about it.

That something had your name on it, something had your name on it, and you couldn't wait to open it.

I think from that point on, when I got my first letter in the mail, I checked it like every day after.

More's coming, you know? You get one letter as a six -year -old, and you're like, yep, people are about to start writing to me every day.

And of course, that didn't happen, right? But I would check it, okay, I'd go through the mail, dad, dad, mom, junk mail, dad, oh,

Tony's pizza, dad, okay. But there was nothing for me, right? Will I get another letter,

I thought. When will I get another one? I guess I'll have to wait until my birthday. But there's something different about letters, truly, there's something different.

You could text someone, you could email someone your thoughts, but it wouldn't be the same.

Not even a phone call is exactly like receiving a letter. Receiving a letter from someone with their writing, the ink from the pen that their hand held that glided across the paper to form the words that are in front of you, letters show something different.

Letters are like receiving the person who wrote it, it's from you, it's like a piece of you going with you.

Letters show effort. You ever received a handwritten letter, even as an adult, from maybe a relative or another church member, when you receive a letter, it's like, wow, this took time.

Letters display love. And that's paramount to the Apostle Paul, that it shows love.

Believe it or not, a messenger sent from Paul, if Paul went to a messenger and said, maybe he would send

Timothy or Sosthenes here and said, okay, this is what you're going to say, you got it, okay, repeat it back to me, all right, now go run as a messenger and go tell the church at Corinth my words.

They wouldn't receive it like as if they received his letter, they wouldn't. There's something different receiving a letter, and yeah, there were messengers who came and brought it, but when

Paul starts, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the church at Corinth, there's something different there, there's something different to that, carries more weight in a way.

And that's what's fascinating, the God of the universe saw it fit to take simple letters and breathe out his word on them.

God uses ordinary men, God uses ordinary letters, and he takes such things and he makes them extraordinary, and so that is the true tale of Saul.

That is the true tale of Saul. You know, you think about a letter that becomes the word of God that has always been the word of God, actually, and you think about Saul and who he became, and then there's the tale of the

Corinthian residents and what they became. So let's take a look at that, okay?

Look at verse one, the first verse, look at the very first word. The very first word introduces the writer of this letter, it just starts out

Paul. Paul is the first word, name. So who is

Paul and what do we know about him? You see, understanding who this man is will help us to understand the rest of this letter.

Paul was arguably one of the most remarkable men to have ever walked the earth aside from Christ.

The story of Paul is one that demonstrates radical, radical redemption of Jesus, that he can take anything or anyone and he can make them new.

But Paul was not always known as the apostle of grace.

There was a dark side to Paul. There was a dark side to Paul before he was exposed on the light to Damascus, to the light on the road to Damascus, excuse me.

Paul was actually born what? Saul. Saul. He was born in Tarsus of Cilicia, a province of the southeastern corner of modern day

Turkey. Paul was born in Turkey sometime in the first decade

A .D. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, hence the name Saul.

King Saul was of Benjamin and so thereby he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. Saul's parents,

Pharisees. His parents were of the Pharisee class, zealous Jewish nationalists who adhered strictly to the law of Moses, who sought to protect their children from the impurity of the

Gentiles. You see, anything Greek would have been shunned in Paul's or Saul's household.

And yet he was intelligent. Saul could speak Greek, he likely spoke

Latin, and his household would have been a household of what's called

Aramaic, a form of Hebrew. It was the official language at this time of Judea.

Saul's family were Roman citizens, but they viewed Jerusalem as the truly sacred and holy city.

And at age 13, Saul left Tarsus, Saul left

Turkey, where did he go? Where his family had been making pilgrimage since he was a child.

He went to Jerusalem. He went to Judea. Saul at the age of 13 studied under a rabbi named

Gamaliel, under whom Saul mastered the Jewish history, the writings like the

Proverbs, the Psalms. He would have combed through the works of the prophets, major and minor prophets.

He would have become an expert as a teenager on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the

Bible. His education continued for even five or six years, as Saul learned such things as dissecting scripture and learned how to argue orthodoxy.

It was also during this time that Saul learned a special form of arguing through question and answer, a teaching style known as diatribe.

And the method of articulation with this helped rabbis debate the finer points of Jewish law to either defend it or even prosecute people who transgressed it.

Saul eventually went on to become a lawyer, and according to Acts 26, we believe that he was even possibly a member of the

Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court of 71 men who ruled over Jewish life and religion.

The very group, the very same group who conspired against Jesus Christ.

Saul was zealous for his beliefs. That's probably an understatement.

And he not only saw in Old Testament history, but even among his leaders interacting with the

Romans, the constant compromise that God detested. Saul looked around him.

He studied the word of God. He studied under Gamaliel, and he looked around at Roman occupation and all this

Greek influence, and he was angry. He was angry.

He continued to see that somehow the nations of the other world were continually influencing the

Jews in the wrong way. And so the zeal of Saul turned into religious extremism and even hatred.

And he was unrelenting. I'm telling you, he was unrelenting. In Acts chapter five, Peter delivered his defense of the gospel and of Jesus in front of the

Sanhedrin. You remember they strictly charged him not to preach in Jesus' name nor to preach this message anymore.

And it was possible that Saul was there, that Saul was there to hear

Peter's words. We know for sure that Gamaliel was present.

In Acts chapter five, Gamaliel comes up and says, hey, let's not kill these men, okay?

He delivered a message, Gamaliel, Saul's old mentor, and said, let's calm down here. And he prevented everyone else from stoning

Peter. Saul might have even been at the trial of Stephen in Acts chapter seven.

What we know for sure is that he was present at Stephen's stoning, right?

He was present there. He held the coats. All the garments of these men who were coming to stone

Stephen, the first martyr, Paul held them all as they performed capital punishment.

After Stephen's death, the Bible says, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and Saul became determined to eliminate

Christianity. He was merciless in his pursuit, as he believed he was acting in the name of God, that he was doing

God a favor. This man became known among all the

Christians, and the Christians were frightened, terribly frightened by Saul, very much.

Saul was blinded. He was blinded by his ferocious religious zeal, even to the point of murder, accusation, imprisonment.

Acts chapter eight, verse three states, Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women.

He would put them in prison, ravaging, ravaging, tearing houses apart, ripping families apart, and taking

Christians and putting them in prison. In Acts chapter 26, nine through 11,

Paul recalls his mindset at that very moment. He said, so then

I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and this is just what

I did in Jerusalem, and not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death,

I cast my vote against them, that they would be murdered, that they would be killed.

And he says, and as I punished them often in all the synagogues,

I tried even to force them to blaspheme, and being furiously enraged at them,

I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities. Saul was off the handle. Saul was pursuing

Christians in a way that they had never seen persecution before, and it was at this point, when the text says that he was still breathing threats and murders, it was at this point, that as he was pursuing others to destroy them,

God pursued him, and overtook him to save him.

And so Acts chapter 9 recounts Saul's experience on the road to Damascus, I'm sure you're familiar with it, right outside the city,

Saul was traveling with his two other companions on the road, when suddenly, boom, flash of light, he's blinded, he can't see anything.

It says that Saul, he fell down on his face, he went straight down, face to the ground, what is going on?

It was a light of heavenly origin, and so he falls to the ground, and he hears this booming voice call out to him, and he hears this,

Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It's not even, that's how much

Jesus loves his church, by the way, do you see how Jesus says, why are you persecuting me, but Saul was helping murder

Christians, helping murder the church, he says, why are you persecuting me? That's how much

Jesus loves his bride, and Saul says, on the ground, cowering, who are you sir, who are you?

And Jesus said, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting, now get up and stand on your feet, for this purpose

I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and a witness, not only to the things which you have seen, but also to the things in which

I will appear to you, rescuing you from the Jewish people and from the

Gentiles, to whom I am sending you, to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the dominion of Satan to God, and they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in me.

Those were the orders of Jesus, on the road to Damascus, in an incredible heavenly visitation.

Now it's interesting to consider, we don't know for sure, this may have not been the first time that Saul met

Jesus, we don't know, Saul could have been present at one of Jesus' sermons, and he was standing in the back as a scoffing

Pharisee, we don't know, Saul could have been witness to the

Lord's death on the cross, I saw that man die, I saw him die, we don't know, but what we do know is that previously

Saul did not have eyes to see, though his eyes worked, and now he has eyes to see, though his eyes do not work, right?

Eyes to see and ears to hear to know the truth, to believe on Jesus Christ, and so his companions took

Saul blind, and he was wandering in darkness, confronted by the light of heaven, and he was led all the way into the city, and he told them, the master

Jesus told me, you are to take me to Ananias, lead me to Ananias, and they're leading

Saul as a blind man and they bring him to Ananias, before then

Ananias received a vision from the Lord of what he used to do with Saul, he used to pray over him, lay hands on him, and it was at that point when

Ananias laid hands on Saul that he gained his vision back, and he received the

Holy Spirit, and he was immediately baptized, it was a complete 180, Saul's world had turned upside down, and so the people in Damascus had heard

Saul was coming, the man who terrorizes Christians, he's coming to our city, and all of a sudden

Saul walks out of Ananias' house and he starts preaching that Jesus is the

Christ, unbelievable, you've got to turn to Jesus, he's the Messiah, and they're like, what?

We thought you were about to destroy us, we thought you were about to ravage our city like you did

Jerusalem, they were dumbstruck, at that moment

Saul became Paul, he went from death to life, he was blind but now he sees, he was a hater of Christ who became one of the biggest lovers of Christ, he needed time though,

Saul, now Paul, needed time, time to go back through the scriptures, all of it, he studied it as a teenager for years, he continued to study it in his 20s, and Paul had to go back, the

Pentateuch, the writings, the prophets, connections were already sparking in his head, and so what did

Paul do? He spent three years in Arabia, and these are the things that make him an apostle, that's what he says,

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, what makes one an apostle?

Well, it's not having a Facebook account, and you're from Nigeria, and you're the apostle,

Nairobi, John, or whatever, and you give prophecy, right? If you're at all on social media,

I see some heads nodding, you know what I'm saying, there are some people in other countries who are like, hey, I'm an apostle, so -and -so, but this is truly what makes an apostle, number one, an apostle must have seen the risen

Lord Jesus Christ, and in that, you didn't just see the risen

Lord Jesus Christ, Jesus had to come to you and call you and say, hey, you're going to be an apostle, he had to actually call you, it wasn't just like all the people who saw him were suddenly an authorized apostle, he had to call you to this office, personally by Jesus, Paul met that criterion, next, you may remember that the twelve apostles spent three years with Jesus, walking with Jesus, learning from Jesus, being disciples of Jesus, well, that's what

Paul did in Arabia, for three years, and that's what Jesus said in that accounting,

I will show you things, for three years, after Paul gets saved, he goes to Arabia, and in the

Spirit, Jesus shows himself in all the Pentateuch, the writings, and the prophets, and so,

Paul, all that study with Jesus in the Spirit, Jesus showing himself the

Messiah of the Old Testament, that's what you see in the epistles, that's what you see in the rest of the

New Testament, that's what he did, all the theology, all the fulfillment,

Jesus showed himself as the Christ in the Old Testament for Paul in Arabia, and so meeting these criteria means that Paul has the express authority to speak on behalf of the

Lord Jesus Christ, so to learn about Jesus, one must not only learn from Peter or John, if you're going to learn about Jesus, you've got to learn from Paul, in fact, that's a new heresy, it's probably an older heresy, too, but a modern -day heresy right now is the words of Paul are not the words of Jesus, I'm a red -letter person, but I also like Peter and John, oh, you, oh, so you just don't like Paul, you just don't like the

Pauline epistles, that's a new heresy going on right now, anyways, at this point,

Paul has learned from Jesus the Christ in Arabia for three years, and actually, real quick, by the way, do you see how important it is for a new convert to spend time in Scripture and with God?

Do you see how important it is not to take a new believer and make them a mascot for Christianity?

We're facing that issue right now, if you've been kept up to date with a current issue going on in Utah and ex -Mormon personality and the cult that they made after and everyone championed them as the most wonderful Christians, and I pray that they repent,

I have such love for them, but you see how important it is that we don't just give someone who just turned to Christ the role of teacher,

James 3 .1 says that, other principles of Scripture say that, and so Paul, even the

Apostle Paul, spent three years waiting, and so he comes out, and what does

Paul do? Paul doesn't just start going on his missionary journeys, what does Paul do?

Paul goes from Arabia, three years in Arabia, and he goes to Jerusalem. Where does he go in Jerusalem?

He goes to Peter's house, the Apostle Peter, and he stays with Peter for 15 whole days.

James comes and visits, James the brother of our Lord, the elder of the church in Jerusalem, they come, and what we presume is that Peter and James examine

Saul, now Paul, and he's telling them everything about grace alone, faith alone, this man's a believer, he's telling them about the road to Damascus experience,

Jesus calling him an Apostle, and they're like, we can't deny this, you are an

Apostle, that's what I think happened. Paul spends 15 days with Peter, and so at that moment, a testimony about Paul went throughout all the early church, people were astounded, they thought, this guy who was murdering our people, he just disappeared, but there were rumors, did you hear?

Saul was on the road, Jesus approached Saul, Saul went blind,

Saul turned to Christ, well where is he? It's been three years, where is this Saul? Then boom, all of a sudden he comes out in the open, loved and endorsed by James and Peter and the rest of the

Apostles, people were astounded that one so fiercely opposed to the church is now for it, it was unbelievable, and so from that point,

Paul started the arduous and treacherous task of that of a missionary, through the 40s and 50s of the first century, and through many trials and many dangers,

Paul endeavored upon three missionary journeys throughout the Roman Empire over several decades, he even alludes to a fourth one in his letters, but during that time,

Paul and his companions planted many, many churches in Gentile areas, he would first appeal to the

Jews in each city, and then he would move to the Gentiles, preaching

Jesus as the Christ, and so by the way, Paul has wrote the majority of the

New Testament, there are 26 books in the New Testament, Paul has wrote 13, he has wrote

Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1st and 2nd

Thessalonians, Philemon, Ephesians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, and Titus, and I'm of the same opinion as my fellow pastor,

Dr. James White, that Paul gave a sermon one day on Christ in the

Old Testament, and Luke, the physician who wrote the gospel of Luke in the book of Acts, wrote down Paul's sermon, and that's the letter to the

Hebrews, that's my opinion, I agree with him, I think there's some good evidence for that.

So, Paul had been through a lot for the sake of the gospel, and even the

Lord Jesus said it in another account of when he saw him on the road, Jesus said, I'll show you how much you have to suffer for my namesake.

Imagine getting saved by Jesus, and he goes, you're gonna know how much you're gonna have to suffer for my namesake.

You'd be like, alright, you're gonna have to get me through it. You're gonna have to get me through it.

And he mentions some of these things in 2nd Corinthians 11, look at this, in your printout, 2nd

Corinthians 11, in far more labors and far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, this is

Paul, often in danger of death, five times I received the Jews 39 lashes, three times

I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day

I've spent in the deep, that's the ocean, I've spent, I've been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the

Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren,

I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and in thirst, often gone without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.

And I've now, being in my office of pastor, I've begun to really have that last one.

There's a lot of physical things and a lot of spiritual attacks, but boy, what can keep me up at night is just thinking and loving you guys and thinking about how

God's working in you and that God will continue to sanctify you. And he was in charge of tons of churches, my goodness.

And so, Paul had gone through so much for the gospel, we don't ultimately know, but according to a second century document, if you've wondered what

Paul looked like, we don't know for sure, but in the second century, it was described that Paul was a balding man, balding, he had a lot of care on his mind, a long nose, thick eyebrows that almost touched in the center, and he had crooked legs.

By the way, that's now two balder, balding men in the Bible, Elisha and Paul.

I'll stick with it, man. That's representation. All right. Paul looked like a weak man.

By all accounts, Paul looked like a weak man. In fact, when he was new, when people had heard about, you've got to see this apostle

Paul. And he had never been to a church before where someone else planted. It's like, Paul's coming, you know, they're sweeping everything, they're getting the house church ready for him, and they're like, be on your holiest behaviors,

Paul's coming. And then they'd look at him, and it's like this kind of middle height, maybe even a little bit short, balding man, crooked legs.

And he looked altogether weak to people. He looked weak. But then something would happen, and Paul would open his mouth, or he would rebuke, or he would speak the gospel, and people were like, oh my goodness, this is a holy man.

He was extraordinary. You know, 2

Corinthians 12 talks about the thorn in his flesh. He asked the Lord Jesus to remove it three times.

Many have guessed what the thorn in the flesh is. We don't know. I think it's really providential that he never said what the thorn in the flesh was so that it could apply and minister to so many of us.

So we don't know that. Some do say that Paul had a degenerative eye disease.

We don't know. They say that he was slowly going blind, and they figure that from Galatians 4 .15.

When Paul writes to the church in Galatia, he says, you would have plucked out your own eyeballs and given them for me.

And so some look at that and go, wow, Paul was going blind. Very slowly,

Paul was going blind. Maybe on that road to Damascus, that light was too bright, man.

And then over time, he started to lose his eyesight. Some have said maybe that's the thorn in the flesh.

He didn't want to lose his eyesight. He wanted to see people. He loved people. But we don't know.

But what we do know is that Paul was a humble man, a man who truly loved

Jesus Christ, a man who had been forgiven much, who felt he had much to share, a man given everything.

And a man given everything has every reason to share everything, does he not? And Paul did.

Paul shared all that was given him. The apostle Paul did whatever it took to share Jesus Christ crucified with a dying world.

And that's why he wrote this letter to the Corinthians, to this church that he planted years before.

And so verse 1, Paul called an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God in Sosthenes, our brother.

Paul identifies himself. He is the sender of this letter. He establishes his authority to speak to the

Corinthian church first. He's an apostle of Jesus Christ. He isn't just a messenger in general.

He's been personally called by Jesus. And Paul communicates essentially that what he has to say in this letter is because he is under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

He says in other parts of the letter that, I've come to pass on the words and traditions and teachings of Christ.

Later on, Paul will indicate that he and his team had come to the Corinthians and performed many signs of an apostle before them.

And then Paul is an apostle, he says, by the will of God. This apostleship wasn't his own making, nor was he appointed by a human institution or specific men.

What and who Paul is was determined by God. And the same goes for his message.

Galatians 1, 11 through 12, For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.

For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

He goes on to say that he was called by Jesus in the same way. This is no self -appointment.

This is no lone wolf. He is an authorized apostle of Jesus Christ, and yet Paul is not trying here to defend himself.

He's not trying to pull rank. He's stating the simple facts. He's transparent on what gives him the ability to speak authoritatively into this church.

He didn't become an apostle by freely choosing it as a career. He wasn't nominated for apostleship.

We talked about the evils that he did to the early church. Paul knows his unworthiness for this role, but you know what he will never do?

You know what Paul will never do? He sees what he did. He sees his unworthiness to be sent by Jesus, but he now won't ever go against Jesus, and so he goes,

Jesus, you know better than me, so if you're going to make me an apostle, I'll do it, and he obeys.

He will not go against the calling of God. You know, people go, people go, does

God make someone do what he wants over what they want all the time? Yeah, Saul was like, someone turn on the light to the road to Damascus, right?

Paul was the one who said, let me see a vision of Jesus. No, God stepped in,

God intervened, God acted, and Paul knew that. Paul finally, in verse 1, writes on behalf of Thosanes, a brother in Christ, there are those with Paul who agree with him.

He writes in such a way where this isn't personal opinion. These words represent more people than just himself.

Paul doesn't act alone. We already talked about how he made sure he was examined by Peter and James, and then he finally went on mission.

Paul participated in the Acts 15 Jerusalem Council. Paul speaks for the

Christian collective, not just himself, okay? One theologian states

Paul does not perceive himself as commissioned to lead or to minister as an isolated individual without collaboration with co -workers.

He's not a maverick apostle. He's part of a ministry team. He's with Thosanes, his brother.

Now, Paul calls Thosanes our brother as if the Corinthians knew him. We don't know for certain, but there is a

Thosanes in Acts chapter 18. In Acts chapter 18, Paul travels to Corinth for the very first time, and so this is before the church at Corinth was even there.

Paul travels to Corinth, and he meets Priscilla and Aquila, who are also tent makers, and in Acts chapter 18, it seems like Paul stopped evangelizing for a short time, and he starts making tents in Corinth.

He's making tents with Priscilla and Aquila, and Silas and Timothy join them down from Macedonia, and their arrival was like a breath of fresh air.

It was a motivation for Paul. It says when when Timothy and Silas arrived to Corinth, Paul had the motivation to get out there with the gospel, but the

Jews largely rejected the gospel message except for a man named Crispus.

He was the leader of the Jewish synagogue in Corinth, and Crispus, this

Jewish man, believed that Jesus is the Christ at the word of the apostle

Paul, and it says that his whole family believed, and they were all baptized, and so what happened?

No church at Corinth has started yet. Crispus and his household are the very first Christians in Corinth.

You have Titus, I'm sorry, Timothy, Silas, you have

Paul, Priscilla, and Aquila, and all of a sudden, the Jews see their synagogue leader turn to Christ, this new, this messiah to them that they didn't believe in, and so the

Jews rise up against Paul, and they go to the proconsul Gallio in Corinth, a

Roman sort of authority, and they go to this Roman authority, and the Jews say, this man

Paul, he's causing an uprising. He's leading people astray.

He's causing problems in Corinth, and so the text says that Paul then spoke and gave his argument, and the proconsul

Gallio dismisses the Jews' charges. Do you know what happens?

The Jews are so upset. The Jews are so upset at what happened with the

Jews dismissing Paul that they take the new replacement synagogue leader, a

Jewish man, Sosthenes, and they beat him in front of the proconsul

Gallio. The Jews beat one of their own in front of the proconsul Gallio, and we don't know what happens at this point, but I think it's possible that after Sosthenes was beat by his own brethren, that Paul came to him and took care of his wounds, and Paul gave him the gospel, and now another

Jewish synagogue leader became a Christian. Crispus first, Sosthenes replaced him, and then

Sosthenes then joined and became a Christian. He converted to Christ, and so Sosthenes joined

Paul on his missionary journey, okay, and so Paul writes in this one unified voice with other brethren on his team.

Verse two tells us who Paul is writing to. It says, to the church at Corinth, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. So Paul is the one who sent it. The addressee is the church of God at Corinth.

Now just as we looked at how Saul became Paul, it'll be important for us to understand how these people went from just Corinthians to Christians.

So let's talk about Corinth, okay. The city of Corinth was located on this narrow land bridge between Peloponnesus and the mainland of Greece.

This strip was called the Isthmus, the Isthmus. It was situated between two major harbors in the

Mediterranean. On the east side, you had one harbor that led straight to Asia Minor and to get to Israel, and then on the other side of Corinth was the western harbor, and that harbor led to Italy, to Rome, places like that.

So being in this position, Corinth was a place where people were constantly traveling and coming to, okay.

If you've ever wondered, even what, I don't know why, this is a fact to me that I like to know.

What are temperatures? What's weather like in Corinth? Well, in the winter,

Corinth being a city by the sea, its highs can be in the high 40s, and in the summer, typically, it averages in the high 80s.

The average temperature for the whole year of Corinth is 62. It's like some kind of San Diego sort of thing, if you've ever been there.

It's like constant, you know, just being by the sea, and so these moderate temperatures led way to them being able to grow wheat, grow barley.

They grew grapes. They, of course, grew olives, and they raised cattle and sheep. It was not unlike Israel in that sense,

Mediterranean through and through, and Corinth remained mostly unpopulated for a hundred years after the

Roman general destroyed it, and all the Greeks, most of the

Greeks were killed during that time in Corinth, and a hundred years later, in 44

BC, 44 years before Christ, Julius Caesar made Corinth a

Roman colony, and so what happened is Roman men would come back from war, or Roman men would become freedmen.

They'd get out of slavery, and so you had Roman soldiers and freedmen. They were sent to Corinth to populate it.

They were given some land in Corinth. Julius Caesar gave them an allotment of land, start a new life in Corinth, and so all these

Romans started coming to Corinth, and there were still some native Greeks there, but you started to see all this

Romanization of Corinth. As far as religion went, they were a highly religious people in Corinth.

When someone came back from being at sea, arriving safely, they would whisper a prayer to Poseidon.

Thank you, Poseidon, for getting me safely across the sea, something like that. When you would go into Corinth, when you would get off the ship, and you would come out of the harbor, and you would enter into the city, you would see temples everywhere.

You would see older temples, newer temples. You would see ruins and new temples being built everywhere to false deities, and even to the imperial family, and the temples were these towering structures, not unlike the ones that we see in our valley today, false idol temples, and so Corinth was a mixture of old religion, new religion.

The people in Corinth celebrated or worshiped Apollo, Aphrodite, Venus, Asclepius, Athena, Demeter, Corre, Dionysius, Artemis, Acreia, Hermes, Mercury, Jupiter, Capitolius, Poseidon, Neptune, Tyche, Fortuna, and Zeus.

Some residents even branched out, and they worshiped Isis of Egypt.

If there was a god, the Corinthians were willing to worship it. In fact, many believed in Corinth, the more gods you had in your pocket, the better.

You see, if you made one god mad by not honoring them when you came back from sea, maybe you made

Poseidon mad, or you made the god of land and crops mad.

If you had many other gods in your pocket, then they would go to battle for you.

They say, hey, leave them alone, and so it was good in their mind to have many gods, many gods, the better, and they loved to experiment.

The Corinthians would love to hear that there was some new religion, some new god. Oh, let's add them to the rest of them.

That's what they would do, and so it goes without saying that Corinth was a spitting image of a people who traded the truth for a lie.

They were worshiping the creature rather than the creator, and their allegiance to these gods didn't help their behavior.

It didn't matter how many gods they worshiped. The city contained so much immorality, very immoral.

Think of some prosperous but syncretistic and immoral city in America, and you will find a likeness to this

Greek metropolitan. Now, as far as religions go, stay with me here, as far as religions go, the most important religion in Corinth was the imperial cult, the imperial cult.

These were people who worshiped political powers as though they were divine. Some would sacrifice animals in front of their house to the emperor, okay, and Paul loved to challenge the emperor.

Oh boy, did he love to, because you know what they said all the time in this culture, in this

Roman culture? They would say, Kaiser Curios, Caesar is

Lord, and so what would Paul say all the time in his letters? He would say, Christos Curios, Christ is

Lord, Christ is Lord. He would use that title that they often use for the emperor, for Caesar, and he would use it for Jesus, always challenging, and that very truth was in opposition to everything the

Roman culture stood for, only Jesus can be king. Believe it or not, because of all these gods that the

Corinthians worshiped, do you know that Jews and Christians were labeled as atheists?

They were the first atheists. Atheist means you don't believe in a god, atheist.

Why? Because they only worshiped one god, so they would call them atheists. What's wrong with you guys?

Why aren't you part of our culture? Why aren't you going to the goddess and god's parties and these festivals?

Why aren't you participating? You guys are atheists. You're secluding yourselves, and so the

Christians, once the Christian church started, those who were wealthier had big homes, and they would meet in these big homes in Corinth, Christian believers, or they would rent assembly halls, and they would speak of a crucified

Jew from Judea, who is the Christ, the one killed by the

Romans. Now, not only did Corinth enjoy prosperity due to farming, it was actually one of the busiest slave trades in the empire, and there in Corinth you have the

Ismaean games, the Greek games, and so there with these two harbors that brought so many people, it brought merchants and traders, and there you would have some of the most slaves being bought and sold in Corinth, and then you have these

Greek Olympic type games. This city rose to new heights. In fact, people would come, and they would realize, man,

I can't get really far in Rome, but if I go to Corinth, I could become something.

I'm a freed man now. I'm not a slave anymore, but I can't do anything here. Rome's too saturated.

I'm going to Corinth. I'm going to start a business, and they would do that. They would sell things to people coming for the

Ismaean games, the Greek games. You became someone who was a mercenary.

You would find people to sell in slavery. The slaves had these plaques on them saying where they were from, what they thought they were good for.

If they thought that you were going to die soon, you had a plaque that said you're about to die. They'd still buy you.

They'd run you till you were dead. You had slaves of all colors and types from all over the empire being sold there.

In that evil, prosperity and money abounded.

When Paul began his missionary work in Corinth, it was full of a diversity of people because of that.

There were people of every class. You had dark Ethiopians to light -skinned people from northern

Gaul, which would have been Spain that we know. Free people, slaves, but to have

Roman citizenship was the greatest privilege okay. It may have been

Greek in geography, but Corinth was Roman in culture, and everyone came far and wide to grab a piece of it.

And so at this point when the letter is being written, you have a community of people, these

Corinthian believers, who came from a background where they were part of a merchant, mercantile community of trade, business, entrepreneurial pragmatism.

This was a place where you secured your own honor and your own power, and you were in the pursuit of success okay.

The Corinthian people wanted to attain public status. They wanted to be known, and so that was plaguing the

Corinthian church. They wanted the most prestige, the best income, the most knowledge, the most wisdom.

They wanted a fine education, the best religious dedication, high family positions and community status, and they would do whatever it took to gain these things, even if it meant corruption.

And so the Corinthians were not unlike modern day Americans in that sense.

And so this kind of background, this desire to become something big and have your name known and to be successful, got brought in to the

Corinthian church. They were blending the culture with their Christian beliefs.

To be a Corinthian was to seek to have more than everyone else. It was highly individualistic, competing with everyone else for everything else.

And Christianity's collective community nature and selflessness was so foreign to Corinth.

Barclay says concerning the Corinthian church, the church was not a cohesive community, but it had become a club whose meetings provide important moments of spiritual insight and exaltation, but do not have global implications of moral and social change.

The Corinthians could gladly participate in this church as one segment of their lives, but the segment, however important, is not the whole and the center.

The perception of their church and of the significance of their faith could correlate well with a lifestyle which remained fully integrated into Corinthian society.

So in other words, these Corinthian people came from a society where you build your name up, you make yourself known, you become successful, you argue with the philosophers, you learn from the best mentors, you become the smartest.

And so when it came to the church, they would have these Lord's Day worship services and men would argue their points about Jesus, and men wanted to be higher than other men.

And then wealthy people came in and they were like, gosh, you're so low. You don't even have food to bring to the

Lord's Supper. Oh my goodness, you're different. And so you have this division and these factions and this cultural aspect going on in the

Corinthian church. And that's why Paul writes this letter. There are problems. The church at Corinth is arguably one of the churches in the

New Testament riddled with the most problems. Now the church was founded by Paul in February or March of A .D.

50 on his second missionary journey. In fact, Acts 18 says that he stayed there for a whole year and a half.

As far as the church went, it was made up of Jews, Gentile proselytes and God -fearers and people who were former idol worshipers.

Some in the church were Roman citizens, some were not. Some were wealthy and some were not.

Some were well -educated and others not. Some were slaves and some were free.

And so for the most part, this letter, what we're going to find is that this letter contains warnings, rebukes and teachings on the peril of having cliques, factions, church division, sexual immorality, idolatry, sin that affects church worship and denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the bodily resurrection of ourselves.

And so Paul felt absolutely compelled hearing the issues going on in this church to write this letter to this struggling church body.

He founded the church in A .D. 50, the spring of A .D. 50, and right before Pentecost in either

A .D. 54 or A .D. 55 is when he wrote this letter in Ephesus.

He was in Ephesus. He was in the at the church with Ephesus and he wrote this letter to the

Corinthians four or five years after he founded it. And this letter, you guys, this letter is his very heart.

This is the apostle Paul's very heart. He's an apostle of Jesus Christ writing to the church of Christ.

He appeals to them on the basis of the gospel of Christ and the word of Christ. How will they receive it?

We're going to find out. And so this is the church of God which is at Corinth.

To those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours, he says you are the church of God. You are the ecclesia, you are the congregation, you are literally the people who form an assembly.

To be in the church one must join with others and yet it's not the church of man.

Paul says this is the church of God. A church of God follows him, stands on God's truth and worships him and even though there were likely several house churches in Corinth, Paul says singular church, the church at Corinth.

There must be unity here. It's not first Baptist this or second

Presbyterian that. It's the singular one church of God at Corinth.

Our Lord and their Lord, he says, and they join in with all the saints at every place. And it's subtle, it's very subtle, but Paul starts already combating issues in the church.

Some of the biggest issues he sees, he writes to everyone, all those who are being sanctified by Christ, all who are called by his name, and Paul doesn't care who's baptized by whom because we're going to see that very soon.

He says you were called and sanctified by Jesus Christ and what we're going to find is pretty soon in the next couple weeks we'll go over is there were factions of men who were like I'm of the class of Paul.

I was baptized by Apollos. I was baptized by this apostle.

Oh, I'm part of this faction. I'm better. I'm better than you. And so Paul begins his letter already combating it.

You guys, it's not the matter whether Pastor Wade or Pastor Andrew or whoever baptized you.

You are called and sanctified by Jesus the Christ. Jesus is the common denominator.

He is our Lord. Stop elevating men. We're going to be talking about that real soon. Some of these men in Corinth, this

Roman colony, they were living double lives. Lives dedicated to the worldly ways of Corinth and lives to Christ, and yet Jesus wants full dedication.

He wants full dedication. And so at least a few among them we'll find out are not called by Christ.

Paul will later tell some people in this letter they need to leave. They need to take some people out of the church from their midst.

Some do not belong, and they've proven that by their deeds. And so Paul is planting seeds for the rest of the letter, and yet still they're called by Jesus Christ.

No matter how many, no matter how problematic and how much strife there was going on in the church, they're saints.

They're called by God. And so what they ought to recognize is whoever baptized them, whoever gave them the gospel, he says the only reason you're here is because of God's calling, called by Jesus Christ.

And that's what's amazing is Paul says an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he says called by God, and he says you saints of Jesus Christ called by God.

You think you're here because you're someone special? You think you're here because someone special baptized you?

He said we're here because of the grace of Jesus Christ. And that's what he'll show them.

This letter is going to be a harsh letter. In fact, in the second letter to the

Corinthians, Paul is, he's like it hurt me. When I sent the letter to you, and I knew you were going to read it,

I grieved for you. One day we'll go over that letter. But in the end, even though it hurts them, it will help them.

Better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy. In our final verse, the end of Paul's introduction, and yet this is not even the end of his greeting.

We're going to go over the rest of his greeting next week. Verse three, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In the ancient world, karein was the traditional way to greet someone, karein.

But Paul Christianizes the greeting. He says karees, not karein.

He says karees, grace to you, grace from Jesus Christ, grace and peace.

There were Jews and Gentiles in the Corinthians, Corinthian church.

And so Paul says karees and shalom, grace and peace.

He gives them both. And because Paul is an apostle called by God, he can offer this blessing directly from God.

This isn't a formality and he doesn't offer only that which is his own.

Paul gives them something from heaven, grace and peace to you. Grace is what gave them this

Christian life and peace is how the Christian life will end with eternal life, grace and peace.

So with all that said, church, we've talked about letters, we've talked about senders, we've talked about recipients, we've talked about the sent ones, the called ones, the old

Saul, the new Paul, the old Corinthians, the new Christians in Corinth.

And I suppose that before the Corinthians read the rest of this letter,

God felt it necessary to remind them who they are and what he's doing with them.

Before, during and after the hard words of this letter, they will know, he'll continue to tell them no matter how hard the

Holy Spirit digs at these people for their sin, God will continue to remind them you're called, you're loved by me and you're being sanctified.

And that's a promise and that's going to be throughout the letter. And this letter, as we examine it, as we examine this letter as a church, because we're doing the same thing, this letter was read to the church at Corinth, then it was copied down and it was sent to other churches, well now we received it.

So it's our time to read this letter as if we are the Corinthians and to examine ourselves.

And we want it over the next year, it's going to take a little less than a year, maybe about a year to go through this letter and it's going to challenge us, it's going to cut us, but just like them, just like what

God assured the Corinthians before we go through the rest of this letter, we had to see how

God redeemed Saul. We've gotten to see how God redeemed the Corinthians because that's what's happening to you and me right now.

For God to make Paul more like Christ, so that Paul could later say imitate me as I imitate

Christ, to be his representative in both power and weakness, Paul had to go through extraordinary trials.

No piece of ore turns to gold without first going through the crucible and that's what's happening in this letter and that's what's going to happen to us.

And so you have a response to make over the next year during this study of this letter.

You can either consider this letter as from God and you can let it purify you and encourage you or you can take this letter and toss it out with the junk mail.

Whatever you do, don't do that. I pray as we go through the first epistle of Paul, the apostle to the

Corinthians, you might see God's writing from his hands and you might see his love in your

Bibles in this letter and that you might see that it wasn't just for the brethren in Corinth, it's for you, it's for me, and it's for our good.

And so I guess that's my prayer as we wrap up today, is that I truly do pray that we wouldn't just gain information from this text, but that over the next year as we go through it, we'll gain transformation and information, right?

Knowledge and power, knowledge and deeds. And so let's pray for that now.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we come before you today as weak, weak people, people who are just as likely to syncretize with the culture around us, people who so quickly go back to our old lives.

We can really sympathize with the Corinthians, Lord. We can see how easily our faith can denigrate to this competition.

And, Lord, there are some of us here who have tried to make ourselves better than other Christians in an unhealthy, sinful way here.

Lord, there are those of us who may even think that somehow getting baptized by someone else is better than the other.

Lord, there are some of us who have been having one foot in the world and one foot in the church for far too long.

I pray, God, that through all of this study and this first letter to the Corinthians, God, that we would know that we can't do that anymore, that we must not be either hot or cold lest we be spewed out.

We must not even be lukewarm.

We must be what you've called us to be, the called -out ones, the saints being sanctified in the

Lord Jesus Christ, that unlike the Corinthians, the church isn't just one aspect of our lives, but Christ in the church is the center of our lives.

And so, God, use your word over the next year to challenge us, to encourage us, to correct us, to bind us up, to challenge us,

Lord, in all the ways that we need to, Lord. Thank you for showing us that you take men like Saul and turn them into Paul.

Thank you for showing us that you can take a church like at Corinth, riddled with problems, and you can even sanctify them,

Lord. That shows us with those two examples that you could do anything with us today,

Lord. It doesn't matter how far we've gone, you can do it because you've called us.

So, Lord, please encourage us today with that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right.

Well, we're going to take of the Lord's Supper today. I was going to mention something about it.

I mentioned that last week. I'll wait till next week. I feel like I went long again.

So, I'll explain something. I think I told you all I wanted to share why we do it the way we do it.