What Are You Doing Dividing?

Well, good morning, I got some fun things this morning for us, keyword fun. There could be a good number of disclaimers to give for this. I'm probably not going to do that. If something about this is bothersome or whatnot, I'm just going to go ahead and ask you to go ahead and think the best.

Go ahead and afford us that grace as we go through this, and I'm excited, y 'all. Corinthians is an amazing book, an amazing one. This is also my first time doing manuscript, so Lord, have mercy on my soul.

The Call to Unity in a Divided Church

All right, beloved, we are living in a fracture. Families split over politics, friends unfollow each other over pride, churches divide over preference and personality. Everywhere you look, the world teaches us to draw lines, us and them, my tribe, your tribe, my way or no way.

But Paul opens this letter to the Corinthians with a bit of a shock of all the sins that the Corinthians have, and believe you me, there are a plenty. He begins not with sexual immorality, not with greed, arrogance, or even drunkenness at Lord's Supper, but he starts with this one, division.

Why?

Because division is not a surface wound, it is a spiritual cancer that eats the heart out of the body of Christ. It mocks the cross that has reconciled us. It preaches a false gospel to a very watching world.

Verse 10,. I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and same judgment. Church, I don't know if you heard if something there was optional, but it's not a suggestion, it's a command, it's an apostolic command with the authority of Jesus' name attached.

To it.

So today we're going to hear three calls from this text. One, called to unity, two, Christ alone is head, three, the power of Christ preaching. And finally, we'll look at how division creeps into our own hearts and what the cross demands.

Of us.

So one, called to unity. An apostolic command towards unity in Christ's name. Paul begins his letter not with accusation, but with appeal. I appeal to you. A word that means I call you alongside me. This is the heart of a shepherd who refuses to let a flock drift apart.

He pleads by the name Lord Jesus Christ. Names represent authority and character and Paul invokes the mightiest one, the crucified and risen Christ, the one in whom there is no schism, no rivalry, and no division.

The Greek phrase, pardon my butchery, autu phronen, to think the same, does not mean identical opinions. It means a shared mindset anchored in the gospel. Unity is not uniformity. It is a harmony under the Lordship of Christ.

I will dabble because I will speak more about this in chapter 12, but I'm not going to go all the way in. But there are many parts to the body. The hand doesn't get to say to the foot, the ear doesn't get to say to the eye.

We all look different here in the body of Christ, but we are to have unity. Christ didn't make us uniform by any means, you must strive and pursue unity. It will not fall on your lap and neither will that Bible fall on your lap if you're hoping to be in it.

I hope you're in it. Psalm 133 sings, behold, how good and pleasant is it when brothers dwell in unity. And then Jesus prayed in John 17, he says, that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you so that the world may believe you sent me.

Do we grasp the weight of that prayer? When we are united, we get a small taste of that communion, of that trinity. Our unity is the herald of the gospel, the herald. It's a proclamation. When we walk in love and humility, the world sees the truth of Christ.

When we divide, the world doubts the gospel and its power we proclaim. Unity is not sentimental togetherness. I do not want to sing kumbaya with you. It's a theological obedience. It doesn't depend on if your personalities mesh.

To divide the body is to tear at the wounds of Christ himself. Onwards. Verse 11, it has been reported to me by Cleo's people that there is quarreling among you. Cleo, likely a respected woman of business and her people most likely being workers, possibly household, had people in her household who loved Christ enough to speak up.

They didn't whisper behind closed doors. They named themselves and stood for truth, and that's courage. I need more Cleos in this church, people who love Christ right enough to confront sin instead of gossip about it.

Gossips say, well, some people are saying, or, well, not me, but I've heard from. If you're going to bloody the night, just go for the stat. I don't need the gossip here, and you don't need it.

We can't afford it. We don't have time.

There is no time for gossip. There's no time for the church to be divided. Don't you know what's at stake?

The kingdom.

The proclamation that the witnesses of people around here see. It's at stake. We don't have time. You only get so many years, yet faithfulness says, here's my concern, and here is my name. Here's my name attached to that concern.

Be bold and be brave. Proverbs 27, faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Better a friend who wounds than a coward who flatters. Church, may we have courage like Cleo's house.

If you must speak of a problem, speak with your name attached and your Bible open. That is how unity is protected on factions. Verse 12, each one of you says, I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Cephas.

I follow Christ. Don't you hear the pride in that? They were waving banners of human names in the house of God. What a tragedy when the servants become the idols. Paul, a man who never sought fame, has now become the mount content figurehead, a rally flag for division.

And he didn't even know it, but he crushes it immediately. So let's talk about our factions. Who among us blows with the political wind? Is everything Trump does good? Are we more loyal to a party or pundit than the Prince of Peace?

Who parrots the word of famous teachers but neglects the words of Scripture? Who boasts that all his heroes are dead, as if false nostalgia were holiness? Are all your heroes dead? Brothers and sisters, those are not harmless preferences.

They are symptoms of a divided heart. When our allegiance shifts from Christ to men, we are not only divided from one another, we are divided from Christ himself. Abide in me, he says. Calvin said, there is nothing more ruinous to the church than for men to glory in men.

Do we glory in our theological camps more than at the cross? Do we mock other believers to feel superior? Yeah, yeah, I can answer that one right away, we do. And I'm guilty, and I'm sorry. Beloved, the bride of Christ is not your punching bag.

The bride of Christ is not your punching bag. All the neighbors around here, all those who profess Christ, do we just slander them? Are we waiting for them to fall into a pit, never extending a hand to help them out?

Are we like scavengers at the side of a road, waiting for those ones to die, being excited.

About it?

Because then we'll have some juicy morsels to chew on. The church is the blood-bought treasure of the Son of God, purchased at the highest cost ever paid in the universe. His own torn flesh and crimson flow.

When you ridicule her, when you mock her weaknesses, when you roll your eyes at another congregation and sneer at another brother's failure, you're not merely insulting people. You are insulting the groom.

Every careless word becomes a slap at the scarred face of the one who died for her. Would you dare mock a bride on her wedding day? Would you sneer at her dress, criticize her walk, or laugh at her tears in front of the groom who loves her?

And how dare we speak so lightly of the church for whom Christ bled? I will suffer no rival talking to my wife that way. And I can promise you if I told Brady, Brady, brother, I love you, golly, that wife of yours.

You know what Brady just heard? He didn't hear I love you. He heard I have nothing to do with you. Ephesians, Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her that he might sanctify her having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish.

Every insult against the church spits at that splendor. Every sarcastic comment adds another wrinkle to what Christ came to make radiant. Be careful how you mock.

Be very careful.

Is mocking a tool?

Yes.

Vehemently, yes. But we love the church a very different way than we love the world. They will know that we are his disciples by how we love the church.

Be careful, believer.

The one who hears every idle word also guards his bride with jealous love. He's not passive about her purity and he will not overlook those who bruise her with gossip or arrogance. She may be bruised and blemished now, but she will shine soon, clothed in white, crowned in grace and standing beside the lamb.

And on that day, every careless critic will realize too late that they have mocked the masterpiece of heaven.

So guard your lips.

When you're tempted to tear her down, remember whose bride you're speaking about, James. The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, set on fire by hell. Every careless word that tears down another believer scorches the very altar we claim.

To worship at.

So hear the call, repent of factional pride, vomit out gossip, spit out theological arrogance, return to Christ. Make faithful friends in other churches, y 'all. It's really hard to have a whole lot of pride when you're surrounded by faithful believers at other churches whose faith makes you so ashamed because of their maturity in Christ by what you see happening there.

Do we surround ourselves with believers from other churches and count many of them more honorable than ourselves? Are the most honorable people you know in this church? You need to get out more, although we have a blessed and beloved church.

Celebrate the grace of God wherever Christ is preached. And remember, you are not the last bulwark of truth. You are one of the countless trophies of grace. Praise God. Rejoice believer. We're not alone in this dark valley.

The kingdom is bigger than our tribe, and Christ's reign is broader than our banner. Paul thunders out a question meant to pierce pride itself. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul?

This is not polite rhetoric, y 'all. It's holy indictment. To divide the church is to deny the nature of salvation itself. Christ is not divided because His body was torn once for all. The cross is the place where God united sinners to Himself and to one another.

To fracture that unity is to treat His wounds as common. When believers split over ego, they are saying with their actions, the body of Jesus was not enough. And that, beloved, is blasphemy. What are we doing divided?

And what are we doing dividing? Paul drives the dagger of conviction deeper. I thank God that I baptized none of you, except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say you were baptized in my name. Paul is stripping away every reason for boasting in man, even baptism, a most sacred sign.

It can become a trophy of pride if we forget its meaning. No man ever hung on that cross for you. No pastor ever shed his blood for your justification. No preacher can carry you through the judgment. Look how little Paul pays attention to baptism here.

Crispus, Gaius, oh yeah, and the household of Stephanus. That's right. That's right.

That's right.

I can hardly remember that, which is ironic because Stephanus was the first family that Paul baptized on that whole peninsula. It doesn't matter in scope of who is king. There is no special spirituality we get in association with others.

No one is going to sanctify you, my friend, except the Lord. Romans, do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Jesus, were baptized into his death? Baptism points to union with Christ, but not allegiance to the baptizer.

Paul refuses to let his name rival Christ. He would rather be forgotten than exalted as a party leader. Oh, that every pastor today would share that heart. To glory in ourselves is to steal the crowns from the head of Christ.

We must confront our own temptations here. In every generation, the church is tempted to trade devotion to Christ for devotion to personalities. We quote our favorite preachers like apostles, defend denominations like kingdoms, and measure faith by how closely others echo our heroes.

Did they say the right names? Well, I think I already like them. But hear me, the gospel does not come with a fan club. It comes with a cross. When we boast in men, we repeat Corinth's sin. When we compare pastors as if they were products, we forget they are merely servants of one master.

Paul says later in 1 Corinthians 3, what then is Apollos?

What is Paul?

Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. Servants and nothing more. Christ alone is head. Praise God. Christ alone is worthy. Praise God. Thinking lowly of the Corinthians at church?

Don't, because they're better than us. No historic church for them to stand on. No confessions for them to stand on. No phones to look up. Do Corinthians really say that? Nothing like that for them. They were new Christians in one of the darkest cities in the world.

They had only been believers for possibly four years by this point. They are leaps and bounds ahead of us, and they're on the frontier. They're fighting darkness while we are here fiddling in safety with our nerf wars.

This is the doctrine of union with Christ, the golden chain that links every believer to the Savior. We are not fragments joined to human leaders. We are living stones joined to the cornerstone. To reject another believer over pride is to strike at Christ's own body.

To exalt a teacher over Christ is to dethrone the king in your heart.

Be careful, y 'all.

What are you doing dividing? Church, tremble at that thought and then rejoice. For this same head who tolerates no rivals also holds us fast. He holds you fast. He does not let his body fall apart. He heals it by his spirit and word.

The Power of the Cross, Not Human Eloquence

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. The power is not in the man. The power is in the message.

Paul is no entertainer. He didn't polish his sentences to impress Greek philosophers. He thundered truth until idols cracked and consciences woke. The cross loses none of its power, but we can't hide it behind our performance.

Every time we preach for applause, that cross is veiled. Every time we trade conviction for comfort, the cross is emptied of its sting. Men, I do not care how comfortable you feel. And women, I do not care what you think of my harsh rhetoric.

Does it burn? Better holy fire than hellfire. If it's hard to hear a lot of this, perhaps your drive home will be quite interesting. The preacher's task is not to charm but to confront. Paul says that we will not use eloquent wisdom to satisfy human taste, because human taste prefers flattery, not fire.

I have no need of eloquent wisdom to satisfy men or women, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Yes, I did appropriate that. It's not cruelty, y 'all, it's reverence. Better a gritty gospel that saves than honeyed speech that damns.

The cross offends every idol, our pride, our self-righteousness, and our need to be right. It tells us that we are so wicked that only God's Son could die in our place. That message will never win popularity contests, no matter how we package it, church.

If your focus on speaking to someone is about, well, how can I package this message so that it may not offend, so that it can be ushered in a little bit easier? It doesn't work that way, lest you rob it of its power.

So the church must never trade power for polish. When the pulpit becomes a stage, the cross becomes the prop. When preaching becomes entertainment, souls starve while applause roars. The cross stands as God's declaration.

The wisdom of man is folly, the weakness of God is stronger than men. We do not need new methods, we need new hearts set on the old cross. Now, church, this is a petition to you. Hold your pastors to this standard.

Not that we make you feel comfortable, but that we make you see Christ. Pray for courage in our preaching, for humility in our hearts, truly. Pride can ruin me and Josh tomorrow. And for the Spirit's fire to fall on all of us sermons.

And when the Word convicts you, don't recoil, just repent. If you feel recoil in your heart, examine, beg the Spirit, show me what you're doing.

Read the Word.

Paul didn't want followers, he wanted converts, he didn't crave applause, he craved resurrection. So let us cling to the same simplicity. Preach Christ crucified, hear Christ exalted, and live Christ glorified.

Preferences, Conflict, and Reconciliation in the Local Church

Now, church, before we leave this text floating over ancient Corinth, we must let it walk down our own aisles more so. Your preferences are a liberty for tradition in the local church, but they are not righteousness and faultless doctrines of the Christian faith.

More on that. Conflict is inevitable. That will happen. I promise you it has, is, and will happen here at CBC and every other church you go to. If you're scared of conflict, then there is no room. You must go through it.

It is a refining, it is a refining tool of sanctification that God blesses us with. And conflict doesn't have to lead to division. It must not be so. Division is a choice. Conflict can be redeemed. Wicked division must be repented of.

So back on to preferences. Music, teachers, programs, they can all be good gifts. But when they become proof of who's more mature, they rot in pride. We must keep this program going because, well, it must.

Some of you have carried grudges long enough to forget what started them. You smile in greeting and glare in private. The Lord sees through every polite mask. He says in Matthew, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there, remember that your brother has something against you.

Leave your gift there before you go and first be reconciled to your brother. Reconciliation is more than pleasing God than worship songs sung with a bitter heart. When preference hardens into entitlement, the church begins to look less like a bride and more like a boardroom.

Let us be careful, church. Let us be careful with our preferences. Are they bad? No, praise God. But let's be careful with our demands on them. And let's be careful on equating our preferences to obedience to God.

This is not the church of Corey Platt or Josh Rice. If so, may I be damned. This is Christ's church purchased with his own blood. Paul refused to have followers, so we must refuse to gather fan clubs.

We are not building monuments to personalities. We are building a temple for his glory. If you find yourself whispering, I can't believe what she said, or did you hear what happened at that church? Just stop and ask, does this honor Christ?

Just pause, James. If anyone thinks he's religious and does not bridle his tongue, his religion is worthless. Is that in your bones yet? Better silence than slander. Better prayer than pride. What are you doing divided?

Paul honored Cleo's household because they were clear and courageous. They didn't stir rumor, they spoke truth. Imagine what health would bloom if we spoke that way. Not triangulating, not hinting, but humbly face to face.

Jesus said, come to terms quickly with your accuser. Quick forgiveness is Christ-like.

Be quick.

Don't nurse offenses, just crucify them. Don't store grievances, just empty them in that empty tomb. Division in the church often starts at the dinner table. When husbands and wives stew in bitterness, children learn that church is something you go to, but not live out.

Husbands, lead with strength and repentance more than your rhetoric. Your words don't mean a whole lot if you're not doing the thing. Wives, build with gentleness and not gossip. Build peace in your home.

Let your home be a haven of rest. If we cannot show unity in our houses, how will we show it in God's house? The unity of the church is not a luxury, it is a living witness to the gospel. Ephesians, walk in a manner worthy of the calling with all humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

When the world sees reconciled believers, it sees living proof that the cross still works. When the world sees a fractured church, it assumes the cross has failed, but the cross has not failed. Christ is not divided, and He will not allow His people to be divided forever.

One day, around the throne, every tribe and tongue will sing one song, not in harmony by talent, but in unity by redemption. The blood of the Lamb will erase every faction and silence every boast. Let us repent of gossip, let us crucify pride, let us forgive as we have been forgiven.

Hold nothing above Christ, not your opinions, not your reformer, not your preacher, not your pride. He is the Head, the Bridegroom, the King, the Christ. Because Christ is not divided, neither will His people be.

Cling to the cross that unites. Love as you have been loved, forgive as you have been forgiven. Let us pray. Father, we praise You. We desire to honor You, Lord. Reveal the sin in us that offends You.

Lord, draw us away from division towards unity. Lord, may we overlook personality issues. May we overlook tendencies. Father, would You just break us down and see love for one another. Lord, would we be a testimony of You by how we love one another.

We praise You, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.