1 Corinthians 1:1-9 (The Childlike Church)

The Shepherd's Church

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All right. Well, good evening again, everyone. As we get started this evening, and it's funny, as I look at my notes,

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I was preparing for the morning, and so it says good morning, but I'm glad I caught it early on to correct mornings to evenings.

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But as we begin this evening, I want us to begin by taking a look at a text. We're going to be in 1

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Corinthians again this evening, but I want to begin in Matthew chapter 18 and take a look at a point where Jesus tells us about the faith of the truly converted, those who will be the partakers with him in the kingdom of heaven.

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Matthew 18 verses 1 through 4 says this. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and said, who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

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And he called a child to himself and set him before them and said, truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And the great truth we find here is the simplicity of the faith required for one to be saved.

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It's not high and lofty things that we must know, but it's the simple truth of the gospel of grace and that a child likeness, a humility, and reliance upon God in Christ alone is all that is required for salvation.

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No more than that, right? There's no greatness in yourself that is required to be saved.

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And so what we're seeing here is that in the economy of God, greatness is not achieved by accomplishment or riches, but it's in child likeness.

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And what a concept for us to consider, right, in the world that we live in, where childhood is seen as a time of your life where you are weak, where there's great weakness in that point.

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It's something that we grow out of. It's a stumbling block that we have to overcome.

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And how true it is then that God uses the weak things in the world to shame the strong things.

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And while it's true that for a believer, a childlike faith, a simple, helpless, trusting dependence on God is a good thing, there are aspects, of course, of childlikeness that can be detrimental to the life of a

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Christian and to the life of a church. For example, and I'm sure the parents in here will agree with me,

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I hope at least, that teaching children to change their behavior, act a certain way, is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

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I couldn't tell you how often, Lena could probably tell you how often I say to myself after telling one of my boys not to do something,

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I'm up from, I'm mumbling to myself, how many times do I have to tell you not to run in the house, to turn the light off when you leave your room, to close the door behind you when you go outside, don't scream while the baby's trying to go to sleep.

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The list goes on and on as far as having to tell children over and over and over again what they should and should not be doing.

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And this aspect of childlikeness, obviously, is one that's not so great, right, compared to humility that we looked at before.

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But it's this aspect of childlikeness, this inability to listen well, or maybe better said as the necessity to hear things, or the same thing over and over again, in order to understand the changes needed.

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It's this element that presents some problems for Christians and for the churches that we're a part of.

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And as we pick back up today in 1 Corinthians, it's this element of childlikeness that I think we see on full display within their church.

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And before we go into this letter again of 1 Corinthians, I wanna pray and ask the

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Father to help us, his children, to heed his word as we consider it this evening.

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So let's pray together. God, again, we thank you for the blessing that you've given to us and that we are able to gather together, as Kendall mentioned,

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Lord, that we're able to be here. While many in the world, many of your people are not able to gather, at least not freely as we are.

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And yet, Lord, even gathering freely has been something that's been taken somewhat over these past few months.

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And so again, we praise you that we are able to be here together to celebrate what you've done, and not only celebrate,

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Lord, but to have fellowship with you in this time. Lord, we pray that you'd help us to see that and believe that as we're here,

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Lord, that we're not just here to learn, we're not just here to see each other, Lord, but we are here to actually have true abiding fellowship and communion with you as we gather here in your name.

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Lord, as Kendall prayed previously, I do pray that you would help the words that would come from me this evening,

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Lord, if they are of me, may they fall by the wayside, Lord, but if they are of you, may they take root in our hearts.

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Tonight, Lord, may they be things that we walk home with and we take and enact in our lives, and things that we would believe not just for a short time,

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Lord, but that we would believe throughout our lives here, Lord, and into eternal life.

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And God, we thank you that you're faithful to us, you're faithful to the promises you've made to us, and we commit the rest of this time to you, that it would be for your glory, not for our own, but for yours and yours alone.

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We pray in Christ's name, amen. And so as we begin again in 1

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Corinthians, I wanna highlight a few things that we're gonna try to accomplish here this evening. And first is going to be kind of a recap of the first sermon that we had on this great book, and this was many months ago.

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One of the fallouts, obviously, of COVID -19 is that our services, we weren't able to meet as regular, we weren't able to meet regularly, and even for three months, we weren't able to meet in person.

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And so we're now given the difficult task of recalling information that we talked about back in late

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February, so it's over six months ago. And so today, as we're picking back up in 1

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Corinthians, we're gonna have that unfortunate task to refresh our memories, and so I'll go through a little bit of a refresher on that first and only, to this point, sermon that we've had in this great book.

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And so as we, again, as we begin, we'll spend a little time recalling that context that we went over previously, and then we're gonna endeavor to move forward in the text.

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We're gonna look at the introduction, the first nine verses, to try to gain a little bit more of understanding of the

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Corinthian church, and what Paul had to say to them, what God had to say to them, and what

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God has to say to us this evening, because I truly believe that through this book, there are a legion of things that we can learn from the experience of the

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Corinthian church that we have insight into from these letters from Paul. And so first of all, again, we're gonna be reminded of how this church got its start in Corinth.

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So if we can, let's take a look at Acts chapter 18, and the passage of Paul's finding of this church, or founding of this church in Acts chapter 18, verses one through 11.

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It says, after these things, he, meaning Paul, left Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a

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Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife, Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the

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Jews to leave Rome. He came to them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them, and they were working, for by trade, they were tent makers.

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And he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks. But when

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Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly testifying to the

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Jews that Jesus was the Christ. But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads,

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I am clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. And then he left there and went to the house of a man named

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Titius Justice, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the

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Lord with all his household. And many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. And the

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Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.

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And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. And when we went over this text,

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Acts 18, is really where we focused, when we went over first, when we were introduced to 1 Corinthians back in February, we highlighted a few things that stood out as far as the establishment of this church.

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First of all, we do well, I think, to notice that there are very strategic elements involved in Paul's planting of this church in Corinth.

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First, he found people of peace, right? Priscilla and Aquila, who were Jews, and most likely already at this point, they were

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Christian Jews, to stay with and work with while he proclaimed the gospel, while he proclaimed

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Jesus as the Christ in the synagogues, in the Jewish temples. And this is an important point, because in looking to establish a people who would claim

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Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, as the Christ, right, in looking to establish a church, he went first to people who either already were thinking this way, right,

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Priscilla and Aquila, or people who were looking for a Messiah. He goes to the synagogues, he goes to the Jewish temples to proclaim the gospel, people whose frame of reference would have already thought along the lines of looking for a

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Christ, a Messiah. And so Paul goes there first, very strategically. And a second strategic point is not contained in the text, necessarily, but is more so found when we consider the geographic significance of Corinth.

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Being on an isthmus, which is a piece of land that kind of juts out into a body of water,

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Corinth had a port in two separate bodies of water, making it a very populous city, very well -traveled through in the ancient world.

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And given, again, its geographic location, Corinth saw countless goods and products, as well as ideologies and trends coming in and going out from its harbors, making it particularly useful to someone like Paul, a strategic location for him, when he's looking to spread the gospel.

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This would be a great place for information to disseminate throughout the ancient world. A second thing that sticks out in the origins of the

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Corinthian church is the boldness that we see Paul commit in this work.

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The text tells us that Paul went directly to the Jews with the message. He was reasoning continually in the synagogues with them.

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So often and relentlessly did he, in fact, spend time reasoning with them that he was eventually driven out.

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They got sick and tired of it. They resisted the message, and they blasphemed, and Paul moved on to minister to the

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Gentiles. What's amazing about that interaction and that part of the passage to me, and I really do think this is a pretty amazing thing to consider a picture of boldness here, is that Paul continued to proclaim

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Jesus as the Christ, not only in the city of Corinth, but he went directly next door to the synagogue in a home that likely, based on the

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Greek word in Acts 11, likely shared a wall with the Jewish synagogue.

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So that's where he went to continue to proclaim. So he was driven out by the Jews, and yet he continued to proclaim, even right next door to them.

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He faced intense rejections, a rejection from them, but was steadfast, he was committed, and he was bold.

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It's a great thing for us to learn and to see when it comes to establishing a church.

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And a final thing we noted from this passage in Acts, again, a few months ago when we considered it for the first time was that the church in Corinth was planted reliantly.

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And so it was planted strategically, boldly, and reliantly. And we see that, again, in the Acts 18 passage, that Paul was entirely reliant on the sufficiency of the gospel message.

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When he was met with rejection, he didn't resort at that point to means of coercion or human wisdom, right?

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He committed himself further to the teaching of the word. He relied upon the

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Spirit of God. He trusted the Spirit of God who told him, right, that he had many people in this city.

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And so Paul trusted, he was patient, and he was faithful to continue in the work.

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And so these ideals of planting churches strategically, boldly, reliantly, they go pretty quickly from being ideals to being things that we have to put into practice, right, when we consider the culture around us, right?

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In the culture we live in, we have to consider these three elements, strategic, bold, and reliant.

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And they go into practice really, really quickly. And it was the same for Paul. In the culture of Corinth, at the time when he arrived, it was a home to, among many other vices, an incredibly hyper -commercial culture that bred prideful attitudes of competitiveness and self -sufficiency and autonomy and nationalism.

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And really, they probably rival what I think we have seen historically in America, probably in parts still today, but particularly when we look at large and wealthy cities like New York and Los Angeles, come to mind of great self -sufficiency, being idols, and autonomy.

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And yet this was a city that God said he had many people in. Let that be an encouragement to us,

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I think, right, that there's a culture like Corinth, which is so depraved, so broken, and yet very similar to ours, and yet God says,

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I have people in that city. I know that's an encouragement to me with the current season of the political climate that we're all living in.

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That is an encouraging thing to the church to know that God has people. And we can hope in that, we can trust in that, that he will bring them to himself.

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And again, so the culture was rife with sinful displays of pride, arrogance, elitism, and a church, nevertheless, was established there.

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And Acts 18, that passage, verses one through 11, ends by letting us know that after spending some time ministering in Corinth, Paul moves on about 18 months' time.

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And while the church was very likely established in the spring of AD 50 through the fall of AD 51, again, 18 months' time that Paul was there.

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So in that 18 months, Paul establishes the church, and he leaves. The first letter to the

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Corinthians was likely written in AD 55, but it could have been as early as AD 53.

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So within four years, certainly, this letter is sent to the Corinthian church.

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But could have been as soon as two years, or less than two years, that they received this letter from Paul.

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And if you're familiar at all with the letter to the Corinthians, the first letter to the Corinthians, it's an extremely strong rebuke of them.

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And it reminded me, again, of children, that like children, when the

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Corinthians were left to themselves, they quickly turned back to the things that they were doing before.

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And we read it in our reading of the law this evening as well. We quickly turn back to the culture that we're used to, the things that we're used to, out of our weakness.

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Right, and we go back, and we cling to the things that we shouldn't cling to. And this is true, again, of us as well.

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Right, this isn't just true of the church in Corinth. They weren't a weak people, so to speak.

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Right, their culture wasn't so much worse than ours. I would argue it probably wasn't worse than ours.

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And so before we can assume that, you know, we are not a people who are so weak, right, that we'll cave in in two years, three years, four years, back into the culture,

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I think we do well to consider how much we have already done that.

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How much we do that today. How much we could do that in the future. The allure of sin in the world around us is real,

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I think, and it's very easy for us. To fall in line with it. I think if we consider, even at this church, right, the

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Shepherd's Church that we're a part of, right, that, again, we had our first service a year ago, this Monday, and we came in grounded in certain convictions, right, certain things we held as of first import, right, the sufficiency of Holy Scripture, that that was enough.

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God's Word is enough for His people, for discipleship, for people to be saved. You know, we were committed to the right administration of the sacraments, baptism, and communion.

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And we were committed to the vitality, the importance of Christian saints coming together, to be together, to encourage one another, love one another.

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We were committed to these. We found these things to be so important. That's why we, those were the convictions that undergirded why we wanted to do this, right?

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And I'm not just speaking for Kendall and I, but I think the community as a whole. And yet, a year later, have we lost sight of some of these things?

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Have we begun with the church culture that we've grown accustomed to, that we might have grown up in, do we clamor for more convenient programming in ministries, more entertaining services?

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Have those things risen in importance in the other things, the convictions that really motivated from the beginning of those things, diminished?

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And not just inside the church, but outside of the church as well. The culture around us today calls for anyone and everyone, right, to adopt certain viewpoints on certain social issues.

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And they elevate these things to matters of first import. If you're not thinking along these lines on this particular topic, then you are the problem.

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How easy would it be for us as individuals and as a church to succumb to that type of pressure, right? Many churches do, sadly.

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But how foolish it is to do such a thing, to succumb to pressures from the world, from the culture around us, because it cheapens the gospel of Christ.

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It's in remembering and retaining of convictions, right, that we begin with that's gonna be crucial to persevering.

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This isn't just true for us as a church, this is true, I think, universally for us as individuals as well. Remembering why you do something, that's important.

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Not losing sight of it. You know, if we're able to, if the culture is able to look in at something that we believe in so strongly, and we, by their scrutiny, we weaken and we stop, then that is not something that's going to help us to persevere.

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Lena's laughing at me, so I can't, I'm getting distracted. And the

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Corinthians, along these lines, were exposed in pretty short order, that they had put their hand to the plow, right, but they weren't willing, or they weren't able, or they weren't ready to complete the labor, right?

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Christians today, American Christians today, Christians here at the Shepherd's Church, you know, we're no less susceptible to this very same error.

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And if we're a people fit for the kingdom of God, which is what Jesus says in Luke 9, verse 62, when he talks about putting your hand to the plow, if we're gonna be a people fit for the kingdom of God, we can't look back to the culture, both inside and outside of the visible church, once we put our hands to the plow.

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But the church in Corinth, they looked back, or not only did they look back, but they fell back in with the culture.

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And we're gonna see many ways that happens throughout our study of the book. It manifests itself in many ways. But as we look tonight, only at the first nine verses, the introduction,

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I think Paul really begins the process of digging into their falling in, their being consumed by the culture around them.

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And he digs into the root, I think, and that's their pride. So let's take a look at these nine verses of 1

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Corinthians chapter one together. Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sostenes, 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

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Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God, which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our

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Lord. As many of you are accustomed to, at this point we open our services each week with a couple of readings from scripture, and one of those is what we call

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God's greeting, right? And in many cases we'll read something very similar to what we just read here in verse three in particular.

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It says grace to you and peace from God our Father in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we read that verse, and others like it at the beginning of New Testament letters because we believe that this prayer, and this is a prayer that Paul is praying, is one that is not just for the original audience of the letter, but is also for us today.

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It displays the heart of God towards his people to give them grace and mercy to be with him, as well as peace and blessing while in his presence.

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And as is the case for much of the Bible, but not all of it, we have license here to read this part of the greeting in the introduction outside of time, right?

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It's not only for the Corinthians in AD 55, but it's for us Christians today. But having said that, there is some debate about the fullness of this introduction between scholars as to who the intended recipient of this epistle was at the time of the writing.

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Now, there's no debate that it was certainly for Corinth first, right? Primarily to the

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Church of Corinth, it even says that to the Church of God, which is at Corinth, right? But there's debate on whether or not this was meant exclusively for them, even in that time.

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The first school of thought sees this letter as a regional one, meaning that it was not meant only for the

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Corinthian church, but not also meant for the universal church, but meant for many churches and many cities throughout that area. Looking at verse two again,

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Paul says that this letter is 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

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Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. And with the most basic reading of the text, this would seem to make sense.

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It does seem pretty clear that what is happening here is Paul is greeting the Corinthians as the primary or initial recipients of the letter, but also expanding the audience to include all in every place who call on the name of Jesus.

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A second school of interpretation, and I think I fall in line with this one, I think it's a little bit more consistent, is that this is obviously meant exclusively for the church in Corinth.

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And there's a few reasons why, again, in my opinion, this is the correct viewpoint. First of all, we'll see in our reading of the entire epistle that it's gonna deal with very specific issues in Corinth.

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So it stands to reason that this letter, though, of course, beneficial to everyone to read because it is the word of God for everyone to hear, that it was originally written to them very specifically.

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But the second point, and I think more illustrative of the position that this letter is meant, particularly this introduction is meant to be very pointed towards Corinth, is that not only does the meat of the letter deal with them, but the way that the introduction is worded, again, while at first glance might seem to deal in the abstract of theology, it is very pointedly speaking to the

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Corinthian church. And again, as we said, the point that Paul is making here,

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I believe, is a point of pointing out their pride, their fallenness, and how quickly it has happened to them.

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So Paul has become aware, on the occasion for the letter, Paul has become aware through several reports from people.

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One of the people that we see here is Sosthenes, our brother, who's introduced in verse one. So Paul has become aware from reports from brothers and sisters in the faith that the church has begun to view themselves very highly, very similar to the culture in Corinth.

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They believed that they're a special church in some sense because they were Corinthians. They're the

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Corinthian church. And so in some intrinsic way, they are more important. They are better, greater than the other churches.

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In a sense, again, they were the Americans of their time. They believed that they were very unique people, exceptional, and while I love

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America, there is no question that there are times where people believe that because they are American, they are somehow better than other people.

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And that's not unique to America, just to be clear, but it's very common in the history of this nation.

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But Paul doesn't hold back here, I think, in pushing on this thought in light of the truth of the gospel of grace, which is that all people stand on equal footing before the cross of Christ.

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You notice how he specifically puts the Corinthians on equal footing with the entire church, right? Every believer everywhere.

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When he addresses the letter to them, he says, just with all who in every place call on the name of the

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Lord. He says, with all who in every place call on the name of the Lord. Christ is not only your

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Lord. He's not only your Lord, he's theirs as well. He's our Lord, he's their

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Lord. And so they are taken down a peg or two here.

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And even in looking at the text, it becomes pretty clear that in verse two, Paul is describing the church of Corinth, right?

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The church of God, which is at Corinth. And he gives a couple descriptors of the people that would make up that church of God at Corinth.

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These are people that have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. These are saints by calling, and they are also people who would call on the name of the

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Lord. They would call the name of Christ as Lord. And so it seems to me that this letter, especially not only the meat of it, but particularly the introduction as well, is very much directed towards Corinth.

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It is not one meant to be taken regionally, but very specifically towards them. And so with that being the case, there are some very specific things that I think we can take from it.

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And so we know, again, by the occasion of Paul's writing, that the church, while it was created a few years later, has now been consumed by the culture around it, specifically in the prideful elitism that was rampant within Corinth.

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And now Paul is coming to them with this strong confrontation in power and authority. And if you're a fan of alliteration, which

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I'm not too much, but it did work out well here where I was able to, we see, again, this progression.

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A church is created, but shortly after, like a child, they are consumed by the things around them, consumed with the things that they're used to, the things that appeal to them.

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And yet it's with a confrontation now that Paul is coming in to let them know of their error.

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And often when we go to correct someone, we need for them to call to mind some level of authority that we have over them, some level of authority that exists within the relationship.

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And I think the degree of authority varies from relationship to relationship, but whenever someone is being confronted or corrected, there is an intrinsic right in one of the people to confront the other person, right?

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Whether it's a parent confronting a child, right? There's an intrinsic right that they have to have, they have authority over that person.

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And even friends, people who are peers, there is a right within one person, within person

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A, to confront person B. They say, and oftentimes we make this clear by saying, as your friend, I want to say that I think that this is a problem, right?

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And so that's a statement of, I have this level of authority to be able to make this statement about you. Please hear my words here, right?

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Whereas if we're talking to a stranger that we don't know anything about, we might tell them that what they're doing is wrong, but they would probably say,

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I don't know you, and I'm not particularly concerned about what you think about anything that I'm doing. And so I think what we see here at the beginning,

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Paul begins to set the tone for that authority. He has authority in this relationship, not just because he knows them, because he spent time with them, but because as he points out in verse one, his office within the church is one of authority.

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As an apostle, again, as Paul called as an apostle, along with the other 12,

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Paul has been given a certain authority in the early church to protect it, to maintain doctrinal and ecclesiastical purity, and ecclesiastical is the life of the church, the purity within it.

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And he asserts that authority here in this greeting in hopes that the readers and the hearers of it would be inclined then to heed the teaching that's going to come.

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He's basically telling them what, because of this office, what I have to say matters to you.

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And so listen. But Paul, in his wisdom, under the guidance of the

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Holy Spirit, he doesn't only point to his own authority, and that's another major, authority is one of the major themes that we see in the first three verses.

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He doesn't only point to his own, but he also points to a greater authority to enliven the hearer, to quicken someone, to listen to what he has to say.

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He points to the authority of the one who calls him. Who called him to be an apostle, and that's

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Christ. He gets, Paul wants to get through to these prideful Corinthians, because he knows he has to knock them down a few pegs, certainly, and he needs to get them to realize they're not as great as they think that they are by showing them that they're not the top, they're not the heads of the church that they think that they are.

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And he does it four times, really, where he calls upon the authority of Christ over the church.

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Four times in the first three verses here. First, we mentioned already, he points out his apostleship as being of Jesus Christ and by the will of God, saying that even his own authority,

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Paul's own authority over them, is the product not of his decision to be the authority over them, not of his being the one who was there to plant the church.

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That's not why he has authority over them. He has authority over them because the will of God has placed him as the authority over it.

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And Christ has the ultimate authority over the church. And so, that's the first instance of it where Paul calls upon the authority of Christ to set the reader and hearer up to be able to receive what is going to be said.

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Second, again, he points to their station in the church. They're not the heads, they're not the keepers of the church. Rather, he says in verse two that they are the church of God, which is at Corinth.

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They're just an expression, a local expression of the church of God. And he further specifies that they are those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.

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They are saints by calling. And he does this to show, really, how ludicrous it is for them, for anyone, to think so highly of themselves, considering that it's

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Christ who has effectually called them to be saints. And it's Christ who has sanctified them.

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And this is not being sanctified in the sense of the progressive growth of a Christian, right? This is a resultant sanctification.

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It's the ultimate result of our salvation, which is freedom from guilt and perfect relationship with God and Christ.

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This is about being set apart, being made holy. Not, again, not progressively, but this is the resultant culmination of our salvation.

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And so Paul, again, he's setting them straight by pointing out that the pride that they could possibly have, any pride they could possibly have is foolish because they haven't made themselves saints.

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They were made alive by Christ. They were effectually called by him. They aren't an elevated people.

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They haven't, they have not perfected themselves in the sight of God. They have been declared perfect in the sight of God.

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They have been declared sanctified in the sight of God because they're in Christ, not because of anything they've done themselves.

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The third way that Paul proclaims the authority of Christ is he confronts them. We see at the end of verse two, and it's probably the simplest one, but it's perhaps the most important one, and it's that Jesus is

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Lord. Jesus is Lord of all the church. He's their Lord and he's our Lord, Paul says.

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And Paul is being very clear with this proclamation since the word

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Lord literally means one having power or authority. It means master, ultimately. He's their master and he's your master.

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You are not greater, they are not greater. Christ is the Lord of all. And finally, the fourth instance of Paul pointing to Jesus' authority over them, and therefore, by association,

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Paul's authority over them as Christ's apostle, a sent one, literally, is by claiming that Jesus Christ is not only their

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Lord, but he's their God, co -equal with the Father. In verse three, again, he says, grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He's declaring here that God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are of the same. They are equal. It is from God alone that one receives grace and peace.

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And Paul has declared here in this statement that that comes from the Father and from the

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Son, Christ the Lord. And so Paul, again, has set the stage in just these first three verses for what is to come throughout the next 16 chapters because he's declared the authority of Christ over this church and every other church.

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And therefore, by declaring the authority of Christ, he's declared his own authority and the things that he has to say as Christ, one of Christ's sent ones, one of his apostles.

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And so the Corinthians and us, as we receive this word today, if we're of any confidence that they are those who are of the group who has been sanctified in Christ, if they're gonna have any confidence that they are of those saints, those who are saints by calling, then they're going to heed this instruction because it's coming in the name of the

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Lord, their master. And so they would take very seriously what is to come next.

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And with that, setting the stage of authority and confrontation that Paul is about to leap into,

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I wanna spend the rest of our time here tonight looking at how, despite all the issues that Paul is going to dig into, and despite the issues he's already began to poke at,

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I wanna really rest and just kinda spend time considering how much

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Paul in his writing and God, because this is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, loves the bride of Christ.

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John Calvin points out in his commentary on this passage that the way even that we see

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Paul greet the church here is a humble appreciation for them. I'm not quoting him,

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I'm just kinda paraphrasing. It's a humble appreciation for them, not for who they are, what they've done, but because they are the church of God.

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He doesn't reject them, he doesn't push them away. He calls them back into deeper fellowship because to reject them would be to reject

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Christ's bride. And so I think it's a good lesson for us to learn that we don't reject people because they may be doing things wrong, but rather we call them into deeper fellowship, particularly for Christians.

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I'm seeing here that we call our brothers and sisters into deeper fellowship when they err. We don't push them away and disassociate with them, but if they are of Christ, we call them back.

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Imagine teaching your child how to ride a bike. And when they seem to have figured it out, you kinda leave them to themselves and you kinda know what's gonna happen, but you leave them to themselves and ultimately they fall down, they fall off their bike.

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And we certainly, none of us would forsake them, just kinda like, how dare they?

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I taught them everything they needed to know. I spent 18 months teaching this kid how to ride a bike and look, he just doesn't get it.

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But we would never do that, obviously. We would come alongside them out of love because they're ours, right?

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They're our children and we're their parents, right? And so it's similar with Christ.

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It's the same, really, actually. I think it's not just like, but I think it's tied together that we're his, right?

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We are his children and he is ours. He doesn't leave us in our failures and Paul knows this, of course.

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And so while he's obviously disappointed, right, in their fall in Corinth, he's committed to them.

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And it's not because he was, again, one of the, he was the founding planter of it, right? He's committed to them because Christ is committed to them.

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Right? So Paul, in his love for them, he's gonna rebuke them, right? He's gonna correct them and confront them, but he's also gonna comfort them.

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He's gonna point to the testimony of the gospel among them. Looking at verses four through six here, he says,

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I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus, that in everything, you were enriched in him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you.

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And so Paul points backwards, right? He looks to the past to give them some encouragement. And what's beautiful here,

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I think, is that Paul doesn't comfort them by encouraging them in how well they had done, right?

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He actually comforts them, not pointing to them at all. He points to what God had done in their midst.

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Notice the passive tense of every verb in these verses, verses four through six. In verse four it says,

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I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus.

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The grace was given, right? It wasn't attained. They didn't grasp it for themselves, but it was given. I even love in verse four that he says,

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I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God. Basically, I thank God for the grace of God, right?

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It has nothing to do with the Corinthians. I thank him for the grace of God. In verse five it says, that in everything you were enriched in him.

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And so he's talking about the blessing of pure doctrine here. Speech, all speech and knowledge is referring to preaching and understanding, right?

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So the blessing that pure doctrine was to them, it was given bountifully to the

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Corinthians. It wasn't that they were smarter than everyone else or more eloquent than everyone else. It's that God blessed them.

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He enriched them. You were enriched. You didn't enrich yourselves. You were enriched. And all these things that happened among them, they serve to reveal, if we look at verse six, it all reveals that the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you.

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The gospel, right, the testimony was confirmed in them, not by them.

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These other things that are happening, the bounty that God is giving to them just confirms the gospel message did take root.

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And it wasn't because of them. It wasn't done by them. It was confirmed and done in them. And so it's good,

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I think this is a good reminder for us. It's good to look back from time to time and be reminded of God's work among us, right?

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As a church, as individuals, as families. It's good to look back at how God has worked in spite of ourselves.

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It's not good to look back and say, yeah, I was pretty smart back then. I did a lot of reading and that's why I learned. No, like that has something to do with it.

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But these disciplines, these spiritual disciplines aren't what accomplishes anything for us. It's the grace of God.

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It's the spirit at work in us. Paul doesn't only look back, though, as a point of encouragement.

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He points to their current testimony as well. And again, we notice the passive role that the church plays even currently.

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Again, this applies to us too. Anything that's going to happen in this church is going to be, not because we do it, not because we're active, it's because the spirit of God is active.

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We play passive roles as the church. Christ is the active one. And so we look at verse seven and Paul, continuing the idea of verses five and six that they have been enriched by Christ.

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He says that they are not lacking in any gift and instead are awaiting eagerly the revelation of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are presently waiting, right? And the Corinthians are presently waiting at this time for the return, the revelation, the apocalypsis is the word here.

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So it's literally talking about the literal return of Christ when it says revelation of the Lord. And while we wait, we've been given every gift we need.

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While we might be tempted to rely upon ourselves as we wait, Paul reminds us here that we've been given all that we need so much so that we're not lacking anything, any gift that we would need as we await the return of Christ.

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And so we, Paul's telling us we don't need to rely upon ourselves. We don't need to seek to gain for ourselves, but rather we trust that God has given us everything necessary in this life.

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And finally, Paul comforts them in the midst of this confrontation that he's beginning, not just by looking backward, not just by looking currently, but by looking forward.

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Again, noting the passive role that the church plays in it all, which stands as this a scathing rebuke, a repeated rebuke of the prideful tendencies within Corinth.

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He says in verse eight, who, and this refers to Jesus Christ, will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Christians are unable to give themselves the grace that grants forgiveness of sins.

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All right, we're unable to enrich ourselves with spiritual gifts and an understanding of the word.

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We're unable to confirm ourselves in faith for this life and we're certainly unable to confirm ourselves to the end in faith and hold ourselves blameless on the day of the

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Lord. And that's why Paul stresses here, Christ will confirm you to the end.

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All of these things, all these things that we're talking about, spiritual gifts and forgiveness of sin, saints by calling, the call, the initial call to faith, perseverance, all of it,

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Paul makes it clear here, there's just these nine verses and the passive role that we all play. It is all done by Christ, accomplished by him on our behalf.

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And this isn't meant to be a teaching that causes us to kind of wonder like, is Christ actually doing this in me?

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I don't know, if it's not up to my decision, I don't really know what to rest on. I hope that God is doing it,

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I think he's doing it, but I'm not sure. That's not, it's not meant to drive us in that direction, it's meant to comfort us.

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That's what Paul is doing here, he wants us to know that it's not of ourselves. He wants us to believe it has nothing to do with us.

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Our faith, all of it, past, present, future is of Christ. And what a grace and what a peace.

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Again, verse three, grace to you and peace from God our Father. This is the grace and peace that truly is to us.

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This, that's what we want to rest in, that none of our salvation, past, present, or future relies upon us.

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If it did, then these Corinthians, I mean, if you're familiar with this letter at all, these Corinthians would surely have lost their faith at this point, if any of it relied upon them.

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And honestly, I think we could probably, if we're all being honest with each other, we could say it'd probably be the same for us. But instead, we await eagerly, and this is actually so amazing, that Paul knows the error that exists in Corinth.

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He's pointing some of it out here in these first nine verses and yet he says in verse nine, or in verse eight, excuse me, or excuse me, verse seven, that they are awaiting, so that you're not lacking any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. We can await eagerly, despite all of our sin, our shortcoming, we can await eagerly what

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God has prepared for us at the day of the Lord, because we know that by faith, not by our own works, but by faith, we will be confirmed and blameless by the power of God.

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And we know it, and we rest in it, because, and we'll prepare to close here, we rest in it because we look at verse nine, it says that God is faithful.

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The world often holds it against us, right, as Christians, if we're not perfect, because they see it as hypocritical, right?

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But if we understand the gospel rightly, then we know that, obviously, we're not able to be perfect.

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Only when we see Christ will we finally be like him. It says in 1 John chapter three, that it's in seeing him that we'll finally be like him, fully conformed to his image.

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And so perfection in this life is not attainable, and yet, despite our sin, even after we've been saved, we know that while we're not perfect, we are perfected before God because we are in Christ, and we know we cannot lose that hope because, again,

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God is faithful to his promises, and to his promises to his people. Truly, I think it is one of the great paradoxical truths of Christianity that while our faith is always susceptible, our faith is always susceptible because of our sin, it's always even more secure because God, because of God's faithfulness to his promises.

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And what's more, we've been promised something by God. It's just not that God is faithful to his promises, that we've actually been promised something by him, and that's actually someone we've been promised by him.

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That's himself, Jesus Christ. Paul closes verse nine by saying, God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his son,

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Jesus Christ, our Lord. In these nine verses, Paul reminds us that our faith is not about ourselves becoming better or smarter, but it's about fellowship with Jesus Christ.

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He is the reward of our faith. It's not that we're better people, it's not that our lives kind of fall into line, it's that we get

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Christ, we get fellowship with him. He's central to everything that we've been given and will be given.

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In these first nine verses, Paul writes the name of Jesus nine times in the first nine verses, and he does it to remind us of the centrality, the importance of Christ to our faith.

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Colossians 1, 15 through 20 says this of Christ and his centrality to all things, this is

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Paul writing as well. He says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for by him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible.

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Whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

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He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church, and he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.

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For it was the father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell on him and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

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Through him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Christ is first place, and that's what

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Paul's trying to relay to the Corinthians from the beginning of this letter. Nine times in nine verses, he says the name

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Jesus Christ, and Christ obviously being a title, the Messiah, the Savior.

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Jesus is Lord. I actually was struck as I read through this passage, and I thought maybe

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I had typed it out incorrectly. Verse seven ends with our Lord, the revelation of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Verse eight ends in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse nine, Jesus Christ, our Lord. I was like, did

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I write this down incorrectly? Was my eyes all messed up? It's just over and over and over again,

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Paul is hammering home the point that Jesus is the Christ and he is our Lord, and it's through fellowship with this

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Christ. That's what Paul's saying in verse nine. Through fellowship with this Christ, we're partakers of his glory.

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We're heirs with him. We're sons of God with him, and it's because God made the promise to us, and because he's faithful to keep it, that we have hope in that truth.

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Not because we're able to live up to the weight of the law, but because God is faithful. And now, really, as I close here this evening,

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I want to do so with this thought. As I wrestled with this text, the introduction here to the first letter of the

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Corinthians, I thought to myself, this is not a unique book in the New Testament, right? It's most of Paul's letters, and there's 13 of them in the

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New Testament, are letters of very strong critique and confrontation correction to the receiving church.

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But one of those letters really stands in stark contrast to the rest of them, and that's the letter to the

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Philippians. In that epistle, Paul's motivation for writing seems pretty clearly to be a little bit less driven by correction and confrontation.

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And the reason for that is probably a simple one, that they just had less issues going on in their midst than the

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Corinthians did, than the Galatians did, and so on. And yet, as I thought through that, and as I had sat with this text,

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I was reminded of the introduction to the book of Philippians, and something really incredible came to mind.

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And it's not about Paul or his writing style, but it's about God and his love and his faithfulness to his people, and that the same promise that undergirds

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Paul's introduction in Philippians is the very same one that he's stressing here to the church in Corinth.

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Philippians 1 .6, Paul says, for I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

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How similar, right? Are these two promises of Philippians 1 .6

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to verses eight and nine here, 1 Corinthians 1. That despite all their shortcomings for Corinth, despite all of it,

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God will confirm them to the end, blameless in the day of the Lord. And for the

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Philippians, Paul's saying, I'm confident of this thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

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I mean, you might as well change them, just swap them, it would mean the exact same thing.

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The same promise exists for both churches because the same God is the one that made the promise, and it's the same

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God who is faithful to keep it. You see, God is gracious to save us, no matter our sin, because he does it for his glory, he does it through Christ's work on our behalf on the cross, and God is faithful to preserve us if we're truly in Christ, right?

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If we're truly in Christ, God is faithful to save us. He's faithful to preserve us to the end, to confirm us to the end, to complete the good work that he's begun.

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Because if we are truly saved, if we are elect of God, we have been sealed for everlasting life by the promise of the

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Holy Spirit. God is faithful. He does not take back a promise that he's made and placed upon us.

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And so whether we're like the Philippians, whether we're like the Corinthians, the promise that we rest on is the same one.

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God is faithful. And so while we may be consumed, right, by the culture around us, especially as a young church,

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Lord willing, we will never, we would not, but that's, we're gonna have to continue to cover ourselves in prayer to protect ourselves from things that won't be of ourselves.

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It will only be of grace. And so while we may be consumed, if we heed the instruction and confrontation that we receive from the word of God from our father and receive it as loving discipline for us, then we can and we should be comforted by the knowledge that we will be confirmed by God.

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So no matter how good or bad we might be, we don't look to ourselves. We look to God, we look to Christ who has called us into fellowship.

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What an unbelievable truth. He's called us into fellowship with him through his son, Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. Let's pray. God, thank you for the amazing truth that it is,

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Lord, that your gospel doesn't only save us from the penalty of our sin, but even more so,

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Lord, calls us into fellowship with you. Lord, salvation is not a get -out -of -jail -free card. How insulting.

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Lord, rather, salvation, the salvation that you give to us, Lord, is a call to fellowship.

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It's a call to know you or to rejoice in you. Everything that we could ever need, everything we could ever want is found in you and in you alone,

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Lord. And we pray that as a church, as individuals, as families, you'd help us, Lord, to be people that rest in your promises, rest in your faithfulness.

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Lord, and rest in your presence, that we wouldn't forsake the gathering, because we know that it's in the gathering,

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Lord, you are with us, or two or three are gathered, you are with us. Lord, we wouldn't forsake our time in your word, because we know that in your word, your spirit works, and your spirit is present with us.

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Lord, we wouldn't forsake time in prayer, because we know that through prayer, Lord, we are able to come before the throne of God.

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Have fellowship with you, Lord, be transformed by your presence. Lord, help us to long for fellowship with you.

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And in so doing, may the sin and the corruption in the world around us, may it all just fall to the wayside, because being with you and knowing you,

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Lord, is the only thing that would matter. Lord, the things of this world, their importance, their, the vanity of it,

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Lord, would just fade when we consider being with you. Lord, help us to be a people that lives in the light, knowing that you are there, you are the light that would call us there.