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- well the music is to prepare our hearts as we turn to the word if you have your bibles please turn to first corinthians please turn to the book of first corinthians it's found in the new testament we're going verse by verse through first corinthians i think this is week eight or nine or something like that some introductory comments i have good news this morning and bad news as you're turning to first corinthians the church bethlehem bible church this church is ninety seven percent unified that's the bad news because the lord wants this church to be unified as much as his bride is unified and that is one hundred percent true the bad news is we're not completely unified the good news is god isn't finished with bethlehem bible church yet did you know that and what god does is he takes his word this inerrant infallible authoritative sufficient word and as it's preached through a frail a feeble preacher he begins to conform our minds our ambitions our thoughts our ideas our ideologies so that we become people who think less naturally and more supernaturally that is to say god uses preaching not only to save people you probably can remember back to the day where you first heard the gospel or the day that god the spirit open your mind through preaching supernatural event god opens people's hearts through preaching yet preaching does something else it sanctifies christians it makes them think more like god it makes them to have their minds renewed as roman chapter twelve verse two would talk about so we come to the passage today and chapter one two three and four paul deals with the church that's not close to ninety five percent unified not ninety seven percent unified they are fractured they are divisive and they are literally falling apart at the seams and this is a church where paul had been basically it was pastor paul he was the apostle yes and he began to preach to them he loved on them as we would say for eighteen months and paul can teach a lot of doctrine paul can teach a lot of bible in eighteen months and he certainly poured out his heart and taught them people got saved under his ministry sanctified and now he gets a note he gets a report and there's all kinds of trouble so how do we look at the big picture of first corinthians how many chapters are there sixteen and the first four chapters deal with excuse me the first six chapters deal with four problems they've got a problem of disunity that's where we're camped now they've got problems where people are not uh...
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- the church is not disciplining itself there's no purity in the church uh...
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- matter of fact the third problem is people are suing each other suing other christians in pagan law courts and there's also sexual immorality running rampant paul hears about this and he deals with those and then in the rest of the book chapter seven all the way through chapter sixteen paul asks and answers a variety of questions i've heard you've got a question regarding this topic let me answer you the question and so i find this book fast -paced i find this book exciting this book is more exciting than one of my most exciting things to do in my life there are other things but for sake of argument i love it when i'm on my bicycle my pedal bicycle my road bike and i'm going down a hill have my helmet on and all the accoutrements and i'm going down the hill and about the fastest i like to go is about forty five miles an hour and it seems like it's a video game and there's nothing between you and the pavement except lycra it's just moving fast and you can just see things come up one thing after another and you're trying to listen you're trying to see first corinthians is almost like that where it's one topic and the next and the next no room for oh this kind of doesn't pertain to me this isn't very practical i don't get it what's the big deal it is fast -paced it is energetic it is driven by the spirit of god and if you're a christian it will change your life i think we'll have a completely different church in three years when we finish okay five whenever uh...
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- when we finish we will think differently isn't that true for christians we we come with all this baggage of the way we think we think like the world thinks we think like unbelievers think the more we progress in christianity the more we think like and so christ -like thinking in chapters one two three and four is this don't think like the pagans do so you have some kind of party atmosphere in the church where i like ike and i like truman and i like pastor dave and i like all these different people no we have to be unified because christ is unified so let's look at chapter one verses ten through sixteen today i think we can get through that and we will deal with this issue what does paul do when he hears there's a problem in corinth when it comes to a divisive factious church i'll say again that i don't think you're divisive and factious maybe some of you are but as a whole we are not and so i'm not preaching this to you because i'm here to scold you or because i'm here to lecture you i'm here to preach this to you because it's in the word and god will use this to make us more unified and when we see this going on in corinth we don't want this to happen at bethlehem bible church so it's a challenge to preach because this doesn't necessarily all apply to us although it is all relevant for us and good for us to understand the mind of god and just how important unity is it's more important than anything else in this book by the way of numbers when it comes to chapters chapter one two three and four all about unity more important seemingly by the weight of passages the number of passages than any other topic so we come to this response of paul he hears about things and let's go to chapter one verse ten now i exhort you brethren by the name of the lord jesus christ that you all agree in that there be no divisions among you but that you be made complete in the same mind in the same judgment i've been informed concerning you my brethren chloe's people that there are quarrels among you now i mean this that each one of you is saying i am of paul i am of apollos and i am of cephas and i am of christ has christ been divided?
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- paul was not crucified for you was he? or were you baptized in the name of paul?
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- i thank god that i baptized none of you except crispus and gaius so that no one would say you were baptized in my name now i did baptize also the household of stefanos beyond that i do not know whether i baptized any other pray with me bow with me and we will pray and ask god's blessing on the message today father in heaven i pray that you would take the text take your holy scriptures and do a great work in our hearts father would you help our church to be strong to be unified to be able to do things outside of these walls so that we might see your blessings and lord we know that when we come to your word and your spirit applies it to our lives things happen in wonderful ways i pray for unbelievers who are here today that you would quicken their hearts and minds they would see biblical truth they'd believe in the risen savior jesus christ they'd acknowledge their sinfulness and lord for us as christians as we come to this passage help us to blot out all kinds of block out all kinds of other issues and help us to see what you the god of the universe thinks and that we could just go behind the scenes to peer into your mind is an awesome thing so help the preacher help the congregation that we both might glorify you in jesus name we pray now as has been said the last two weeks if i got a report that you were fractured and i was out of town i don't know if i would write the same kind of letter i think i might want to scold i might want to say how could you how dare you after all this work but what does paul do in this section he appeals it's a brotherly kind of appeal it's not of iron fist it's a comforting friend and so do you see the tenor of the whole passage here when he says in verse ten i exhort you or i appeal to you he is appealing to them like a friend like a gentle mother as he says in first Thessalonians chapter two gentle among you he was affectionate he was kind and so the whole sermon today is going to be wrapped around that idea i'm going to give you five appeals for unity to be carried out here at Bethlehem Bible Church five appeals to unity not commands not imperatives but appeals and you see how he connects this with the previous verse he says now it's connected to the verse before that in verse nine
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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 and if we've all been put together with his son in a unique fellowship with Jesus the
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- Lord then we shouldn't be fractured we shouldn't be splintered that's the idea and so let me give you these five appeals to unity some in review the first appeal to unity is that you ought to agree since we're a family unity is essential you see that in verse ten now i exhort you brethren now i exhort you brethren you've been given the mind of Christ you've been informed you understand things biblically and as a parent would want to have the child and the children and the wife and the dad all on the same page
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- Paul says we're brethren he could say i'm an apostle the spirit demands it but he appeals to them and says we're family we are family the second appeal to unity we saw two weeks ago is found also in verse ten i appeal for unity because we're all slaves of Christ Jesus the
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- Lord we serve another master do you see that in the text by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ he is the
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- Lord and he has accomplished salvation and we are under him he is the Lord we aren't Lords the pastor's not the
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- Lord the elders aren't the Lord Paul wasn't the Lord and when you look at chapter one one through ten Lord is found everywhere this is not a surname of Jesus this is not necessarily a vacuous empty title you see it in verse two
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- Lord Jesus verse three Lord Jesus verse seven Lord Jesus verse eight
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- Lord Jesus verse nine our Lord I exhort you by the Lord the master the boss the one who reigns over and the risen savior we're all slaves of the
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- Lord we're all members of that Lord's church appeal to unity number three also found in verse ten we all have the same doctrine so why wouldn't we be unified they had it back then we have it now take a look at verse ten that you all agree there be no divisions among you but you may be made be be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment in other words
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- Paul said I taught you for eighteen months about doctrine and you all believe that and if you all believe the same things about God shouldn't that keep you together oh if you believe different things you'll be on different pages if we have eighteen people here at the church and they say
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- I don't believe that the scriptures are the word of God and we have three hundred people over here that say I do there's going to be a problem but we are united by statement of faith elder board deacon board down to nursery workers we believe this is
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- God's word and we are under the word of God it should unify us to speak the same thing let me give you an example when the elders get together we don't always agree on every little detail and so we have four elders and even when
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- Lewis was there we didn't agree on every little detail we're different people different backgrounds and so we work on things we realize the mind of God is one and so we want to move towards that and then after we work it all out then what do we do we all walk out of the elder room and we speak the same thing there may be differences we may come at things differently but we speak the same things and so the elder board speaks the same thing we speak the same thing as a church you've all said if you're a member of this church in your membership application there's a question do you agree have you read and do you agree with the doctrinal statement do you agree with it if not do you agree to not make it an issue we on the fundamentals of christianity speak the same thing about the same thing we have one voice number four the fourth appeal to unity is remember that divisions in christ's bride are always sinful he says that in verse ten that there be no divisions among you no divisions among you remember last week i tried to create a scenario where you would all be saying this uh -huh i agree i agree i agree and then comes the wrecking ball that was my thought process last week we talked about things that god hates we all said oh god hates idolatry god hates offering babies to molek in the hot fire god hates homosexuality god hates a variety of these things and then we worked our way up to proverbs chapter six and at the top of the list god says out of all these things i hate in proverbs six what do i hate the most the text says one who spreads strife among brothers causing divisions isn't to be commended it is to be condemned god does not like that in his pure bride so one of the things i thought about this week was we don't have a lot of people who run around and subtly try to craft words to get people to think wrongly about the church but we do have some on occasion and we're all tempted to do things that we used to do so let me just give you a quick little interlude here and here's the interlude i'm talking to the ninety five percent of the people now who would say to themselves i want to be strong i want to be unified if god hates strife and disunity what does god love he loves unity i want to promote peace i want to promote unity i want to be a roman sixteen person remember last week who scopes out people who walk around and they're not saying openly factiously let's have a revolt down with abendroth let's get rid of the guy at least i haven't heard it but maybe you know when i first got here the church thought we've seen pastors come and we've seen pastors go he'll be the next to go right if you like me you wanted me to stay but if you didn't like me you'd think he's only got a few years to go and thirteen years later here i stand much less hair grayer no correlation maybe there is a correlation but i want you to be on guard so when someone comes to you and they would say jesus didn't die on the cross you'd go alert that's not true but people have a certain way to ask a question to put kind of a doubt in your mind and what they're trying to do is they're trying to have some they're probably not courageous enough to go to the leadership to go to the elders and they're trying to find a quorum they're trying to find a group they're trying to get somebody else to think the way they do or maybe run with their ideas so i want to make sure you're you're aware of kind of a subtle thing that could creep into anyone's heart and if you hear this you would maybe know here's the way to go about dealing with it because divisiveness friends is not always overt so you the unified ones when you hear things like this you may say to yourself is this some kind of whispering messenger of satan who's subtly trying to make me think ill about the church and the way you get someone to think ill about the church is to get them to think ill about the leadership i want to just tell you some of those things that i've heard over the years that if you hear here's what i'd like you to do i appeal to you if the person says these things to you why don't you just say i appeal to you and i'll hold you accountable to go to the leadership of the church to talk to them to ask them why are you talking to me about this you want not to be talking about the leadership this way you want to go to them and so since you wanted to bring it up to me certainly you're not trying to sin and so uh...
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- i'll give you the benefit of the doubt i'll give you one week to go talk to leadership and if you don't talk to them then i'll tell them you've got a problem with them wouldn't that deal with so much wouldn't that deal with so many things i don't think we're like Corinth where there's this factious quarreling i think we're like any other church who's learning and growing and we've got lots of folks and exciting things that happen but once in a while there's somebody who kind of shoots in they don't like something and they say something i think you ought to say to those folks well then i want you to go talk to the leadership i've heard people say to other people things like this do you think the elder, do you think the pastors should get raises this year and what are they doing maybe they're innocent but more times they're more likely they're saying things like this i don't agree that the pastors like got raises do you disagree because if you disagree now there's a couple of us and off we go by the way if the pastors get raises this year should you be happy or bugged if you got a raise this year and you went home to your wife what would you say i'm so mad today i got a raise now you'd be happy it's hard i know because we think as congregants we're paying the pastor's salary by the way i would never talk this way thirteen years ago but now i've been the pastor thirteen years and i love you you guys pay me well but if you say well we don't like these raise giving things do you friends i don't know how you can say that's helping promote the unity of the local church i don't really like elder rule and you can see it's this kind of fishing thing i don't really like it when kim spends all summer in california i don't really like it that mike has five weeks off for vacation every summer i don't really like it pastor dave seems to teach a little bit different eschatology than pastor mike what do you think of that see how subtle it is and i don't think this is some problem you know i i think mike talks about the doctrines of grace a little too much what do you think you all laugh i guess you all think i do i think you should say things like this when people ask questions and again it might be immaturity or it could be outright divisiveness either way it is your privilege it is your duty to say i want to strive to take the what the high road god loves unity and god doesn't like it when we kind of fish and talk this way if you like to talk that way then i don't want you to do that anymore i don't appeal to you i command you you need to strive for the unity the body i don't think i like it when pastors take sabbaticals you see how that kind of works and you say mike that's self -serving i don't think it's that self -serving because i love you i'm your pastor and i want you to say things rightly and when you say things make sure you realize you're not going to try to gather people around you who somehow think in less than a biblical way remember friends submission is going along with someone even when you disagree you don't have to agree with every minutia of the elder board and matter of fact kim and i we don't agree on everything in life but she has to submit and she goes along with even though she disagrees submission somebody comes to you and says you know as a matter of prayer uh...
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- i i need to tell you about brother so -and -so at the church and the elders aren't telling anybody about it but you need to know so you can pray about it we just ought to say well certainly you're not trying to sin give them the benefit of the doubt maybe they are trying to sin but i think i'm going to hold you accountable to go to the leadership divisions are always sinful well again i don't think this is a huge problem but i think it's in all of our hearts to maybe do it and when we hear ninety seven percent of you that hear those things you just need to say well you must not be saying these things let's go talk to the elder board and then we will deal with it number five appeal number five christians should never follow men christians should never follow men ultimately and that we are going to see in verses eleven through sixteen you ought never to follow mike dave paul macarthur piper the list goes on and on let's take a look at the text fascinating watch this verse eleven for i have been informed concerning you my brethren see there it is again my brethren my friends my comrades i've been informed this is not hearsay this isn't gossip this is an established fact paul's not saying why i've just kind of overheard through the grapevine through the prayer line through the gossip line i haven't not not all prayer lines are gossip lines but sometimes they turn into that i've heard this i've been informed i've received this report my brethren by chloe's people there are quarrels among you in the original language this report is used for legal official documented things this is a basically i just got a legal document from chloe's people and you're fighting why are you fighting why are you quarreling now people kill thousands of trees trying to figure out who chloe is who's chloe's people most people think she was a wealthy slave who got saved and freed and then she had slaves she had interest in corinth and ephesus we don't necessarily know who chloe is but do you think the church of corinth knew they knew only mentioned here those of chlore that's where we get the greek word chlorine see how easy that is he says i hear there are sinful strife quarreling contentions among you it's a documented fact this isn't hearsay i know that they're there i've heard about these wrangling hot -tempered things when you think of that word strife or dissension or quarrel in the text there in the new american standard it means something hot heated have you ever seen an argument that's gotten over the top and you call it what man they really got heated that's the kind of idea here this isn't some kind of minor disagreement this is emotional flames running high and by the way this is the kind of quarrel that makes the church vulnerable to outside attacks i don't mind the outside attacks at bethlehem bible church we're bound to get them we're bound to get them when we stand up and say the bible's true jesus is the only way the exclusivity of the cross you're born sinners and you need a savior and there's only one the only one who's alive in his name is jesus and you must be born again and those who follow other religions and all those who follow other religions will not inherit the kingdom of god and you think the world's gonna go right on way to go we like that no the world is going to shoot at us i don't mind that but when we're quarreling and when we're not unified and when we're having these kind of problems we become easier prey, don't we?
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- we don't want that these wranglings were leading to schisms he gives the general statement in verse eleven now look at the particulars in verse twelve and look at all the eyes here the church of corinth one man said has eye disease not the e -i -e e -y -e rather e -i -e -i -o reminds me of the story bruce can i tell the story too late now when pastor does that you're in big trouble bruce was uh...
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- somebody's trying to teach him how to speak in tongues years ago when he didn't realize it was an unknown it was a known language that he never learned and so they said we'll just go to the front begin to say some things just start saying some words and god will kick in and get the thing going he was like what what do i actually say just start saying some consonants or something some kind of sounds and so you meet bruce one time and you see how much scripture he's memorized and how god has taken a man whose brain was blown out by drugs and now is a man who's got a mind who is captured by the spirit of god and probably has more verses memorized than you do than i do but bruce didn't know what a consonant was so he just came up to the front speaking in tongues and just started saying a -e -i -o -u a -e -i -o -u a -e -i -o -u thought it was a vowel a consonant no big deal so the eye disease is a e -i -e no it's e -y -e i -i -i -i verse twelve now i mean this from general to specific that each of you notice that language there i don't think there's just a little segment of the church at bbc we have just a minor segment here this is the church spirit each of you i mean this that each of you hear the father language and you know the kids are all fighting and you bring the kids into the room every one of you is saying here comes the eye disease i am of paul and i am of paulus i am of cephas and i am of christ he says now i mean this let's get down to brass tacks let's talk about this issue some people think these were literal parties you had four parties in the church and we had the party of paul because paul was the pastor and they got saved underneath paul's ministry and so they said i follow paul and some of these same people think that then there's paulus and since paulus was a a rhetorician and he was an eloquent speaker that some like that better than what paul did and so they rallied around paul and rallied around paulus some say well you know what i kinda like the bent of jewish background paul's got this gentile background paulus is just a good speaker peter's got more of this jewish background and most people think peter somehow made his way to corinth or they knew of him so i'll follow peter i'm of cephas i'm of peter and then you've got the super duper spiritual ones i don't follow paul i don't follow paulus i don't follow cephas i follow jesus now that could be for parties but i think more likely this is paul using rhetoric using skill using these words in caricature using them almost figuratively you say i don't go for that figurative talk turn with me if you would just to first corinthians chapter six it's not unlike paul to have this kind of talk paul's gonna say you basically sound stupid as if you talk like babies and here in first corinthians chapter four verse six you see how paul has made allusion that he applies things to himself and others sometimes figuratively first corinthians four six now these things brethren i have figuratively applied to myself and paulus for your sakes so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf one another are against the other paul says this back to first corinthians chapter one language like i belong to i belong to i am of paul says isn't that a caricature of what you are and you're acting like and he says in first corinthians chapter three babies babies talk like that i'm of so -and -so i'm of so -and -so i am so -and -so it's not necessarily that there were really four groups but all the people had allegiance not necessarily even to jesus paul of paulus arcephalus but to themselves i'd like to be in this party i'd like to be in that party one man said paul heightens the severity ludicrousness of the situation by using language like this these people were affected by the world and the world back in those days said i think you'll find it similar to today radical individuality radical individuality they don't have any theological differences do they because they've all been taught from paul they only know of the lord christ jesus the entire church starts getting into this ludicrous rivalry like children best example i can think of i've told the story before but not for many years we used to sit around the kitchen table when we lived over in sterling i would ask the kids at night time for dinner uh...
