What Holds the Church together

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Years ago, when I got started as a pastor, I had heard these stories from other pastors about when pastors would be introduced to each other for the first time. And the stories I was told was that they would kind of size each other up. You know, well, how many are you running?

How big is your church? How big is your budget? And thankfully, that has not been my experience because I always thought that was kind of gross.

that we’re first thing off, you know, we want to compare how big talk about what the Lord’s doing in your, in your congregation. I’d rather have that conversation. In my experience, when, when pastors from different areas, when we’re at the convention or, or different things go on and we meet each other, we talk about where are you from?

Where are you serving now? Where have you been? Because we’re looking for some kind of common ground.

And, and I’ll, I’ll talk to guys like I, Rodney introduced me to somebody a few weeks ago from across the state who said, I have cousins that are members of your church, or so they say. He didn’t recognize the name. Later on, I realized, wait, two different churches.

So they’re off the hook. I thought, well, maybe they’re just telling me they’re going to church and they’re not. Anyway, two different churches.

But we talk about where we’ve been and realize, wait, I know somebody that used to go to your church. Do you know so-and-so? Or maybe we served in towns that were right next to each other.

Hey, did you ever eat at this place? Because we’re looking for some kind of common experience to bond us. Y’all laugh, but we’re looking for something we have in common.

It’s not just preachers. That just seems to be the, for whatever reason, seems to be the circle I run in. But I remember when I lived in Arkansas for a few years, anytime I would see somebody, we’d be out at Brahms or we’d be out at Walmart, and we’d see somebody in an OU t-shirt.

I had to be reminded you don’t know them because I would just start walking up I would walk up to them and talk to them like we’ve known each other hey how are you and it was kind of off-putting to people I was looking for somebody that was from where I was from you know we we want that we we want to have something in common with people that we can connect over and for me a lot of times it comes back to Oklahoma because I love Oklahoma but people people bond over sports teams that they that they have in common. People bond over places where they went to school. People bond over restaurants they like.

We all have those things that bond us to other people. As we start out the book of 1 Corinthians this morning, that’s where Paul starts in his letter to the church at Corinth is what bonds the people together. What it is that holds them together.

Because as we will see going throughout this book. This is a church that has factions, it has divisions, it has some real problems. Paul seems to alternate going back and forth between praising what’s good that’s going on in the church and addressing the things that are going wrong in the church. Last week I told you that as we come through this series we’re going to talk about some things that are uncomfortable for me to talk about and we’re going to talk about some things that are uncomfortable for you to hear.

I was reading through 1 Corinthians again this week. Sit down and do it a few times. It only takes about an hour.

But I came to a few passages and I said, really, Lord? Why did I pick this one? But here we go.

All right. There’s some things I’m going to have to get comfortable talking about. He starts out, though, by what it is that brings them together because before he can deal with the problems, he needs to remind them of where the solution lies.

Before he can deal with the issue of factions and division, he needs to remind them of where their unity comes from and so that’s where he starts this letter first Corinthians chapter one obviously first chapter first verse we’re going to be there at the very beginning of first Corinthians this morning if you turn there with me first Corinthians chapter one if you can’t find it or don’t have your bible with you this morning it’ll be on the screen but once you do find it if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s word we’re going a look at the first 17 verses this morning as he talks about what draws them together. So he starts in verse 1 and says, Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and Sosthenes, our brother. Now he’s not saying he was called by God and Sosthenes.

He’s saying Paul, who was called by the will of God, is writing to you as well as Sosthenes writing to you. See, they did this weird thing back in the old days. We put who we are at the end of the letter.

They put it at the very So I would say, I, Jared, write to you. That’s what Paul’s doing here. He says, To the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

So that’s his introduction of who he is and who he’s talking to. Verse 3, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He starts out with that wish for them. Verse 4 says, 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 Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful through whom you were called into fellowship with his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. For I have been informed concerning you, my brethren, by Chloe’s people, that there are quarrels among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you is saying, I am of Paul, and I am of Apollos, and I am of Cephas, and I am of Christ. Has Christ been divided?

Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 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 Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

And you may be seated. So the first thing I notice as I read through this passage is I don’t think he could have worked the name of Jesus into the passage any more than he did. Every other breath is Christ Jesus our Lord, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of Christ. It’s all about Christ. And that’s fitting because Christ is at the center of our unity, as he talks about.

Christ is the basis for our unity. So he writes this letter to a church that had all sorts of problems. He’s already identified one of them. They had factions.

They were divided in the church. We see in later chapters that there was gross immorality going on in the church. There was behavior that was more befitting the pagan rituals these people had come from than worship in the church of our Lord.

There were all sorts of problems that he had to deal with, but he comes to remind them of what they’re doing there in the first place. If we can establish why we’re here and why we’re together, that answers a lot of the other questions about what we should do and how we should do it. If we can figure that part out, that sorts out a lot of the rest of the problems. To give you a little bit of background, not as a history lesson, but just to help you understand what’s going on in this letter.

Corinth was a city in Greece. It was a major port city. It was a center of pagan worship.

So Paul is not writing to people of a Jewish background who are struggling with the law says this, but we have freedom in Christ. They’re dealing with my old pagan way of living, let me be as wild as I wanted to be, and I’m not supposed to do that anymore. Historians look at the clues that we find throughout 1 Corinthians and believe that this was written in the spring of 54 AD, which means as he writes this, they’re coming up on the 21st anniversary of the crucifixion. So this is not that long after Jesus died.

There are still people around, including Paul, who’ve witnessed the resurrection of Christ. And yet the people at Corinth weren’t part of that. And so he’s basically, in contrast to a lot of the churches that had quite a few people from a Jewish background, quite a few people who understood the scriptures and just needed to go from the basis of Old Testament scripture to Christ. He’s having to start at the beginning with these people and say, wait a minute, and these are people who are already saved, but these are very, very baby Christians in some regards. And so he has to go back to the basics and explain, this is how you live.

Being in Corinth, being in such a pagan place, this was also a church where the culture was 180 degrees opposite of the gospel. Does that sound familiar? That’s why I think the Lord led me to 1 Corinthians, because we as a church exist in a culture.

Now, granted, it’s not as bad in Lawton, Oklahoma, as it is in some other places, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s not here too. The culture around us is increasingly hostile toward our faith, and we can sit there and get about it, we can shake our fist at the culture, or we can learn how to work within it. We can learn how to represent Christ within it.

And so that’s what we’re going to do. To do that well, you’ve got to have a united church. You’ve got to have a church that stands together moving forward.

That’s the point that he makes to them here. I find it interesting, though, that he doesn’t start out with, hey, y’all are fighting, knock it off. That’s where I start with my kids.

I don’t want to get into the wherefores and whys. I just want you to zip it. Don’t make me pull the truck over.

You know, Paul doesn’t do that. Paul starts with, let me talk to you about what the Lord’s already done. And he spends several verses talking about what the Lord’s already done because where God is at work, it will bring his people together.

If we will focus on that. If we’ll focus on what he’s doing and what he wants to do. So Paul talks about what God has done for the Corinthians and he even starts back in his introduction, back in verse 2, where he talks about them being sanctified.

Sanctified is a churchy word. I think it doesn’t hurt us to go back and define it periodically because it’s not something we use out in daily conversation. Sanctification means to make something holy.

And sanctification in Scripture is twofold. There’s the sense in which at the moment we trust Christ, we belong to Him and God says, you are holy, you’re declared holy, you’re mine. And then there’s this ongoing process of sanctification in our behavior where God teaches us and trains us and equips us to act like it.

So in the sense that God said, you are holy, I have declared it. It is a one-time thing at the moment we trust Christ. And then it’s learning how to live that out. And he says in verse 2 that God has sanctified them in Christ. God took these people out of this pagan lifestyle and said, nope, you’re no longer pagans.

You’re no longer demon worshipers. You’re mine because they belong to Christ. God doesn’t owe us that. And yet he had sanctified them and said they were holy and they were his.

He also said that they were saints. They’d been sanctified in Christ Jesus. Verse 2 says, saints by calling with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours.

So he said to the Corinthians, you are saints. You are God’s saints. Saints are not a special class of super spiritual people.

Saints are those who belong to Jesus Christ and have been called holy, who’ve been declared sanctified. But he goes a step further. He says, your saints by calling with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of the divisions that took place in the early churches, especially where you had a lot of people from different areas, was that if you had Jewish background believers who had the experience in the Old Testament law and already, you know, growing up under that and living according to that and believing that, it affects your morality.

You take people from a pagan standpoint, and they have a lot more to learn to get where they need to be. There could almost be this sense of we’re inferior over here because look at them. They’re so good and they’re so moral. They’re so godly in their behavior.

We’re second-class saints out of here because we’re still learning how to come out of our pagan ways. Paul looks at them and says, you people at Corinth, you are saints by calling with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. If you belong to Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter whether you were saved serving in the temple in Jerusalem or whether you were saved living a debauched life in the marketplaces of Corinth.

If you belong to Jesus Christ, you are his saint and his child. And I think that’s a reminder that the people at Corinth needed to hear. Verses 4 and 5 tell us that he had given them grace in Jesus Christ. Grace to you.

He’s wishing and praying for them to have grace and peace. That’s a common greeting. But he says, that’s verse 3.

Verse 4 says, I thank my God always concerning the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus. He says, when I think about you, when I think about the change that God has made here, I cannot, every time I think about you, I cannot help but thank God for the grace that he’s given you. None of us deserved to be plucked out of where God found us and given grace and forgiveness and being adopted into his family.

Not one of us deserved it. That was his grace. That was his kindness.

And when Paul looked at the salvation that had been worked out in the Corinthians, he couldn’t help but praise God for it. That in everything you were enriched in him in all speech and knowledge. God’s grace was so incredible that these Corinthians were not just plucked out of the pit and saved and given eternal life, but God began to change them and they began to grow.

And the Corinthians were even exhibiting a change of life as a result of what Jesus Christ had done for them. And we come to verse 6 and building on that, he says, Even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you. We talk about the power of the gospel.

We say we believe in the power of the gospel. That the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. That it can take sinners and it can change lives.

We say we believe that and then we seem surprised when it happens. We seem surprised when somebody’s headed this way and God gets a hold of them and they change course. We shouldn’t be.

That’s what the gospel does. That’s what the good news of Jesus Christ does. And he says, that was manifest in you.

The testimony concerning Christ, what they had taught about Christ and what he did, was manifested in the Corinthians. He said, you are prime examples of the change that Jesus Christ makes. Verse 7, so that you’re not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. He had gifted them and empowered them for service.

When God called the Corinthians to do something, he didn’t leave them unable to do it. They were gifted to do exactly what God had called them to do. By the way, the same is true of you.

We’ll get into some discussion of spiritual gifts later in 1 Corinthians. But he says, you have been gifted. You’re not lacking any gift.

You’re eagerly awaiting the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. They had been given the gifts they needed to serve and they were actually out doing that. They were serving, eagerly awaiting the coming of the Lord. You know, like those bumper stickers that say Jesus is coming look busy.

They’re funny. I’m not sure about the theology behind them. The Corinthians believed that Jesus was coming and so they were busy.

They were anticipating his coming by doing things in preparation, serving him in preparation. Verse 8 says, who will also confirm you to the end, blameless to the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. He talks about the security and hope that they had, that their future with Christ was assured, and what God had started, Paul was confident that God was going to finish. And then in verse 9, he closes that part by saying, God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

As believers, as those who belong to Jesus Christ, we’re not just called into fellowship with each other, we’re called into fellowship with him. That is a place I don’t deserve to be. It’s a place none of us deserve to be.

Fellowship with God the Son, are you kidding me? And yet we’ve been invited into his presence. Paul spends these verses emphasizing all that God has done among the Corinthians.

And he doesn’t address the strengths of each of the groups that he talks about. He doesn’t address what God had done in this faction or that faction. He’s speaking to the church as a whole.

And I think it reinforces the point that it did not matter which faction, which group they considered themselves part of, whether they were a follower of Paul, whether they were a follower of Apollos, whether they were a follower of Peter, who he calls Cephas here, didn’t matter which faction they considered themselves to be from. God was at work among all of them. They were all equally partakers of God’s grace.

They had all these things that God was doing in common. And sometimes in churches, I haven’t seen it here, but sometimes in churches, factions will rise. And it may not break into open civil war, but there may be this group that just doesn’t care for that group, and they really don’t mix, and they kind of look down on each other, all the while forgetting that they are every bit as much recipients of the grace of God as that faction over there.

See, if we belong to Him, and that person belongs to Him, We have something in common far more important than where we come from, or what sports team we cheer for, or what restaurants we like, what movies we’ve been to see. We have something far more in common than all of that. We’ve been recipients of the grace of God, and we are the canvas on which God paints this incredible portrait of the power of the gospel.

And that’s where our unity starts from, is the work of God in our midst. God being at work within us, and bringing each of us closer to Him. As we grow closer to Him, I use this example in marriage counseling a lot, like a triangle. God’s at the top, you’re here, the other one’s here.

As God draws you closer to Himself, He’s going to draw you closer to each other. That’s true in the church as well. We have this unity.

We talk about striving, and I may even use that kind of language. Don’t get the idea when we say that we’re supposed to strive for unity that it’s something we have to build. The unity is already built in.

It’s ours to maintain. And we have a responsibility to guard that Christian unity that’s baked into the cake here, that’s built on our common experience with the gospel. So he comes in verse 10, and still before he actually addresses the problem head on, he says, now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, exhort is, I encourage, I beg, it’s several things rolled all into one.

It’s a lot stronger than just saying, this is what I want to happen, but basically that’s what he’s saying. I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. He wants them to get together.

One of the things I do when I look through a passage to study and prepare it to preach is I look for the imperatives. I look for the commands. Because the commands are telling what somebody’s supposed to do.

And it either applies directly to us or we can learn from it. There are no commands in these 17 verses, at least not in the Greek. These are as close as you get.

Where Paul is saying, this is what I need to see happen. This is what you need to see happen. You need to get together.

As a church, you need to guard that unity. You need to be thinking about that unity. Where you’ve been thinking about all these other things.

that are going to distract you, that are going to lead you to fighting and squabbling. They’re going to lead you astray where you’ve been looking at all these other things. You need to look at what God has done in your midst and what He continues to do in your midst. And you need to guard that unity that you have.

And there are three things that He calls them here. Again, these are not commands. He doesn’t say, you must do this.

I don’t think we’d be wrong by taking them that way, though. Three things that He says need to happen. And they happen one after another.

he tells them he wants them to agree that that doesn’t mean they have to agree on everything here Paul is talking about teaching by the way we need to be very careful because often calls to unity are used to downplay truth unity around a lie is not unity let me say it again unity around a lie is not unity there is a time to divide and it’s when the truth is at stake it’s when core essential truth is at stake. I want to be clear, there’s a middle way to be found here between dividing over everything, treating everything like it’s a matter of life and death doctrine, or just acting like anything goes. I think it’s okay to say this.

Brother Rodney and I’ve sat in my office together and talked about various passages of Scripture, and sometimes we don’t see them the same way, right? I mean, we may see them a little differently. We have not split into two different churches here, right?

Because everything is not a cause to divide over. But there are certain things that we as a church have to agree around. If we can’t agree on how one has a relationship with the Father, how one gets to heaven, if we can’t agree that Jesus Christ is the only way, if there’s a faction who believes that’s not the case and a faction that believes there is, we need to be two different churches.

And the faction that believes he’s not the only way needs to repent. Let’s put that out there. If we’re not agreed that the Bible is the Word of God and trustworthy in everything it teaches, if we can’t agree on that, what basis do we have for teaching or fellowship?

If we don’t agree on the resurrection, what are we doing here? There are certain things that are worth dividing over. But even here, he’s not telling them, divide over those things.

He’s telling them, unite around the truth. I want you to agree. I want you to come to the truth.

You say, well, whose truth? Listen, if we are faithfully studying and applying God’s word, there’s going to be far more that we agree on than what we disagree on. And I hear all this talk about, oh, you say Christianity is true.

Well, which version? There’s all these thousands. Listen, there’s all sorts of denominations within evangelicalism that we agree on far more than we disagree on.

And I’ll go a step further. There’s a lot that the Catholic church teaches and the Orthodox churches teach that I vehemently disagree with. But even with them, if I can say this without getting fired, there’s a lot that we agree on.

There’s a lot of core things that we agree on. Not to the extent that we’re going to join up and be one church. Well, we might if they change their minds on some things.

But there are some things, and I don’t say that to attack them. People want to say, oh, every version of Christianity is different. No, there are some core common doctrines that have been set in stone for 2,000 years.

And he, on the basis of what we know to be true, Paul was calling the church at Corinth to agree and to come together. And if we align in our faith, and he says to agree in verse 10, he says that there be no divisions among you. Again, that’s not a difference of opinion.

We’re going to have differences of opinion. It’s going to happen. It’s inevitable.

He’s talking about division. He’s talking about factions. This group only talks to this group.

this group only talks to this group, they may talk about that group. He says, don’t do that. I pray that there be no divisions among you, that you stop that.

What we’re talking about here, and I said there is a time to divide over doctrine. In my experience, more churches divide over personality than over doctrine. I told you all about that first church I pastored where there were the Northern Baptist and the Southern Baptist, and that wasn’t denominations.

That was which side of the auditorium they sat on and who they talked to. I got a two-for-one deal in my first church. I pastored two different churches that just met in the same building.

That was fun. Not a bit of it was about doctrine. It was about power and influence and control over the money.

It was about this guy didn’t like that guy. So these people took sides and these people took sides, and that’s what Paul’s talking about. If we will align around the truth, if we will align our faith, especially on the core teachings of Christianity and things that are bedrock for our church, If we will align in the essentials and we will get our personalities and agendas out of the way, then the third thing that he seeks to happen will happen.

We will grow together to a place of spiritual maturity. Because notice he says, here’s what he’s looking for, that you all agree that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment. He’s talking about growing together, and that word complete means mature.

That we grow toward maturity in Christ together. the quickest way to derail that is if we lose our unity about what we teach and we start fussing and fighting over personalities now it feels very freeing to be able to talk about this because I don’t know of any personality personality conflicts in our church so if you’re saying he knows and he’s talking about me no I may be talking about you but I don’t know right the holy spirit I don’t know so that he he knows yeah the holy spirit knows I I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised if in a group this size, there’s somebody who looks across the auditorium and says, you know, not my favorite person sitting over there. That’s okay.

As I’m known to say, you can’t like everybody. You can try. But this is not calling us for everybody to be everybody’s best friend.

This is calling for us to love one another and work together for the good of the church and for the advancement of the gospel. It’s okay if so-and-so on the other row rubs you the wrong way. Can I tell you, there are people in our denomination that I know personally who really rubbed me the wrong way.

And just this week, I found myself talking to my wife about it, saying, you know, so-and-so. And I said, I need to stop. I need to pray for that person.

We are on the same team. And just because our personality is great against each other doesn’t become an issue to divide. That’s what I’m talking about in the church.

We work together where we can. Sometimes it’s easier to work together from a distance. But what I’m telling you this morning is if there’s something that would lend itself to factions in our church, if there’s personalities and agendas that collide, we need to recognize those are not as important as the gospel.

They’re not as important as the truth. And it brings me to the final thing I want to share with you this morning, is that division arises when we put loyalty to anything that isn’t Christ ahead of loyalty to Christ. Paul said, I’ve heard from Chloe’s family that there are factions, there are divisions in the church. And I think when Paul wrote this, he had in mind what my children will often do.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Because he says in verse 11, I’ve been told that there are quarrels and divisions. And he preemptively answers it in verse 12.

He says, now I mean this. He says, here’s what I’m talking about. Some of you are saying, I’m of Paul, I’m of Apollos, I’m of Cephas, I’m of Christ. He gives specific examples.

They were dividing over what teachers they followed. Now this really is goofy. that they were doing this.

It’s one thing to divide because you don’t like each other. I mean, that’s still wrong, but they were dividing over which guy they liked better when they were teaching the same thing. They were on the same team.

We’ve got several people that teach in this church. There’s me, there’s Brother Rodney, there’s Brother Rick, there’s Miss Linda. There’s several people throughout this church that teach classes.

And we don’t all see everything the same way, but on the essentials, we are right there. The silliness of saying, well, I support Jared, so I’m not going to talk to those people because they like Rodney. Rodney and I don’t want that.

Linda doesn’t want that. Rick doesn’t want that. Bob doesn’t want that.

Huey, anybody that teaches, we don’t want that. Paul and Apollos and Peter, they didn’t want that. Christ certainly didn’t want that.

And so in these remaining verses, he paints the absurdity of what they were doing. They want them to be arguing over it. They were treating these people like that was the most important thing to the point that Paul says, did I get crucified for you?

Did I miss that? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? And it was to prick their conscience just a little bit to get them to realize Paul didn’t die for you, just like Jared didn’t die for you.