Introduction

of your announcement sheet, there is also today's text. So I say, hear the word of God. Paul called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and sustenies 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 the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me pray. Jesus, I pray simply that you would send your spirits open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf that they may hear your gospel. I pray for the one who teaches that you would forgive his sins for their many and I pray that you administer your word to us even now and your name we pray. Amen. Today if you're visiting or if you're a regular attendor, today is the first day of a new series that I'm going to start on 1 Corinthians. And it's also a good time. It's going to be a little bit different today, though I hope not too much different than usual. It's going to be different than I'm going to give you a lot of instruction. And first of all, I'm going to give you what the pattern of preaching, why I preach what I preach. I'm starting 1 Corinthians today and basically my pattern of preaching here at Grace Seattle is just this. In the fall, I preach through the Old Testament. Right now, I'm preaching going through Genesis. And in the spring, I preach through the Gospels and in the summer, I preach through the epistles. And that's very intentional. You see, in the fall, we're going through Genesis. We did Genesis 1 through 11 last fall. We'll pick up in Genesis 12 this coming fall because Genesis is all about foundation building. Genesis teaches us who we are. Genesis teaches us who God is. It teaches us where sin came from. It's very earthy. All of these kinds of things. And then we look at the Gospels. Right now, we just finished the first chapter in the Sermon on the Mount, Chapter 5 of Matthew. And Jesus talks there about how to lift the gospel. What does that mean? And now, in the summer, we're going to start 1 Corinthians because 1 Corinthians is a beautiful book because it's written to a church just like ours. It's written to a new church that has a lot of problems, quite frankly. Not bad problems, but new churches always have problems. And Paul is going to apply the Gospels to all of the different kinds of problems that a new that arise in a new church. So that's basically what we're going to be looking at for the rest of the summer is Paul applying this thing called the Gospel to a new church quite like ours. But before I start, what I want to talk about a little bit is Corinth itself by way of introduction. Corinth was one of the greatest cities in the ancient Near East. In Corinth, the reason was one of the greatest cities in the ancient Near East, Corinth is in Greece and it's between Athens and Sparta and it lays on an isthmus. An isthmus is simply the opposite of a peninsula, it's peninsula with only two sides. That's water on both sides, so basically it was a port city. And so Corinth was this great thriving port city until the year 146 when the Romans came in and the Romans came in and basically destroyed Corinth and they enslaved us inhabitants and took it over. And by the year 44 BC, Julius Caesar came along and he said, man, the city is just too great to let it lay fellow, we need to recolonize the city of Corinth. And so what you had happened in the city of Corinth almost immediately was people from all over the ancient Near East came streaming in in order to make their fortunes. People from all over the ancient Near East came in and so it was very racially diverse, it was ethnically diverse, socio-economically diverse and frankly it was a lot like Seattle because there was a lot of money to be made and people came in and you sort of had a lot of your ancient Near Eastern versions of internet startup companies, right? People came in and they thought, man, if I can get on the ground floor of Corinth, I'm really going to be wealthy and see what would happen is in Rome you would have people that were slaves and at some point they would be freed and a freed man had no rights in Rome but in Corinth he would, or she would. So Corinth was this great mecca for people who were sort of either screwed up and wanted to go to get away from things, Seattle, or people who wanted to come to a place where they had the great potential of making a lot of money and so they go to Corinth. And Corinth was not only that Corinth also had a great reputation for being very sexually promiscuous. Before the Romans came the temple of Aphrodite at any given time had over a thousand temple prostitutes. You know what the word to fornicate is in Greek, Corinth the Azatai. You know your city is pretty sexually active when the word fornicate is derived from it. So Corinth not only was this wealthy sort of startup city but it was also had this history of sexual promiscuity sort of anything goes but it also had this history of religion but not just any kind of religion, every kind of religion. Okay, anything went in Corinth in which which gives it this other value it had this this this dual value of being very religious but also very relativistic which led to what? The reigning value in Corinth was tolerance. That's unfamiliar? You see in Corinth everyone's free to practice their own pagan religion no matter what that religion did and you were fine as long as everyone didn't bother the other person. And so basically everyone in Corinth would walk around blinders on and they wouldn't talk about anyone else's religion because everyone's religion was equally a value. Now think about this this situation where there's a lot of money and there's a lot of sex and a lot of pagan religion the apostle Paul comes into the city to plant a church. That seems like it would be pretty hard. Guess what? It was pretty hard. That's what I want to talk about first is what does it take to start a church in a city like Corinth? What does it take to start a church in a city like Seattle? Well there's a lot of money there's a lot of sexual stuff but also there's simply just a lot of tolerance that everything goes here. What does it take to start a church in a city like that? Well first let's look what happened to Paul if you have a supplemental sheet there or on your sheet there's a supplemental text in Acts 18 where we see where Paul actually planted the church and let me read from that. I'm going to read through verse 8. So after these things he left Athens, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth and he found a Jew named Aquila a native of Pontius having recently arrived from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the 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 and he was reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying to persuade Jews and Greeks but when Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia Paul began devoting himself completely to the word solemnly testifying to the 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 I am clean from now on I will go to the Gentiles. I'm going to stop there. What happened? Paul basically did this. Paul went to Corinth and he found a few people who are willing to help him start this church just like we did in Seattle. I got to Seattle two years ago with my family and I think we met four people on our first Sunday here and those four people ended up being the nucleus of this church but then Paul went to the people he thought would be easy pickings. He went to the people who he thought would embrace his message he went to religious people he went to the Jews he went to the Jews and was reasoning with them that Jesus is the Christ and guess what the Jews did they rejected him. They said we don't want any of this you know I've read this text this was sort of the theme text when when Judy and I moved to Seattle because when I get to the city of Seattle I came into the Seattle and I thought people ought to embrace us greatly all the religious people in Seattle because there are not very many churches here that would be happy we're here and so I began meeting with anyone who had meet with me and I'll never forget generally speaking some people did not did not fit this well but generally speaking when I met with us an arch conservative they would say do you know what kind of people live in the city the only way you could start a church in the city would be to sell out and would somehow be to water down the message of the gospel and then I would say oh well that's not very encouraging and so I would go and I would meet with religious liberals you know religious liberals would tell me do you know what kind of people live in the city the only way you could start a church in the city was just just somehow to help them feel accepted and you know how do you start a church when when when a situation like that you see the problem with the religious conservative and the religious liberal is this is for one they have a very low view of the people in the city I think but another thing is they have a very low view of the gospel right you see one believes in only its offense and the other believes only in its mercy but neither one generally speaking believes in its power and the power of the gospel Paul says is the power of salvation for anyone who believes anyone and so how does Paul where is Paul's confidence where you get any kind of confidence to start a church in a place like Corinth or a place like Seattle or a place like San Francisco or New York any of these big liberal urban centers where is the power come from and the answer is easy it comes from God if you look look down at the verses 7 through 10 this is the most beautiful text I think and almost all the New Testament since then then he left there and went to the house of a man called Tidious Justice a worshiper of God whose house was next to the synagogue Christmas the leader of the synagogue believed in the Lord with always household and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing in being baptized and Paul the 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 and he settled there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them

where does the foundation of Paul's confidence that anything is going to happen in the city of Corinth it's a word that none of you many of you don't like and many of you think is it important but it's this word election who was God talking about here he said Paul don't be afraid to start a church in the city for I have many people there well there who are there it wasn't people who are already Christians but it was people with whom God would initiate and Paul's great confidence was that if I go into this city my only job is to tell people about Jesus and it is God who does all of the work and you see many of us say gosh that stuff I don't like talking about that stuff it's not very important but I tell you if you believe in a gospel of grace it is all important it is our only hope that anything will ever happen it is your only hope that your friends neighbors people in the city are actually going to come to know Jesus because it is God who is the one who opens their eyes and that was Paul's great confidence and that's our great confidence I can remember telling this verse to myself over and over and over again because we got to the city there are many days almost every day where I wondered whether it was going to happen or not and so the question is whether we I was going to believe the gospel and now as a church it's whether or not we are going to believe the gospel does God have many people in this city I think he does and so what that means is we get this great privilege of being a part of seeing him draw them unto himself that's the beauty of the gospel that's the power of the gospel now the problem of the gospel the problem of the gospel in a city like Corinth and a city like Seattle is this is that when the gospel goes through and it begins changing people that were formerly very lascivious pagans what kind of church do you end up having a very messy church you see when the gospel really goes through a place and it begins changing people that your church that must necessarily become messy because here people who had all these problems in their lives and then the gospel changes them but guess what they still have problems in their lives I remember making them stake when I became a Christian about 15 years ago I had had had relatively speaking a pretty hard life I think I was raised in a very abusive alcoholic family at all these issues you know I had all these things that I had done wrong and was in trouble for and then I became a Christian I thought that is so beautiful I don't have to deal with any of that ever again and about 10 years later it caught up with me and so the question is can the gospel help during these things and Paul says yes yes because the church is messy does not mean it's bad in fact a messy church is actually a healthy church we're going to see next week what Paul says Paul says to the Corinthians and the next line next week is Paul says I thank God for you they had an infinite number of problems and Paul says I thank God for you in the Galatians church the Galatians were legalists and you know what he says in the Galatians church he doesn't say I thank God he says you guys missed it you don't get it and so the thing we know I want to look at very briefly this morning is the three big problems that the Corinthian church had and and how they are all in the first three verses of this text that Paul is such a masterful writer and the first three verses of this letter you have all of the problems in the Corinthian church addressed so the first problem they had was very simply this it was an authority problem look at verse one Paul called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God and sustenance our brother basically the Corinthians had an authority problem for a number of reasons for one that an authority problem because they suffered from the doctor fox effect do you know what the doctor fox effect is basically the doctor fox effect is this several years ago the University of Virginia did a study and then it was so compelling that they repeated it at the University of Florida because they couldn't believe people would be this gullible and so they repeated the study and the study was this they took an actor and they named him doctor fox and they had him to a presentation on on biotechnology to a bunch of PhDs and a bunch of medical doctors and doctor fox did not know one thing about medicine biology or any or or technology he was just an actor whose job was simply to go out and to do is a lot of double speak and to woo the crowds and so doctor fox went in front of the crowds and he gave his his presentation on biotechnology and he wooed the crowds and after this after the presentation they gave the handouts all of these medical doctors and PhDs experts in the field and they asked them to give Dr. Fox a letter grade on his presentation how it came across and a letter grade on his content almost every person in the room both at the University of Virginia and the University of Florida gave Dr. Fox an A on his presentation it was very good guess what they gave him on content they also gave him an A moral of the story is if someone is slick and persuasive the average human being generally assumes that the content is good so in Corinth what happened is a bunch of slick persuasive teachers had come in and began teaching them sort of doctrines of self-empowerment if you will is almost the the ancient Near Eastern equivalent of Anthony Robbins that you are your own power that you just need to to realize things you just need to gut it out and determine that you're going to be good and you have arrived and you see that ran into other problems because imagine this imagine that you're a new Christian and someone comes into your city and preaches to you and they preach you things like this the God wants you to be rich or they tell you that God God wants you God desires that you be sexually fulfilled no matter what form that takes and then imagine another a very ugly by his own description Jewish man who is not persuasive at all coming in and saying whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa the gospel's not about God making you rich in fact the gospel's about giving the God's not about you being sexually fulfilled by any way you manner the gospel's about purity now if that happened what would you say what would you say to Paul if he came into your city and sort of put the kibosh on all these slick things you were into you would say Paul who do you think you are who are you to tell us to stop doing these things and you know what Paul would say I'll tell you who I am I'm Paul an apostle by the will of God you see that's an incredibly fully packed phrase because what it meant to be an apostle with that you spoke with the very authority of Jesus that Jesus had hand picked you himself and that he gave you all authority to teach in his name and so Paul came in and says I teach with the authority of Jesus these guys might be slick they might be persuasive I'm not slick and I'm not persuasive but I'm the man you see and you must listen to the man and so guess what Paul's authority was not only for the Corinthians but it extends to us as well most people most Christians that have a problem with what the Bible teaches if they say I've got a problem with this or that usually they're talking about something that Paul is teaching and the reason they're talking about something Paul is teaching is because Paul is actually applying to your life what Jesus taught in the Gospels and it's very easy to sort of live out here in this nebulous land of where you have the math right oh I believe in Jesus everything's good but what Paul does is he said now here's what it looks like in your life and if you're a sinner that will necessarily sting sometimes okay so the first thing they had was an authority problem the second thing they had was a morality problem look at verse two verse two Paul says to the church of God which is it called which to the to the church of God which is that current to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus saints by calling with all who in every place call in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ their Lord and our Lord

what was the morality problem it was just this the Paul came into this place where people basically did all manner of of of lasciviousness all manner of simpleness all manner of everything and the apostle Paul comes in and he says you can have a relationship with God through no merit of your own that you don't have to get cleaned up to have a relationship with God what you have to do to have a relationship with God is believe in Jesus that it is by faith alone by grace alone that you can't you can't sort of clean yourself up and be good to have a relationship with God and the Corinthians embraced that but they took it to its farthest extreme and you know what they began to say if I can't do anything to merit my relationship with God then nothing I must do matters and if nothing I do matters I can do anything I want and so they basically went around calling themselves Christians living the exact same lifestyle they had as before and you know what Paul's going to do Paul's going to come in and say no if that's what you think the gospel is then you don't get it because the gospel does not free you in order to sin but the gospel frees you from sin that the gospel frees you from the power of sin so before you were slaves to sin you were in bondage of sin you could not help be lascivious and he says now now you are free to struggle with your sin why because you know that Jesus has embraced you in such a way that he is never ever going to let you go the third problem they had and finally which is simply this the third problem they had an authority problem they had a morality problem but they also had a unity problem if you notice in that same in the same text in verse two he says saints by calling all who in every place call him the name of our Lord Jesus Christ what does Paul do here he's reminding the Corinthian church that they are they're part of something bigger than themselves because the Corinthian church much like our church was a network of community groups or it was a network of house churches and in these house churches what you would have is as the church grew different house churches would begin to be be defined by different things and some house churches would frankly be defined by being upscale and they would exclude the poor some house churches would be defined by spiritual gifts and they would say you know what all the rest of you house churches all the rest of your community groups if you're not speaking in tongues you don't have the spirit and therefore you probably are not even Christians and so we won't even associate with you some community groups some house churches would have been defined what would have been sort of ancient Near Eastern equivalent of feminist issues and other ones would have been chauvinist and Paul comes along and he says you guys don't get it you know it's the same in the city of Seattle the city of Seattle I battle with people all the time who say we want to pull ourselves out and we want to form a special group of artists or we want to form a special group of gay Christians or we want to form a special group of this because the rest of the church doesn't get it the rest of the church doesn't understand the gospel we're so frustrated because the rest of the church is hypocrites the rest of the church simply doesn't get it you know what Paul says to those people Paul says not that it's not the church that doesn't get it you don't get it Paul says if you're life and your community is defined by anything besides the gospel you don't get it he's going to talk about that I'm not going to elaborate on these things today but these are things pegs on which we're going to hang everything else if your community is defined by anything but the gospel you don't get it you know it's very interesting since I've been in the city of Seattle and I saw it in Atlanta too churches will put big banners on the outside of their church right and the banners will often say you know we are welcoming church for gay Christians or they'll say we are welcoming church for families or we are welcoming church for singles you know what a church that is defined by the gospel the banner will say on the outside either implicitly or explicitly the banner will say we are welcoming church to everybody we are welcoming church to everybody think about that let me pray Jesus I thank you that you have seen fit to have many people in this city and I thank you that you have seen fit to draw them here and I pray that even now you would apply the word of your gospel to our hearts and your name we pray all these things amen each week