1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses 10 through 17 hear the word of God. I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this. One of you says, I follow Paul, another, I follow a palace, another, I follow a seeker, but still another, I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Christmas and gas. So no one can say that you were baptized into my name. Yes, I also baptized the household of Staphonus. Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. All men are like grass and all their glorious, like the flowers of the field. The grass, withers, and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands for ever, amen. The philosopher, Schopenhauer, wants to describe humanity as the collection of porcupines on the cold winter's night. They were cold and we weren't warm and we wanted to get close to each other, but the closer we get, the more we heard each other, is almost if inevitable, convoluted, insoluble conflict that has been fallen humanity. Certainly, when you look in the Bible, even in the life of the church, what you find is strife among people, and a continual battle that we might have peace and harmony. Does that sound like an oxymoron to you, a battle that we might have peace, yes, indeed? That's what we find in the life of humanity and in the life of the church. Those of you who are in business or professional life or if you're in a working group of some sort or an educational environment, you know that 75% of the failures and successes in your place of employment have to do with human relationships, not with expertise or professional competence. It has to do with getting along with people, it's true all over the world. And when you come into the church, I would say that outside of my own private devotional life where I'm reading the Bible and praying, as soon as I move into public ministry with people, 90% of my time has to do with relationships. 10%, maybe as little as 5% has to do with someone saying, I've got a theological question for you. Of course, you've noticed, if you've ever asked, I go, oh, great, this is the interesting. I love theological and biblical questions. Most of the time, what I had to do with is human relationships. Now, I'm not complaining. I'm simply describing what life is like in all of your neighborhoods and all of your work, but my life is like, as a full-time minister of the gospel in the Church of Jesus Christ, it has to do with relationships. Now, when you look at the Corinthian church, you find the same thing, isn't it interesting as you assess this church, which from any objective observer is a total disaster of a church? You have people who are in sexual immorality and bragging about it. You have people who are litigating each other, going before the secular courts instead of going for reconciliation in the Church. You have marriages that are following apart, people who are marrying unbelievers. You have people judging each other on things that are not moral issues and looking down their nose at each other. You have people having communion and coming drunk to the Lord's table and not providing for the poor. You have people who are boasting in their spiritual gifts instead of using them for other people's edification. And you have the resurrection being taught that it already happened and there's no bodily resurrection to come. Now, that's a disaster of a church. Well, if you had these problems before you, messengers had come to you to say, this is what's happening in that church over there that you planted. Where would you start? Well, you probably start with the greatest organizing principle and then work everything else out. What would it be? Isn't it interesting? The Apostle starts with human relationships. He starts with the divisions and the quarreling and the dissension that was in the church. That's the thing to him to be the starting point and he spends the first four chapters on it. Now, there are some important theological reasons why he does that. We'll see it in the text, but that's where he starts because he had heard from Chloe's household. We don't know if Chloe lived in Corinth or lived in Ephesus. It could have been an Ephesian household that went to Corinth and observed these things and came back and battled on them. Or it could have been a Corinthian household, Chloe's household that then reported to the Apostle while he was in Ephesus where from when he wrote this letter. We don't know. But he had this message from Chloe and then he had a letter to ask certain other questions. This is what he starts with, human relationships. And that reminds us, dear friends, of how important this is, not just for your success or our church's success, so to speak, but for our pleasure in the eyes of God. This is where he starts. If you take Ephesians, for example, the letter that Paul wrote to the Christians in Ephesus in this surrounding area, you will remember, perhaps, that of those six chapters. The first three are largely doctrinal and the latter three are largely practical. Now, neither are completely one or the other, but largely that way. When you begin with chapter four, you're entering into the part that's largely practical. What's the first issue? I plead with you to live in unity with each other and to promote the peace. The Apostle starts. There's got lots of problems in Ephesus too. It's his first issue that he takes up because it is so vital to the mission of the church. We cannot do our mission and we cannot glorify God without unity in relationships. Now in this text before us, in the few minutes we have, I want you to notice three major points that are asserted. In verse 10, the first verse of our text, the Apostle is saying that we must embrace the ideal. In verses 11 and 12, he's saying we must face reality. And in verses 13 through 17, he is basically teaching us that we must apply the only remedy. So embrace the ideal, face the real, and apply the remedy. Verse 10, he pleads with us. He urges us. He appeals. He's using his apostolic appeal to say to us, I'm begging you that there may be a unity of speech among you because literally he says, where he says, all of you agree, he's saying say the same thing. How does he mean that we say the same thing about everything? We all like the same color carpet, or we all like the same type of seat. So we all like the same kind of music. We all like the same style, lifestyle, or curse, or drive. No, certainly not. He's saying in things revealed by God, that isn't things in the Bible, there should be one voice coming from the church. For example, in our denominational motto, here's what we said, in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity. In essentials unity, what is an essential, anything in the book, anything in the Bible is an essential, God wouldn't put it there, but it's not essential, it's of the essence of Himself. So we have unity on the things in the book. The other things, stylistic things, preferences, all of that stuff folks, it's all liberty. We can all have our different opinions, but we have one mouth, one voice, one heart, on the things that God cares about. For example, Paul says to the Philippians, he says, we must be contending with this world as one man for the gospel. So as one person, we rise up and contend for the gospel in the world in which we live, and you can't do that if you're arguing with each other. Lord Nelson, the British officer, was on a ship in Trafalgar, and he had two officers on the ship that were arguing with each other. He put his arms around both of them, and he said, gentlemen, out there is the enemy. Sometimes, we need to be reminded, we have an enemy, but it is not ourselves. So the first thing we must do, says the apostle, is to embrace the ideal standard that God gives us. Now, in most of your working places, perhaps in some of your families, you know, we have dysfunctions. You know what that is? Some people, you just can't, you just can't get along with them, no matter what you do. And we learn to accept a certain level of mediocrity. If you didn't, you'd probably go crazy. And we come into the church with the same mentality, who will just be the best church we can be, and we say things like, well, you know, we've got some problems that we're not as bad as old so-and-so church down the street, you know, or this is a better church than the one I came to. I tell you that, or we say, well, it's probably better than my working place, or we say all kinds of things. So try to make ourselves look better than we really are. What the apostle is saying, you say, I'm not expecting you to be better than the Athenians, I'm not asking you to be better than the Flippians, I'm asking you to be perfect. That is the standard in the church. If you'll see what it means to agree together, you'll see, first of all, no divisions, no renting, no tearing, no divisions, and secondly, perfectly united. So negatively, no divisions, positively, perfectly knit together, literally the word means knit together. We read in the Psalms a few moments ago how we were knit together, my mother's womb, knit together by the hand of God, and how closely were you knit together? Look at your human body and say, that's how closely he means knit together. So we knit, come together, get knitted together, and that's what he wants to do perfectly. He said, well, we're not going to make perfection till we get to heaven. I know that. The apostle knows that. Jesus knows that, but the standard abides because Christ is the same yesterday, today, forever, and Christ lives in this sinful church. He lives here and he's perfect. This will the standard must always be perfection. You say, well, that just let wears me out. Well, have you ever heard of grace? That you're constantly living in forgiveness for falling short of a perfect standard. That's what it means to live the Christian life, but we don't lower the standard to make ourselves feel better. That's what the world is doing. It will constantly redefine, redefine deviancy, and it will define it downwards, as Patrick Moynihan said. We'll always define the standard lower. When we want to have higher SAT scores, we just lower the standards, and the scores go up. And that's exactly what we do in our moral life, but the church must never do that because we have a revealed, absolute standard, and he says, stick to the standard, embrace it and say that I refuse to be content with the Christian fellowship that I enjoy unless it is perfectly united. Now, that has some implications for every single one of us, that nobody should get lazy or complacent or self-satisfied because we're better than we used to be or better than somebody else. We've been given a standard here, perfectly united. Now, secondly, we not only embrace what the Bible reveals, the better standard, but we embrace the reality that we live in. We confront reality, we address it, we acknowledge it. And in verse 11, he says, now, brother, I've got to tell you, I've got some news here. I've been hearing things about you, and here's what I've heard, that there are quarrels among you, that you're fighting with each other, you're arguing with each other over things that really don't matter. What is going on here? And he says, here's what's going here, what a hear is going on, you're taking up sides. Some of you are saying, well, I think I'm going to be a sandy island. I can't imagine such a thing, but so now I'll be a run-ite, I'll be a rocky-ite. I like to wait Chuck Jacob for each of these helic ones. I think I'll be a Chuck Jacobite, that one actually sounds better. But these people were dividing up because Peter had a certain emphasis, probably on the moral law. People had an emphasis, it was probably on liberty from the non-essentials and things that aren't revealed. And Apollo's had an emphasis, and frankly, it was probably great eloquence. He was a rhetorician of the first order. And he could compare with the philosophers who are preaching on the street corners with fabulous eloquence and elegance, and Apollo's seemed to be about the only spokesman in the church hat at that time who could stand in their shoes and give them a good run for their money. And they were saying, no one is going to say out there. But in our church, we have an in-elegant speaker, and I'm going to follow a policy. And in some who are the worst of all, said, well, only we are the real Christ followers. We're the Christ people. The Apostle says, that's what I hear is going on among you. You're taking up sides based on personalities. And do you realize that is what happens in any social group? We think about it. We're all tempted to it. We create parties. I'm not against political parties. I'm not against social parties. I'm not against all kinds of parties unless they wage war with the church in the gospel. And here's one that does. This past week, I had the delight of going to the battlefield of Shiloh, and I have to admit, having gone there, all my southerners just started to come out. And I start to think, you know, I wish we'd crushed Grants or Hermann right there. You know, we had our chance. And I, all the rationale for being a southerner, you know, comes out. And we don't have time to talk about it. But that's the very thing that gets completely broken down when you come into the church. Some of us prefer our race over another. In fact, there's not a person here who doesn't prefer his or her race over another. Today is also race relations Sunday. And here we go. We're going to pick our leaders, pick our race, pick our culture. Some of us prefer to deal with people who have a lot of money. Some of us prefer to deal with the poor. Probably we do. It's just easier. We all have our preferences, and sometimes we get real caddy about the other group. And what the apostle says is, that's the antithesis of Christian unity in the church. We're to be demonstrating the gospel. We're to show the world so that you could leave here and take some common principles from the church and apply it in your business and apply it in your professional group and apply it in your school. That's the way it's supposed to work. We're to be the example for the rest of the community. So he says, let's face what we have, and you and I must face what we have. Then thirdly, in verses 13 through 17, we'll close with this section. We must not only embrace the ideal standard and face the reality that's in front of us, whatever it is, but thirdly, we must apply the remedy radically to where we are. Now here's what the apostle is saying. He's faced with saying, let's think about this from a theological point of view. Okay. So he says, you're following me, the apostle Paul. Why are you doing that? Did I die for you? Do you realize you have one to be devoted and the reason is he put himself in your place and died for your eternal life? Did I do that for you? And then he takes them to the sacraments because some of them were bragging that, well, you know, Peter baptized me, a Paulist baptized me. The Paul says, well, to begin with, I only baptized those who were first in the church. Christmas was the synagogue ruler. I baptized him. Gaeus was a key early believer. I baptized him. He said, oh, yes. Stephanas, he lives in a cave at the same province. He wasn't. It appears that he may not have been in Corinth, but he was in the same cave in province. Now I did baptize him in his household and I did that. I don't remember if I baptized anybody else, but I intentionally didn't baptize him so that through the sacraments, they wouldn't attach themselves to a person. He said, the remedy is to realize that you cannot have a party spirit and be a pantech to a human leader with ultimate devotion and also be attached to Christ. Now notice two ways in which the apostle deals with him. First of all, he divests himself of glory. And you should always expect your leaders to do that because if you do not do that, you then make yourself a personality cult or the center of a personality cult. And you are trying to get other people to be devoted to you personally in your leadership. It doesn't matter whether it's a Sunday school or a home Bible study or a small group or as an elder or a deacon or a staff person, all of us are to divest ourselves as the apostles say. He first of all says, remember, I did not die for you. And he says clearly that I didn't baptize any of you. You're not devoted to me in that sense either. So the apostle does that in two ways. First of all, he shows in his personal ministry he's not building personal loyalties and devotion. And secondly, in his public ministry, he says, I'm not the most eloquent. And he says furthermore, let me tell you something, I'm not trying to be the most eloquent because I do not want your church attendance or your Christian experience or your overall Christian life to be a reaction to great speaking. I want to proclaim Christ crucified so that your whole life is a response to him and what he's done for you. So you first must divest yourself. And secondly, you must promote Christ and him alone and crucify. He says, look in verse 17, that he did not send me to baptize. He didn't send me to create his personal loyalties. And there's nothing against baptism. The apostles were commanded to baptize, but the apostle says in my case, I intentionally avoided it so that there wouldn't be this unhealthy personal connection. But to preach the gospel and not with words of human wisdom, not to try to charm you or to woo you or to manipulate you, not with that kind of thing, less the cross of Christ being of his power. He's saying that unless we divest ourselves and exalt Christ, the cross loses its power. And the power becomes human power, political power, economic power. And when you put your faith in those powers, you have no spiritual power. I told the early service this morning that I can give you a personal example of how this has worked out for me here as second-price material. Five years ago, I came here. And for those of you who are new, I have succeeded a man who was senior minister, who is brilliant, very fine. Theologian, church historian, wonderful preacher and teacher. Well anybody in the right mind would be concerned about trying to lead the people, have been passed by someone of that caliber. But you know what? I found, obviously you all recognize those gifts and dig to it too, if you know them. But I heard several of you say, you know, I thought when Dick was here, I could just never follow any other senior minister. But Sandy, you're okay. You know, we'll accept you and you have. And you do. It's not just in my ministry, but in every other ministry. I see that happening. Now let me tell you why that happens. It's by the grace of God. But I'll start with Dick. It takes men and women who are in leadership positions who constantly direct you to Jesus Christ and constantly remind you he is your Lord and he is the head of the church. And then it takes the spirit of that within the church, people who are saying, I'm devoted to Christ and I'm not conditioning my discipleship on anybody. And that's so important in our own day when we find so many of our leaders disappointing us. Where's our faith? It's in Christ and Paul cultivated that. And our staff must cultivate that. You must cultivate that in your leadership and in your fellowship is Christ alone. That's where he's in the Apostle said in 2 Corinthians 4, and we could summarize this whole argument with this verse in chapter 4 verse 5 of 2 Corinthians. He said, we preach not ourselves. That's the first point. But Jesus Christ as Lord, that's the second point. And furthermore, thirdly, ourselves as your servants for his sake. So you want to know what to think of us? We're slaves. Preachers are slaves and servants. So I haven't noticed anyone who's looking for servants to base your whole life on you. Don't do it in the church either. So the Apostle starts here. Why does he start with human relations? I want to close with this point, and it's a thrust of the whole matter. You forget everything else, remember this. The reason he starts here with the quarreling and descendants is because those things were happening, not because people were socially challenged, relationally handicapped, which some of us may be. That was not the problem. The problem was lack of belief in the gospel. And the gospel is at the core of the church and the remedy for every problem, racism, sexism, classism, nationalism. The gospel is the answer to all of it. And therefore, this dispute takes us immediately to the gospel. So in your life, dear friends, if you are promoting party spirit, if you are following party spirit, it comes from lack of faith in the gospel. Christ crucified. You have another devotion besides Him. On the other hand, if you find your life to be part of the remedy, where the walls are being broken down, and people are loving each other, let me tell you why. Christ crucified lives in you. The gospel is living in you and being adorned by you. That's the reason that this is so vital for us. Wherever there is distinction, there's lack of faith. Wherever there is peace of Christ, there's real belief in Him. Let us be the ones who set the example in our world and promote His kingdom here and everywhere of God. Gracious God, we thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ and for the blessed tie that binds our hearts together. We pray that we may more and more experience this through the years as we know quarreling and dissentions and strife, and we experience it, and we confront it honestly in our own family. We pray that we may consistently apply the one remedy that you have given to us. Jesus Christ crucified for us who receives all of our devotion and all of our praise.