11/25/2001 

Father we thank you that that is so true, we thank you that there is a promise in Christ that there is in no other. He said in Christ we are righteous because God has given us the righteousness of Jesus Christ upon our faith. We are inheritance with Christ, we are going to receive the same inheritance as he does because we are fellow heirs with him. Father we know that you have given us great and wonderful promises on the basis of our faith, on the basis of the work that Jesus Christ did on the cross. Father we thank you that we could participate in that through nothing good of ourselves but through the very goodness of God. We thank you Father that you are so good, you are so gracious to us and we thank you in Jesus Name. Amen.

Turn to the Book of 1 Corinthians. Remember hearing an account of a fellow who was sent to the south seas, to an island, and he was a shoe salesman. And the shoe company sent this guy out there to sell shoes and he sent word back and said, ‘I am coming home it is no use they don’t wear shoes.’ So they sent another salesman down and he sent word back and said, ‘Send 10,000 pairs of shoes, they don’t wear shoes.’ So which salesman do you want on your team? It is kind of like St. Paul going to Corinth. If you are listening to the New Testament on tape you will be in 1 Corinthians today and probably starting about Chapter 1. We already know about Paul, we talked about him last week. He was a Pharisee, the Roman citizen who was also a Jew and was also the persecutor the church who was converted on the road to Damascus. We learned all that last week so if you weren’t here then you will have to read the Book of Acts to find that out.

But Paul now is the Apostle sent to the Gentiles and he has gone to Athens and spoke with the philosophers there and they rejected the gospel and so he went to the city of Corinth. In fact not only did the philosophers reject the gospel, the Jewish leaders in the synagogues rejected the gospel of Christ because you see to them Paul was preaching a false God. Because they did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. Paul said, ‘No, he is the one that was prophesied in the Old Testament and you will see all the prophesies come true at Christ, so he is the Jewish Messiah. They disagreed with him, in fact they disagreed so vehemently that they kicked him out of the synagogues, tried to stone him, took him up on charges before the magistrates and all kinds of things to try to do away with him. Well, in Athens, he said finally, ok you guys I have had enough with my people the Jews I believe God is going to send me, he is sending me to the Gentiles. I will pioneer the message to the Gentiles and so Corinth was the first church, the first place that he went, that was primarily, in fact almost exclusively, Gentile even though there were, I am sure, some Jews there. So we know a little bit about Paul already.

We need to understand when you read the Book of Corinthians, first and second Corinthians, you need to understand Corinth. Now Corinth was a city with three seaports. It was on the isthmus of Corinth, which was right near Athens but it was a little place that came to an almost non existent land bridge between the great sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Adriatic Sea which was up towards Italy. There was a real small piece of land there and instead of sailing the two hundred miles around the bottom which was real difficult sailing voyage around the bottom of that almost island, peninsula, became very dangerous. They actually began to pull ships across on rollers, on wheels and rollers, they would pull it across the land from the Great Sea, the Mediterranean Sea to the Adriatic Sea rather than take the two hundred miles around it. So Corinth was the city that was built at that place. There were seaports there, three of them, in the city plus the isthmus of Corinth where they pulled the ships across. So you could see that there would be a very cosmopolitan city. It had people from all different nations, all different backgrounds, all different ethnic groups there. Being it was a great important Greek city up until about, sometime before Christ’s birth the Roman’s destroyed it. Then a little while after Christ’s death they rebuilt it and it became a very important Roman city. It was considered important for a number of reasons, one for its seaport status but also because it was the home of the statue and the temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. An 1800 foot pentacle in the city and had a temple up there and a 1000 temple prostitutes. That was part of the worship was to spend time with prostitutes. So you can understand that Corinth became known as a city of sin. In fact, people vacationed there but they vacationed there, vacationing from morality. Because they went there to fornicate, to commit adultery, to do things that were ungodly. So the whole city became known as the city of sin. In fact, if you acted in such a sinful manner they would say your acting like a Corinthian. Because it had such a reputation for being such a sinful place. There were about 700,000 people there in Paul’s day. Two thirds of which were slaves. So it was a very strange city in our perception of what a city would be like. But if you could compare it with a lot of our modern day cities if might compare pretty closely because the very cosmopolitan, very in the know, very worldly, wise city, very sophisticated of its day.

So Paul comes in with a message that is not terribly sophisticated. And he is writing to a church, by the way, he established a church there, it took about 18 months, but he established a church there in Corinth, in a city that had no regard whatsoever for real spiritual things of God. They only had regard for essential things of there own worship and so he was coming to a place that had no spiritual shoes in a sense. But instead of saying, ‘No use going there they don’t even believe in God.’ He said, hey there is a real opportunity there because they don’t believe in God yet. So he went there preaching a simple gospel because it was in such need there. Like many of our cities of the day. He met some resistance there and he also began to understand the complexities of a city that was so full of sin. The church is to effect the world but after awhile the world began to affect this church. The Corinthian church became one that had a name for being quite worldly, quite carnal as Paul puts it in the third chapter of 1 Corinthians. So he writes back this letter to the church of Corinth. He had been there, he had established a church and he is away now for some time and he writes back to them and is going to actually visit them. And so he is writing ahead of his visit. He had gotten word of some divisions there, he had gotten word of all kinds of problems. In fact, if you read this letter you will find that he addresses a ton of problems. You will find people were led by flesh, their sinful desires rather than Christ. Pride, arrogance, he’ll discuss tolerance of blatant sin, he’ll talk about divorce and re-marriage, and worship and drunkenness at communion, the order of worship services, how to keep order within the worship service, the place of women in church, and he does say there is a place so that is good. Question of death and resurrection and spiritual gifts and all kinds of things and each one of these addresses as a problem. Because the problem is existent within the church. So he is writing to remedy the problem.

Many people read some of these passages and say, ‘Ok that applies directly to us, well sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t because if we have a problem with it some of those instructions apply but some of those were pretty much written for the church there because they were in such trouble. But the principles all apply. He addresses three principles of life for himself. I call them the principle of proximity, he says be careful what you spend time with, those you spend time with you tend to become like. He talks about the principle of profitability, he says I can do all things but I won’t do anything that is not profitable. He talks about the principle of mastery, he says I can do most things but I won’t let anything master me. And he says I will be careful that I don’t do something that causes somebody to stumble. So he talks about how he orders is his life around certain principles, certain godly principles because the people of Corinth really needed that kind of instruction, as do we all.

In the first Chapter of 1 Corinthians, lets read it together it says, ’Paul called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother,’ he is obviously a co-worker. And it probably the fellow who is writing this down for Paul at this point because that is what we understand that Paul’s eyes began to be quite bad later in life and it is quite likely that Sosthenes actually may have penned this letter for him. ‘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 upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, so that you are not lacking in any gift, eagerly awaiting 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.’

Understand even though the church was full of problems, they were also full of Christ. They really did have a true faith in Christ, they had the gifts that were present, they had energy in Christ. Some of there energy was dissipated in the wrong directions and Paul wanted to corral that and put it back in place but he has no doubt that they truly are doing their best to follow Christ in many ways. So in the other says not so true. Then he addresses one of the two issues he talks about in the first chapter here.

‘Now I exhort you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you, but you be made complete in this 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 Apollo,”,” and “I of Cephas,” and “I of Christ.” Apollos is one of those who helped to establish the church and doctrine at Corinth after Paul’s time. ‘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, that no man should 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, that the cross of Christ should not be made void.’

Just a little side note, there are many who believe that baptism plays a part in your conversion. It doesn’t, in fact, Paul says I didn’t come to baptize but the preach the gospel. The gospel is saving faith that Jesus Christ, baptism is a symbolic act following that. If Paul believed that baptism was part of salvation, he obviously would have baptized a few more than this. So he says, ‘I didn’t come to baptize just give the symbol of salvation, I came to bring the real thing, the gospel of Christ. That the cross of Christ would not be made void. Because you if add on something besides the faith of Jesus Christ and the cross, then it is something else that saves you. Or it’s watered down, becomes equal to something else. There are some who believe that you are saved in Christ but then you have to be baptized to complete that salvation. Well, then you are not really saved of Christ, are you? You are saved by Christ and your own works. That is not how it works. You are saved by Christ alone.

‘For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” ‘Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs, and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things to the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, that no man should boast before God. But by His doing you are in Christ, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD.” And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.’

So he addresses two issues, he addresses the divisions that were within the church and he addresses that in Chapter three and tells them how they need to work on that and chastise them for that and then he talks about the simple message of the gospel of Christ. The simple gospel message of Christ and that is what I would like to spend time on today.

You are all aware of the fact, the other issues, the divisions, that were present within the church. We as he says in II Corinthians, Chapter 5, we are the ministers of reconciliation. That is what our works is to do. We are the ones, in fact like Ford used to say, that is job one. We are to minister reconciliation among people to Christ. We are to be reconciled with each other and to Christ. And so he says, ‘divisions must not take place within the church.’ They must not. Says in Chapter 3, they are indicative of the carnality of the members, if there are divisions arising. There are ways to deal with division, there are ways to deal with hurt feelings, there are ways with people who have offended us. But the way is not to divide and to begin to cause division within the church. In fact as he says in Chapter 3, ‘Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys a temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.’ He is talking here about the church not just the individual. So he says, we must not allow division and problems to arise in the church that causes problems within the church. In fact he tells us in Titus, ‘To reject a factious person after the first and second warnings.” Factiousness means causing divisions within the body. You can not do that. That can not be allowed, in fact, the person who causes division warn them once, if it continues warn them again, after that it is a savage practice, you have got to get them out of here. He says reject them completely if they continue to be factious within the church. So it is a very, very big issue and so he addresses it very carefully and very clearly here in Chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians and later on. Because it obviously was a problem within more than one church. And I have seen obviously you have seen it to in churches around where you have lived. Divisions are not uncommon within churches.

But he addresses the very simplicity of the message of Christ. That is where we want to spend time on today. How many of you find it easy and fearless and painless to set down with a friend of yours and explain the gospel of Christ? Not many, one or two. Ok, it is not that easy. Do you know why? Cause you are an evangelist like I am and I am one like Paul. Notice what he says in Chapter 2, Verse 3, ‘I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.’ That is normal. That is normal and so if we are weak and afraid and tremble that means we don’t have to share our faith, right? That does not mean that. Just because we are weak and fearful and trembling means nothing. It just means we are weak, fearful and trembling. And you are just like everybody else.

The problem is, I believe, we tend to think that we need to persuade a person to believe. Now Paul did persuade, he was persuasive. In fact it says in Acts Chapter 18 when he was in Athens, he persuaded them in the synagogues regularly. He tried to persuade them to believe because you see the philosophers in Athens had all kinds of arguments about everything. They were philosophers, philosophers don’t like to let anybody have the final answer. And so they would always raise objections so Paul was using his abilities to persuade and to convince and to argue and the philosophize to convince them that Jesus Christ is the way to salvation. Well, they rejected that because anybody you can raise final objection that you can’t answer, they think they won the argument and they don’t have to believe what you believe. It is like little kids, a had our grandson stayed over night with us last night and we were convincing him that it was going to be time to go to bed when we got to our house. But of course there was some answers to that, that he had which made it so it wasn’t time to go to bed and we knew it was. So it was time to go to bed no matter what. You can raise all the objections you want and the truth is still the truth. But a person who thinks they have the final objection you can’t answer, they believe they have a reason not to believe what you just told them. And so they use there ability to reason and to think and to argue and convince themselves that they don’t have to believe what you say they should believe. So Paul says, I came to you, to Corinth, I know nothing. I am not coming with any persuasive speech, I am not going to convince you of anything. I am just going to tell you the simple truth of the simple gospel, in a simple way from a simple man. If you want to believe that is wonderful! If you don’t believe that is not so wonderful but I am not going to try to persuade you and force you to believe. I am going to give you the simple gospel message. Notice what he says in Verse 18 of Chapter 1, ‘For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.’ If you try to explain how the Holy Spirit works in your life and how he has brought you to Christ and you have come to faith in Christ and the changes have taken place in you, then nobody would believe other than seeing it and experiencing it. They would probably look at you and say, there is something wrong with you. I can’t understand that, that can not happen. But once they have experienced it, they understand it. That is they way it is with a lot of things. You can explain something to somebody but til you have been there you don’t understand. So he says, the message of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness. Because it doesn’t make sense to them.

He says, the Jews seek for a sign. That was typically there way, they sought for signs from heaven, they want some miraculous act of God to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah and Jesus said you are not going to get anymore signs, you have the sign of Moses and Jonah and all these things that took place in your past and you don’t need anymore.

The Greeks or the Gentiles sought for philosophy. They said we need a reason. We need something that convinces us. And that is going to have to be your convincing us, persuading us. Says they seek wisdom. To them it is foolishness, to the Jews, there is a stumbling block because they are not getting what they think they need to prove he is the Messiah. He said that is ok. I’ll will just tell you simply. The simple gospel message is this. That we have sinned, and we have no remedy for sin, we can not remove the sin that we have committed. We may be able to ask the person forgiveness for our sins but that does not deal with the fact that we sinned against God by committing the sin against them. If I lie to you, I could say would you forgive me for lying? But that does not fix the fact that I lied and that is contrary to God’s nature. So somewhere along the line somebody has to pay for our sins. Somebody has to do away with our sin. And God said the soul that sins must die. And the only covering for sin is the shedding of blood, that was established in the very beginning. And so he says the only way your sins are forgiven is by the death of somebody in your place or your death. If we pay for our sins we pay forever. But if Christ pays for our sin and we accept him as our Savior we have eternal life. It really is simply that. There is a whole lot more doctrine and there are a whole lot more you could learn over time, there are a whole lot more nuances you can understand. Why this and why that and get the answers for these. But simply put we are lost without Christ. We will be punished in hell if we do not accept Jesus Christ as the sacrifice in our place, as our Savior. So he said when I say that the Jews say we need to see a sign that proves this is true. The Greeks say, Boy that doesn’t make sense at all. How can you explain that? You can’t explain that, you know why? Chapter 2 look what it says in the first few verses. ‘I did not come to you with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.’ Says that is all I am going to tell you, that is all I know. Is that Jesus Christ was crucified in our place and we accept him as our Savior and that is it. That is the simple gospel. We acknowledge our sin, confess our sin, repent of it, turn away from it and ask God’s forgiveness and in Christ he forgives us. So he says in Verse 3, ‘I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling.’ Do you know why? For one thing it is pretty intimidating place.

I am a small town boy now, ok, I grew up in Flint, which is way on the outskirts actually, we would go hunting in our back yard, so we weren’t in town. We grew up on the outskirts of Flint and had a great upbringing there. Lived in the big town of Huntington, which is about 18 - 19,000, about the size of Mt. Pleasant or so, for a couple of years while we were going to school and then we moved out in the country to our first pastor was way out in the country. We couldn’t see our neighbors from where we were and now we are about the same kind of conditions, way out in the country, and we love it. My sister and her daughter were up, my sister has a daughter who is about 12, seventh grade, and she loves horses and so she arranges to get up here when she can to see our horses and she just likes to go out there and just smell them and pet them. Something I don’t understand, but she does. So she and my sister were there and they slept in cause they played games at my sister’s until way in the night on Thanksgiving night. I go to bed earlier. And so I go home but they stay up almost all night and then they home and sleep almost all morning. Kate and I were gone that morning while they were sleeping and we came back and my sister, Patsy said, “Kelsey and I were looking out over the back porch through the field over here and you can see where the deer go around and you can see, just beautiful out here, nice and quiet. And she said, ‘Kelsey you know I could live out here.’ She is from Lansing, Grand Ledge right now. Kelsey says, “Well, dah. It’s like couldn’t anybody.’ Well, my brother-in-law couldn’t he has got to be in the thick of things. But I don’t like the city. I can go there and do the things I need to do there. When I drive in the city I don’t like it. I like to get back out here. Drivers training I had to drive in the big city of Flint all the time, I know how to drive in the city that is no big deal. I don’t like being there. I would be intimidated by being in the city, I think. We have a friend, one of our pastors in Warrendale, which is Warren, Detroit. They have locks on there doors, bars on the windows and in fact, one of our pastors who grew up in that church said one of the things that he experienced when he was a kid. He and a bunch of his friends were walking down the street, he was about 10 years old, and one of his buddies pushed on the kids in front of a car and he was killed right there. He said that is really not that unusual in inner city Detroit. He said some of those things happen and that was just part of my upbringing. He said they saw drugs, they saw drug dealers, they saw drug accidents and incidents and drive-by’s and all kinds of stuff. That is just part of life there in the big city. A drive by shooting out here would mean somebody is poaching a deer. But down there it is somebody shooting each other that is a whole different world.

I don’t know what Paul would be like stepping into the city of Corinth, known as sin city, saying my work is to go in there and convince them that they need to believe in Jesus Christ. That doesn’t make any sense to them? Man, and you think it is intimidating and so do I to talk to your next door neighbor who is not from Corinth. Well Paul says, ‘ I came to you in fear, in trembling and weakness, but my message was simple. Simple as could be. You need to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, you need to turn away from your sin, and follow Christ, otherwise you are lost. Simple message from a simple guy made in a simple way. All we have to do is simply believe. Well that is simple enough, it is just not easy. It is not easy because Jesus said those who don’t come to Christ, don’t come to him because their deeds are evil. People prefer their sin over Christ so, therefore, they will disregard Christ because they want to keep sinning. That is the reason people reject Christ. It is not because they can’t believe, they can’t understand, it is because they prefer to keep the way of life they have been living. That is what Jesus says, not my words. And so when a person rejects Christ they are not rejecting necessarily the fact that they can believe or not believe, they are saying no I prefer to keep doing what I am doing and I know if I accepted Christ I would have to quit doing some things. Well, the Corinthians had come to faith in Christ and they were trying to mix it with the world and it wasn’t working. So Paul says, No, you can not do that. But for our sake. What I would like you to do is this. Paul says, ‘Pray for me that the Lord would open windows or doors of opportunity that I may speak forth the message in a way that I ought to speak. Seasoned as it were with salt so that I might bring grace for those that hear’. So I would like to ask you in fear, in trembling and much weakness, or weakness, fear and much trembling if you would say God, if you will open the door and prepare the person’s heart I will be brave enough to simply say the gospel is this. Simply that we are lost without Christ, we can only be saved in Christ, and so you do need to believe. God gives no other opening for heaven except that. That is a plan that God made from the foundation of the world and we are his only spokesmen. We are his only spokesmen so ask God to give you an opening with your friend, with your co-worker, and also ask God to change our heart because he says I don’t want people to believe on the basis of my words, I want them to believe upon the power of God. That means a big word, I like the word though, it is called prevenient grace. Prevenient grace means God works ahead of you. God goes before you and prepares a heart, when you give the simple gospel message, they say I have been waiting to hear that. Thanks for telling me. Ask God to prepare the heart before you get there and the simple message can be accepted. You don’t want them to reject you if they are going to reject the message. So just state it simply. Here is what the word of God says, it is simple. We are lost, we can only be found in Christ. So therefore, we have to acknowledge our sins, repent of it, ask God’s forgiveness then we can be saved. Then we just live our life for Christ the rest of our life. That is all there is to it. It’s simple. Sort a complex but simple. So ask God for opportunities, and say God show me somebody that I can talk to. You prepare their heart, open the door so I am not forcing my way in, then just let me have the courage to speak what I ought to say. Simply.

Let’s pray,

Father we thank you that the gospel message is truly simple. We are lost, we can be found. The parables that Jesus told in Luke, he says there is a women who lost a coin, she searched till she found it. There was a man who lost his sheep, he searched til he found it. There was a father who lost a son who finally came home. The son finally came home. So we are lost until we are found. We are only found in Christ. It is a simple message. There is nothing to it. But Father I pray that you would help us to have opportunities and prepare the way before us that we might share simply the simple message in a simple way that people might simply come to Christ.
In Jesus Name, Amen.

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