Amen.
Good evening, everyone. So I'll be introducing 1 Corinthians.
Tonight. Ray asked me if I could provide a couple of maps and I thought, you know, that would be a good idea. So I've got I've got two maps.
That I found on the internet. Didn't take long. They both did what I needed them to do.
But I want to start with that so that we can Turn off the screen because we're not going to need it for the whole I don't put together slideshows. I should, but I'm not good at putting together slideshows.
So if we can look at the map. We can get a sense of where Corinth is and that can help us some in understanding what's going on both with the geography, why Corinth is important.
And also some of the timing of what's going on with what's going on with Paul's writing the Corinthian letters.
I guess I'm going to have to go up there. Sorry, Zoom, I won't be… on screen.
But… Oh, I'm not going to be audible either. I should just point. All right.
Ooh, a laser. And just describe things?
My mouse. All this high tech. Can I get there?
Now you see what my students at school see every time I try to use technology.
All right, here we go. I didn't unplug it. I've done that before.
All right. So Corinth is right here. On an isthmus from, this is all land. It looks like there's water here and this is an island. This is not an island.
There's land that goes all the way across. It's a very narrow land bridge. Actually, I can show that to you. We can go back and forth.
So here is that land bridge. That goes from the mainland Up here, across the land bridge to this I guess it's basically a peninsula technically. But what looks like an island And there's a very narrow land bridge.
On this map. You've got a… a canal, you see a blue line, is it visibly blue from out there? Okay, so there's a blue line running there. That's a canal.
It's a canal that I think was cut in the 18th century, maybe in the 19th century.
It's a canal that the people who were running Corinth had been wanting to cut For centuries.
But it was for… engineering reasons beyond my ability to know. It was just really difficult.
Having to do with the geology. But it's a really narrow spot.
Where there was already commerce going across So kind of the same sorts of reasons that we wanted to cut a Panama Canal It's a narrow spot that would save you a long trip.
This doesn't save you as long of a trip As the Panama Canal does.
But even before there was a canal cut. There was a motivation to sail up in here and unload your cargo from your ships.
Have it carried across the handful of miles And it's not a long walk. I didn't write down how many miles it is, but it's short.
And then load it onto ships on the other side. The trip around here is not… anywhere near like going around South America.
But particularly in winter. These waters are really, really treacherous.
You may remember Paul being shricked on one of his journeys.
And having to spend the winter at Malta, if it's Malta exactly, which isn't totally assured. But that was after he's leaving Crete And he's sailing through these waters in winter And shortly after leaving Crete, Paul and the ship that he's on
Encounter crazy storms The ship is destroyed and they, or the ship isn't destroyed but But then they drift for, I think for two weeks.
So understandably. Sailors, merchants.
People shipping stuff, wanted to avoid any chance of that. And cutting across right here at the narrowest part of that isthmus was A popular thing to do.
So this Corinth is modern Corinth. Down here. Is the old Corinth. This is the area where Paul would have known Corinth to be.
And the city of Corinth pretty much controlled both of these ports.
Both places where the ships would come in. To load up and where the ships were coming in to unload. I guess it actually goes both directions, but whatever.
The city of Corinth. Is controlling and operating both of those. It's a a reasonably short walking commute.
From Corinth to either of them. And so they were in charge of both of those, which made Corinth a pretty profitable and prosperous location.
Which is part of why… Paul would have wanted to establish a church there.
It's a place where there's a lot of coming and going.
There are a lot of people there. And another thing that I don't know if the geography has to do with this, probably.
But another thing that's going on in Corinth that attracts Paul to Corinth is that it has a fairly large Jewish population.
Do I need anything else? Well, I'll just leave the maps here.
And if I want to refer to anything else. I can do that.
More likely that one. All right. So you can also see Corinth within the context of Greece.
This is Greece, Macedonia up here. Asia Minor over in this area. And for some reason.
Ephesus isn't on this map. I don't know. Okay, 750 BC. Maybe… I don't actually know when Ephesus was founded. Maybe it wasn't important yet.
But right around in here. Is where Ephesus would be, right about halfway the Asia Minor coastline.
And that's actually where Paul is when he writes the letter of 1 Corinthians. He's writing from Ephesus.
One other point to make about Corinth itself and just it sort of geography and all that.
Is that we tend, I mean, like I said, this is Greece, right? So we tend to think of Corinth as being a Greek city.
It's Greek in location. There is still some Greek holdover.
Particularly, they have a handful of temples to Greek gods and goddesses that are still important in Corinth.
But culturally, Corinth is not really a Greek city. The ancient Greek city of Corinth was destroyed by the Romans.
146 years before Christ. And about 100 years later in 44 BC, some guy named Julius Caesar refounded Corinth.
It was one of the last things he did before he got stabbed to death.
So I don't know, maybe it wasn't a great move. But he refounds the city of Corinth as a Roman city, as a Roman colony.
And so Corinth, by the time of Paul. You have to think of it as more of a Roman colony in Greece than as a truly Greek city.
So we'll come back to that. Because that will continue to be relevant for a number of things.
But we'll talk a little bit now about the timing, the origin, where Where Paul is, when Paul writes the 1 Corinthian epistle.
The second one's… just written shortly after the first.
1 Corinthians is actually one of the easier letters in the New Testament to narrow down when it was written. And that's largely because Paul talks about and Acts tells us about Paul being on trial.
Before Galio, who was the governor in Corinth. And so we know because the Romans kept really good records of everything they did, we know exactly when Galio was the governor, I can't remember exactly which Roman title he had.
But when he was the governor in Corinth. So we know that Paul was on trial before Galio Sometime between July and October.
Of either 50 or 51 AD. It's not clear which of the years, but it had to be one of those two because Those are the times that Galio would have been in Corinth in charge presiding over trials.
So that's when Paul was actually in Corinth. And then we know that he leaves from Corinth.
And goes first to Jerusalem Then, so wait a minute, I can, well, Jerusalem's way down here off the map.
Goes first to Jerusalem. Conduct some business there that we hear about and act.
Travels back up to Asia Minor and eventually gets back to Ephesus where he meets up with me up
I want to say Priscilla and Aquila. I believe that's right. But he gets back to Ephesus And he's operating there in Ephesus for several years.
And so we know that, or we believe that Paul most likely writes 1 Corinthians in 53 or 54, that gives them some time to travel. It would have been early in the year because he says that he's writing a little bit before Pentecost
So he's riding in the winter, so this time of year.
In either 50 or 51, We figure to do all that traveling.
And also, if you look at… You can jot it down. You don't really need to turn there.
But if you look at 1 Corinthians 5, 9, He refers to an earlier letter that he wrote to them He said, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
Not at all, meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters Since then, you would need to go out of the world.
So he's had time. Since leaving Corinth.
To write them a letter, which apparently they misinterpreted, misunderstood what he was saying.
He's gotten word back from them and realizes what they misunderstood And so now 1 Corinthians, he's correcting that misunderstanding. All that takes a little bit of time.
So we give them… two or three years to travel around and start this correspondence.
So he's writing around 50… Sorry, 53 or 54 in the winter.
From Ephesus where he's from Ephesus in ministry for several years.
Back to Corinth. Trying to bring several issues there.
I'm not going to go into as many of the issues tonight because we're going to spend… I don't know, probably several months at least.
Going through all of these issues. I'll tell you the way I told One of my classes at Heritage With a couple of weeks ago.
I don't remember which passage it was. From 1 Corinthians right now. Might have even been 2 Corinthians, but there was something that I was telling them about.
And the context was. Paul was rebuking the Corinthians for something.
And I told my students at Heritage, I said, now you have to understand.
If Paul is writing to the Corinthians. He's probably fussing at them about something.
Because there's not much that the Corinthians at some point along the way don't mess up. And they generally mess it up pretty badly.
So we will see lots and lots of things. Maybe a complete list of what the church can get messed up.
We will see lots of things that the church at Corinth got messed up and that Paul is trying to correct them about.
And I think… I think if we're attentive to it.
We'll see a lot of parallels to the Christian church in our day.
And also between Corinth and to society in our day. There's not a lot that we don't mess up at some point along the way either, is there?
All right, so I said that Corinth was… basically a Roman city. It just happens to be in Greece.
The Greek location doesn't mean much except for maybe what the the local restaurants are going to be like.
The city itself is a Roman city And the culture there is a Roman culture.
And a big part of that Roman culture that comes up repeatedly In 1 and 2 Corinthians.
You see evidence of it anyway, is a Roman patronage system.
Now, we talk about… patronage, sometimes in politics.
And sometimes we talk about it just that's the way it is. The new guy comes. I mean.
This doesn't rise to the level of patronage. This is more like just our political system as it is, but we have a new president He's appointing his own cabinet. The old cabinet is gone.
Or I guess they're all gone. And… And that's just the way our system works.
When it gets maybe a little bit more corrupt or when it has gotten a little bit more corrupt Particularly if you look back at the 1800s and early 1900s.
The same kind of thing would be going on in the civil service as well.
You might, you know, I don't know how far down it reached, but you might work for the post office And all of a sudden, you've lost your job because the politics at the top changed.
And he's plugging in one of his guys into some plum government job.
And we think about patronage like that. Just as a… If you have… Connections with somebody that's in power, you can get a job.
The Roman system of patronage was much, much deeper than that.
I wouldn't… We would probably see what they were doing as corrupt because it would be illegal in our society It wasn't illegal or even frowned upon in their society. It was just how their society operated, but it went all the way through society.
Everybody had a patron. There was somebody… that was watching out for you. There was somebody that you owed loyalty to.
And who owed some sort of help to you.
And the higher you got. The more money you had to distribute.
And the more power and jobs and all of these things that you had to distribute.
And so the more people were in sort of your your, I don't know, downstream. There were more people below you.
Because you had clients, it's called a patron-client relationship. And a patron would have clients But those clients were not just clients. They were also patrons.
Of somebody else below them. And it sounds like a pyramids game, doesn't it? It just hit me. It sounds like a pyramid scheme. It kind of is.
So yeah, the Roman The kingdom of Rome, which is way, way back.
The Roman Republic and the Roman Empire I guess the whole thing is a pyramid scheme.
All right. Everybody involved. Is somewhere in that pyramid scheme.
And where you are And who's like… Is that me? Nope.
And who's… whose path you're part of.
Is really, really important. It is socially essential. If you are You know, if you are a client of somebody who used to be important, but they're not that big a deal anymore.
This is bad for you. But it's also really, really bad to sort of ditch your patron and go to another one that shows a lack of loyalty. You might not be valued by your new patron for quite a while.
You could switch. You could switch teams. But it takes a while to build back up that reputation of loyalty And this goes through their entire society.
One place that it's really, really important is in any kind of social gathering.
So, for example. When people gather for a meal.
You have to… We barely, as a society, we barely entertain anymore.
Now, Ruth… has entertained extensively on Sundays for years. This is one of the things that we really liked when we first moved here.
She invited us over and there were I don't know, there were probably 35 people at the house.
There might have been more. Every week, it seems like, for a long time, there were lots of people that were going over to Fred and Ruth's. I even remember one time, Fred would… Like, Ruth would leave.
Because she had to get everything ready. And Fred would be here and he would be gathering people up and usually toward the end of inviting people.
He realized, I need to invite somebody that has an extra seat in their car.
Because otherwise, I think, did you ever actually end up having to walk?
Just one. Just once. So one time he neglected to ask somebody with an extra seat and he had to walk.
So one thing, though, that I'll say about the seating at Fred and Ruth's.
There was some strategic, like, let's make sure we get these people in the same room.
Because we want to see them talking. Let's make sure that we get these people over here together because they would really hit it off.
But unless they were doing it really subtly and I couldn't tell.
They weren't checking off like, okay, who's at what social level and let's make sure that the people that are at this rank get seats in the good room where the food's actually going to be.
And then the people that are way down the pyramid, well, if there's any food left over, yeah, they can have some.
But that's how a Roman feast, or a Roman meal, not a feast.
But a Roman meal would have frequently operated is that where you sat was determined by your social status.
How far you got in was a question of where you were in that patron client pyramid.
And we'll see that that comes up and you can see how that comes up in the Corinthian church, when Paul is talking about the Lord's Supper.
Because guess what? We've got people coming together for a meal.
And because they are so saturated. With Roman culture They're not even trying to be mean.
It's just the way we do things. Well, we've got to put these people in the good seats and the good room where there's definitely going to be food.
These people are definitely clients, but they're also patrons of Psalms, so they'll get sort of second tier. And then, you know, these people, they should just be glad we invited them. And so we'll put them out here. And if there's enough, that'll be great.
And like I say, they weren't necessarily trying to be mean, but they were keeping that social structure that pyramid scheme, that Roman patronage system And they were imposing that onto gatherings of the church for the Lord's Supper.
And Paul has to break that up. Because that is not… what the church is. And they didn't quite understand it. Like I say, they can mess anything up.
But they didn't quite understand it. But Paul understood what they were doing and he understood why they were doing it.
And he understood what needed to be changed. So that's one place that's one place gets where… Corinth's Roman culture and Roman society is really important to understand in understanding what's going on in the Roman church And why, right? They're not just being selfish. They are.
They're selfishly not thinking about things and not understanding certain gospel truths But there's a reason why they're… why they're not understanding them. And that helps us to understand what in particular Paul needs to pick at and to correct with them.
Another one. That's a major… part of what's going on.
In Corinth. Really, in the whole Roman Empire, but in Corinth especially Because like I said.
Corinth was founded, I'm going to try to do math, so nobody laugh at me.
So Corintha was founded in 44 B.C. Paul is there.
And 50 or 51… So that's 94 years later.
And a couple of years later, still less than a hundred years After the city of Corinth is founded.
That paul is visiting. And that Paul is writing to them. So it's I know we don't think that sounds new.
But Mondi. 100-year-old city is a new city, right?
That's a new young city when you're in Greece. Where you have cities that can already trace themselves back a thousand years.
Corinth is a new… growing, vibrant, exciting city And Corinth is heavily into a lot of these aspects of Roman culture. A lot of them just kind of are They've gotten old and dried up and they're still the way we do things in places like Rome.
Or Milan or any of the any of the old Roman cities, but they're still new and important in Corinth.
And one of them is that Roman culture was an honor-shame culture.
I don't know how many people have heard of an honor shame culture before.
Okay, so a couple of people. So basically the idea is that all value everything that matters.
Has to do with how you're honored or whether you're shamed.
That's boiling it down below a nutshell But that's really where the term comes from.
And what's going on. And those are most important To the point that the truth is less important.
As long as you're being honest. I've got a… A quotation here, let me make sure I've got the right I was going to highlight it, but I didn't have a minute to do that, so…
Okay, yeah. So…
The reason I say that, or the reason I emphasize that Corinth is a new city And that getting all these things accurate isn't as important is that you didn't want to rely on other people honoring you.
If you want to be honored now. Maybe the best way to do it is to do some things that are really, really great and let people notice you.
Well, Corinth, they were not going to rely on that. You promote yourself.
Self-promotion was the order of the day. It was not frowned upon. Nobody was going to… Think less of you because you were less shamelessly hawking yourself That was how it was done. You were self-promoting.
You were boasting. Paul talks about boasting, I think.
But you were boasting and that was acceptable and that was a good thing.
I'm just going to read something from a commentary, actually he's quoting from a study of Corinth.
And the scholar concludes. Corinth was a city.
By the way, before I read it, think about whether this sounds at all familiar.
Corinth was a city where public boasting and self-promotion had become an art form.
The Corinthian people thus lived with an honor-shame cultural orientation where public recognition was often more important than facts.
In such a culture, a person's sense of self-worth is based on recognition by others of one's accomplishments, hence The self-promoting public inscriptions So they're, I mean, they're not only… promoting themselves they're even promoting themselves even literally carving it into stone.
Well, they probably were paying somebody to do that. Having their boasting about themselves carved into stone and that That honor, that recognition.
Was more important than the actual facts. That's the culture that Paul's working in.
He's choosing to do it, right? He made that choice, so he's got to live with it, but he's working in that kind of a culture He's writing to that kind of a culture and he's trying to deal with people who have that, like an entire life's an entire life
Of living that way. For 100 years and their families, probably. So generational reinforcement of that As he's trying to bring to a more God-honoring and a more Christ-like approach to the world, an approach to gathering together as a church.
One of the other ways where this comes into play and where we can see how Paul adjusts his own behavior and adjusts his ministry.
Is in… One of the big public entertainment things that goes on in Corinth.
A really, really popular Corinthian pastime and it comes into this honor shame system as well because you can gain honor by associating in the right ways and everything.
A really popular form of entertainment has to do with philosophers and rhetoricians.
So people who practice rhetoric, public speakers, basically. Now, I know that That sounds really great to us, right? We want to go out and we want to listen to philosophers Give long speeches, right? Doesn't that sound like fun, everybody?
For those of you on Zoom, we're not getting a lot of agreement on that.
This country that it was fairly popular. When Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, that was really short.
But he was just like on that day's schedule He was just making a few short comments.
The actual event of the day was some other guy whose name I don't know.
But some other guy that everybody was coming out to Gettysburg to hear, and he was going to do, I think, like a two or a three hour lecture.
That was the actual draw. The president being there and speaking for a couple of minutes just as a, you know, making a public appearance, that was not that big a deal.
The big deal was the really exciting two and a half to three hour lecture that the guy was going to give.
I don't know if they were up for two and a half to three hours.
But that's kind of what Corinth is like to. They like… These philosophers to come through.
And they want to hear something cool. They want to hear something. Clever.
They want to hear something that sounds really smart. They want to hear something new that they've never heard before.
It's kind of like when you go on YouTube. It's a lot like when you go on YouTube. You want to hear something new.
You want to hear something cool? You want to hear something you've never heard before?
I think the most popular, like. Bible related YouTube channels tend to be the ones that are telling you something cool that you've never heard before.
This is what the Corinthians were really, really hot for.
And so when Paul goes to Corinth. He decides he's not going to do that.
Because he doesn't want to play into their culture. And if you look at 1 Corinthians 2,
Oh, good. It was verse 1. I didn't write down the verse, and I got… worried for a second there.
1 Corinthians 2 verse 1, he says, and I, when I came to you, brothers did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.
And the… commentator who wrote the commentary that I was Reading to you from, he has another translation for that and it's with clever sayings.
Paul decides he's not going to go with that. We sometimes… Take Paul as saying that you don't preach the gospel with like with I don't want to say with wisdom, but you don't preach the gospel with sophisticated in a sophisticated way.
It's not really what Paul was saying. Not as a general thing. In fact, when you When you go through the Corinthian letters.
People who look at them from an ancient rhetoric and philosophy kind of standpoint Paul actually is making some really sophisticated arguments And he's taking some sophisticated steps to undermine the arguments that he's opposing So it's not that Paul's just going to do it super, super simple.
It's that Paul is not going to participate in their And he's not going to play their game.
He's not going to come in and try to win them Because he's able to use the clever philosophy Or the really, really snappy turn of phrase Or the cool new thing that they are craving, that they want to hear, right? Their itching ears.
He's not going to win them that way. Because that's… That's not actually going to win them because if that's what draws you.
If you're grabbed by that cool thing that you just heard.
And you're like, yes, sign me up. I love that. Then that's going to last up until you hear the next cool thing.
And then, oh, okay, that's old news. Sign me up for this.
And Paul doesn't want to play that game because these people play that game constantly. That might not be true of everybody everywhere.
When he goes to Athens right before Corinth. He does very openly.
Use sophisticated philosophical arguments. When he goes to the Areopagus in Athens.
He's speaking to them in their own language because he decides that's what would be the most effective to communicate with them But when he goes to Corinth, he knows if he uses that same technique.
These people jump from from one idea to the next.
They're not actually serious about their philosophy. They just think it sounds cool.
And so they'll jump from a Platonist to a to an Aristotelian.
To a sophist, which is more likely. To a cynic. They'll jump from one to the other. They don't care. They're not actually committed. They just want whatever's hot right now.
So Paul refuses to participate in that. And there's another reason that he refuses to participate in it And it ties this together with the honor shame culture and the patronage that's going on in Corinth the socially… like beneficial thing to do.
When you've found one of these super cool new teachers. Is you… You support them.
And it's not because they say, look me up on Patreon.
It's because… If you can be their sponsor, if you can provide for them financially so that they can keep doing these cool lectures that people want to go to, that gives you social status.
And it also puts them in a client position to you Which means they owe you loyalty.
Paul doesn't want to go to Corinth. And owe anybody loyalty.
Paul doesn't want to go to Corinth. And get an audience.
Because he's doing the cool new thing and because… Rich dude number three is supporting him and sponsoring him Paul wants the gospel itself to be the only thing that draws people to the Lord in Corinth.
He doesn't want them to even listen to it for any of those reasons.
Doesn't even want to use those methods to get a hearing.
Because if he gets a hearing that way in Corinth, I'm not saying this is true everywhere.
But in Corinth If he gets a hearing that way.
It's not really worth very much. So instead… Um… And we famously know Paul had a job, right? What was Paul's job?
He was a tent maker, some kind of… And the skills apply pretty broadly. So he could do pretty much any kind of leather work, presumably.
But he was a… a skilled… pretty, I mean, it's not easy work, but it is skilled work.
And he was able to do that, and that's how he met some of Some of his close friends, because they were working in the same trade.
But Paul was a man who had a trade. And famously.
Especially in Corinth. Pursued it. Now, there are two places.
That stand out to me. Where he works.
As a tent maker or some sort of leather worker, my understanding is it might be almost the normal way of identifying yourself would be by sort of the good, like the top version of the trade. So you might not say you're a carpenter
All the carpenters and Finnish carpenters and everybody might all be categorized as cabinet makers or something like that.
Tentmaker might have been a big, broad category And you could say you were working as a tent maker no matter what kind of leather work or heavy cloth work you were doing. Whether in Corinth.
With some of the things going on, he probably was making tents because there was a pretty big market for them.
But there were two places in his travels that he definitely decided I'm going to pay my own way. I'm not going to accept support from these people.
And he talks about it. In similar language.
If you look at 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 9,
So I don't want to take the time to read all of it, but if you… If you look up earlier in chapter 2, Paul's talking about his ministry in Thessalonica.
And he's talking about What he did there and what he didn't do there and how he did it there.
And… Let's see.
He said, for we never came, in verse 5, we never came with words of flattery or the pretext for greed, nor did, in verse 6, nor did we seek glory from other people.
Whether from you or from others Though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.
He's saying we would have had that right. We could have made demands of you.
But we were gentle among you, verse 7. We were gentle among you.
Like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So being affectionately desirous of you.
We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God.
But also our own selves, because you would become very dear to us.
Now in verse 9, he says, for you remember, brothers. Our labor and toil. We worked night and day, and I don't think he's just talking about in the ministry of the gospel. I'm sure he did that.
But I think he's literally talking about working leather, making things.
Making tents, repairing tents. We've worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.
While we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. So in Thessalonica, at least.
He didn't look for support. From the Thessalonian believers.
He supported himself with the work of his hands. Making tense.
And selling them, presumably. And he says that he didn't want to burden them.
If you go to 2 Corinthians 12, Well, you know what? Let's first go to 1 Corinthians 9.
We're going to have to combine things from two two epistles here.
In 1 Corinthians 9, he's talking about his ministry in Corinth, just like he was doing In 1 Thessalonians about his ministry in Thessalonica.
And he's going through and he's… Verse 3, this is my defense to those who would examine me.
Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord?
And Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living.
So he's like, I had a right. To refrain from working for a living.
Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit?
So he's saying, he's comparing himself to somebody who's serving as a soldier But it's his own expense to do that. He's providing… all of the uniforms, he's providing all of the weapons, he's providing all of those things.
Himself. And he says, who does that? I didn't have to do that.
Skip down to verse 12. He says, if others share this rightful claim on you.
Do not we even more. The rightful claim that he has a right.
To be supported by the Corinthians. But he says, nevertheless, we have not made use of this right But we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ In 2 Corinthians 12, 13, he's talking about similar things.
And he uses some of that language that he used In Thessalonians.
So let's look, let's go all the way back to 11. He says, I have been a fool.
You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you.
For I was not at all inferior to these super apostles.
These are the people that he's opposing Especially in 2 Corinthians.
He says, I was not at all inferior to these super apostles.
Even though I am nothing. The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.
For in what were you less favored? Then the rest of the churches Accept that I myself did not burden you.
So he uses a lot of the same language. He doesn't want to burden the Thessalonians financially. He doesn't want to burden the Corinthians financially.
There's a key difference, though. The key difference is that if Paul had burdened the Corinthians supporting him financially?
It wouldn't have been much of a burden. There were rich people in Corinth. Corinth was… one of the most I mean, you saw, I wonder if I still have… I still have this. Is it coming up?
Do you see me typing in? All right. So Corinth is dealing with all of this trade coming from Asia Minor, which is… super wealthy. Corinth is dealing with all of the trade coming right across here and I mean, think about it.
If there's a boat right here. And there's a boat right here.
Those two captains, they really need to get those goods across.
Where do you guess the dudes who towed it across live?
They live in Corinth. Who do you guess those dudes work for?
They work for a guy who lives in Corinth. And they're not doing it for free.
There are a lot of tolls going across. That's a toll road. And it becomes a toll canal. It's cheaper and it's less risky.
Then sailing around through those dangerous winter waters. But it's not cheap.
So there's a lot of money coming into Corinth. If he had burdened them with his… support while he was there. I mean, he's one guy. He's got to eat.
You know, he needs a place to stay. It costs something, but it's not going to cost that much.
In Thessalonica. If he burdens them… That's a real financial burden.
That's a poor church. So when he's in Thessalonica.
I think he doesn't accept their support I think he works for a living while he's there.
Because he knows these people can't afford to support me. Especially not if there's a possibility of me being able to to do some patching on some tents and some things like that and I can support myself.
I'm not going to burden these people. But in Corinth, I think there's something else going on there.
I think Paul is saying… If I let these people support me.
Then they're going to think that they own me and they're going to think that they… own the gospel. And they're going to continue that they can control all of this.
And one of the things that Paul knows that they need to understand We don't control any of this. And until we Give up control.
Until we give that up to the Lord and say. I can't save myself.
Until we say that, we can't be saved. As long as we think we can do it.
We can't do it. Only the Lord can do it. And so Paul doesn't want to… The burden that he would have imposed on the Corinthians if he had allowed them to support him is the burden that it would have been.
10 times harder. It would have been an obstacle in the path of the gospel.
For them to come to an understanding that They weren't the ones doing this.
That they couldn't do this. So that's the other thing I think that's going on in the Corinthian, both Corinthian epistles that explains some of what Paul does while he's in Corinth.
It explains some of the things that he condemns. That he directs them away from There are plenty of other things to criticize about Corinth.
The morality was not good.
But whoever gets chapters, oh gosh, five, six, and seven. Whoever gets those chapters.
You can talk about the morality. I don't need to go into that, but we'll just say that They were at least on a par with modern America.
But that's more. You know, stuff that you get one bit at a time.
I think the ideas about the patronage system are really important to understand for understanding his overall ministry there.
And understanding why it was so important to him that he support himself while he was in Corinth.
Even as he is going around and he's amazed by the fact that the Thessalonians even contribute to the collection at Jerusalem.
Whenever he's collecting from the Corinthians. He does it in a way to be sure that They can't be proud of what they've done.
He'll take some money back to Jerusalem because then he won't take any for himself.
He will from other churches, but he won't take any for himself.
He will take some back to Jerusalem. But he makes sure they can't be proud of that either.
So there are a lot of things going on with the Corinthian church that are helpful for us to understand.
And I hope that I was not too, too talky And that I was organized enough that people were able to get some from it And if you want the maps, I can send you links to the maps later.
But that's all I have. A minute and a half left, I was told I was supposed to go to 7.30.
So got a minute and a half left. Did anybody have questions?
That I might not be able to answer.
Bill, you're good at questions I might not be able to answer.
Scale there. Okay. Close to three and a half miles across.
Okay, so Bill tells us because he's able to… to do the math and the measuring better than I can, it was, did you say, three and a half? It was about three and a half miles Across the Isthmus across
For the guys that had to tote all that All that cargo from one ship to the next.
Anyone else? Like, why is… Why are the Corinthian epistles in the New Testament where they are.
Based on video. Authorship? No.
As… The system that seems to be in place, now I think it's not a perfect It is not a perfectly applied system.
But the system that seems to be in place is largely from largest to smallest.
They let, you know… What is that, like kindergarten level education staff, I think they let a kindergartner or maybe a first grader decide what order they go in. Romans is the longest.
1 Corinthians is next, then comes 2 Corinthians. And it trickles on down from there, roughly. Not exactly, but roughly.
So, sorry, nothing more theological than that.
All right, then why don't I close in prayer and then we can turn it over to announcements and a time of prayer.
Father, we thank you for these letters that Your servant Paul to these churches or to this church in Corinth.
Father, we thank you for all of them, how many of them there were, because the Corinthians needed them all.
But we especially thank you for these two that were preserved for us because Whatever it was that was in the very first epistle to the Corinthians, we don't need… But the things that are in 1 Corinthians as we have it, and 2 Corinthians as we have it.
Those are the things that are given for us. We're told that the prophets of old spoke for our benefit We know that the authors of the New Testament just as much.
Spoke for our benefit. As well as for that of the people that they were writing directly to.
Father, we thank you that we're able to understand enough about them to better understand what Paul was saying.
So that we can better apply that to our own lives and to our own understanding of faith.
Father, help us when we look around ourselves, when we look at Our country, when we look at our city.
When we look at our church. Help us to look with a cold eye and truly recognize the similarities that are there when they are.
So that we can truly take seriously Those aspects… of our culture that affect us, those aspects of our our society that that color the way we look at the world around us.
Help us to try to purge that out the way the Corinthians needed to purge that out of their own worldview.
And… Learn to look at the world in a new way purely through you.
Through the gospel that you have… created through the gift that we have through your Son.
Father, we pray for your spirit to be on us. As we try to… to reform our minds in light of that.
In Christ's name we pray. Amen.