And we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.
Well, good evening, everyone. How's everybody doing? We're going to have our brother Joel do the study.
Next Wednesday, and I'm going to take us through today, 1 Corinthians 1 verses 10 through 17.
Book of 1 Corinthians is fascinating, frankly, extremely, obviously, so many, obviously the New Testament books, they're all very important, but this one is extremely important with respect to studying the church and the issues that can come up in it. And we're going to continue
Looking at the first problem that Paul deals with, and that is factions in the church or divisions that's going to take us from the beginning, really, chapter 1 verse 10 all the way through chapter four, verse 20. So it's a broad treatment of this subject here but
Let's take a look at these verses. Very quickly here, 1 Corinthians 1 verses 10 through 17, then we'll open with a word of prayer.
Paul says this, I have the New King James. Now, I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing.
And that there be no divisions among you, but that you'd be perfectly joined together in the same mind And in the same judgment. Verse 11, For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household, that there are contentions among you.
Verse 12, now I say this, that each of you says, I'm of Paul, or I'm of Apollos, or I'm of Cephas, or I'm of Christ.
Is Christ divided? Verse 13. Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
I thank my God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.
Verse 16, yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanus besides I don't know whether I baptized any other.
Verse 17, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel.
Not with wisdom of words lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
So the title of this study tonight would be factions or cliques in Corinth. I'm not talking about internet cliques. They didn't have that at the time. I'm talking about cliques, factions.
And so we're going to look at the first problem in the church, but let's open up with a word of prayer. Father, we just give you thanks and praise that for those who are born again, you've given us the spirit. And as it says in 1 Corinthians 2, the Spirit allows us to
Your spirit speaks to our spirit, allows us to interpret the scriptures.
And who knows the mind of God except for the Spirit of God.
Every nugget of… a truth that we've appropriated comes by the Holy Spirit unlocking these things for us and he does We know that you do not unlock your truths easily, but they must be pursued, and we thank you for that.
Father, we thank you for the blessed hope that we have, the rest that we have in you, and Lord, help us to abide.
In you as we accomplish your purpose here on earth and that is to glorify you and to spread the gospel message. We give you thanks in Jesus's name.
Amen. How many of you believe that the church, any church can have problems?
Probably every hand can go up, certainly. Paul is going to be dealing with this subject of division in the church. It runs As I said, all the way through the end of chapter four.
There is little doubt. That the church in Corinth had problems.
They were divided. They were defiled, and they were disgraced. When we look at some of the topics we're going to cover. And Paul doesn't waste any time in coming after the first issue, and that, of course, is right after we looked at the first nine verses which dealt with Paul's greeting and his gratitude. And remember.
One of the things that I said and that I've learned over time is that I think when you first start teaching the Bible, you tend to just burn right through greetings or you tend to burn through portions and then you want to get right to the meat of it. But there's actually a lot that he says in those first nine verses.
And so the problem was that In Corinth, they weren't dwelling together in love. They weren't living together in harmony and so they were grouping around personalities and that's the issue here I wanted to mention this phrase I've mentioned before in another sermon that I gave. I frankly do not know who the author of this phrase is.
Aptly describes what's going on. It says. To dwell above with the saints in love that will be glory.
But to live below with some saints I know, brother, that's another story.
So Paul is going to be dealing with these things. This is a church that had their personality cults.
And let's take a look at this. You know, the devil loves to divide, doesn't he?
He likes to divide and conquer. It's actually a very good military strategy.
Attack an enemy, try to get them into smaller groups and then attack them with great force.
The Old Testament prophets, for instance, in Ezekiel berated the shepherds of Israel as being poor shepherds because they allowed the sheep to wander.
On the hills without protection. Jesus also was very concerned with shepherding sheep.
And protecting them, as he talked about protecting his disciples and also offering that protection to anybody that would abide in him, take him as their savior.
The issue is the devil loves to divide. He loves to get people into evil surmises about things over all sorts of problems and then use that wedge and hammer and hammer away.
This is a very good portion to look at with respect to dealing with these issues.
And division, of course, is no has gone back even to the earliest church and certainly continues to this day.
One of the key points is Almost all of the epistles that Paul wrote in the New Testament in some way Paul deals with the subject of disunity.
Disharmony or division in the church and so Even among the 12 apostles.
That Jesus chose there was disharmony. Think about the particular portion he talks about in the gospel where Jesus is walking ahead of him and behind them the disciples are what they're disputing over what who's going to be greatest in the kingdom of God. So years later, as they did ministry and the Lord has ascended into heaven, they're probably like.
How can I even? But they were disputing over these things and Jesus uses the example uses an object lesson to put that to bed.
Peter here. Wants to demonstrate that unity is possible, certainly. And we want to display that to an unbelieving world, unity in the church.
Because they're watching, certainly. So what does the world see when they look at the church? They see a church that has divisions and schisms and it's hard to win unbelieving people to the Lord when there are divisions. And so I'm not going to go into a long
Screed about that. I'm just simply saying that this is the issue that Paul has on his mind. Evangelism is if we're not divided, we can be pretty effective at evangelism.
And even Christ prayed for that in the high priestly prayer, right? We look at the first section, how he… prays for himself and then he prays for the disciples and the last section is praying for believers, right? And in that middle section, he prays that the disciples would have unity.
And that's what should be produced when the Holy Spirit is present.
So let's look at this here in verse 10. Let's go back and read verse 10 here.
And it says this, now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
So Paul here in verse 10 puts a lot into this verse. And so the first thing that he's calling for in this verse is for unity. He says, now I plead with you, and this is an appeal And Paul uses this idea of begging. I beg you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you. And there it is, that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind.
And in the same judgment. Notice that Paul is pleading with him. It's the same thing he does in Romans 12.
I beseech you, brethren, this new king james By the mercies of God that you present yourself a living sacrifice. He doesn't say, I command you, and in this case, he doesn't say the same thing. I don't command you. I'm pleading with you. This is an important issue.
Is lovingly urging them. He's not commanding them as an apostle, even though he could.
And he feels that pastoral care and concern for them. Lovingly beseeching them that they be of the same mind and that they love one another.
Notice also in verse 10 that Paul does two things. He softens his rebuke.
In other words, he's going to be kind of subtly rebuke them.
He calls them brethren. So he softens it up a bit. And this is, of course, in contrast to Galatians, right? Where he doesn't have a lot of loving words for them. He calls them foolish.
Because of the issues that they're dealing with. This is quite a contrast O foolish Galatians, but here he's calling them brethren. He wants to win their favor. And he says, brethren.
Calling them brothers. You should be loving one another. Should be exhibiting brotherly love.
Not a brotherly shove, although that work for the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl. Very effective. There is no answer for it, but I'm digressing brotherly love.
That guy, that quarterback can actually squat more than 600 pounds. It's amazing. But I digress again. Here we go.
So brotherly love, no brotherly shop. Although this is the term that, or I should say this is the thing that Paul is getting to, Psalm 133 verse 1.
Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.
Brothers, brethren, sisters, brothers and sisters, what we want to do is dwell together in unity.
How pleasant and good it is. So Paul does two things. He gives us the ground for unity in verse 10.
Notice what that ground is. Anybody know what the ground of unity is?
This was said 10 times in the first 10 verses. Remember from last time, what is the ground for unity?
The Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, Donna. For which you will receive a fabulous prize when we're done.
And it might involve a handshake. So the ground for unity is Jesus Christ. Yay, this is what unifies the church. Here's Ray Stedman. He says this great Bible teacher, there is no other name big enough, great enough, glorious enough, and powerful enough to gather everybody together.
Despite the diversity of viewpoints and the differences of background or status in life.
Than the name of Jesus. People of all ages are here tonight. People all walks of life.
How do we get together in unity? It's the Lord Jesus Christ and the unity produced by the Holy Spirit.
What fellowship or commonalities might we have without Christ? Maybe we would have none, but we're coming together. And it's quite a quite a beautiful thing, all because of Jesus Christ.
So the basis for Unity Jesus Christ, here's the focal point here.
The real problem that was causing divisions in this church in Corinth was that their eyes were off of Jesus and they were on men.
This is a typical, typical issue, even in our own Christian walk.
I pointed out last week again, the first 10 verses, Jesus Christ is either said or implied 10 times. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Paul never gets tired of this. He never forgot.
His salvation, never forgot how God put him to work a man who formally hurt the church He put him to work, and this is what he's doing. So we want to keep our eyes on Jesus.
There's a story of a story kind of a deeper life club church club They thought they were super spiritual and they called the name of their church Jesus Only. And then a strong, they put it on a sign. Then a strong wind came along and knocked the name Jesus off of it. And so now they were called only. This is what happens when we take our eyes off of Jesus Christ.
Only. We get very very picky and fastidious in those types of things. So we want to be not self-focused, but Jesus focused. This is the ground for unity.
Secondly, he gives us the goals of our unity. This is still in verse 10.
We want to talk about first the unity of speech Notice it in verse 10 that we all speak the same thing. And what does Paul mean by this?
We're not carrying along a little script where we have the same words.
We're not talking about uniformity. Uniformity comes from pressure from the outside.
We're talking about unity. We don't wear the same WCBC clothes. We don't have a WBC haircut. We don't have WBC shoes. We don't drive a WBC car.
We don't have WBC watches. We have unity.
Not uniformity. And the difference is the work of the Spirit in our hearts working on the inside out.
Then he's going to talk about the attitude that is manifested when the Spirit is present. So they should be giving a united testimony to the world that is watching.
The unbelieving world. So Paul's appeal is for harmony And not the elimination of diversity.
What he's saying is we need to be present. I'm sorry, to present to the watching world a unified front. The second thing that he wants, again in verse 10, is the elimination of sin.
Schisms, schisms, division. Notice it in verse 10, he says this.
That there be no divisions among you. This is the key issue again This is the Greek word schismata. We get our English word schism from it.
Really, the definition of that word is a rip or a tear in a garment.
So it's as if someone comes up and tears your garment. They wore a lot of seamless garments or garments that would have a reinforced neck. And so someone came along and ripped it but didn't rip it off completely. And these little tears
Are the problem. So… This is the issue of it.
The application is this, the church in Corinth had conflict. There was internal strife.
But it was not at the point of splitting the church yet, like the government ripped off of you.
Many churches today split into groups. If you go into any town, I travel in a lot of rural towns, you'll see First Church of X, and then you'll drive a little farther, Second Church of X.
Third church of Acts. Something happened, right? Heard the story about a guy that was on a deserted island He's all by himself abandoned on an island. All he had was coconuts to eat and salt water. Finally, he's rescued and the rescue team gets on the island.
In the process of rescuing him, they notice that there are two churches on the island. They ask him, he said, well, what kind of church is this? Why do you have two churches? You're only one God. He goes, well, I started this one.
And then we had some splits, and so now I had to start a second one, one guy on an island, church split.
No schisms. I don't want you to have these divisions among you, he says.
Thirdly, in verse 10, he says, he calls for the unity of attitude.
Be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
Being joined together here is a pretty interesting phrase. This is the Greek word Cathol Rizzo, which means to restore to mend. It's a medical term for bones that are knit together again. He uses this in Galatians 6 verse 1.
He says if a sister, a brother or sister is overtaken any trespass, you are spiritual Here's the use of it. Restore such a one.
Restore them in a spirit of gentleness. Considering yourself lest you also be tempted.
The word restore means to mend a broken bone. It can also mean to rip in a tear of a fishing net. So if you're fishing the nets If there's a hole in it or becomes useless, right?
One fish gets through and another one they keep breaking. So we want to This is the word that he's using here.
Or it could be the putting together of a puzzle, pieces in a puzzle. But the point of the matter is.
Churches are like this and we want to avoid these things, little things that occur that can open up And then trouble.
Begins here so he wants us He wants them to be of the same mind and attitude.
And also on the same page here. Notice that two words in the 10th verse here that we might be perfectly joined together. So use of the same mind the same judgment.
And three times in verse 10, by the way, the same speech, same mind, and same judgment. And what does he mean by the same mind Again, the attitude that we're on the same page.
Biblical attitude to think biblically through different issues and such. Here's what he says in Philippians.
Chapter 2 of that epistle He says, to be of the same mind or attitude that was in Christ Jesus. This solves a lot of issues if you have that attitude.
And then he goes on to say that as you can interpret this differently, but to say that he was God took nothing away from the Father.
And though he could say that and he was equal, he took the steps downward in humility. And then, of course, the Lord brought him back up again.
In exaltation. He was humbled. He knew what it was like to be pushed around and not open his mouth.
And he kept focused on what the Lord had for him to do.
Considering others better than ourselves. Look, not every man on his own things, but every man on the things or interests of others.
Now we move to verses 11 and 12, and here are the reasons for Paul's appeal.
He says four. Here's the reason, the rationale. It has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, by those of Chloe's household that there are contentions among you. These are open arguments.
These are open arguments that have a lot of heat behind them, contentions among you. Now this I say that each of you This is the cause of the arguments. Say, I'm of Paul.
One click, I'm of Apollos. I'm of Cephas or Peter, and then the super Christians and of Christ.
And he says this rhetorically, is Christ divided? Well, of course, no.
Was Paul crucified for you? No. Are you baptized in the name of Paul? No.
Now notice in verse 11 and 12 he says It has been declared to me. Now this is critical here. One of the big destructive forces in churches is gossip And what does he say? I'm declaring as a fact that Chloe has said to me or of her household
That there are contentions. I'm naming the person. It's a fact. I make a declaration. Now, this is probably what contributed to people not liking Paul because he goes right in there and blows this stuff up, right?
I'm dealing with these issues because they can harm the church.
There is a gentleman by the name of Professor Stanley Toussaint. He taught at Dallas Theological. I took an online course in Hebrews.
He had pastored churches and he said, one of the first things that I jumped on was if there was a contention between one person and another, immediately I dealt with those issues because they can balloon very quickly and blow up a church.
So… Paul is dealing with these things. Not a rumor, a fact. It's been declared. This is the same word that's used for a legal document.
Paul wants to make clear I'm not going by hearsay. I'm not going by rumor. This is a fact.
So one of the things that divides churches, gossips, rumors. Paul wants to make clear He identifies as source. It's a family of Chloe.
He says. He does not say a lot of people are saying, and you ask, well, who are these people? He identifies it.
Paul deals with this fact. Let me just… For time's sake, skip a little bit here.
Paul's in your face about these particular issues and so Paul is making the point, why are we arguing about these things?
There are ways of dealing with this. And so this contention literally means, again, open quarrels.
Let's look at 1 Corinthians 3, verse 1 through 3, and this is what he says here.
This is one of the reasons for the quarrellings and divisions. He says, and I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal.
As to babes in Christ. Versus to I fed you with milk and not with solid food for until now you were not able to receive it.
And even now you're not able, for you are still carnal. For where there are envies, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
So remember in verse 1, he says. He calls them in Christ.
But they're carnal. They need to be fed. And they need to be built up in their faith.
In Corinth here, there's a lot of carnality, even though they're loaded with gift.
And so again, strife, division, quarreling come from carnality. Now in verse 12, let's notice this.
Paul says in verse 12 that there were these little groups these little personality groups.
The contentions were over personalities and not principles. This is what happens today. People argue and divide and quarrel over many things, personalities and not over principles.
There's a great case study of one of the largest churches in the US that had a major
The main leader of that had a moral failing. And one of the things about the case study was this individual was such a massive personality that he was able to get away with a lot of things for many, many years.
The elders, but one elder in particular confronted him and demanded accountability. He said, well.
I just go down the road and start up another church. I'm not going to do any of these things. And he got away with it.
So the point is. We have to, there is accountability and we have to deal with personalities and such. And Paul is pointing that out. The Bible says to contend earnestly for the faith which was once and for all delivered to the saints. Jude 3.
Not to condemn with each other, but contend for the faith. This is the point.
So we're not going to argue over the type of music we play or what color the carpet is.
We're arguing. Over, not arguing, but we're looking to present essential principles and not petty issues. This is where Paul is going here.
So they had four parties. You could divide them up. One commentator divided them up like this.
You have the party of the loyalists. The party of Paul. I'm of Paul. For Paul started the church at Corinth and no doubt they were loyal to him.
He's the founder of the church. He started the church. We're committed to him.
Loyal to him. Very, very, very dangerous position to be in because, as I just spoke.
If someone is, a church is just driven by a cult of personality, a lot of things can happen, right?
The next group is the stylish. We follow Apollos and certainly Apollos was an eloquent speaker profoundly gifted by the Lord.
And they were gathering around him. And the reason he's called the stylist is because you can have people that are great orators who dress in a certain manner or are presented as overly intellectual or something where people can gather around people like that.
Then the next group here could be described as the traditionalists were of Cephas.
Peter. Peter's our man. He was one of the original 12. The Lord… gifted him and we're following Peter and perhaps this is where some of the issues of legalism arose.
And then finally, the group, the last group would be the Jesus Only Party.
Here, this is the Bible Expositor's commentary, a great commentary. It says this, the mention of the Christ party suggests that some Corinthians claim special relationship to Christ, 2 Corinthians 10 verse 7.
Or placed a special emphasis on them, an emphasis they felt the followers of Paul, Apollos, and Cephas had neglected or did not have.
It could be that these were hyper-spiritual people. We don't know.
Maybe they said, we don't follow any man. We get our messages directly from God. We don't need a teacher. We don't need a commentary. We're the Deeper Life Club.
There is the story of a Quaker who can never find a church.
That was spiritual enough for him. He went from church to church to church and he could never find a church that was, again, spiritual enough. And so finally he started his own.
Finally, someone visited his church and there were only two people there, he and his wife.
And they were talking to this Quaker and he said, yeah, it's just me and my wife. And I'm even kind of concerned about her as to whether she's saved or not.
So these are the same things that can come up in churches now, certainly these different divisions. And so now Paul comes to his closing correction with respect to this issue in verses 13 through 17, And he says this.
Verse 13 is Christ divided. He asked three questions, three rhetorical questions, all expecting no answers. Is Christ divided?
No. Was Paul crucified for you? No. Were you baptized in the name of Paul? No. Paul says, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius.
Lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.
Yes, I also baptize the household of Stephanus. Besides, I don't know whether I baptize any other. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words.
Lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
So next week, Joel will delve into the effect of the cross and the very, very famous passage Paul closes with this thought.
Why God called them to preach on the cross. Three questions.
No answers here. Christ is not divided, yet they were dividing Christ up Maybe they thought that, well, you know.
Paul preaches this Christ and Apollos preaches this Christ and Peter preaches this Christ and we're into this Christ.
Christ is not divided. You weren't baptized in the name of Paul or his authority. Paul goes on to say that Christ cannot be divided.
And so in this particular case. The body of Christ cannot be divided if we're gathering around the core principles of what it is to be a Christian, we shouldn't be divided about things.
So this is Paul's point here. The point that he's making is that Again, if the Holy Spirit is there, unity should be present. And so was Paul crucified for you? The answer is no. Paul, a sinful man, cannot save anyone but Jesus can.
Paul wasn't crucified for them. And notice how his statements focus on Jesus Christ.
Here he says this, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptized in my own name.
Which is the idea of authority here. And so Paul is saying, God sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel.
He didn't want people to think he was baptizing in his own name. And of course, that would lead to factions, wouldn't it Jesus didn't baptize anybody. John the baptized baptized a whole lot of people.
And people followed him and also followed him the implication is that he was also seen as sort of a I mean, he was a godly man in the spirit of Elijah, but he had his groupies and then they start to peel off when Jesus appears on the scene and some of them
Got upset. Look at these people are baptizing and they're all going to Jesus. What about us? And John says this.
They're leaving our club. Or they were saying they're leaving our club and going down to Jesus.
John says this, and it's important for everyone who serves the Lord to know this. He said, no one can receive anything except What was given to him from above.
If they're going down there, then, you know, let them go down there. This is a God thing.
And then John said these words. He must increase and I must decrease.
That's what every servant of God should say. He must increase and I must decrease.
So… Men cannot be baptized.
In any other authority, under any other name of authority except for Jesus Christ.
Fourthly, Paul came to preach Christ, verse 17. That's what it's all about. So each one of these arguments The solution is it's Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ. Christ can't be divided. It's Christ who saves, not Paul.
And then finally here. If the church were focused on the church preaching Christ and winning a loss, they won't be fighting among themselves. I think that's the application.
And God's mercy is available for all churches that they would stay unified.
So… This is the purpose here. I'm just kind of shaving off some things here so we can get on time here.
Again, the purpose of the church is to exalt Christ, to evangelize the lost, and to keep our focus on that
The same voice, the same mind, the same judgment that is focused on the effort of Glorifying Christ in the church and evangelizing.
And so we'll finish right there for tonight then. And we'll pick it up next time with Joel on Wednesday.
Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we just give you thanks and praise for your loving kindness. We thank you for this portion in 1 Corinthians.
Thank you for the opportunity to study your word, to teach your word.
And to learn from it. And we're grateful, Lord. For Jesus Christ, who in great humility.
Went to the cross. Died, was buried, resurrected again, and ascended into heaven, seated at the right hand of God the Father, interceding for us.
And in his name we go forward tonight. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus's name. Amen.