Lessons from the Corinthian Church Part 1

CCI Fellowship's podcast focuses on reaching God, each other, and the community. The message challenges listeners to grow in their faith and love for God's Word. The series "Lessons from the Corinthian Church" explores the simplicity of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The church has complicated this gift, but Scripture is clear and our life in Christ should not be difficult. The series will help understand how to do church and the power of the Spirit in believers' lives. Scripture assumes believers desire to receive everything God has for them. We must approach the Bible with our spiritual minds, not our natural minds. The series will focus on chapters 11-14 of 1 Corinthians, addressing cultural norms and their spiritual application for unity. The New Testament assumes believers are filled with the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was a natural progression in the early church. Scripture is written in the context of the early church's experience with the Holy Spirit. Welcome to CCI Fellowship's podcast. Thank you for joining us. At CCI Fellowship, we are reaching God, reaching each other, and reaching our community. We pray that this week's message challenges you in your walk with the Lord, causes you to grow in your faith, and encourages you in your love for the Word of God. Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I'm starting a series, starting a series today called Lessons from the Corinthian Church. Lessons from the Corinthian Church. Before we left on our trip, I did a three-part series on the simplicity of the baptism of the Spirit. We talked about how we as a church, we as the church global, have done a very sufficient job in making Christianity difficult, specifically when it comes to the relationship that we are to have with the Holy Spirit. Yes, Jesus lives in our hearts. Yes, He has saved us. Yes, He has given the Holy Spirit as a down payment of what is to come. His Spirit resides in us. But His Spirit is so much more than that. And we have, through many different studies, through many different debates, we've taken what God has meant to be a gift for the church, what God has meant to be a supply, a tool, a source of power and of strength, a source of anointing, we've taken it and we've kind of muddied it up and made it, just like we as humans do with everything, we've made it more about processes and procedures and more about, well, do this the right way. And, you know, if you stand on one foot with this hand in the air, then you'll get reception from heaven and you'll be able to hear what God wants you to do. And I mean, it sounds funny, but really, if you look back at some of the things that the church has taught, church, again, the big church, church has taught as a whole, we have come up with some fascinatingly stupid things. And so, as I was going through that series, because Scripture is simple. It's not meant to be complicated. Our life in Christ is not meant to be complicated. Is it difficult sometimes? Sure. Absolutely. Like my neighbor says, it's difficult to serve God. It's not. When you get your focus right and when you're walking in faith, it's not difficult. It may be difficult to make that initial sacrifice, but once you are consecrated to God, it is not a difficult life. Because no matter the difficulties of life, we know in whom we are anchored, in whom we are established, and he is greater than anything we will ever face. So when you get into that place, it's not hard, but we make it hard. When it comes to the relationship with the Holy Spirit, when it comes to how do we do church, what does this look like? Why are there so many different versions of church? Well, there are so many different versions of people. And God is a God that glories in diversity. He does not glory in division. He doesn't get any glory by division, but he does get glory by diversity, and diversity is OK. But there is a section in Scripture, and this is the series that we're going to move into, because ultimately it will help us to understand this gift that God has given to the church, this gift that is the simplicity of the baptism of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit within the life of the believer. This is going to help us because what we find in the book of Corinthians, the first letter of Corinthians, is a four-chapter section that is an expose on how to do church. And as we go through these chapters, you'll see the different things that Paul talks about in regards to helping the Corinthian church understand their questions. Now a pastor friend of ours, while we were in the States, he was doing a series on the assumption of Scripture. And his point in the assumption of Scripture is that Scripture takes as a given that whenever somebody enters a life with God, they enter this life with a desire to receive from God everything that he has for them. Sometimes what we do is pick and choose throughout the Bible, oh God, I want a little of this, and God, I want a little of this, but you can keep this, I don't want this. But the assumption of Scripture is that we are all in. Mark Batterson wrote a book we had done in fellowship groups one time called All In, which is basically just, I'm here for everything, God, whatever it is. Whatever you have for me. I think our heart's desire ultimately needs to be, God, whatever you want to give me, whatever you want to ask of me, I'm here for that. And it takes that process of growing into that place of sacrifice, of self-sacrifice and consecration. In 1 Corinthians 2.14, which is the verse that I had you open to, it says, The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. You know that this book is nothing to those who don't believe a word of it. It is consistently the best-selling book in the world. But it means nothing if you don't put faith in it. It's just a collection of words. It's a good thing to use to start a fire, a doorstop, whatever. It means nothing to those who don't believe it. It means nothing to the natural mind. But to the spiritual, which we are the spiritual ones, we read it and find life. We read it and find wholeness. We read it and find liberty. We read it and find the love of a God, of the God who created the universe. This God that everyone thinks is so unattainable, unreachable, and yet he loves us so much. And he's so personal. But to those who are outside, it's nothing. But I think that this verse still applies to those who are spiritual. Because sometimes we approach the things that God has for us. We approach sections of Scripture from a natural mindset. And we look at it and we try to understand it and we go, well God, I just don't get it. I don't understand it, God. Or we find a command in Scripture and we're like, I don't like it. I don't want to, God. Because we haven't received yet the revelation of that truth. It's just words. That's not life. In the Gospel of John, it says that Jesus said, your word is spirit and life. Oh, that we would read when we're doing our devotions with that desire for spirit and life to come inside of us. Not to look at His Word and just, well, my reading for today is 1 Corinthians 2-5, so I've just got to do it. And we barrel through it, barely receiving what God has for us. I do have notes and I haven't gotten to them yet, but this is good stuff. I did read the Bible verse. We got a verse in there. We can't approach the Bible with our natural mind. We must approach the Bible with our spiritual minds. And when we come up against something that we don't understand, which we will find in chapter 11-14, this is the section that we're going to focus on. Chapter 11 starts with this whole thing about head coverings. Who understands head coverings? What do we have in that section of Scripture that applies to us today? People who don't use head coverings. I've been listening to a biography about Rees Howells, who was a Welsh evangelist. And the Lord had told him at one point in time that in teaching him how to be in an attitude of prayer all day, He told him, you are not to wear a hat. Well in his society, to go out of the house without a hat on, that was social embarrassment. His mother almost had a heart attack when he said, no, I'm going out without my hat. She was at the door with him, at the door waiting for him, had cleaned his hat, had brushed it off. Here's your hat, son. I love you. Have a good day. He goes, no, I'm not wearing a hat. Who understands all of that stuff? Well when we approach it with our natural mind, it's like, yeah, I don't get it so I'm just going to pass that up. But when we approach it from the spiritual aspect, we can find that even the things that have to do maybe with cultural norms have a spiritual application for us that can cause us to grow in unity and in oneness before the Father. And those are the things that we're going to look at. Another assumption that Scripture makes throughout the New Testament is that we need to realize that the New Testament was written from the standpoint, in the context, with the assumption that the believer was filled with the Spirit or baptized in the Spirit, had that experience that we read of in the book of Acts. It wasn't a question for them. It wasn't a debate. It wasn't a, is this real or not? We find Paul in Acts chapter 19 checking in on some disciples and he said, did you receive the Spirit when you believed? And they said, what Spirit? And he said, well, let me check your salvation. What do you believe in? Well, we believe the message of John. Oh, that's great. John preached baptism unto repentance. But John was pointing to Jesus and it says in that moment they believed and were baptized in the name of Jesus. In other words, they went through water baptism and then Paul laid his hands on them and they received the gift of the Holy Spirit. It was a natural progression in the life of believers. It wasn't anything of, well, I don't know, I hope you explain it right. Like there was no explanation. It was just, this is what it is. And if you remember back to my, my series before we had left, one of the things I pointed out was nobody knew less about the Holy Spirit than the first church. Have you ever thought about that? It was so new. They had no literature to go back on. They had no previous experience to draw information from. It was all new, but to them it was just, it was a part of life. And scripture is written in that context. Well, how come we don't see it throughout the rest of scripture? You know what we don't see throughout the rest of scripture very much? Evangelism. But we are not confused about evangelism, are we? It's in the book of Acts, but the majority of the New Testament is written to the church about how to grow and be discipled in your walk with God. There are evangelistic things in there. Paul told Timothy, do the work of an evangelist. But the letters of Timothy, the two letters that Paul wrote to Timothy were about order in the church. The three letters of John at the end were all written to the church. Just because we don't see evangelism in the rest of the New Testament, we haven't thrown that out. We shouldn't throw out other things as well. When it comes to the baptism of the Spirit, when it comes to, let me just get rid of that word. We'll get rid of the word baptism. When it comes to the relationship that we are to have with the Holy Spirit, we do ourselves a disservice and we end up striving in our own ability, in our natural understanding, when we do not allow the Holy Spirit to have the place in our lives that he was sent here to occupy. Are you with me? Scripture was written so that the person with absolutely no knowledge could understand it, and the person with every study tool available to them is able to understand it. It is not written from the standpoint of, well, as long as you can understand the cultural background, as long as you have gone through the classes to learn classical Hebrew and Greek, as long as you have reached a certain level of scholastic experience, then you can understand Scripture. It's written for the whole gamut. What we find is that the more you are able to study, the richer the word becomes. The more that you are able to understand the context, you understand how we can draw from these stories the things that are applicable to us. But that does not mean that the believer who has just come to Christ can't understand anything. The Holy Spirit made sure the Scripture was written so that whoever wills can understand it. So why do we make it complicated? First Corinthians 2, 9-11. But as it is written, eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him. But God has revealed them to us through his Spirit, for it is the Spirit that searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. So it's not even the words on the page that give life. It is the relationship, it is the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal what is in here and to expose the deep things of God so that we can understand them and grow in them. Verse 10, again, God has revealed them to us through his Spirit, for his Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man, except the Spirit of the man which is in him. In other words, do you understand the verse? Do you understand what it is saying? It's saying, how can I look at you, Lindsay, and say, I know everything that's going on in your heart. I can't. I don't know what's going on in her heart. I don't know what's going on in her mind. I don't know why these three moved from the third row to the front row. I don't know. They just got up and moved. I don't know what's going on in their hearts. How can I know? How many times have you come to the place where you're like, I don't even know what's going on in my own heart. I don't know why I did that. I just did that. I have no idea. I don't know. I'm so confused. Have you ever found yourself in that place? The good thing is that the Holy Spirit knows what's going on in your heart better than you do. Who can know the heart of a man except that man or that person? Who can know what is going on in their mind? And then he goes further and says, even so, no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Therefore shouldn't we desire a very close relationship with the Holy Spirit? Shouldn't we desire for Him to be everything in us that He was sent here to be? Shouldn't we desire to receive from Him everything that He was sent here to give us? I don't know about you, but I'm getting stirred inside. Verse 12 says, and we have received God's Spirit, not the world's spirit. So we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. Another Scripture says, who knows the mind of God, yet we have the mind of Christ. We have been given the mind of Christ. This is so that we can spiritually discern what Scripture is saying. This is so that we can understand. And the challenge for us throughout this series is, will I allow the Holy Spirit to teach me something and look at these verses, not from my natural understanding, but with a desire to see things from a spiritual standpoint. The Corinthian church had questions. First Corinthians 7, verse 1, actually kicks off this whole section. But it's chapter 11 through 14 that we're going to focus on. But some believe that First Corinthians is actually the second letter Paul wrote to them, and Second Corinthians is the third letter Paul wrote to them. What happened to the first one? I don't know. Really doesn't matter. This is what we have. It's called First Corinthians and Second Corinthians because we have two. It seems a pretty simple way. But in chapter 7, verse 1, it says, now concerning the things that you wrote to me. The church in Corinth, we had the opportunity to be in Corinth, to walk these streets that they walked, to be in the area where Paul was writing this letter to. It was pretty fascinating. But they said, Paul, God's moving in a mighty way here. God's doing amazing things. We're experiencing the power of the Spirit. But we got questions. And since you started all of this, we believe that you have the answers. So they said to Paul, can you answer these things? And Paul said, concerning the things that you wrote to me about. They're presented in what we find in chapter 14 and chapter 3 and throughout this first book of Corinthians, this first letter. We find how often Paul is referring to their immaturity, yet they have at least a little bit of maturity to say, we don't know. We're going to search for answers. So within this context of them asking questions, we're going to look into these questions. Specifically how to do church. Chapter 11 talks about how to pray, how to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Chapter 12 is how to be used by the Holy Spirit in the gifts he gives to bring unity and benefit to the body. Chapter 13 is how to love, and it also talks about the limitations to our finite condition. And chapter 14, how to allow the gifts of the Spirit to flow in order in the church. There are five recurring themes throughout these chapters. There's only four up there because I added one while I was in the car reading my notes. The first one is unity. We are one body. The second one is love. Anything not done in love is out of order. The third thing is sacrifice. Our experience in church, our coming to church, is not just a sacrifice to God to interact with him, but it is a sacrifice for our brothers and sisters, that we are to make ourselves available and to put aside our own wants and desires for the benefit of the body. Knowledge is a recurring theme because Paul is teaching them throughout this section. Instruction concerning misunderstood concepts. And the fifth thing is order. God is a God of order. In chapter 14, there's actually a verse that specifically says this. God is a God of order. Chapter 11, like I said, many skip the first part and focus just on communion because who wants to talk about head coverings? In chapter 12, we have the focus on the gifts, but really we want to focus, most people want to focus on the middle of chapter 12, which has to do with we are one body. And how can an eye say, I want to be an ear, and a hand say, I want to be a foot? We all have our place, but we kind of glance over sometimes the first part and the last part. And then we really want to focus on the last verse of chapter 12 that Paul says, let me show you a better way, and that leads into chapter 13, which is the love chapter. Well, that's the best chapter. That's my favorite chapter. That's that. I mean, all we need is love. It's all about love. It's all about love. All we need is love. Yes. But why did God, not Paul, why did God sandwich the love chapter between the chapter where he says, I don't want you to be ignorant concerning spiritual gifts, and the chapter that says, do not despise prophecy or speaking in tongues? Why is love in the middle of those two chapters? Because if it's not done in love, it's worthless. And chapter 14, a lot of people look at that and go, chapter 14, there's a chapter 14? There's not a chapter 14 in my Bible. I don't know what Bible you're reading, but it's there, and you cannot ignore it. So over these next few weeks, this is what we're going to focus on. I don't know how long it'll take us. The goal at this point is to be finished by the time we have our retreat for Hunter and Fellowship in mid-September, but that depends on if we take a 30,000-foot view or if we take a ground-level view, but I'm going to aim for someplace in the middle. So we have detail and we have context and we have understanding, but we don't get lost in the vastness of it, but we don't get bogged down in the minute detail of everything. So that's the goal. So you can be praying. For me, this is a different type of preaching than I'm used to. I'm a topical preacher, not an expository preacher, and this type of study is more expository. So I had asked God a couple months ago, teach me something new. This is going to be something new for me. So you can pray for that, but pray for all of us. For this week, I want you to read these four chapters, chapter 11 to 14. I want you to read them as a whole. the beginning of chapter 11 and don't finish until you get to the end of chapter 14. Read it as a whole to get a continuity of what Paul is talking about as one complete thought. Go ahead and read it as individual chapters, which most of us have already done, but give special attention to the parts of the chapters that you might have read through very quickly because maybe you didn't understand them or maybe you fully understand them and it's just review, but give attention. And in the third way, read them as smaller sections, read them according to their topics or their breakdowns and really ask yourself, what is it that I believe about this? What is it that I have pitched my tent and put down a foundation on this, my belief on this? Ask the Lord if he's wanting you to pull up those tent stakes and understand something a little more about it. In fellowship groups this week, we'll start discussing the things that we understand about these chapters at this point and throughout the series, we'll see what God does in us to gain a more thorough understanding of what he has for us. Amen. Are you with me? Does it sound like a good plan? Ten of you? Like the plan. Well for the ten of you, this series will be really good. Let's stand together. That is a joke, of course, the whole ten thing, not the stand together, but the whole ten thing. As the worship team comes up, let's pray. Fathers, we embark on this study. May we embark on it, Lord, as a collective one. May we be unified in our desire to learn more from your Holy Spirit, to be encouraged, to be instructed, to be challenged. And Lord God, that you would bring us to a place that we can be used by you in a more powerful way, Lord, to understand what you have given us and to understand what actually does reside in us through the Holy Spirit. Father, we submit this to you. We dedicate it to you, Lord God. And we commit this evening to pursue understanding and pursue, Lord God, a dependence on the Holy Spirit to reveal the deep things that are written here, that come from your heart and come from your mind. May you be glorified in Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to this week's podcast. If you are ever in the Tegucigalpa area and looking for an English-speaking congregation, please join us on Sunday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the main auditorium of Iglesia CCI in Colonial Trepici, just off Boulevard Sollapa, near Una. 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