The Bible Recap - Day 333 (1 Corinthians 1-4) - Year 3

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Yesterday in Acts 18, we met the people of the church in Corinth. Paul went there on a missionary tour and stuck around for 18 months. He likes to check in on them from time to time and he sends them letters in response to what he hears. Before he wrote first Corinthians, he wrote them another letter that we haven't found. We call it zero Corinthians. He references it in the section we'll read tomorrow. Then at some point later he sent this letter, first Corinthians, to address some really upsetting problems he'd been hearing about as well as some questions they had. Before we jump in, this is your friendly reminder to slow down when you're reading Paul's intros.

They aren't fluff. They are steeped in theology. Okay, here we go. Paul spends a lot of time in this letter correcting things that Corinthian Church is doing and believing. It carries the weight of a rebuke, but he opens with some encouraging reminders before launching into the problem areas. In 1 7 through 9, he says that Jesus will sustain them to the end and will make them guiltless.

He says that since God is the one who called them into his family to begin with, God will be the one to keep them there, because what God initiates, he will sustain and he will fulfill. When you're about to be confronted with all your sin, it's nice to be reminded that none of it changes the way God views you. None of it revokes your status as his beloved child. The first problem Paul addresses today is that the people are divided over their favorite leaders in the church.

There are some things worth dividing over for sure, but these aren't those things. None of this is about doctrine or theology at all. This is a popularity contest. This is about being part of the in-grout. Worshiping their teachers is idolatry. Paul isn't the one who died for them. All Paul does is plant some seeds. He has zero power to make those seeds grow,

but that's on God. God is the one who gives the growth. He also mentions that his job isn't to baptize people. He's not diminishing the importance of baptism, so much as pointing out that it's secondary to preaching the gospel. And that all checks out with what we've mentioned about it not being the act of baptism that saves the person. Otherwise, Paul would have been adamant about it here.

He goes on to say that the Gospel makes no sense to those who don't believe the Gospel, its foolishness. It's not easy to grasp the value of the Gospel. Sometimes its message doesn't line up with what we're looking for. The Jews were seeking signs, the Greeks, like those who met in Athens were seeking knowledge, but all Paul had brought them was the Gospel of Christ,

which threw a wrench in things for the Jews, and which seemed crazy to the Greeks. It's so easy to dismiss the gospel. But for those who do believe it, it is the power that enables everything they do. Somehow Paul says, the people of the Corinthian Church who are unpolished and lower class actually got it. They understood the gospel. Paul says God intentionally chose them because they understood what it's like to be at square one, spiritual poverty. They are not under the illusion

that they have anything to offer God, unlike the self-righteous Pharisees or the educated Greeks. And because of that, they gained the righteousness and wisdom of Christ, what a trade-off. So these guys don't need to boast in whatever teacher they're following, including him, they should boast

in the finished work of Christ. Paul wants to help those who've been given the wisdom of God to grow in the wisdom of God, and the only way to do that is to be in communication with the spirit of God, because he's the one who imparts wisdom. But don't imagine yourself sitting on a cloud meditating. That's all well and good, but it's imperative to note that one of the primary ways to communicate with the Spirit is through reading Scripture. Jesus affirmed that the Spirit is the one who wrote this book. So what we're doing every day when you open up the Bible and read it, that's you listening to the Spirit of God's first hand unfiltered.

Where Scripture is preached, the Spirit is at work. When a verse jumps out at you, when you learn something new, when you feel convicted or guided or encouraged by the words of Scripture, that's the Spirit speaking. Haven't you increased in the knowledge of God by picking up His word every day? If so, thank the Spirit. Because the Spirit is God, He knows the mind of God, and because the Spirit is our teacher, He helps us understand God's thoughts. Paul refers to this kind of correction and access as having the mind of Christ.

That is remarkable. Paul wants to teach them to know deeper things, but he says their actions prove they aren't ready for it yet. First, they have to learn to live out what they do know, to try to teach them more things that this point would be cruel and overwhelming and unfruitful, like trying to give a baby a protein bar. He trusts that God will keep growing them up, though, because he will finish what he started in them. In the meantime, though, he says, Look, don't boast in humans. You belong to God, not to a preacher. And if you think about it, those preachers were sent by God to serve you.

So don't idolize them. Fix your eyes on God. In chapter 4, I'll talk a lot about what judgment is and who judges whom, and it can be really confusing if we forget the context. At this point, he's talking about what it means to be a Christian leader. While leaders are servants to the people, leaders are accountable primarily to God, he says. He's not seeking their approval, and he's not even trying to feel awesome about himself. He's seeking God's approval, and it's a hard path to walk.

He doesn't make a lot of money, and he doesn't sleep much, and people speak poorly of him. But he and all the other teachers do it because they love them and they love God. Paul says he feels like a father to them. That's how much he loves them. He doesn't want to have to rebuke them when he comes to visit, he wants to come in gentleness and love, but he'll do whatever is best for them, whatever they need at the time. My God shot today is just five words in 130, where Paul is talking about the things that are given to us in Christ. The phrase Paul uses is righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Those five words and those three things went to different timeframes in our life. We have already been declared righteous. That's past tense.

Sanctification is the ongoing process where we're made clean. That's present tense. And redemption is what Jesus referred to in Luke 21, where he said our redemption is drawing near. Romans 8 says we eagerly await the redemption of our bodies. This is future tense. Those five little words, those three things, reveal that your past, present, and future are all handled by Jesus. There is no frame in the movie of your life where he hasn't been active. He's at work in all of it to bring us into the fullness of relationship with himself.

He's got my past, present, and future. He's got my always because he's where the joy is. Uh oh, did your podcast not load today? Of course not. You're listening to it right now. But someday that's going to happen to you. So here's what you need to know. Plan ahead.

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