Grace and peace – 1:1-9 – God in the mess
Today we start the letter of 1 Corinthians, a growing, Jesus worshiping, diverse and messed up church.
Over the coming weeks we are going to hear the apostles love towards the church and anger at some of the things happening, and as we listen in to these words of wisdom addressed to the Corinthians, we are going to learn repeatedly how to love Jesus more and each other better.
Paul called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and our brother Sosthenes. To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge. God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Pray
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1. Who is this letter from?
a. Paul & Sosthenes.
i. We have one messiah, Jesus.
ii. But we like to turn other mere men into saviours.
iii. But God doesn’t bring his kingdom through one superhero Christian. He brings his kingdom through his church, teams of people, all different and wonderfully made to be his hands and feet to the world.
iv. It’s often multiple people who are involved in bringing someone to Christ, multiple people who God uses to mature us, multiple people who God uses to speak wisdom and see churches grow.
v. Paul is the main mouth peace, but God is even here using a team to speak into this youth church,
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2. Who is this letter addressed to?
a. The church in Corinth – the letter is written to address certain issues that had arisen in this particular church. It is addressed to the church in Corinth.
b. It is also for all believers sanctified in Christ
i. For all believers living at that time, not living in Corinth.
ii. For us now.
iii. The letter’s primary audience is a group of 1st-century Christians living in the Greek city of Corinth, a people living 2000 years over 2000 miles away. We need to remember this when we read this letter and all scripture, it is not written to us but it is for us.
iv. This means that we sometimes will need to do a bit of work to understand what the writers of scripture mean at times.
1. They will use metaphors and sayings; they will use the way they understand the world to try and describe the riches of our God to us.
2. Not all will be plain for us to understand,
a. If I said I went to the game yesterday or Preston is about 15 minutes, we used to live near fat man’s corner. You understand that
3. This is why there is such a diversity in scripture, poetry, history, wisdom, prophecy, apocalyptic, biography, and epistles.
4. God didn’t possess someone, downloads his word into their brain and straight onto a page.
5. He used people, their understanding of the world and their character type to make himself known.
c. God reveals himself through multiple genres of scripture which were written by many people, he grows us through using different people, his church is grown using a vast array of people
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3. Just to hammer home this point
Who planted the church in Corinth? Not just Paul
After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he met a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome …
… When Silas and Timothy came from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself exclusively to preaching, testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah.
Acts 18:1-2, 5
a. Paul initiates and seems to be the primary leader but God builds his church with teams of people, not one-man superheroes.
b. God also sends Aquila and Pricilla
c. Then Paul’s right-hand men, Silas and Timothy join him and they free him up to preach.
d. If you continue to read you see Sosthenes is there, he was the leader of the Corinthian Synagogue.
e. Then after Paul moves on Apollos, a gifted teacher is added to the church.
i. Each with their own gifting to help this church grow.
4. Take a look at ourselves
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Guess the Elder
A. Encourager (his words strengthen and comfort), Faith (A supernatural ability to lean on God for the unseen), Help (sees need before others) and Hospitality (putting people at ease, making them feel welcome and at home).
B. Hospitality, Craftsman (the practical gift of working with your hands), Encourager, Faith.
C. Encourager, Service (seeing jobs that need doing that others miss), Teaching (bringing understanding to scripture), and Faith.
D. Leadership (bringing big picture direction), Apostolic (pioneering and laying down foundations for new ministries and training up others), Teaching, Tongues and interpretation.
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you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
1 Corinthians 1:7
God doesn’t give one person every gift. But he supplies our needs by adding people to us.
You are the gifts to the church
5. Diversity is good.
a. We are missing prophecy, discernment, evangelism, administration, pastors, intercessors and healing.
b. But we are not the church, we all are and we all have a measure of each.
i. Andrea has a measure of the gift of prophecy.
ii. Pamala, you have a measure of the gift of evangelism.
iii. Geoff, you have a pastor’s gifting.
iv. Who has a heart of prayer? Intercessor.
v. Who’s good at forms and loves order? Administrator
vi. We pray in gifts that we are lacking and want more and like a good father he is generous to meet our needs. And his desire is to surpass our need far beyond we can imagine.
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Stop and Pray 1
What gifts do you feel are lacking in our church?
Ask God to give you those gifts and for God to add different people with those gifts to us.
a. To build a church the way Jesus wants, to build a healthy church.
vii. Requires diversity
viii. Different gifts, different people, different backgrounds.
ix. In God’s wisdom, he plans for the world in all its wisdom to look at the church and say, “You’re going to use them!”. They have nothing in common.
x. And to some extent that is right, some of us are married others are single, some of us voted labour others conservative, some like sports others like spicy food, some have money, and some are educated.
xi. Honestly many of us have very little in common. BUT our love for Jesus.
6. We are all different and not just spiritual.
a. Some of you are always early, for others, it seems physically impossible to be on time.
i. It was suggested that we move the start time back for church, to help you be on time, but I know that for some of you, we would still be late for a morning service that started at 2 pm!
b. Some are extroverts, and you love seeing people. It’s the best thing about your Sunday. Others, turn up late and plan to leave early to avoid human contact but then we put a break in the middle.
c. Some of you are talkers, you use 1000 words without saying much at all and others can sum up the depths of the soul with one word “fine”.
7. Corinth was an extremely diverse place, a home for the wealthy and poor, where people from all over the empire came to live. As this new church formed men and women from all these backgrounds were added to this mixing pot of cultures to become one new wonderful family.
a. This is something that can only happen in Christ,
b. Nothing else on earth looks like the church
c. She is diverse, full of people who sometimes annoy each other, who are different. But to Jesus with all her differences she is the most beautiful thing in the universe.
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After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
Revelation 7:9-10
d. When Jen and I were back in Lancaster dreaming of what this church would look like.
i. We said like that, with every people group there are.
ii. Because that’s the type of church God wants.
8. Diversity isn’t easy
a. This series is titled God in the mess because when you bring this diverse group together it can get messy
b. This diverse group, full of differing ideas and ideologies would struggle in their new identity as brothers and sisters in Christ’s new family.
c. We have the same problems now.
i. It’s much easier to do life, build church, with only people who look like, sound like, behave like and think like you.
ii. Who like the same things, eat the same foods, who are the same age as you.
1. we call that par church
2. A church for:
3. poor, rich, young, and old, have a British, Nigerian, Zimbabwean, Romanian, Italian, or German church
4. It can seem like a good idea but it’s not God’s idea.
5. THAT’S NOT REAL CHURCH,
6. Yes, it is useful to have ministries that are directed at certain groups, but the goal should always be to bring them into God’s big, messy, beautiful family, where we find new brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.
iii. Paul writes another letter to a church in Ephesus and says in chapter 3 that the church is the manifold wisdom of God.
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Stop and Pray 2
What people groups are living in Blackpool that are not represented here?
Pray for God to break into those communities and add them to our family.
9. But take off your rose-tinted glasses because diversity is hard!
a. Corinth is an extremely diverse church and the letter is the result of issues arising due to the diversity.
b. Diversity is good, it is Godly, but it is hard.
i. When you put a group of people together from different backgrounds, with varied education, money and family values.
ii. It’s a recipe for disaster, we don’t understand each other, there can be language barriers even between English speakers.
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10. Grace and Peace
a. This is why Paul and his friends want to start with Grace and Peace.
b. They have some big issues to address, as this church argues over who is the better teacher, what they should and shouldn’t wear, some are getting drunk in their services, they are suing each other, and someone is even sleeping with his stepmom.
c. But before they get into that they want them to know firstly God’s:
i. Grace (Charis) It describes the undeserved favour from one person to another, and for those who are saved, it conveys the wonderful, amazing, freely given kindness of our Lord. Jesus died, he gave Himself away for us because He is hardwired to bless.
ii. Secondly his Peace (shalom): A state of harmony and restoration. Where there is nothing to fear nothing and we are in a place of pure contentment, that is received through Grace.
11. Receive God’s grace and peace
a. Paul knew that before the problems of church life could be resolved before the issues raised by building a church full of very different people could be tackled.
b. The church needed to grasp the grace of God.
To experience the peace of God, you have to first have received and been changed by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. God’s grace in us is the source of our peace. It brings us into harmony with our heavenly Father and enables us to love each other as we die to ourselves and live for Christ.
12. Grace changes everything
a. The simple truth is that Jesus knows everything that you have and will ever do, he knows the worst version of you. Yet still chooses to love you. The father had a list a mile long of all your offences against him and Jesus willingly stood in your place, taking the punishment and offering you peace.
b. How can church be diverse and still work? How can it truly be for everyone?
i. because when we know the cost of what Jesus paid and receive the peace he offers we can willingly die to our own desires….
And we can by the grace of God not only get on but we can display the manifold wisdom of God to Blackpool, the Fylde and the world! By loving each other in away that is impossible apart from Christ.
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Stop and Pray 3
Who do you struggle to love?
If there are Christians you struggle to love, repent, don’t ask God to change them but ask for the grace to love them no matter how annoying they are.
13. Response.
a. I said at the start that with in this letter we will see the apostles love towards this church and anger towards some of the things happening.
i. The words get angry at times because the writers have a Christ inspired vision for the church. For Christ’s bride and some of what he sees goes against that vision.
ii. A church made up of all peoples, loving and serving each other.
iii. This is our vision, it’s part of our values (community, serving, reaching out, not because its a good idea but its biblical).
iv. Values are more than well worded statements and as such it should affect how we live our lives everyday.
v. How we do church yes but how you make choices in your home, work …
Pray