Introduction to Corinthians

Well, good morning, everyone. I want to greet you in Christ's name. And I too want to say that I'm glad for the presence of everyone here today. And that is not hyperbole this morning. Sometimes we say those kind of things sort of out of habit. But as the crowd is less this morning, every person here does make a huge difference. And so we're glad for everyone who's here.

I thought I'd begin a study in the book of First Corinthians. I just find it for myself just easier if I have a place to go to when it comes time to share. And recently someone reminded me, or I was listening to an exposition on expository preaching, that if you preach through the New Testament, you do pretty well cover all the bases. So that's my desire in this study here this morning.

So this morning's basically going to be a little bit of maybe a preview or a lay a little foundation for the study in the book of First Corinthians.

Context is really important. And oftentimes I think maybe we read a book of the Bible like this without sort of connecting it with real places, real people, and maybe let our imagination work just a little bit to think about how would it have been. And so I want to think just a little bit about Corinth. Corinth was the third largest city in the Roman Empire at the time. Does anyone know what the third largest city in the United States is today?

Take a stab at it.

Chicago. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, I believe. So Chicago is the third largest city. So that sort of gives you a little bit of a context and maybe to put it in it probably doesn't compare size-wise or anything. But Chicago is different from Los Angeles.

Los Angeles is known for movie stars and movies and a beautiful coast there. Chicago is known for it's a lake city and it's sort of a it is a hub. O'Hare Airport's there because it's sort of in the center of the country and people come there. And it's also the center of the mercantile trade exchange because of all the wheat and all the crops and so on. So that affects what kind of city Chicago would be. And it was no different with Corinth.

Corinth was located on the Isthmus between the mainland Greece and the Peloponnese. And so if you look at Greece, there's this pretty big landmass and that looks like someone took it and just squeezed it. And there's just a little Isthmus that comes down through and then we have this pretty large landmass at the bottom. And Corinth was located right on that little skinny part, that little Isthmus.

So the Peloponnese was almost an island, but that little Isthmus is about less than four miles across. And so it became, as you can imagine, relatively important in the society. So any commerce in Greece coming from mainland Greece down to the bottom had to go through that little four-mile strip of land, as well as ships plying the Mediterranean Sea and they were headed wanted to go to Asia, had to go all the way around the tip of Greece. And so there was these inlets, these long inlets that came in. And so it was preferable they would the sailors would prefer to sail that sheltered water, come to that little part of land there. And they would either if it was a small enough ship, they actually would they had roller system and these ramps and they would actually pull the ships across and pull them to the other side and then they would be into the Adriatic Sea and they could shave off 200 miles of sea voyage.

And so it was very important from north to south. It also became very important east to west. And there was the larger ships, they would actually take the cargo off, transport it over land, put it into another ship, and take it. And some of this makes a little more sense when we think about Apostle Paul and some of his journeys and the ships and whatever. And you kind of get a little bit of a picture maybe of what it would have been like.

The city was destroyed, totally destroyed in 146 BC. So this is before Jesus' time, before Paul's time. The city was completely destroyed. As the Greek Empire fell, this city was very strategic. And so the Roman Lucius Mumius destroyed it completely.

And it was only around 46 so for about 100 years it was pretty well ceased to exist with just ruins. But then Julius Caesar got to looking at it and said, "Well, it's going to be important." He could see that it was going to be an important place for commerce and so on. And so 46 to 44 BC, it was rebuilt. The city was rebuilt by Julius Caesar.

Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar and others all had ideas of digging a canal across that thing instead of dragging the ships across. And Nero in 67 AD, so this was about 15 years after Paul was there, actually came there for a groundbreaking ceremony where they were going to dig this canal. And they were going to use Jewish slave labor to do it. However, it was abandoned. They started the project and it was abandoned. It wasn't until the 1800s when the French finally succeeded in digging a canal across there. So if you go on Google Maps and pull it up, you can see right across right there at Corinth, there's a little canal that goes across there and the ships can go through there.

Because you can imagine then, because of what the city was like and all the ships and all the people coming and going, that it was not a it was a wicked city, a very wicked city.

The highest point in the city, there was a temple to Aphrodite or Aphrodite. She was the goddess of love. And by the time of Paul, that temple was actually somewhat in ruins but still had vestiges of its former glory.

At its height, there were a thousand priestesses and they were temple prostitutes that were connected with the worship at the temple of Aphrodite. And so that would have been at the highest point of the town. So when you would come to Corinth, if you looked at the highest place, there's this temple to Aphrodite.

And even though it had fallen into disrepair somewhat because of the destruction and so on, it was not what it used to be. The worship of Aphrodite was still very much part of the culture there. And the priestesses were still part there.

It says, "Likely they plied their trade in the wine shops." In excavating the ancient city, they found 33 wine shops and then there's lofts above the wine shops and that's what would have went on there.

There was another temple on another lower part of the town, a temple to Apollo. While Aphrodite was a celebration of the female body and femininity, Apollo was a male god. And you can imagine, but in that temple, there was all kinds of homosexual practices and things taking place there.

Poseidon was another god that they and he was the ruler of the sea. And again, you can sort of figure out why that would have been because they were involved in all these sailors and the sea trade coming through.

Hermes, they had a pantheon there, which is a temple to all the gods, just in case you missed any, sort of like in Athens to the unknown god. And so these temples permeated the city. And along with the temple was temple worship, which involved feasting and meats offered to idols and so on, which again, as we think about the context of the book of Corinthians and the letter to the Corinthians, we can see why this was a major part of their culture. It was also home to the Isthmusian Games, which were second only to the Olympics in their size.

There was an outdoor theater there. It could seat around 20,000 people. And the crown that they offered in these games was a crown of celery. I'm not quite sure why they chose that. But Paul talks about in chapter 9, verse 25, he talks about a corruptible crown that withers and fades, fades away. And probably very much had in mind that crown that was given out. A wicked city, full of immorality, full of drunkenness, to the point where it was actually a byword to say if you I can't pronounce the Greek word, but there's a word that basically says to act like a Corinthian. And if you said he acts like a Corinthian, you very much knew what they meant.

Another contemporary Greek said that you never put a Corinthian on the in a play. Every time a Corinthian was in a play, he was portrayed as a drunk. So that would tell you a little bit what people's oppression of the Corinthian culture would be. And of course, as usual, when we think about wicked places like that, you often have a lot of wealth with poverty in the underbelly. So it looks good on the surface, but there's a lot of poverty and so on, a little bit like we would think of Las Vegas or somewhere like that.

And it was to this Corinth that Paul went. And it's no wonder that he says in First Corinthians chapter 2, "That I was with you in weakness and fear and in much trembling." And we often think maybe that was because of his speaking abilities and that may be part of it. But I think he was intimidated by this city when he went there. This was not a good place to go to.

So I'd like you to turn, if you could, to Acts chapter 18. And I'd like to just set the stage for how the church came to be and how Paul came to be there.

So chapter 18 in Acts says, "After these things..." And if you want to just think just a little bit after what things? Well, after everything else that has gone on to this time with Apostle Paul, all the imprisonments and Philippi was mentioned this morning and his experience at Athens and at Thessalonica.

And then he goes from Athens to Corinth and says, "After these things, Paul departed from Athens and went to Corinth. And he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome. And he came to them so because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for by occupation they were tent makers. And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and persuaded both Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy had come from Macedonia, Paul was compelled by the Spirit and testified to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ. But when they opposed him and blasphemed, he shook his garments and said to them, 'Your blood be upon your own heads.

I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.' And he departed from there and entered the house of a certain man named Justus, one who worshiped God, whose house was next door to the synagogue. Then Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed on the Lord with all his household. And many of the Corinthians, hearing, believed and were baptized. Now the Lord spake to Paul in the night by a vision, 'Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent, for I am with you and no one will attack you to hurt you, for I have many people in this city.' And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

When Gallio was Proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat, saying, 'This fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the law.' And when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, 'If it were a matter of wrongdoing or wicked crimes, O Jews, there would be reason why I should bear with you. But if it is a question of words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves, for I do not want to be a judge of such matters.' And he drove them from the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat.

But Gallio took no notice of these things." So here we have how the church in Corinth had its beginnings. Paul comes to Corinth and I imagine him coming there. It sounds like he was maybe by himself. And you come to a new city, you have no one, "Where do I go? What do I do?" And it says he met up with Aquila and Priscilla.

And they were tent makers. They were of the same trade that he was. And they were expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius. And so I just love the picture here of the working of God behind the scenes. So we think, "Well, Claudius is pushing these Jews out of Rome. That's not a good thing." But Priscilla and Aquila end up in Corinth. And Paul comes to Corinth and he meets them and they're believers. And of course, we read a lot of Aquila and Priscilla and the impact that they had.

I love verses 9 and 10. "The Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, 'Do not be afraid, but speak and do not keep silent, for I am with you. No one will attack you to hurt you, for I have many people in this city.'" And so Paul had that as a backdrop, that confirmation that he's where God wants him to be.

And that brings us to First Corinthians then, a letter written to the church four to five years after the church in Corinth was established. And it actually seems like it's the second letter maybe that Paul had wrote to them because he references an earlier letter in chapter 5, verse 9, about the things that he wrote to them before.

And this was a letter written to a church with many problems. This was a messed up church. It really was. What were some of those problems that the church in Corinth had? Well, right off the bat, they were divided. There was division among them. There was gross immorality.

Brothers were going to law against brother. They were thinking wrong about marriage. The rich were taking advantage of the poor, the haves and the have-nots, especially at the Lord's Supper.

There was problems with the gifts in the church. They were elevating some gifts to a higher level than they were ought to, and specifically tongues. They were thinking wrong about the resurrection. And if there ever was a church that you'd give up on or say, "This is a church I need to leave. I think I just need to leave here," this would have been the church.

But I want us to take note of Paul's attitude in the opening verses of First Corinthians. And that's a little bit where we're going to go here this morning. I'll read verses 1 to 9. "Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God and Sosthenes, our brother, to the church of God, which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of the Lord, the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by him, in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly awaiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful, by whom you were called unto fellowship of his..." "By whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."

The verse that stands out to me, or the statement that stands out to me, is God is faithful in verse 9.

The promise that Jesus made in Matthew 16, where he says, "On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." And Paul looks on this church, which we would look on and say, "This church is a horrible mess."

And he looks on and he says, "I see evidence that God is working here."

You know, God uses...builds his church, and he uses imperfect human beings to do it, imperfect people. And churches are made up of imperfect people. And I'm an imperfect person. All of us are imperfect people. And...but Paul didn't write them off. Did he overlook things that needed to be done? No.

We're not talking here about some kind of baseless optimism that Paul had. Neither were we, at the same time, looking at some kind of a pervasive pessimism that Paul had about the church here. Paul sees the potential not because of who he is, but because he has confidence in their calling.

And he says there at the beginning of this, he says, "That I was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God." And then he says that you were called to be saints. And it's interesting here, I don't know if you took notice in the first verse, Sosthenes, our brother. And there's a good chance that that's the same Sosthenes who was the leader of the synagogue.

At the end of Acts 18, it says, "Then the Greeks took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat." So there was Paul who went to the...who went to the Jewish synagogue, and for the most part, they rejected him. And yet it says that the ruler of the synagogue believed. After he went next door to Justice's house, the ruler of the synagogue believed. And now here this book opens, and apparently Sosthenes is with Paul. And apparently he was...a good chance at least, we don't know 100% sure if it's the same Sosthenes. But he talks about Sosthenes, our brother. And Sosthenes was probably the scribe, the person that wrote down the book here, the letters themselves.

He said, "You were called to be saints." And remember the promise that God made to Paul was that there's many people in this city who are mine. There's many people here.

"Along with all people everywhere that call upon the name of the Lord." And then he says in verse 9 that they were called into fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

And then he says that he was thankful. "I thank God for the grace of God that I see in you."

In verses 5 and 6, he talks about...he mentions how that he sees how God has equipped them. He says in verse 5 that you were enriched in everything by him, in all utterance and knowledge. So...and you had no lacking in the gifts.

He said that you came no short in no gifts, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord. And he has confidence that they're going to be found faithful because God is faithful in verse 9. And so the question this morning is, are we going to be a part of his program? Paul goes on to address this letter then head-on, the things that need to be dealt with. But he does so in such a way that he doesn't lose sight of the big picture, the fact that it's God's church. He's building the church. It's not Paul's church. It's not Peter's church. It's not Apollos's church. It's not Harvey's church. It's not Wendell's church. It's not John Martin's church.

But it is the church of God at Shippensburg. And this was the church of God in Corinth. And I think we need to always keep that in mind. It's God's church. He's building it. Not with some kind of unreasonable optimism, unrealistic optimism, or with a dark pessimism that pervades everything, but confidence in the faithfulness of God, that if we follow what his directives, God will build his church.

We've looked and we thought a little bit about the problems. I'd like to just look a little bit at the pattern that he lays out here in verse 10 as a springboard for where we're going to go from here on and the rest of the book.

First Corinthians 1, verse 10. "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."

That's the pattern that Paul lays out. And that's quite a pattern. That's quite a challenge, really, when we think about it. Speak the same things, no divisions among us, joined together, having the same mind and the same judgment. And so what he's calling us to is a spiritual maturity. You know, it's children that fight and squabble over minor things and little things.

And if we look at these following verses, that's what they were doing. They were saying...and one was saying, "I'm of Paul, and I'm of Apollos, and I'm of Jesus, and I'm of Peter," and so on.

And Paul's desire for the church at Corinth and his...and I believe God's desire for our church is a growing into maturity. You know, the church is to grow and expand and take new territory from the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of this world, from Satan's dominion. That's what Paul said...Jesus says, "The gates of hell are not going to prevail."

And too often, I think, a pessimism sets in and it becomes a flat monotony in the church. Or the other side is sort of an unrealistic optimism where kind of we just pretend that there's no elephant in the room, there's no problems here.

And that lends itself to maybe feverish activity. Let's just...more programs, more this, more that, you know, in an effort. And neither of those are very successful in turning back the tide of the society around us that...that press in against us. And you know, Christians have a tendency to sort of hop from one church to another. "I don't like the Cracker Barrel on this side of town, so I'm going to visit the one on the other side of town." And if you look at Cracker Barrel in the end, Cracker Barrel's bottom line, there's no difference. It just transfers from one to the other.

And you know, I think so often it can be that way when we look at the big picture and we see, you know, are we gaining ground? Are we taking territory from Satan? Are we just popping from one to the other and things are staying the same? Am I saying there's never a time, you know, that we have to make some hard decisions about leaving a church? No.

But I would just like to really encourage us this morning that, you know, just to hang in there, to stick with it. It's God's church. It's his program. And you know, we need a reverse tsunami, like Brother Steve talked about the other week.

And I'd like to reinforce that, you know, brotherhood's hard work. Like I say, we're imperfect people. We make mistakes. We hurt each other. We all have our foibles and our personality and so on. And so much of problems is wrapped up in that. And I'd just like to reinforce that brotherhood is hard work. It comes with a cost.

And it comes with a cross. And the message of the cross is what Paul goes into here in the next part of this...part of this book. And I think the message of the cross is an antidote to some of this stuff that we struggle with. And it's the antidote for the problems that...was an antidote for the problems at the church at Corinth. And I think it can be an antidote for any problems that we face here at Shippensburg. And so I just...the overarching thing that I would like us to think about in this introduction is that it's God's church. It's his program. Let's not lose heart. Let's do what it takes. Let's do the hard things, brotherhood's hard work.

But let's have the attitude that Paul has here. I mean, when you look further back in the book, that church was a real mess. And yet Paul had that shepherd's heart, like we talked about this morning, where he wanted to see the flock prevail. And we see that in Second Corinthians that it was successful in some of what he...what he promoted. And so let's not lose heart. Let's not become cynical and pessimistic. At the same time, let's be realistic when we deal...and deal head-on with the things that we face, our struggles that we face. And we can claim, as Paul did, that he's going to confirm us to the end and that we'll be blameless on the day of Jesus Christ.

And that's my desire for myself, for all of us here this morning. Does anyone have any comments or anything before we close?