There she is, sitting right down here. Can you hear me, Eleanor? Oh, you do hear me. Okay. Yesterday, she celebrated her 90th birthday. Congratulations. There she is. And one of the things I like most about Eleanor is the fact that every day she thinks could be the day that Jesus is coming. And I agree with her on that. She believes in the imminent return of the Lord Jesus Christ and looks forward to His return. Amen. I'm on the same page.
We're going to open our Bibles together this morning to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. My wife and I have a little arrangement that when one of us gets sick, the other one will not catch that virus. I don't know if you've arranged that yet in your marriage or not, but every now and then we break that agreement and we have broken it this weekend. We've been battling a virus and it's my turn now. But that's why I married a nurse after all.
I figured if I'm a hypochondriac, I might as well marry a nurse so she can take care of me. I married a doctor so I married a nurse and it has worked out well for 37 years. And Stephen Gregory is gone now, but he and his wife just celebrated 21 years of marriage yesterday. And so congratulations to them and if you see them after the service, be sure to congratulate them, won't you? I'm going to talk today about what it, you've got what it takes from 1 Corinthians chapter 1.
Today we are starting a journey that I think will prove exciting and spiritually stretching as well. We're beginning an expositional study of the book of 1 Corinthians, a book that was written by the apostle Paul as he says in verse 1 with the help of our brother, he says, Sosthenes. Now Sosthenes is not a common name in the New Testament. There is one other use of the term, the name rather, and that is in the book of Acts, the 18th chapter.
Interestingly, it is the chapter that talks about Paul's visit to Corinth. While he was there, he was preaching the gospel as was his manner in the synagogues first and then he left the synagogues when they eventually rejected the message. One of the, the, the ruler actually of the synagogue in Corinth was a man named Sosthenes. Eventually the Jews of that city had had enough of Paul and they brought a charge against him before Galio, who was the proconsul of that area that was called Achaia.
They dragged Paul into court, but Galio was a very pleasant, genteel sort of a leader. He didn't like to get involved in these sorts of things and his decision early on was just throw this out of court. He says, I don't want to think to do with this. You Jews look after this kind of stuff. It's your own business. I don't want to hear it. But it says that after he had made that decision, they beat Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue. Now it doesn't explain who they were.
It could have been the Romans beating him because they had brought a worthless case to the court, that's possible. Or it could have been actually the Jews themselves who beat Sosthenes because he had brought such an ineffective case to court. It's not clear, but he suffered at that point. And apparently at some time, if this is the same man, and I lean toward the fact that it is, at some point Sosthenes became a convert. He received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
He believed in the Messiah, his people, the Jews. And so now he is with Paul as Paul is writing this letter back to the city. Some years have passed. Paul is now in the city of Ephesus where he has been for about three years or so. And there in the city of Ephesus, he receives three guests, three visitors from the city of Corinth. Ephesus, of course, is across the body of water there in Asia Minor or Turkey, as we call it today. And these three men brought news from the church in Corinth.
They said that things were not real well there, that there were problems in the church. And they also apparently delivered a letter from the church to Paul asking specific questions. And so Paul sits down and then by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he pens what we can see call First Corinthians. And he mentioned Sosthenes because the people there would have known him and appreciated the fact that he was helping Paul in his ministry and even in writing this letter back to them.
You say to me, well what relevance really does a letter written by an apostle 1950 years ago have for the church today? A couple of responses to that. First of all, this is the Word of God. And folks, the Word of God is always relevant to us. We may or we may not grasp its relevance personally, but it is always relevant to our situation because it's God's Word. We don't have to make it relevant, it is relevant.
But beyond that, I would say this, that the letter of First Corinthians addresses many of the concerns and issues that we face today in our world and in today's church. This was a very materialistic and affluent church that was beset by numerous problems. It was a church that was badly divided. We get into that issue very early on in the letter. In fact, we'll begin talking about it even next week. It was a badly divided church.
It was a church that had experienced what I'm going to call superficial discipleship. People became believers, but they didn't ever deepen themselves in the things of God, much like the contemporary church today, at least in the West. Perhaps you have heard about the study that Willow Creek Community Church in Barrington, Illinois, did about six months ago now. Very courageously, Bill Hybel is the pastor there, asked for some research to be done on their converts.
Willow Creek has led the way for 25 more years on what a seeker-driven church is all about. So after 25 years or more, they wanted to find out what's happening among our converts. They put together a study that was professionally done by an outside organization. I'm sorry, it wasn't an outside organization, but they utilized outside resources for it. The results shocked them.
When they got the results back, basically Bill Hybel's got before his congregation, he said to them, ladies and gentlemen, we have failed. We have failed. What they discovered in the course of this research was that the converts that they had produced over these years tended to be very superficial. They came to church to get themselves fed and spiritually nourished. They had never been taught or never followed through on how to feed themselves.
And consequently, they were superficial converts to Christ. They may have been genuine, but their discipleship, their commitments were very shallow. Now I can almost hear somebody here say, well, yeah, that's what I've been telling people about the seeker-sensitive church all this time. And some of us have said that.
But before we criticize them too much, perhaps we ought to do some research on our own converts and be courageous enough to put it out in public, as Willow Creek was, and challenge ourselves as to whether we're really producing disciples of Jesus Christ and what we're about. The Corinthian church was not. It was also a church that was very accepting of immoral behavior. It was a church that lacked commitment to marriage. Paul spends a very long chapter on that subject.
It was a church that disagreed about how Christians are to relate to and live in a pagan culture. Now we have an increasingly pagan culture on our hands. How are we to relate to that culture? We'll find out. There was doctrinal confusion in the church. And there was also the seeking of experience in worship over substance. So you see, as you think through this, there were a lot of parallels in the Corinthian church to what the church is facing today in our world.
And so this is a letter that Paul writes to them, a letter of correction and instruction. Now in one sense, what we understand about the Corinthian church should encourage us a lot. It should encourage us because sometimes we think that the issues and the battles that we fight in today's church are unique to our age, and that simply is not the case. Throughout the centuries, God's people have demonstrated one consistent characteristic.
Despite all the blessings that we enjoy in Jesus Christ and our calling in Him, we still have problems. Now maybe that's not true of you, but I've got to tell you it's true of me. There are still issues in my life. I don't have it all together yet. Most likely you don't either, if you're honest with yourself. So we're very much like the believers down through the centuries and like the Corinthian church as well. We have tremendous blessings, but we're not yet at the point of perfection.
The church comprises imperfect people, and that's the first blank in your outline. The church comprises imperfect people who are nonetheless called by God to share the venture of knowing His Son, Jesus Christ. Now we don't boast in our imperfections. To be honest with you, I've heard some testimonies through the years in which people seem to be boasting a little bit about their imperfections. That's wrong. We shouldn't boast in them, but we should recognize them and acknowledge them.
And we certainly also wish that we had it all together, but it's good for us to acknowledge the truth to one another and to ourselves personally. That we still do need to learn. We still need to grow. We still do need correction and instruction in the ways of God so that we will grow to be more like Jesus. That's what discipleship is all about. We're on a venture as the people of God. That means we're on a journey. We have not arrived. We're not called destination Christian church.
We're called venture Christian church because we're on the move. We're still growing. We're still coming toward the goal. The Apostle says in verse 9 here that these believers were called into fellowship with His Son. That is the case with all of us. So the good news is that you and I are not alone.
We have a company of believers who are around us now and with whom we can identify through the ages really, who are imperfect, but who are nonetheless called by God to join in this great journey, this great venture toward becoming like Jesus Christ. We are part of a church that shares the same wonderful blessings from Jesus that God's people have enjoyed through the ages. The first blessing I want to point out is in verses 1 through 4 where Paul seems to be saying, you share in his grace.
We'll pick up the reading in verse 2 where it says, Paul to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, together with all those everywhere who call in 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 God for you because of His grace given you in Christ Jesus. You see as a follower of Jesus Christ, you share with other believers in His grace. What is that grace?
Well, Paul seems to lay it out for us here in three actions of God. First of all, he has called you in his grace. He's called you. The word ecclesia is found here. It's the word church in the English versions. That means people who are called out, people who are called out from the rest. You see a church is an assembly of people who are summoned out from everybody else for a particular purpose.
Now in kind of a, I suppose a negative sense, you might compare this to getting your summons to be on the jury here in Santa Clara County. How many of you over the years have been summoned at least once to the jury? Well, that's most of you. Congratulations, you must be citizens. Now I don't know what it is about this county, but I've had at least three summons to the jury in the eight years I've lived here. That's more than I had in 19 years in Minnesota.
I don't know if there are so few of us who are citizens or what. But you know what it's like. You are called to come down there. You're summoned. And when you get there, you sit in this room and you wait for your number to be called. The fact is that you've been summoned out from all the other people who live in this county and you're there for a purpose. May not be the happiest purpose in the world, but that's the idea. You've been called out. I remember when I was in 4-H Club.
How many of you know what 4-H is? Oh my goodness! I did not expect that response. 4-H has been a fairly rural association of kids. It has changed through the years considerably since when I was in there, but the 4-H's are head, heart, hands, and health. Very good, you remember. Those are the 4-H's. And as being a part of 4-H, you have projects that you do. And I took sheep, for example, and showed sheep at the county fair.
And also I think the same year got a blue ribbon on my cookies that I took. They were good. One particular year, though, I was, I don't know how. I was bullied into it, I think. I was enrolled in a contest for dressing up. And I've been trying my best to remember what the name of this was. There was a particular name for it, but the idea is that you come well groomed, and they judge you on how groomed you are. It kind of sounds like church, doesn't it? And so I didn't have a suit.
I didn't have a suit. What would I need a suit for? So my cousin gave me one. It was a good suit. It almost fit. It had a little spot up here where something had happened to it. I have no idea what happened to it, but its color was gone a little bit in that area, but that was the best I had. And so I put that on. My mother bought me a tie. I put on my shoes and my white socks. And I went to the contest. And we were judged.
And I remember afterward, as soon as we were off the stage, I was out to enjoy the fair, because who am I? So we are not to enjoy the fair. About five minutes later, somebody came running after me, gill, gill, gill. They want you. They want you back there at the stage. I said, what for? I said, you won something. So I went back to the stage. And sure enough, I had come in, reserved champion, which means you're number two. I've done a lot of that in my life, coming in number two. And so I won.
Now, I think there are only three of us in the contest, which may tell you something. But I remember, even though I wasn't dressed in the finest, I felt very special being summoned out from everybody else and told, I am the reserved champion. You've had times like that in your life. Well, folks, listen. God in His grace has called you out from the world to belong to Jesus Christ. That's amazing, isn't it?
He has called us out that we might fulfill a specific purpose, and that is glorify Him through worship, fellowship, discipleship, service, and evangelism in the context of the local church. We are called out of our past, out of our brokenness, out of our condemnation, out of our identity with the culture to become a part of the body of Jesus Christ. Now, you think our culture is tough. The culture here was really rotten.
In fact, in that day there, they took the name of the city, Corinth, and they made a verb out of it. And the verb meant that you were acting very immorally. If you Corinthianized, you were a very immoral person. God had called these people out in His grace, just like He's called you out in His grace. Secondly, He says that the blessings that we have in Christ that we share in His grace is that He has set us apart.
You notice that when He says, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy, or literally He says called saints. Now, if you come out of some backgrounds, particularly Roman Catholic background, you're used to the term saint being used of a certain class of people who've died, and they are now set apart for some purpose, I guess, in heaven. I want to tell you something. That is a concept that's absolutely foreign to the Word of God.
A saint in the Bible is anyone who is trusted in Christ. It's anyone who is trusted in Christ, because the Word really means that you've been set apart. You have been set apart. And the tense of the verb that Paul uses here to those sanctified is that it happened in the past, and it's a done deal. It's a done deal. We see this illustrated a little bit in Exodus chapter 11, where the apostle, where Moses, rather, is told by God that he's going to bring one more plague upon the Egyptians.
It's number 10, and it's the death of the what? The firstborn, exactly. And so he says, all the firstborn and all the land of Egypt will die. But I will make a distinction between Israel and Egypt. The word distinction there in the Hebrew means I will make a deliverance between the Egyptians and my people. And then in the next chapter, chapter 12, he tells them how that deliverance was going to happen. It was going to be through the sacrifice of a lamb, the Passover lamb.
And you remember the story. The lamb was killed at the doorpost of the house when the angel of death came through the land of Egypt that night, taking all of the firstborn, a man and beast. Wherever he saw the blood, there was deliverance. He passed over that house. God made a distinction between his people who were saved by the blood of the lamb and the people of the world. And folks, God is still doing that today.
God is making a distinction between his people who are saved through the blood of the lamb of God and the people who are still in the world. You shared his grace. He has set you apart. And third, let me say quickly, he has joined you together. Paul says, I'm writing to all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. He's tying the whole body together here. We are joined as God's people. We are part of His new creation, the body of Christ.
Jude writes a little bit about this when he uses that phrase referring to our common salvation. Now, he didn't mean by that that our salvation is ordinary, it's routine, it's common. He means that it's a salvation that we share in common. The same idea that Paul had in Titus, chapter 1, verse 4, when he writes of our common faith in Peter writes, to those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours, equally precious with ours.
You see, these are the wonderful blessings that come by the grace that you and I share in. That we have been called out, we've been set apart, and we have been called to belong together as the body of Christ. Now, there's a second blessing that we share in Christ, and that is that you share in His gifts. You share in His gifts.
In verse 5, Paul goes on to say, for in him you have been enriched in every way, in your speaking and in all your knowledge, because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. You do not lack any spiritual gift. You share in the gifts of Christ to His church. Well, what are these gifts that we're talking about? Well, the word gift here is the word Charismity, and you hear the word Charismatic in there, which refers to spiritual gifts. A Charismity is something that is given to you freely.
It is a grace gift. It is a deposit that God makes in your life. It's an inheritance that you have, and I'm defining it here in the context of 1 Corinthians as special abilities to serve others for their good and God's purpose. That's what gifts are. Paul is going to have a good deal more to say about these gifts. What had been given for good, unfortunately, were being exploited by the Corinthians for selfish ends.
Paul mentions two general categories in which the Corinthians were especially rich in gifts of speaking and gifts of knowledge. He says, you're wealthy in these things. Now, from whom did these gifts come? Well, the answer is they came through the Holy Spirit from Jesus. You were enriched by Him, by Jesus, Paul says. And when were they given? Well, the answer is found in the text, in the tense, rather, of the verb, you were enriched by Him. It points to a completed action in the past.
Something that is done, it's finished. The Lord has made you rich, and when was that? Well, the answer is at the moment of your new birth. You see, spiritual gifts are not the same as talents that we have, natural talents. Spiritual gifts are God-given abilities that come to us at our new birth. And it's the gifts that God intends for us to make use of in the context of serving other people and fulfilling His purpose in our lives. What are the results of the gifts? Paul points to two.
One, the gifts confirm the fact that these people really saved. And verse six, that seems to be the intent of his rather enigmatic statement because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. The word confirmed means to guarantee or to secure something. And what Paul seems to be saying is to the Corinthians is this, look, I see all of these gifts that work in you. And that confirms, that secures the fact that you truly believed the message that I preached, that you're really saved.
Now I know that there are some people who say unless you have a particular gift, you're not saved yet. Wrong. That's wrong. But it is true that the presence of spiritual gifts in your life that God gives you, a deposit of abilities to serve Him, that is evidence of the fact that you are a believer. But the second result that Paul points to is the fact that these gifts enrich the whole church. They're not intended to bless just the individual who has them. They are for everyone in the church.
These believers were not lacking. They were not coming short. In any respect to the blessings that they had in Christ, they had all that they needed in terms of spiritual gifts. Here's a very wealthy church in spiritual terms. They had a lot of people who had a lot of abilities that God had given them to use for His purpose.
So the blessings of Christ that we have for this journey include the fact that we are, we're shares of His grace, we're shares of His gifts, and finally we are shares of His glory. You share in His glory. In the last part of verse 7, Paul goes on to say, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul is here looking ahead in history, and he is saying that Jesus Christ is one day going to be revealed. He is going to be made visible. He is not today, but one day He will be manifested to the world. When is this going to be, we ask? Well, the answer Paul seems to give here is that it's the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see that at the end of verse 8?
You need to make a distinction when you read the New Testament between this phrase, the day of the Lord Jesus Christ and the day of the Lord. They're not the same. Sometimes the day of the Lord Jesus Christ is contracted, it's shortened to be the day of Christ, for example. But they're not the same thing. The day of the Lord Jesus Christ refers to that time when Jesus Christ will come back into the atmosphere of the world and will call out His people.
That's what we call in our English the rapture of the church. When Jesus will come back not to the earth, but into the atmosphere of the world, and He will call us to come up, and the dead in Christ will rise first, and we who are alive on that day will be changed, and with them we will be caught up into the presence of the Lord. That's the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you will also see the phrase the day of the Lord used, and the day of the Lord comes out of the Old Testament.
The day of the Lord Jesus Christ is not used there at all. The day of the Lord refers to that time that the Old Testament prophets also foresaw. The day of the Lord Jesus Christ is an event.
The day of the Lord is a period of time during which God will bring judgment upon a world that has rejected Him, will at the same time save and deliver His people, and then come to reign on the earth at the conclusion of that time of judgment, and bring in the blessings of the day of the Lord that will last for another thousand years of time. Here Paul is looking to that rapture of the church, the time when we who know Christ will be caught up to be with Him.
Now he says, you have a part to play here. He says, you are to eagerly wait for His coming. That is, you're to intensely and patiently keep your focus on this truth, and folks, that's not easy to do. Because our lives get overwhelmed so easily in the kind of a world that we live in. That's why it's important for us to remember to do this. If we don't remember to be eager in our anticipation of His return, our lives will tend to drift toward the world.
And so the apostle says, your part in this sharing of His glory is to eagerly await that day when Jesus will come back and take you home. But His part is this, He will keep you strong until that day. He will keep you stable. He will grow you to maturity. He will establish you in your faith so that when that day comes, you will be blameless. The word blameless here comes from a verb that means you will not be called in.
And when I say that, I immediately think of the principal's office where I astutely tried to avoid going. But there were a couple of times when I was called in. It wasn't my fault, but I was called in. So I understand what that's like. And what Paul is saying is, when Jesus comes back, don't be living in such a way, you're going to be in trouble. You're going to be called in and held to account for it. He says, on that day, you're going to be blameless. We thank God for His faithfulness.
And this morning we've sung a lot about His faithfulness in our singing, our worship of the Lord, great is your faithfulness, forever faithful. Lord, you're forever strong. These themes have been a part of our worship today. Dear people, you shared His glory. When Jesus comes, it's yours. It's yours. We have all of these blessings that the Corinthians had, but the point I want to make this morning is this, that blessings alone don't guarantee much. They guarantee opportunity.
They guarantee potential. But they don't guarantee much beyond that, and the Corinthians sadly give us an example. You see, you've got what it takes. Christ has given you everything you need in this world to live for Him. But that's not enough. It takes something from you too. It takes commitment. It takes surrender to the Lordship of Christ. It takes self-discipline.
In my lifetime I have seen a number of presidents of the United States, and it looks like we're going to see another one sometime this year. I will tell you that the one who was the president during the 90s is the greatest politician I ever saw in my life. I mean, charisma just pours out of the man's genes. He is able to articulate. He's able to empathize. So much going for the man, but it wasn't enough.
In that regard, I think of Saul in the Old Testament, who was head and shoulders above everybody else, handsome. He had everything you could possibly imagine a king should be. He had it all. But it wasn't enough. He didn't have a heart for God. I think of athletes in our day who have prowess that is unbelievable. Very highly skilled athletes, but some of them have attained their fame by cheating, taking steroids. They had what it took to be successful without doing that.
They had what it takes to be a famous athlete, but it wasn't enough. They didn't have the character, and now their names are stained and asterisked. I think of the poor and pitiful person whose name is Britney Spears. She has what it takes to be successful, to be a star, to entertain people, but it's not enough. And now we have the sad spectacle of her life exploding before all of us in public, and it's very, very sad.
You can find just about anything on the Internet, and I've discovered that on YouTube, you can find Tim Conway and Dick Van Dyke and all these funny people who are not around anymore, if they're around, they're not on the air very much. The other night, I thought, well, I'm going to see if one of the funniest people I've ever seen is on there, and that's John Candy. Do you remember John Candy? A funny person, made some really hilarious films, but died as a young man. I looked up Chris Farley.
You don't have to appreciate all of the language they used or the kinds of things they talked about to realize that these were naturally funny people. Often their humor came out of a lot of pain, but they were naturally funny people. They had a lot. They could command salaries, they could command movies. They had what it takes, but it wasn't enough. And some of them died of drug overdoses. Now think of Samson in the Bible, brawny, smart. Samson, although he had a lot, didn't have enough.
He didn't have character. And so my point is this, despite what the Corinthians had in common, it wasn't enough because they were a war with each other. How sad is this picture? How tragic is this picture of a church that was marvelously gifted, a church that enjoyed the grace of God, a church that shared in the future glory of Jesus Christ, and yet here they are at war with one another. Blessed beyond measure. But it wasn't enough. They found reason to attack each other.
Paul thanks God for their past. Oh, he thanks God for the future that awaits them, but Paul does not thank God for their present because they were not behaving as followers of Jesus Christ. The reason they were a war with each other is that they refused to live under the authority of Jesus Christ. Five times in this opening text, Paul says, the Lord, the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. He wants to impress upon them the Lordship of Christ, and he is going to press that home through this letter.
How much of our lives does Jesus need to be in control of? To be Lord. Would you say 51%? That's a good American number. That's a majority. Would you say 90%? No, you see where I'm going with this. He's not really Lord if he's not Lord of everything.
Now folks, we can be wonderfully blessed in many different ways spiritually in Christ, where we are, but what we have to do is bring ourselves under the authority of Christ, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, because only then will all of our blessings benefit us and bring honor to Christ. To be under his authority means to put him first in everything. It means to yield our rights to him.
As we get through this book and interact with the various things we're going to be talking about, we're going to talk about ways in which we, you and I, need to be under the authority and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It's going to be a great study. It's an important study for us. It's an important study for this year, and I'm glad you're along with me on this journey. Would you pray with me, please? Father God, I am so grateful today for the blessings. The blessings that we enjoy in Christ.
That we share in the grace of God. And we quickly acknowledge if it weren't for that grace, we would be so lost, so undone. Thank you for your grace. Thank you Father for the spiritual gifts you give us. God I thank you that in this church there are all the spiritual gifts that we need to do everything you call us to do. Thank you for that. Thank you Father for the glory that's coming. We thank you that Jesus may come today.
We thank you that Jesus may come this year and we'll be caught up and be glorified with him. Thank you for that. Lord it's not enough. I pray that we, each of us will search our hearts, be sure that we're under the Lordship of Christ. Not the majority of our lives or most of it, but all of it. And I pray this in Jesus' name. All of you is more than enough for all of me for every first time. Every need you satisfy me with your love and all I have in you is more than enough.