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The World in the Church
1 Corinthians
September 10, 2017
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 14:25 in the audio file.
Or, Paul’s Letter to a People with Problems in Corinth
I have been saying for a while that I think one of the biggest blind spots for so many Bible-toting, truth-loving, theology-lauding churches is that they don’t read much other than the New Testament epistles. And Psalms. Even then, they read thew songs like letters.
On one hand it makes sense. We are the church, the church is a New Testament organism, and all of the epistles were written to churches or to leaders of churches or to people who were members in a church. Acts is about the formation of churches, and Revelation starts with some churches, but if we want to know about what the church should believe and how the church should behave we have tailor-made theological and practical instruction in the epistles.
That said, at least in the bites of evangelical pie that I’ve tasted, it’s been too heavy on the epistle salt and too light on the psalms sugar and history flour and wisdom butter and prophetic baking soda. Salt is good, tasty even, but not all by itself.
So I’ve been working to study and mediate on and even teach outside of the epistles for almost a decade. I’ve put my fork in to an epistle here and there, but I haven’t put a big piece on my plate, our our plate, for a while.
It’s time for a slice of epistolary pie. And, as I’ll introduce this morning and we’ll see throughout our study, 1 Corinthians is a letter for such a time as this. This first—century letter from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Corinth, Greece, is full of gospel encouragement, instruction, and admonition. These believing people had a crazy amount of problems, though it’s kind of amazing grace that they didn’t have even more problems than they did. Corinth was one of the least conservative cities in the Roman Empire and all of the Christians would have been new converts and first-generation believers. Next to Rome, the existence of a church in Corinth demonstrates the transforming power of the gospel, even as Paul wrote to them about some addition breaks from the world’s mould that were necessary. Too much of the world was in the church, but by God’s grace there was a church.
This will be good for us to go through. It will be good for those younger believers among us who haven’t spent a lot of time in the letters. It will be good for all of us who live in the world while trying to not be of the world. Our culture does not have complete overlap with that in Corinth, but it is not hard to see so much modern and/or post-modern worldliness among Christians today. And it will be especially good for those of us pursuing a Kuyperian Dispensationalist way of life. Being a Kuyperian isn’t an automatic disinfectant for compromise, for impurity, for greed, for conflict, and for worldliness. Of course being a Dispensationalist has done a lot for separatism but not necessarily to make sanctified and savory salt. 1 Corinthians will help us to know what it looks like to live God-wise, world-foolish image-bearers waiting for the return of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
So let’s begin our study of this epistolary pie and keep our Kuyperian ice cream, too.
The City of Corinth
A letter is more personal than a treatise or a memo, even if it is a group letter, an open letter. Knowing a little about who wrote the letter and who received the letter can help us understand the contents of the letter.
It’s History
The city of Corinth is in Greece. It sits on the isthmus with harbors to both the east (heading toward Asia) and the west (heading toward Italy). Imagine two floating frisbees, one north and the other south, connected by a popsicle stick; Corinth was on the stick. The area known as the Peloponnese was on the bottom. A road called the diolkos built around the 6th-5th century BC ran from one coast to the other a little less than four[...]
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By Trinity Evangel Church1 Corinthians
September 10, 2017
Lord’s Day Worship
Sean Higgins
Download the bulletin.
Download the Kids’ Korner.
The sermon starts at 14:25 in the audio file.
Or, Paul’s Letter to a People with Problems in Corinth
I have been saying for a while that I think one of the biggest blind spots for so many Bible-toting, truth-loving, theology-lauding churches is that they don’t read much other than the New Testament epistles. And Psalms. Even then, they read thew songs like letters.
On one hand it makes sense. We are the church, the church is a New Testament organism, and all of the epistles were written to churches or to leaders of churches or to people who were members in a church. Acts is about the formation of churches, and Revelation starts with some churches, but if we want to know about what the church should believe and how the church should behave we have tailor-made theological and practical instruction in the epistles.
That said, at least in the bites of evangelical pie that I’ve tasted, it’s been too heavy on the epistle salt and too light on the psalms sugar and history flour and wisdom butter and prophetic baking soda. Salt is good, tasty even, but not all by itself.
So I’ve been working to study and mediate on and even teach outside of the epistles for almost a decade. I’ve put my fork in to an epistle here and there, but I haven’t put a big piece on my plate, our our plate, for a while.
It’s time for a slice of epistolary pie. And, as I’ll introduce this morning and we’ll see throughout our study, 1 Corinthians is a letter for such a time as this. This first—century letter from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Corinth, Greece, is full of gospel encouragement, instruction, and admonition. These believing people had a crazy amount of problems, though it’s kind of amazing grace that they didn’t have even more problems than they did. Corinth was one of the least conservative cities in the Roman Empire and all of the Christians would have been new converts and first-generation believers. Next to Rome, the existence of a church in Corinth demonstrates the transforming power of the gospel, even as Paul wrote to them about some addition breaks from the world’s mould that were necessary. Too much of the world was in the church, but by God’s grace there was a church.
This will be good for us to go through. It will be good for those younger believers among us who haven’t spent a lot of time in the letters. It will be good for all of us who live in the world while trying to not be of the world. Our culture does not have complete overlap with that in Corinth, but it is not hard to see so much modern and/or post-modern worldliness among Christians today. And it will be especially good for those of us pursuing a Kuyperian Dispensationalist way of life. Being a Kuyperian isn’t an automatic disinfectant for compromise, for impurity, for greed, for conflict, and for worldliness. Of course being a Dispensationalist has done a lot for separatism but not necessarily to make sanctified and savory salt. 1 Corinthians will help us to know what it looks like to live God-wise, world-foolish image-bearers waiting for the return of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
So let’s begin our study of this epistolary pie and keep our Kuyperian ice cream, too.
The City of Corinth
A letter is more personal than a treatise or a memo, even if it is a group letter, an open letter. Knowing a little about who wrote the letter and who received the letter can help us understand the contents of the letter.
It’s History
The city of Corinth is in Greece. It sits on the isthmus with harbors to both the east (heading toward Asia) and the west (heading toward Italy). Imagine two floating frisbees, one north and the other south, connected by a popsicle stick; Corinth was on the stick. The area known as the Peloponnese was on the bottom. A road called the diolkos built around the 6th-5th century BC ran from one coast to the other a little less than four[...]