47 How 1 Corinthians Exposes Our Worldliness and Calls Us Back to the Gospel (1 Corinthians 16)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for joining me today for Wednesday in the Word, my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. We are studying 1 Corinthians chapter 16 today. This is the 47th and the final talk in my series on 1 Corinthians. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast, and you can find them on the website at wednesdayintheword.com slash 1 Corinthians 4 7. You can also find previous talks in this series and lots of helpful information on how to improve your Bible study on the website. There is no charge, no spam, no ads, no clickbait, only Bible study. So glad you've joined us today, and if you've stuck with me through the entire 1 Corinthians series, thank you and bravo. Good job. I started teaching through 1 Corinthians a little over a year ago, and today we're going to finish the book. It feels like a big milestone. We're going to cover chapter 16 fairly quickly, and then I want to spend some time reflecting on what we've learned and what we've studied together. Chapter 16 is sort of the business end of the letter. It contains a lot of personal news and plans, and I think we can cover it rather quickly. So let's start with chapter sixteen the first four verses. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come. When I arrive, whomever you may approve, I will send them with letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem, and if it is fitting for me to go also, they will go with me. Taking a collection for Jerusalem comes up in several of Paul's letters. When he wrote this letter, Paul was in the process of gathering a collection from the various churches he founded to be given to the poor in Jerusalem. This gift might be connected to the prophecy in Acts that there would be a famine in Jerusalem. This is in Acts chapter eleven verses twenty seven through thirty. Now at this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. One of them, named Agabas, stood up and began to indicate by the Spirit that there would certainly be a great famine all over the world, and this took place in the reign of Claudius. And in the proportion that any of the disciples had means, each of them determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea, and this they did, sending it in charge of Barnabas and Saul to the elders. And Saul, of course, is another name for Paul. This gift mentioned in Acts could be the gift Paul is referring to in Corinthians. You'll remember that the Christian church started in Jerusalem, that's where the resurrection happened, the ascension, and the day of Pentecost, and then it spread outward from Jerusalem. But Paul's ministry has largely been outside of Jerusalem. He was called after the other apostles, he was sent to the Gentile world. At first he was based at Antioch, but then traveled extensively from there and ended up in Ephesus, which is where he's writing this letter from. He tells us in Galatians that he had very little contact with the other apostles. Every now and then they would cross paths and touch base, but Paul worked largely on his own. Paul tells us in Galatians two that when he finally went to Jerusalem, he met with the other apostles and he explained what he was teaching to them, and he says they added nothing to his testimony and changed nothing. They only asked of him that he remember the poor, and he says that was something he was already doing, so this gift could be part of that charge. He told the other apostles he would collect money to send to the poor in Jerusalem, and we see him doing that in this letter. And this gift is also a way Paul can connect his work to the ministry of the other apostles and foster a connection between the largely Gentile churches he founded and the largely Jewish church in Jerusalem. One way to help them form a connection is to get them to help each other. Paul mentions here that he wants them to save a little on the first day of every week to be put into the collection, and people like to make a big deal of this verse. It's one of the few places in the New Testament that gives us a hint that the early church met on Sunday, the first day of the week. We know that they did from church history, but it's not really mentioned much in Scripture itself. It's always surprised me how easily and seemingly without controversy they made the switch from having their worship on the Jewish Sabbath to having their worship on Sunday. We have these instructions on the collection here, and then in Second Corinthians we get a glimpse of what actually happened. Paul writes a fairly lengthy exhortation to them in Second Corinthians nine, and he reminds them to finish what they started and warns them against coveting, and he tells them basically, look, the folks in Macedonia have already collected a large amount of money. They're going to be coming through Corinth with their gift, and I Paul would hate for them to find you Corinthians with nothing to give. He says he may go to Jerusalem with the money, and we know that he did visit Corinth again and eventually made his way back to Jerusalem, which is where he was arrested and taken to Roman chains to appeal to Caesar. So going on then in sixteen five through nine, but I will come to you after I go through Macedonia, for I am going through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go. For I do not wish to see you now just in passing, for I hope to remain with you for some time if the Lord permits, but I will remain in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective service has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. Paul is writing this letter from Ephesus. He spent quite some time in Ephesus. He comments here on the many opportunities he has there, but also the many adversaries. And in Second Corinthians one, Paul describes his time in Ephesus as being so difficult that he fully expected he was going to be killed there. He says he despaired even of life and had passed the sentence of death onto himself. We have one example of the kind of opposition Paul faced in Ephesus in Acts nineteen. Demetrius, the silversmith, is upset that Paul's teaching is putting a dent in the idol trade. So the more people are becoming believers, the less they're buying idols and it's cutting down on his business along with the other silversmiths. And there's a riot and they seize two of Paul's traveling companions and drag them into the town square. And Paul wants to go in to talk to them, but others prevent him, saying it's just too dangerous and he'll be killed. And eventually an unnamed town clerk is able to calm and disperse the crowd. Evidently the riot in Ephesus was just one of many such responses to Paul's teaching and apparently was not unique. He faced this kind of danger frequently when he was preaching the gospel. Paul talks about his travel plans here. He says he wants to visit them and stay with them for a while. If you look at a map, you'll see that Corinth and Ephesus are roughly across the Aegean Sea from each other. From Ephesus, Paul had two ways of getting to Corinth, which is in Greece. He can cross the sea by ship, or he can take the land route up through Macedonia, which takes him around the sea. He wants to go to Macedonia, so he tells them he plans to take the land route and make then make his way to Corinth and stay with them a while and leave from there. He's not sure where he's going next, maybe Jerusalem, maybe someplace else. While his plans did not work out this way, as we learn from Second Corinthians, a serious problem developed between Paul and the Corinthians. In a visit that's not recorded in Acts, Paul makes a brief second trip to Corinth from Ephesus and then goes to Macedonia. And this visit, which is predicted in 1 Corinthians 16 and referred back to in 2 Corinthians thirteen, is sometimes referred to as the painful visit or the sorrowful visit. Something happened that Paul felt he needed to deal with swiftly, so he took the direct route across the sea, stayed briefly, and then left to go back to Ephesus via Macedonia. And Paul refers to this visit as his sorrowful visit in Second Corinthians because he left them sorrowful, probably because he came and rebuked them severely or corrected them in some way. This sorrowful visit caused him to write a lost letter that scholars called the severe letter, and Paul refers to that in 2 Corinthians 7. It's a letter that didn't survive. So apparently during this sorrowful visit, Paul told them he would go up to Macedonia and then come back to Corinth again and take the sea route back to Ephesus. The idea I think was that he would visit them twice to make sure they had plenty of opportunity to talk this over and work out whatever the rift was. But as we learn from Second Corinthians, that plan didn't work out either. He ends up taking the land route back to Ephesus rather than returning through Corinth. And Paul's opponents in Corinth use that against him. They call him a liar and use it as evidence of how unreliable he is and how he's not to be trusted, and Paul has to defend himself against that charge. He explains in Second Corinthians that he didn't want to have another painful visit with them. He had intended to return, but then he thought better of it, and he sent Titus to them instead. When Titus rejoins Paul, Paul reports that he's very happy to hear from Titus that some in Corinth were repentant and wanted him to visit them again, which he ultimately did. So his travel plans here and what ultimately happened gives us a window on his rather tumultuous relationship with the Corinthian church. Going on in sixteen ten and eleven, now if Timothy comes, see that he is with you without cause to be afraid, for he is doing the Lord's work as I also am, so let no one despise him, but send him on his way in peace, so that he may come to me, for I expect him with the brethren. Knowing the difficulty and the problems in Paul's relationship with the Corinthians, you can see that this comment is a little more serious and carries a little more weight than you might think at first reading. When Timothy comes, see to it that he has no cause to be afraid. Paul's concerned that at least some of the members in their church are not going to treat Timothy well because of their hostility to Paul. I think this statement is more than don't despise him because he's young. Paul's concerned that they're going to take their anger out on Timothy, their anger at Paul out on Timothy. So he's he reminds them, send him on his way in peace. He's doing the Lord's work. We don't really know what happened when Timothy arrived, but we can kind of guess that things didn't go very well because this is before the sorrowful visit. So Timothy visited. Whatever news he brought back to Paul caused Paul to jump on a ship and go swiftly to Corinth and rebuke them in what we call the sorrowful visit. Now we don't know what the problem was. We don't know if they mistreated Timothy in some way, or they just crossed some blatant line of immorality and Timothy brought back the news of what was going on. We don't know what happened. Whatever happened, Timothy brought that news back to Paul, and Paul jumped on a ship and went immediately to go speak to them. sixteen twelve but concerning Apollos, our brother, I encouraged him greatly to come to you with the brethren. It was not at all his desire to come now, but he will come when he has opportunity. If you'll remember back to the early chapters of this letter, some in Corinth had rejected Paul's teaching and Paul's authority in favor of Apollos, and factions had grown up, and one faction rejected Paul and said Apollos is our guy, he's the teacher we want to listen to. Now I don't think Apollos did anything deliberately or on purpose to undermine Paul or to encourage this kind of misplaced devotion, but he ended up in the middle of the fray anyway. Paul is encouraging Apollos to go visit Corinth again, but Apollos is reluctant. He probably doesn't want to be the cause of any more trouble. But notice Paul doesn't seem to have any problems with Apollos. Apollos is with Paul as he writes this letter, and Paul is encouraging him to go back and continue his ministry. So their relationship appears to be just fine despite what happened in Corinth. And now we come to the final exhortation in the conclusion of the letter. This is 16, 13, and 14. Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love. Be on the alert is one of Paul's frequent admonitions. He warns repeatedly in his letters that we can get easily distracted by the cares and the worries of today and forget that this world is not our home and we're on a journey. This world is not our ultimate home and goal. So we can be metaphorically asleep or metaphorically drunk, forgetting what's really important because we're so focused on ourselves and the cares of today. And it's really easy to lose sight of what's truly important and let God just drift out of the picture. We get so focused on getting a good education, finding a good job, finding someone to marry, raising children, taking care of finances, caring for our elderly parents, and all those cares of today that we forget that one day we're going to stand before the judgment seat of God. And as important as those other problems are, they pale in comparison to judgment day. Ultimately, all that stuff is going to pass away, and it will become really important whether or not we had faith in Jesus. So Paul's admonition is be on the alert, stay sharp, stay focused on what you know to be true. Remember where you're headed and who you're counting on to get you there. Don't let yourself be seduced by the world around you into thinking that there is no bigger issue that you have to deal with. So be alert, stand firm in the faith. It's really easy to drift from the faith, especially if you get a daily diet of modern media and TV and movies and news. We are constantly bombarded with a perspective that says, you know, all that religious stuff, it's just old fashioned, it's out of date. Why are you worrying about some musty old Hebrew text and some Greek letters? You've got so many more important things to worry about. And the Bible, you know, it just doesn't speak to today. It just doesn't understand how life has changed. So it's easy to get carried off by each new philosophy and sophisticated fad that blows through the culture. And Paul's saying, stand firm. Don't get pushed off your rock of faith. Stand firm in the gospel you first believed and don't get taken in by these other ideas. Act like men, I think basically we should understand that is act like an adult. Rather than being childlike and naive, be wise and courageous. So take a wise, mature, grounded stance that an adult would take. It's kind of like saying grow up. I think he's calling them to courage. He's calling them to face the pressures of life with wisdom and maturity and strength, being wise in their thinking and not childlike in their thinking. And fundamentally, this set of admonitions is all about what we've seen in the Corinthian church. Some in Corinth have become worldly in the sense of being overly influenced by the world's cares and the world's philosophies, and they're drifting away from the gospel. They are starting to embrace false teachings that contradict the gospel, and they're childlike in their thinking. So this is his last admonition to them to be alert, cling to the faith, be strong and courageous no matter what life throws at you, remember what's at stake here, and don't let yourself be knocked off course. And let all that you do be done in love, which, as he argued, is one of the great essential values of the faith. The two great commandments are love the Lord your God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself. So one of the key truths of the gospel is that we are called to love. We are called to remember that others are as important as we are. We are not the center of the universe, and we should act with others' best interest at heart. Then in fifteen through eighteen, now I urge you, brethren, you know the household of Stephanus, that they were the first fruits of Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves for ministry to the saints, that you also be in subjection to such men, and to everyone who helps in the work and the labors. I rejoice over the coming of Stephanus and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have supplied what was lacking on your part, for they have refreshed my spirit and yours, therefore acknowledge such men. Now remember, Paul started this letter addressing the divisions and the factions in the church. Some were rejecting Paul's authority and questioning his apostleship, and here he's saying Stephanus was one of the first believers there. He's presumably one of the leaders of the church, but Paul is saying, look, he's worth listening to. Stop all this infighting, this bickering, stop listening to the world and start listening to people like Stephanus. Let him help you, let him guide you. You ought to submit to him and others like him who have a proven track record among you. Stephanus appears to be one of those in Corinth who was standing up for Paul and saying, No, we ought to listen to Paul, and presumably he was having a tough time, and the various factions were disrespecting him, probably because he supported Paul, and Paul is saying, No, you ought to be listening to him, submit to him. Even in his closing greetings, we see Paul throwing them a lifeline for how to work out their problems and get on track. Then he closes in nineteen through twenty four. The churches of Asia greet you, Aquila and Prissa greet you heartily in the Lord with the church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you, greet one another with a holy kiss. The greeting is in my own hand, Paul. If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed, Maranatha. Let the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. Paul usually dictated his letters to a scribe and then wrote a final comment at the end of the letter in his own hand, and that's what we see going on here in sixteen twenty one. If you remember back to verse one, Paul mentioned Sosthenes, our brother. Paul is probably dictating this letter to Sosthenes, and now he picks up the pen to sign his own name. Scholars have speculated that Paul's eyes were never quite right after his blinding experience on the road to Damascus, so he dictated rather than writing himself. In one of his letters he says, see with what large letters I'm writing this myself. Scholars think that may have indicated a problem with his eyesight, and that problem with his eyesight could also be the thorn in the flesh that he prays to have taken away, but God does not. But we don't know, that's all speculation. In sixteen twenty two he says if anyone does not love the Lord he is to be accursed, Maranatha. That sounds really harsh to our modern ears, but remember Paul has argued in this letter that the mark of true spirituality, the way you know if someone has the Spirit of God at work in them or not, is that that person can say and mean in a profound way that Jesus is Lord, and he has called on them to examine themselves to see whether they in fact can make this claim and whether they truly want to follow Jesus. After reading this letter, it's likely that some of them are going to fail the test. They're going to reveal that they don't in fact love the Lord, but they may still claim to be true Christians and they may try to take others down the path they've chosen. And I think this warning is don't go there. If someone says, well, you know, Jesus is Lord, but so's Artemis and Diana, it doesn't really matter which temple you go to, it's all good. Paul's saying, let that person be accursed. Don't believe him, don't trust him, don't follow him down that path. The word accursed here is the word anathema, and it's a word we still use today. If something is anathema, it's forbidden. It means stay away from it. That's anathema, that's forbidden. You keep clear, steer clear. That's the idea of he's saying. And Paul has been very clear that there's a difference between being a believer and not. And some are going to see and embrace the message of Christ, and others will reject it. There's no room to fudge the line and say, well, you know, it doesn't matter what we do with Jesus, we're all good people at heart. Paul's not trying to warn them away from being friends with nonbelievers. He's writing to a church that he has every reason to believe is a mixed bag of believers and nonbelievers. And he expects as time goes on that the nonbelievers are going to start making themselves evident by their lifestyle and their choices. And he's warning the others, when that happens, stay away. Don't be seduced by them. Don't follow them onto that path of destruction. You can't invite them into your church as if they are fellow believers and pretend it's all good because they will take you down with them. So Maranatha is an Aramaic phrase that Paul has not translated. It means basically our Lord come. It's kind of like a prayer. It's looking at the promised future return of Jesus and praying, make it so. Well, I'd like to finish our time in this book with some reflections about what we've learned. It's hard to talk about the overall theme of the letter because Paul speaks to such a variety of issues, and the vast majority of the letter is Paul responding to specific questions they've asked him. So it's hard to summarize the message of the book as a whole because he covers so many topics. But if I had to find one unifying theme, it would be this issue of worldliness. If you take each of the issues that Paul addresses and try to reduce it down to a common denominator, I think that common denominator would be worldliness. And by worldliness I don't mean materialism, I mean being too influenced by and too taken with the problems of this world, valuing the opinions of mankind over God, focusing too much on the cares and problems and pleasures of this life now instead of on the hope of the gospel. And when you go back through each of the sections, you'll see the root problem in each case are the Corinthians are too worldly, as I just defined it. They are too taken with the philosophies of the world, the ideas of the world, the cares of this world, and so forth. Most of the issues he addresses find their roots in hostility to Paul. A few of the topics seem to be genuine confusion, but most of the issues come from a group of Corinthians who have rejected Paul's authority and are challenging some aspects of the gospel. There are a lot of different ways to describe what's important for believers, but Jesus told us there were two fundamentally important commandments love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God is fundamentally in opposition to loving the world. Everyone is going to love something. Everyone has something that they focus on, that they pursue, and they set their life on. And by nature, we love the things of the world. We think that the things of the world will fulfill us, and it's so easy to start thinking that if I just get all the good stuff in this life, fame, fortune, health, wealth, prosperity, that's what it's all about. That's what I should be after. Browse through a sampling of sermons on the internet and you'll find a kind of prosperity gospel lurking in the background. It's not taught as blatantly as it was decades ago. I can remember hearing televangelists on TV saying if you give God ten dollars, he'll give you back a hundred. Well, you don't hear that kind of thing anymore, but you do hear a kind of shadow of it. You hear it in things like God is about giving you peace of mind now, or God is all about making you feel special, or it's most important that you understand that God loves you or that God wants you to be empowered now. Pray first, and you're guaranteed to succeed in this life, and that kind of thing. That kind of teaching is really common today. But as Christians, we're called to think differently. We are called to love God instead of the things of this world. People talk about making room for God in their lives, but that's a little bit like saying I need to make room for an elephant in my Volkswagen. When you make room for God, He takes over the room. Well, if you do it properly, if you do it properly, God takes over the entire space. He changes everything about you, the way you think, what you value, what you want, what you're pursuing, and who you are at a fundamental level. Loving God is not fitting in a morning devotion. Loving God is not simply praying before acting in order to get my plans to succeed. Loving God is letting Him dictate who I am, what I value, what choices I will make, where I think my life is headed, and what I think is truly important in this life. Loving God is embracing all the implications of the gospel and striving to live my life in accordance with those implications now. Likewise, loving our neighbor is in contradiction to our essential selfishness. By nature, apart from the grace of God, we each think that our own concerns are the most important and take precedence over everyone else's. Now we may not come out and admit it, we may not come out and say that we think we're more important than everybody else, but deep down inside we know we think that. Each of us secretly believes that we are the hero of the story and everyone else is the supporting caste. And as believers, we have to confront that selfishness and admit that others are as important as ourselves. Those are the two great commandments and the two great issues that confront us. They are two ways in which we rebel sinners have failed miserably and two fundamental ways that we need God to change us as we live out a life of faith and following Jesus. In one sense, the issues are really complicated as you try to sort out each situation you face, but in another sense, they're simple. Am I going to put God first? Am I going to make room in my life for God and am I going to make room in my life for others? Am I going to live as if I'm the center of the universe or as if God is the center of the universe? And fundamentally, these are the issues Paul has been confronting the Corinthians with. Underlying all the issues in the topics is this basic problem of worldliness, a worldview that pushes God out of the picture and that elevates myself over my neighbors and focuses on the here and now. This issue of divisions is an issue of who are you going to believe? Are you going to follow and pursue the wisdom of the world or the wisdom of God? The gospel is not cool among the sophisticated academic elite. Likewise, Paul is not seen as an eloquent or wise sophisticated speaker. But as Paul argues, it's foolish to let the world tell you what is wise. The world in its wisdom doesn't did not come to know God. How wise can it be if it missed the most important being in all of reality? It can't be that perceptive if it missed God. The wisdom of the gospel is rejection of the wisdom of the world and you have to choose. You can either be seen as hip and cool by the sophisticated people of your culture, or you can follow the gospel, but you can't do both because the world is going one way and the gospel's going another. So we saw that Paul's concern about their factions and divisions is much more than a are you getting along kind of question. It's an issue of what do you believe to be true and where do you think true wisdom is to be found? Then we saw him deal with the problems of sexuality among them. Some in the Corinthian church think it's kind of cool that they have a man among them who's living in a blatant lifestyle of immorality. Because, you know, after all, the world tells us that sexual indulgence is fun and free and to be pursued no matter what. But the gospel calls us to acknowledge that the God who made me created sexuality for a purpose and I ought to seek his wisdom on the place of sexuality in my life. So again, the issue boils down to who are you going to believe? Who are you going to trust? Are you going to accept the world's wisdom or God's wisdom? We saw this again in the issue of eating meat sacrificed to idols. The sophisticated group in Corinth had rightly concluded that they have the freedom to eat meat sacrificed to idols, but they were pressuring others to join them. And Paul said that is both worldly and unloving. It's unloving because they are pressuring others to violate their conscience and to act in a way that disregards what they sincerely believe God thinks. And it's worldly because it makes the right to eat meat more important than the gospel itself, more important than loving your neighbor, and more important than accurately and clearly communicating the gospel. Then we saw that some in Corinth had elevated the gift of speaking in tongues to the mark of being truly spiritual and enlightened. And again, this is both worldly and unloving. It's worldly because it's very pagan to use flashy and impressive outward actions as proof of spirituality, and it's unloving because they were judging and dismissing other believers as naive or less than or inferior, and they were elevating themselves over their fellow believers. And finally, we saw the section on the resurrection. Fundamentally, that too is a worldly perspective. Rejecting a bodily resurrection is ultimately a rejection of the idea that God is taking history to a new age. Instead, it's thinking that this age is what it's all about. But Paul argued the resurrection is central to the way God is going to conquer sin and death. And when you understand what God is doing in history, you realize that this life is like the orchestra warming up before the show. This life is just the preamble or the prelude. It's like we're in the lobby waiting to go in to see the real show, and the real story will begin when Jesus returns and establishes the rule of God over all creation. Many in Corinth claimed to follow Jesus, but when faced with real life situations, their true colors emerged. They rejected Paul, they wanted to be seen as wise by the world, they valued sexual freedom over following God, they thought highly of their own spiritual status and looked down on others who they thought were naive, and they thought that the important thing is what we have in this world, not the next. And all of that is worldliness. And I would argue that the situations we face today confront us with the same choices. Now the situations are going to be different. We're probably not going to be faced with the choice of eating meat sacrificed to idols, but the pressures are the same. Fundamentally, all those choices come down to are we going to follow the path of the world or the path of the gospel? Are we going to embrace the wisdom of the world or embrace the wisdom of the gospel? That's our fundamental choice. What's true wisdom? What am I counting on? Where do I think this life is headed? What do I think is most important now? What gives me value as a human being? All those questions are addressed by the issues that Paul deals with in this letter. And the fundamental choice in all of them is do I believe the gospel is true or not? Do I believe that there is a God who can tell me what this life is all about and that God revealed Himself through Jesus Christ? Now all of us are facing terribly difficult trials. Sometimes the phone rings and I just brace myself for what horrible news am I about to hear? And it can seem overwhelming at times. But if you stop and think about it, all those trials, as big as they are, as complicated as they are, come back to the issues we've explored in this book. Who is ultimately in control of my life? Who am I going to trust? What am I counting on? Where am I going to put my hope and my values? Now we're going to face many trials and sufferings and circumstances that we're just not going to be able to solve. And we're going to face many problems in life that we will be unable to make go away by Friday. And the question is when that happens, what type of world do I think I live in? Do I really believe that I live in a world that God intends to redeem and that I have a hope of an inheritance in the kingdom of God? Do I believe the promise that God will ultimately work out all things for good, no matter what I face? That's the choice before us. This life now is the opportunity to face into those questions, and that's what Paul was challenging the Corinthians to do. We think the real problem is whatever particular circumstance or issue is in front of our feet right now, but the real problem is will I face that issue with the hope of the gospel? Will I face that issue, whatever it is, as a believer who trusts in the promises of God and the blood of Jesus Christ, or will I face it on my own as an unbeliever? Second and finally, I think this book has a lot to teach us about how to study the Bible. This is a great book to practice your Bible study skills on and to teach how we ought to approach the Bible. You've probably heard the phrase context is king and you're familiar with the idea of proof texting and not pulling verses out of context. Well, I think First Corinthians is a poster child for that idea. It's a long letter. Paul makes long arguments in it that span chapters, and it's critically important to know something about Paul's relationship to the church in Corinth and the situation he was writing into. There are any number of verses and sections in this letter where we can go terribly wrong if we focus our attention on just those few verses without understanding the bigger picture. Corinthians is the textbook case for looking at the larger flow of thought, the historical background, and the specific occasion of the letter. Now this may sound like I'm getting on my Bible study soapbox again, and I kind of am, and it's true, Bible study's my thing, but I think I'm making a very substantial claim here. You may have noticed as we went through this letter that there are several places where I disagree with the way people frequently quote Corinthians and some of the popular teaching of Corinthians. And by popular, I'm not generally talking about the kind of interpretation you find in most commentaries, although there are a few I would take issue with. But I'm talking more about the kind of understanding you'd hear from someone who memorized a verse from this letter without ever looking at where it came from. Or maybe a sermon where the speaker only looked at a few verses without studying the larger context. And I would argue in the cases where I have disagreed with the popular understanding, it comes down to context. If you take just three to six verses as a standalone paragraph, you might come up with a popular view, and it might sound pretty good, it might even be true. But it's important to realize that every set of verses, every three to six verses is part of a larger argument, and our goal in Bible study is to understand that argument. Often the argument is pointing in a very different direction than our first impression would lead us to believe. Now I am not saying that I have understood everything perfectly. I am not saying that I did not make any mistakes anywhere in teaching this letter, far from it. If down the road I learned something new or I change my mind or someone writes me and says, Well, you know, you missed this here, I will admit my mistake. And it wouldn't be the first time that I've had to go back and say, you know what, I was wrong then. But what I'm saying here is where my understanding differs from the popular understanding, that difference comes primarily because I have tried to apply the larger context. We saw this in the first four chapters. Paul starts out talking about factions and divisions, and we could read these verses about unity and conclude that Paul wants us to be unified and what divides us? Well, theology. So we need to stop worrying about theology. And as long as everyone loves Jesus, we're all good. We should just get off this theology kick so that we can all get along. But when you look at the argument, that perspective makes no sense. Reading those verses in the context of the whole first four chapters, we learn that Paul is primarily concerned with the ideas and the attitudes that led to the factions and the divisions. He's not just disappointed that they're not getting along. Some have rejected his authority in favor of views and thinking which is highly influenced by the world rather than the gospel, and he wants them to remember the truth of the gospel which he proclaimed and come back to the truth. So Paul is greatly concerned with theology. It is theology that he wants to unite them because as they all believe the same gospel, they will all become united. Similarly, Paul makes the famous statement that we have the mind of Christ. Now I don't know how many times I've seen people run in all kinds of directions with that verse. I've heard people say things like, I don't have to study the Bible because I have the mind of Christ. Christ's mind has been given to me. I just need to access the power of Christ within, and then I will know. I don't need to study and pray. It tells me what to do because I have the mind of Christ. Well, when you look at that verse in context, that is really far from what Paul is saying. And there's the famous section about building on the foundation with wood, hay, and stubble, or gold and silver and precious gems. And you've probably heard that section as being explained as being all about rewards in heaven. And I covered that in detail when we were on that section. But again, I think that understanding comes from misreading the context, from not taking into account the larger flow of thought and the argument that Paul is making. And as I argued, I don't think that's what Paul is talking about at all. Chapter seven is often read as Paul's message to the church that marriage is second best. But when you put the argument together with the historical background, you see he's speaking to a very specific issue. A group in Corinth had decided that all things physical are bad and all things spiritual are good, and therefore to be really spiritual, they have to abstain from sexuality even if they're married. And they've argued that the truly holy person can't be involved in sexuality in any way, and Paul is correcting that idea. Chapters eight through ten are often seen as a series of unconnected admonition. First he's talking about meat sacrificed to idols, then he talks about I Paul have the right to receive support. Then he says, let's look at the Israelites who fell in the wilderness, and by the way, you should flee idolatry. But when you stop and look at those chapters, you see that Paul is building an argument through all three of them. And this issue of meat sacrificed to idols raised the issue of how we should conduct ourselves in our freedom as Christians. They were free to eat the meat sacrificed to idols, but it was having an Negative consequence on others. And Paul is teaching them that there are times when love calls us to limit our freedoms for the sake of another and especially for the sake of clearly communicating the gospel so that others would not be led astray. While most people recognize that chapters twelve through fourteen are all about spiritual gifts, we often see people go picking through those chapters for the verses that they like and the questions that they want to find answers to. And you can find commentaries that treat those chapters as if they were a series of isolated rules and guidelines about how to find your spiritual gift and exercise it. But if you look at the flow of thought and how Paul builds the argument, a very different picture emerges. He's making a rich and complex and very profound argument. So I think this is a profoundly important claim about the way we approach the Bible. Maybe I'm wrong in my understanding of one particular section or argument, but I really don't think I'm wrong about this claim about how we approach the Bible. From my perspective, we in the church today have gotten into a very bad habit. Not everyone has this bad habit. There are a lot of good commentaries and teachers out there who take the same approach that I'm advocating here, and there are lots of people who teach from this perspective. But there are a lot of sermons online now, and you can listen to a lot of teachers from all over the place, and there are a lot of people out there who have a point that they want to make, find a paragraph in the Bible that appears to teach that point, and then use that paragraph to make their point without looking at the larger context. And the upshot is you can hear a lot of teaching from 1 Corinthians that has absolutely nothing to do with what Paul is saying. You can hear a lot of good spiritual advice that may be true enough, but in the end it has nothing to do with Corinthians except to borrow the language that Paul uses in this letter. And if you've hung with me through this whole series, you've seen that there are places where it really makes a difference if you're looking for a coherent argument or not. And especially if you're looking for a coherent argument across whole chapters. So the question you have to answer when you come to the Bible is, where do you think the meaning of the text will be found? Is it found in whatever idea comes to my mind when I read a verse? Or is the meaning to be found in whatever argument the author was trying to make? And I would argue the latter. Until I can find the argument that the author was trying to make, I have not understood what the Bible is teaching. That's what I've been trying to model for you as we've gone through this letter. Now you can argue on whether I accomplished that goal well or poorly, and you could argue whether I've misunderstood the arguments that Paul is making, but I think the approach is sound. Even if I haven't executed it properly, that approach of looking at the larger context, taking into account the historical situation and the background that we know is a sound approach. And if that's the approach you learn to take toward Bible study, you have a wealth of wisdom at your fingertips. I'm Krissan Marotta, and you've been listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for this series. I hope it has been time well spent for you, and I would love to hear what you've learned. You can email me through the website at Wednesdayandheword.com. I'd like to close this series with a song by Reggie Coates from his album Intimacy. You can find his music on heartfeltmusic.org, and this song is called My Prayer for You.