Truth Encounter: 1 Corinthians

Just imagine inviting Jesus to spend the day with you, but as the you start to get involved in daily activities it is very apparent that there is a lot of stuff in the routine that you wouldn’t be comfortable having Jesus join you in. For example, who wants Jesus looking over your shoulder as you laugh at Jimmy Kimmel Live or salivate over a racy novel? Finally some friends invite you to come out that night and really party. As you get ready for the big night on the town and proceed out the door, Jesus follows even though you uninvited him. Finally in exasperation, you nail the Savior to the cross again to keep him out of your life. Powerful truth--but we need to be sure that we know what the biblical Christ is actual like, what he likes to do and what he doesn’'t like to do.

Just imagine inviting Jesus to spend the day with you, but as the you start to get involved in daily activities it is very apparent that there is a lot of stuff in the routine that you wouldn’t be comfortable having Jesus join you in. As you get ready for the big night on the town and proceed out the door, Jesus follows even though you uninvited him. Finally in exasperation, you nail the Savior to the cross again to keep him out of your life. Powerful truth--but we need to be sure that we know what the biblical Christ is actual like, what he likes to do and what he doesn't like to do.

No one else made the magic happen when in the midst of a night club, sitting on a barroom stool, Frank Sinatra began to croon “I did it my way!” He has done it all and he did it his way. But is this stress upon getting your way the essence of human existence? From the millions who applaud you would gather the case is closed. But there was another man who said that if you want to find your life, you are going to have to be willing to lose it; that if you live for yourself you will lose yourself, but if you lose yourself in caring for others, you will discover to your surprise that you have discovered it all.

Get at the facts! Improve your investigative procedures! Stretch your mind! Expand your horizons. If you have a Ph.D. behind your name in our society it makes you an expert, and people are supposed to listen to you. Few would argue that education is not a good thing, but did you know that there is a great danger in education?

There has never been a church with more available Bibles, more effective teachers, more beautiful and efficient worship centers, and more financial resources. Looking at the externals you would expect this church to have the most healthy spiritual people and to exert a powerful influence for God in their society. But for the most part the secular society views the church as angry, radical dissidents who view anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy. Where have we missed the path? What’s wrong with the evangelical church in America?

How does a single person know whether they should marry? If a life partner is taken away, what does God say about how the remaining partner needs to live out their days? Since the world is in such a mess, wouldn’t it be better not to marry and bear children? These are questions Christ followers are asking today and they were asking these same kinds of questions in the first century. We can be thankful because it means we can allow the Apostle Paul to respond to the issue of “to marry or not to marry.”

Change—it’s the name of the game. In the midst of all these changes we need to ask ourselves, “Why?” Why am I moving across the country to get that big promotion? Why am I moving into the bigger house with the gigantic payments? Why am I so restless? For the next few minutes call time out, and let’s explore together whether we might be going down a road we don’t want to travel toward a destination we don’t want to arrive at.

We have become a culture of broken relationships. Take a moment to take an inventory. How many old friends do you have? When someone wrongs you, do you lay them aside and move them out of your life? What about your marriage? Do you think of it as a place of reconciliation and forgiveness or as a place where your deepest felt needs should be met? Listen to Part Two of the Permanence of the Marriage Bond, a study of Paul’s strong counsel to couples struggling in their marriages.

Divorce. It has become the norm in our culture. A young couple starts out with high intentions, but for most the high temperature passion begins to wear off and after two, five, ten years, a couple mutually decides to go their separate ways. In most states this is a relatively easy legal procedure. What does God think about this “easy divorce” situation? In your town you can go from church to church and sooner or later you will find a pastor who will agree with your particular view about divorce. But for a few minutes let’s try and lay aside our preconceived ideas and try to understand God’s heartbeat.

It is in the top ten of most talked about subjects on any given day in the United States of America. Just form the letters of this tiny English word on your lips and immediately ears begin to search and seek for the next juicy morsel. You hear about it constantly just about anywhere communication takes place, but you rarely hear about it in a church building between the hours of 11:00 and 12:00. Today’s discussion brings us to 1 Corinthians 7:1-9 and the subject on the Apostle Paul’s mind is sex.

On a popular television series the main character cynically takes a jab at the celebration of the Thanksgiving holiday by saying, “Who wants to celebrate the coming to this continent of a group of people who were kicked out of England because they were against dancing and any other form of human pleasure?” The underlying message is that if you believe in the Pilgrims’ Jesus, you can kiss fun and good times good bye. It is the popular caricature of the pious Christian but does New Testament Christianity actually teach that the body is evil and any pleasure it enjoys must be sinful?

The evil one has decimated the testimony of so-called followers of Christ by strongly divorcing what we say with our lips about our beliefs from what we practice in our lives. If you do read the New Testament you will discover that this problem of sexual sin was never a problem for the Lord of the Church, but his followers from the first century to the present have wrestled with this temptation just like everyone else. Paul tells the truth about it and gives us the right information to overcome these temptations.

Their joint business venture has grown and become prosperous, but now a serious misunderstanding threatens not only their business, but their relationship as brothers in Christ. During the annual outside audit, $10,000 has turned up missing. Dick, one of the partners, just married off his third daughter, and John, the other partner, knows that the wedding and reception cost a bundle. An early morning discussion about this turned into a bitter argument. How should Dick and John settle their dispute?

We are supposed to be glowing in joy and love because God gave the precious gift of His Son to us. But maybe today you find yourself feeling more like a Scrooge because all this euphoria about the worship doesn’t eliminate the fact that you have been cheated and swindled by one of these so called “born againers.” If you have ever felt wronged by someone in the church you need to spend the next few minutes and listen to a story about Charlie Christian.

You regularly attended worship every Sunday for years, but now you find yourself just sleeping in on Sunday morning. You used to read your Bible daily, but now it is on the second shelf of your night stand gathering dust. You used to enjoy Christian radio, but now the rugged voice of the country western stars singing about the pleasure of just one moment of passionate love dominates your car radio. Before it’s too late, please listen. You might hear a forgotten voice calling you back home.

A pastor discovers that two of his key elders have been wife swapping. A longtime members was just picked up on a charge of sexual abuse . A nationally known preacher has to resign his ministry because of the charge of embezzlement. There is hardly any headline that could shock God’s people and tragically desiring to be merciful and compassionate we have become complacent and passive when it comes to dealing with the malignancy of evil. How did the first century church maintain both compassion and purity?

Is it wrong to go out and eat a big prime rib on your anniversary when there are millions starving in the world right now? If you are starving or facing severe physical suffering is this evidence that God is punishing you because you don’t have enough faith in him? These are the kinds of questions we are addressing with our study leader, Dave Wyrtzen, as we examine the fourth chapter of First Corinthians together.

When Jesus was here on earth the lame, the deaf, the blind, and the deformed simply came to his feet as he sat on a hill overlooking Galilee and they were instantly healed. He said in John that when he ascended to heaven that we would do even greater works than these. Doesn’t this mean that if we have enough faith all of our diseases will be healed, all of our financial needs will be met, all of our problems will end?

Think about who has the power over your life. Who do you want to look like or be like? What celebrity do you worship? Evidently there were super stars in the first century- even religious celebrities. The Apostle Paul warns us against those high flyers, their influence, and the way we respond reveals what’s inside.

Remember the old children’s rhyme “ring around the rosy pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down?” A building can be elegant in its design, stunning in its appearance, and colossal in its dimensions, but the whole thing will fall down if it’s not built on a solid foundation of the right materials. What is the right foundation for a church? What kind of materials should it be built of? These are the kinds of questions the Apostle Paul answers in First Corinthians chapter three.