Sermon Transcript
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you are enriched in him in all speech and in all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there will be no divisions among you, but that you will be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ.
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? What then is Apollos? What is Paul?
Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers.
You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward.
If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness.
And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all is yours. And you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.
We’re starting a new series today, which will take us all the way to the end of the calendar year, studying an ancient letter written to a relatively small group of Christians living in the Roman city of Corinth. Corinth, as it turns out, actually has a good bit in common with our area. Corinth was an extremely wealthy city, high average per capita income, similar here to Silicon Valley. For that reason, many people moved to Corinth for career opportunities. It was a busy seaport on the coast.
It stood at the center of commerce between kind of modern Europe and Asia. So it was an intersection of trade, intersection of ideas, food, languages, religions, philosophies. It’s like the whole world was in Corinth. Does that sound familiar? And because of that diversity, there were many competing claims for how to live your best life.
There were highbrow academics, you know, Stanford scholars, there were simple pleasure seekers. There were other people just trying to make it big, right? Founders of startups. There was a range of people, different backgrounds, different goals for life. And Christianity was part of that diversity, but a very small part.
It was a significant minority amongst all the other ideas. The church was at most, you know, hundreds of people. The city was hundreds of thousands of people. So Christians had zero cultural leverage. Their beliefs would not have provided them any social capital.
You know, being a Christian didn’t open any doors for any of them. In fact, they would have faced a social cost in order to show up at church, which, you know, at least some of us can relate to that, playing your Christian card around here. Doesn’t immediately garner you respect and admiration, right? And that’s what it was like in Corinth. For the Corinthians, many of them were new in the faith.
Some of them came from a Jewish background, but it seems most of them came from other belief systems from around the Mediterranean. None of them had a generational heritage of Christianity, right? By definition, anyone in the church would have been a first-generation Christian because Christianity had only been around, you know, for a couple of decades at this point. So none of them grew up in a home with mom and dad teaching them Christian beliefs, which means for many of them, right, their faith was still forming. It was kind of messy.
They had one foot in this past way of life, but they had found Jesus compelling and they wanted to follow him. Like some of us around here are still brand new in the faith. Some of us are still investigating faith. And even, even those of us who have been at this faith thing a long time, we can still feel sometimes like we have one foot in the world and one foot toward Jesus. So Paul, who helped start the church in Corinth— you can read about that in Acts 18— Paul had spent a year and a half with them teaching, developing leaders before he moved on to do the same thing in other cities.
Paul writes them a letter to help them sort out and apply their growing faith. What does it look like to follow Jesus in a culture that knows nothing of him? It’s his letter. In the course of the letter, he addresses the difficulty of sharing your faith with secular academics, the difficulty of sharing your faith with people of other religions, God’s plan for marriage, singleness, and sex. He deals with some gender confusion, what to do with murky moral issues, what to do in those instances, you know, when some people say something’s right, other people say it’s wrong, but the Bible doesn’t specifically address it.
How do you sort that out? He covers giving and generosity, you know, why Christians must prioritize giving, their care for others. And their financial support of God’s mission in the world, prioritizing that. He talks about spiritual gifts, why God gives different people different gifts and how they all fit together for some greater purpose and how to know what your gifts are. Where do you fit into this big picture that God is painting?
Toward the end of his letter, he gives, I think, the longest explanation of the meaning of the resurrection. In Scripture, why Jesus’ resurrection is the central linchpin to our faith, and why if the resurrection didn’t literally happen, nothing else really matters. We should just go live however we want if the resurrection didn’t happen. But if the resurrection did happen, and it did, how and why that changes everything, everything. Do you think any of that might have some relevance to living in the culture that we do?
I would say so. We’re going to cover all of it between now and the end of the year. To get us started, we’re looking at the very beginning of his letter where he addresses divisions in the church. The Christians in Corinth had become pretty heated with one another to the point they were dividing, maybe not speaking to one another, certainly different tribes had formed within the church. People probably felt like they needed to pick a side, and it was getting worse.
Do you think that has any relevance for today?
Have you seen any Christians heated with each other, forming tribes, making people pick sides? Any Christians doing that right now? You know, 30 days before a presidential election? We’re going to go there today, so buckle up. Division against Christians is nothing new.
Christians have been at times at each other’s throats ever since the beginning. We’ve had trouble with this. And so, while, you know, unity seems timely to talk about today, it always seems timely. Today’s the election. Sometimes it’s about what music we should sing in church.
Tomorrow it’ll be something else. But regardless of the cause of the division, Paul gives a framework for how to have unity in our multiple texts today. You’ll notice we’re looking at 2 different chapters this morning. We will do that kind of thing throughout our series because Paul keeps circling back to similar subjects. He raises an issue, moves on to something else, then goes back to what he addressed earlier, which means if we moved through his letter in sequential order, we would end up studying the same subjects multiple times, which would be okay.
But rather than do that, we’ve grouped related sections together, which is why today we have chapter— or most of chapter 1 and then all of chapter 3. We’ll do that kind of thing throughout this series. But between now and December 31st, we will study the entire letter. We will not skip anything. So when we move on to chapter 5 without covering chapter 4, don’t worry, okay?
It’ll get covered later. We will even study the kind of dicey parts. Don’t worry, parents, we’ll give you a warning in advance of that so you can make right plans. But we’re going to look at all of it. Because it’s all God’s Word.
It’s all meant for our spiritual growth and training, and we don’t want to miss anything. In fact, one of the reasons we often study an entire book of the Bible is so that we won’t skip any topics. If we came up with sermon series only out of our own heads, you know, what was on our hearts maybe, it would be easy to neglect certain subjects. I don’t know if I would cover unity in the church in October if it weren’t here, right? Which means we would be spiritually malnourished.
We don’t want that. So we often study entire books and then let the text itself dictate the study matter or subject matter. So today, as we said, we’re looking at chapters 1 and 3, and we’re learning how to have unity when there is disagreement. And as we study these chapters, we will see the cause of their conflict and then Paul’s fourfold strategy for how to have unity when we disagree, when things are heated, how to bring the temperature down, how to come together, which, hey, who knows, may help some of us at Thanksgiving, right, with that family member who just doesn’t know how to let it go, man. How do we have unity then?
Paul has a fourfold strategy. But first, let’s look at the cause of their conflict, which was which leader to follow. That was their conflict, which leader to follow. In the decades after Jesus died and rose again, there were a number of different Christian teachers who traveled from city to city, either starting new churches or strengthening the ones already planted. Of course, I mean, there’s Jesus’ original disciples, or at least most of them while they were still alive.
Then there was Paul who wrote this letter, and then there were people like Apollos who Paul mentions in our verses. We first meet Apollos in Acts 18. We— he, he was just some guy who heard about Jesus and was converted. He happened to be a gifted speaker, so he pretty immediately after conversion, he starts traveling and telling everyone he could find about Jesus. We don’t, we don’t know precisely how many different teachers there were, but we know there were an increasing number of them as more and more people became Christians.
And naturally, right, different teachers developed different followings. That makes sense. Like today, some Christians will listen to one podcast while other Christians will listen to another one. You know, sometimes people choose the church they attend depending on how much they resonate with what is taught or how it is taught. All of that’s probably to be expected, but the people of Corinth had gone a step further.
Different groups within the church who followed different teachers thought their guy was the guy, so they divided into tribes. Each one believing that they were superior to the other tribes. They bragged, well, I follow Apollos. Well, I was baptized by Peter. It’s like saying, I have the real thing, which by implication means you don’t.
They’re arguing things like, you need to follow my guy or you’re not really a Christian. And even if you are a Christian, then you’re a lesser kind of Christian. They’re questioning each other’s faith depending on which teacher, leader they followed, which sadly happening all over the place today. People have even written books saying certain Christian leaders aren’t really Christian leaders because of who they follow or don’t follow. Politically, right?
Both sides of the aisle are doing that. They say, you can’t really be a Christian and support X candidate. You must support Y candidate if you have real faith.
Have you heard that kind of thing? It’s exactly what they were doing in Corinth. It’s deeper than simply, I see the world a different way. It’s deeper than, I prefer this podcast to that podcast. It’s deeper than what news outlet we listen to.
I have the real thing. I’m a real Christian, meaning you aren’t. And if you are, then you’re a lesser kind of Christian. And if disagreements get that deep, they cause people to stop talking to one another. They cause friendships to dissolve.
And in terms of the church, a house divided against itself cannot stand. If we spend our energy attacking the authenticity of each other’s faith, we become much less effective in our most important objective, which is spreading the good news of Jesus all over the world. So we must find a way to have unity with each other, even if we don’t have uniformity around these ideas. The church, the church must model for the world how people who disagree really, really disagree, how they can still appreciate one another, treat one another with kindness and respect. The church must be the one to do it.
Must. Because who else will? It’s us or nobody. So my prayer for Bridges, and we have improved on this so much in the last 4 years. It’s awesome.
I’m so happy with where we are at right now. But my prayer is that we could be a place where political tribes, all of them, could have unity under Christ. Even when we disagree, that we still have unity. So how do we do that? Paul gives a fourfold strategy.
The first piece is celebrate Christ together. Celebrate Christ together. So one important footnote as we get started is Paul’s strategy for unity is for unity in the church. Between Christians, Christians from different tribes. He is not addressing how people outside of Christianity can have unity.
There’s probably a way to do that, it’s just not the strategy he’s giving us. He’s speaking to how Christians can retain a deep admiration and appreciation for one another when they disagree. And his first admonition is focus on Jesus instead of anything less consequential. Jesus is most important. Jesus outshines any division that we could ever possibly have.
The squabbles they’re having are nothing compared to Christ. I mean, Paul asks what leader to follow? Are you kidding me? Paul contends, don’t divide over whether you follow me or not. Goodness, who am I?
Like, what do I matter? He asked, was I crucified for you? Am I the one who makes you blameless before God? Like, of course not. So why are you wasting your time arguing over someone as inconsequential as me or Apollos or Peter when you have Christ in common?
Like, who is Paul compared to Jesus? Paul’s saying you’re dividing over a nobody. How silly. I’m a little flicker on the timeline of history, whereas Jesus holds all of history in his hands. It’s him you follow.
It’s It’s him you serve, not me, not Peter. Don’t divide over someone as small as us. Goodness. And he’d tell us today, when we get all caught up in who follows X candidate or news personality, he’d ask, he would ask, were they crucified for you? Did they know you from eternity past?
Did they knit you together in your mother’s womb? Do they hold all galaxies and stars in place? Do they determine the outcome of history? Do they? No, they don’t.
Are you sure? ‘Cause you kinda act like they do. You kinda act like they’re that important, like it’s that consequential if you follow them. Paul says they aren’t. Jesus is who matters.
And you have him in common, you can deeply appreciate one another even if you are on polar extremes, opposites of everything else. Jesus is enough to unite us. I’ve actually seen this in action. I had the privilege of attending an interdenominational seminary for my master’s level work way back when, so we were not non-denominational, We did not meld into one generic type of doctrinal practice. Every denomination represented in the student body and among the faculty, everybody held on to their distinctives, their denominational differences.
And on top of that, the student body was diverse, came from different parts of the country, world, different economic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds, different political ideologies, which means we did not agree. On what seemed like very important issues. There was often much discussion and debate in our common room where people would gather, which I would engage with, you know, at times. And occasionally someone would make a claim and I would think, I don’t see any possible way that anyone could think that? It’s totally illogical, disconnected from reality.
It doesn’t make any sense. Like, how could anyone think that? Occasionally. But I’ll tell you, I was in the program 3 years. It was residential, so we lived amongst each other.
We would eat together, play intramural sports together, study together, worship together in chapel. We would pray for one another. And I realized at some point The people who see the world very differently than me still love the same Jesus as me. Their faith is authentic. They trust Jesus’ substitutionary work on the cross to reconcile them to God.
They recognize the risen Christ as Lord over their lives. Like, they are real deal Christians. So I can always appreciate their faith, admire their love for Jesus, give thanks for them even when we couldn’t agree. In many issues, we were never going to agree, ever. But Paul is correct.
Jesus really is enough to create unity across large divides of other differences. He is enough. So there’s one piece of Paul’s fourfold strategy for unity: celebrate Christ together. The second piece is where you disagree, let God be the judge. Where you disagree, let God be the judge.
As we said, the disagreement in Paul’s day was really over who was the best teacher or who was the real teacher of Christianity between Paul, Apollos, Peter, who he calls Cephas, others. And undoubtedly, all these men had different strengths and weaknesses. Perhaps those differences were some of the reasons why one followed one versus the other. You know, Peter, we know him, right? Loudest, most probably most visible of Jesus’ disciples, but Peter was totally unlearned, Scripture tells us.
Never went to school, spent most of his life as a fisherman. You know, conversely, Paul had been trained by the top rabbinic teachers of the day. He had a systematic mind like a super lawyer. He was a good writer. Paul writes most of the books in the New Testament, but Paul admits, he himself admits, He’s not a good speaker, he’s not eloquent.
Whereas Apollos, great speaker, but we don’t have anything that Apollos wrote. So does that mean he didn’t write? Was that not his gift? Maybe, but they weren’t the same, which apparently led to different approaches to how to do ministry. We don’t know exactly what was different, but something was, maybe how long they preached, you know, if they were funny, did they sing songs, did they do an altar call?
Okay, probably not, zero of those recorded in the New Testament, but maybe, right? They each had their own way to convey Christ, to get the world to see Jesus, which is to be expected, differences are to be expected. But the Corinthians had deified one approach versus the others. It was, my guy does it the way. If you don’t do it his way, you’re not even really a Christian.
To which Paul responds, kind of surprisingly, verse 13 of chapter 3, he says, God will test the quality of each person’s work. Now Paul doesn’t comment on whether Paul, or I mean Peter or Apollos are doing it right. He doesn’t comment even on how they could improve. He says all of us are building on the same foundation of Jesus. We all agree on Jesus.
He is the foundation, no debate about that among the 3 of us. And from there, he’s like, yes, we’re going to go about it in different ways. We have different gifts. We even have different roles. Paul’s like, I planted the seed, Apollos watered it.
He gives these different images. But as to the question of who Who is doing it best? Which way will last? Which way will produce the most fruit in the end? He says God will sort it out.
All of our efforts will be judged. The day will reveal it by fire. If what we built was solid, great. If it’s not, well, we’ll find out then.
But that’s for God to evaluate. And so you can relax. You don’t need to divide over these different approaches for how people add to the foundation. As long as someone builds from Jesus and to Jesus and for Jesus, just give thanks for that, even if you don’t agree with how they’re doing it. You know, if they’re— they are building in the direction that their conscience has led them from the foundation and Christ.
That’s his counsel. God will judge their efforts. Now, how does that apply to help us today in our divisions, especially our heated political divisions with other Christians? Well, if you spend time with people on the other side of the aisle from you, and you should. If you don’t know any Christians from the other side of the aisle, let me know.
I’ll introduce you.
But if you spend time with them, have conversations, don’t interrupt them, just listen, what you’ll often see is their viewpoint comes from their faith. It is not disconnected from their faith. They have not abandoned their faith in order to hold their position. And you’ll find that they don’t agree with everything their candidate says or stands for. There could be things they really don’t like about the person they support.
You’re probably the same way, right? You don’t like everything about whoever it is that you support, and you wouldn’t want anyone to accuse you of guilt by association, right? So, if you talk with people from the other side and listen long enough, you’ll begin to realize where they agree, where they disagree with the candidate they support, all of it comes from their faith. It’s like their faith has formed their view. It’s almost like their faith is foundation and now they’ve built on it in some way.
See how this relates to Paul’s metaphor of building on a foundation? It’s similar, it’s not the same, it’s similar. But different Christians build from Christ in different ways. We don’t all do it the same way in the political arena or anywhere else for that matter. So for instance, hopefully a helpful example that doesn’t cause anyone’s head to explode.
All Christians believe or should believe that we need to help the poor. We agree on that. Scripture is clear, right? Help the poor. But Scripture is not clear on all the specifics of how to help the poor, especially on like a macro national policy level, right?
Not clear on that. Some Christians, as an expression of their faith, they believe the best way to help the poor is through large government programs, massive government spending, very high taxes. Where other Christians believe, as an expression of their faith, the best way to help the poor is through small government, reduced spending, reduced taxes. Private sector can create more jobs, which That is what will lift people out of poverty. Right?
Those are 2 very different approaches, but both of them come from the foundation of their Christian faith. They are both applying their faith to what they think national policy should be, but they have built on that foundation differently, and they will vote differently. Right? And we should vote. We should be involved.
We need to work out our faith in all areas of our lives, including civic ones. But we’re not all going to do it the same way.
And instead of dividing over which way is more effective, Paul would say, let God be the judge. He will test the quality of our work. So if someone comes from a foundation of Jesus and is trying to honor Jesus, just celebrate that, even if it’s different from how you would do it, even if you think their approach has no hope of working. Leave that to God to judge. You can’t see the endless ripple effects from every policy decision anyway.
You are not that wise, which leads to the 3rd piece of Paul’s threefold strategy: humble thyself. Humble thyself. This is going to be hard for those of us, if there are any of us, who believe that our approach is the only right approach, it’s going to be hard. But Paul writes starting in verse 18, let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
The idea is we don’t know if the way we build on the foundation of Christ is the best way. We’re not sure. So don’t deceive yourselves. If you think you’re wise, humble yourself. Open yourself to the possibility you could be wrong, that your view might backfire.
It may not be the best way. And if you do that, then you will be wise. I’ll try to give you another example. I don’t know if we made it through the first one or not, but here we go. I’m a child of the ’80s, so I grew up right in the middle of the war on drugs, right, which I’m sure at the time all Christians and most people agreed, right?
Drugs are bad. We agreed. We still do. Drugs bad. So, what are we going to do about it?
Well, in the ’80s in this country, and really before that in the ’70s, the answer seemed obvious, right? Criminalize drug use. Stamp it out through command and control. Top-down force compliance through heavy, heavy, heavy punishments. We will penalize people into sobriety.
Seemed obvious, right? But since then, we’ve spent over $1 trillion on the war on drugs, and drug use is as rampant as ever. In other words, the solution that was obvious didn’t turn out to be so obvious. Then in response, to that attempt, other people said, well, the solution must be to do nothing at all. You know, no regulation, no enforcement whatsoever.
But that hasn’t worked either, right? Cities who tried that have basically collapsed. The point is, we are not as wise as we think we are. What seems to be an obvious step to bring our society more in alignment with what is good and right and true, what seems obvious might backfire. It might accomplish the exact opposite.
It. So whatever you’re so certain of, you know, whenever we say something like, if people don’t listen to me, it’ll lead to death and chaos and destruction. Maybe, maybe not. So humble thyself. If anyone thinks he’s wise, may he become a fool.
Okay, lastly, the 4th piece of Paul’s fourfold approach to unity. Rest in what Christ has provided. Rest in what Christ has provided. It’s a little cryptic in verses 21 to 23, but it seems Paul is saying, since you belong to Christ, you have everything you need. You do not need to tear your brother apart thinking it’s the only way to save the world.
You can rest because the world has already been saved. By the one who was torn apart. Jesus already bore the cost of whatever errors we make in how we build. He suffered the collapse so that we can stand. It’s going to be okay.
He is putting the world back together, often in spite of us, and he will bring all history to a culmination of glorious praise to him where we will live and thrive forever and ever. Paul says, you have all things. It’s been provided. You can’t lose. Regardless of which approach to ministry is implemented, regardless of who wins an election, you have all things.
The world to come is yours, bought by Christ’s work on your behalf, right? So, you can rest. That’s his strategy. Celebrate Christ together, Let God be the judge where we disagree, humble ourselves, and rest in what Christ has provided. If we can implement that, right, we will be such an anomaly in our age of outrage that Christ may just seem compelling to the world around us.
And that’s what we want most, right?
Let’s pray that it would be so. Father, we thank you for how you can provide unity when we disagree. Thank You that we have something big and bright enough to bring us together even when everything else wants to push us apart.
May we celebrate Christ, Lord. May we let You be the judge. May we humble ourselves, and may we rest in what Christ has provided. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, historically, one of the symbols that pointed to the unity that Christians have is the practice of communion, eating a meal together with a cup and bread. And traditionally at Bridges, we celebrate communion on the first Sunday of the month, which is today. At Bridges, of course, we, we don’t believe that communion is what saves you. There’s nothing magic about the, about the cup and the bread. But we do believe that it points to what Christ did on our behalf, that he died, that he bore our sins in our place to reconcile us to God.
So our ushers are going to pass these elements down our rows, and if you would just hang on to it, I’ll come back up here in just a minute and we will, we will all take it together. In the early church, we say this almost every month, Communion was a meal. It was shared around a table. And just like your table at home, you want everybody to be there before people start eating. So to honor that early practice, we want to all take it together.
So as it comes down, just hang on to it and I’ll be back up in a second. Thank you, ushers.
