“Intro to Expository – Preaching Corinthians” – Dr. Joel Gregory (EKBPC 2017)

[Music] well good evening ek Bailey International Conference it's a delight to be back here yet still once again pastor Carter thank you for your gracious words of introduction and your kind invitation to be back here as a leadoff hitter for this week in 1st Corinthians to give honor to whom honor is due thank you for the invitation to be here my assignment is to give you an overview of 1st Corinthians in the next few minutes lake together with some images that will help you think your way through this book Corinth Corinth had been refounded by Julius Caesar a hundred years before Paul got their guard up on the high place the acryl Corinth was the temple of Aphrodite the goddess of sensual pleasure and a thousand temple prostitutes would make their way down from the mountain holding torches in a parade going to a city that was a seaport on an isthmus a narrow neck of land between the Adriatic and the Aegean Sea Roman triremes would dock there sailors would hit the streets they'd go to the great marketplace there you could buy ivory from Libya rugs from Persia spices from far away it was a Vanity Fair of the ancient world corinth and there was the Baima the judgment seat of God Leo the Roman proconsul who would hold crown even four-pole himself the background of Corinth is in Acts chapter 80 you remember Paul came there he'd preached at the Areopagus and Athens and they left him off the hill when he spoke of Jesus in the resurrection he made that 40 mile walk or ship journey and came by himself to quorum Timothy and others were putting out some ecclesiastical fires somewhere to the north when he came by himself you remember he glued himself that's what the word is to Aquila and Priscilla because they were also tent makers and Paul must have been broken so at night my lamp light under the moonlight with his poor eyesight Paul made tents he went to the synagogue the Jews had the Covenant promises of God he tried to persuade them that Jesus was Lord but when they black steamed he left and started a little house church in Corinth that was the recipient of this letter when you think about the Corinthian church though think about some Basilica or Cathedral or mega church building think about a house full of people who first heard this letter and we're here tonight to talk about the isness of that wasn't is the hereness of that various 2,000 years later remember Paul started to get discouraged and Jesus made a personal appearance if you have a red letter Bible in fact you'll find red letters right there in Acts chapter 18 I've got many people in this city he stayed there for 18 months in a ministry finally the Jews and the conspiracy had him dragged before Gallio the Roman proconsul but Galileo said this is a church state issue well he didn't say exactly but he said I don't know what you're talking about this is a Jewish matter get out of here and Paul left town with Aquila and Priscilla and that's the background of the church at Corinth but could we jump into the letter now the first the first four chapters or chapters famously about division there was Paul you know how he dressed them along with Sosthenes to the church that is at Corinth in Christ do you know that it would always be easier to be one or the other if all you do is live at Corinth you can be secular or if all you were were in Christ you could be spiritual but to be at Corinth in Christ [Applause] that's the problem do you know that Paul's phrase in Christ is his favorite phrase for Christians he uses it 160 times that word in Christ in had never been used with a personal pronoun in the history of the Greek language you weren't in Nero you weren't in Tiberius but he said here's a new reality like the birds in the air and the airs and the bird the fishes in the sea in the season the fish you're in Christ right there you've got the whole problem of the Corinthian church they were in Christ but their address was at Carl you know to dwell above with the Saints in love that'll be glory that dwell below was some of the Saints I know that's a different story and that's the problem it was a troubled triumphant Church yet he called them Saints with all their problems he says they're sanctified they were the church now first of all it was a gifted Church he says you are enriched with spiritual gifts and that's known all over the Empire a gifted group of people you see that in 1st Corinthians 14 we'll look at that in a few minutes when they came together everybody had a prophecy everybody had a tongue everybody had an interpretation they almost had a contest about who could be the most gifted he said they were a gift did Church there was no question about that and yet they had a famous fight [Applause] out of every corner there was a faction they were those who said we're charter members and we've never had another pastor like Paul and there were those who said all know this eloquent young Jewish Alexandrian Apollo he's a Spellbinder a stem-winder and the Jewish Christians said ho ho no Peters the rock and it's built on the rock and then there was a fourth group I've known some like him all we needs Jesus and there was a fire and qhorin this word had come to them from Chloe's people what does Paul do was this he doesn't talk about a clearly ecclesiology he takes them to the cross in this divided church he says what have you done to the Christ of the cross they didn't divide his precious garment at the cross but you divided his church he points to the Jews he said Jews look for a sign Jews always wanted to show us a sign a sign is never enough I remember from that great sermon by the venerable law did preacher Jay Jackson remember when they said come down from the cross and we'll believe you Jackson said he'd already come down from heaven they wanted three more feet [Applause] you'll never get enough Sun on the other hand there's the Greeks the intellectuals they said we want a super Aristotle we want a better model of Socrates and he said to the Jews the cross is a stumbling block to the Greeks that the Son of God bled to death on a stick of wood that's moronic it's literally the word in Greek Moria moronic but he said to those who are called for the Jews are Greeks here's the wisdom and the power of God himself and so he takes their divisions to the cross but then in the great second chapter he brings before them the Greek philosophers in that day there were philosophers who were itinerants they recalled the Sophists they were the philosophers they were Platon as neoplatonist Aristotelian all kinds of philosophers in Chapter two and as he brings before them he said when I came to town I did not try to compete there was a group of philosophers called the Sophists the Sophists were traveling or adores they were Spellbinders they were stem winders they'd actually show up at a Greek city-state and say give us a topic and we'll come back tomorrow and give you our best shot and they would literally buff themselves up oil themselves up and amaze people with their rhetorical skill Paul said I'm not competing with them when I came to you I knew nothing among you except Jesus Christ but not as a philosopher I knew him in a way that was the least palatable to you Greeks that's Jesus having been crucified and incidentally if you looked at the top of my resume the first line was I'm weak I'm fearful and I shake a lot you ever think about putting that at the top of your resume he said I did that so that your faith would be not in the wisdom of humans but in the power of God all of this is dealing with the divisions in the church and their vaulting of human beings and human Paras and human power in fact when he comes to the 3rd chapter he says your problem is you're a group of spiritual babies when you should have been eating meat yes still drinking milk interestingly when you interpret this he doesn't say who is Paul and who is Apollo's he uses the neuter pronoun in Greek what is Paul what is Apollo's you're trying to make us the head of some kind of superstar Revenue he said no no what is Paul Paul's a planter I dropped some seed and I went to Ephesus what is Apollo's Apollo's is just water do you make emperors out of seed sores and water can carries that's beautiful air is tense if you're a Greek student it says our planet Apollo's water but then the gorgeous present tense all along God was causing it to grow he said what are you fighting over planters and waters about what matters is that I sowed the seed Apollo's watered it but God is the one who makes it grow you heard the story of the will amo tribe in Ethiopia tab look it up googly not right now you'll find out that before World War two missionaries had gone to Ethiopia they'd started work with the wool amo people that's a known tribe both then and now a people group in Ethiopia they were leaving them the written word of God when Mussolini ran haile selassie out of Ethiopia and the missionaries all fled sad because their work never even got started six years later when Hitler was defeated Haile Selassie was reinstalled the missionaries went back they thought to start over all they had left was part of the New Testament when they got back 48,000 wonho's had become born-again believers they planted they don't even know who watered but God J the increase you read anything about the Wickliffe Bible so you'll find out over and over the same thing happens where you leave the word of God but then he turns to warn them be careful how you build these are highly theological slides he says there's only one foundation and I Paul laid that foundation and I've gone you be careful how you build on that foundation you can build with worthless stuff wood hay stubble or you can build with that which cost you something gold silver precious stone tout the background of that is what happened from time to time in Corinth there were beautiful temples like the Temple of Apollo made out of marble with precious stones in them and right next to them in the same neighborhood there would be poor houses made out of wood hay and stubble they were thatched together they had chinks made out of straw to keep the rain off and when a flash fire would come through Corinth that flash fire would incinerate those buildings made out of wood hay and stubble but the marble temples would stand he uses that background from Corinth to say be careful how you build on the foundation and then he raises an awful possibility for ministers and that is if you try to minister on the cheap giving him what costs you nothing would hay and stubble in that day oh you may be saved but you'll be like a man running out of a tenement house with your very garments singed because you built on the foundation with what cost you nothing be careful he says how you build but then he shifts the figure and looks at ministry in an altogether different way and they're not really stars there's something [Music] ramming speed [Music] [Music] [Music] what does charlton heston they have to do with first corinthians I'll tell you in a minute Paul says what is Paul and what is apostle he in what is the policy uses three words he says in chapter 3 we are diac annoy that was the lowest servant in the house then he says where arkad no more we're stewards that was a servant who was entrusted with the stuff of an absentee landlord but then he said we are hew para tastes the word literally means under roars in that famous unforgettable scene from Ben Hur Charlton Heston is n under roar down in the bottom of the ship just on top of the qiyan when someone up on the deck gives the order he pulls at the oars Paul says there's nobody on the deck pulling the oars but I've got a lord in heaven and I'm pulling away sometimes when I can't even see what's happening outside I'm pulling a word it's one of the great images in the book of first great I am and deacon that is a servant I am a steward sometimes I just have to be in under or faithfully pulling away while the Lord above is navigating what happens next in fact he uses some sacred sarcasm here he says your kings you're full you're rich those of us who were apostles are hungry were servants and were poured in verse 9 he uses the image of a Roman triumph in a Roman triumph like that of Julius Caesar when he conquered vercingetorix the king of the gulf they prepared a parade for seven years prayed was led by the lictors carrying the romans fuscus that's what you see on a dime by trumpeters floats were made that demonstrated Caesars victories there was Caesar and his gilded chariot but last of all were the prisoners the Gauls himself Paul uses that image he said you at Qarth enrich do you think you're rich you're full you can name it and claim it he said sometimes I feel like the prisoner of Christ last in line what he's trying to do is break their idea that Paul and Apollo's and Cephas were some kind of spiritual superstars then we have to leave that now and we go to chapter 5 the chapter that deals with an unspeakable immorality and a morality that even among the pagans was a taboo that a man would have his father's wife and Paul said when you should have been broken up you were puffed up he said not even the greco-roman sand their worst paganism tolerate that so he addresses them sharply doesn't he say when I'm absent but present in the spirit you take such a one and turn him over to Satan for the destruction of his Sark's his flesh why so that his spirit might be saved we don't have time to dwell here very long but it says the purpose of church discipline is not punitive it is restorative he said if a born-again believer is caught in this kind of unspeakable situation and you turn him over to the devil for the destruction of Sark's in self-disgust they'll turn back to the house of God skip over to second Corinthians oh did they ever do it in fact they did such a good job of it that even after the bothered repented they were still beating him up second corinthians paul said let him up now we don't have time for church discipline but i know sometimes we've made it such a ridiculous thing when i was in my first pastor at Edgefield baptist church south waco junior and senior at Baylor what I didn't know about pastoring would fill an encyclopedia I used to read the old church minutes pastor Carter from the 1920s and every month at the business meeting they kicked somebody out for dancing and reading the minutes one month somebody had to correct the minutes because they'd kicked a member out who wasn't a member the trivialization of church discipline this church disciplines exercise because it so hurt the body of Christ that even among the pagans the church was being ridiculed then that takes us to the next row and that is Christians suing Christians in secular courts in fact today we'd call them small claims courts petty Corden's and and paul says don't you have one wise person in the church who could act as a mediator he said we're already we're already dismissed at corinth and now you're dragging one another before paid in judges you're gonna judge the angels what he told them you're gonna judge the angels someday if you're gonna judge angels can't you decide who broke somebody's chariot without dragging them before a pagan judge in fact this raises the whole question that it even got worse than that because this let a spirit into the church that made them forget that the church is made up of people who are temples of the Living God it was a city full of temple it's the Temple of Apollo you can still see the columns there today but he looks at them as if to say in the Old Testament God had a temple for his people but in the New Testament he has a people for his temple and every one of you individually is a temple of the spirit but this leaven from Chapter five and six had gotten into the church the Greeks had a statement about the moral life they said the body is for food and food is for the body but they took it a step further and they said sex is for the body and the body is for sex it's just like eating it's no more than eating and eliminating something and Paul said no he said your members are members of the body of Christ are you going to take a piece of the body of Christ and make it one with a temple prostitute your destiny is resurrection and he treats it with that kind of utmost seriousness what was happening in the church at Corinth and he gives them a solution he doesn't say pray about it he doesn't say think it over he says please he said sometimes your best spiritual help is a good pair of Nikes just get out of there if you were hiring somebody to drive you up the switchbacks of a Swiss Mountain I was in Swiss mountains a few days ago looking over the edge at a 3,000 foot sheer drop if you were looking for a driver would you say I want someone who can drive as close to the edge as possible I'd prefer someone who half the tires could be off the road no no no I'd want to get somebody that would hug the side of the mountain as close as they could Paul says flee why the great reason in first Corinthians six you have been bought with a price use your bodies now do you know what if you took the chemicals in your body oxygen hydrogen nitrogen carbon phosphate calcium you know what you're worth as chemicals $4.50 [Applause] if they could take your chemicals you'd be worth four and a half bucks but you're worth a lot more than that because you have been bought with the precious blood of Christ and he says be careful what you do in the body now we turn to one of the interesting passages in all the New Testament and that is 1st Corinthians 7 and his passage about marriage the interesting thing about this it's like listening to one side of a phone conversation do you enjoy doing that I love that on airplanes when people are trying to talk just listening to one side of it and wondering I wonder what those other folks are saying what do you have in 1st Corinthians 7 is listening to one side of a phone conversation because Paul says concerning the things you wrote me about since we don't know the questions we have to decide what they were from the answers evidently starting in Corinth and certainly later in the church there was a practice that was called spiritual marriage and that was men and women grown fools adults setting up housekeeping in a platonic relationship and guess what they wasn't working that well and that must have been the question behind the first one Paul says yeah it's okay it's good for a maintenance it's better he said it's good for a man not to touch a woman he said I wish everybody had my gift and that was the gift without any doubt of celibacy Paul was a content celibate but in the New Testament celibacy is always a gift is not this that you clench your fist and grit your teeth and say I'm going to be a so no it is a gift Paul is very realistic about that it is a gift and he said if you don't have begins [Applause] you need to get married [Applause] rather than burn and he doesn't mean inhale he means burned with desire but for those who were more spiritual than God he said if you're not going to come they said three things if you are not going to have intimate relations she said it needs to be by mutual agreement it's not one of you that solve a lot of problems he said it is for a specific season it is for a purpose prayer and come back together lest you be tempted now there are a lot of Pauline critics today even we run into these as so many people who criticized Paul versus Jesus Lee my what a low view of marriage you just get married so you won't burn and I'll say why don't you just grow up it's a very realistic view of God's purposes and then he goes to a whole series of questions and we don't have time to go he just but I want you to notice this put a bomb show by verse 26 because everything he says has to do with this present distress something was going on at Corinth pressure persecution that sheds it said it goes firework forwards and backwards from verse 26 everything he says is because of this present distress he says if you're single or you're a widow in light of that present distress stay that way he said if you're Christian and married the Lord says stay with him if you're married to an unbeliever if they're willing to say don't divorce them but if they want to go let them go you're not bound the whole chapter is in light of this present distress some circumstances that we don't know about all the way down to widows remain single if you marry marry in the Lord it's one side of a telephone conversation as you get ready to preach through this you can work your way through it but we've got to run on to chapter 8 9 and 10 idle sacrifice idolatry it seemed like a remote question then I never thought in my life I would have to face anything like this food offered to idols and then I did I was in Bangalore South India I was out with the missionary doctor surgeon hero dr. Rebecca and Nagler and we'd gone out to vaccinate people off the off the off road and we were in a village and we went into a lady's house and there was a statue of her household God and she had just made an offering on the birthday of her household Hindu God and she reached down and picked up an orange and offered it to me and I landed in first Corinthians chapter a hate am I gonna have some orange juice from an orange that was offered to an idol and that's what they were facing the situation there in Corinth had to do with a man or a woman who the week before had been in the temple of apollo burning beef at the altar now a week later they're a Christian and their host puts a sirloin steak in front of them and they wonder where did this come from should I eat it if it had been offered to a publican and it's seared their conscience this has to do with matters that cause other people to stumble that creates a scandal now in the history of Christian life even in the last hundred years it's taken many different forms there's some folks who said you shouldn't wear makeup we lost Billy Graham not long ago when he was a very young man and wasn't as smooth as he got to be later a Pentecostal lady accosted him in a hotel lobby and said dr. Graham do you think women should wear makeup and he looked her and said ma'am I think some would do you a lot of good [Applause] Oh touch that but in Chapter nine he uses himself as the example of someone who gives up his rights even though he didn't have to give them up he had the right to give up his rights now he's pleading with people and say look I don't believe there's any such thing as an idol if I want to eat a steak I'll eat it and he says yes this is look at me I exercise my right to give up my rights it's an interesting little side path about the support of the ministry he said if you minister in material and spiritual things you have the right to be supported in material things famously you don't muzzle the hawk Hawks that treads out the grain he says if you're a soldier you don't have to go out and make a few sales calls in order to feed yourself if you have a vineyard you can eat off the vine if you have a field you can eat of the week he said look even Peter and the Lord's brothers and the other apostles carry around wives with them and they expect support but he said not me no he said I'd rather die than have you because what was he he was a tent maker and here this man who was writing Romans founding churches at night by poor lamplight with his poor eyesight making tents because he had the right to give up his rights misusing this is an illustration yes you can eat steak in front of your neighbor if you want to but if it Sears his conscience why don't you have the right to give up your rights in fact before chapter 9 is over it's that vivid metaphor what I beat myself up West having preached to others at the end I would be the Greek word is a dhaka mas dis approved I don't know what that means that I don't want to know 300 years ago Isaac Watts was preaching from first corinthians on just this idea and he wrote that famous in must i be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease while others fought to win the prize and sailed through bloody seas we know it i am i a soldier of the cross a follower of the lamb or some of the believers I've known Joseph's son was a Romanian Baptist in the days of the communist dictator Chou chess coup he was all the time harassed interviewed threatened with death a communist investigator was in his face and said we're going to kill you and Joseph song said go ahead your greatest weapon is killing but my greatest weapon is dying he said my tapes are all over Romania if you sprinkle them with my blood my greatest the Communist investigator went back to his boss said this man's crazy let's let him go they ran him out of there chapter 10 is the summary of the matter you know it uses a bunch of Old Testament examples take heed if you think you stand lest you fall he goes back to the Exodus building the golden care grumbling the immorality God's sending fiery servant he says those are warning signs hebrew scripture warns us of the seriousness of what we're involved in and the arrogance of taking we stand but we saw remember Karl Wallenda 1978 the famous Italian high wire Walker with that pole on that high wire between two buildings in Puerto Rico you can look it up on YouTube he didn't think he could ever fall and yet the wind blew him off and he fell to his death last year his grandson Nick in the famous eight person pyramid on a high bar same thing didn't think they could ever fall and all of them fell to the ground don't ever dare say it can't be me that's the warning how we come chapter 11 and that is trouble at the Lord's Supper now this is an interesting thing because the first part of it has to do with misconduct at church in terms of what you wear on your head this is the most mysterious part really of first Corinthians in many ways he says it's a shame for ladies not to be covered but it's a shame for men to be covered because of the angle Oy because of the angels are the word can be translated messengers nobody's quite sure what it is it's so mysterious but what it does have to do with is appropriate conduct at the house of God now that can change from generation to generation and the takeaway of this is not trying to figure out what you did in ancient Corinth but it is to ask in our culture today how should people behave in the house of God and it might be altogether different the famous Episcopalian lady preacher Barbara brown Taylor was converted she claimed at Stanford University in her dormitory room when some Campus Crusade people came back she started to look for Church she took some hippies it was in the 60s to church went into a Baptist Church and because they had long hair they kicked them out you see a totally different cultural situation see I'd say they misunderstood first Corinthians eleven because part of it had to do with cars and the things at Corinth but the other part doesn't and that has to do with the Lord's Supper because at the Lord's Supper which was celebrated at the agape meal a meal of the church the people of affluence were getting there early and eating everything up you know it was a covered dish dinner you ever get to one of those too late but the poor people which include the enslaved people who didn't have the freedom to get there early we're getting there whenever about it eating it up and all they had was a bunch of dirty dishes and what Paul says is that if you take the supper in a way that disregards others some of you sleep and some are dead and what he meant by that when he says not discerning the body my interpretation is not discerning the body of Christ the church right over here right over here let me give you an example of what that means right here across the street at First Baptist Church where George W Truitt was pastor from 1897 to 1944 few months ago we lost an 89 year old famous professor at Baylor University dr. James vardaman he and his sister Ann vardaman Miller were the two most famous teachers maybe in the history of a hundred and seventy-two years when they were a little boy and little girl they were right over here across the street in the basement of the old sanctuary standing against a wall the world-famous pastor and the most famous citizen of Dallas by far George W truly saw them standing there he got up and said why are you standing here children James vardaman NN vardaman said because if we ride the bus here we don't have enough money to pay for dinner and George Truitt took them in his arms and set them down at his table and said you will always eat here he discerned the body and that put them on a track to get an education at Baylor University and to become two of the greatest teachers in the hundred and seventy two year history of that school it started because over here caddy corner somebody looked and discerned the body then we come to chapters 12 13 14 I've got to rush on here we come to deal with the question of spiritual gifts and what you had in the church there was a bunch of spiritual mr. potato heads you remember mr. Potato Head some of them said because I'm not they are I'm just an ear I don't belong to the body they diminish their gifts some of them said I'm a foot not a hand I don't belong and that is those who have the more conspicuous gifts haunted them and those who have the less conspicuous gift diminish themselves and they were spiritual mr. potato heads when he said the truth is you're part of one body and you ought to have the same care for one another and that leads us to the famous chapter that sometimes lifted out of context it's about spiritual gifts it's first Corinthians 13 right in the middle of the passage about gifts is this beautiful love poem you know he says if you don't have a copy you're a war sounding brass tinkling cymbal and that sticks in our mind but to me what dominates it is the fact that it was a church full of spiritual man-child's when I was a child played with toys though when I grew up I knew when to put them aside he said you people arguing over leaders tolerating incredible immorality dragging one another the court getting drunk at the Lord's Supper and bragging about your conspicuous gifts yeah just a group of adult children then he changes the metaphor he says how much do you know you're like people looking at a mirror in the dark now in Corinth they didn't have silvered mirrors that didn't come across for a thousand years later all they had was polished brass nobody ever saw themselves as they really were what they saw was an indistinct image he says you think you're so gifted he said what you know about eternal things is about a man looking at a bad mirror in a dark room John Calvin the first great Protestant exegete talking about the Bible says when God speaks to us in the Bible he accommodates to us this is John Calvin and he said the Bible is God's baby talk to humans who can't understand anything do you know how baby talk is wah wah wah goochie goochie goo he says the highest thoughts this is John Calvin in Scripture our baby talk compared to the reality that they're talking about Carl Bart was in Chicago in his last lecture to somebody asked him if he'd summarize his great book church dogmatics this really happened yes really happened and he said I'll summarize him jesus loves me this I know cause the Bible tells me so goes on the chapter 14 we must hurry and that has to do with the conduct of worship in the church it was such an enriched church that everybody when they came together had something to say in Chapter 14 he deals with the conduct in serve everybody won't talk in tongues everybody wanted to prophesy hey everybody had a word of knowledge and first of all he says it's better to speak one clear word that edified rather than an unknown language the dad won't wait now wait a minute don't take it away from him he says in verse 18 I speak in tongues more than all of you can't get around man but he said in public it's better to be clear so we laid down some rules he said first of all if you're gonna have tongue talking at church - never more than the-- and have an interpreter or don't do it that stopped a lot of it right there where I'm missing did you hear that two or three in order with an interpreter prophecy he says two or three in order that's it and then if somebody is I just can't help myself he said yes you can he says this the spirit of the Prophet is subject to the Prophet God gave you two guards in front of your tongue your lips and your teeth and you can [Applause] you can help yourself I've got to sit down but here we come to the great fifteenth chapter the resurrection chapter perhaps the worst misunderstanding of all the Corinthians as Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul but not the resurrection of the body so they believed Jesus was the great exception not the guarantee of our resurrection it's a huge mistake they believed yes heroes but we want and that's why Paul wrote this chapter he'd gotten that word first of all you need to understand that there is a great handoff of Christian doctrine we don't make the gospel up brothers and sisters he uses the word para didn't me it's the para dosis the thing that's handed over he said what was handed to me I'm handing to you and by implication to you and you what was handed to him as it Christ died according to Scripture was buried was raised according to scripture and was seen and he lists that we don't make the gospel up that's handed to us and would you come close to me just an in it I've got a suspicion that some folks are getting bored with the gospel that's getting more spiritual than God that's central but then he comes to the mistaken in a sense of mistake he he takes you as it were to the cemetery the Corinthians who were Greeks believed that the soul might survive the body but to them it was abhorrent to think of a bodily resurrection they couldn't believe they said maybe it happened to Jesus not gonna happen anybody here and Paul argues with them that if the individual Corinthian is not raised neither was Jesus raised he turns the argument upside down but having done that he takes them on to answer the question in verse 35 and dwell there when you look at this it's a double question how are the dead raised and with what kind of bodies do they come in answer to that question how he says look at seeds look at what you put in the ground look at nature he says when you drop a wheat seed in the ground who would think a whole stalk would come out you take an acorn if you'd never seen an oak tree do you think that thing would come out of an acorn you put a Xenia seed a tiny desiccated dehydrated little thing and a flower comes out he said if you mere humans can put seeds in the ground and something different comes out what do you think God can do [Applause] and then he says look at different kinds of bodies he said God is able to give mammals birds fish and you a body suitable for your environment birds have hollow bones so they're light and can fly fish have gills so they can breathe underwater he said if God is able to do that on the lower lesser lighter level he can do it on a higher holy or heavier level and he can give you a body suitable for eternity but then he looks at heavenly bodies he says as a glory of the Stars the Sun the moon if he can make heavenly bodies surely he can give you a body fit for eternity but then he goes back to an open grave and really this is the zenith of what he says he says what you put in the ground is subject to corruption but what will come out will be incorruptible what you put in the ground is sown in dishonor and it is you know I've presided over a lot of funerals nobody comes out and say just looks like he's sleeping doesn't look like he did it doesn't look like he said disarmed raised and glory sown in weakness raised in strength put into the ground a body for natural life raised a body suitable for eternal life and then he tells us how it's going to be he takes us to a heavenly scene and he says in a moment [Applause] bless his name in a moment he uses the word out of us it gives us the word add up in an atom of fire with the blast of a trumpet and the shout of an archangel we're gonna stand up breathe and then from that trial to thing he takes you to the offering plate [Applause] he said incidentally since I know that makes you want a shower [Applause] it's time for the collection and he gives you that great word it's a matter of individual responsibility let each one of you it's a matter of planned regularity on the first day of the week and proportionate return ask God is prospered within he's gonna say goodbye their hairs on the fire and they want him to leave Ephesus and get right back remember what he wrote them about that he said I've got a big what open door I have a mega door that's what he says in Greek I have a mega thourough a mega door and just cause your hair's on fire doesn't mean I have to leave the door God's given me it's a good word there there's always going to be somebody in the church with their hair on fire and that doesn't mean you've got to leave the door that God gave you the thin he ends this were these beautiful greetings and starts naming a bunch of folks from 2,000 years ago did you see it it's real sweet really he he he calls her name says Timothy Apollo's Stephanus fortunatus aquellas Aquila Priscilla sauce Denise we look at these people as if they're long gone but he's not the god of the day he'd - god of the living and first Corinthians 16 is an open list when the saints go marching in [Music] you can get on that map brother wait here on that lid put your own babies [Music] [Music] [Music]

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Keywords: ekbpc, ekbpc2017

Id: CcfLajOfZZ0

Length: 60min 20sec (3620 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 17 2020