Does It Work? What Americans Want From Christianity

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We have been working our way through the book of First Corinthians. Lately, we began looking at the opening section of St. Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. And he talked about how Jesus is enough for the congregation in Corinth, that when they received Jesus, they had everything, all gifts, all power, all spiritual gifts, everything they needed from God. The next section was about divisions in the church. And we talked about what it means that the church is currently divided as it is, and how Christians should approach thinking about denominations in this divided Christian world. Today, we're moving on to the next section, verses 18 through 31. And it looks at the the cross. And the question of how crazy is the cross? When the world looks at it? It looks like foolishness, like nothing worse than nothing, like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. But to us, it is the wisdom of God, and the power of God for our salvation. St. Paul gives us some words about what it would have looked like to the people who were there at the time to the Corinthians, their congregation would have been made up of Greeks, and Jews, right. And so he tells us the kinds of things that they saw as powerful. He says, For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. He asked about the debaters of the age describes the powerful and amazing people. We know enough about Greek society to know what St. Paul is talking about, at this time. And through much of Greek society, it is the the scholar, the wise person, the philosopher, who is the peak of society. You know, some of their names Plato, right? You've heard that one before. I'm sure. He is the one who said that the perfect King, the ruler was supposed to be the philosopher king. Right? The wise man who knows the truth about reality. Socrates, also, Aristotle, big names even now. You might not know people like dioxygenase, who started the school of the cynics, or Zeno, who began the school of the stoics. The stoics are making a comeback right now. Many people are recommending reading the journal of Marcus Aurelius, who was a Roman Emperor 100 years after Jesus ascended into heaven. Still following this school that would have existed at the time Paul is writing to big deal, what these these different schools of philosophy were doing, and they lasted for centuries past the founder, who made them. We know that this is a big deal in the Bible, because it talks about it. Actually, when Paul goes to Athens and acts 17, it says, now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time and nothing except telling or hearing something new. That's kind of the Palestinian way of coming to Athens and saying, What are they doing debating philosophy all day long. Jews also had expectations, the things that they thought were powerful. It wasn't the wisdom that the Greeks had, it was signs. We see that in the Gospel of Matthew when they come to Jesus, Matthew 16, verse one says, and the Pharisees and Sadducees came and to test him, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. happens over and over again through the Bible. Show us a sign to sell what authority you have to do these things Jesus, and he almost always replies with no, you're not going to get a sign from me. I don't dance to your tune. But you can see why if you look at the Old Testament, why they would say that Deuteronomy points back to Egypt and says You saw the signs and wonders Deuteronomy 622. And the Lord showed signs and wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household before our eyes are Joel Chapter Two with this expectation, And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions, and even on the male and female servants in those days, I will pour out my spirit. Wouldn't that be a sign? Wouldn't that be a wonder? That is what they were expecting. And so anything that is powerful, anything that is good, you would see Jews expecting the miraculous to accompany it, like it did with the prophets. That was their expectation from God. And with that, we read these words, for Jews demand signs, and Greek seeks wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. And again, for the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Sometimes I think we, we forget how strange the cross actually is, how horrifying. It is, stripped of all of our history and tradition. One of the ways that we see this is the way that Matthew chapter 20, is interpreted. This is the story where the the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and says, Jesus, I want you to give me a favor. And he's like, What do you want me to do? She says, When you come into the kingdom, put my sons one on your right and one on your left. When you come into your kingdom, Jesus says, You don't know what you're asking. He turns to them and says, Can you drink the cup that I drink? They say yes. And he says that, then he says, It is not my place to to, to give tell you, one of my right ammonia in the left, that is for those that it is prepared for. Now, most of the time, when we talk about that, and this is how I was taught when I was young, we think we don't know who will be sitting at Jesus when He comes in his glory when he's on his glorious throne, who will be in his right and his left. We have no idea it's prepared for someone. Probably someone that we don't expect. And that is absolutely wrong. And you want to know why? Because we don't read Matthew like a book, we read it Peric up right by Peric up. But if you actually read Matthew, you know, we know exactly who is that Jesus is right and left when he comes into his kingdom. It says in Matthew 27. And over his head, they put the charge against him which read, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Then two robbers were crucified with Him. one on his right, one on his left. When Jesus comes in glory, and enters into His kingdom, it's already happened. His glorious throne was across his amazing crown was thorns. And his wise counselors were robbers who died next to him. Kind of weird, right? That's not a glorious throne. An amazing crown. That doesn't sound like a kingdom I want to be in. Consider what it is that we have. Right up here. Look at that thing. We've added all sorts of beautiful stuff to it right. We made it nice and smooth. This cross in front of us we added some varnish, there's a little metal and it's pretty shiny. It's big and beautiful. It fits in our architectural style so it looks really amazing. I want you to strip it of that in your mind.

Get rid of the metal That is nice and shiny and beautiful. Take off the beautiful varnish. Make it instead rough wood, cut hastily, without any thoughts of beauty, not sanded, so there's plenty of splinters on it. Now add a body right up there. Not back in Palestine right in front of you. A man with nails through his wrist, a crown of thorns on his head and blood dripping down from the arms. flowing like a river, down the center. A head bowed because he is too weak, to lift it. Feet mangled by the nails. That's something you put up in front of a group of people. Is that beautiful?

That's the God of the Christian church. Paul says, We preach Christ crucified. You can see why it would be a stumbling block for Jews, foolishness to the Gentiles. And for us, as well. It is the same for every culture that has ever come to it. Because it looks like nothing worse than nothing. But for us, this horror, this torture and death is the power of God and the wisdom of God it is salvation itself. When we look on the pain and death of Jesus Christ, we see only glory. And it has to rework what glory actually means. In our mind, Jesus is true throne is torture. His true crown bites into his flesh. And from that cross, He reigns over his church. Until the day he returns. The church he won by this holy sacrifice the church, he marks with his holy body and blood and gathers us together to receive this death for our eternal life. And he came down to do it, so that he could enter into our life so much that even when we go down into our graves, he can be there with us in death. So we can bring us through that grave to the resurrection on the last day. And it's that cross that defines the church in the here and now until Jesus returns. I found myself in a strange confluence of events lately. All of my media consumption has randomly pointed me towards the Vikings, which is really weird. I've been playing god of war on my PlayStation. It's all about a guy who goes and fights the Norse gods pretty amazing. Lots of background about tear and Loki and Thor and all that stuff. I've been listening to podcasts, about the Viking Age, just sort of randomly came up in my normal podcast feed. And of course, the North man just came out on streaming services. I watched that too. That's interesting. Looking at their perspective on Christianity. In the north, man, they had a little scene where they had Christian slaves there. And one of the guys said, they have a corpse God. Isn't that right? We have a corpse. God don't wait. Jesus who died on a cross and when they want them to go somewhere, they say come on blood drinkers. That's what the world thinks of our craziness. Right? It's baffling because it doesn't make sense. They needed a God who would go and slay people. The high purpose of their life was to go and die in battle so they could go off to valley Halla. Foolishness is this cross where you would go and die for nothing? But what about us? What about in America? If Jews seek signs if Greeks want wisdom, if Vikings want valor, what do Americans want? We want our religion to work. I think that's it right? We're a very practical people. We don't care about highfalutin theories, and book learning, right? We want our religion to do what it's supposed to do, to function in our lives. And if it doesn't work, we jettison it, and we find something that does. Right. And I think many Christians see Christianity as an instrument, towards gaining something for life. We look at our religion as instrumental in making life better. And this isn't just me talking. This is what surveys have shown. There was a book called soul searching the religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers, it came out in 2005, which means that the people they surveyed and the interviews they did, they're no longer teenagers, their parents themselves. And one of the big findings in this was everybody they interviewed, except for a vanishingly small number of people saw that religion is there to get something done for us. A 14 year old from Massachusetts, said this. I think it's just important to have a belief system, because I think it helps you what you believe is how you live. Any belief system is good, as long as you have one. It's about fulfillment. A 16 year old Catholic from Florida said, quote, the important thing in a religion is connecting yourself to the spiritual side of yourself and fulfilling that. As long as you feel fulfilled, you have a spiritual experience, and you're good to go. Right. Another one said, talked about therapy, almost, quote, it's important that it's important. Religion is not like major important, but religion can help you get through a bad day. They summed it up with this, quote, what our interviews almost never uncovered among teens, was the view that religion summons people to embrace an obedience to truth, regardless of the personal consequences or rewards. Now, these are teenagers from 15 years ago, but where do you think they learned it? That they invent it? No, we taught it to them. The problem with this, is I want you to think about those quotations and throw it up next to a Savior who died on a cross. That horror that we saw before. To have a belief system, do you need a savior? who sacrifices his life? Now, to find spiritual fulfillment? Do you need a death on a cross? Absolutely not you can find that sitting around and meditating. To get therapy. Do you need torture and death? Of course not. You can go by that. We have to be sure that we don't have an instrumental view of our Savior Jesus Christ. Is he there to cope with your problems? Is that why Jesus came? Is Jesus here to make a better society to fight a culture war? And make sure America stays a Christian nation? Is he here to establish morality for your children? Is he here to make you feel good when you leave church on Sunday? But those thoughts next to the blood of Jesus dripping down that cross. Jesus did not come to make your life better. He did not come to give you therapy or to feel good. He did not come to bring you fulfillment. He came to die for you and raise you from the dead on the last day, and call you to the cross, like him. Bless it are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely, on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. A while back, there was a series of shootings in churches, insurance companies emailed out all sorts of things that you could do lock your doors when the worship service darts, hire guards, develop a system with the police figure all these things out so you can stay safe. My Church discussed that. You know what they didn't discuss this, if only we could be found worthy of martyrdom, of proving to be true disciples who could die for his name, if only.

That's what the apostles said. When they were whipped for Jesus, they rejoice that they were counted worthy of suffering for the name. This is the foolishness of the cross. This is the craziness of a God who dies for us. And it's the power of God for your salvation, to follow someone who took up suffering, who died for you who went up onto a cross and was tortured to death so we could enter your life so you can live forever our life will look like the cross and it's the power of God for you. In Jesus name, Amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

I Follow Luther? Divisions In The Church

1 Corinthians 1:10-17

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and 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? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Last week, we started a walk through the beginning of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the first letter he, in the order of our, of our Bible, we looked at his opening, where he talked about some of the problems that were going on in Corinth, to let them know that Jesus was enough for them, that they didn't need all of the extra things to fight over spiritual gifts, or power or status, that having Jesus was enough. Today, we're continuing to go through this letter, and see the problems that St. Paul is addressing in the church in Corinth, and looking at how they can apply to church life here. Because the letter to the Corinthians is about our life together as Christians, whether in a congregation or relating to each other around the world. And that's what St. Paul is talking about to them. Today, he talks to them about divisions. He says that he does not want them to be divided, but that you but, “That you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.”

He says that there has been a report by Chloe's people, whoever they are, that they are divided into factions. Now, this isn't just a debate within the church. This is real fighting going on, that they are divided into tribal groups. What it reminds me of is the old Greek schools of philosophy. You know, what they would do is they would have, like a founder, like Zeno was a founder, or Plato or Aristotle, and they would found these institutions where they would have this school of learning, and they would go on for centuries sometimes, and he would go, Well, I am a stoic, or I am an epicurean. Sounds a little bit like that in the church. I follow Paul, I follow a Paulus. I follow Sisyphus, or I follow Christ. It's a little bit like they all had joined up in a team. And then maybe the last one were those people who are sick of it all and say, I'm an independent. Right? Now, I just follow Jesus. Come on, guys. And the thing is, is that St. Paul is urging them that having these factions in the church, divisions in the Church of God undermines the unity that Christ wants his church to have. Unity is a big deal. In the letter to the Corinthians, it goes over and over and over again, we see this theme, whether it's unity in communion, unity in the body of Christ, unity in love. Paul wants to make sure that they know the church is supposed to be united. And he tells him You are to be united in the same mind and the same judgment. Chapter 12 gives us the best image of this, the one that we know pretty well, I'm sure where it says, For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves are free. And all were made to drink of the one Spirit. So there's unity isn't just an organizational thing, but there is a spiritual unity being brought together in the body of Christ. Or as he puts it, in Ephesians four,

there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is overall and through all and in all.

We also confess the unity of the church when we confess the apostles are the Nicene Creed, where it goes I believe in one holy we use the word Christian here, but the original word is Catholic, which means universal, I believe even one holy catholic or universal church, and the communion of saints, which means we are in a whole church bound together in this spiritual unity that we have with Christ. You and I, we are united in Jesus, because He has come to us and adopted us into His family and given us this one Spirit. We are bound together deeper than any other kind of bond. And we should be committed to that kind of unity inside our congregation and with Christians outside as well. On a congregational level, it means that we should always be committed to loving one another, and solving disputes between this doesn't mean we can't debate at all. In fact, sometimes we do quite vigorously. And that's a good thing. As we discuss our future or think about life, we should disagree sometimes. But always come back together as the Body of Christ and love each other, and serve God towards his mission. When that unity breaks, when we actually have real problems we need to solve, we actually should solve them. Not just cover them up, not hide them, not pretend like they're not there. Because the mystical unity of Christ demands that we actually solve our divisions. So that we have, as St. Paul says, that one mind, and one judgment. So we can come together as a congregation and take Christ's holy body and blood and say we are truly united in him.

But of course, I think when we read this, when we say, when we see what Paul's examples where he goes, I follow Paul a policy first, or I follow Christ, the first thing that we have to think about, at least I do in my head is what are we doing in a Lutheran church? Because if there is any place where we say I follow Luther, maybe it's in a Lutheran church, right? This almost seems like a direct challenge to us does? Well, first, what we have to say is, we didn't give ourselves that name. In fact, we never wanted to be kicked out of the Catholic Church to begin with. If you look back at the history of this, Martin Luther himself said, no, no, let's not do this. He says, quote, what is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. How then Should I pour stinking maggot fodder than I am? Come to have men called the children of Christ by my wretched name. He had a way with words, right. When you look at the history of our church, you can see that the first document that the Lutherans put out, the Augsburg confession was a was presented to the Catholic Church as a way of saying, Don't kick us out. We are really good Catholics. And they did anyway.

Many people assume Luther wanted to go out and was like, I will be an entrepreneur and start my own church. And it was the opposite of what he wanted to do. What he wanted was to have a debate within the Catholic Church, call a council bring out God's word and have everybody talk about it so that we could get back to the way it's supposed to be. Even at the end of his life, when he's writing the small called articles, this is what he was hoping to do. That the church would gather together a council of everyone so that they could finally have the debate he always wanted. It never happened. How did we get the name Lutheran? Well, it was because other people called us that. That happens a lot, doesn't it? People looked at at the the evangelicals. That's what they called themselves, gospel centered people, and they call them Lutherans, and eventually, we took it up as well. instead.

Yet, we still know that there are problems in the division that there is right. But when we look around, we know that there is a lot of division within the church. In fact, there are all sorts of names. There are Baptists, and Methodists, and Lutheran there are divisions within the Lutherans. It's actually kind of kind of crazy. And one of the great big problems of the church, perhaps the most tragic thing that the church has happened is this division, that we have been divided ever since the Great Schism. And ever since then, we have been cracking and breaking until now, just about every church is its own denomination, with its own mini Pope. How do we deal with this unity? How do we come together with the same mind and the same judgment? I used to talk to people who've been in the Lutheran church their whole lives who grow grew up in the 50s and 60s, and they would tell me that many of the divisions that happened in between the different groups at the time, mostly seem tribal, you know, you would never go to a Catholic church because they were Catholics, and we were Lutheran. And that was pretty much the theological division, like they do. They do weird stuff, and we do our own thing. I remember as a young child, having someone explained to me that one of the big differences about why we have an empty cross and Catholics have a crucifix in the front of their church is because we believe Jesus is risen from the dead, and they believe he's still on the cross. Ridiculous, right? Of course, they don't believe that. But it was mostly about stereotype, and, and misunderstanding. And now that most of us have moved past some of those things, that things that divide us are actually real in our different denominations, and our different groups. Because these aren't just tribal stereotypes or different practices, but there's real theological division. We can't pretend they're not there. Just like in a congregation that is fighting, you can't pretend that those divisions don't exist. We have to approach these in a faithful way. Because Paul tells us, we should be of the same mind and the same judgment. How do we do that? Perhaps the history of the church can help us out with this. If you look at the early church, they did their best to make sure that the church was united and bound together in the same judgment. And all you have to do is go to Acts chapter 15. And find when the church was rocked by the circumstances cision scandal, when Jews were going around telling the Gentiles that they had to be circumcised to be saved, what did they do? They called a meeting. They got together, they talked about it. And one guy stood up James and said, Here's what we're going to do. Gentiles don't need to be circumcised or follow the law of Moses. They talked about God's word. They had a debate, they heard what was going on, and they made a decision and the church came together. The same thing happened a few 100 years later, in the Council of Nicaea. There was this guy named Arias who was going around and teaching that Jesus was not God. That he was a created being, maybe the most powerful and first of the created beings, but still just a created being. So what did they do? They called a meeting, the gathered in all of the bishops. They talk talked about God's word, they debated they figured out what it really had to say, and they came up with the Nicene Creed to show us what a unity is. And after that, the church said this is the same mind in the same judgment. Jesus is truly God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, god of God, Light of Light, very God, a very God and begotten not made. In 431 AD, the church College Council of Ephesus there was this bishop named Nestorius, who wanted to preserve the divinity and humanity of Jesus so much, he kind of separated the two and acted as if the that marry wasn't truly the Mother of God, but only the mother of the human nature. And that the two natures didn't really interact, which is a big problem, because if the two natures don't interact, then there's no body and blood right up there in communion. So what did they do? Cyril of Alexandria, he was the patriarch of that area, who was very aggressive about dealing with this. What he did was, he split communion until they could have a meeting, which they called in for 31 ad. They got together, they made some decisions, they debated God's word. And they came together around what the true interpretation of God's word is. They were dedicated to preserving that unity. They were dedicated to making sure they understood the truth, and came together around it to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ. But they did it by being united in the word in doctrine, and not just covering up these things. And I think that's the challenge for us, as we look at the different groups and churches around us, is that it's very tempting just to say, we want to be nice to each other. So we'll act as if we're all the same. But we can't. Because we are different. Lutherans have a different way of understanding the gospel from Baptists or Methodists were Catholics or the Eastern Orthodox. In fact, we're talking about those things in our Bible study in between services right now, helping us understand what are these differences. And they're important, we can't cover them up. The Paul was pretty, pretty aggressive. When people were doing things that weren't right. When they didn't understand the gospel correctly. Listen to what he says in Galatians chapter one, he opens up the letter he writes to them, he does his intro thing. And the first thing he says is, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ, and are turning to a different gospel. pretty aggressive, right? Yikes. Or maybe Second Peter chapter three, where Peter talks about interpreting God's word.

“There are some things in them those scriptures that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. Therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people, and lose your own stability, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him the glory now and to the day of eternity, amen.”

We want to be together and unite it with our brothers and sisters of Christ to understand God's word differently than we did.

And one of the great things is that we can know that on the last day when Jesus returns, and he raises us from the dead, all these labels will fall away, because we'll know face to face. And as we deal with the conflict, and the pain and the sadness of this, we can hold on to that hope. But until then, we have to use God's Word, to understand what God truly wants to help us come together. And it's the word of God. That word of the cross that St. Paul tells us is that it's supposed to bring us together, for it is the power of God for all of us. And so, that's what we do. As we deal with the differences. We use God's word to talk and debate and think and pray. But until these divisions are healed, we have to know that they're real and true. And as much as it pains me and makes me sad, as I'm sure it does. As you we can't overlook it in Jesus name amen

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Jesus Is Enough

Text transcribed from audio by AI. Please forgive any errors.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We're now in the epiphany season, getting ready for this season where we find out who Jesus is. During this time, we'll look at stories like the one we saw today where John points out Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And it will lead up to the miracles and the amazing things that Jesus does and then finally, culminate at the mountain of the Transfiguration, where we'll hear the voice from heaven say, This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him. Then we get to Ash Wednesday, and begin the march towards the cross. During this season, the lectionary assigns us the epistle readings from First Corinthians we began right at the beginning of the letter, and it's just sort of going to go section by section over the about the next month into the first couple of chapters until we get to Lent. So we're going to do that, walk through First Corinthians up until we get to this new season. So today, we're starting with the opening. It's interesting to get the beginning of a letter as a reading and church isn't it? It's like, dear James, as a reading, right. And that's interesting about what's going on that first line, it says Paul, calls by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother, sauce, the knees. This should remind us that the letters of Paul are Letters, written by Paul, I have to say this, because very often, when we read the Bible, we think that the Bible is written to me, not to me, James unik. But to me, every individual Christian. This line remembers that there was a real man named Paul, who wrote a letter with a guy named SAS Denise. And he did it at a particular time, and place. And then he sent it to a group of people, to the Church of God that is in Corinth, not to the Church of God in alcohol, or Chicago, or New York, or any other place to call it a particular group of people that met in a particular place, probably in a house owned by a guy named Gaius, just in case you were wondering, you won't be able to find him, don't worry, he's long gone. He writes these things to them to help us understand life in the church as well. Now, it's important to know this because you have to understand that there is some background to the church in Corinth, to help us understand what Paul is writing about. They were a Greek church, in a place that spoke Greek and lived in Greek culture. in Corinth, there was a great deal of competition between people, they would compete over things like status, and wealth, and wisdom. schools that were very famous in the Greek world were filled with with teachers who proclaimed great wisdom. There were people who would go around and tell you that they could teach you how to speak and convince anyone of anything. This was a problem in the church in Corinth, because it was then imported into their own church law. Something we'll talk about a little bit later, St. Paul writes to a group of people and talks about some of their moral failings as well. Later on in the book he talks about, about getting rid of believers who refuse to follow the dictates of the faith. There are questions about idols. There are divisions in the congregation. And all of these things are part of why St. Paul is writing a letter to this particular church in this particular place. So he continues, he talks about being part of the Church of God, together with all of those believers in every time and place, which is important for a congregation that sees itself as special, like the Corinthians. We're gonna get a little bit later on that when we get into the further readings. Now one of the things that I think is most important about this particular passage that I'm speaking on today is the competition inside the church. That is one of the reasons St. Paul is writing. Later on, you will see passages about the body of Christ, and how the congregation is one in Christ, there are not greater members and lesser members, there are not greater gifts and lesser gifts. St. Paul also writes this, this wonderful First Corinthians chapter 13, about the love of Christ at work in the body. Love is patient. Love is kind, you know that passage. The introduces the concept here, but there is no distinction or division within the congregation. Very simply, he tells us that Jesus is enough. Jesus gives us everything, the whole package of salvation. I want you to think back, imagine what it might be like in a congregation that worked like the Corinthians did. in Corinth, there were some people there who thought that they were amazing, outstanding Christians way better than the rest of them. And they could prove it, because they could speak in tongues. They had amazing spiritual gifts, they had a gift of prophecy. Some of them were amazing, outstanding speakers, and they held themselves up in front of the congregation as being the best. Can you imagine what it would be like in a church like that? People looking down on you all the time. People saying they had more Jesus points than you do. Right. Then of course, there will be some people who felt like they didn't get any of that. They must not be as powerful or spiritual or as wonderful as the the super prophets who stood up in front. And I want you to think about what this message would be that I'm about to read from St. Paul, if you were in those shoes. St. Paul says, 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 were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, that you are not lacking in any spiritual 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. So this message is a message both to those super men who thought that they were the best Christians ever, spiritually powerful way better than the rest. And also for those who thought that they were a lower level of Christian. Jesus is enough, is what it says. You don't need anything more. You were in every way enriched in him and all speech and knowledge. You are not lacking any spiritual gifts, as you are waiting for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus is enough. That's because the salvation that every Christian receives by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the whole package. There are no greater or lesser spiritual gifts. There are no higher and lower status Christians. There is only Jesus and His salvation. St. Paul writes later in First Corinthians chapter two, that and I when I came to you brothers did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. That's because Jesus Christ is all you need. His death and resurrection on the cross. The gift of faith that He gives you is what leads you to the very thing that we're all waiting for. The resurrection on the last day when he returns and reveals himself shows up. And everything that we see now is changed into the perfection that is to come. At that moment, everything else fades away. Powerful wisdom, the smart people of the world, will that be a thing anymore? No one will care. Prophecy? Well, that'd be a big deal. No, because it's all leading up to that day. Ella eloquent speech, the guy who gets to stand up in front of everybody and looks really good when they're talking. Well, that'd be a thing anymore. No. Because we will all see Jesus face to face when he raises us from the dead forever. That's why at the end of First Corinthians 13, Jesus, though St. Paul writes, faith, hope and love, these things remain, but the greatest of them is love. Because faith will disappear. On the last day, you don't need faith, when you can see Jesus hope will be gone on the last day because you hope for something you don't yet have, the only thing that will remain is love. And we who love in all things on that day. So St. Paul is writing to a divided and broken church, a church that is fighting with each other competing over power and status. And he says, You don't need any of those things. All you need is Jesus. And Jesus is enough.

It's a good reminder for us today. We don't need anything. But Jesus, Jesus is enough. Last summer, we worked on a survey to do an assessment of our congregation and talk about our organizational health. We're working on trying to figure out what to do with that coming up with plans for our congregation, working on our programming, and all of those things. And all of these things are good things for us, as a congregation, trying to be figured out how to be more effective in connecting with our community and connecting with each other, and working on all those things to make ministry better. But one of the things that I've noticed in not just our church, but church generally, is that we tend to compare ourselves with other congregations. You've seen that it happens at every pastors conference I've ever been to. They go, where do you serve? And then the next question is always how many people do worship? Which is a great way to phrase that question because I want to say just one, Jesus, but they say how many people do worship because that's actually a really big deal to a lot of us. How many people show up on a Sunday. We sort of worship that. Sometimes, as we think of status in congregations, and we compare ourselves to the people around us, especially congregations in the midst of the land of the mega church, like us. You don't have to look very far to find the really big ones. Skyline foothills, the rock Shadow Mountain, you pretty much can't pick up a stone and throw it without hitting the rock somewhere right? There everywhere around here, especially compared to where I came from in Chicago. And often we compare ourselves to them. Interestingly, a new article came out from LifeWay Research and church answers.com that talks about the demographic statistics for churches around the country. And it divides churches up into four different groups, people who are have under 50 in attendance on Sunday, that's 31% of all the churches in America, you know that? Under 100, between 51 and 99 is 37% of all churches in America, meaning that attendance under 100 is 68% of all congregations. Between 102 149 is 24% of all congregations. Do you know how many churches have over 258% We who look from our place and we look around and we go there Are all these huge churches? What are we doing wrong? Those are the outliers. And yet, we look at ourselves and we say, we must not have the spiritual power. We must not be doing something right. We've got to fix it. But that's really doing the same thing the Corinthians we're doing, comparing ourselves and saying what we really measure our spirituality by is how powerful we look to the rest of the world. And St. Paul would reply, Jesus is enough. In fact, if a new person never walked in our doors, we would still be a successful congregation. If we kept on preaching and teaching and serving the sacraments and doing everything that we do now, and it was just slowly dwindling, until the last person out lock the doors. Jesus would still be here with everything. His law, his gospel, his grace, his sacraments, his words, giving you the full package of salvation. I hope that doesn't happen. Right? The locking the doors, the walking out and the dwindling, and we're going to do our best to not have that. But that's not the point of a congregation is. It's the gospel. It's Jesus, its salvation. It's not just in churches, where we worry if having Jesus is enough. It's in our lives as well. I can see it in the way we talk about work attendance versus church attendance. When I go to someone and say, hey, you know, we'd love to have you in church, and they say, Oh, I work on Sundays. And I think, Wait a second. Is that how it's supposed to be? Now I got people need to work. And sometimes there's a time in life where that happens. But if that is a an excuse in our lives, what we are saying is, money is more important than Jesus. Right? You have to ask the question, Is Jesus enough? Well, on the last day, will that job matter? When Jesus returns up in the clouds with power in Might, and he calls us up from our graves, and he judges the living in the dead, will He say, Well done, you earned a lot of money. He will not. What matters when we stand before our judge on the last day, is whether he saves us whether the gift of God has been delivered to you. And he provides you with this amazing food for that journey and rest until that day, by gathering here and hearing about him. But we accept that excuse. Because we think work is most important in our lives. That Jesus isn't enough that Jesus is a nice extra. The same thing works when we talk about school for our kids, and church. One of the things I often hear is, I want my kids to be happy coming to church. Like they're supposed to enjoy it the whole time. And I asked myself, What happens when they wake up on Monday morning? And they don't want to go to school? Do you say oh, I want my kid to be a lifelong learner and happy about it. So I'm going to let them stay home until they feel like going to school. Right? We don't do that. Nobody would do that. That's ridiculous. Because you need to learn how to read. You need to learn how to do math, right? Like basic stuff. You need to know how to do this. But then, on Sundays, we say You know what, if they're not happy, I want them to enjoy it. But I have to ask you on the last day when Jesus returns, will it matter if you can do math? Well done. You know how to do the square root of 23?

Of course not. It will matter if you can read. What will matter is that whether Christ will raise you on it from the dead to glory, or distraction. That's what we really need. No matter what you do with your life, Jesus is enough. Nothing else matters more than that. Whether it's the people who are fighting in Corinth, or what we do with our daily lives, we need to make sure that that is what we know. The most important thing you can ever do is be connected through Jesus through His Word and Sacraments. To hear from him, and be filled by the Holy Spirit. Nothing else matters next to that, because Jesus is enough. In his name, amen.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai