Sermon Tone Analysis
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Many of you who are older than I look at the world that we are in and ask “What happened?”
As some people say: “Mayberry isn’t Mayberry anymore.”
We can look at our own town.
We see the alcoholism.
We see the drug use, even in our school.
We see a new shop on Main Street: The Neligh Vapor Shop.
We see the broken families.
We can look at the churches in the area.
Immorality is normal.
Who waits for marriage anymore?
The things that no one would do back in the day are flaunted.
We could talk about beliefs.
The Methodist church, which was the foundation of Gospel truth a hundred years ago is about to split over homosexuality.
Most of the churches in this county do not believe in salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.
They add works to it.
Several do not even believe that the Bible is the Word of God, complete and without error.
We can look at the history of this church, the splits, the squabbles, the fights, the pride.
We can look at ourselves and admit we are not perfect, just like everyone else isn’t perfect.
The saying is “History repeats itself.”
And I believe that we as the church in America needs the message of 1 Corinthians again.
What the Corinthian church struggled with, or didn’t struggle, is exactly what we as the church are facing or dabbling in today.
Before we dive into the passage today, let’s lay some background to this book.
We always ask: who, when, what.
First, let’s pray
1A.
Introduction
1B.
Who
This letter was written by Paul the apostle.
He was not one of the twelve apostles who lived with Jesus for 3.5 years, who saw his death.
Paul was a religious leader, a Pharisee, who actively persecuted Christians.
After Jesus went to Heaven, Paul traveled around Israel and threw Christians into prison, he even influenced the execution of some.
He thought he was doing a service for God.
But, he was a horrible person.
Consider how we reaction to Muslim extremists.
That’s who Paul was.
Then, one day, Paul was traveling to Damascus to terrorize Christians there.
Jesus appeared to him, struck him blind, and proved the truth of the Gospel to him.
Paul repented and turned to Jesus in faith.
He was gloriously saved, not by works but by faith in Jesus Christ.
After years of learning more about Christianity, both alone and with other Christians.
He began to travel around the Roman empire as an evangelist.
On his second trip, he came to Corinth.
There he met Priscilla and Aquilla.
Titus and Silas joined him.
He spent a year and a half there and then went to Ephesus.
After a period of time, Apollos was sent to Corinth to continue the work.
You’ll see his name pop up from time to time in this letter.
Corinth was a hard mission field.
When Ahab was king in Israel, Corinth was a thriving city in Greece.
It rivaled Athens as the wealthiest and most influential city in the area.
People flocked to Corinth because of the temples of Apollos and Aphrodite.
The ruins of the temple of Apollos can still be seen.
During this time of prosperity, this town was also known as sin city.
Literally.
The temple of Aphrodite employed one thousand prostitutes.
Immorality was so engrained in what people thought of Corinth that Greek literature began to coin phrase about it.
Plato would refer to a prostitute, no matter where she was, by the phrase “Corinthian girl.”
Another writer used the phrase: Doing Corinth for fornication.
That life came to an abrupt halt in 146 BC.
Rome came to conquer Corinth.
They destroyed the town.
Most of the people were either killed or sold into slavery.
It lay empty for decades.
One hundred years later, Julius Caesar rebuilt the town.
He brought in freed slaves, soldiers, and urban laborers to live there.
Situated where it was on a prominent trade route, it quickly grew.
People from all over the Roman empire moved there.
It became the capital of the province of Achaia, and was a place of cultural and religious pluralism.
Everything was okay there.
We don’t have any evidence of the temples of Apollos or Aphrodite being rebuilt.
However, we know the worship of Aphrodite continued in shrines scattered throughout the city.
Immorality was exulted, along with all sorts of other sins.
The Corinth of Paul’s day was basically New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas all rolled into one.
It wasn’t a nice place to live.
That’s the who: Paul and Corinth
2B.
When
Now, the when.
Paul first visited Corinth in AD 51, about 18 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.
This is about 15 years before his own death.
He stayed there 1.5 years, as I said.
Then he left.
In AD 54, he wrote a letter to Corinth.
We don’t have that letter.
We don’t really know what is in that letter.
We just know that he wrote it, because he refers to this letter in 1 Cor 5.
The Corinthian church misunderstood the letter and wrote a letter back.
We don’t know what that said either except it contained questions about Christian living, church life, and accusations about Paul’s authority and apostleship.
So, he wrote this letter back which we will be studying this year.
After this letter, he visited Corinth two more times and wrote at least one more letter.
3B.
What
So, we have the who and the when.
Now the what.
In this letter we have a bunch of themes: Paul defends his apostleship.
He urges the Corinthians to embrace the values of the cross.
He touches on issues of purity.
He talks about loving God and others.
Church worship practices are spent a lot of time on.
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