Gracious Father, we thank you for the cross,
and we pray that that power might impact us day by day.
May it not be a relic of the past,
but present power to take up our cross and follow you,
and we ask it for your sake.
Amen.
Please be seated.
Just quickly, an update.
I believe you've prayed already for Joshua.
Fantastic.
He went into surgery on Friday.
Didn't go so well,
so he went back into surgery again yesterday,
and I just received a text from Josh.
Sorry, from Josh.
He's an advanced kid.
From Stuart and Emma saying,
Josh doing much better this morning.
Surgeon happy.
Praise the Lord.
Please thank everyone for their prayers.
So please continue to uphold them as they walk in these days,
and thank God for the great news.
Perfect Liberty Church used to be the fastest growing church in the world.
It had its origin in Japan
and has since spread to a number of different locations in the world,
including Brisbane.
Mostly exotic locations,
except for Brisbane, I'd imagine,
but mostly spread through a number of different places in the world.
The headquarters in Japan is considered a paradise.
At one point,
it boasted in having the most complete recreation complex in all of Japan,
and the landscaped delights like artificial lakes and cherry trees and waterfalls
were just marvellous to comprehend.
Perfect Liberty Church had a very simple theology.
Everyone who is a member is a child of God
who finds the way to eternal peace by freely exercising individuality,
and therefore you are free to express as members of the church
to express your individuality
and discover eternal peace through prayer,
through golf,
through group sex,
and frankly, whatever else you wanted to do.
The crucial thing is total freedom for individual expression.
You can do whatever you want,
so long as it makes you happy,
and it's called church.
That would be on their board in their foyer.
Come in here and do whatever you like.
On one level,
it's not hard to see why it was the fastest growing church in the world at one time.
On another level,
it's a bit hard to fathom why it would grow so fast.
The message of this church is to do whatever you want,
whenever you want,
with whomever you want,
so long as it makes you happy.
So how's that different than anyone else in the world?
One of the tenets of salvation for the Perfect Liberty Church
was you had to give lots and lots of money,
which is why it had money for its landscapes and recreation facilities.
So why would you give up your perfect freedom there
to come into this church
to give lots of money in order to have perfect freedom?
Makes no sense in my mind.
Perfect Liberty Church would have grown pretty well in Corinth.
Corinth was a city on the up.
After being flattened by the Romans in 150 BC,
they then decided they made a mistake,
dramatic transformation,
and poured lots of money into it
and rebuilt it in the early part of the first century.
Money came from all over the empire
to rebuild and improve the infrastructure.
Sorry, Corinth was a major trading centre in Greece,
crucial for the Roman Empire,
in fact, for the world.
It was a very popular tourist destination
and a great place to party.
The morals of Corinth were pretty low bar.
So it was a great place
if you wanted to let your hair down and have a great time.
The population of Corinth had exploded
from all over the Roman Empire
in the early days of the first century.
They came to take advantage
of the Corinthian cosmopolitan lifestyle.
Many of those who came were former slaves
who had bought their freedom
and were now players in the financial services industry.
And as far as we could work out from the book of Acts,
Paul stayed in Corinth for a couple of years
to teach and establish this new church.
By the time he left,
there was a church family there of around about 60 people.
The church was multicultural
and predominantly middle class,
not unlike St. Paul's Chatswood.
There were a few rich people
and there were a few slaves,
but most people were somewhere in the middle.
The other thing that we need to understand
about this church before we launch into this letter
is that it had some pretty major problems.
This letter, 1 Corinthians,
is Paul helping this church to get back on track.
And so just imagine it there.
You're squeezed together in one of the houses
of one of the rich people at Corinth
because they're the only ones who can fit 60 people in.
And you're there to hear Paul's letter.
And he says,
Paul,
called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God and our brothers,
to the church of God in Corinth,
to those sanctified in Christ Jesus
and called to be holy,
together with those everywhere
who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
their Lord and ours.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I always thank God for you
because of his grace given to you in Christ Jesus.
For in him you have been enriched in every way,
in all your speaking and in all your knowledge
because our testament of our Christ was confirmed in you.
Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift
as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
He will keep you strong to the end
so that you will be blameless
on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God who has called you into fellowship with his son,
Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.
Notice that Paul starts his letter
by describing his church in Corinth
as to those sanctified in Christ Jesus
and called to be holy,
together with all those everywhere
who call on the name of our Lord.
And again, I always thank God for you
because of his grace given to you in Christ Jesus.
And again, you have been enriched in every way.
And again, you do not lack any spiritual gift
as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed
and he will keep you strong to the end
so that you will be blameless
on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You see, at the beginning of this letter,
Paul looks back to what this church has received
in Jesus Christ.
And then he tells them to look forward to the goal
as you eagerly await the Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.
And he promises them that God
who has called you into fellowship with his son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, is faithful.
They have a beginning in Jesus
and they have a future to aim for.
The day when Jesus Christ is revealed.
And the problem for this church in Corinth
is they have forgotten what it means
to live in between times.
They've forgotten what it means
to live out their future hope in the present.
Even though they were the Christian church in Corinth,
an inordinate amount of Corinth was in this church.
And so Paul's writing this letter to get them back on track.
And how does he do that?
He does it by getting to refocus on Jesus.
Twelve times in the start of this letter,
we have Jesus Christ or our Lord Jesus Christ
or Christ Jesus our Lord mentioned.
Paul is simply telling this church
to refocus on the crucified Jesus
as the foundation of how they live out their life
together in the present.
That is fundamentally his core message
through this letter.
There is a beginning in Jesus
and a future that they are heading to.
And in between, he's calling them right now
in the present to live the cross
shaped life.
That is what the Corinthian church needed to get
because they weren't living the cross shaped life.
They were operating like perfect liberty church.
The first evidence of that is the divisions
and the factions in the church.
Listen to how Paul describes it in verses 10 to 17.
I appeal to you brothers in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ
that all of you agree with one another
so that there may be no divisions among you
and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
My brothers, some from Chloe's household,
she got dobbed in,
have been informed me
and informed me that there are quarrels among you.
What I mean is this,
one of you says I follow Paul,
another says I follow Apollos,
another I follow Cephas,
still another I follow Christ.
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Were you baptised in the name of Paul?
I'm thankful that I did not baptise any of you
except Crispus and Gaius
so no one can say that you're baptised into my name.
Yes, I also baptised the household of Stephanas.
Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptised anyone else.
For Christ did not send me to baptise,
but to preach the gospel,
not with words of human wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
Corinth was no different than Jatswood,
no different than Sydney,
no different than Australia.
Like us, they had a celebrity culture.
The big celebrities in Corinth weren't the singers,
or nowadays the chefs.
They weren't the movie stars,
they weren't the socialists,
they weren't the sports people,
they were the public speakers and the orators.
People flocked from everywhere
to hear these speakers deliver their lectures
on the latest ideas.
When Paul talks here about human wisdom,
he's talking about human worldview.
These guys came in and just spoke about stuff.
They would speak about everything and anything,
politics, architecture, sex, leisure, art.
The better that they presented,
the more adherence they got,
and the bigger the payday it was for them.
People would come and hear their favourite speakers,
and then they would argue their viewpoints with one another.
The disciples of each one of these speakers
would argue their viewpoints with each other.
One of Paul's contemporaries,
a Greek orator and historian of the Roman Empire,
a guy named Dio Chrysostom,
wrote this about Corinth.
He himself was a historian and an orator.
He said,
When I arrived,
I was escorted with much enthusiasm and respect,
the recipients of my visits
being grateful for my presence
and begging me to address them and advise them
and flocking around my door from early dawn.
One could hear rival crowds around the temple
shouting and reviling one another.
Disciples of one fighting with the disciples of another
as the writers read their stupid works.
It's a little ironic that he should call other people's works stupid
when one of his most famous works
was a speech called,
In Praise of Hair.
It was against baldness.
So what Dio Chrysostom describes there
wasn't football hooliganism,
it was philosophy hooliganism.
The celebrity culture,
the worldviews of Corinth
fed all into the life of the church.
We see it there in verses 10 to 17.
If the Corinthians were a little bit underwhelmed by Paul
and his speaking,
they loved Apollos.
Oh, we love Apollos.
He could really preach that guy.
And this led them to start saying things like,
well, we're Apollos people.
Another group over there said,
well, we,
Paul's our guru,
we're Paul people.
Another group says,
no, no,
we're Peter people,
most likely the Jews,
we're Peter people.
Some who presumably thought
they were all above all church leadership.
No, no, no.
We're Jesus people.
That's the trump card on you all.
Even the Jesus people faction here
are meant to be read negatively
because they weren't Jesus people
out of submission to Christ.
They were Jesus people
to beat the other factions.
The church hadn't actually split,
but they were heading that way
because they had adopted the wisdom
and the worldview of Corinth
and focused on personalities
and outward gifts and appearances
and skill and polish
rather than this cross.
And here I think is one of the main issues for them.
They began to think of their teachers,
their pastors,
in terms of itinerant philosophers
and celebrities.
and their new faith
in Jesus
as the product,
as a new wisdom
for Corinth.
The gospel message
became something
that they just attached
to the end of their life.
The Christian faith
has become
more than,
nothing more than just
simply a bunch of ideas
that they have
given intellectual assent to
and claim to believe.
And Paul's message here
in this chapter,
in fact,
I think the rest of the book,
is that
the crucified Jesus
isn't another piece of wisdom
that you collect
and you stick it on your CV.
The message of the crucified Christ
stands in total contrast
to human wisdom
and power.
The cross of Christ
is in fact
the great reversal
of all those things
that you long for.
This is how Paul puts it
in verse 18,
for the message of the cross
is foolishness
to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God
for it is written
I will destroy
the wisdom of the wise
and the intelligent
of the intelligent
I will frustrate.
Where is the wise man?
Where is the scholar?
Where is the philosopher
of this age?
Has not God
made foolish
the wisdom of the world?
For since
in the wisdom of God
the world
through its wisdom
did not know him,
God was pleased
through the foolishness
of what was preached
to save those who believe.
Jews demand
miraculous signs
and Greeks
look for wisdom.
but we preach
Christ crucified
a stumbling block
to Jews
and foolishness
to Gentiles
but to those
whom God has called
both Jews and Greeks
Christ the power of God
and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness
of God
is wiser
than man's wisdom
and the weakness
of God
is stronger
than man's strength.
You see,
power was a big issue
in the culture
of Corinth.
It didn't matter
whether you were Roman
or whether you were Greek
or whether you were Jew,
sort of the three main cultures
that made up Corinth.
Power was essential
in one way or another.
That is why
they had forgotten
the cross
because Jesus
on the cross
looks defeated.
He looks weak.
It's an embarrassment
in that culture.
It's a stumbling block
in that culture
to preach
a crucified Messiah.
And if I asked you today,
just today,
to share with me now,
if we had a roving mic,
stand up
and share with me
some of the great displays
of the power of God
in the Bible.
There is a number of things
that you could turn to
but who here would stand up
and say the cross of Christ?
That's the power of God.
That's the display
of God's power.
God's power.
What sort of philosopher
in human wisdom
would ever come up
with God himself
dying on a cross
in total weakness
being the great demonstration
of that God's power?
Jesus,
through his weakness
in dying on the cross,
has dealt with sin
and has become life
and power
for all of eternity.
He descended to the lowest
of lows
in weakness
and he is now given
the name that is above
every name.
That at the name of Jesus,
every knee would bow
and every tongue confess
that he is Lord
over everything.
God's power
and he is now given
what Paul is saying here
is you can't get
the cross of Christ
and attach it
to your human wisdom.
It blows human wisdom
out of the water.
God has more wisdom
on a bad day
than all the minds
of the world
together on a good day.
He has more power
in his little toe
than the might
of a world superfowl.
And the only answer
for this church
at Corinth
is to
abandon
their human wisdom
and look
to the crucified Jesus.
There's only one thing
that can bring
this church family
back together
and to stop
it splittering.
There is only one
antidote
to their boasting
about their cleverness
and about their cultures.
It's the message
of Jesus.
Death on the cross.
What they need
to discover
is that the message
of the cross
isn't simply
another idea
to intellectually
debate over
and to put in
their CV.
The gospel
isn't another
form of wisdom.
The gospel
means belonging
to Jesus.
It's not just
the intellectual
idea.
It means
you belong.
That's what
the gospel is.
Chapter 3
says,
And you are
of Christ
and Christ
is of God.
Chapter 6
says,
You were bought
at a price,
therefore honour
God with your body.
You no longer
live for yourself.
You belong to Jesus.
The only answer
to all the
Corinthian problems
and our problems,
the problems of
individualism
and personal preference
is to live
a cross-centred
life together.
And what does that
mean?
It actually means
to make Jesus
and his death
the main thing
in our lives,
both individually
and corporately.
make Jesus
and his death
the most important
thing in your life,
the thing that
you're passionate about,
the thing that
shapes your behaviour
and your thinking
and your decision-making
and your choices.
This really is
the central message
of this letter.
We are to be
people of one
thing,
people of the cross,
living cross-centred,
cross-shaped,
cross-defined
lives.
The overarching
challenge of this
letter is to live
all day,
every day,
together in a way
that is controlled
by God's wisdom
and he has shown
it on the cross.
And that means
taking up our cross
and dying to self.
I was at a birthday
party yesterday
and one of the
questions during
a party game
was something
like,
use one word
to describe
the birthday girl.
I was thinking
about various
people
yesterday
as I was writing
some of this
and I was thinking,
can I come up
with one word
to describe
what they are
passionate about?
You know,
you look at the person,
you just,
you know,
hold random,
look at the person
and go,
yeah,
golf.
You know,
surfing,
retirement,
children,
job,
career,
flowers,
caravan,
gardening,
ballroom dancing,
single malt scotch,
fishing,
travel,
holding cars,
Sydney swans.
I mean,
it just quickly
came to my mind,
just think a whole
random,
one thing to
identify them.
Now,
don't get me wrong,
there's nothing evil
about any of those
things,
with the possible
exception of
Sydney swans.
What I'm saying
is,
they cannot be
the main thing
in our lives.
it is just
foolishness.
The wise thing
to do,
the only wise
thing to do
is to make
Jesus and
his cross
the controlling
centre of
our lives.
And I suspect
that if I did
a similar sort
of thing today
in a survey
and just whipped
around all
of St.
Paul's and said,
what's the main
thing about St.
Paul's?
There is a number
of things that we
could identify with
and say,
this ought to be
our main thing.
And what this
passage says,
no, no, no.
If it's not
Jesus crucified,
it's not the
main thing.
And so Paul
does something
really unusual
as he finishes
this chapter.
See what he
says there in
verses 26 and
27?
Brothers,
think of what
you were when
you were called.
None of you
were wise by
human standards.
Not many of
you were
influential.
Not many of
you were of
noble birth.
But God
chose the foolish
things of the
world to shame
the wise,
God chose
the weak
things of
the world
to shame
the strong.
He basically
says there,
hey guys,
just for a
moment,
look up.
Look up.
He said,
heads up,
just look
around the
room.
Look at the
people sitting
in front of
you and
beside you.
Look at
each other.
Aren't you
a strange
lot?
What a
weird collection
of people.
people.
He basically
says only
the cross
of Christ
can explain
that.
Conventional
human wisdom
can't explain
it.
You're not
here because
you were wise
and powerful
and you
wanted to
join a group
of wise
and powerful
people.
If God
worked
according to
conventional
wisdom,
if God
had handpicked
his church
on the
basis of
human
qualification,
let's face
it,
I for one
wouldn't
get a gig.
It dawned
on me this
week in
preparation,
I didn't
include it,
it dawned on
me this
week,
I'm not
number one
in the
world at
anything.
At
anything.
In fact,
I'm pretty
sure I'm
not number
one in
chats
would at
anything.
I'm
pretty
average.
That's
partly
depressing,
but it's
the wisdom
of God.
The cross
is the very
expression of
how God
works.
He works
to bring
people like
us,
relatively
unimpressive
people from
all different
backgrounds
together,
and he
empowers
us to
do what
we cannot
do on
our own,
and that
is to
die to
ourself
and pursue
unity in
Jesus.
That is
the wisdom
that the
United Nations
hasn't got
and the
power that
they don't
have.
If we
make Jesus
our main
thing,
then God
gives us
the power
to do
something
incredible,
the power
to stop
boasting
about
ourselves
and our
personal
preferences
and our
cultures.
See what
it says
in verse
28,
he chose
the lowly
things of
the world
and the
despising
the things
that are
not to
nullify
the things
that are
so that
no one
may boast
before him.
You see,
when we
look to
Jesus,
when we
look at
Jesus on
the cross,
we won't
look to
ourselves.
We won't
waste our
breath trying
to convince
ourselves or
anyone else
that we
are fantastic.
Oh, but
friends, how
prone we are
to do that.
How skilled
we are at
it.
I think it
would be both
entertaining and
quite revealing
if each of us
had a flashing
beacon on
our heads
and that
beacon was
wired to
our hearts
and it
went off
every time
we started
to talk
about ourselves
and to
think ourselves
up.
Every time
we thought
high thoughts
of ourselves,
every time
we took
credit for
other people's
ideas,
every subtle
little reference
to how
spiritual we
are or how
good parents
we are or
how well
things are
going at
work and
how smart
at all,
or even
if it's
just simply,
my, my,
I would
not do
that.
And the
beacon would
go
zzzz.
It would
be particularly
entertaining so
long as I
could take
mine off and
watch everyone
else's go
off.
And more
importantly the
red beacon
would go
off.
More
importantly it
would be so
revealing because
it would be
a reminder to
us every time
we took our
eyes off the
cross.
That's what's
happening when
the beacon
goes off.
We're taking
our eyes off
the cross and
we're putting
it fair and
square on
ourselves.
You see,
when we focus
on the cross,
we simply
can't talk
ourselves up.
We can't
boast about
ourselves,
but we will
start raving
about Jesus.
We also
won't make
our personal
preferences and
our culture
the main
thing.
The very
things which
every day
threaten to
divide us.
You see,
it wasn't
Paul,
it wasn't
Apollos,
it wasn't
Cephas,
it wasn't
Steve
Jeffrey,
it wasn't
Chris Jones,
it wasn't
Brian Tung,
it wasn't
Fay Lowe or
anyone else
who died
for you.
It wasn't
anyone else
who brought
you in to
the family
of God.
It was
Jesus.
He is the
one who
brings us
into his
family and
he is the
one we are
to follow.
He is the
one we
serve,
he is the
one we
boast about.
Right at the
end of the
chapter,
verse 30,
Paul says
this,
just a
reminder of
the significance
of Jesus.
He says,
because of
him that you
are in
Christ Jesus
who has
become for
us wisdom
from God,
that is,
our righteousness,
our holiness
and redemption.
Paul uses
three very
different words
here to
describe what
Christ has
done for us
and the
motivation for
us to keep
looking to
him and to
live the
cross-shaped
life.
The first
word here is
from the
law courts,
it's righteousness,
it's a legal
term.
Jesus has
made it
possible for
us to be
given a
perfect record,
not just a
clean record,
a flawless
record.
One where
we've done
absolutely
everything right.
The second
word is from
the temple,
it's holiness,
it's Jesus
who has
cleaned us
up and
made it
possible for
us to
come into
the very
presence of
God.
And the
third word
is from
the slave
market,
it's
redemption.
it's
Jesus who
has broken
the chains,
broken the
chains of
slavery,
slavery to
sin and
selfishness and
individualism and
the judgment of
God.
Jesus has
broken the
chains of
bondage and
brought us
home to a
master who
makes us part
of his
family.
This is what
Jesus has done
for us,
this is what
the cross
achieves for
us,
and what
should we
do?
we're
enslaved to
boasting about
Jesus.
Verse 30,
therefore as
it is written,
it's written in
Jeremiah,
let him who
boasts,
boast in the
Lord.
And so
friends,
we're not the
perfect liberty
church,
doing whatever
we want to
do that makes
us happy,
but we have
perfect liberty
in Jesus,
a perfect
liberty that
serves Christ
and serves
each other.
We have
been set
free and
empowered to
do what we
cannot do,
that is to
serve Christ
and to serve
each other.
And 1
Corinthians calls
this church to
do what Jesus
called his
disciples to do
when he says
to them in Luke
chapter 9,
verse 23,
if anyone would
come after me,
let him deny
himself, take
up his cross
daily and follow
me.
That's what
Paul's calling
the church of
Corinth to do.
You see,
Christ died to
save us from
hell, not to
save us from
the cross.
He died so
that we could
be glorified,
but not to
keep us from
being crucified.
crucified.
The cross of
Christ is not
merely a
past place
of substitution.
It is also
a present place
of daily
execution for
the Christian
to die
to self.
And so,
930
congregation,
it is only
by looking to
the crucified
Jesus and
taking up your
cross will
you in a
couple of
weeks walk
willingly down
to Chatswood
Club in order
to do church
without grumbling.
It's only the
cross of Christ
that will allow you
to do that,
to do it for the
sake of others.
When Christ
died on the
cross for
sinners,
he not only
stood in my
place doing
what I could
never do,
that is,
forgiving my
own sin,
but he also
showed me
what I must
do if I
would save
my life,
namely to
take up my
own cross
and to join
him on the
Calvary Road
and die
to self.
And so I
beg of you
today,
don't treat
the cross
as a historic
relic.
it is the
very power
of God
to change
everything in
your life
and especially
the power to
change our
inclination to
make much of
ourselves.
If you would
be his
disciple,
if you would
save your
life and not
lose it,
take up your
cross and
treasure Jesus
together.
Amen.