Transcript
You know, in many ways, I'm the most fortunate person here every Sunday morning, because I get to hear the Cathedral Choir sing that incredible anthem three times this morning. 8:30 I heard it, 10, and now I get it again at 11:30. And I get to watch all these babies getting baptized in all three, actually four services an evening, too. I get to watch all these babies being baptized, which is such a joy. I can't
believe that beautiful anthem. Tony knew the text that I was using today. When you hear this sermon today, you're going to be so struck with how marvelous that anthem of the advice of St. Paul fits in with this sermon today, Advice from a Friend. Let's pray together. Lord, may the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our Redeemer. Amen. We are studying together and preaching
sermons together on the letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians. Paul begins the letter to the Corinthians with a convergence teaching. I use that phrase because he teaches at the beginning of this letter, he focuses the attention of the Corinthians upon their center. And so I created a kind of parable to work with in this series. If you were to think of a modern bicycle wheel with all the parts of a bicycle
wheel, its hub, its spokes, and then its outer rim. What we did a couple of weeks ago was we looked at the Apostle Paul focuses upon the hub. The first task of any human being in terms of that parable is to find a hub at the center. It has to be true and at the center, otherwise you can't true a wheel. And it needs to be strong enough and true enough to last the whole life of
the bike. Then the spokes. I asked the question last week, if I were to choose Jesus Christ as the hub of my life, what would the spokes in my wheel, what would they look like? And we looked last week at the various spokes that would go up to make a wheel in terms of that parable with Christ as the hub. Now today we want to look at the health of those spokes because the Apostle Paul in
chapters four through 11, and this is a long passage of scripture that we're going to do some soundings from today. He really gives advice to the Corinthians. It's salty advice and it's joyous advice, but it is advice from Paul, a friend to the Corinthians on the health of their spokes. He takes on specific issues in this advice section. And I want us to now do a kind of whirlwind tour of chapters four through 11. I'll tell
you some of the themes he covers and then we'll do some soundings to see what he does and some of the, and then we'll try to understand how he does it. First of all, he starts out with the arrogance. This is the salty part of the book. He starts out with the arrogance of the Corinthians. We saw that before when he accused them at the very beginning of dividing into groups and having factions, I belong to
Paul, I belong to so and so, and then becoming very judgmental of each other on the basis of those factions. Notice chapter four. He is very blunt with the Corinthians in chapter four. Listen to these words in verse six. I've applied all this to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers and sisters, that You may learn not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against the
other. That's the first hint of that arrogance. And then verses eight through 13 is a rather odd passage in that Paul writes in a rhetorical way, but in a cynical way to them. And listen to what he says, verse eight. Already you're filled. Already you've become rich. Without us, you've become kings. Now that's cynical. He doesn't mean they've actually become kings. They think they've become kings. They think they're rich. They think they're filled. So he uses
that kind of rhetorical language. And then he goes on. And I wish you did reign so that we might share the reign with you. For I think God has exhibited us apostles as last of all men sentenced to death because we've become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. This is a cynical passage. He doesn't really think they're wise. He really thinks
they're fools, but they think they're wise. So he says, OK, I'll call you wise. And you think we are weak, but you are strong. We are held in, you were held in honor, but we in disrepute. Now you can see that's a salty, salty passage. If you call that advice from a friend, it's neat to have, I don't know if it's good to have a friend like that, but that's the kind of friend Paul is with
the Corinthians. In verse 14, he does pull back a little bit and shows that he does care about them. He says, I don't write these things to you to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. And then the word arrogance actually is used in chapter five. Notice the beginning of chapter five, it's actually reported that there is immorality among you and of a kind not even found among pagans. And then verse two,
and you are arrogant, ought you rather to mourn. So that's the way the advice begins. Let me give you a kind of a tour of the advice. He starts out by the warnings against arrogance. And then against this backdrop, he tells them of the report that he's heard of immorality in that church, actually in the church, let alone the immorality in Corinth. Everybody knows about that. Corinth was the wildest city in the whole Roman Empire. But
it's also there's a wildness in the church. And so he points that up. He also knows about lawsuits that are being held, that various members of that church are litigating against each other. He criticizes that and gives them advice in that. And then he answers specific questions that they asked him about. Notice how chapter seven starts now concerning the matters about which you wrote. He now has a letter from them. And we don't have the actual
questions that Paul received, but we do have his answers. And in his now chapter seven through 11, he works with the questions that they sent him. And in this section, he talks about marriage. He talks about singleness. He talks about how to live as a Christian in a less than ideal world, like they have to live in Corinth. He talks about the special problems of being a Jewish Christian, a Greek Christian, or a slave Christian. He
goes into all these things. He talks about the special problems of foods, and in fact, a great deal of space is spent on that problem, because we now know from the first century studies that most of the meat that would be sold in a market like Corinth was meat that had been offered to various idols in the Greek and Roman mystical religions. And then after the meat was offered to idols, it was sold in the public
markets. So the big issue became, should Christians buy meat in the public market if it had been previously offered to idols? Wasn't that idolatrous meat? And that was a huge issue. So Paul decides to answer that question. And he spends a lot of time, and we get some of the most remarkable teaching of Paul, really, in answering that problem, which is not really a problem we face today. In fact, a lot of these problems you're going
to see are not necessarily problems we face today. But I think I'll be able to show you that the way Paul handles them is what's going to help you today. So he talks about those issues. He talks about how to properly celebrate the Lord's Supper. And we have the famous words of the Institution of the Lord's Supper in Chapter 11. That which the Lord was delivered to me, that the Lord of the night which he was
betrayed took bread. That, the words of the Institution are in this passage. Finally, in the end of Chapter 11, he cuts off the advice and says this. Notice the very last sentence of Chapter 11. So he says, This told them, brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. He's giving really specific advice. And if anyone's hungry, let them eat at home, lest you come together and be condemned. About the other things,
I will give directions when I come. So he decides to stop answering specific questions and says, when I come visit you, we'll handle the other questions. Well, this is the passage we're looking at today. And I want us to do this today. I want us to look at the principles that govern Paul's advice giving. As I see it, there are three main or great principles that form the framework of Paul's advice giving in these chapters. And
I think you will find that these principles are going to be very helpful to you and me today. The first principle is found in a word that Paul uses at the very beginning of the whole section. Now open back up to First Corinthians four, and I'll show you that word. He uses a word, Paul has a great, he has a marvelous understanding of the Greek language and he picks wonderful Greek words at key places. And here's
one of those examples. He uses a word at the beginning of the section that really governs everything he does throughout all these chapters. Notice verse four, verse one, chapter four, this is how you should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. It's the word stewards. That's the key word here. Well, servant is obvious. That's what we talked about last week. I belong to Christ. That's the big thing. But then he
says we are stewards. Let me give you a word study. The Greek word for steward is this word in Greek. It's oikonomos. Now let me tell you about that. Oik is a Greek word for house. You should learn that. If you're taking notes, write that down because it's a key root for a lot of Greek words. It's oik. The English word economics comes from that word. The English word ecumenical comes from that word. The word
oikoumene, which is from that word, means the whole inhabited world. And the word oik means the house. And that's why the word for the house of the Lord is kuriakon, the house of the Lord. So oikon or oik means house. Nomos means law, the law or the principles of the house. So a steward is someone, and by the way, oik always means the whole house. So stewardship would be someone who is, because this is the sense
of the word when it refers to a person, a steward would be somebody who knows the law of the whole house or the principle of the whole house. Now what then does stewardship mean? Stewardship is this. It's the principle of the larger whole, W-H-O-L-E, the larger whole for the smaller part. That's stewardship. For instance, when we had our menu that was presented to you a couple of weeks ago for the stewardship of
University of Presbyterian Church, it was put out by the Stewardship Council. What does stewardship mean in that sense? We were trying to show you the whole house here at University Press, and everything University Press is trying to do in a given year, and then the parts that fit in the whole house. That's what stewardship is. But that's a word that we use every day in life. It's a word that's very important to all of our lives,
to be stewards of the earth. It's the person that sees the forest and then understands the trees as a part of the forest. And as you know, the wisest person is the person that sees the forest as well as the trees. If you only see the trees, then you might see individual parts, but you've got to see the individual parts as a part of a larger whole to make sense of them. And that's the word Paul
uses. And that's his strategy throughout this advice giving. He's always going to take the separate parts, and I'm going to give you a sounding in a minute to show you how he does it. He's going to take the separate parts and he's going to put them into a larger whole. And that's how he makes sense of them. Now we do this every day. A scientist does this. Did you know that this is at the heart of
science? The heart of science. What was Albert Einstein trying to do in the general theory of relativity? He was trying to find a hypothesis into which you could put all the parts of known physics. And now what is Stephen Hawking trying to do? He's trying to get even a larger hypothesis than Einstein had. That would be what he calls a unified theory that would be a large hypothesis to put the individual parts. That's what science does.
That's what medicine does. I'll never forget when my daughter Anne was at University of Washington Medical School. We were still living in Berkeley in those days. But one thing I've always done as my kids have grown up is I've always gone to college with them and spent a day with them in college and go to their classes. And when John was in law school, I went and sat through a day in law school with him. And
I got to sit a day with Anne at the University of Washington Medical School. And I'll never forget, as long as I live, the most exciting class I think I ever went to in my whole life. It almost made me want to be a doctor, except that after that class was gross anatomy, and I decided I could not be a doctor. In fact, I didn't get to see the cadavers or anything, but I heard about what
they were going to do and I practically fainted hearing what they were going to do. And anyway, I'm glad she's a doctor and I'm not at that point. But the class that I loved was diagnosis. It was called clinical medicine. And a professor here at University of Washington Medical School took those students through two hours. I was on the edge of my seat, sitting back, everybody was sitting in their numbered seats and I was back there
taking notes furiously. I thought maybe I can start diagnosing after this class. And I was watching this class unfold. Afterward I told Anne, I said, this is like doing inductive Bible study. This is a wonderful Bible study class. Because what he did was, he took a real case. It turned out that the person in the real case had tuberculosis. That was the issue. They finally found out. He knew that because it was a real case. And
then he took it with these students and they talked about symptoms and they went up various roads. And he taught the principle that in diagnosis and medicine, the key is to find a hypothesis that will cover all the symptoms. And if you can't find one that will cover all the symptoms, you may go into a very bad false eddy or a false cul-de-sac. In fact, some students had come to the conclusion it was mental
illness that explained the symptoms of this poor guy who's coughing up blood. And they were going to, for a while, it looked like the mental illness crowd was going to That's a good thing they didn't, for that guy's sake, because he had tuberculosis. And it was amazing how they worked all these various roads and roads and this marvelous physician took them through to show them they were looking for the larger hole to put the separate parts.
And until they could get all those parts in, they hadn't found the diagnosis. And he kept hitting him and hitting him. And finally they did at the end. Students actually came up with tuberculosis. They figured it out. The larger hole for the smaller parts. That's Paul's strategy. That's what you have to do in international economics. This last week, we saw wonderful statesmanship from the President of the United States and the head of the Republican Party in
the Senate and House and the head of the Democratic Party in the Senate and House in the incredible decision that was made, a brave decision, to help Mexico with its peso. Imagine, I was reading things in the paper that I couldn't believe, people referring to the Mexican peso crisis as if it's their crisis. And why should we Americans worry about their crisis? Are you kidding? The Mexican peso is their crisis and not our crisis? Look at
the forest, folks. You can't have an island of wealth in a sea of poverty. It won't be an island of wealth very long. You can't survive if another country's collapse is happening right alongside of you. We are all interrelated. And we saw statesmanship there that saw that the peso is related and, as a matter of fact, part of its crisis is interfaced with ours. And so a whole look was looked at economics. And we saw a
lesson right in front of our eyes of what I would call good global stewardship economics. This is what Paul does now spiritually with us. Open to 1 Corinthians 8, 4 to 6, and we'll see him do it. In the eighth chapter, 4 to 6, he does a beautiful job taking on a very technical issue, which is the issue of whether you should eat meat that you bought in the meat market that had already been used in
the worship of idols. Now watch Paul take that specific issue that obviously has caused a lot of trouble at Corinth and probably some very devout people are very troubled and maybe angry at other devout people over that issue. And watch Paul pastorally and theologically handle it by stewardship technique, by trying to put the smaller part into the larger whole. Now concerning food. This is chapter 8. We'll start right in with the, we'll start with verse 4.
Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence. That's his first approach, to first of all define an idol, to put the idols themselves into a larger whole. Did you hear the book of Hosea that we read at the Old Testament lesson? The idols don't exist. That goes way back to the Old Testament. We know they don't exist. You may follow an idol, but the idol doesn't
exist and I'm not going to follow that idol because I know it doesn't even exist. Okay, that's, now I have a larger whole. And that larger whole is that I know that the idols don't exist. So he says, now, hence the eating of food to idols, we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. For, although there may be so many so-called gods in heaven and on earth,
as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one Lord, one God, Father, from whom all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. So in other words, he says this large whole is the large framework in which we put now an issue like whether we should eat food to idols. Now, move over to chapter 10, verse 23, where
he finishes this argument. He says, all things are lawful to me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any questions on the ground of conscience. For the earth is the Lord's and everything in it. And then he even goes on to say, and if you're invited,
to an unbeliever invites you, in other words, someone who perhaps worships those idols, if an unbeliever invites you to dinner and you're disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you. Have you ever heard that before? Did your mother ever say that to you? Now you know where she got that verse. You don't like spinach? You think it might have been worshiped, an idol might have been involved with spinach? You eat it. Because we don't believe
in idols, and we know the idols have no existence, and why are we going to be worried and doing a kind of a special test on every piece of meat? How are you going to test the meat to see where it was worshiped? Who worshiped it before? Paul says, I don't want to get involved in that. I have a larger hole in which to put the smaller parts. And I think that gives you an example of
Paul's strategy. He uses that approach. It's what I would call the stewardship, the law of the whole house, the whole house into which you put the separate rooms. The second principle that is used by Paul is found in two more words that appear in that passage I just read to you. Open up again to 1 Corinthians 10, look at 23. We'll see two more words that are key to Paul. He says all things are lawful. By
the way, notice what he's doing with freedom theology there. Our country right now is going through a real test, I think, of conscience and of philosophy over what we mean by freedom. Does freedom mean that I get to do what I want to do? Can I do anything I want to do when I'm free? As you know, many people are treating freedom as an entitlement and that I have the right to do anything I want to
do and no one should ever encroach upon that or take away any of my rights to do what I want to do. But you know, the founding fathers of our Constitution never had that in mind. There are three books. The New York Times this week reviews three books on the future democracy. And one of those books, well, all three of them are dealing with that subject. That's last week's New York Times book review section. And they're
pointing out the fact that the founding fathers and mothers, when they wrote our Constitution, they did not have the idea that freedom was an entitlement, but rather they were concerned about preserving the freedom of civic-minded people, of the fact that there is a civic contract, that everyone has a civic obligation. And that was the consensus inside the Constitution. So it is a freedom to be responsible, a freedom to use our freedom, but not as license,
but to use our freedom in a responsible contract that I have with other human beings. And anyway, that's what Paul's getting at here. He says, all things are lawful. I mean, I'm set free, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful, but not all things build up. There are two words that I want you to look at now. The word build up is another oik word. Oik is house, and the word build up is
literally oikodomeo. Domeo means to build. Oik means a house. So that's the word in the New Testament that's translated sometimes edify. Here it's translated build up. It's literally translated here. In other words, the oikodomeo, the edifying thing in your life, is something that builds up your life. And the other word is an interesting word, sumphero. It means to carry weight. And here it's translated helpful. It carries weight. So let me translate it literally.
Here's what he's saying. All things are lawful. I'm free to do anything because I know the idols don't exist. But not all things are helpful. In other words, not all things carry weight. And all things are lawful, but not all things build up the house. So here Paul says that I want to restrate upon my freedom. My freedom needs to build up the house, and it needs to carry weight. And I want to suggest to you
that you will be able to understand Paul as an advice giver throughout the New Testament if you understand his use of these two words. Because he always thinks of his stride. He thinks of discipline as helping a person catch their stride so they're able to carry weight and build up the house. You know, it's a very important thing to be able to do that in your life. We're taking a special offering today for the youth, our
high school and middle school projects of the edge and the rock, these groups in our church. And you know, I was just struck with that, that last year at Easter break, when a lot of teenagers in America were going off the beaches and having fun, I'm not against that. But a lot of kids did that. Our high school kids went down to Mexico. The high school kids from this church, about 100 of them, they went to
Mexico. And because of that offering last year, they took lumber with them. They took cement with them. And at an orphanage in Mexico, they built, these are high school kids from Seattle, Washington. They built 12 homes for houses, houses for people's homes. And with cement floors, they even painted the houses. They were built to a design that was a marvelous design. And they did that. They built something with their hands. And that's why those teenagers had
life-changing experiences, is because they came together to carry weight and to build up the house. Everyone needs an experience like that in their life. They're going down again this summer. I talked to James B. at the last service. And he said, over the history of that project, our teenagers have built 70 houses for families in that orphanage area. And they've done it with their hands. And I think there's something so healthy about people who have
an experience in their life, boys and girls and men and women, an experience in their life where you catch your stride in order to carry weight and build up the house. Believe me, that's a lot better than entitlements, where everybody owes you a living and everybody owes you your happiness. Now you build. And that's Paul's strategy. His whole goal with the Corinthians is to take these people and to try to get them into a frame of
mind where they want to carry weight and build up the house, because he knows that that's what will produce happiness. Now, let me give you one more test where he does this. Chapter seven of first Corinthians. I'm not going to talk in this chapter. He talks about sex and marriage and singleness. But after Easter, I want to do a series of sermons on the Christian understanding of sex. So I'm not going to talk about the sexual
part. He has some marvelous advice there. But I want to just use one passage in the seventh chapter, starting with 17. He says, let every one of you lead the life which the Lord has assigned to you and in which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? That means were you already a Jew? Then let him not seek to remove the marks of
circumcision. In other words, if you're whatever you are, your race, your background, you don't have to run away from that. Be who you are. God has glorified that. He's honored you for who you are. Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? That means were you a Greek? Then do not seek circumcision. You don't have to be a Jewish Christian. Just be what you are. For
neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision. Notice in his larger whole now. But keeping the commandments of God. That's the larger whole in which you put all the parts, even your identity parts. Everyone should remain in the state in which he was called. And now he takes on the slaves. Did you know there were many slaves who were Christians in the first century church? One third of the names in the last chapter of the book of
Romans are slave names. Paul was winning many slaves to Christ. Listen to this passage. He says, were you a slave when you were called? Never mind. In other words, a slave should not look lowly on himself or herself. If you're a slave, you can be a Christian as a slave. But for this one, he decides to throw in one little P.S. Were you a slave? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of
the opportunity. And that little one line has stayed in the church's mind and heart ever since. We have always felt uneasy about slavery because of that one line from Paul. If you can get your freedom, get it. And as we know, the early church spent a lot of its benevolence money buying people out of slavery. So he says, but if you're a slave, hey, never mind. You can be a Christian as a slave. But if you
can get your freedom, get it. Because he sees that as a part of a larger whole. But listen the way he goes on. For he who has called you in the Lord is a slave, is a freedman in the Lord. Likewise, you who were free when you were called is a slave of Christ. In other words, if you're free, you really belong to Christ as a slave, his servant. And if you're a slave, you're free because
of Christ. You were bought with a price. So do not become slaves of men. Don't let anyone else write the agenda of your life. Don't let anyone else give you your virtue. You get your virtue because of your relationship with Christ. That's the larger whole. So brothers, sisters, whatever state you're in, then remain. You don't have to be anything else. Be who you are belonging to Christ. And this is Paul's larger whole for the smaller part.
So that you can carry weight and build up the house. Now the last will get us ready for next week. The third principle is Paul's insistence on the belovedness spoke. It's true. He's reminded them of their sinfulness spoke when he in a salty way challenged their arrogance. But in that very setting, he said, but I don't write this to make you ashamed. But I write this because you're my beloved children. He wants them to remember their
belovedness. The apostle Paul does not want them to ever forget their belovedness. This is at the heart of Paul's of his advice as a friend. He wants them on the one hand to know the larger whole for which the small parts fit. He wants them to live lives so they carry weight and build up the house. But he wants them to know that they are beloved. Whether you're a slave, whether you're free, whether you're single, whether
you're married, whether you're a Jew, whether you're a Greek. He wants them to know this. And now he's prepared them for the wheel, the outer part, the rim. Which we'll look at next week when we see the very famous chapter 12 of Corinthians. Heavenly Father, thank you for this passage today. Thank you for the way in which the apostle Paul helps us understand the large framework in which the small parts of our lives fit. Thank you,
Lord, that you're a goal for our lives, that we can carry weight, and we can build up the house. And Lord, also, we thank you that in all of this, your goal for us is that we know that we're loved. That we are very important to you. Now, Lord, as our spokes are placed into this hub, balance us and help us to know all these things so that we can be balanced and whole people for the
world in which we live. In Christ's name we pray, amen.