An Evangelism Explosion presentation pictures a person bobbing in the middle of an ocean after they’ve been tossed from their boat in the midst of a storm. A Coast Guard vessel arrives as the person is going down for the third time, and a sailor throws a lifeline connected to a life preserver. Do you hang on to the wreckage, or do you let go and grab hold of the invitation to be saved? Jesus is the only Savior, for this life and the next. Are you hungering and thirsting for Him and for His righteousness?
If we are going to effectively solve our problems, we have to get to the source. Just bouncing from symptom to symptom will not solve problems; we need to get at the root. For the last 9 months, we have been looking at the problems in the church at Corinth. Today we start on the final problem: their misunderstandings of the gospel, particularly the resurrection of Jesus (1 Corinthians 15:12). What if this problem was behind all of the rest? Today we will see how the gospel is the power for living, and the power behind solving our problems. What is the gospel?
Words have an enormous power to affect our lives. Negative or false words wound the spirit and mislead. Positive words of truth of love have the power to build in courage and love. Words matter. Our Christian walk and testimony must be built upon the Word of God. What happens when the use of words is replaced by experiences? This was happening in the church in Corinth as the ministry of intelligible words was being replaced by the unintelligible experience of speaking in tongues (1 Corinthians 14:1-2). In this passage, we learn how understandable words are necessary for making disciples and confronting the conscience.
Ephesians 2:11-22 (ESV) One in Christ 11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without…
Who is the most loving person you know? What is it that makes them so loving? The church in Corinth was divided and disrupted by people who thought they had it all. They were missing something very important–love. Because God is love (1 John 4:8), our Christian faith is best demonstrated in the way we love. Love is the goal, not supernatural experiences, not our own comfort, or increasing our own glory. What is the value of
love?
Ephesians 2:1-10 English Standard Version (ESV) By Grace Through Faith 2 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our…
We go to the doctor because our personal well-being depends on each part of our body being healthy. If just one part of our body is unhealthy, or missing, it affects everything else. It’s the same thing in the church. In fact, the church is described as a “body”, made up of many parts (1 Corinthians 12:12-14). Each one of us is a part of the whole, and we need to be concerned about the whole of the body, and not just our own life. As an interconnected body, we must care for each member as critical for the health of the whole. A healthy body needs the involvement of all the parts. Our passage can be compared to a doctor’s visit where the physician checks the health of our body. How do we have a healthy church?
One of the many conflicts in the church at Corinth was over spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are abilities the Holy Spirit gives believers when they believe in Jesus Christ. In this controversy, people who had certain gifts were treated as more spiritual than others and those without were treated like a spiritual underclass. Our passage today shows us that there is no spiritual underclass among God’s people, but God has poured out His grace by giving the Holy Spirit to every believing Christian in the church. Through this, He has made unspiritual people spiritual. Where do we see the Holy Spirit active in our lives?
The thing that was supposed to bring the Corinthian church together was splitting them apart – the Lord’s Supper. Instead of worship and care for each other, they were so absorbed in themselves people were starving around them and they didn’t seem to care! In fact, their practice was so contrary to Jesus’ intentions (John 13:2-5, 34-35), they couldn’t even truly call it the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11:20). The Lord’s Supper is a gift to the church to show that Jesus gave His life for His people and brings them into one united body. Because it is so precious a gift, we need to practice it rightly.