Subtract the Division

1:18Or how about when someone falls in love with a longhorn? Yes, it happens even in this holy church. And you are forced to put one of those house-divided stickers on your car. Division is almost never a good thing, and that is certainly true in the church. Well, friends, last week we started our series of the book of 1 Corinthians called Messy Church. And we talked about the fact that every church, both then and now, is messy. But there's hope for us because God is in the business of transforming messy churches and messy people into beautiful displays of his glory.

2:08Well, today in 1 Corinthians 1:10 through 17, we're going to get a first-hand look at some of the mess in the church. And the mess, particularly, the first part of that mess, is division. The church is dividing over human leaders of various kinds. And you have to keep in mind, that was a very serious problem. Division is a serious problem anytime, any place in the church, but in the first century, that was a really big problem. Because it wasn't like they could just go down the street to another church.

2:41They might be attending the only church for thousands of miles. There was typically only one in the city, so there was no choice but to reconcile. There was no choice but to live in unity together. So division was a huge problem, and it's still a problem today. And so what we're going to learn from this passage is that because the gospel is our common denominator, uniting around it is the only way to subtract division from the church.

3:14So let's get into the text here in verse 10. Paul gets into the body of the letter and he says, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now remember, like we talked about last week, Paul is an apostle. He's been invested with the authority of Christ through the Holy Spirit. He has every right to command the believers. He can command them to do anything that he wants, but he doesn't command them. Instead, he appeals to them. He urges them. He implores them, beseeches them, exhorts them.

3:56And sometimes a well-grounded appeal is just more effective than a command, isn't it? If you're in authority as a parent, as a boss, as a leader in the military, wherever you might be in authority, you have the permission, you have the right to command those underneath you. But oftentimes, an appeal is more effective because with an appeal, you're not just telling them what to do, you're telling them why to do it. And friends, the New Testament is filled with this kinds of language. Not just the what we're supposed to do, but also the why behind it. Why are we to do what we are being commanded to do? And so Paul appeals to them. And there are two grounds upon which he's making this appeal. The first and primary ground is the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The secondary ground is that they're all part of the family of God.

5:01So, first, Paul reminds them that they all share one Lord. Who is Jesus? Paul says he is our Lord Jesus Christ. The Corinthians do not worship different gods, different Lords. Or maybe I should say they no longer worship different gods or different lords. Because if you remember the background from last week, Corinth is this melting pot. People have come from all over the Roman Empire, all different ethnicities, all different cultures, all different backgrounds, and many, many, many different religions.

5:41So, at the time when Paul arrived and brought the gospel to Corinth, you have people worshiping a host of gods. But after Paul preached the gospel to them and they received Christ the Lord, they now share one Lord, Jesus Christ. That's why he can say He's our Lord. The gospel changed everything for them. So he appeals on that ground. But then, secondly, he appeals on the grounds that they're brothers. Because they've all been adopted by God into his family through faith, they're no longer strangers to one another. They are brothers in Christ. And that language, as I point out from time to time, is very, very important. It doesn't say brothers and sisters, but brothers, not because Paul is sexist, not because it was a patriarchal society, but because it was the sons who inherited all the rights. And so both men and women through Christ are treated as firstborn sons. That's the glory of the gospel, is that we all inherit the rights of the firstborn son, Jesus. And so he says, Look, you're all brothers.

6:54And remember, he's writing from Ephesus. And I want to turn your attention to the screen where there's a lengthy passage from Ephesians 2. Ephesians is the city where Paul is writing Corinthians from. And there was a huge mixture of people there in Ephesus, too, many Jews, many Gentiles. And so he wants to help them unite together. Look at what he says. 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. Remember that at one time, 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 God in the world.

7:42But now, in Christ Jesus, you, who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that He might create in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And He came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near. For through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, listen to this, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

9:02I don't know of any passage in the New Testament that better shows that we are unified in Christ, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, rich and poor, every ethnicity, every background, through faith in Christ, we have been united. That was a countercultural message in the first century, and that is a countercultural message in our fractured society today. What a beautiful reality that we are brothers. And so we would expect servants of the same Lord and brothers in the same family, sharing the same father, to work together and to be unified.

9:40But unfortunately, in Corinth, there's not unity, there is division. And that's evident in Paul's request. Look at verse 10. Paul appeals to them 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. So there's a few different parts to this appeal. First, he wants all of them to agree. Now, this word in the Greek means to say the same thing. He wants them all to agree and to be saying the same thing together. The second part of his appeal is that he doesn't want there to be any divisions among them. That Greek word is schisma.

10:30That's where we derive our word schism from. It means a division, a separation, a divide, a split. Third, Paul wants them to be united in the same mind and in the same judgment. To be united is to be made as one, it's to be complete. So let's pause here for a moment. Because what we've just heard the apostle say is that he wants them all to agree to say the same thing. He wants there to be no divisions among them. He wants them to be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

11:06Now, when we read all of that, it sounds like what he's saying, that he wants all the Corinthians, or maybe even all believers for that matter, to be the same person, to think exactly alike, to be clones of one another, maybe. And if you talk to many people who don't consider themselves followers of Jesus, don't consider themselves Christians, many of them will say, this is my beef with Christianity. This is my beef with religion. I don't want to be forced into a mold and told you have to think the same thing as everybody else.

11:46So the question is, is that really what Paul is saying here? Well, I think as we go on through the rest of the letter, it's going to become very obvious that that is not what Paul is saying. Because in the rest of the letter, Of the letter, Paul allows for different faith-based convictions. When we come to chapter 7, he's going to remind us that Jesus said he was coming back at a time no one could expect and no one can predict. And that, in light of that fact, if you want to stay single or if you want to get married, that's up to you. You can stay single, you can get married. There's not a Christian way to approach that. He allows for freedom of conscience. In the very next chapter, chapter 8, all the way through chapter 10, there's this situation because you've got all of these temples who are sacrificing to idols. Well, after they kill these animals and make the sacrifice, they then go to their HEB and they sell it and they sell that same meat. And some believers had the freedom of conscience to be able to eat that meat that was sold in the market, while others said, look, it's been sacrificed to idols.

13:01We don't want to look like we're supporting that. And so Paul says, listen, if your conscience will let you eat the meat, eat it. It doesn't matter. Idols aren't real. He says, if you don't want to eat the meat because your conscience is sensitive about that, don't eat the meat. The only rule here is love. Don't make anybody stumble by what you're serving in your house. So he allows freedom of conscience there. Chapter 16, he says, look, we all need to be generous in giving to. Support God's work. But he doesn't say, as a Christian, you need to give 10% or 20% or 37%. He doesn't give you a number. He just simply says, based on how God prospers you, you should give cheerfully and generously.

13:48And so I think from these examples and many others that we could give, it's very clear that Paul doesn't expect believers to think exactly alike on every issue. He doesn't expect us to be clones of each other. There's freedom of conscience, freedom for believers to hold different faith-based convictions. That's the key phrase, faith-based convictions. So, what does he want then? What does he want when he says he wants all of us to agree and to be united? Well, I think he gets into that in verses 11 and 12. Look there.

14:26For 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. Now it's starting to make more sense. We don't know much about Chloe or her squad, but she is either an Ephesian who is there with Paul, who knows people in Corinth, or she's a Corinthian who has. Friends in Ephesus, but either way, she and her people are the way that Paul knows that there is quarreling and divisions. There's fighting in the church among whom? What's the word he uses? Among the brothers. There's that family language again. And what are they fighting about? Look at verse 12 once more. What I mean is that each of you, how about that? Each one of them has joined a fan club.

15:30Every one of them is dividing over which teacher, which rabbi that they should follow. Some of them said, I follow Paul. Now that's probably the easiest to understand. Paul, after all, was the apostle who came to Corinth, who brought the gospel there, who established the church there. He lived in Corinth for a year and a half. He preached, he taught, he set an example with his life. And so many people felt a deep and abiding loyalty to him. Probably especially those who had been there from the very beginning, those who were there while Paul was ministering, they felt a deep and abiding loyalty to him and to his particular convictions.

16:19But there was another group that said, I follow Apollos. Well, according to Acts 18, Apollos came to Corinth after Paul had left. Apollos first went to Ephesus, and then the church there sent him to Corinth to preach and teach and help to lead. Now, Apollos was an impressive man. Acts 18 tells us that he was eloquent, he was competent in the scriptures, and he was highly educated. He came out of Alexandria in Egypt, which was the premier university city of the day. So, in your mind, think about what Athens was like in the fifth century B.C. with all the great philosophers. Think about Oxford when C.S. Lewis and other famous Englishmen and women were there studying and writing. Think about College Station today.

17:18He is highly educated. And because he's a Gentile, he may have gained a large following simply because there was a lot of Gentiles in this church. Remember, he's from Africa. He is an African. So, in your mind, you should not be picturing a Western white guy. And the Gentiles may have coalesced around him because many of them were not Jewish. They didn't have that Middle Eastern background. They certainly didn't have a European background. Some of them said, a third group said, I follow Cephas. Well, who is Cephas? That's the Greek name for Peter. It means rock.

17:57And, you know, Peter is one of the original 12 disciples. He's an OG. And there was probably a lot of people that said, Look, Paul wasn't even converted until years later. Apollos wasn't converted until years later. I follow the guy who was there, who was with Jesus in his life and ministry. Moreover, we can't forget that Peter was a Jew. And Peter himself, according to Galatians and also the book of Acts, he struggled with how to relate properly to Gentiles. There's probably a lot of Jews that could identify with that problem, and so maybe they said, Look, Peter is the guy, his convictions, his teachings, his lifestyle, that's who we're following.

18:42And then last, you've got this group that said, I follow Christ. And you might be thinking, aren't all these people following Christ? Well, yes. So it might be better to understand this phrase as, I'm only following Christ, or I'm just following Christ. So the situation breaks down to this. You've got three groups of people who are essentially giving too much deference to human leaders. And then you've got a fourth group who isn't giving any deference at all to human leaders. And there's division because of this.

19:24See, giving too much deference to human leaders isn't good. It necessarily leads to division. In the body of Christ, as people pick and choose between their favorite human leaders, people that they give essentially unswerving devotion to. Now, these men may be godly, they may be wise, but in the end, they are flawed people, just like you and me. And we're no strangers to those kinds of things. Today, we have groups of people that coalesce around different spiritual leaders, don't we? Their theology, their philosophy of ministry.

20:05So, you can walk into many churches like ours and say, Are you of John Piper or John MacArthur? Are you of Tim Keller or Mark Dever? Are you of Matt Chandler or Al Moeller? You notice that all of their names end in Ur? That's why I'll never be famous. I can assure you that none of those men are trying to build a loyal following. They don't want you to make much of them, they want you to make much of Jesus. But unfortunately, our problem is just like the Corinthians' problem in the first century. Instead of making much of Jesus, we make much of these human leaders, we give too much deference to them. And so, you've probably found yourself in a conversation with somebody, and instead, Of referencing the scripture, you're quoting a book written by one of these guys. You're quoting a blog post, a tweet by one of these guys.

21:10We're giving too much deference to human leaders when we know what our favorite leaders have said better than we know what God's Word says. And they don't want that. We thank God for their preaching, their teaching, their writing, their leadership on so many levels, but we don't want to give too much deference to them. And so that's what you have these first three groups doing. They're giving too much deference to human leaders. But this final group, the I Follow Christ group, seems that they're not giving enough deference to human leaders.

21:50And I'm willing to bet you have met people like this before. The I Follow Christ coalition is still alive and well today. These are people who are unreasonably suspicious of all human authority. And that's often because they don't want to submit to any authority at all. So they'll talk a lot about the universal church and how we're all a part of the universal church and how Christ is the head of the church and all of those things are true, but then they never are willing to commit to any particular local church. They're not willing to give their lives in service and love to. Actual real flesh and blood people. They're not willing to submit to any human leaders, commands that are all over the scripture. Look, for example, at Hebrews 13, 17 on the screen.

22:43Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account. See, the great irony here is that the very people who are claiming to follow only Christ are proving that they're not following Christ because they're not being obedient to all of his word. They're not giving any deference to the leaders that God has called and set up within his church. And so this is the struggle. We're always going back and forth between extremes, aren't we? Martin Luther, whose name also ends in Ur, said that the human race is like a drunkard who falls off his horse on the right side only to climb back on and fall off on the left. That's what we're doing all the time. Too much deference to human authority, not enough deference. We go back and forth between extremes. And so Paul is saying this situation in Corinth is not good. It shouldn't be this way. There's division.

23:54And so in verses 13 through 16, he's going to demonstrate why division is underestimated. Unacceptable in the church. Let's look there, verse 13. 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 Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptize anyone else. Probably the most encouraging verse in the Bible to me.

24:37I don't know. Maybe. Three very pointed questions drive home this point. Is Christ divided? That is, was Jesus chopped up and distributed to each of these different groups? It's a grotesque image, and it's meant to be. Because of course not. Of course, Christ is not divided. All of us have all of him. Each group isn't given a piece of Jesus. Was Paul crucified for you? You almost feel ashamed reading it. Notice also, he doesn't pick on the other fan clubs. He doesn't say, was Apollos crucified? Crucified for you? Was Peter crucified for you? No, he picks on his own fan club. He says, guys, was I crucified for you? No, of course not. I'm not your Lord. I'm not your Savior.

25:46Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? He goes on to say he only baptized a handful of them, but even in those instances, he baptized them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He was making disciples of Christ, not disciples of himself. So, friends, Christ isn't divided. No human being was crucified for them, no human leader, I should say, and they weren't baptized in any human leader's name. That's why division is unacceptable in the church. Christ isn't divided, and so his body cannot be divided.

26:27Paul, Apollos, Peter, every godly leader that's ever existed adopts the same attitude as John the Baptist. You may remember that John the Baptist had this huge ministry. He's baptizing thousands of people in the River Jordan. And as he points people to Jesus, his disciples come up to him one day and they say, John, everyone is leaving you and is going over to him. And what does John say? He essentially says, good, because I came to point people to him. He says, he must increase, and I must decrease.

27:16That is the attitude of every godly leader. And that's because every godly leader desires to unify the church, not divide it. The gospel brings unity. And that's his point in verse 17, where he lands. Look there. 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. Now understand, Paul is not saying that baptism is unimportant. You can't read his letters and come to the conclusion that he thought baptism was unimportant. He knew it was a command of Christ. He himself was baptized. He taught that every believer needed to be baptized in the name of the Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit. He doesn't believe that baptism is unimportant. He's just driving home the point that baptism is not the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. The gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone. Who believes? That's the message he came preaching.

28:35And the gospel, by its very nature, produces unity and not division. What is the message of the gospel? It is the good news that Jesus, by his sinless life, his death on the cross in our place and for our sins, and his resurrection from the dead, reconciled all of us to God. That's the message. The gospel tells us that every one of us was united in our sin and rebellion against God, that every one of us deserved eternal punishment.

29:18The gospel tells us that none of us could save ourselves through our good works or through our religious performance. The gospel tells us that every one of us is equally in need of the grace and mercy that comes from Jesus' perfect life, his death in our place, and his resurrection from the dead. In other words, friends, the gospel of Jesus Christ brings unity. We are united in our sin and rebellion against God. We are united in our inability to save ourselves. And we are united in the fact that we must have the grace and mercy of Christ if we are to be saved.

30:02As the old saying goes, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. See, when we elevate human leaders and we divide the church over them, what we're doing is we're emptying the cross of its power. We're draining the power out of the cross, the gospel message. Paul cannot save you. Apollos and Peter cannot save you. Mary, the human mother of Christ, cannot save you. John Piper, Matt Chandler, Tim Keller cannot save you. I cannot save you. You cannot save yourself. Jesus alone can save you. And he will save you. He will save anyone who trusts in his life, death, and resurrection for reconciliation with God. That's the good news of the gospel. And so, friends, today, we're reminded that division is not a modern problem. We look around at our fractured society and many churches that are experiencing division, and we think, man, this must be a new thing, but division is not a modern problem. It's existed as long as the church has existed.

31:21And the only way to subtract division from the church is to unite around the gospel, which is our common denomination. You see, all of us will prefer different human leaders who have different preaching styles, teaching styles, who have different philosophies of leadership. All of us will have preferences when it comes to music. What songs are played, what songs are not played, how the songs are played, how the songs are not played. All of us will come to different faith-based convictions when it comes to matters of conscience and freedom.

32:07But what must unite us is the gospel of Jesus Christ because it is the permanent reminder that He alone is the head of the church. We are the body. He is our Lord. We are brothers and sisters in the family of God, serving the one Father. And so I want to encourage you today that if you have struggled with a divisive spirit in your mind, in your heart, over certain programs or choices or methods in the church, or if you've been divisive in your heart or mind or words or actions with other people in the body of Christ, I want to urge you to add the gospel back into your thought process, into your prayers.

32:57Because, friends, uniting around the gospel. Of Jesus Christ is the only way that we can subtract division from the church. Let's pray. Father, we want to begin by acknowledging that we have not always been unified. We have struggled because we have elevated human leaders, we've elevated our own preferences, we've elevated opinions and matters of conscience to become issues that divide the body of Christ. And it's just so clear from your word that those things shouldn't divide us.

33:53We're called to be united in Christ. And so, God, we ask for your forgiveness. We pray that you would pour out your grace, pour out your Holy Spirit. Fill us with your spirit so that we display the fruit of the spirit in our thoughts and prayers for others and in the way that we talk to and interact with other believers in the body of Christ, both in our local church and those who are members of other churches or who are members of no church at all.

34:32Help us to be unifiers, not dividers, so that the world can see this beautiful display of your glory that is the church. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.