A Messy and Authentic Church

Messy Church - 1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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Churches are messy because they are full of sinners, but messy churches are also full of Christians who have been saved by grace.

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Transcript

If you have your Bibles, please open them to 1 Corinthians 1.

Tonight we are starting our new series through the entire book of 1 Corinthians, and I have titled this series ‘Messy Church’.

As we get started, let me introduce this series by telling you about how I perceived the church when I was your guys’ age.

When I was in high school, I got my first job where I worked in a mail distribution facility. I wasn’t a mail man… but I worked to organize the mail so the mail man could deliver the mail.

At that job, I worked with a rough group of people. One of the guys I worked with regularly came to work drunk, people were constantly swearing and taking the Lord’s name in vain, and they would blast blasphemous music, and sin was celebrated. All of these activities that took place really bothered me.

At the time, I was young in my faith, though I was very involved at my church and in my youth group. But during those years of my life, I was resolved to serve the Lord. I was striving to live a different life from the rest of the world, I desired holiness, and so working in a secular environment was incredibly frustrating.

And during those formative high school years, there was a question that others were asking me and I kept on asking myself. It’s a question that I’m sure all of you high schoolers are being asked today as well. And the question was this: What am I going to do with my life?

I thought to myself, I wanted to live a life for God… I wanted to set myself apart from the world… and I wanted to distance myself from sin and from sinners… And so I thought to myself, the church would be a great place to work in order to do those things. So I went to Bible college, I studied to become a pastor, and I first began working at the church as a youth pastor back in 2015. But, as I began to work in the church I began to realize that working in the church is far messier than working at a mail distribution center.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love working in the local church, but boy was I wrong about distancing myself from sinners by working in the church. Because the church is full of sinners! And a church that is full of sinners is going to get messy.

At my last church, I thought that the reason it was so messy was because the gospel was not preached… I kind of assumed it was all the pastor’s fault that things were so dysfunctional. And so when I came here, I thought surely LWC will be far less messy than my last church. But after being here for a year and a half, I have found that there LWC is just as messy as my last church, because Living Water Church is still full of sinners who forget the gospel, and fall into sin. And when we sin things in the church get really messy.

And there is no clearer picture of a messy church in the Bible than the church that was in Corinth. The church was planted by the Apostle Paul himself.

As we go through this letter written by Paul, we are going to hear of all the messy problems that were happening in the Corinthian church that he planted a few years before this letter was written. While Paul was away on one of his missionary journeys. Problems like that Paul heard about and he addressed in his letter were about things like, fights and divisions, celebrated sexual immorality , pride in one’s position in the church over another’s, and false doctrine that was being taught. Through this series, I hope you learn that church can get messy because of sin. And this is a universal reality in every church. Because churches are filled with people, and every person is a sinner. But I also want us to see how the gospel confronts every sin, and the gospel gives grace to the sinner.

So hopefully by now you have found 1 Corinthians.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

1 Corinthians 1:1–9 ESV

1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let’s pray

In modern Christianity, there is a growing movement where people make the claim to love God, but hate the church…

This growing resentment against the local church by Christians is a result of those who have experienced the messiness of sin in the church.

Messes in the church have caused people to leave the church in order to have their own personal church experience where they can listen to their preferred pastors, podcasts, and sing their preferred songs of praise to God.

They do this, they say, because they love the God, but they do not love the church.

But here in Paul’s greeting to the Corinthians, we get a different idea of the relationship that the Christian is to have with messy churches...

As we hear Paul’s opening words to the Corinthians, we don’t hear words of resentment by him, or any kind of disconnection from Paul towards the church…

1 Corinthians 1:1–3 ESV

When Christians take offence against a church, they often treat the church like a baseball player up to bat. When they see sin in the church, they begin counting strike 1, strike 2, strike 3, you’re out…

So often when we look at a church:

that has not been faithful to the doctrine of the gospel

that has sinned against us

that has those among them who sin worse than the world

(all things that we will find the Corinthian church guilty of btw)

We might be tempted to write that church off as being full of false Christians, who are bound to go to hell, and so we separate ourselves from them… and go find another church until we find the same messy sin problems that are in that church as well, and so we leave that church as well, and you might do that couple times, you might do it a dozen times, until you decide to leave the local church to do your own thing because you are sick of the mess that happens in the church…

But this is not what Paul does

Hear him again in v 1

1 Corinthians 1:1 ESV

1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

First of all, notice the familial language being used here with regard to Sosthenes…

There’s not much to say about who he is, but Paul calls him, “our brother”… that word our, is an important word to ponder for a moment. Because Paul is saying that the Corinthian church shares the same familial ties with Sosthenes as Paul does…

In other words, the Corinthians are still a part of the family of God, that is the church, despite all the messy sins that are going on in that church… And while it is implied in v1, this point is made abundantly clear in v 2

1 Corinthians 1:2 ESV

2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Note, he calls them the church of God…

that is to say, the Corinthians belong to God

Paul says that the Corinthians have been sanctified in Christ Jesus

meaning, they have been made holy, because of the finished work of Jesus on the cross…

And so, Paul calls the Corinthians saints…

Even though they do not live like saints, the Corinthians are none the less saints. And they are not Saints because of their works. Rather they are saints because

they have been called by God

Sinners are made saints by the effective call of God

No one becomes a saint by any single work, not by becoming sinless, not by getting your act together

Rather, sinners are made saints when God calls them

But here’s the difficult question that many wrestle with… how do I know that I am among those who God has called or chosen? Have you ever asked that question before? I sure have… Well Paul tells us how we can know if we are called:

1 Corinthians 1:2 ESV

The call of God that makes a person a saint is demonstrated when that saint calls upon the name of Jesus as Lord…

And we call upon the name of Jesus when we recognize our great problem, that is sin and death

and when we recognize the solution to that problem, is our savior, Jesus Christ, we will call upon him

And if w have called upon him, then we can be sure that he has called us to be saints

So, have you called upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved? Then know that you are saved and God called by name before you even knew the name of Jesus

The Corinthians are Christians even though they are a mess of a church

1. The church is full of messy sinful Christians

You don’t need to read the Bible to see the mess that happens in the church. In fact, the mess in the church is what keeps so many people from ever being a part of the church

But here in the opening two verses we see that even though the Corinthians are still sinful people, they are no less saints that have been justified, and sanctified by the effective call of God. And though they are sinners, their sins have been washed by the blood of Jesus.

In fact, every one of your sins, be it the sins you did in the past, the sins that you have commited even in the last fifteen minutes, and every sin that you will ever commit in the future… every single sin of yours has been paid for in full if you have called upon the name of Jesus.

This is certainly true of the Corinthians, and it’s true for you and for me.

While the church is fully of messy Christians, each person who has called upon the name of Jesus is a saint who’s sins have been washed by Jesus death on the cross.

And look at closer at those words from verse 2

1 Corinthians 1:2 ESV

They Corinthians are in Christ Jesus… that is to say, they have been joined together with Christ… which means that that sinner has been made one with Jesus, and that other sinners have also been made one with Jesus.... oh yeah and, me, the sinner that I am am also one with Jesus.

Why is that important to note: It’s important, because it means we are connected to one another… And so when we experience the mess in the church, we cannot just walk separate ourselves from the church and think that walking away is a solution to the sin problem in the church… for if we walk away from the church, we are in effect walking away from Christ himself who has joined us all together in Christ…

So let’s recognize and hear why Paul is writing to the Corinthian church:

1 Corinthians 1:3 ESV

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Even though Paul is writing to rebuke and correct the sinful Corinthian church, he is doing so so that they would receive grace and peace from the Father and from Jesus.

While Paul has some hard words that he will say in this letter, the effect of those words is so that they would receive grace and peace.

Now there is one more thing I want us to see from v 2 that I passed by so that we would see that the Corinthians are sinners and yet saints all the same. Look again at v 2

1 Corinthians 1:2 ESV

The word sanctified, means to be made holy… or to be set apart

2. The Church is called out from the world and is set apart for Christ

Let me illustrate it in this way… Let’s say you have a bunch of spoons in your shed that you might use to dig small holes in your garden to plant seeds… I know that there’s another tool for that, but for the sake of the illustration let’s just say you took a few spoons from the kitchen for this purpose, for digging in the garden with… now, if you were in the backyard working in the garden with a cup of yogurt that would you eat your yogurt with the same spoon that you were just digging in the garden with? Of course not! Rather you would use the spoons that are set apart in the kitchen for the special use of eating food with instead of using the spoon that you just used to dig in the dirt…

So too, the church is called out from the world, meaning called out from a dirty sinful life, and instead participating in sinful activities, the church is set apart to be used by God for holy purposes! This is the error in thinking that God’s grace frees us up to sin more. For this way of thinking fails to see that the Jesus died not just to free us from the effect of sin, but also to free us from sin itself!

Since the church is called out from the world and is set apart for Christ, it is unfitting for Christians to sin…

Now this doesn’t mean you that the Christian will not sin after they have been made a saint…

Rather it means that openly participating in sinful activities is something that is unthinkable and unfitting for the Christian to do.

This is an important to understand as we move forward, as the Corinthian church is participating in dozens sinful activities that Paul will rebuke them for time and time again from this point forward in this letter. And the reason for Paul’s rebuke, is because the church has been set apart for Christ.

Let’s continue reading:

1 Corinthians 1:4–9 ESV

4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

The heart of this paragraph is found in v 4

Paul says that as he prays, he gives thanks to his God always for the Corinthians because of the grace of God that was given them in Christ Jesus…

and where was grace given? Paul continues

He says that the Corinthians were enriched in all speech and all knowledge, because of the grace of God…

Next week and in the weeks that follow we will find that eloquent speech, and superior knowledge was one of the major problems in the church…

But Paul says, that the Corinthian’s speech and knowledge was a gift of God’s grace…

and such gifts were further evidences of God’s grace

Paul says in v 7, that their having every gift during this time as they wait for Jesus, is a means of God’s grace…

And even during that time of waiting, Paul says that God will sustain the Corinthians in every day of their life until they die. And God’s sustaining them is an act of God’s grace

And when they do die, Paul says that the Corinthians will be found guiltless… not because they were without sin, for we will find that this church was full of sin… Rather, they they will be guiltless because of God’s grace…

and all of this grace is summed up in v 9

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord…

Here’s what I want you to see:

3. From beginning to end, every part of the Christian life is a result of God’s grace

The Corinthians were saved by grace,

Every gift that they had came from God, and each gift was a result of grace

and every day that they breathed was because God sustained them by his grace even though they deserved to die

And even at judgment, these Corinthian sinners that were made sanctified saints would be found guiltless even though they were more than guilty and that would all be credited to God’s grace

And all of God’s grace that he poured out to them was an overflow of God’s faithfulness to his word.

And all this grace that Paul is giving thanks for, produces humility, not pride

Because as we are talking about God’s grace, it is inevitable that we would talk about God’s glory!

How many of you have heard soli Deo gloria…

It goes on mugs, I have it on a coaster in my office, but do you know what it means?

It’s a Latin phrase…

Soli means alone… it’s where we get the word solo from

Deo means God… it’s where we get the word deity from

And gloria means glory

Literally, it means, alone God glory

But english doesn’t work that way, so we say, God get’s all the glory

and the reason he gets all the glory, is because 100% the Christian life is a result of Grace

Did you believe in Jesus,

You believe because of God’s grace

Have you obeyed Jesus today?

You have obeyed because of God’s grace

Have you sinned today?

Then you are in need of God’s grace

Will you be sustained until the end and be found guiltless on that day?

You will, and it is because of God’s faithfulness to continue to give grace to the sinner that has been made a saint

And so it is true of every Christian, including each of us here.... every part of our life is an evidence of God’s abundant grace towards us

And so as we look at the messy Corinthian church through this series,

and we even see the mess that sin produces in Living Water Church

and we even see the mess that sin has produced in our own life… may we be ever dependent on God’s grace.

For it is by grace alone that we are saved

and it is by grace alone that we are sustained

and it is by grace alone that you will be found a sinless saint on the last day

So is the church a mess… you bet it is

but will the church make it to the end, you bet it will

And it will to the praise of God’s glorious grace

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