The Apostle Paul's authority and background are established as God's chosen instrument to reach the wicked metropolis of Corinth. Paul, a formerly zealous persecutor of Christians, was transformed by a divine encounter on the Damascus Road, leading to ten years of secluded training to understand God's message. Corinth, a wealthy but morally corrupt city, was chosen by God to demonstrate that salvation comes not from human wisdom or status, but through the grace of God offered in the gospel of Christ's death and resurrection. It of redemption through Christ is the only way for both the religiously proud like Paul and the deeply sinful like the Corinthians to find salvation.
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And now we're back. We want to take up a study of the books of Corinthians. I've never taken up this book before, but I want to take it up now. And I trust that you'll come every Sunday morning and Sunday night because it's a very interesting book. And I trust that you'll be able to come along, bring your notepad and pencil, and enjoy the studies with us on the first epistle to the credentials. Well, this morning, just for our opening text, we'll read the verses one and two. Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and possibly, possibly our God, unto the church of God, which is that calleth to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both there and our."
I'd like to speak this morning on three things, the man, the metropolis, and the message. Very noticeable, the man that God used to go to this wicked metropolis and the message that he preached. You notice how this professor opens Paul. The first word is Paul shrewing his authority as an apostle. He's quite a character, the Apostle Paul, and he had a name before his conversion, and it was Saul. Now, Saul of Tarsus, according to the world, as men see men, that word, Saul, was a nobler name, because in the Old Testament Saul, the king, was head and shoulders above all other men.
And so the word Saul, in the eyes of the world, the unconverted, was a noble name, a name that was revered. God says, Paul, I don't want you to have that earthly nobility. I want you to have a heavenly nobility. And the little word Paul that God gave them after conversion means little. in contrast to Saul, which means Paul, and pretentious, and seeked in the flesh. But now here is Paul. He's a little man, and he's a spiritual man. He's a godly man. He's a man that God used to establish all the churches at that time in Asia, and also to give us fourteen books of the New Testament.
So you have the Apostle called out before you that chosen temple. God selected this little Jew. He was a native of Tarsus. And Tarsus was a city of no mean character. And he said later on about born in the city of Tarsus, a city with quite a reputation. And his father was a Roman. He was a Jew and there's a Pharisee by birth. the son of a Pharisee, in his belief. He preached, and he believed in the hope and of the resurrection. That's what the Pharisees believed in, the hope of the resurrection of the dead.
He was a freeborn citizen, and he used his citizenship on various occasions to his advantage. And so he was a freeborn citizen of Rome. He had a very religious background, a very religious training, and he was a tent maker by his trade. Now there were three things every Jewish father sought to instruct his son in, three things of which he was responsible to see that his son carried out the law, carried out the will of God. He had to have him circumcised, second, he had to be instructed in the law, and third, he had to be taught a trade.
And the Apostle Paul had all three, as millions of young Jewish men did. And he had a very good education, the Apostle Paul. He was taught under the great philosopher Gamaliel, according to chapters twenty-two and verse three. Not only so, he had another trade. Although he trained as far as this world is concerned, under Gamaliel, he trained also in the College of Experience. That's the best college of all. The School of Experience. Knowledge may come by books, but experience comes by responsibility and by experience.
When you're young, you can study all kinds of books, you can get an education by or through the college or university of your choice, but when you begin to teach by experience, then you say goodbye to youth, for there are two things that never go together, youth and experience. And you'll learn that if you haven't already learned. Experienced in a wonderful day. Men who can speak from experience. The dynamic of experience. They've gone through it. They know what they're talking about. That was true of the Apostle Paul. And he was a persecutor of the opposition.
Here was this young Jew. And he was so sure he was right. He was so sure because of his religious background. that when he heard of Jesus, of Nazareth, and that he was looked upon as the true Messiah of Israel, he fought that doctrine, he fought Christianity, he's going to annihilate the infant church. He set out to do it. There's no evidence that he himself ever killed anyone, but he gave orders for others to be killed and to be put in prison, and when Stephen was put to death, marketed for Christ they laid Stephen's clothes down at the feet of a young man, Saul of Parker.
And so he was a jealous young Jew, jealous of what he had been taught, and he was willing to fight all opposition to what he had taught. He became, though, a new creature in Christ Jesus. This young Jew... finally got turned around. Now there are seven visions in the light of the Apostle. We'll be speaking on them tonight. But the first one was on the Damascus Road when around noon there shined a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun. And so on a few occasions he always loved to bring in his conversion. What happened to him on the Damascus Road?
How he got turned around. And how that vision of a risen Christ focus. So we'll be taking up something about those visions tonight. And the Apostle also after that conversion, because it was so new to him, he had seen the emptiness of Judaism, and it only made him proud and haughty and conceited, but now the Gospel has humbled him. And under the blistering rays of that light that shone from glory, he was withered up. and he saw his true condition in the sight of a holy God. He says, I am the chief of sinners.
I am not least to be called an apostle. I am less than the least of all saints. Can you imagine the proud young Jews walking like that after he was saved? What a change, wasn't it? Then he had ten years of training for his remarkable work that God had called him for. He was in Arabia. Gamascus and also in Jerusalem and in Syria or Philistia. And I'm going to read you some of his training with a hand. Over in Galatians one, it says this in verse fifteen, but when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace, to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the heathen or the Gentiles.
Immediately I concurred not with flesh and blood. I didn't run to any human source of education. Neither went I up to Jerusalem, to them which were apostles before me. But I went into Arabia, into seclusion, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But out of the apostles saw I none, say James the Lord's brother. Now the things which I write unto you behold before God I line off. Afterward I came into the regions of Syria and Solitia, and was unknown by faith unto the churches of Judea which were in Christ.
but they had heard only that he which persecuted us in time past now creases the faith which once he destroyed and a glorified God in you. Now here is that remarkable experience of the Apostle Paul had. Turn completely around, and remember he wasn't a robber, he wasn't a thief, he wasn't a gangster, he wasn't involved. He was very religious, extremely religious. But he didn't have trite. There's a great difference. People can travel all over the world and don't think that everybody in the world are atheists. They do not believe in God.
There's more of the world that have religion than there are atheists. Even outside the communist bloc which claim to be their atheists, yet there are some countries under the influence of Moscow. and also PT, where they still have their God, their religion. You see them everywhere. They have a religion of some sort, but then religion is not Christ. Christ is essential to your getting to heaven, and the Apostle Paul was up to his neck in religion, the religion of the Jews.
a religion given to them by God at Mount Sinai. Why did God give them a religion? To show them they couldn't keep it. He gave them the law because they asked for it. And God says, you want a religion? My standard? Here they are. And they broke all those standards in the Ten Commandments. It's not religion, men and women need. It's the Redeemer. because the Lord is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. And this is what happened to the Apostle Paul on that Damascus Road. And so you have the Apostles, and how he was turned around and then his wonderful ten years of training, when he went into these places I referred to, to be closeted with God.
He wanted to know what God had to say in his word. He couldn't get away from the influence of power, the penetrating light of the Damascus experience. And he wasn't going to go up to those men who accompanied with the Lord Jesus. He's going to get what he wants right from a risen Christ in heaven. That's where he got his information. How wonderful that was. And this apostle was a great missionary. He established many churches. He made three missionary journeys. It was on the second one. He came to Corinth and started the great work there. And in all his travels, his trials and crimes, he had one incentive in life, and that was to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
He said, I am willing to die for Jesus Christ, for me to live as Christ. This was his one incentive. What a revolution. What a turn about faith, from religion to the Redeemer. He was a hard-skirting preacher too. Three of his sermons in the Acts are modeled, modeled sermons for all creatures of all time how Paul got to the root of this. He spoke to one congregation all June and also He's spoken on another occasion to Gentiles and Marville.
And then before the Council, these sermons are deserving of the study of any man who wants to know what to preach and how to preach. The Apostle Paul was a master of the pulpit. Not only so, he was a gifted writer. He wrote fourteen out of the books that we had. Thirty-seven books in the New Testament, and Paul wrote fourteen of them. Now in the Old Testament we read about great characters like Moses and like Abraham and like Elijah and David and Solomon. I believe in the New Testament, some may say John was the greater writer, no.
The Apostle Paul is the greatest character and writer of the New Testament, giving us fourteen epistles. Letters by which to this day we can find out how to be saved and how the Church is to be governed and controlled. All this information was revealed from the risen Christ to the Apostle Paul and Arch. It wasn't a handout. He got it from the risen Christ, so it's impossible for him to be wrong. And these Ephesians, they bring out Paul's character, his intensity, his originality, his fleshness, his depth, his boldness, and his strength, and bring out also the largeness of his heart.
And as you read these Ephesians, you see all these things on earth coming to the surface. What a great man the Apostle Paul was. The Apostle Paul, according to his physical appearance, evidently was not impressive. He says, my bodily presence is content but weak, and my speech is content. In other words, for many people in those days, they wouldn't look upon Paul as a great orator, not like a father. They wouldn't look upon Paul as a giant of a man and an attractive man with a pleasing personality.
No! Not that. far as we are concerned, or far as we know, according to some Jewish Jewish historian, he was small with crooked legs, yet a vigorous physique, partly born with close-set eyes and a crooked nose. That's the story that's left behind of the Apostle Paul. Get in that little man. That little character, the Apostle Paul, you have a man who turned the world upside down. In other words, he changed the course of history. And I know one thing, the Apostle Paul knew what it was to suffer for Christ.
His little bark sailed the rough and choppy waters of the seas of persecution. He knew what it was to be beaten, to be stoned, to be baptized. He knew what it was to suffer, siphon. He knew what it was that all is experienced until they went out on the Appian way. There his noble head rolled from his feral box, showing his final devotion to Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul is one of the greatest figures in history. is the man who want to speak about relative to this book of Provinces.
A remarkable man that God chose, a chosen vessel, that he might bring his message unknowingly to the church's end. But today, some of these cities in your Bible are buried, although those who are doing some excavating are uncovering a lot of these ancient cities and finding out many things. But there's one thing that's not buried. Although many of those cities were buried and have been, there's something that's not buried. And that's the Ephesus. That the Apostle Paul wrote, there are lots until this day.
And if you want to know how church order is to be carried out, you'll find it in the Ephesus. Especially in First Corinthians, it's the charter of the church. You wouldn't know how to conduct the church unless you had these wonderful leaders. Now let us think of the metropolis. You notice the land now the metropolis of that forum, a chief city situated on a narrow isthmus, a neck of land connecting the Grecian mainland with the province of Achaia. It was a capital city. A citadel, who could imagine this, it had a citadel of two hundred feet high that was able to guard all approaches to Corinth.
It was a flock. It was situated in such a way, between east and west. Corinth became the commercial centre of Greece with a population of four hundred pounds. It was exceeded only by Rome. and Alexander and Antioch of Syria. It was the fourth largest city in the Roman Empire. And this is Corinth. Its population was composed of Jews and the Greeks and the Romans. There was a Jewish colony there in Corinth. They will be saying something about the next. And here it is, the great trade center between Rome and Asia. Enormous wealth, a city of common.
It tries itself and its culture issues a philosophy, but at the same time, this city of Corinth was a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah, the very seat of the base form of worship, a worshipping Venus, and also actually worshipping impurity. This is some of the things we find out about Corinth. Racially, it was mostly Gentile, except for this little colony of Jews.Socially, it was a bunch of zero. Quite interesting to note what God says about the people in Corinth.
And I want to read this for you over in chapter six and verses nine and eleven. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? No, it's in chapter... And verses twenty-six and twenty-eight. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty men, not many noble. Now he's talking about those in Corinth, the kind of people that God chose there. He says there were not many wise, not many mighty, not many noble, that God had chosen the foolish. There were a lot of foolish people there in Corinth.
the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God had chosen the weak things, there were a lot of weak people there, weak things in the world to confound the things which are mighty, and based, there were an awful lot of base people, base things of the world and things which are despised, have God chosen ye and things which are not. There are a lot of zeros. No, nothing. God has chosen these to bring to naught things of power that no flesh is glory in its Son. Why did God select this city to be one of the first and one of the greatest in the history of the church?
God is going to do this in a city of learning with their great philosophy. God is going to sing it out, the very faces. the most ignorant, and the most weak, and the most wicked, they might learn this lesson, that salvation is not in education. Salvation is not in riches. Salvation is not an earthly prestige. Salvation is for the weak, the lost, the helpless, and the undone, those who can glory in anything but the grace of God and Savior.
How wonderful that no great can glory in his church. Now I'm glad it doesn't say not any rich, not anyone, not anyone. The Queen Victoria said one day to one who visited her, her sister, and the Queen Victoria was a sister. She said, I thank God for the little letter M. Why, Your Highness, why do you thank God to that little L. M. Because he says, I read in the Bible not many nobles are caught. It doesn't say not any. For she was of mobility.
She was a queen. And there are few here and there who really get saved by the grace of God. And some rich people get saved. Some wise people get saved. But he says here not many. This church in Corinth was composed of what was looked upon the day down in order. And out of their population of four hundred thousand, half of them were slaves, snakes. This is the city, the city of Corinth, where the Apostle went to preach the gospel of the grace of God. This city changed sports centers, where they held the Olympics at that time.
The very name became synonymous for luxury and dissipation. And on its summit, and I want you to get this, on its summit there was a temple called the Act of Corinth, and they worshipped Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, where one thousand prostitutes acted as priestesses to entertain strength, and they looked upon fornication. as something sacred to consecrate to their idol, and they didn't look upon it what it really is, as God sees it in the sight. God looks upon that as the behavior, the ugly behavior of the human heart, the desecration of the body.
Yet here they are taking all these wicked, vile things, faceless, things unfingled. and they turn those things into acts of worship to their gods, demons, and demons. How far and how much more appalling can man get? This city was written to the children. Yet at the same time there were lots of cults and coming from Egypt and Asia. They thrived there. Now here is this city of course. And what a challenge to the gospel.
They have all their learning, their philosophy, all kinds of cults. Here they have their temple and their so-called worship of this wicked vile goddess. All this was going on under the name of religion. Is it any wonder God selects Corinth, just to show his marvelous grace, how he'll shoot And as he said in the days of his press, speaking to those scribes and Pharisees, he said, the publicans and the harlots went to the kingdom of heaven before you white-robed priests and scribes and Pharisees.
You're trusting in your religion. You're trusting in your good life. You're trusting in your ritual. Christ says, poor publicans and harlots went to heaven before you. So they're willing to admit they're sinners, they're lost and undone. And you won't. You trust your own good works and good deeds to take to death. Just by a week, I was visiting a man in the hospital. He said to me, he said, Brother Wilson, I've never told a lie in my life. He said, I've never stolen a thing in my life.
I've never done anybody any harm in my life, and I believe. That's what he's trusting to take him to hell. I was quick to point out the thing that all has sinned in some sort of a glory of God. A man's got to be saved his drug life. We'll not save him. He must be born again, or never went to heaven. There's only but one for the other, ransom and for the other. So you see how wicked this city was. What message was it that God used to reach these Corinthians?
If I did in chapter fifteen, Paul says I declared unto you the gospel, that which I also received. how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. That is the message that Paul went into Corinth to preach. And tonight we'll go into more of his entrance into this city, how lonely and depressed he was. He looked at that wicked, godless city, and he had one weapon. He had the gospel. He had the gospel.
He's going to challenge those places of higher learning. He's going to challenge those six rules of aniquity. He's going to challenge all of my doubts. He's got one level. That's the gospel. He said, I am not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. Let us look at... Paul in contrast to Paul. You have the Apostle Paul at one end of the spectrum. You have that Corinthian city at the other. Now here's the Apostle Paul. What kind of a message could he have?
Then his own need, I was able to meet the need of these Corinthians. It says concerning Paul over Philippians three, Paul... had a covenant dignity. He said, I was circumcised the eight days. Racial dignity, he said, I'm of the stock of Israel. A tribal dignity, I'm of the tribal benton. An ancestral dignity, a Hebrew of the Hebrew. A religious dignity, I'm a Pharisee, a moral dignity, I'm blameless for touching the law. He had the dignity of fanaticism. He was willing to put to death. will suffer death and death for what he believed, and he's going to put to death anybody who opposed him.
He was a fanatic for what he believed. Some people say, well, I don't go to church because there's too many hypocrites in the church. Well, in the things of God trained, you're going to be either one or two, a fanatic or a hypocrite. Fanaticism means you're all alone for what you believe. A hypocrite is a person who lives and behaves the very opposite of what he wants you to think he is. And if I've got to choose between a fanatic and a hypocrite, I'll be a fanatic anyway. That is, I want to be fanatic toward the gospel. I want to let people know where I stand.
Today the world wanders so far from God or a man goes in, quotes a couple of scriptures, and tells them how... He found Christ, he lived a different life. Here, you're a fanatic. What this world needs, what all of it needs are a number of people who are fanatic for Jesus Christ. I mean all of it for Jesus Christ. Paul says, I'm a fool for Christ. Yes, it's nice to be all of it for Jesus Christ. And Paul was all of it. He knew what it was to persecute people because they differed with him. But his beautiful castle trembled and cracked at the feet of a pleasant glorified Christ on the Damascus roof.
Here is Paul in this wonderful edifice that he builds up with all these dignities I've mentioned. He traced it all back to what man could step forth and say I've got a third background in that. Here is the Apostle Paul. Then he got into the presence of God. Now when the Lord Jesus tried with a shaft of light shone down on that lonely figure, although others were with them they saw enough or heard not the voice. The Apostle said, All that I was, all that I thought I was, clumped and became a dumb.
He mischieered. He was with it up. by a shaft of light from the presence of the glorified rock. Christ, who I mentioned a while ago, he said, I am the chief of sinners, and not me to be called an apostle, unless and the least of all things. In other words, Christ died for his sins according not to what a man is, not according to your feet. Christ died for my sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried, he rose again the third day, according to the scripture. And this was a message of Paul's face.
Horrible! He challenged that city. He challenged it with those few words. Christ died for our sins, according to the scripture. And there he rose again the third day, according to the scripture. Now there's a man in his background. The message of the gospel reached him. Can it reach these Corinthians? Here is this place, Corinth, the principal trade routes of the Roman Empire. Through its harbors flowed the commerce of the world. But third streets flowed vices, third corruption and shame of the eastern, westward world.
It very alleys where the sewers carrying rotting bodies, diseased minds, and left lives, the whole city with its idolatrous lustful, shameless worship on a heathen goddess. This is Cork, a veritable cesspool in the spite of God. Here's Cork. Here's Cork. That zealous, religious, dedicated young Jew, the other end of the spectrum is silly. Films, grants, and not to make one come. And yet the same message that reached the Apostle, which crossed.
And in Corinth and her surrounding, there were assemblies, churches planted beneath the shadows of the shame Yes, it was quite a shift. And the only thing that could make the change, Carl says, and this was what you were. They're writing in the books of Paul. But he says, you're lost. Search for some of you, but you're lost. How did they get lost from their sins? Through the blood of Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ God's son sinned about and all of you.
I care not where you go east, west, north, or south. I care not what religion you bring up or what condition land in you. There's one answer from the Bible. Jesus Christ says, I am the way, the truth, and the light. He's the way. And you've got to tread this way if you're going to heaven. Oh, how he loves to feel the pressure of your feet of stink on his pathway. I'm the Lord. I'm the truth. You'll never get to heaven without the truth.
No error ever enters heaven. And you get plenty of it today, knocking at your doors and peddling their literature. They may see decent fields. So were some people in Paul. Locks of error, all kinds of cults in Corinth, but they've got to have the truth. I am the way, the truth. Pilate says, what is truth? The truth stood before him in the person of Tracton. And he says, I am the life. You can't get to heaven without the way of Tracton. The truth, Tracton, the life.
And that light is in Jesus Christ. He that hath the Son hath lightened. And he that hath not the Son hath not. And so from the one end of the spectrum, first of all, standing, outstanding in his religion, his field, the tradition of the Father. I built to him a light, a stone. Yet he crumbled. His castle he had built and was covered up. And toward it anyway, come moved, as he saw there isn't Christ. And so these Corinthians come from another direction. A violent, filthy, stupid, sickly bunch of people.
They too can be reached only at the cross. The rich and the poor meet together at the cross. And at one place, there are two places where all people meet. One is, you all meet, three in fact. You meet together at birth. You're all born alone. Victim's birth was born alone. Another place you meet together is of death. You've all got to die. Victim's and cruel, stricken and rotten. But the place to determine how you're going to die is the other place where there's level ground and the whole human race meets and that's at the cross.
all of sin and come short of the glory of God. That's the thing the doctrine brought that is going to be said. See the emptiness, the unreality of your religion. That's Paul's son. The Corinthians son. See the answer to all your heart, lungs and your knees, found in Jesus Christ, not in the lost. of us death. It is. I am the Lord. The truth and the divine. No man comes under the Father but by me.
You know Jesus Christ of God. We've given you the man, the metropolis, and the message. Tonight we'll be continuing this study on this great epistle of the Trinity. This morning I want to ask you, friends, You know the Lord Jesus. You know him as you're safe. We have some coffee meetings up in Burlington. One man, he was the best cabinet maker in town. He worked for one of the men in this chapel. And Kirk said, I wish that man would get saved. He said, I've been inviting him. He's educated. I hope he gets saved.
He sat behind beside Kirk Dixon one night, about the third week of the meeting. And at the end of the meeting, I said, now if any of you would like to be saved, you know you're lost, you'd like to trust Christ, you may come up and tell him. And he hadn't started singing yet. He says, I've put this off too long. And he rose up and he came up with one. And I spoke to him, his name was Griffith. Phillips, well, Phillips. Now this time after we'll chat with him, he had ended the first verse. As the first verse ended, I said, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr.
Phillips tells me, and he was saying, I shall turn around and tell the audience yourself. I never did that before in my life. I thought if I'll ever do it again. He turned around, and the tears running down his face, he put up his hand, and he said, I accepted Jesus Christ the night, so I've got all to win. I'm nothing to lose. He was to say, tears ran down many other sheep. And friend, you've got to make that decision. Jesus Christ, as my personal Savior, I will all win, and nothing to lose.
Father in heaven, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, thy son, we come before thee, we thank thee for thy word. We ask you to bless it to all our hearts. We pray for any who run the cave this morning, who know not this Christ, the one the Apostle Paul met on the Damascus Road, on his lightless cave. Years later, he willingly walked to the executioner's flock. He laid down his light. for the one who lay down his life for him at San Luis. We thank thee for the devotion of the great apostles. We thank thee we have a lesson here for all of us who are saved.
To live for Christ, only when life can soon be passed, and only what's done for Christ will last. Do pray, for someone unsaved today, and part in our Lord Jesus Christ, even now, in the afternoon of days. out of my bondage, sorrow, and I, Jesus, I come, Jesus, I come, into thy kingdom, gladness, and light, Jesus, I come to thee. That's your will, that you trusted the treason. I'm not going to ask you to turn around and tell the congregation to come up and tell me.