Division and sectarianism are the primary issues addressed in It on 1 Corinthians, stemming from the Corinthian church's tendency to align themselves with human leaders like Paul, Apollos, and Peter, rather than solely with Christ. The sermon emphasizes that Christ is not divided and that loyalty belongs only to Him, as He is the one who died for all believers. It argues that the divisions in Corinth, characterized by following man-made names, ordinances, and methods, are a direct contradiction to the unity Christ desires for His church and a primary reason for the world's disbelief. The core lesson is that true Christian unity is found in submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which equips believers with the ability and message to glorify Him.
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of Jesus Christ. I want you to notice how many times the name of the Lord Jesus, all three of his names are used. There you have two called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ, through the will of God and Thosthenes, our brothers, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, the then that are sanctified in Christ Jesus. There are two of his titles again. Called to be saints, with all and in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. There are three of his titles.
Both theirs and ours. I might just mention this fact. Someone recently was telling me that a preacher was answering a question of one of his members about a woman's participation in meetings, public meetings, and She referred to Corinthians. Well, he said the official of Corinthians was written for the Corinthians in that day. It didn't apply today. That just applied to the Corinthians and a lot of disorder in the church at Corinth in that day. Well, if you're going to play that way with the Word of God, why do they speak on the fifteenth chapter of the first Corinthians on Easter morning, where you have the resurrection?
But to show how you can let's handle the Word of God, it tells you here, plainly in verse two unto the church of God, which is at Corinth, also to them not our sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and of every place then and afterwards. This is applicable to the Christians today. So you couldn't say the whole book of Corinthians belonged to the Corinthians of that day on not any church's sin. This applies to all the people of God in every place, all those who call upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, verse four, I thank my God on your behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ, that in everything ye are enriched by him, in all utterance and in all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ, was confirmed in you, so that she come behind in no gift, waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. There it is full title. Who shall also confirm you unto the end that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?
God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. In the next verse we want to read it, now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. So, so the prominence given to the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in these opening verses. Now, after the Apostle Paul left Corinth, he went there. And undoubtedly, he wasn't there many days before he found a godly couple there.
And he stayed with them, Priscilla and Crilla. They were tent makers. And it wasn't long after that, before Timothy and Titus came along. They came along for Silas, but Timothy and Silas came along. Then we find someone else that got saved, or the Holy Ghost already been saved. We don't know. Justice was a worshiper of God. His house joined hard to the synagogue. Now, that's a very interesting remark. His house joined hard to the synagogue. And David said in the psalm, My soul followeth hard after thee, O Lord. Now, when you think of that house joining hard to the synagogue, I understand it was joined right up against the synagogue.
So tightly knit to the synagogue that they couldn't get a razor blade to there. David says, My soul follow us hard after thee, O God. Are we walking so close, or longing to walk, so close to the Lord that nothing can come in between me and the Savior? It's a nice thought to contemplate. Then again you have not only justice, but Christmas, the chief ruler of the synagogue. He was there. Then you have Apollo. That gifted man, that orator, that young man who could hold an audience, yes, he was a very gifted and able young man.
He was there. Now the Apostle Paul wasn't alone very long. He had all these others with him. So he had quite a little nucleus, a solid colonel, a solid heart for the work at Corinth. And then it spread out, and they came from all parts of the city, no doubt, and an assembly was formed. Then Paul left with Priscilla and Aquila and went to Ephesus. He was in Ephesus for three years, and while there he began getting some very disturbing letters. Not only so, he had the information from the family, and he doesn't mind calling names. Here he tells us who it was, the house of Chloe.
He tells about that in verse eleven. He hears from the House of Chloe what was going on in Corinth. Quite a number of things were going on, and we're going to mention them in a few minutes. But God designates that what the early churches were called, and one of the first things he liked into about is this division, and this sectarianism that had crept into the church in Corinth in such a short time, only a matter of three years. And so he starts off with this division, this sectarianism. What the Bible designates what the churches are called.
And I think there are three texts that make it very, very plain. I think we mentioned them last week earlier, but I'm going to mention them again in chapter eleven and verse sixteen of this very epistle. He speaks of the churches of God. And that's in the plural. At the beginning here of this chapter, the church of God. He's speaking of all the Church of God as well as that locally, but here he says the churches of God over in the eleventh chapter. And he says the churches of Christ in Romans, sixteen and sixteen. And then the third expression, the churches of the saints in First Corinthians, fourteen, thirty-three.
Now think of those three expressions. He says the churches of God, the churches of Christ, and the churches of the saints. Here you find them, and they're bound by an organic unity. All the churches of God. All the churches of the saints. All the churches of the churches of Christ. And I'm not referring to any denomination today who goes by that name. At that time there were spoken of, the churches of God, and the churches of Christ, and the churches of the saints. There is no conflict there. because all of those expressions embrace every child of God in the world.
That wasn't in any way dividing up the church. So it's a different situation to what you have here in Corinth. There was a division. So you find them bound together, all these expressions, bind all God's people together in one organic unity, not in an organizational unity, nor in an amalgamated unity. nor in a federated unity, a central board of control or authority. There's nothing like that in the Bible. Your Bible plainly teaches a local church is to be self-sufficient. It's to look to the Lord.
It doesn't get orders from any other place or any head office. And no organ, published organ, to pass out all kinds of information and lay down all rules and regulations. The Bible knows nothing of that. And these churches in the New Testament, every one, if they carried out the Word of God would be exactly alike. You'd see the same procedure as laid down in the Scriptures. Now, if you were to get all the Christians together and all, but I think I mentioned something like this last week. supposing it were possible. And what church would you select to have them gathered? I think possibly the stadium would be necessary.
And every born-again Christian in Albany gathered at the stadium on a certain day. And let us go through the New Testament, and when you hear something you don't like or don't agree with, you're at liberty to leave. Supposing that would have happened. And we'll start where Paul starts here. He jumped right in, as you'll notice in verse ten. He jumped right into the situation of a division. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no division or schisms among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind.
Now, the Bible says having the mind of Christ. If every Christian had the mind of Christ, there'd be no division. There'd be no sectarianism. None whatever. If every Christian had the mind of Christ, Christ is not going to tell one group, you do this, or you can believe this, and this group over here, you can believe something else that would bring in conflict. Christ has one line of truth. for his people to follow. And supposing we did what I've just mentioned. And so you got up and you started with your Bible open and said, Folks, I'm going to speak on sectarianism.
And I'm going to call names. Now, Paul on this occasion, he said, I got this information from the House of Chloe. He didn't mind saying where he got his information from. And I'm quite certain he had such confidence in the House of Chloe that he knew he'd get the truth. And he got plenty. For if they told him all that he refers to in this epistle, he got an earful. And he got it from the House of Chloe. And I'm sure that the House of Chloe, if anybody went to them and said, Why did you tell the Apostle Paul all that? It has stood up and said, Because.
I was burdened about it, and I have a responsibility. And I told them the truth. And if you don't believe it, look it over yourself. Here's a man and his wife and his house told not afraid to stand up and be counted. And that's what we need today. Many women will stand up and be counted. And so he goes right after them about this chism in their midst. Today we have people following names, man-made names, also ordinances and methods. Churches called after these three things.
Ordinances, men, and methods. And so you find these verses, and I'm going to refer to them, in verse eleven. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now this I say that every one of you sails, I am of Paul, and I of Apollo, and I of Cephas, or Peter, and I of Christ. Yes, there were four men, and they had their followers. There were those who said, Well, I'll tell you, I like Apollo.
I like his delivery. I like his personality. I like his presentation. I like Apollo. He's my choice. And there are the Apollo sites there. Then the young man says, well, I like Peter. I like Peter. I have a little Jewish background myself. And I like Peter. I like his orthodoxy. I like Peter. And so there were those who followed Peter. And then, of course, there was another one there, and that was the Apostle himself. I like Paul. I like Paul. Oh, the others said, you all wrong. I like Christ. And they made Christ the head of a pocket.
And here were four divisions in one church, mind. Now, that's where it all began. Sectarianism began nineteen hundred years ago. And if you had four sects to begin with, then you have about four thousand now. Paul asked three very blunt questions here, and I want you to look at them. Verse thirteen, three questions. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? You see those three question marks? In other words, Paul is making this claim.
Who died for you? Who died for you to save you? Did Apollos die for you? Was Peter crucified for you? Was I crucified for you? Christ was crucified for all of us. Christ is not divided. And those who are making a part in him out of the Lord Jesus were just as bad as the rest. Christ is Lord over all his people. And the man that died for me is the man I owe my loyalty to, and his name I will follow, and no other name.
It's clear and plain right here. Is Christ divided? No. If you've got two, you've got a division. If you've got one, you've got unity. And Christ is one. and Christ is not divine. And so this is very plain, who died for you, says the Apostles. Why, the Lord Jesus died. And he died for you, Apostolites, too, Apollosites. He died for you who are following Peter. He died for you who are following me. Ah, yes, and the Lord Jesus died for that other party, too.
But the Lord Jesus Christ is not of the divider of men. He seeks to maintain unity. He prayed to his father in John's seventeenth, Father, that they all may be one, as thou father art in me and I and be, that they all may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. He says this, there is one thing that will convince the world that I came from God, and that is the unity. No wonder the world doesn't believe. in the deity of Jesus Christ. Because of the way the church has split and divided. There are those down there, this occasion the Apostle Paul was being followed because he baptized people.
And when he heard this, immediately stopped. He said, I'll baptize no more. So these who were following the Apostle Paul, I suppose they would call them Baptists because they were following the Apostle and he immersed people. No, Paul says, I won't stand for that. No, all of these men were free. Peter, Apollos, and Paul could have said, now this is my opportunity to be a leader. This is my opportunity to be looked up to. This is my opportunity to make a name for myself and have followed. I have a group that follows me, still looks to me. I'll be the idol.
Apollos, if that sounds good to me. Paul can say, that sounds good to me. No, it sounds devilish to the Apostle Paul. He doesn't want such a position. He says, I want the Lord's people united. And if I, my baptizing people, they're going to follow me and make me the head of their party, I'll baptize no more. And he says, God did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel. I've got something ahead of baptizing people, although he believes in baptism. And he emphasizes baptism. He blazes with all his heart for them to be baptized. He teaches that in Romans and later on in the Epistle.
But he says, if you're going to make me the head of your party, because I baptize people, I'll not do it. I've got something that is essential to you, you're getting to heaven, and that's the gospel. After you get saved, you obey the Lord. Don't obey Peter. Don't obey Apollos. Don't obey me. You obey the Lord. And so here you have the situation in court. And do we not have it today? We certainly do. And you think of this situation I've been referring to. If you had all the Christians together, if you started out with what I just mentioned, Now, all of you who have another name that you gathered to, other than the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or you're naming yourself after an ordinance, Baptist, you might as well call yourself the Lord's Supperist.
There were two names, two ordinances given, baptism on the Lord's Supper. The Lord never intended his people to be gathered to an ordinance. And others' methods. The Methodists, the reason they're called Methodists, is because they had Methodists, John and Charles Weston. God never intended that. Paul says, who was crucified for you? John the Baptist wasn't crucified for any man. And God never intended that John the Baptist would turn over in his grave or get his head back, the tired, cut off. He knew anybody was going to make a denomination out of him. No. There's one name and one name only that we're to be gathered to and to be called by, and that's the man whose name was mentioned so many times in these eight verses, the man who died for me and goes again.
Mohammedan has his followers. Plato has his followers. A lot of other men have their followers. Today they're finding this fellow Armstrong. Look at the following he's got. you can turn on your radio and find all kinds of men that have got their follows. But there's one good test which one's right, and that's the party or the denomination, the head of which rose from the dead. Muhammad, you didn't rise from the dead. Plato, you didn't rise from the dead. And all these heads of these other great movements, when they died, they stayed there.
The Lord Jesus Christ was the only one who rose from the dead. He's the head in heaven alive, and he's over his body, the church. And that church is one. And there's no better name than gathered in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you can find a name better than that, I'd like to know it. His name is preeminent, and no man dare challenge the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. In all things he must have the preeminent. And if I were to preach this to the stadium full of people, all Christians and all of them, I have about half left now.
One half had already left for the exit. But then you could go to something else. Let's start with... something else that you might be interested in. The Bible teaches once you're saved, you're saved forever. Once you're born again, you can't lose yourself. Now you lose a few more. This very passage tells you that you're saved forever. In verse two, under the Church of God, which is at Corinth, of them that are sanctified in or set apart in Christ Jesus. called to be a saint with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.
And then in verse eight, he makes it plain, who also confirm you unto the end, that he may be blameless in the day of the Lord Jesus. God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. He kept keeping you unto the end. I don't know any better evidence you want from this official. Look what's going on in Corp. If you've got one look at Corp and what you read later on, you'd say, I don't believe any of them are saved. What a man. Just think of what's going on there in Corp.
And those people call themselves Christians. Don't forget the horrible background these people had. An undoubtedly after the Apostle Paul left, the ministry for some reason wasn't reaching their heart, and they began to coup. They broke up into these factions, and this began causing the body to bleed until it became anemic. And when it was in that terrible dying state, the Apostle Paul gets the letters, the news, and he writes the letters only three years after. He said, old people weren't even saved.
What does Paul say about them in his opening verses? And remember all this that happened when he wrote this letter. He says, Paul called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Thosthenes, our brother, onto the church of God which is at Corinth. He doesn't question their salvation. 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 theirs and ours. And he starts out so graciously, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when you start talking about Once you're saved, you're saved, whatever, you'd lose a lot of your audience.
Now let's get into something else in the Bible. And if you'd like to get rid of the Church of Christ, you'll take up the Book of Revelation. They'll make for the Exodus. But they don't like the Book of Revelation. They don't like the truth of the second coming of Christ. So they're gone. Well, we'll take up something else then. we'll take up water baptism. Well, you preach baptism by immersion, which we certainly do believe. The sprinklers and the pourers, they make for the exit. So your crowd's getting down all the time. Then we'll take up something else. Suppose we take up no pledging, you're not demanded to pledge in the Bible, and no begging for money, or giving salaries to the preachers, or taking money from the unconverted, No, God says, I want my people to live by faith.
Well, you lose a few more. The Bible teaches that we're to live by faith, and the Lord's people are to give the money when they come together on Sunday morning to remember the Lord Jesus Christ. So you take up the money problem. The only time you read about a collection is in Corinthians chapter sixteen, one and two, concerning the collection. on the first day of the week, and that's the day they came together to break bread. Well, we want to self-mouse now, we got through that. What about the subject of discipline? Let's speak on this. Anybody in your church gets drunk, anybody in your church, they're carousing, and they get by with it, nothing said, not to mention such things as adultery, adultery, gambling, Where would they start?
Where would they end if they carried out discipline today? One preacher's name was Cross and Greenberg. He came to our meeting one time when I was there thirty-some years ago. And that night we spoke on discipline in the church. He said to me after the meeting, he said, do you believe that? I said, it's in the Bible. Sure, I believe it. He said, I agree with you. But he says, can you practice it? I said, we do. We find out if someone is guilty of a certain sin, and if it's a sufficient magnitude to require discipline, there is a silence were put out. He said, I admire you.
He said, I couldn't do that. He said, I won't have been over there a year, and I'm getting a good salary. And he said, if I started discipline in that church, he said, I lose my job. need to tell me any big church that would start today to discipline according to the Bible. And I'll tell you, there'd be some thin audiences. You could start with those who are unsaved. Would you mind getting out of the membership? Where's the preachers going to stand in the pulpit today and lay down the scriptures? No unsafe people to be in this membership. You're just a weakness to the testimony.
Dr. Charles Stevens? Dean of the Baptist Piedmont College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I was very friendly with him when I was up there. He said to me one day, he says, Well, Lester, I came here to Salem Baptist Church. We had fifteen hundred members. Of course, he said that I didn't know much about it, but he said, I've been here a few or four years now. I've got a chance to size up this membership. And he said, I want to say this. He said, if I were to lose, or rather if I were to have my way, he said, I would open the back door to the church and let all this membership out and then go out the front and open the front door and have a good conversation with everyone that came in before I'd admit them in the membership.
He said, if one third of this church is saved, born again, he said, that's a good estimate. And he should have one-third of that other that's left, were living for Christ. He said that would be a good person. He boiled it down to this. He believed that five hundred people in that congregation were not even Christians. And he said about another five hundred are not living for the Lord at all. And that was his appraisal of his own church membership. And he was about to live alive today, eighty-three, four years of it. He said, it's a pitiful thing.
He said, I can get up the minister of the Word of God. He said, and then I visit them in their home and they hardly know a thing. They don't seem to have any spiritual response nor are they going in graceful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. And one could go on and lots of other things. Now here's a Lulu. You preach that out of what you have left in the stadium, woman's place in the church. Now you'll see some make for the other exit. but it's right in the book. What are you going to do with it? And you could go on for that. Worship. Take up the worship meeting, breaking bread every Sunday morning.
And only those who are saved by grace and found in their life and doctrine are admitted to break bread. And that's the heart, the kernel of your church. That's where people are received into fellowship, and that's where they're put out of fellowship when they're disciplined. He says, put away from yourselves that wicked person who is such a one known not to eat. In the New Testament churches, they were received at the worship meeting when they broke bread. When they were in fellowship with God, walking according to the Word of God, they were received into fellowship. When they were guilty of disobeying the word to the point of discipline, they were put away from the worship meeting.
They could come to the other. But the worship meeting is the place where people were received in, where they were put out. Is that carried out today? These are the New Testament principles you have in your Bible. And you could go on to other things, such as eternal punishment. Those who don't believe in the eternal punishment of the wicked, oh yes, you believe in heaven. But do you believe in the eternal punishment of the wiki? No. Can you imagine how many would be left out of that stadium full? The time you get through these and there are other things. Laying it on the line. The other week up in Greensboro at the Big Greensboro Preachers Conference, Brother McKay, known to some of you, was here for this.
The mortgage burning. He knows he's not here for long. Seems we get to meet her all the time. He stood up, he said, Dylan, I haven't much longer this day. I know. But he said, I'm more convinced now than at any time in my life that God wants me to go according to this book. And he says, this book means exactly what it says. And it says what it means. He says, let us stop playing around with the word of God. That's a man who's facing eternity in reality.
And I may be facing eternity tonight than so may you. And let us obey this book because we're going to give an account to God, the author of this book. Here you have what the Bible teaches. Now you'll notice Paul's thanksgiving. And this is in... First four, he begins his thanksgiving. I thank my God always on your behalf. You're expecting to say I'm just disappointed. You've disgraced his name. You've made a mess of things. No, he didn't. And yet he knew all that had been going on and what was going on.
He said, I thank my God always on your behalf. For the grace of God which is given you objects of grace by Jesus Christ, that in everything ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge, sick of these remarks. Now these words that he mentions there were called to be saints. Not everyone's called to be a preacher, or to be a missionary, or to be a hymn writer, or to be a musician, or an elder. but all God's people are called to be saints. That's clear.
God may call certain men for special work, but all God's people are called to be saints. We never know what sinners we are until we try to be saints. And then we find out what a sinful nature we have. And the only answer to this sinful nature within and this wicked world around us is found in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. But only as Christ is living in me, and I'm subject to His Lordship. That's one thing. In the book of Corinthians, first and second chapter, books of Corinthians, I went through Mark in Corinth, ninety times the word Lord is mentioned, which means His Lordship.
His Lordship. That's the teaching. of the whole epistles, both epistles of the Book of Corinthians. If this assembly or church had been subject to his lordship, which means his authority, they wouldn't have been in the mess they were in. And what he's trying to do is to get them back to the lordship of Jesus Christ, that one mind, the mind of Christ, one master, and all his servants get the same orders. He doesn't say you can get sprinkled by water for baptism and you can go and get immersed. No. One thing, one baptism.
I'm not by immersion. He doesn't say you can carry on this way in your church and you can do the other over here. He's got one message for his people. That's the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And he lays it on the line, his Lordship. And only when we bow to that Lordship are we going to glorify him and be victorious in our own lives. And then he says, grace and peace. And now that word enriched in verse five. Enriched in all utterance. What a statement. He says, you're enriched in all utterance. That means ability to speak and a message to speak. He says, well, you've got ability.
And you've got a message. Why don't you utter it? If you people would only get back to what you were saved through. How did you get saved? Through the gospel. I preached Christ unto you, and you accepted that message. And you had the ability to give it up. What shut your mouth? He did run well. Who hindered you? Yes. One message and ability to give it up. You know, Christian, you've got a message. And it's the message that you heard. And God wants you to pass it on, and he's given you the ability to do it. A.P. Gibbs said one time, he preached on the gift, stirring up the gift of God which is in you.
And he said, after the meeting, a man came up to me, said, Brother Gibbs, I don't agree with you tonight. Of course, some young men have got enough blast to do that. To an older brother. He said, I don't agree with you tonight. Brother Gibbs said, why would I say? If I don't believe every man has the gift of gab, I don't believe God thinks that all these people won't preach. A young man, he says, you just stir up what gift you have. And he said, I weighed him aside, talking to some of the Christians, and after a while I got out to the door, and he said, outside, in front of the chapel in Augusta, Stephanie Chapel. He said, here was this same young man with about ten other young men about his age, and, boy, he said he would lay it on lock.