Establishes that the destiny and security of the church rest solely on the persevering faithfulness of God, not on human organizations or denominations. It highlights that God's call and gifts are irrevocable, evidenced by His calling believers into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ. The message then pivots to the essential unity of the church, emphasizing that true unity is not uniformity or man-made union but is grounded in apostolic doctrine, Christian brotherhood, and God-centeredness, urging believers to speak the same thing and direct all aims toward God's glory.
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morning to First Corinthians chapter one. And we want to begin our reading at verse eight. First Corinthians chapter one and verse eight. Where we read who and the who of verse eight is our Lord Jesus Christ of verse seven. 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 you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 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 divisions among you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.
For it has 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 saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas, and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you but Christus and Gaius, lest they should say that I had baptized in my own name. And I baptized also the householdest upon us. Besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.
For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Let's pray. Now let us again go to the Lord in prayer. Loving Father, we would use the language of the hymn writer as we ask for thy special help. Speak, Lord, in the stillness.
While we wait on thee, hush my heart to listen in expectancy. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The first seventeen verses of First Corinthians chapter one provide a firm foundation upon which the remaining part of the epistle rests. It seeks, or the apostle seeks in the first seventeen verses, to correct their pervasive man-centeredness and to establish their hearts upon the grace of God.
Now these verses, the first seventeen verses of First Corinthians one, they give us a picture of what the church of Jesus Christ consists. First of all, you have the foundation of the church, and it's found in that word apostle. Paul called an apostle. And the foundation of the church is apostolic doctrine. Then second, you are the origin of the church. The origin of the church is the grace that was given them in Christ Jesus. You have that in verse three. And then you have the constitution of the church.
You have that in verse two. They are sanctified in Christ Jesus. And they are called saints. And they call upon God. So they are sanctified, they have been called by God, and they call upon God. Then the character of the church is given to us. Its character is one of thanksgiving and a preparation for glory, a waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now beginning in verse eight and verse nine, we have the church's destiny. In verse eight we read in the King James translation, who shall also confirm you unto the end.
The NIV puts it like this, he will keep you strong to the end. This is the future hope of the church of Jesus Christ. And it is grounded upon the persevering faithfulness of God. This is the foundation upon what? our hope rests. Verse nine, you see, should really begin with a word faithful. It's amazing. It is the first word in the Greek text, faithful. And yet it's the last word in the NIV in that ninth verse.
But you see, the ground on which the destiny of the church of Jesus Christ is absolutely absolutely secure, is faithful, is God who called you. Our security rests, beloved, upon the faithfulness of God. This is a hope that gives us confidence at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope is in the faithfulness of God. For at the coming of our Lord Jesus, we shall be found in a state of grace and in a state of acceptance. Now, verse eight says, He will keep you strong to the end, so that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, God's persevering faithfulness is evidenced in the calling us into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. We must consider these words. You see, it is irrevocability. of the faithfulness of God or the call of God. That becomes a ground of our assurance. It becomes a ground of the church's destiny and it is the ground of our own eternal future. The fact that what we read in Romans chapter nine, the gift and callings of God are without repentance. That is one of the verses that brings joy to my heart every time I read it.
Think of it. the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. I illustrated this a number of weeks ago in this way. And I was the director of the Youth Congress at Greenwood Hills. We had a lot of college age and senior high school young people who attended. And some of them would start pairing off on the Friday night. And you'd see them sitting together, meeting after meeting on the Saturday. And then on the Lord's day, but maybe by Tuesday or Wednesday, what was a pair or the past Saturday and Sunday was no longer a pair. Somebody else was with somebody else, you see.
And I would sit on the platform and I'd look out over the audience and I'd say to myself, someone has repented. Someone has changed their mind. It's amazing how this happens. But when did God begin to love you, my friend? Those of us who are saved by divine grace, we can use the language of Jeremiah, I have loved you with an everlasting love. How much did God know about you when he said his love upon you? He knew everything about you. He knew every time you'd fail him. He knew every time that you would be faithless and fearful in the presence of the unlawed.
How much did He know about you? All. You know, the more we tend to know about somebody, the less we like them. How much does God know about you? He knows everything. Faithfully, God who called you into the fellowship of His Son, and the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. And we can rest assured, beloved, this morning, that in that day we're going to stand in his presence unimpeachable because the calling of God is irrevocable. He will never change his mind about us.
Jude in his little epistle, I think it's verse twenty-five, he says, in that benediction, now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. Faultless in His presence. Now, Second Timothy chapter two, verse thirteen reminds us that God is faithful even when we are faithless. If we believe not, it says that He abideth faithful. Beloved, that is persevering grace. when the Lord hands over the kingdom in a coming day to the Father.
As we read, He shall, there in that passage in First Corinthians, when He shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father, He's going to do it. And in that day when He delivers up the kingdom to the Father, He's able to say to the Father, Here am I, and the children that you have given me, not one of them is lost. They're all here. Now, beloved, that is faithfulness. That is persevering grace. And, beloved, this is a blood-bought portion of every child of God.
This is our inheritance with Him. This is our birthright. We have been called by God. Eric Alexander... bulk of a newspaper article in which the question was asked is there a future for the church is there a future for the church now this article focused on all kinds of trends and all kinds of statistics and you know there are a lot of people can make a lot of sermons over trends and statistics that they find in the church today and of course the conclusion of the article was there's probably not a future for the church.
That was the way in which the article was written. But the right answer to that question, is there a future for the church? The right answer must be, it depends upon what you mean. It depends upon what you mean. If you mean a particular organization or a denomination, the answer is not necessarily. There's not necessarily a future for any particular denomination. God nowhere pledges himself to protect a particular denomination or group, not even the brethren. God hasn't pledged himself to do that.
But beloved, if you mean the Church of Jesus Christ, which is his body, the temple of God, The answer is there is nothing in the universe that is more secure than the church of Jesus Christ. Everything God is doing in the universe focuses on his church. God's sovereign purpose in the world today is concentrated on this word of the Lord. I will build my church. And all history finds its context. In the fulfillment of that statement of our Lord, I will build my church.
All history finds itself there. You see, and the rest of history is just scaffolding. You've heard my illustration that I've used of the church. It came to me last summer as I was watching the television set and the news of the hurricane that was coming in on the east coast of North Carolina. And as I saw those waves coming in and then the hurricane moved up the coast and there was a Statue of Liberty there in New York Harbor with all that scaffolding around it. And I thought to myself, what a picture of the church today. Everything that God is doing in the world is a connection with the Church of Jesus Christ.
He said, I will build my church. And all that scaffolding around the Statue of Liberty. It was all used. It was all necessary. And everything that's going on in Washington, everything that's going on in London and in the Kremlin and in Pakistan and everywhere else, it is all scaffolding for the one purpose of God. I will build my church. And this year and the Fourth of July, in that great celebration, as the lights were turned on, we saw something. We saw the Statue of Liberty with no scaffolding in all the beauty of that monument.
And beloved is a day coming when to the principalities and powers in heavenly places, God is going to take the covers off and he's going to show to the universe the church which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And there he will say, Behold, The children which God has given me are have built my church. The scripture says the destiny of the church rests upon the faithfulness of God. The church of Jesus Christ, beloved, will stand at the grave of every human organization.
We have people today who put an awful lot of emphasis on human organizations. But I'll tell you this, the Church of Jesus Christ will still be standing at the grave of every human organization for it has been established and decreed by God. So we have the destiny of the church in verses eight and nine. And now in verses ten through seventeen we have the unity of the church. Paul turns from unity and assurance in verse ten to exhortation. And verse ten is a verse of exhortation.
He says, No, I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye 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. Notice what he says. He says in verse ten, Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing. As the American Standard Version puts it, that ye all agree. The NIV puts it, that ye all agree with one another. This is an appeal for unity in the church at Corinth.
Now, beloved, we need to distinguish various words. In this unity family, there are words like unity, union, uniformity, unanimity. We need to distinguish these words. Unity, beloved, is not the same as uniformity. Oh, how often we like to rubber stamp everybody. If everybody were just like me, aren't you glad they aren't? I am. And I'm also glad that not everybody's like you. Uniformity. You see, uniformity, beloved, is not the same as unity.
For Scripture declares unto us that unity can coexist with uniformity. For in the body there are various members and they're not alike. but they're all part of that one body. And that's a great analogy in First Corinthians chapter twelve. So when we talk about unity, we're not talking about uniformity. Furthermore, unity is not the same as union. See, union can be created by man. It can even be forced by man. And you know of places where unity is enforced. And I can give you some illustration, but I'm not going to.
Unity is enforced. But beloved, I said, did I say unity is enforced? Union is enforced. But there's not unity. Unity can only be created by God. Nowhere in the Bible are we told to create it. We are told to keep it. God has created it. Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Now, what Paul is stressing here in First Corinthians one, as an essential for true Christian unity, is unanimity with regards to the truth of the gospel.
He says, No, I beseech you, brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing. That ye be perfectly minded in thought, and in mind. How important this is. He wants them to agree with one another. Why? Let there be no divisions. The word for divisions is in the Greek schisma. It's the Greek word from which we get our English word, schism. We get it from that word, divisions. Now the basis for Christian unity is founded upon apostolic doctrine.
Let ye all speak the same thing. Now there's a lot of talk today about the scandals of the church, the many divisions in the church. Now the real scandal in the church is not that we do not all worship the same way, nor that we don't all worship in the same place. nor that we don't all belong to the same organization. That isn't the scandal in the church, nor is it the scandal that we don't all have the same view of church government. That isn't the scandal either. The scandal isn't also that we don't all partake of the Lord's Supper in the same way, nor that we don't all baptize in the same way.
That is not the scandal. nor that we don't all have the same concept of the ministry. That isn't the scandal either. The real scandal is that we don't all preach the same message of salvation by grace. That, beloved, is apostolic doctrine. I beseech you, brethren, he says, that you all say the same thing. Beloved, are we settled on this? That a man is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
Are we settled on that? That's a scandal. Beloved, there are multitudes of men who stand in the pulpit across America and across other nations who deny the very gospel that the Word of God upholds. And I can give you an illustration. When I lived in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, I had a good friend. He was pastor at three churches to the north, a graduate of Dallas Seminary. His son is now in the faculty at Dallas. And we were close friends.
We had great fellowship together. And he moved from Northern Lebanon to a large church in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania area, a place called New Holland, where they make the New Holland Farm machinery. They're not a little place, but nevertheless. And it was while he was there that they had a pastor's conference. It was a united thing with a lot of churches participating. And they had a man from Professor of Religion at Albright College. In Reading, Pennsylvania, come and address them. And what he said was that he says he has two great problems with the young people that come to his religion class in the college.
He says, number one, most of the young people don't know how to find the gospel by Mark. They don't know where the book of Romans is. They don't know anything of any of the books of the Bible. They can't find it. But he says there's a worse problem than that. This worse problem is that some of the young people that come to him even believe that the Bible is true. Can you imagine that? A professor of religion talking like that, that some of the young people even believe the Bible is true. This went to the end of the meeting and he threw it open for questions.
Not a question was asked and my friend Fred said I was boiling on the inside. I said, Sir, I have the answer to your question. Did you do? He said, Oh yes. He said, I teach my young people that the word of God is absolutely true. That you can rest upon it. There is no salvation apart from it. And you are being paid to teach that very thing. And if you are not, you are a fraud. He told him point blank in front of the other preachers, no, it takes a bar of steel on your back to do it.
But, beloved, it needs to be done. And Paul cries out to the church at Corinth. He cries out to them, and he says, I beseech you in the name of the Lord that you all speak the same thing. Are we settled on this, beloved? that a person is saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. And I'll guarantee you, that when you're settled on that, then you will speak the same thing with the other members of the fellowship in the church. Because you aren't in the church. Apart from that, that is the only way in.
So you see, the foundation of the church, the foundation of unity is apostolic doctrine. So you see, the first ground of unity is apostolic doctrine. The second ground of unity that Paul speaks of, and by the way, it's easy to miss. It is in his mode of address. For he says in the second ground there, it's in verse ten, I beseech you Brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That word, brother. Now that word is not simply a convenient way of addressing someone whose name you have forgotten. You see, that word, brethren, and brother has a theological concept.
And you need to unpack it. You need to examine the theological concept of that word, brother. And when you unpack it, you discover something. You discover that it contains the doctrines of regeneration and adoption. For when you talk to another man and you say, Brother, that means he's been born into the same family and he's been adopted by God and blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavens in Christ. You see, it's a theological concept. Regeneration and adoption is what God does. when he makes us members of his family.
So you see, the first ground is apostolic doctrine. The second ground is Christian brotherhood. Now that brings us to the third ground. The third ground of Christian unity is God-centeredness. You have it in verse twelve. For he says, Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am a Paul and I of Apollos. and I of Cephas and I of Christ. Oh, man-centeredness instead of God-centeredness. One of you says, I follow Paul. Another one, I follow Peter.
Another, I follow Apollos. And another, I follow Christ. Now, it would be quite interesting if we took these various distinctive features and we worked them over. But I don't think that is the most important thing. We could spend a lot of time dealing with what would make men say, I'm of Peter, and another one, I'm of Paul, and another, and I'm of Apollos. It would be quite interesting, and it would be quite in line with a lot of activity of men today. But we're not going to dwell on that.
because I don't believe it's important. The sad thing is that the one church of Jesus Christ, and in it there are rivalries and divisions being produced because of a man-centeredness instead of a God-centeredness. And what we have chosen as a test is the closing verse of First Corinthians one. He the glory. let him glory in the Lord. Now Paul concludes this passage in verses thirteen through seventeen and he concludes it by reminding them of three things which bore witness against their man-centered divisions.
Three things and these three things are important. They are found in the rhetorical questions of verse thirteen. First of all the nature of Christ Second, the nature of the atonement, and third, the nature of baptism. These three things testify against man-centeredness. Beloved, I've seen so much man-centeredness in my time, and I'm relatively young. Notice I said relatively young. See, that is a relative term. But I've seen an awful lot of it.
Man-centeredness rather than God-centeredness. First of all, the nature of Christ. Paul says, is Christ divided? Oh, what an awful idea. Is Christ divided? And the answer is, no, Christ isn't divided. Then if Christ isn't divided, therefore Christians in the same body should not be divided from each other. That's what he's saying to the church of Paul. Can you imagine the body of Christ being divided?
It isn't. In that coming day when he unveiled his church, which he is building, it's going to be one church. And it's going to be made up of those who have been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Is Christ divided? The nature of Christ. And the Word of God reminds us in Romans fifteen, receive you one another to the glory of God as Christ also received us. The second thing is The nature of atonement.
Was Paul crucified for you? Is it a question of the apostle? In his atoning death, beloved. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who stood as our substitute on Calvary's Hill. And he purchased us with his own blood. How can we say that we belong to Paul or that we belong to Darby or Calvin or Luther or anyone else? Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Beloved, we need to look at this portion of the Word of God.
He cries out to us for unity. Now you and I can't produce it. But we are told to keep it. It has been produced by the work of Christ. Is Christ divided? The nature of Christ, the answer is no. Was Paul crucified for you? No, no, no. Paul is just another man. And were Paul crucified, it would provide no salvation for anybody. It is Christ the Lord who died, who arose again. It is he who has provided eternal redemption for us. The third question is, were ye baptized in the name of Paul?
In baptism, beloved, we are baptized into the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Baptism, therefore, becomes a very symbol of our union with Christ. It is a picture of death, of burial, and of resurrection, and no one is ever saved apart from the work of the cross. And the Word of God declares in Ephesians chapter four, verse five, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. The very thing, beloved, that spoke of their unity, that is a clear picture of it was baptism and they were making it the ground of their divisions.
Isn't the human heart perverse? Beloved, when the flesh gets to work, they were making baptism a cause of their divisions rather than unity, for they maximized what God minimized. Now, a good example of this is, who baptized them? You see, there were glorying men. There were those who were saying, Oh, Paul baptized me. Why, I stand right in there with Paul. Another one said, Well, Peter was an apostle before Paul.
and Peter baptized me. You see, and then there were those who said, but Apollos baptized me. Do you ever hear that man speak? Boy, the words flow out of his lips. He's a silver-tongued arbiter. You see, they were glorying in men rather than in the Lord. You see, Paul said, I can't even remember who all I baptized. I know I baptized Crispus and Gaius in the household of Soponus. And beside that, I don't know. I've forgotten because it is an important, who baptized you? The important thing is that you're in Christ.
May I ask you a question? Who baptized you? Do you remember? You see, what is vital is that you're in the family. In closing, I'd just like to make a few straight statements. The unity of the church of Jesus Christ has been described by someone in this way. All wills bowing in the same direction, all affections burning with the same flame All aims directed to the same end, the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
May God make that increasingly true in our experience. That is unity. It may hurt our pride, beloved, if we have to bend our wills to the will of someone else. But God says, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. With our affections burning with a shameful aim is Christ.
center is he preeminent all affection burning with the same flame if it's not Christ forget it and all aims directed to the same end the glory of God I need to have a little plaque on my desk It was paper, and of course it got old, and I threw it away. It had a question on it. Is it for the glory of God? For the scripture says, Let everything be done.
In whatever you do, in word or deed, do all to the glory of God. And, beloved, when we analyze our actions and our activities, like the church at Corinth, to a large extent were pervasively man-centered. And it's a shame, beloved. The Word of God says, Despise not prophesying, quench not the Spirit, as he writes to the church at Thessalonica. Do you know how we quench the Spirit?
Oh, brother so-and-so said it. I don't care for him. But he's part of the body. He's part of the body. Oh, we can force our union on somebody. But it doesn't produce unity. The unity has been produced. May God enable us to keep it. His name is set. Now let's pray. Our Father, we thank you for the church of Jesus Christ. The greatest privilege on earth is to be part of it. Oh, we pray, our God, that we may be able to behold the glory of Christ and be occupied with that one thing, his glory, not our own way, not having our own way, but rejoicing in him, the one who loved us and gave himself for us.
Now, our Father, we commend ourselves to thee. We pray that thou would enable us to behold that glorious truth of grace in order that we indeed speak the same thing. For the glory of Christ, for the honor of thy kingdom. Now our Father, we commend this company to thee and to thy grace, which is able to build them up and give them an inheritance. among all that are sanctified through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.