1 Cor No.2 Tearng and repairing

1 Corinthians and we'll begin to read at verse 10. I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.

What I mean is this, one of you says, I follow Paul. Another, I follow Apollos. Another, I follow Cephas.

Still another, I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized into the name of Paul? I am thankful that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptized into my name. Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanus.

Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel. Not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Praise be to God for that reading from his inerrant word.

You will find it helpful to have your Bibles open at Paul's letter to Corinthians, his first letter, and we're looking at verses from the 10th through to the 17th of this opening chapter. It was a very unpleasant day in the experience of David, great leader of the Hebrew community that he was. His name ever imprinted on the lips of his fellows of the felling of the giant Goliath.

He was nonetheless to fall foul of King Saul. Motivated by jealousy, Saul made an attack on the life of David, and like some Hebrew version of Robin Hood, David had to leave the precincts of Jerusalem, go off to Philistia, and then into the wilderness, to a place called Adullam, and there he set up his headquarters. And we're told in the book of Samuel, the first book in the 22nd chapter, and the opening verses that to David at Adullam, came all those who were in distress or in debt or discontented, they gathered around him, and he became their leader, about 400 men.

When you come into the epistle of the Corinthians, in the sixth chapter of the opening letter, in the heart of that chapter there is a description of what the members of the church used to be like. Listen as I read from the ninth verse. Do you not know, says Paul, making a point about purity, that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexual offenders, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God? And that is what some of you were, to the cave of Adullam.

Potential supporters of David, potential servants of the living God, came the unemployed, and the vagabonds, and the estranged of Hebrew society. And it was the genius of David, that he merged 400 men together to form one of the best fighting forces in the Middle East in his day. And it is the genius of the Holy Spirit, that into the Christian assembly at Corinth could come men and women from such terrible backgrounds as the ones he described.

And ultimately they could be forged into a community of people that honored the living God to the extent that he's pleased with them. Now listen, for David to unify his soldiers was a tremendous challenge, and it took some time for Corinthians, who have made their peace with God, to fully appreciate what it means to be a servant of the living God. To become entirely sanctified is going to take a long, long time.

It's going to take a lifetime, and they'll never fully appreciate or achieve their objective until the day when Jesus presents them miraculously, faultless before his Father. Therefore, if you follow the logic of what I have been saying, you must realize this, that within the Christian church there is always going to be some measure of difficulty. Jesus said, I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

They who are whole have no need of a physician, but rather those who are sick. Jesus Christ deals with the difficult of this world. He calls men and women into his kingdom who are surprising when you investigate the sort of people that they really are, naturally speaking.

There is nothing more staggering in the whole of history than to trace the elective purposes of God, the way in which God chooses men for himself. Listen to Paul, still with 1 Corinthians, first chapter, verse 27. God chose the foolish things of this world to shame the wise.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. Go back to the 26th verse, same chapter. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called.

Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble births, of noble birth.

What does all this add up to? Well, simply this, that it is a challenge to the Holy Spirit to take the material men and women that God has called to Christ and to continue the work of sanctification, making them to be like Jesus Christ. And in doing that, there will be tensions, there will be problems. And this is the reason, my dear friend, why the early church received letters from the likes of Paul and John and Peter to help them to come to grips with some of the problems that arose within the domestic situation of their church.

Once heard someone say, or I read the remark, there is more unity in my golf club than what there is in the church I used to attend before I got so disgusted I left. And a wise pastor answered the comment, perhaps the reason is this, the devil is more concerned to create disunity in the local church than what it is in a golf club. When you come to this particular passage of Scripture, you find that there's a key verse in the reading which has been brought before you.

It's the opening one. Here is the Apostle Paul appealing to men and women in the name of Jesus, I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. Do you know in one sense that verse of Scripture embraces verbs which really are taken from a tailor's shop? You say what an odd comment to make.

Well nonetheless it happens to be true. That word divisions translated like that in the NIV and also in the AV really comes from the idea of tear. To put it literally into the Greek it's the word schism, and you know full well that if your clothes are torn they have to be mended.

And so later on in the verse you get the second term from a tailor's shop. May there be no more tears among you, but rather praise Paul, may you be perfectly united in mind and thought, or as the AV puts it, may you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. And there the idea is of mending, tearing and mending.

You go down Montague Street to the dry cleaners and you will discover that some of those establishments have a sort of secondary service in as much as they can invisibly mend tears that have occurred in clothing through wrong use. They can mend them, they can repair them, so that no longer you are confronted by the tear. Well this is what the Apostle Paul is here speaking about.

He's saying that in the Christian community at Corinth there are tears, there are things that are wrong, and he doesn't want people to continue in this fashion. He wants to see the tears repaired, he wants to see the problems resolved. And so he appeals in the strongest language possible, I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus that all of you agree with one another.

So what I want to do in the time remaining for me this morning is to look at this whole concept of invisible mending under those headings tearing and repairing within the local church. Let's come to our first word. You remember it's translated divisions in the authorized version and in the NIV.

Paul saying, I don't want any divisions in the church at all. And just in case you haven't understood what he's on about, in the third verse of the third chapter he says more or less the same. The AV sustains the word divisions, the NIV loses it.

You are still worldly, for since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? That word quarreling translated as I say divisions in the NIV means people trying to stand together from different points of view. You say that's rather complicated, can you illustrate it? Yes, easy. Did you listen to Mr. Ben and Mr. Healy at the trade union congress in Blackpool on Thursday? There were two men trying to stand together and you were rather ill-inclined to believe that the legs were from the same body.

They had different points of view, they represent divisions within the socialist movement and you couldn't paper over the cracks at all, you couldn't unify the positions that they adopted. Well, this was the case in the Corinthian church here and Paul argues against it. Let's move on a little, come to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 18 and there the apostle uses exactly the same word as in our opening chapter in verse 10.

In the first place says Paul, I hear that when you come together as a church there are schisms, there are tears, there are divisions among you, and to some extent I believe it. Well then, having noted the fact that there were tears, there were splits in this local church, let's ask ourselves what were they about? Well, it seems to me that it is an unfortunate preoccupation of the church to split and to tear and to know various factions within it. What were these divisions about? Well, they were about personalities.

That's what Paul has to say in the 12th verse and 13th verses in the opening chapter and later on in the opening verses of the third chapter. You remember how I told you last week the apostle Paul had ministered for three years at Corinth. Tremendous ministry.

Then he left and there was a Jewish man by the name of Apollos who became a Christian and he was brought to Corinth and he exercised a tremendous ministry. The Acts of the Apostles tells us in the 18th and 19th chapter that he was a very eloquent man and as a result there were some people who favored Apollos's ministry over against that of Paul. Now nowhere in scripture is there criticism directed at Apollos, but there's criticism directed at people who suggest I'm a Paul man and others say I'm an Apollos man.

And some of the more wealthy had taken sea trips from Corinth to Ephesus. Possibly there they'd listened to Peter. He's been having a convention, let us suppose, at Ephesus.

They've heard Peter preach. They've heard another aspect of the Christian gospel proclaimed and they believe that neither Paul nor Apollos are really the men to hear. They are Peter's men.

And so you see grouping around personalities it becomes one of the prime reasons for division within the church of our Lord. Jesus Christ. And you get groups who sort of take these men's names as being their leaders and they fellowship only with people who are attracted to Paul or people who are attracted to Apollos or people who've been under the influence of Peter's ministry.

Fellowshiping only with this little group and as a result there's a breakdown, there's a fracture, there's a tear. I tell you it is an unfortunate occupation of the Christian church to tear itself apart very often over personalities. But it wasn't just people.

It was over emphases that these folks disagreed. You say what do you mean? Well you see you can disagree with someone in Christianity not because they've gone heretical but because they emphasize one aspect of a certain doctrine and you yourself don't go along with that emphasis. You could get it, for example, if I run an illustration on the doctrine of the second advent of Jesus Christ.

Now there are at least three main views that are held about that doctrine. Not the physical appearance of Jesus himself, that is basic to the Christian gospel, but what is going to happen when he comes. And you get some folks who align themselves with one viewpoint and another person who aligns himself with another viewpoint and so forth.

And as a result, if you press it too far, one may be offended about the emphasis of the other group. Now I say you got this in Corinth. And there were some people who felt that they had perfect liberty, you remember, to go down to the marketplace and there to buy meat even though it had been offered to idols and to cook it on the basis, well idols don't exist in any case and if I eat this meat I do so with a pure conscience.

There were others and they were saying no that's wrong, that emphasis is completely inappropriate. This meat has been offered to idols, therefore don't touch it. And so you see there was a division there, not over doctrine but over emphasis.

And this happens, as I say, down the history of the Christian church. In Corinth it would seem that they had a much more flamboyant worship style than the Christians at Thessalonica. So Cardinal Paul, if he will forgive me, writes to the Corinthians and he says in a word, cool it fellows, just turn it down a little bit.

But when he gets to the Thessalonians, these ultra-conservatives, turn it up a little bit. Don't quench the spirit, don't despise prophesying. Your problem is different from the one at Corinth.

You see it's a question of emphasis and we can sometimes break away from one another, not because we don't have a common gospel but because our emphasis is a little different and as a result we sometimes tear one another, spiritually speaking, apart. You say my language is strong. Yes my friend, but it's not unbiblical.

If I say anything here that's unbiblical then forget it. What you need is the teaching of the Bible, not my attempted explanation of the same. Come to Paul writing in the 13th verse.

He's made reference to this partisanship within the church, the factions, the groups who follow Paul, who follow Apollos, who follow Cephas, and Paul puts up the rhetorical question, is Christ divided? Do you really feel that you can break the Christ into various groups? Do you remember the Roman soldiers when they were at Calvary? Our Lord has been stripped and he hangs there naked on the cross as he dies for the sins of believing mankind. And those soldiers, they gambled, they played bingo at the foot of the cross. What are the stakes? The white lengthy robe of our Savior.

They'll not tear it up. They'll not say, here Judas, you have this part. Here Benjamin, you have the other part.

No, they realize that if they tear that garment they devalue it. I tell you from that illustration those Roman soldiers could tell us a lot about Christianity. Is Christ divided? Can you divide the body of Christ? You people who are Christians, what in effect are you? Spiritually speaking, you're members of the body of Christ.

Later on, Paul will run an analogy in the 12th chapter, is it, about the body and the way that every part of the body is essential to the working of the other. So says Paul within the Christian community. If you're split into groups, if one of you has a different emphasis from the other, and as a result you divide, you're in effect dividing the body of Christ.

And that is a most injurious thing. That is a terrible thing to do. What our Lord Jesus prayed for was unity amongst his body, that they may be one Father as we are one.

When the Apostle Paul writes to the Ephesians, he says that he has a prayer which he offers to them, for them. The fourth chapter of that epistle. Make every effort, he says in the third verse, to keep the unity of the Spirit.

Through the bond of peace there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. There is only one Christian community. I had great difficulty in America convincing people that I don't belong to a denomination.

You must be a Baptist. I'm not a Baptist, although my wife feels that my closest friend is Charles Spurgeon. But I'm not a Baptist.

I'm not a Methodist. I'm not even basically, though I go along with the theology of Calvin, I'm not basically a Calvinist. I'm a Christian, and I don't really care what flag you fly denominationally.

If you acknowledge that Jesus Christ, God's Son, died on the cross of Calvary to save you, if you have known the filling of his Spirit as a result, you belong to me and I belong to you. And that mystical body of Christ on this earth cannot be divided. So the Apostle Paul makes reference to this tearing, this unfortunate division at Corinth.

I appeal to you brothers in the name of Jesus Christ. You can't put it any more strongly than this. It's not Paul speaking.

It's not my opinion. It's not just what I personally want. Here I write in with the approval of Christ that all of you agree with one another so there shall be no tears among you.

Well, if he doesn't want tearing, what does he want? He wants repairing. He wants to see a ministry of repair exercised at Corinth that there be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. When you come across the disciples almost the first occasion in Matthew's gospel, you find them in the fourth chapter of that opening gospel by the seashore of Galilee.

And what are they doing? Well, listen as I read from the 21st verse of Matthew 4. Going on from there, Jesus saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee preparing their nets, or as the A.V. captures it, mending their nets. That's exactly the same word in the original as you get here, that you may be perfectly united, that there may be a repair work done amongst you.

One of the greatest handicaps for any fisherman would be to put out to the sea of Galilee and to toss overboard nets which have got holes in them. It would be absurd. A man who was schooled in this art knew that his responsibilities were not only to catch fish, but to keep the nets repaired.

Do you know what the tragedy of the 20th century evangelical church is? We're trying to catch fish and we've got broken nets. We're trying to catch fish with broken nets. There's schism.

There are tears within the body. They're there at a relationship level at any rate, even if Jesus doesn't acknowledge that his body is fractured. Only a fool of a fisherman casts overboard nets which have not been mended.

Only foolish Christians neglect the preservation of unity within the church. You know, this really bore into Paul's heart just like some drill making its way into a piece of wood. Look at the 11th verse.

My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. I spent some time researching what was meant by Chloe's household or the house of Chloe as it's put in the authorized version of the Bible. And as far as I can ascertain, this is what it means.

Chloe actually was the popular name of Demeter, a Greek goddess. Around Corinth, there were 52 temples that were built in honor of this false deity. Now, some of the worshippers of Chloe were merchantmen, were seamen.

And they put her off from the Corinthian seaport and they came round to Ephesus. And there they met Paul. And they started to speak to Paul because there were certain things in common between what Paul was preaching and their own views of worship, as the worship of Demeter was a rather sophisticated sort of thing in Greek religious practice.

And they say to Paul, do you know something? It's pretty terrible back in Corinth. Those folks who have committed themselves to Jesus Christ, who are following you, they're at sixes and sevens. They're at loggerheads, Paul.

They're tearing one another pieces to pieces. And Paul receives from the hands of pagan people news about what's going on in Corinth. When I was in South India, I was traveling in the state of Karnataka.

And there there are more Christians than in the majority of states. And since the missionaries pulled out largely speaking in India, there has been some tremendous problems within the denominational churches. Problems about property.

Who owns what? There are two courts in Karnataka presided by Hindu judges that sit every working legal day to distinguish between who is right and who is wrong amongst Christian churches who have engaged in legal action the one to the other. Terrible business. One of the Hindu judges recently told a man from the church, why don't you tune into the Far East Broadcasting Association's message of the Christian gospel and apply that to your heart and your church situation? Well, one is grateful for the Hindu's comment about fever, but what does it show about the Christian community in Karnataka or some of the communities? Now that's the sort of thing that was breaking Paul's heart.

What I mean, what I say is this, my brothers, some from Cloy's household, they've informed me there are quarrels among you, there are tears among you. So what does Paul really advocate in this first letter he writes to the Corinthians? I'm going to say something that perhaps will shock you because of its novelty more than anything else. He advocates the gift of invisible mending.

Well, you see, I've read through the gifts of the Spirit but I've never yet come across that one. The gift of invisible mending. You haven't? Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.

Though I had all the charismatic equipment, all the paraphernalia of spiritual gifts, and I had not agape love, it would profit me nothing. It would be one big zero. It would be a spiritual bubble that amounts to uselessness.

Says the apostle Paul, I want you brothers to repair this ism, to repair anything that causes breaks in the household of faith. You say, do we need the gift of invisible mending today? We do indeed, my friends. Let me suggest you one or two areas in which it might well be applied and how you can develop it.

First of all, by thinking positively about any group of Christian people who know Jesus as Savior. Have you noticed in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians when Paul starts to write the fourth verse, he doesn't criticize, he congratulates. Imagine congratulating the Corinthians.

Here in this group there's a case of incest amongst them. The women folk particularly are creating problems in the worship patterns of the church. So many, many difficulties and yet Paul says in the first opening, the first verses of the chapter, I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.

Invariably there's something that you can say to the credit of a group of Christians who acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross of Calvary to save them. Think positively, even about those who you don't fully understand and know very well. Secondly, make Jesus central.

Paul says that he doesn't want to see or hear of any more boasting about personalities. Listen to him in the last verses of chapter three, whether Paul or Apollos or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours and you are of Christ and Christ is of God. So, verse 21, no more boasting about men.

It doesn't really matter whose tuition you have been under in the scriptures. The thing that is most important is the Lord Jesus Christ. Make Jesus central.

And then in this gift of invisible mending, be adaptable. The Apostle Paul says in the ninth chapter in the 20th verse, though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I became like a Jew to win the Jews.

To those under the law, I became like one under the law. There's a degree of adaptability as far as the Apostle Paul is concerned. He sympathizes with people, with their culture, with their background, anything so that he can win them to Christ, so that he can help them.

Are you adaptable, my friend? Do you think positively? Do you make Jesus central? Do you act maturely? Paul says when he writes in the 10th chapter and in the 14th verse, therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak, verse 15, to sensible people. And in the 14th chapter in the 20th verse, he says, in understanding, be men.

What causes some fractures in the church today? I've known people who fractured simply because the minister or the preacher doesn't preach from the version of the Bible that they acknowledge to be the best one. How absurd. Thank God for the authorized version of the Bible.

If I had to go on a desert island and I'd only got one Bible to take with me, I'd go straight for the A.V. But I was brought up on the A.V. I understand when Paul is writing to the Corinthians and the A.V. translators put the marketplace in terms of the shambles, what they're on about. I've got some idea as to what is meant in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 4, a verse that is almost unintelligible at first reading, at least the first sentence, simply because of my background in the Christian faith. But there are people who have not had such a background as that.

They've come to the Bible fresh. They come from secular society which is untaught on spiritual things. Do we have to teach them Anglo-Saxon English before they can fully appreciate the message of the Bible? Was not the original language of the New Testament written in Koine Greek instead of classical Greek so that the ordinary person who spoke Koine could understand what was being said? What am I saying? Throw away the authorized version, not a bit.

I spend more time in that version of the Bible than any other. But I'm asking for sensible conduct on the part of Christian people who were reared in my generation or before in their attitude to a younger, spiritually untaught generation. Let's be sensible in these things.

What about this whole business of the charismatic phenomena and certain things that are happening in some circles? What do you do? Do you immediately say, all this is extreme? Reject it all? All these people, that they are being unhelpful as far as the gospel of Christ is concerned? Do you not think that a more agreeable fashion would be, first of all, to suspend your opinion unless you have personal experience, and to look for what might be good amongst people with whom you don't agree with as far as their emphasis is concerned, and not to break spiritually, and not to be libelous? And that works the other way too. We would appeal to some of the charismatic leaders in this country that they stop indicating to others that more established evangelical churches are an anachronism from the past. We possibly might have something to contribute to them as they, in turn, in their joy and in their concern for relationships, have something to pass on to us.

Let's be a little bit more mature. We have not been called to tear the body of Christ. We've been called to repair the body of Christ.

A mature attitude, the gift of invisible mending, think positively about those with whom you do not immediately have a relationship with. Make Jesus central. That's the main point of preaching.

Not the doctrine of the Spirit in itself, not the second coming of Christ in itself, but the fact that Jesus bled and died for mankind. Is this at the top of your priorities spiritually? Be adaptable. Don't necessarily take up an entrenched position to the Jew, says Paul.

I was a Jew. To the Greek, I was a Greek. To the strict Baptist, I can become as a strict Baptist and bless God for the ministry within that circle.

To the more demonstrative, well maybe another demonstrative person myself, but it could well be that they've got something to teach me. Let's act maturely. I speak, says Paul, to sensible people in understanding.

Be men. I appeal to you brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions, no tears among you, and that you may be perfectly united, fully repaired, reconciled in mind and thought. Well, we'll come back to this practical teaching next week.

The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is His new creation by water and the Word. We start singing from the third verse.

Father, we've so much to learn, so much to know of your grace, of your desires for us, for our fellowship. We offer our nets to you by the power of the Spirit. Help them to be repaired.

No holes, no factions, just unity and love and confidence in you and in one another.