An Uncomfortably Hospitable Church

and Paul here is saying it is only when we are enlightened by God enlightened by the holy spirit that even makes sense that we would try to put these into practice and here's why this is so important the church needs to not be surprised so when non-christians act like [Music] non-christians but as we dive in go ahead and grab your bible or you can pull up in your notes app today we're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 and I'm going to kind of catch you up if you have not been with us or just recap a little bit if you've joined us so far in this series and kind of as you're flipping to 1 Corinthians chapter 2 we started this series called living in Corinth and and as we kind of dive into this book this is a letter that Paul the Apostle wrote about 2,000 years ago to this city of Corinth that was kind of like an ancient Day Las Vegas it was a very immoral Society it was very consumed with money and ex and had all these issues and problems with it and we kind of talked about in this broken culture this theme we're going to continually see through this book is that a fractured or broken culture requires a focused and faithful church that if we're going to be a church that reaches our culture that in in one that is broken one that people are hurting one that is full of immorality one that is full of anxiety and depression you can list off all the traits we need to be a church that is focused on the right things we need to be a church that is faithful to the right things and so far in the first chapter of First Corinthians we kind of studied this the last two weeks as Paul shows us that if we are focused if we are faithful here's what your church is going to look like and the two concepts in these kind of cultural pillars we unpacked last two weeks was first a focus in faithful church is going to produce spiritually hungry individuals the more you let Jesus in the more you come to Church the more you read your Bible it is not going to make you less hungry for God it is going to make you more and it produces spiritually hungry people we gave some practical ways we do that is one you got to say yes to Jesus and it's not just say yes to Jesus for the first time in Salvation but say yes to Jesus for maybe the hundredth or the thousandth time of what are things in my life I need to chip away to give more to him we talked about being part of a Bible group and a community and and surrounding yourself and Kyle mentioned that earlier how you need to be in a group so you can grow in your faith but then maybe the biggest challenge is we challenge you and our church and if you're here today of what would it look like if you were an a graded church attender that 90% of the Sundays that is 45 Sundays this year your butt was in that chair I said last week you would make an indent if you sit in the same chair each week and you'd be like that's my butt guys um right it's like what is it look like to be an a gr church attender and show that spiritual hunger in our lives last week we explored this more that not only does it make us spiritually hungry but a faithful and focused Church produces radically humble contributors that when we have that hunger it forces us to do things and here is what we talk about is humility is is seeing less of the stuff that you have as things that you worked for that you slay for that you've earned that is all because of you and the more we mature in our faith we see that we had so little to do with it but is the gifts and the grace of God that we are where we are in our lives and we talked about some practical steps on do that is to give your resources consistently we talked about giving our time consistently and serving the church Body and Beyond but we also said prepare your hearts for life-changing gifts uh starting next month we're going to be raising money and starting kind of a campaign for our camps and that's for kids camp and youth camp and our goal is to raise $30,000 to send our kids and our youth to camp and here's the thing is lives will be changed I I was saved in Youth Camp I was called to Ministry in Youth Camp because of a faithful church that invested in me and loved me well today we're going to unpack kind of our third cultural pillar as we go through this and as we do in in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 Paul is going to give us as as he kind of unpacks this principle he's going to give us a little history lesson through it and he starts in Chapter 2 starting in verse one he says this when I came to you PA Paul starts this he's saying hey when I came to you in Corinth when I started this church and he's going to kind of explain a little bit more of that and and it begs the question well how did Paul start a church in such a messed up culture and really for us to ask the question of if that comes to us is how do we do that is how do we make Jesus known to a Fractured culture how do we make him known when we look around our world and we might think that oh it's just full of Sinners it's full of these problems full of those problems the same problems we struggle with is how do we preach about Jesus in a culture that is hostile to him well we actually get the background of the start of Church of Corinth in Acts 18 if you want you can flip there and kind of keep your finger in 1 Corinthians otherwise we'll show some verses up here but let me give you a little summary as Paul comes he leaves ancient Athens and then he comes to this city of Corinth and as he comes to Corinth one of the first people he meets is aquillin Priscilla and aquill and Priscilla are this Jewish couple who had come from Italy to Corinth and in the first kind of commonality they have is they both Jewish so Paul's like makes that connection but then apart from that they're also tent makers we think of Paul the Apostle Paul the guy who he's like pretty much had a profession in being in jail cuz he was in jail a lot I guess but he was also a Tent Maker by trade so so they kind of bonded over that and and he stayed with a quill in Priscilla and he kind of did life with them and then as he he starts and he's like okay let's start this church after he preaches the gospel they're saved they come and they're all on fire for it he's like all right let's go to the synagogue and let's tell the Jews the messiah's come let's tell him about Jesus and they pushed him away and and then he goes like Forget You Jews he shakes off is you know he's like I'm going to go to the Super sinful Corinthian Gentiles and I'm going to just preach to them instead and and as Paul does that and as Paul kind of sees that all of a sudden in verse 8 of Acts chapter 18 it gives us a little background here I love it it says Crispus the leader of the synagogue he believed in the Lord along with his whole household it's funny after Paul says I'm done with the Jews I'm no longer going to talk to him all of a sudden the leader of the Jewish synagogue comes to Faith and it says many of the Corinthians when they heard they believed and they were baptized the Lord said to Paul in a night vision don't be afraid but keep on speaking and don't be silent for I am with you and no one will lay a hand on you to hurt you because I have many people in the City verse 11 he stayed there a year and a half teaching the word of God among them you see Paul was preaching the word with some success but also with a lot of push back and he was probably a little discouraged he was probably frustrated but God told him just keep preaching keep loving and in verse 11 we are told he ended up staying a year and a half among them think about that for a second among the Corinthian people what was ancient day lost Vegas so the question is how did Paul make Jesus known to such a fractured broken immoral messed up culture like Corinth well in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 starting in verse one he begins to reveal that and he says when I came to you brothers and sisters seeking the church at Corinth he says announcing the mystery of God to you I did not come with Brilliance of speech or wisdom he said I decide to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified he said I came to you in weakness in fear and in much trembling my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the spirit's power so that your faith might not be based on human wisdom but on God's power here's our first thing we see when we ask this question of how did Paul start this church how did Paul make Jesus known in Corinth and how do we do it today is the first kind of principle we see of this is we need to point people to God's power and not our own words if you take this passage in isolation it's kind of an interesting one because it's almost like Paul is telling us like you don't need to logically reason the gospel in the Bible what we call apologetics which is like defending the Bible from like against logical arguments Paul's like eh whatever like it's God's power I didn't use persuasive words I just said like hey believe Jesus and you did it and it's like we take that in isolation be like is that what he's saying it actually reminds me of this past uh couple weeks ago um every now and then I listen to The Joe Rogan podcast anyone out there yeah you just don't want to admit it okay um he uses some colorful language just every timeone when he says the f word just like do a different word in your mind okay um he's a sinner so that's you know Joe's going to talk like that but he he had I listened to him cuz he's a a great interviewer and he has interesting guests on so recently he had this guy Wesley Huff on and Wesley Huff he's he's Canadian He's 33 same age as me and he's uh blond haired blue eyes uh we look exactly the same he's just jacked and has an accent okay like barely a difference all right and I'm a little bit better looking but that's about it okay he does a very strong job anyway um but in West Huff he is a he's a theologian um and he is a like kind of an apologist but he's also a linguist so he goes and he reads ancient biblical texts like the Hebrew and the Greek and he finds these manuscripts and he kind of puts them together and he makes Arguments for why we can trust the Bible and we can trust that Jesus was a real person and raised from the dead and all that and for three hours on Joe Rogan he explained all this he he talked about how Jesus is Lord how Jesus was a real person how he really raised from the grave after being dead and it was this amazing example for 3 hours into an audience of there's like over 300 million people that follow the Rogan podcast and for 3 hours he laid this on and it was just awesome I encourage you go listen to it but as social media does because we are stupid then there was arguments were like but did he really share the gospel like he didn't ask jod except Jesus into his heart right there does it count and I'm like bro he just gave one of the greatest Arguments for why Jesus is real and why the Bible is reliable and how he really raised from the grave and he shared all the aspects of the gospel and just because he didn't ask Rogan while they're you know Rogan's like drinking whiskey or cigars if you wanted to accept Jesus at that time doesn't mean he didn't share the gospel and we could almost be like is Paul saying like that kind of thinking and that kind of argumentation and that kind of sharing is that still sharing the gospel well here's the thing is Paul isn't actually speaking against that type of sharing at all instead when we read this in context of chapter one where in Chapter 1 he told the Corinthian Church that hey don't get it too attached to a singular leader don't divide over preferences but instead be United in Jesus when he picks this up in chapter saying it's a continuation of saying hey stop following people stop following preferences of communication instead humble yourselves to see that the only reason you are saved is by the very power of God and here's why this is super encouraging for us is because when we share about Jesus the pressure is not on us to deliver this eloquent and amazing presentation that people are saved because of the power of God let me talk about this a little more is like there's a lot of tools to help you share your faith and maybe when you grew up if you grew up in church there was these things called tracks and they were called like chick tracks as you give them out and explain the gospel and people would read them maybe people are safe through those maybe they weren't I don't know as he grew up there's more methods we have things called three circles we've taught here before where you can draw three circles and you can share the story of of the Bible in those circles we it was really popular and you know what was popular like 20 years ago is now cool again um remember wwjd bracelets and then all of a sudden nobody talked about it now it's cool again okay and my wife ordered me a shirt for Christmas and like kind of the answer to wwjd Is hwlf is he would love first um I haven't taken this bracelet off because it was free and I got it with a shirt and I've been showering with it so it's probably going to turn a different color pretty soon um but our resources to share our faith let me give you an example I had a cross church hat in my hat like a it's a one-of a kind cuz we made it and then all of our staffs didn't like it except for me so I was like all right well I'm going to keep wearing it and I went to bosea donuts and I was carrying my daughter my 10-month-old in a car seat I was holding my three-year-old son Arlo And then I was yelling at my six and 8-year-old to just pick your doughnut already as they're touching all the glass and my wife is at work so I'm solo and then all a sudden I start having this conversation with this dude and then this guy starts and when he he's like dude that's a cool hat I'm like thanks man I start I'm like telling him I was like it's for my church I'm like do you go to church anywhere he's like no me and my girlfriend have thought about it I'm like dude why don't you come to our church and he's like oh yeah I could probably do that and then I was like what's your name he's like Luke and then we started talking and and he hasn't shown up yet this was a couple weeks ago funny enough I was passing Bose of donuts and my kids are like do you think Luke's there I'm like we're going to find out all right I went in I saw Luke again I was like hey dude we didn't see our church man we'd love for you to come he's like I know I'm going to get around to it we'll see if he comes today all right I didn't see him in first service otherwise I'm going to show up at Bosa again and bug him another time right um he's going to be sad he ever talk to me but here's why I say all this it's cuz things like that things like this t-shirt we have some new cool swag out there that you can buy it says making Jesus known Adam our guy who designed these he went and picked them out the printer he invited four people to church cuz they thought the shirt was cool all right and it's like those little conversations of inviting people to church of telling people why your Jesus is amazing the pressure is not on you to save those people it is to share to share unashamedly knowing the power of God is what saves people and Paul told him he's like you're not following me because I'm smart you're not following Peter because he's this great wizard with words he's like you're following Jesus Christ because the power of His Spirit saves you and the power of God was happening in two ways it was not just happening but was moving in the heart of the hearer but the power of God was also evident in how Paul lived his life among them loving them being with them exuding this characteristic for a year and a half but it keeps going in verse six and he says this we do however speak a wisdom so we do still speak right among the mature but not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing on the contrary we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our Glory here's the second thing we see when we talk about how do we make Jesus known to a culture that is broken that is fractured that is far from him is we need to point people to God's word even if they don't understand it here here's the thing the wisdom that Paul refers to here is the gospel what we would say is the good news of Jesus Christ what we see as the Bible in this wisdom he said it is only known among the mature now it's fun if you actually take that word mature and you go back to the Greek language um if you dive into it that word is translated as complete or a whole sacrifice that is lacking nothing Jesus actually uses the same word in Matthew 5:48 he says be perfect or be mature be complete as your father is perfect mature and complete you see what Paul is doing is is continuing this argument from chapter 1 where in Chapter 1 he said the world sees the cross and sees the gospel and they see Jesus as foolishness but he says but when we are saved by grace and by the grace of Jesus we are all of a sudden seen as mature as whole as perfect before our heavenly father and all of a sudden this wisdom of scripture starts to make sense think about this for example as you look at our world and and and if you take out a Christian context if you take out Jesus then why in the world do we strive for things the Bible tells us to like Purity and charity and empathy and love yesterday morning my wife uh set up uh we did a day date okay four kids you don't get a lot of dates all right so we're like let's drop off all our kids with my mother-in-law she agreed to This I Promise um and we're like we're going to go on a hike so we went out to westwing and kind of 83rd in Happy Valley and there's a bunch of awesome trails and we totally got lost but then we like could use our phone and see the trail to get back we're like let's not turn like a Four mile hike into a 12 mile hike um cuz then on all the posts it's like if you're lost call 911 and give them this marker I'm like bro we are not being airlifted off a mountain okay cannot afford that bill all right but but as I'm looking at nature I'm like all right there's like coyote coyote poop over here there's like horse poop over there like there's dead animals around from nature and you think for coyot for example when it sees a bunny it doesn't say Let Me Be empathetic let me be loving let me be charitable to this bunny says I'm going to eat you and kill you cuz I'm hungry and in nature by it's just look at is brutal and in our sin we are brutal when you kind of boil everything down if we live in a world where it's just survival to Fitness and we need to survive then charity empathy love none of those are good qualities for me to follow and Paul here is saying it is only when we are enlightened by God enlightened by the holy spirit that even makes sense that we would try to put these into practice and here's why this is so important because I think for us in the church in a post-christian culture the church needs to not be surprised so surprised when non-christians act like non-christians okay when you're a sinner and all of us are sinners and you don't know that you're a sinner then why does it matter when you are sinning and we expect and here's here's the problem is in our lifetime we have almost lived in a culture that has been heavily influenced by judeo-christian values meaning that our laws and some things are set up that they have hints of what the Bible says in here and kind of uses that our as our guideline but too often we see when our world acts like Sinners and like man I got to hold them the standard of Jesus it's like dude they don't know Jesus why are they going to try to be like Jesus and we got to be more focused how do we show them and teach them who Jesus is because Paul says it's they're not going to understand it they're not going to strive forward and the reason broken humans act like broken humans is because their understanding is naturally limited let me let me flesh this out a little bit more with a cultural observation that Paul makes is is he Paul shows us here that Mankind's understanding is limited by three things the first thing it's limited by is time check out verse eight he says this none of the rulers of this age knew this wisdom because if they had known it they would have not crucified the Lord Of Glory out of this line he says None of the rulers of this age you see all our Earthly time spent here will be classified by an age because we are not Eternal here on Earth that we have an eternal soul but all of us one day here will die and and here's the thing is you can never on this side of Heaven know everything this past year in 2020 before I I made a goal that I was going to read one book a week and when I Define book that can be reading a book or listening to an audible which my wife said doesn't count but it totally does all right and here's what I would do is I I would I would read or listen to a book and I would have a notes tab on my phone and I would like put notes in as I'm reading this book because a lot of books I especially book A Week you're not going to remember that whole book but I was like what can I take from this I'm just putting some notes together and it was cool I learned so much and and just by like kind of reading exploring it was a great experience and I'm not doing it this year um but I'm just kid I'm reading other books but anyway but the reason iy I bring this up is right now in the Library of Congress there are 18 million books they estimate over the next 14 or 50 years that number will grow to 28 million if you are a super super reader you will probably read 3,600 books in your lifetime and I'm not talking about like potty books right like that you read as a toddler like here's how to poop in the potty like I've read that book A Thousand Times all right to toddlers or like I'm not talking about Dr Seuss but real books if you are an amazing reader you read 3600 in your lifetime so for every one book you choose there is tens of thousands that you're saying I'm not going to read that what all this means is we are limited by our time we we can try to grow we can try to get smarter we can try to Fascinate and bring stuff in but our time is limited by how much we can consume on this side of Heaven the second thing our understand is limited by is our senses check out verse 9 he says but as is written what no eye has seen no ear has heard no human heart has conceived God has prepared these things for those who love him Paul hints at the senses that we use to experience our world but that some of our senses are beyond our comprehension that there's some things in our world that just the normal stuff we cannot understand CS Lewis talks about this and contrasting different qualities of life here on Earth you see a plant is alive but a plant can't see an animal is can do more and sense more than a plant where it can see it can smell it can hear but an animal can't analyze mentally the way we do in spiritually there is another aspect that we cannot fully experience and understand everything God has for us on this side of heaven and our last way that mankind is our understanding is limited it's not by just time and senses but also and lastly by access check out verse 10 he says now God has revealed these things to us by the spirit since the spirit searches everything even the depths of God for who knows a person's thoughts except his Spirit within him in the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the spirit of God now we oh actually I'm going to stop right there and here's what I want to here's kind of as we break this down our understanding is incredibly limited by the fact that we can never fully know someone for example I've been married almost 11 years and and I barely know my wife all right you might be married 50 years and you probably barely know your wife and and here's what I mean by that you can never know what someone else is thinking here's a little example is turn to a person next to you and I want you to tell them the first thing that comes in your mind when you hear Tick Tock all right do it talk tell them banned over destroyed Trump will save it right uh that that wouldn't probably going to happen guys just be ready for it you're like I don't even know what that means some of you right I'm not on Tik Tok so I didn't miss out at 8:00 at night when they shut the whole thing down but uh then here's what I'm sad about is then I saw people on other social media posts now posting Tik Tock like dances and I'm like all right it's over I'm leaving social media all together right um Tik Tok gets banned and it just moves other places but here's the thing it's like you can never know what's fully going on in someone 's mind until we invent some technology that's totally going to end the world you will never know what's going on in another person's head but God knows what's in your mind and God fully knows you in a way that nobody else here can and the only way we can begin to know God personally is beginning to explore him and inviting him in which Paul expands upon in verse 12 he says this now we have not received the spirit of the world and Paul does this play and you're going to notice he did this in the first two verses before it he is a lowercase Spirit of this world which is our personal fleshly Spirit but the capital Spirit the Holy Spirit who comes from God he has given us that so that we may understand what has been freely given to us by God he says we also speak these things not in words taught by human wisdom but in those taught by the spirit explaining spiritual things to spiritual people but the person without the Holy Spirit does not receive what comes from God's holy spirit because it is foolishness to him he is not able to understand and since is evaluated spiritually the spiritual person however can evaluate everything and yet he himself cannot be evaluated by anyone here's our last point we see when we talk about how do we make Jesus known to a world that is broken that is far from him is we need to point people to understand through the Holy Spirit you see when I read these four verses and then the first time I read this my reaction was like wo and the second time I read it my reaction was like wo and then I kept reading and I was like whoo it's still a lot like there's so much in here it's it's a little mindblowing it's a little overwhelming it's it's slightly confusing and there's just a ton here but Paul starts in verse 12 explaining first that we can never truly know God without the Holy Spirit here's what I mean by that is this is what makes the Bible so different than any other book is that the is not just a history lesson the Bible is not just a list of rules and morality it is a living book that when it's illuminated by the Holy Spirit we get a deeper sense and knowledge of it you see the Bible is historically accurate the Bible is scientifically challenging the Bible is a literary Masterpiece but when the Holy Spirit illuminates it when the Holy Spirit brings life into it then it becomes the life transforming very word of God and when we learn from the Holy Spirit as Paul continues on this in verse 13 Paul says that then the Holy Spirit begins to speak from within us and all of a sudden instead of us dictating how we want to live our lives the Holy Spirit starts to transform who we are as people let me give you an example of this is if you have a little problem with your language and how you use your mouth and if you cuss and curse like you're not going to immediately go to hell from that okay like I don't think a big hole is going to open up you're going to fall straight down into hell like cursing is not right but it's also not going to just like void your salvation but the more you speak like that and the longer you become a Christian when you say I follow Jesus but your words still say things that are not honoring to God what it reveals is a spiritual immaturity in your life because eventually there's things in our lives that need to chip chip chip away as the Holy Spirit transforms us as it changes us and we mature close closer to him and then Paul emphasizes in verse 14 that the need for the Holy Spirit not only does it transform us but it also gives us greater understanding and in verse 15 he kind of wraps up this little talk about the holy spirit that he says that it's and it's kind of an odd verse because he says that the spiritual man is not to be evaluated or judged by anyone else here's a little twofold explanation of this and then we'll kind of kind of wrap up of what all this means he says is first is as Christians we don't have to worry about judgment from non-christians now this is not a license to be a jerk okay but what it says is we don't have to worry about non-christians judging us meaning if people don't understand our God they won't understand the choices and the lifestyle we choose to live but the second thing and then the more we give over to the Holy Spirit then judgment becomes unnecessary because we are saved by Christ in his Holiness his righteousness is working through us so that understanding becomes a LIF style of becoming more and more like Jesus the the theological term for this is sanctification that we become more holy we become more like Jesus and we work out our faith with fear and trembling our salvation but here's where all this leads and Paul kind of starts to wrap this up in verse 16 as he ends chapter 2 he says for who has known the Lord's mind that he may instruct him this is like a rhetorical question he's like you don't even know your spouse's mind do you know God's mind he's like no way but here's how we can understand God is we have the mind of Christ you see in Chapter 2 this kind of marks the end of really Paul's opening remarks in this letter in these first two chapters Paul is kind of laying out what a focused and faithful Church looks like and starting in chapter 3 he's going to get into specifics of the problem that the Corinthian Church was running into but as he closes out this section and as he kind of shows us in these first two chapters what this focus and faithful Church looks like he he starts to show us that this church that is focused that is faithful that makes Jesus known we already covered to this he says they produce spiritually hungry people that they that they produce radically humble participants and the last part of this as we see it produces uncomfortably hospitable followers you see what Paul gets in here and this is our last culture principle we see is that when we are a fa focused and faithful church that we produce in ourselves uncomfortably hospitable followers who adopt the very mind of Christ in verse 16 he he says we have the mind of Christ and think and dwell on that for a second is the mind of Christ is one that is pretty uncomfortably hospitable what do I mean by this that before Jesus came down as a man he was sitting on a throne in heaven being worshiped day and night for eternity past to Eternity present and will be for eternity future he was being worshiped on a throne in heaven that's a pretty good gig okay but Jesus decided when he looked down on a sinful world when he looked down on me and you and saw our struggles instead of saying no I'm just going to chill up here in heaven he stepped down into heaven or to into Earth he humbled himself in a way that I can't imagine was easy in a way I can't imagine was comfortable and he came down into our Humanity in the mindset he came with here's what I love in Luke 7:34 and we see this throughout the life of Jesus throughout the gospel in so many ways as Mark talks about he came not to be served but to serve and in Luke 7 34 I just love the mindset here he says the son of man this is Jesus talking about himself he says has come eating and drinking and you say look a glutton and a drunkard a friend of tax collectors and sitters yet the wisdom is Vindicated by all her children you see when Jesus came down here he didn't come down here to judge and peace out he didn't come down here to say I'm taking this whole place down cuz with his two full of Sinners it is irredeemable I can't do this instead he came down here to eat with Sinners with strangers and saints that would forever change our worlds and when we look at what Paul did in the first church of Corinth he didn't come there and preach with eloquence and word and say you guys are all sinners you're going to hell instead it says he spent a year and a half with them loving them being among them of teaching them of loving them of being hospitable to them in showing them who this Jesus is and I firmly believe that when we look at our world today and we think man our world's too broken we're so full of sin we're so full of hurt we're so full of hate how can we ever begin to reach a culture like this is adopting the same mindset of Paul the same mindset of Jesus and the same mindset that we see today is how do we love people by letting people into our world and showing them the love of God [Music]