Are You Spiritually Hungry?

and often that's how we operate in our lives we hand stuff off and say good luck but here's the good news we don't have a God that does that we have a God who equips us who resources us God doesn't say hey pray this Prayer of Salvation go get baptized here's my Bible good luck with your spiritual journey but as we kick off New Year's and and here's our as we dive into this new year in 2025 as a church we're going to be studying through the book of First Corinthians so if you have a Bible you can go ahead and grab that open to First Corinthians as we begin to kind of dive into this letter written and see just kind of the riches that God has for us but you see as we start a new year a lot of people have projections and have predictions and ideas of what this year is going to be like one expert wrote this that 2025 will be another year of massive change and and they get into AI robotic space travel and healthc Care breakthroughs suggest that the possibilities of this new year are limited L I expect actions and Innovations to be carefully planned to extract maximum value and he sums it up this for the next 12 months and Beyond will allow us to Envision a future filled with social progress and technological advancements you see our world loves to see the new stuff that is happening uh the the brighter lens that it looks like the future holds and we may very well in this new year see some crazy stuff maybe we'll see some great technological advancements maybe we'll have ai pets like right you could have a pet that could be your friend but not like pooping a boxer on your lawn that' be great right uh maybe you see some advancements that will make our life easier better and maybe we'll see the economy improve a little bit that would probably help our retirements look better by the end of this year than they might have this last year and all these great things might progress in some way but here's the problem is that its core culture and the culture we live in will still be filled with immorality Division and just the sheer broken of people one of the greatest technological advancements and you look at our world is the internet and a smartphone age and as we kind of look at that and all the great things that have come with it when you put it through the lens it it didn't it didn't solve the problem of immorality Division and Brokenness just look at the internet for example is is great as it is we also see that in our world today we have more pornography and trafficking than we have in human history it's more immoral it's worse than we've ever imag imagined when we look at see better technology as paved the way for things but we still people aren't more united instead they're more divided and more Angry than they probably ever have been just go on Twitter or any other social media platform we see better technology that have maybe given better things to our life but we also see that we have the most anxious and depressed generation in all of society in more of a need for a cultural heart change and all of this brings us to the doorstep of why we are studying the book of Corinthians and the theme that we'll be exploring in this letter is that a fractured culture a culture that is divided a culture that has a moral a culture that is hurting as a fractured culture requires a focused and faithful Church in First Corinthians chapter 1 and looking in verse 10 Paul gives us a preview of this kind of the theme of this book he says I urge you brothers and sisters in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree in what you say that there be no divisions among you that you be United with the same understanding and the same conviction you see the church at Corinth and and you even see from our bumper video the Corinth was much like Las Vegas it was a very rough and IM moral Society but the church at Corinth they faced this culture that needed a moral and ethical and a loving heart change and the only way that it was going to happen it wasn't through a government program it wasn't through a better economy it wasn't through technological advancement it was going to be through movement of the church and in our day it's no different it it and we see today what we need is a movement of the church both in our community and at large so if you haven't already go ahead and grab your Bibles we're going to be in first Corinthians starting in chapter 1 in First Corinthians 1 we're going to start in verse one and Paul writes this he says Paul called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will in sanes our brother to the Church of God at Corinth to those Sanctified in Christ Jesus called as Saints with all those in every place who call in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Our Lord both their lord and ours grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ here's the first thing we're going to pull out of this passage as we kind of walk down this journey is first we're going to look at the roles of a focused and faithful church and the different roles that are needed for a church to be successful in moving in that direction a lot of you maybe in the New Year have started reading reading your Bible or maybe you continued some of you have started right you're like oh I can open that up and read it right maybe you got a Bible app and and you kind of got on a plan and and if you have I encourage you and it's awesome um I love that I've done a yearly Bible plan for the past four years taking through the whole Bible in that time and and here's what's human nature as we start reading scripture and as you start going through in the Old Testament you're going to come to a genealogy and the first thing that's going to pop in your head is I can read the first name and the last name and Skip all the names in between right like I'm going to make up some days I'm going to read some genealogies and get back on track and in the New Testament here's what kind of we kind of might bend towards and in our human nature is we open up a letter and it's like oh Paul's saying he wrote this okay let me skip down until he starts talking but you see in this greeting in this intro Paul starts revealing a lot of things and in these three little verses he gives us four little kind of punches of the roles that are needed within a focused and faithful church and here's the first role that we see when we need is we need the correction of an author authoritative voice you see in verse one Paul says this Paul called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by God's will now this is important to note because Paul opens he he wrote most in the New Testament and he majority of and he opens letters in different ways his most famous opening is usually he says Paul a servant or Paul a slave of Jesus Christ he he's humbling himself many times he opens a book and he says Paul brother of fill in the blank and of a local leader that's there so they know he's on this kind of a firstname basis and he's like more their friend but Paul opens this one with this authoritative title of apostle he's an apostle someone who's bringing God's word someone who is literally writing the word of God that will be canonized in scripture later Paul an apostle why well you see Paul is about to lay some encouragement slash some correction slash some really hard truth throughout this book and as he starts this he says hey guys this isn't all going to be like sunshines and rainbows I'm going to tell you some stuff in your life that you need to clean up and clean up immediately and he's like and I'm not just saying this as like a nice friend and an encouragement he's saying I'm saying this as an authoritative voice of God that what you're doing is not okay and you know we need that voice in our church today but here's the great news as we have that church we have it Bound in this book as the authoritative canonized very word of God that that we call the Bible and when our lives get off track when we think we need to go somewhere and we're like what does God say about it and we go to the Bible what God says is more important than what you say we say it all the time you're entitled to your own opinion but not to your own Bible that the authoritative voice inside the church that is needed for a focused and faithful church is here before us in God's word but call keeps going and we see the second thing that is needed the second role is the shepherding of a local pastor in the second half of verse one he says and to sasses our brother now we don't get a lot of information about sasses he's actually only mentioned here in in Acts 18:17 he's noted as a synagogue leader as his church is getting started and getting off the ground but many commentaries and and I kind of agree with them and different Scholars will say that sasines was most likely the local pastor of this church now as we go through this Le this kind of letter you're going to feel bad for sasses and like pray in Reverse for sasses that that's the church he was pastoring okay and it's kind of like a church chicken or an egg was it like sass is a terrible Pastor or was it like just a really hard Church to be in and the answer might have been yes who knows but here we see that he's writing that's saying the local Pastor has a role in the church now I just put this point in here for job security personally okay um to throw in there but but seriously like we at Cross Church are passionate about building pastors and those calls to Shepherd local congregations CU we need God's word to guide us and be the ultimate voice but we need those local leaders to help Shepherd those and to go through the hard times inside there and we see what are they shepherding well this kind of comes to our next one in this next rle is we see the sanctification of a local church body check out verse two it says to the Church of God at Corinth to those Sanctified in Christ Jesus called as Saints with those in every place who call the name of Lord Jesus Christ Our Lord both their lord and ours this verse is just packed and we could preach almost a sermon in there get comfortable we're going to be here till 12 anyway but but in this I I want to call out just a few things is one he says those who are Sanctified Sanctified is to become increasingly holy but then he said as called as saints Saints would be those who mimic the fath who mimic the the life of Jesus Christ so what he's saying is the local church those of us who gather together who make up the church we are called to be holy and to be increasingly holy and more like Jesus when we make up that church body and that is a role one of the roles we need filled inside the local church and this leads to the very last role and really the most important one of these is the lordship of Jesus Christ in verse three he says grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ you see Paul here he he makes no bones about it that it's so important that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only reason we gather together as a church it's the only reason we have experienced Grace the only reason we recognize an authoritative voice of scripture the only reason we have local pastors the only reason we have a local congregation to be more like him is because we exist because of the Grace and Truth and Love and salvation of Jesus Christ and here's the deal is you need all these roles filled to be a focused and faithful church and Paul in these first three verses is just kind of like throwing out and and dropping these hints this deep theology into this church but then he kind of moves into encouraging them a little bit and here's a second kind of big point we're going to see in here and and and I didn't warn you I warned for first service if you're taking notes just have that pen ready okay and don't even put that cap back on uh you're going to be going through a few times okay I have a little more fill in- the blanks than usual but the second point we see is the encouragement to a faithful and focused church and here's why this is so important is because no church is perfect and the reason no church is perfect is because it's filled with people like me and you you see the church in Corinth as we're going to read it was filled with like alcohol I would even argue there's probably drug use in there it was filled with sexual morality that even to the point of prostitutes it it was full of lawsuits of they were suing one another in the church not even like lost people they were suing each other and it was just filled with so many more things it was a messy rough church and and you fast forward to 2025 and churches are still messy and rough and I think globally the church doesn't always have the best reputation as people look at the church they see moral failures of pastors they see kind of churches being off on the wrong direction and they criticize that and they cast doubt on that and they throw stones at that but it even happens on a personal level I've had so many conversations with people be like man I I I love the Bible I Think Jesus saved me I love Jesus but I just can't be to church they've hurt me too much I can't go back there is does the church make mistakes do people inside the church make mistakes yes but is the church still a Force for good absolutely and Paul encourages Us in starting in verse four why it is such a for Force for good and he he starts in verse four he says this I always thank my God for you I love this because as we go into 1 Corinthians and you if you read ahead you're going to see how messed up this church is and Paul say you are a headache right like my this part of my headache is for the Church of Corinth he doesn't say that but he says I thank my God for you why because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus that you were enriched in him in every way in all speech and all knowledge in this way the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you here's the first encouragement of the of a focus and faithful church that we see from Paul is that we are uh grounded in the grace and the truth of Jesus I I love this is what Paul tells us in these three verses is that the church is birthed out of the Gospel the grace the truth the good news of Jesus Christ is we exist as a church because Jesus died on the cross to forgive our sins we exist as the church because that forgiveness is true and then we share that amongst our world that is the reason we exist as a church and the beauty of dwelling on these verses and the picture that Paul begins to paint is the church is just a magnificent Force for good and God uses the church listen to this in verse six a little bit he uses a church to confirm the testimony of Jesus Christ and he does that so that we are enriched in him we are grounded in him we are growing in him in a way that changes everything we do in life here's what I mean by this is Jesus will be known through our world through the church he could have used mountains he could have used rocks he could have made monkeys speak and tell about how great God is and jesuses but instead he used us the church to proclaim the good news of Christ and share it with the world around us when we so often have a flippant or bad image of the church Paul is telling us remember where you started and what you are grounded in you are starting on the truth that Jesus Christ is the savior you are grounded in his grace in his truth and that should encourage us that even though we seem flawed at times even though first service my mic wanted to blow up and I had to use a handheld right that the church is still a Force for good that even though they sing a song you may not like at times that the CH church is still a Force for good even though Aunt Betty makes you mad sometimes the church is still a Force for good but this encouragement continues and he says he empowers Us by his grace and truth but check out verse 7 he says so that you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ he will also strengthen you to the end so that you will be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ in verse N I love this we could preach a whole sermon on this I promise we won't but we'll hit it a little bit God is faithful you are called by him into fellowship with his son Jesus Christ Our Lord here's our second encouragement for Paul is to a focus and faithful church is that we are equipped to do the will of God when we look at our world and we feel like it is too immoral and when we look at our world and we feel like it is too divided and then we look at ourselves and feel like we are too inadequate or too hypocritical to be able to counter that immorality and that division we can be kind of put our minds at ease because we come to this verse and we see that because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our lives we are strengthened and equipped and provided with everything we need to do his will until his second coming here's the thing is you're you're not good enough on your own but God is and why can we do this why can we strive to be a focused and faithful church because verse 9 tells us God is faithful you aren't always faithful but our God always is I take that as an amen it was a sneeze but I think that was amen so I'm going to take it all day long good transition boy uh uh a few weeks ago um I was at a friend's house and uh a couple and they have three kids and they're kind of around the age of my four kids so it's just straight up chaos I'm like good luck we getting your house destroyed it was actually my house I'm sorry at that time so my house is getting destroyed and then as they're going he's like starts telling me about like this problem his toilet's having in his kids's bathroom and he's like dude I plunged it and it goes away for a while and then just keeps coming back and I'm like I got a snake and he's like and he's like oh okay good try and I just gave him the snake as he's walking out the door I'm like good luck man so a couple weeks this past week I was at their house now and the toilet's still having problems and then he's like dude I it's snake it and it still doesn't work and it's literally out of commission they're like just don't use that restroom we need to call a plumber like call a plumber what do you think um so I was like Hey I was like let me take a look at it so I went and got the snake and um I see the judge judgement in your eyes that think you you're like you can't use a plumbing snake I know it I can see the Judgment that you're like you have no idea what you're doing but I get it in there and and I start twisting and and I feel something I'm like all right we got something in here and I told him like you probably have a toy in there or something else he's like no I don't think so I just like you know whatever is like sometimes your kids just you know I have a six-year-old who uses like that much toilet paper for every me like you know poops but anyway if it's like wipe your butt with less so anyway I have this and and I'm pulling this out and I pull out a hard plastic kids straw if you know anything about a toilet it doesn't take much to get something wedged in there slowly it's going to back up and that's how you get a PL so I pull this out um I rinse it off and put it in his kid's cup and say good luck right just kidding trash or dishwasher you can say that right uh just a sanitizer but anyway but the the first thing I thought in my head was like yeah I'm pretty awesome you couldn't do it but I could and then it dwelled in a little bit I'm like I'm a terrible friend I gave him that and gave him no instructions on how to use it I gave him a plumbing snake which if I didn't have YouTube I probably wouldn't be able to figure out right and said good luck and often that's how we operate in our lives is we hand stuff off and say good luck but here's the good news is we don't have a God that does that we have a God who equips us who resources us God doesn't say hey pray pray this Prayer of Salvation uh go get baptized here's my Bible good luck with your spiritual journey instead what God does is when we pray those prayers when we are baptized he surrounds us with a community of Believers he not only gives us his word but he gives us resources is to understand his word and then best of yet he gives us himself in the form of the Holy Spirit to illuminate that Community to illuminate God's word so that we are involved in something and we are working our salvation out with fear and trembling in the midst of God resourcing us and here's the deal is our God is faithful he is faithful that he provides all this and he does this so that we can be encouraged to live as the Sanctified body of a focused and faithful church that is needed in such a fractured culture and you hear all that you say that that that's great but the problem is problems come and in this last section we're going to read today I want us to look at the problems through threatening a focused and faithful church because it's a new year and in a new year you probably have a lot of ideas on things that you want to put into practice maybe you want to read your Bible more you want to exercise more you want to eat healthier and and you have all these great plans on January 1st and it's January 5th so you might have already cancel those plans but hopefully you're holding out till January 10th right but all those grand things all of a sudden the problems come in where your kid schedule gets in the way your work gets in the way your lack of motivation really gets in the way and and as you have these Grand dreams of where you're going the problems around us start to kind of create roadblocks that stop us from going forward and spiritually if we aren't careful similar distractions and excuses can cause problems in our churches and and keep reading in verse 10 Paul starts to address the first one he says now I urge you brothers and sisters in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree in what you say that there no be no divisions among you and that you be United with the same understanding and the same conviction here's the first problem that kind of comes and is counter to a focused in faithful church is when we are not agreeing on the essentials you see Paul starts getting to the issues arising in the church in Corinth that they were divided and they were disagreeing over things honestly that did not matter and we're going to see that fleshed out as it continues and they couldn't reach a fractured culture because within themselves they were fractured and here is the important note though he didn't say just agree on everything and and just keep the peace stop talking to each other if you're mad just like be peaceful it's fine instead he says in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that's important to start he says in his name agree in what you say agree in the things of Jesus be United with the same understanding and the same conviction what Paul is telling him is that Jesus being our Lord is the first thing we say so we must let that be what we agree on we must let that be what is essential in our lives in what must hold everything together Augustine famously said it this way that in Essentials we have unity in non-essentials we have Liberty and in everything charity and throughout First Corinthians we're going to read and we're going to see what is Essentials vers what is non-essentials but but here's kind of essential 101 is that Jesus is God who lived died and raised again to defeat our sins and this is the found that we always come back to that we always build from but Paul keeps going in verse 11 he says for it has been reported to me about you my brothers and sisters by members of Khloe's people that there's a rivalry among you what I'm saying is this one of you says I belong to Paul or I belong to Apollos or I belong to cus or I belong to Christ verse 13 is Christ divided was Paul crucified for you or you baptized in Paul's name here's the next problem we see that comes uh that can threaten a focus in faithful churches not uniting in Christ you see I love this is it's telling them is they were too captivated by personalities rather than who those personalities were pointing to we live in a very unique time in the world is with the Internet is you can see the best preaching from around the world every single day every minute of every day and you can watch it every week and let me guarantee you it is not coming from this room okay you can go watch Craig Rochelle you can go watch whoever I not even name people cuz I'm just getting in trouble for naming people you're like why do you go say that guy why didn't you say this guy okay so I'll stop there um but you can listen to any of your kind of personality and your preference and the preacher that you like and that is available to us but here's the funny thing is 2,000 years ago they had the same problem and even in our local context you can have personality preferences you can like Jackie's hunting stories more than my stories of having four kids right you can have a preference of Chad or Josh or whoever it is and Kyle and all the people here but what we should be focused on is what are those personalities pointing to and it's ultimately pointing to Christ and here is what Paul stresses so much is when the problem comes when we say I belong to blank instead of saying I belong to Jesus and see where this leads to him finishing out in verse 14 he says I thank God that I baptized none of you what a weird thing to say like right if you just stop there I thank God I baptize none of you right except Crispus and gous but then this is why in verse 15 so that no one can say you were baptized in my name I did in fact baptize the household of stephanus beyond that I don't recall if I baptized anyone else what a that's Paul flexing again he's like I baptized so many people I don't even remember all the people I baptized right but check out verse 17 for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel not with eloquent wisdom so that the Cross of Christ will not be emptied of its effect here here's our last problem that we can run into when we're trying to be a focused and faithful church if we are not careful is we run into the problem of not preaching the gospel you see Paul gets here to this place what these problems all stem from is they were overly focused on the wrong things they were focused on the politics of the church the people of the church the process of the church rather than the preaching and the sharing of the Gospel they were focused on the things that didn't matter they were focused on people being overly elevated by ordinances that are important but not the most important they're focused on in turning things into something they were not meant to be and they were elevating all those things above the preaching and the sharing of the gospel and Paul boils it down here for them that they became divided they became distracted they became a church that was not reaching their Community because they weren't laser focused on preaching the word on making Jesus known to the city and the people around them and here's where this All Leads as we kind of step back for a minute and look at these 17 verses to open this book is we will never be a focused and a faithful church if we we are not pursuing the right things you see the church at Corinth had so many issues and Paul is going to encourage them to get on track throughout this book but he starts here in chapter one with the basic idea of spiritually pursuing the right things is he saying hey guys you need to preach the gospel hey guys you need to fall more in love with the lordship of Jesus Christ God guys you need to remember how faithful God is and for us to morning I kind of want to summarize it in this way and and we're going to kind of unpack three kind of church culture points that I think we get from these first two chapters of the book of Corinthians and here's our first uh Church culture principle here is that a focused and faithful Church produces spiritually hungry individuals a focused and faithful Church produces spiritually hungry people you see when we look at the church of corinthus why were they not focusing in green on the essentials on what really matters it's because they were not spiritually feasting and focusing on what truly mattered in Jesus Christ why were they not uniting in Christ because they weren't spiritually you you feasting on who in Jesus matters in his birth instead they were focusing on personalities and the people they liked why were they not preaching the gospel it's because they weren't spiritually feasting on where matters was the lost people around them in Corinth and sharing Jesus Christ with them and for us we have to ask the question is how do we avoid the issues that the Church of Corinth faced how do we Foster a spiritual hunger within our own lives as we end our service today I want to do it in a time of kind of action steps coming from some reflection and we're going to talk about three little steps that we can apply to to our lives and and maybe you've done some of these maybe you haven't started any of them but in all these you can take it further and deeper in in these here's what we're going to ask is how do I increase the spiritual hunger within me how do I kind of be on fire for Jesus I Feast after him I follow after him I revolve my entire life around him [Music]