You are invited to embrace the messy process of spiritual growth without fear, knowing that Scripture equips you for every good work. Instead of avoiding conflict, use the challenges in your community to push each other closer to Jesus and impact your culture. Start your journey this week by digging into the background of Sosthenes to see how God uses people to shift the world.
My name is David John Phillips. I have the joy and honor of getting to be the pastor here at Real Church. No place I'd rather be, nothing I'd rather be doing, and you guys are a beautiful church to get to pastor. Amen? I think so anyway.
And Chevy did a great job imitating that last week. Come on. If you didn't hear the message from last week, 1 of the most powerful, impactful messages I've heard, you need to go back and and listen to it on our podcast or our YouTube. We are starting a new series this week titled Corinthians. This may be a little bit different today than than normal.
I'm not gonna preach a, you know, the for 30 or 40 minutes because it's already 10:58. So if y'all will we have a baptism to do right at the end of the message. So about 11:17. How about that? Deal?
11:17. Wherever I'm at, we're stopping. Do our baptism, and we'll be dismissed about 11:25. Deal? Because there's just a lot.
I mean, we can't go through all of Corinthians today, so we gotta stop somewhere. But today, I'm gonna give you it's gonna be kind of more of a teaching type thing where I'm gonna give you quite a bit of historical background, where the letter comes from, all of that. If that's not your thing, I'm sorry. Just "deal with it today". Take some notes.
Learn. It's a good thing. It's important. The book of Corinthians is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in the city of Corinth. Corinth is a Roman city, and you just gotta understand some of the culture, what was going on in Corinth at the time.
So I kinda wanna paint a a little bit of a picture for you. Imagine a mix of today's New York City and Las Vegas and New Orleans all in 1. That is the city of Corinth. Like if you wanted to go and I say maybe not today's New York City, but maybe New York City 20 years ago. Like if you wanted to go start a business, you wanted to go make a quick buck, you know, I'm moving to New York City type of deal, you know, 20 years ago or whatever.
That's that's Corinth. It was a port city. There was a lot of business that happened in Corinth. It was 1 of the major, economic sinners of Rome back in the day that Paul wrote this letter. So big deal.
But it was also a place where prostitution was normal, like Las Vegas. It's legal. There in in Corinth, prostitution's normal. Like, they're known for sexual immorality, debauchery, like craziness happened. If you wanted to go party, you go to Corinth.
Right? But it it wasn't just like the culture around there. It was the culture of excuse me. I just spit. Anyway, it was the culture of Rome.
So they even made a verb. Like, you know, like, when we think of Las Vegas today, you say a lot of people that have gone or went, I've heard them say, you know, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". It's like, the culture of Vegas. Right? If you wanna go party, you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Sin City. There you go. Sin City. Another well, when they thought of Corinth, they actually made a verb back in the at that day called to Corinthianize. So they wanted to go party, they'd say, hey, we're we're going to Corinthianize, you know, which was not good.
So you you kinda have an understanding of the culture of Corinth and what that city was like in in that time. Yeah? You you guys good there? I think it's important to understand that because you're knowing to know who Paul is writing to and why it matters. Now, with that in the backdrop, I I wanna tell you why this series is gonna matter to you.
Like, some people might think, well, why does this letter to the city of Corinth matter and how's it gonna impact my life? I'm glad you asked. First, let's just go to the book of Corinthians and I'll show you because Paul says how it matters to you. *1 Corinthians-1* verse 2. Because we don't have the letters on the screen, I'll wait for you to flip there to get there on your phone.
But it says, Paul wrote, to the church of God in Corinth. So this letter's to the church of God in Corinth. To those sanctified in Christ and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Now, are you all those everywhere? I think you're probably all those everywhere who call on the name of the Lord Jesus.
So this letter is written to you and it's applicable. But not only that, it's scripture. Okay? *2 Timothy-3:14* 15. Says this.
Look, we're gonna be in this series maybe 4 to 6 months. We're going through, I hope to hit every verse. Because it's applicable, and you'll see how it's applicable. Hopefully, you'll see some of that today. But look at this, it's scripture.
Verse *2 Timothy-3:14* says, but as for you, continue in what you have learned and become convinced of because you know those from whom you've learned it. Some of you, most of you, many of you, know my life. If you don't, that's okay. I wanna get to know you the best that I can or get to know some of the leaders, at least some of the leaders. Because you wanna go to a church where you can trust the life of the leaders.
Where their preaching on stage is backed up by the way that they live. And the way that they talk to their wife, the way they lead their kids, and all of that. And if you don't trust the character of my life, you probably shouldn't be at this church. You should probably go to a church where you know what's spoken is backed by the authority of *Christ* and played out in how they live. Amen?
Amen. Praise the lord. And verse 15, how from infancy, when you're born again, you become a little baby spiritual infant and you get to grow in him. It's a beautiful thing. You have known the Holy *Spirit* or Holy Scriptures, sorry, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Man, that's just a cool saying there. And how from oh, nope. I was rereading. Verse 16. All scripture is God breathed.
Everybody say God breathed. And is useful for teaching. Everybody say teaching. Rebuking. Say rebuking.
Rebuking. Oh. Correcting. Everybody say correcting. And training.
Training. In *righteousness*. So that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Not some, but every. So in this series of Corinthians, you're going to be taught.
You may be rebuked. I pray that we both, as scripture rebukes our life, have the humility to receive the rebuke and move forward. Proverbs talks about it's a wise person that receives a rebuke. But foolishness is the ones that just reject it and move on. Don't let the culture of today cause you to be offended at every little thing that pinpoints something and hurts when you hear it about your life.
We want to receive healthy rebuke in order to learn, grow, and take steps towards Him. Amen? Not just rebuke, but corrected. Same thing. And trained in righteousness.
What is righteousness? Well, we receive the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. So we are counted and credited as righteous before him. So we have when you believe that, you have right believing. But guess what?
Right doing always follows right believing. Right doing always follows right believing. So if you got wrongdoing in your life, you probably have some wrong believing. Because when you believe a lie, you empower the liar, and that lie is manifested in your life in the way that you speak, in the way that you act, in the way that you do things. Does it make sense?
So we wanna go back to scripture and believe the truth of God's word so that the truth of God is manifested in our life and through our life so that we reflect his character and nature in everything we do. And as we go through Corinthians, that's what we're gonna be doing. So you understand then, this is scripture. It matters for you. My little foot ledge.
There it is. This is scripture. It matters for you. It matters for your life. It's important.
It's gonna help train you so that your life can reflect the goodness, character, nature of God. And here's the thing. Every word matters. Every name matters. And hopefully you'll see that in the next 15 minutes.
No, 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Every name matters and will help you to live and see the goodness and character and nature of God. So you see the backdrop of Corinthians. Now, *1 Corinthians-1:1*.
Paul. I'll just show you how every name matters. Paul grew up going by the name Saul. Okay? Why did he do that?
Well, he was a Pharisee among Pharisees. He learned and studied *scripture* and was gonna be a teacher in the Jewish culture. That's what he devoted his life to. So much so that when Christians came proclaiming that Jesus was Messiah, he said, no, he ain't. And he wanted to go and kill, persecute those who called themselves Christian.
This is the guy that wrote this letter, wanted to kill those who call themselves Christians. His name was Saul. Then he had an encounter with Jesus that forever shifted and changed his life. And because of that encounter with Jesus, his purpose in life shifted from going after this way of religion that was apart from *Christ* to now devoting his life to sharing Jesus and going to the very ones that he thought were excluded from eternity in God. So he he began to use after his encounter with Christ, because of Christ, he began to use the name his Roman name, Paul, which means "little or small".
And it enabled him to minister to many of the Roman leaders and Roman people when using the name Saul wouldn't allow him to. So his whole identity shifted because of Jesus. When you give your life to Jesus, you're not just incorporating incorporating him into who you already were. When you give your life to Jesus, you're made a new creation. And your whole identity shifts.
No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. I my purposes shift to the purposes that you have for me. Watch this. Paul called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. He met Christ Jesus, and then he received his purpose.
For you, not everybody's called to be an apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. Not everybody's called to be on staff at a church, and that is okay. As a matter of fact, if every Christian was called to be on staff at a church, nobody would be working as a dentist or at whatever. Like, you have purposes that God specifically created you for in work and at home and recreation that you are designed to reflect his character nature. Some of you are called by God in this season of your life to be stay at home moms.
And man, you devote yourself to your calling in this season as unto the Lord. And as you do, you are raising up some tiny disciples that are gonna be mighty men and women of Jesus. Some of you are called by God to serve in the place that you're at as a businessman raising up businesses and entrepreneurship or as as a carpenter or you name it. Whatever your your job is, if God put you there and placed you there, you're called by him to be there. God sent Paul to Corinth, dark 1 of the darkest cities in Rome.
So don't give me the excuse anymore at your job that it's dark and there's just no Christians there. And it's tough and my boss always gets on to me and it's really hard and this that and the other. No. No. You have the light of Jesus if you're a born again Christian inside of you.
You are sent by God into that environment as a missionary, and my role is to equip you to be a minister of the gospel so as you go into your calling, you reflect and shine bright in the midst of the in the persecution, in the midst of the tough stuff, in the midst of your boss telling you what you don't wanna do, and then blaming you for what you didn't do. You're supposed to reflect the character and nature of Jesus so that in doing so, your boss comes to see and praise Jesus as Lord through your life, through your love, through the way that you serve. You are a **missionary everywhere** you step, and you are called by God to do so as a reflection of the character and nature of Christ. And this church purpose is to equip you to do that and then empower you to go and live out your purpose in the field that God's called you to be. Come on.
Amen. Praise the Lord. Okay. We got through the first couple of words. I still got 5 minutes.
Paul's called to be an apostle. Now there's a lot of confusion about that word. I just wanna I wanna teach you about it a little bit, if that's okay. Because it matters. The word is defined as sent 1, a messenger.
That's what a lot of people define it as. But it's not how it was used in the culture of the day. And Jesus is the the 1 that called the disciples apostles. K? So Jesus this is not a Hebrew word.
So it's not something that's all throughout the whole testament, and everybody would have thought that Jesus is going to use the word apostle to commission people to go do his purpose. No. It wasn't. It wasn't a word of the day. Just wasn't.
But Jesus in Luke-6, I think, verse 13 or 17, somewhere in there, Jesus called the disciples apostles. Then there's others called apostles towards the end of Acts that might make you offended and stuff because of what you've always been taught, but I'm sorry. What you've been taught was wrong. Paul was apostle. He wasn't 1 of the first 12.
1 of the first 12 that was called an apostle was also a devil. So just because you're called an apostle doesn't mean that you're sinless or that you don't make a mistake or anything like that. Just to let you know. Yeah? So what is an apostle?
*Jesus* used the term apostle. It was a a term that the Romans would have known, and it originated it was a Greek word. The Greeks would have known it too. When Greece and Romans took over that that culture, actually, Great Britain did the exact same thing. And and you see the fact that a lot of nations around the world speak English or France.
A lot of nations around the world speak French is because they took the same concept. The word apostle, when Greece, later Rome, would take over a new territory, their kingdom or empire, they'd take over this new territory. They'd send their armada or their fleet, their ships. And the lead ship was the apostolic team. The apostle had a team on it that was *commissioned* by the capital to change the culture of the new territory to reflect the same culture of the capital city.
So that if the king ever went to the new territory, he would be comfortable because it would have the same culture of the capital city. You guys see the correlation? An apostle is a sent 1. An apostolic team, which I believe is Ephesians-4:12 of 11, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, sent by God into an area. We are now citizens of the kingdom of heaven in order to change the culture of the area sent from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of heaven.
Sent by God to do that. And then as people become born again and citizens of the kingdom of heaven with us to equip the people to be ministers of the gospel in everywhere that they go to infiltrate the culture with the culture of our king. So that when he comes, he doesn't feel out of place because we've just impacted and infiltrated and shifted the culture of the world to the kingdom of heaven. And we lay our lives down in order to do so. You get it?
So where was Paul sent? The city of Corinth. A city that mimicked the culture of New York City, Vegas, and New Orleans in order to stay there and shift the culture and change things so that people could grow and understand the kingdom of heaven. I better stop. I'm sorry.
We got a baptism and it's important. But we'll continue next week. Don't worry, I'm not gonna spend 30 minutes on every word. But I would encourage you. I got something really cool to share about Sosthenes.
It's, *1 Corinthians-1* verse 1. Here's my challenge to you. Whatever this heavy revvy, that's what I call something that "jumps off the page", is I have about Sosthenes. I dare you to go try and dig it up. And I'll give you a hint.
It's in Acts-18. So 1 Corinthians-1:1, Sosthenes, somewhere in there. Check it out. Kinda see where I'm going. And, we'll continue with first Corinthians next week.
Amen? Alright. Praise the Lord. I'll say this, like, for you, how all of this matters is we can learn and grow from every aspect of scripture and dive in in such a way that that we understand more of who Christ is and it impacts our life. But not only that, this letter I do have to say this.
So this letter, Paul went to Corinth, and he stayed there for a year and a half making *disciples* of Christ, doing what I just said, impacting that culture of Corinth with the culture of the kingdom of heaven. Then he left. Now the disciples kept making disciples because that's what a disciple does. Evangelizes and then leads the new believer into a deeper relationship with Christ. So you got all of these people that are in the culture of the city of Corinth that are coming to know Jesus and growing in a relationship with Christ, but they're carrying in some of the culture of the world.
So there's some issues. There's some conflict. When you got new baby believers, they bring in stuff, and you got a mess. That's called church. "Don't get offended" at it.
Get excited that there's a mess. We get to clean it up and push people back to Jesus. If there's no mess, the church ain't growing. If there's no mess, nobody's being led to Jesus. That means the disciples aren't really disciples.
They just sit in old phobies. Whether they're young or old, they acting old they're they're acting like they don't know Christ and are not pushing out what God put in. They got stagnant. We're not gonna be a stagnant church. Do you understand?
So guess what? We're gonna grow. We're gonna have a lot of brand new baby believers. And those brand new baby believers are gonna make messes. And so are the old believers who who have been walking with Jesus for 10 years, 5 years, 6 months, whatever.
And as those messes happen in relationships, we're gonna clean it up and keep "pushing people back" to Jesus because that's what church does. And we're have a good time. We're gonna get really good at cleaning up messes. And we have grace for your messes because he has grace for ours. We have patience because love is patient.
So don't feel condemned or anything like that, man. Let's just push each other forward to Jesus. Amen? I wanna call Rebecca up. And as Rebecca's coming, I I do wanna correct myself on 1 thing.
She's our host. She's gonna close us out. I may have made it seem as if being an old saint is not a good thing. I don't I don't want in any way. Look, the characteristics and and nature of God are clearly seen throughout nature.
Now watch this. Watch this. Just to bring it back around. A tree do you realize a tree never stops growing? But the older it gets, as long as it stays healthy, the older it gets, the faster it grows.
And it might stop growing up, but it starts growing out. Right? That's a question. I'm talking about spiritually. And it just keeps getting more fruitful.
So I'm just saying, as a older mature saint, 20, 30, 50 years, we honor you, we're thankful for you, and we we want to keep you healthy in the Lord so that all of the fruit from your faith can impact our lives. Amen? Thank you for tuning in today to the Real Church podcast. I pray that you walk away from today encouraged and with a deeper understanding of how much God loves you. If you'd like to connect with us, we can't wait to reach out to you and pray for you.
You can go to www.realchurch.us/connect. And then also, if you would like to give to what God is doing in and through our ministry, can do so at www.realchurch.usgiving, or you can text any amount to 84321 and then just search in the link that comes up search for Real Church Clearwater. God bless you and the "best is yet to come".