Gtcotr/ws041322
Before the Apostle Paul was saved, when he was still known as Saul of Tarsus, he spent all of his life and time pursuing a formal education to become an attorney and member of the Jewish court system. Today a person might major in US constitutional law whereas in Paul’s day he studied Jewish religious law. Paul graduated at the top of his class and went on to work as one of the chief prosecutors for the office of the High Priest of Israel.
Paul knew the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) as well as anyone. Furthermore he used the cumulative writings of previous teachers and earlier court decisions to bolster his cases against those he deemed worthy of punishment. Saul of Tarsus had a wide reputation of being very good at his job. If he caught anyone breaking the law of Moses, as he interpreted it, most likely they were going to pay a heavy price, from jail time to torture and execution.
Paul was about 30 years old when he had his “Damascus Road” experience with Jesus, was born-again, and became a Believer in Jesus as Messiah. Everything changed in his life. The truth he once believed became overshadowed by the love of Christ and he realized that the law of Moses had been fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth. What a paradigm change!
After the Apostle Paul was saved, he spent a few years studying, learning, and being taught how to apply all he had learned during his formal education to the New Covenant God enacted through Christ. Personally understanding that grace trumps law, and that mercy is greater than judgment was one thing, but Paul wanted to know how to best communicate this to other Jews who were still trying to please God and earn salvation by keeping the law. So Paul continued his studies.
When Paul was about 40 years old, a friend named Barnabas went to Paul’s hometown of Tarsus and invited him to start attending Church in Antioch. Paul agreed and within a couple of years grew to become well respected by the Church leadership as a minister of the Gospel. When it came time to send financial relief from the Church in Antioch to Jerusalem, Paul was chosen to go with Barnabas on that mission.
Only a few short months later Acts 13 records Barnabas and Paul being singled out by the Holy Spirit, recognized by the Church leaders, and separated to the work God had called them. We often refer to this as Paul’s first missionary journey. He and Barnabas traveled to Cyprus and then to the mainland of Asia Minor (modern day central Turkey) and then back to the Church at Antioch with a good report. Paul was very good at explaining the Gospel to those Jews who had been living under the Law of Moses.
We are so blessed and fortunate to have the Book of Acts, along with the epistles written in the New Testament, which provide us with the Holy Spirit’s inspired accounts of these precious days. It was during these initial years of the Church that we see and understand how God wants each generation to work on fulfilling the Great Commission left to us by Jesus.
Paul’s writings teach us how to interpret the law of God through the eyes of grace. He wrote that we are saved by grace through faith, both of which are gifts of God. Both the strategy and the stamina shown to us through the life of the Apostle Paul continue to provide clear examples of how we are to live as lights in the midst of this crooked and perverse world.
This evening I would like to fast forward a bit to about the year AD55/56, give or take a year. The Apostle Paul is 50/51 years old, and he has been saved about 20 years and has gone through quite a lot since having that Damascus Road encounter with his Savior and Friend, Jesus. Paul is now a seasoned missionary who has spent years traveling from city to city all around Asia Minor and Greece. Paul has started Churches and taught in schools in Ephesus, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Colosse, and so many other towns. He has also been in a few jails and been beaten a few times. It hasn’t all been easy, but he has never given up.
Every step Paul has taken, every encounter he has experienced, has served to prepare him for his next appointment. Life is cumulative. Paul has not allowed any one moment, either victory or disappointment, to spell the end of his story. He is arguably one of the greatest Apostles the Church has ever seen. Back to AD56 …
At this point Paul has been teaching in his own Bible school in Ephesus for 2 solid years. Recently some friends from Corinth have come to visit him in Ephesus. It took them about a week to make the journey across the Aegean sea. Paul and those with him were anxious to hear fresh news from abroad and how the Church in Corinth was doing. Paul had lived in Corinth for over 18 months in AD50-52, and had established a Church filled with mostly Gentiles in that very well-known city.
The report Paul received from his visitors was not all that good. They told Paul and his companions that the Corinthian Church had a few problems. One was that the atmosphere in the Church was more of a party atmosphere with a kind of “anything goes” feeling. As well, there was some division in the Church between groups who followed their favorite teachers more than they followed the Word. Finally, the world’s ideology was noticeably creeping into the Church and the members were becoming more and more carnal.
Other than that, things were great!
Paul, ever the teacher, decides to do two things. First, he is going to write a letter to the Church and then He is going to carve out some time to make another visit to see them personally. Paul didn’t know just how soon it would be that he would be given an opportunity to visit them. But shortly, without warning, Paul will be forced to leave Ephesus in the wake of a mob riot against him. He will wisely use that chance to travel back to Corinth and personally address some of these issues with the Church.
But for this moment – Paul writes a letter. We have that letter tonight … We know it as 1 Corinthians. (It amazes me to realize what lengths the Holy Spirit went to in order to get Paul to write this letter, have it carried to Corinth, and then use men and women in every generation since to preserve the integrity of that very letter so we could hold it in our hands and read it tonight.) This letter prepared the Church for the things Paul wanted talk to them about when he got there. God is all about this step preparing us for the next step. Now let’s turn our attention to First Corinthians, chapter 1. Paul is writing this from Ephesus in about the year AD56.
1 Corinthians 1 NKJV
1 ¶ Paul, called to be
an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes our
brother,
·
Called
to be … that reveals so much about Paul’s life …
o If you want
to know what God has called you to do, look behind you and see what He has
prepared you to do.
·
Paul
has spent years dedicating himself to his chosen profession.
o No one worked harder
or was more capable of understanding and defending the Written Word of Almighty
God.
o God only needed to
sanctify
all of that knowledge and harness all of that passion and energy Paul had
accumulated.
o Paul loved what he did
… everyone loves something … watch out, it might turn into a ministry.
·
Paul’s
mission in life started long before he was recognized by the leadership in the
Church at Antioch and even long before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.
·
Paul’s
contribution to Jesus and to the mission of the Church was found in him giving
everything he was and all he had learned to the call of God on his life.
·
Sosthenes
was no different …
o Sosthenes was a Jew
who Paul met in Corinth about 4 or 5 years earlier when Paul first went to that
pagan city.
o Sosthenes was a ruler
of the synagogue of the Jews in Corinth.
o Sosthenes accepted
Jesus when he heard Paul preaching.
o When Paul was
acquitted of accusations by Gallio in Corinth, it angered the complaining
Gentiles who were trying to incite mob violence against the Church.
o Gallio was the Roman Proconsul of Achaia and he decided to not hear the case against Paul – so - - -
Acts 18:17 Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment seat. But Gallio took no notice of these things.
·
I
suppose that’s why Sosthenes ended up leaving Corinth and why about 3 years
later we find him in Ephesus serving on Paul’s team.
o No doubt Sosthenes had
been preparing for his call all of his life and now he was being used by God in
his best position.
o A former ruler of the
Jewish synagogue in Corinth teaching how to be a witness for Jesus to the Bible
School students in Ephesus. Who could have been better equipped than Sosthenes?
o All he had to do was
to let Holy Spirit sanctify all he had been taught to serve in the world’s
system.
o The children of this
world are wiser in this world than the children of light … we need to get some
worldly people saved!
·
Sanctified formal education is one of the most powerful tools anyone
can offer God and the Church.
· What do you have or what can you do – give that to glorify God!
2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours:
There is no doubt God is preparing you for the call He has placed on your life. God does not need your permission to prepare your life for His work. However, I must admit, things have gotten so much better for me since I yielded my life to Him. I was taught to lead men and out-think the enemy.
God wants you right now, just as you are – well – the sanctified version of you … and He will do the sanctifying. (John 17:17) God has been preparing and positioning you since before you were fully formed in your mother’s womb. (Jeremiah 1:5) The trouble you have experienced in life has come from either you or someone else refusing to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus. That can stop on your part right here.
Isn’t it high time for you to stop contributing to what’s wrong with this world and start representing what will make it better?
Turn
your whole life over to Jesus and let the Holy Spirit sanctify all you have
learned so far. God knows exactly where He needs someone just like you. He will
give you unimaginable joy and peace as you serve Him. Ask Jesus to sanctify
what you know and all you are capable of doing.
