1 Corinthians 1:1-2 | Episode #976

July 7, 2025

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

1 Corinthians 1:1-2

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

If you would like to revisit today’s Bible study, please visit our website at https://hopealive.buzzsprout.com/ to download the transcript. 

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope.

Applying God's word to your daily life.

As we finish Faithful Finance, we want to produce our winter Bible study done at Lake Community Church on First Corinthians.

It'll be a fairly long Bible study.

We will break it up into different parts.

And so you will get a really good, really fast study through the book of First Corinthians. Before we move on to the book of Joshua.

We're going to deal with the book of Corinthians and we're going to get started.

And I'm going to start with a word of prayer, if y' all don't mind. Let's start praying. Father, we do. Thank you that we can meet together,

Father. That we can take a moment in the wintertime when the sun goes down early, Father, and the. And the weather outside is cold.

That we can take a.

A time on Friday night to come and dig deep into your word.

Spend some time really studying one of the great books that you've written to us.

And so, Father, tonight we ask that your Holy Spirit would reveal himself to us.

That Father. He would reveal your word.

That Father, as we study this book,

that Father, we would come to understandings that Father are personal,

that Father are corporate as a church.

And that father calls us to consider our lives and our walk with you. And so, Father, we ask that you would reveal these things to us in Jesus name.

Amen.

Now let's do talk about the city of Corinth and the location because we do need to do a little history.

Because you need to understand,

even though this letter is written by the apostle Paul to the people of Corinth,

Corinth is a little bit of an issue because Corinth has a lot of wealth. As far as the cities in the book of the Bible,

the different towns that a book was written to,

other than Rome,

the book of Romans, other than Rome,

the city of Corinth is the wealthiest book, is the wealthiest city.

That a book of the Bible is written to the church there.

Not only is it the wealthiest city, the book of Corinth. The city of Corinth is a very.

And I'm gonna give you this word and I'm gonna use it.

I'm gonna use it in its worldly way. It is a very spiritual city.

Meaning. Thank you, sir. Meaning that there is a lot in the book of Corinth that deals with.

There's a lot in the book of Corinth that deals with spiritual issues.

So you have wealth,

you have wisdom,

the City of Corinth had a robust academic.

The academy was there. There was a lot of philosophy,

Greek philosophy.

And so it has all the makings of what you would think would be a great church.

But the truth is, it is a very carnal church. And I'm going to use that phrase a lot.

And so we need to kind of flesh it out a little bit. And I use the word flesh because it literally means flesh.

Okay? All right.

And so as you're thinking about you personally, as we talk about these things, because we're going to have to talk about spiritual, and we're going to have to talk about fleshly,

and then we're going to talk about worldly, okay? And by the way, that's the three ways that you are attacked as far as being. Being.

Being tempted towards sin. You're tempted in your flesh,

meaning the desires of the flesh. Those are usually called youthful lust, the lust that comes when you're young and is strongest a lot of times when you're young.

So that's called the lust of the flesh,

all right? It's called carnality in the Bible.

Then you have worldliness,

okay? And worldliness is a temptation of the soul. And what that is is a desire to be like the world,

okay? And so when you're tempted,

as far as the world is concerned, you're tempted to not be like Christ,

but to be conformed to the image of this world. And the Bible says, do not be conformed to the image of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And so you've got worldliness, you've got carnality. And the answer for carnality, by the way, the lust of the flesh is,

is to flee the lust of the flesh. The Bible teaches us not to fight it, but to flee. Now with carnality, the Bible says, do not be conformed, but be transformed.

And the way that happens is that your mind is renewed by God's word. And then finally is a spiritual attack.

And spiritual attacks,

spiritual attacks are very difficult because a spiritual attack is an attack by the enemy to get you to not only have the emotive feelings of things that are opposite the fruit of the spirit, but for you to act on those things.

So if you think about a spiritual attack or an attack of the enemy on your spirit,

that would be anger that would lead to hatred.

So rather than having love,

you would have hatred. Rather than having joy,

you would have despair.

Rather than having peace, you would have anxiousness. And as you go through love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, Faithfulness, gentleness,

self control, as you go through those and pick the opposite of that in Scripture,

when you are feeling tempted or feeling pushed toward those emotions and then the actions around them, you are usually under a spiritual attack.

If,

if you're laying in bed on Sunday morning and you go, well, you know everybody else. Don't go to church all the time.

That's usually a worldly temptation. You're being tempted to be like the world.

If, you know,

you see red velvet cake a week after Christmas and you just can't do anything but eat a big old hunk of it, that's probably lust of the flesh. And you probably should have got somebody to not have that red velvet cake near you after New Year's, right?

Amen. Hallelujah.

And so, as you're thinking through those things, you need to understand that, because when we're dealing with this,

the Book of Corinthians,

so they are the ones who are sent,

and they are apostles. And they went out and planted churches. They were church planters. They were leaders of the churches. And so Paul is telling you, I am Paul,

and I'm writing to you as an apostle.

Now, in other books,

he in some ways makes sure that they understand that he is not.

He is not being boastful about this.

In this book,

he does take that stance a little bit,

but in some ways he doesn't. And the reason he doesn't is because this church is a church that is rebellious because they love the flesh,

okay? And so he doesn't minimize his position in the kingdom. In fact,

in some ways, he magnifies it. Okay? He says,

I'm an apostle.

I was sent by the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was sent for a reason,

he says,

called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the what?

The will of God.

Now, these are important ideas and understandings.

The will of God is God's nature. His character is the Father's heart and his passion expressed in action in the world.

Okay? So it's the passion of the heart of God expressed in action in the world that we live in.

Okay? So if he's an apostle and he's called by God,

and he is called by the will of God, then he's one who is coming in line with the Father's will.

He's teaching them how to walk with God.

He says here,

through the will of God.

And now this is important.

And Sosthenes,

our brother,

now he's mentioned, because if you'll study in the Book of acts, acts, chapter 18,

you're going to find the passage in the book of Acts where Paul goes to Corinth,

okay? And in Corinth, he teaches for a long period of time and he builds a church there.

And the Jews there decide that they don't like him and they stir up trouble with the governor of Corinth. And when they bring the apostle Paul before the governor, the governor says, this is a religious matter.

This is a matter between you people, the people that are Jewish people there.

And I'm not going to have anything to do with it. And so what do they do? Well, they go outside the governor's palace and they beat Sosthenes,

who is a leader in the synagogue there.

Okay?

So Paul is telling them that he and Sosthenes,

the leader of the synagogue, who is a follower of Christ, who is their leader,

who is their leader in the church, is writing this letter to them.

Now, he says some things that are important and they're always in the introductions that Paul writes. But I don't want you to miss out on them because they always set the stage for things.

It says to the church of God, which is at Corinth.

Now, this is not written to who lost people.

This is written to the church.

So whenever you read that, you go, okay, I know that this is for the church. And if you are born again,

you are the church. So who's it for?

You? It's to us.

So when Paul writes that, remember when you read that, that means everything he's got to say is about you and your walk with God. He says it's to the church in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ called.

Now, that word to be. Some of yalls Bibles will have it in italics,

okay? And the reason it's in italics is the words aren't there,

all right? Because he says this who are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Jesus called saints.

Now, I want you to hear me.

What does that mean?

That means if you are sanctified by God and you are born again,

called by God,

then you automatically are what?

A saint.

Everyone's a saint.

Are you following me?

It's not a hall of fame.

It's not an all American thing.

Are you following me?

Okay, we don't have those who are saints and then everybody else who's just trying to make it okay,

he says if you're sanctified.

He says if you're called,

then you are a saint,

which means the word has the connotation of being holy and right before God.

All right? And he's Saying, I'm writing this to you who are sanctified.

How do I know I'm being sanctified? I hear the voice of God and I act upon it. If in any way,

someone,

a human being, hears the voice of God and acts upon that voice, I want you to hear me. They are being sanctified because if you don't hear the voice of God and you don't have any connection with God, then you are lost.

The minute you're born again and you have the ability. You have ears to hear and eyes to see. You have ears to hear God's word and eyes. I mean, ears to hear it and eyes to see God at work in the world around you.

The minute that that's true of you,

you're a saint.

You've been justified.

You are in the process of being sanctified.

You are made whole before him.

All right, you need to hear that because.

Because.

Because oftentimes we limit ourselves because we don't realize the implication of this. He's saying all of them are saints, with all who are in every place.

With all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, both theirs and ours.

Now, notice what is he saying.

Anybody who calls on the name of the Lord,

anyone who does that,

you're a part of this group I'm talking to.

So if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe on your heart that God raised him from the dead, you are being what,

Saved?

All right?

Not the event that we think it is the process of sanctification. That sozo, that salvation sanctification process.

Are you following me?

Those who come from the Southern evangelical background, you think of salvation is the event where you hear God's voice and you turn and repent and go after God.

We call it being what Now? It is part of the salvific process.

Because the salvific process begins when you're born again.

And obviously hearing God's voice and learning to react to God's voice and learn to turn to him is a salvific work.

But what must take place on the front end has to be a finished work of God, which is to be born again.

And salvation is not an event. It's a process.

Sanctification is a process.

I say that over and over again because I need to say it, especially considering how we have skewed that word to. To mean something that it does mean,

but it is limited to an event.

Okay? It's not an event.

He says, if you are those and you call on the name of Jesus Christ.

You are both they. He is both your Lord and our Lord.

As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep you, that he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.