Today we begin a new preaching series through Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. And although I have preached from 1 Corinthians scores of times throughout the years, I've never preached through 1 Corinthians, systematically from beginning to end. And so by God's help and grace, we shall endeavor to do that beginning today. 1 Corinthians is a significant epistle for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is the second longest of Paul's 13 epistles that are preserved for us by the Spirit of God in the New Testament. Only the book of Romans is longer, and it took me a little bit of time to satisfy myself of the correct relationship in length between Romans and 1 Corinthians. They both have 16 chapters. I went through the chapters of each of the calculator and added up the verses and found out that 1 Corinthians had four more verses than Romans. But I still wasn't sure that it was the longest and I wasn't sure how to count the words. I knew that would take a long time. And so I'm learning new technology and I googled it. I said forget exactly what I said, but how many words are in the Epistle of Romans? And bingo, I got a list that listed all the books of the Bible and the number of words in the original language. And I learned that Romans has, I think, 7,111 Greek words, and 1 Corinthians 6,800 and some, a little less than 300 words difference, but there's the answer. Romans is longer than 1 Corinthians, but not by much. That's trivia, in case you ever get asked that on Jeopardy. But there's an awful lot of helpful teaching in the first epistle of Paul to the Corinthians. And he deals in this epistle with many perplexing problems, some of which are immediately relevant to us today. Some of them that might not seem immediately so, but upon more careful examination, I think we will find that they are all actually relevant to our lives today. Today, we're basically just going to do an introduction to the epistle, and I hope I can give adequate attention to the first three verses. I started out thinking I would cover verses 17 today, and then I thought, no, that's too much, I'll cover through verses nine, the first nine verses today, and I said, no, that's too much, I'll cover the first three verses today, and I'm even doubtful that I'll be able to do that, but here we go. Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our brother, 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. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I've entitled my sermon today, Blessed are the Sons of God. And I trust we shall see, first of all, the channel of blessing, verse one, the objects of blessing, verse two, and the source of blessing, verse three. We begin with a channel of blessing. God blesses people, but God generally does so using human instrumentality to do that. And in this case, Paul used primarily the Apostle Paul to be a channel of blessing to those in Corinth, and secondarily, a man by the name of Sosthenes. But the channel of blessing in verse 1 is the part of the epistle that identifies the author. And every epistle has a salutation in which the author is identified, the recipients of the epistle are identified, and then a greeting is extended to the recipients. And that's what you find in this epistle. And who is the author? He identifies himself as Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. We are accustomed to that language. We know who Paul is, I think nearly everyone does from your study of God's word. And most of us understand what an apostle is, at least to some degree. The word apostle, in its most general sense, simply means one who is sent. Synonyms would be emissary, representative, ambassador, Those all come close to the meaning of the word apostle. One who has been sent, one who has been authorized and sent to represent another. Apostles, therefore, can be apostles of kings, apostles of the church, apostles of apostles. But in this case, Paul tells us what kind of an apostle he is. He is an apostle of Jesus Christ, and that narrows the scope and identifies exactly what kind of an apostle we are talking about. The one that Paul represents is Jesus Christ. He is Christ's sent one, Christ's emissary, Christ's representative, Christ's ambassador. And the group who are correctly and accurately identified as apostles of Jesus Christ is actually a very limited group. Paul barely squeaked into that category, you know. And he calls himself in another place an apostle born out of due season. Because apostles had to meet some pretty strict qualifications. When Judas hanged himself and revealed that he was a traitor, had an unbelieving heart all along, and his death left a vacancy in the number of the 12 apostles. We read in Acts chapter 1 that Peter recommended to the group of 120 disciples on that occasion that they select one among their number and he gave two criteria for the ones that they could consider to fill the vacancy and he said first of all it needs to be somebody who's gone in and out among us from the baptism of Jesus until the day that he was taken up from heaven that evidently is a reference to their being taught and trained by Jesus Christ himself not taught by someone else who was taught by Jesus Christ but one who received revelation directly from the lips of Christ. That's one of the qualifications for an apostle. And the second one was that he be a witness of the resurrection of Christ. He had to be somebody who had seen Christ bodily after he had risen from the dead. Well, that narrows the list in that day and it completely narrows the list in our day. And that day, among the 120 in the upper room, apparently there were only two that met that qualification, those two qualifications. And they named those two. And then among those two, they asked God to direct them in the selection. They did it by some kind of a drawing straws arrangement, sort of like the election in Virginia last week, that they had a dead tie and had to draw it out of a bowl. I don't know. In Virginia they prayed and asked God to direct the process, I doubt it, but in Acts chapter 1 they did. And that's how Matthias became the one selected to replace Judas. And then along came Paul, who had not been with the disciples during Christ's earthly ministry and therefore had not been taught by him directly. and, as far as we know, had never witnessed the body, the bodily presence of Jesus Christ after His resurrection, but by a special dispensation of God. He was converted on the Damascus Road. Jesus Christ spoke to him directly. He saw Christ in heaven, in His glorified body, thereby witnessing the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then over a period of about three years he was evidently taught by Christ himself in a direct process that Paul insists did not involve any other person. Read carefully the first chapter of the book of Galatians. And Paul defends very vociferously the reality that he received his gospel, he received his understanding of the Christian faith directly from Christ, not from the other apostles. And therefore he qualifies as an apostle even though his qualifications came. in a very unusual way, but Christ, of course, is the one who called him, and Christ is the one who qualified him, and Christ can bring those qualifications to bear in any way that he so chooses. But that's the kind of an apostle Paul is, an apostle of Jesus Christ, who, he tells us, was called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ. Summoned would be a synonym. Appointed to be an apostle. Paul didn't volunteer. Nobody volunteers. to be an apostle. Peter didn't volunteer. John didn't volunteer. In fact, the Bible tells us of the original 12 that Jesus called all of his disciples unto him, and then he chose from among them the 12 that he wanted to be his apostles. He decided who they would be, and he called them to himself, and Paul received a similar call directly from God. And to doubly emphasize that, so there's no misunderstanding, he goes on to say that he was not only called to be an apostle, but he became an apostle through the will of God. Not through the will of Paul, but through the will of God. That's important. But we move on to the second person who is listed as an author, and he is a man by the name of Sosthenes. And that's not a common name. We don't run across that name often in the scriptures. In fact, unless we've been paying close attention, we may not have ever noticed that a man by the name of Sosthenes was so closely connected with Paul in the salutation of one of Paul's epistles. It's usually Paul and Timothy, or occasionally Paul and someone else that we know pretty well, Titus or Silas. And oftentimes, no one else, just Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ who is identified as the author. But in this case, we also have the name of Sosthenes, our brother. Who is he? Well, we do know this about him, namely that he was with Paul when Paul wrote this epistle. Paul is writing from Ephesus to Corinth. He is evidently a significant ministry partner with the Apostle Paul to be included like this, but he's only included here. We don't find his name in multiple places like we find the name of Timothy. He was however well known in Corinth evidently because literally in the Greek it does not say Sosthenes our brother but Sosthenes THE brother. Definite article. Sosthenes THE brother that evidently indicates the one that you know well as your brother in Christ. But beyond that, we don't know much. Beyond that, we get into speculation as to who this Sosthenes is. Now, some think that he's probably the Sosthenes that we read about earlier in Acts chapter 18, verse 17. You remember that in the course of Paul's early ministry in Corinth, that Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, was converted. He became a Christian. He was baptized. We read that earlier. Well, it doesn't tell us about the appointment of the replacement to Crispus, but we do learn who that person was later when we are told that the Jews took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue. Now that's who Crispus was. But when he became a Christian, he lost that position. He was no longer the ruler of the synagogue. So now we've got another man who's the ruler of the synagogue, namely Sosthenes. They took him and beat him, and Galileo cared nothing for these things. Now, if that Sosthenes is this one, that would certainly explain why he was well-known in Corinth, because of that particular piece of historical information. But it would also demand that he too became a Christian, like Crispus had, and became a ministry partner with Paul. Is that possible? Certainly it's possible. Can we say that for sure? No, we certainly do not know. Others think that this man, Sosthenes, and Sosthenes was a fairly common name, so it's Certainly possible that this is someone else entirely different by the same name. And some think that Sosthenes was Paul's amanuensis for the writing of this epistle. Amanuensis is the fancy name for what we would call a secretary. But in that day, they called it an amanuensis, and it was somebody who took dictation. And it was customary for Paul, and for most writers in that day, not to actually write their own epistles. And we know that Paul didn't, except just to sign his name at the end, or sometimes maybe write the last verse of the epistle in order to authenticate it as his own, so his handwriting could be recognized, and it would not, therefore, be counterfeited. But Paul dictated his epistles and in a couple of cases we are told who took the dictation but in most cases we are not told. Is Sosthenes Paul's amanuensis for this epistle? Maybe. Maybe not. We don't know that either. And in the final analysis we have to acknowledge we don't know who this Sosthenes is. He is simply a ministry partner with the Apostle Paul, significant enough in the ministry of Paul, the life of Paul, and in the welfare of the church at Corinth to be included in this opening, in the salutation, as something of a co-author or a helping author, maybe he proofread the epistle. Maybe Paul said, write this and See if you've got anything to add." And I'm sure he said, nope. I don't have anything to add to what Paul has written, but I agree with everything that's said. And I would be happy for that to be said. I would agree with it all. And Paul says, if you agree with it all and they know who you are and they have confidence in you, I'll add your name at the beginning. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ and Sosthenes, the brother. Paul had more partners than we generally consider, and here's one that previously we haven't given much thought to. But what a privilege, whoever Sosthenes was, what a privilege to be in partnership with Paul, to be included at this place in Paul's epistle, to have such a significant role in the life and spiritual health of the Corinthian church. And many might say, I wish I could have been there then. I wish I could have helped Paul. I wish I could have had some kind of significant role like this in the early history of the Christian church. And of course you can't because all of that is by God's will. God's appointment, God's sovereign decrees, He chooses who shall be born when and the circumstances of our lives and how we shall serve Him in our place in history. But of course, God has similar places of service for every child of His now. You aren't left out. Roll up your sleeves. and go to work and see how God may use you in the interest of his kingdom. But we move from the channel of blessing, Paul in secondarily Sosthenes, to the objects of blessing. Who are the ones who receive blessing from God? Well, they are identified and described in verse two. 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." Well, we need to consider several things here. First of all, the location. He is writing to a church which is located in a particular city, a particular geographic location, In this case, it is the city of Corinth in the first century. What do we know about Corinth? Well, we know, if we take the time to find out because this information is readily available to us, we know that Corinth was a major, a very significant Greek city at this time in history. In fact, so significant that it was a rival to Athens. We all know about Athens. We probably think that there is no Greek city that would be anywhere close in significance to Athens, but the truth of the matter is that Corinth actually was. In wealth, in population, in culture, in influence, it was equal to Athens and very much a rival to the well-known city of Athens in the first century when Paul was writing. And the reason for that primarily had to do with its strategic location. And it was located on the Isthmus of Corinth. Duh. You see the name, I suppose the Isthmus probably was given the name first. I really didn't try to track down the origin of the name, but I would suppose that the Isthmus bore that name first, and then the city that was located in that spot was identified by the same name. Now an isthmus, as many of you will know, is a very narrow strip of land that joins larger segments of land, of geography. And if you will take your time, take the time to study a Bible map, or really, for this purpose, any map, even a modern map of the nation of Greece, You do, most of you have maps in the back of your Bible, and they are very helpful. They're not inspired, but it's very helpful for you to consult those from time to time. And if you would take time to look at a map of Greece, you would realize that it's a kind of a big peninsula that comes down from Europe and down into the Mediterranean Sea. And then down at the bottom, there's a big bulge that almost looks like an island. And it would be, except for this very narrow strip of land that connects it to the land above. That's the isthmus. If that weren't there, it would be an island. I am amazed at how many islands are off the coast of North America, on the eastern seaboard. Marty and I were away for a wonderful restful vacation this last week, and we were on a barrier island that's very close to the mainland. The bridge isn't that long. You can look at it and say, I don't think the island is more than, I'm sure it's less than half a mile from the mainland, maybe not even more than a third of a mile from the mainland, but nevertheless it's an island because it's separated from the mainland by water and it's a pretty good sized island. In fact, we saw a sign that said it was the second largest barrier island on the east coast and we took a tour later of the city of Beaufort and asked our guide, who seemed to be very knowledgeable of the area, we said if Hilton Head Island is the largest barrier island on the east coast, what's the largest? And he said, I don't know. I've never been asked that question before. I don't have the foggiest idea. So we still don't know. But that's the way this situation is. If there had been a break, that would be a big island, a big island down there in the southern part of Greece. But because it's connected by this isthmus that's only between four and five miles long, it's not an island. It is a bulge. I don't know what it is. It's part of the Greek mainland. But the city of Corinth was built right in the middle of that isthmus. Now, what did that indicate? What was so significant about that? Well, that meant that it had a strategic seaport both to its east and to its west. not exactly due east and west. Again, you have to look at the map and you'll see it's kind of more like southeast and northwest. But nevertheless, it had a significant seaport on both sides of the city. A lot, a lot of sea trade traveled through that city because, number one, to travel down around the lower part of the country of Greece turned out to be a very treacherous journey and sailors preferred to avoid that if possible. So many of the ships would unload their cargo on one side of the isthmus and it would be transported by land across to the other side where it would be loaded onto another boat and go on from there. Corinth was right there in the middle collecting, what shall we say, transfer taxes on everything that went through. that port. Furthermore, so treacherous was the sea that smaller boats actually preferred to be transported by land across that four to five mile isthmus rather than sailing around the southern part. Now large boats couldn't do that but small boats could and they actually had a track for that purpose and they had lots of slaves in the Roman Empire and Corinth which was a city that ranged between 500,000 and 700,000 people had more slaves than free people and so what do you think a lot of those slaves were doing? Pulling those boats. It would take a lot of them pulling those boats across the Isthmus and again you can be certain that there was a hefty fee for using that facility to pull your boat across the Isthmus rather than sail it around the south part of the island. In this way, and other ways that I won't take time to describe now, Corinth became a very strategic city, a very wealthy city. You can see the opportunity for wealth to be made in this situation. in the course of military conquest and in a time when they tried to rebel against the Roman government. Not a good idea. Not very many people did that successfully. Corinth, as big as they were and influential as they were, was not able to do it either and therefore the city of Corinth was destroyed by Roman armies in 146 BC. It was leveled. It was gone. as completely destroyed as Jerusalem was later in 70 A.D. because of its rebellion. But again, because of its strategic location, the Emperor Julius Caesar recognized that it would not be wise to leave that strategic location unutilized and so he rebuilt the city of Corinth in 46 BC exactly 100 years after it had been destroyed and made it the capital of Achaia. Achaia is the southern part of Greece. You have the state or the territory of Macedonia to the north and Achaia to the south in fact if you were paying close attention when I read from Acts chapter 18 you saw reference in that section to Achaia that's the territory of Achaia of which Corinth was the capital not Athens which was only 40 miles away and considered themselves to be the more prominent city but Julius Caesar said we will rebuild Corinth and I'm going to make that the capital of Achaia And again, you can see how Corinth could rise to great prominence under these conditions. But there's a couple of other things you need to know about Corinth. Corinth was well known for its particular pagan worship of the god Aphrodite. There was a huge temple built to Aphrodite. That's the same as the Greek I forget which one's the Greek and which one's the Roman goddess Venus. They're different names for the same goddess. The goddess of love, so-called love. And this grand temple had 1,000 priestesses, female priests, which really was just a What should I say? A nicer term than what they really were, but the proper term of what they were because of what they did was temple prostitutes. 1,000 temple prostitutes. And people came from all over the world. Sailors and merchants and tourists and travelers came from all over the world to worship in the temple of Aphrodite. That worship, if you really were involved in that worship, involved a relationship with one of these so-called priestesses of the goddess of love, which therefore meant that Corinth became the most licentious city in the Roman Empire. There seems to be no question about that. Not one of the most, the most immoral, the most licentious city in all the Roman Empire. In fact, there was even a term which was used for people who lived immorally, and it translates into something like, living like a Corinthian. If you are living an immoral lifestyle in that day, the term that would be applied to that would be a Greek word that translated means you are living like a Corinthian. That's the location to which Paul is writing an epistle to the church that is in that very city. In that place there is a Christian church planted. In that place by the efforts, the labors of the Apostle Paul, a church came to birth and to existence in that location, that strategic location, that challenging location, that difficult location. I'm not sure I would know. what to relate that to in America today. I don't think we have anything that quite comes up to the level of lasciviousness that we're talking about in Corinth. But it would be like trying to plant a church in Las Vegas, for example. Actually, there are churches in Las Vegas, I understand. I've never been there. And I won't ask those of you who have to raise your hand, but I know a good many of you have. It's a primary location for business conferences, and a lot of people go there for that reason. I hope that's the only reason that a Christian would go there. But it is a city with a reputation as being a very immoral and lascivious city, but I don't think it rises to the level of lasciviousness that we're talking about here for the city of Corinth. But you can imagine how challenging it would be to plant a church in Las Vegas as opposed to planting a church in Alamance County, North Carolina. It would be a whole lot more challenging. But that's what we've got here. By the power of God, by the grace of God, by the design of God, Paul had preached the gospel in Athens and, we would have to say, desired to and endeavored to plant a church there without success. There weren't enough people who believed the gospel in Athens to leave a church behind. And so Paul left there rather discouraged, went 40 miles west to the city of Corinth that would seem to be even less promising, and lo and behold, The powerful grace of God went to work, and God saved a multitude of people. and rescued them out of darkness, and transferred them into the kingdom of his dear son, and made them citizens of the kingdom of light, and pulled them away from their wickedness, their fornication, their idolatry, their paganism, and formed them into a body of believers, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ at Corinth. And the church that Paul spent the most time with except for the church at Ephesus where he spent more time but if you read again that account in Acts chapter 18 it mentions that he continued to preach for a year and six months and then it says after this incident with Galileo he continued on for some more time yet so probably close to two years Paul spent in that one city because it was profitable it was fruitful he was he was having a very fruitful ministry over those two years and a lot of people were saved And you just kind of stand back and scratch your head and say, well, I never would have thought it. That's the last place I would have expected to see success with the gospel, with conversions, with the planning of a church. And guess what? That's what happened because that's what God did. Some of the most wicked people in all the world, and God chose to save them. Who is a pardoning God like Thee? And who has grace so rich, so free? I don't have time to talk about the congregation. We'll have to pick that up next time. Or it's problems. It was a problematic church. I'll read my list of problems. I'll take time for that. Just read through it. One of the commentaries I consulted identified 20 problems in the church of Corinth. I'm only going to mention 10 of the most significant ones. Here's what they were dealing with and what Paul deals with in this epistle and what we'll deal with as we go through the epistle. What were the problems in the church of Corinth? Divisions, immorality, lawsuits, marriage problems, meat offered to idols, roles of men and women in the church, abuses of the Lord's table, misuse of spiritual gifts, denial of the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ and the bodily resurrection of the saints, as well as some confusion about financial collections in the church. Now, those are 10 of the most prominent problems and there are others as well. And Paul is writing to address that to this church. But the good thing about it is, in spite of all of these problems and in spite of the challenging location where they were found, these are people who were saved by the grace of God. Paul is writing the church of God which is at Corinth to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, same word that Paul uses of being called to be an apostle. Paul was called to be an apostle, how? By the will of Paul? No, by the will of God. These Christians were called to be saints by the will of the Corinthians? Nope. Well, after God changed their will, of course, their will gladly embraced Christ. But what was the cause behind it all? They were called of God to be saints. They were summoned by God. They were chosen by God for this high and holy privilege. these people saved out of darkness in the city of Corinth, set apart by God, called to live for God, submitted to the authority of Christ, and therefore blessed, blessed, blessed beyond all expectation, beyond all understanding. We can't fully understand the depth of the blessing that God had poured out upon these people. But dear friends, blessed are the sons of God. And these are sons of God, and they are blessed beyond measure. And blessed are the sons of God. And if you fit into that category, you too, we too, are blessed beyond measure. Well, what can I quickly point to as some of the lessons that we learn in this part of an introduction to the epistle? I want to say something about the relationship of wealth, education, culture, and vice. Corinth was one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman Empire, but also one of the most immoral. Corinth was one of the cities of great and notable culture, art, and drama, and high culture, education, and philosophy that rivaled that of Athens and yet the most licentious city in the Roman Empire. Corinth was a city of great sophistication and they were also a city of great degradation. Those things often go together. We see it in our world today. Somehow people have the idea that immorality, degradation, evil lives belong to those who are uneducated, uncultured, unsophisticated, underprivileged, without financial resources, and all you have to do is say, take a good look at Hollywood. Take a good look at New York City. Take a good look at the centers of wealth and culture and education. Take a good look at Washington, D.C. Take a good look at these centers of culture and wealth and education and influence in our own country and you will find that in many cases these are not only the places of highest wealth, culture, education and influence, but they are also the places of the greatest sin, degradation, lasciviousness, immorality. The solution For man's sinful degradation is not education, it is not an economic solution, it is not a cultural solution, it is only the power of the gospel, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ applied by the Spirit of God to lives. That's the only solution for man's sinful degradation, and this is a reminder of that. I'd also like to say just a word about Christian witness in the licentious world. These Christians were witnessing in a very lascivious environment. But so are we, increasingly, in America today. And we're not accustomed to that as Christians, at least those of us who've been around for a long time. Those of us who can remember Leave it to Beaver, back in the, you know, Beaver Cleaver, was it? Those innocent days back in the 50s and 60s when our society seemed so outwardly moral and respectable, when divorce was so rare, when I was a boy growing up in grade school, I only had one friend whose mother worked outside the home. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I'm just telling you the change that's taken place. I had a friend across the street whose mother worked. All the other mothers were stay-at-home moms and kept their homes and kept their children and the dads went to work and provided for the family. That's just one of many changes that have taken place over the years in our society. I only knew, I only had one friend who had a divorced parent, just one, that I can remember that I knew about. Very rare in those days. And know how things have changed. How things have changed. And we are facing a very immoral, licentious culture, and yet this is where God has placed us. This is where God has placed this church. This is where God has saved you, and planted you, and called you to Himself to serve Him. So what do we learn from this epistle about that? Well number one, living in a culture like that requires constant vigilance. The church at Corinth let down their guard at times and that's why there were problems with immorality that had to be dealt with. It requires constant vigilance, please know that. But number two, Christians in that location enjoy effective enablement. God has put us here for a reason, and that is to be an effective witness to this world, not to the world of the 1950s, but to this world in 2018, and to be used by God to rescue people out of this dark world into the light of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why we're here, brothers and sisters, and God will enable us to do exactly that. Well, there's so much else I wanted to say, but we'll wait until time shall be no more. Right now, time is still with us. Shall we pray? Father, teach us thy ways, and show us thy paths, and help us to be fruitful and effective servants of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen.