July 27, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next 16 days we will be reading through the book of 1 Corinthians together. The church in Corinth was an absolute mess! They were plagued by serious issues of arrogance, division, sexual immorality, and confusion concerning doctrine as well as the particulars of their moral living under the gospel. This church needed a wake-up call, a call to repentance and purity, to renewed devotion to Christ, to love and unity, and to zeal for the gospel. The church has changed little over the last 2,000 years, but praise God that there is abundant grace for the mess! Each of us needs this same call to humility faithfulness, unity, and fervor today as much as they needed it then. Let\u2019s heed this call which God gave the church at Corinth through the apostle Paul and let it shape the way we live as Christ\u2019s body!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After urging the Corinthians to pursue love above any spiritual gift, Paul turns his attention back to the gifts themselves as well as their use in corporate worship. Paul commends the gift of speaking in tongues and its usefulness for building up the person who does it, but commends the gift of prophecy even more because it does not build up the individual who prophesies but rather the whole church. He goes on to explain how corporate worship ought to be conducted in an orderly fashion so that everyone present is built up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul\u2019s point in all of this is that the building up of the church as a whole is of far greater importance than the building up of the individual. When we gather together for corporate worship our goal ought not to be to see what spiritual benefit we can get out of it, but rather how God can use us to see everyone else built up in their faith! This flies in the face of everything our culture tells us and, far too frequently, what our church culture here in America tells us too. But God\u2019s Word is clear, and we are to put others before ourselves that they may be built up, following the self-sacrificing way of Jesus in corporate worship as in everything else!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Paul, in describing how the supernatural way of the gathered body of Christ ought to affect unbelievers who witness our worship services, says that it ought to cause them to fall on their faces, worship God, and acknowledge that God is really among the church (v.24-25). What would it look like if, in our corporate worship services, our devotion to the Lord was so undivided, our worship so passionate, our desire to see God move on behalf of others so fervent, our prayers so zealous, and our dependence upon the Holy Spirit so real, that it would force people who don\u2019t even believe to acknowledge the presence of God among us? What would it look like for our corporate worship to look this supernatural to the outside world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the citizens of God\u2019s kingdom, those who live in the world but do not belong to the world, gather together to worship the One whose kingdom is not of this world, shouldn\u2019t it look otherworldly?<\/p>\n\n\n\n