![]() You go through your teenage stages and you fight, and you rebel against authority and your parents. From your infancy and youth you stamp your feet, you throw your toys down, and you have quarrels right from the very beginning. Now, if you've lived upon this earth for any length of time, you realise that quarrels and problems and troubles and arguments are a part of life in general - you can't avoid them. Strife is rife within the church at large, and within local assemblies. It seems that, in the church at large today, and as a little microcosm in local churches right across our land and across the Western world particularly, division is a great problem. In the world in which we live, particularly in the church in which we live and move and have our being, many folk who name the name of Christ are disillusioned with the division and the lack of unity there is among those who name Christ Jesus as their Lord. Disunity and lack of harmony is not tolerated whatsoever, you're just simply put out. One of the reasons, I believe, the cults are so successful in recruiting people in the day and age in which we live, is because of the tremendous unity that they experience in their ranks. For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect". And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: besides, I know not whether I baptized any other. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were ye baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you, but Crispus and Gaius Lest any should say that I had baptized in mine own name. Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ. For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions", or strife, "among you. ![]() We're beginning to read at verse 10: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. We're going to look tonight at the division that was in the church and how Paul dealt with it, and how Paul exhorted them to deal with it, and indeed how we as believers in this modern contemporary age ought to approach and face division within the church Jesus Christ. If you've lived upon this earth for any length of time, you realise that quarrels and problems and troubles and arguments are a part of life in general - you can't avoid them. There were many many problems - I don't think there's ever been a problematic church just like the church at Corinth - yet Paul came, and before he corrects them and ministers to them he gives them the grace of God that is greater than all our sin. Last week we looked specifically at the grace of God that Paul ministers to these great sinners, and if you're familiar with the book of 1 Corinthians - and I would urge you, please, to read all of it in the subsequent weeks - you will see how far this church had backslidden, and indeed imbibed the culture and the morality of the city of Corinth. If you can remember, two Monday nights ago we looked specifically at the city of Corinth and all that it meant for Paul to be writing a letter into such a situation as was going on the city of Corinth - and we thought of it under the title of "The Reason It Was Written". ![]()
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