Orderly Worship

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary

Short Summary
The speaker shares their struggle with an assigned topic that wasn’t a direct scriptural phrase and describes their research into the history and context of Corinth, emphasizing its significance as a commercial hub rebuilt by Julius Caesar and its diverse, often morally challenging population. They highlight Apostle Paul’s 18-month stay in Corinth, his challenges, and his encouragement to build up the church through love and mutual support, starting with one’s spouse and extending to others, focusing on uplifting rather than tearing down. The discourse concludes with the importance of prioritizing Jesus Christ as the foundation and practicing agape love amid the complexities faced by the early Christian community in Corinth.

Long Summary
Detailed Summary of the Discourse on 1 Corinthians 14 and Related Topics

Initial Difficulty with the Assigned Topic:
– The speaker was assigned a topic involving two words not found together in scripture, which made it hard to remember and grasp initially.
– While individual words appeared separately in the Bible, the combined phrase did not, causing mental block.
– The speaker contrasted this with easier topics linked to clear scriptural references like “paraclete,” “1914,” or “smiting of the image.”
– The chapter assigned was 1 Corinthians 14, which primarily deals with speaking in tongues, but the speaker chose not to focus on that.

Context and Approach:
– The speaker emphasized the importance of understanding the “big picture”—looking at the historical and cultural background of Corinth to better learn from Paul’s experiences.
– The discourse was divided into three parts:
1. History of Corinth
2. Paul’s arrival and experiences in Corinth
3. Lessons to take home
– The speaker decided to time each section to avoid spending too much time on historical background.

History of Corinth:
– The city’s significance is tied to major historical empires: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome.
– Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2) symbolizes the succession of world empires ending with God’s kingdom.
– Battles for empire dominance occurred in the region of modern Iraq; notably, the decisive battle where Rome defeated Greece took place in Corinth (about 164 years before Jesus).
– After the Roman victory, Corinth was destroyed and lay desolate for 120 years.
– Julius Caesar rebuilt Corinth around 44 BC as a major commercial hub and retirement city for Roman soldiers from various ethnicities.
– Corinth’s strategic location between Jerusalem and Rome made it a bustling trade center.
– The city became a melting pot of nationalities and religions, with significant pagan worship, especially of the goddess Aphrodite.
– Aphrodite was Corinth’s patron goddess, symbolizing sex, contrasting with other cities like Ephesus who worshipped Diana (fertility).
– Corinth was notorious for its immoral culture, including drunken sailors, temple prostitution, and fortune-telling practices.
– Pagan temples in Corinth included “sex temples” and places where women would “speak in tongues” (ecstatic babbling) to purportedly channel gods and foretell the future.
– This babbling was a commercialized form of fortune-telling, paralleled to modern examples where people seek future knowledge.
– The speaker highlighted the commercial and religious complexity of Corinth as the context for Paul’s ministry.

Paul’s Missionary Journey to Corinth:
– Paul’s second missionary journey took him from eastern Turkey through Galatia, Ephesus (where the Holy Spirit forbade him to preach), and Macedonia.
– He experienced rejection in Philippi, Thessalonica, and Athens but eventually arrived in Corinth.
– Paul’s initial preaching there was met with opposition; he was thrown out of the synagogue and felt discouraged.
– Despite previous conflicts, especially with Barnabas, Paul persevered.
– Paul received a night vision from Jesus Christ assuring him of protection and that many in Corinth were believers despite the city’s sinful reputation.
– This reassurance helped Paul stay in Corinth for 18 months (Acts 18), a much longer period than in other cities.
– Paul wrote multiple letters to the Corinthian church (at least four), addressing numerous serious issues.

Issues in the Corinthian Church:
– The church faced at least 15 major problems according to 1 Corinthians:
– Sectarianism (“I am of Paul,” “I am of Apollos”)
– Immorality
– Legal disputes among brethren
– Misunderstandings about resurrection
– Marital problems
– Disorderly worship services
– The speaker pondered how to prioritize these issues based on Paul’s emphasis.
– Key biblical priorities include:
– The foundation: Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:10 – “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”)
– The “highest” gift or way: Love (agape), described in 1 Corinthians 13.
– The connection between Aphrodite (sexual love) and agape (selfless love) was noted as a stark contrast relevant to Corinth’s culture.

Paul’s Instructions on Building Up the Church:
– Paul exhorts believers to focus on what strengthens the church’s faith and unity.
– The Greek term *oikodome* (“to build up”) is used repeatedly in 1 Corinthians to emphasize constructive, incremental spiritual growth.
– Building the church is likened to laying one brick at a time—through acts like sharing scriptures, testimonies, encouraging words, and love.
– The process is personal and relational, starting with the spouse (“especially to the household of faith”), then children, neighbors, and others.
– Paul’s command is to “build up and never tear down.”

Personal Reflections and Application:
– The speaker acknowledged a tendency towards criticism from his past professional experience but resolved to focus on uplifting others.
– He emphasized starting with one’s home and family to build faith and love.
– The discourse ends with an encouragement to apply Paul’s principles of love, unity, and building up the church community one step at a time.

—

Key Bible Verses Mentioned or Referred To:

Daniel 2 – Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue with different metals symbolizing successive empires leading to God’s kingdom.
Acts 18 – Paul’s 18-month stay in Corinth.
1 Corinthians 3:10 – “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
1 Corinthians 12-14 – Discussion of spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues, and love as the highest way.
1 Corinthians 13 – The chapter on agape (love) as the greatest gift and priority.

—

Summary:

The discourse explores the complex socio-religious environment of Corinth during Paul’s ministry, highlighting the city’s pagan background, diversity, and moral challenges. It recounts Paul’s missionary journey, his struggles, and his divine encouragement to persist. The speaker reflects on prioritizing the many problems Paul addressed in 1 Corinthians, emphasizing Jesus Christ as the foundation and love (agape) as the highest principle. The practical takeaway is to build up the church and community actively and lovingly, starting with the closest relationships, to foster faith and unity amid challenges.

Transcript

Some assigned topics are easier than others.

I struggled with this one, and I’m not sure why. Oh, one of the reasons might be that the two words assigned to me for the topic are not a scriptural phrase. I looked in the scriptures for those two words. They’re not there.

The word. You can find the one word there, and you can find the other word over there, but not together, and that was to show you how it wasn’t getting into my brain. You know, if the subject had been paraceta, I. I could remember that. If it was 1914, I could remember that.

If it was the smiting of the image, I could remember that. If it was just justification, I could remember that. But I had to write down on a piece of paper what the topic was because I couldn’t remember it. I’d be going along and, you know, I said, what was that topic again? No, I had no trouble remembering that it was from the 14th chapter of First Corinthians.

That was very clear to me. But that only added to the problem because you know what that chapter’s about? That chapter’s about speaking in tongues.

I don’t think that’s much of an issue for us today. But. So anyway, I thought I’d share that with you.

And then another interesting thing happened. I had reserved in my calendar after the Portland convention, four days. I had set aside to do nothing but finish my thoughts for this. Okay, so what then do I do at the Portland convention? I leave my computer there and I go home and I’m without a computer.

Well, dumb is the only word that comes to my mind because I don’t have any Bible dictionaries anymore. I don’t have any concordances anymore. You know, it’s all in the laptop, and I’m without my laptop for four days. So those of you who knew, know me from way back.

I kind of had a reputation of putting discourses on three by five cards. Do you remember that? Yeah. Some of you old timers are shaking your heads. Yeah.

So guess what? I was back to three by five cards. Okay, so that’s enough.

Let’s see.

Sometimes the three by five cards have a way of moving around. So what’s the topic? What’s going on here? I’m a firm believer that to understand this particular phrase and what we can get out of it, you have to look big picture. That’s me.

I can only understand things big picture. So I have to look at Corinth. What was going on in Corinth? What was the situation? And what can I Learn from it.

Now, I’ll warn you. Now, I will apologize now that this topic, this assignment, you know, if you gave it to 10 people, you’d get 10 different presentations, okay? So I apologize if you were expecting me to speak about the speaking in tongues. I’m not going to do that. Okay?

If you thought I was going to talk about orderly decorum and starting meetings on time and showing up on time, I’m not going to do that.

I’m going to look at Corinth. I’m going to look at what the apostle experienced in Corinth, and I got some touching lessons from doing that assignment. That’s what I want to share with you. So I’ve got three parts and part one is the history of Corinth.

Part two is going to be Paul’s getting there and getting dumped into that cauldron, and then number three is what do we take home? And I decided that I had better do my timer. Not for the whole session, but I’m going to time each of the three sections because I like the history and the background so much that lately I’ve been tending to spend too much time on that part one. Okay, so here we go.

So Corinth, the city. It may surprise you, but I want to start the history of Corinth with the man called Nebuchadnezzar. Now, Nebuchadnezzar had that famous dream, remember that there was the head of gold and the chest of silver and the belly and thighs and then the legs, and it took Daniel to remind him of what the dream was and what it meant and that there would be these succession of universal empires and it would end up being God’s kingdom on after that image got destroyed, and what we don’t talk about too much is the changes from the head to the chest to the belly.

We don’t talk about that transition very much, and I have to admit that, you know, in my mental picture of this, I see the head of gold and then I see a straight line and then I see the silver start and I see another straight line and there the brass starts. No, it did. It doesn’t happen that way. One nation doesn’t be the dominant nation in the entire world.

And then another one, oh, and here are the keys in the case of Medo Persia to Greece taking over Medo Persia. Alexander fought them for 10 years. So, you know, the lines aren’t straight, they’re kind of fuzzy. So Babylon gets replaced by Medo Persia. Where did that last battle take place?

Southern Iraq.

Neo Persia rules for about 200 years. Then Greece takes over. Where did that battle take place? Northern Iraq. Still pretty much over in that part of the world.

So then we wonder about Greece taking over.

See, I said Medo, Persia. Okay. So then Greece rules for about 200 years and Rome, they deteriorate, and then Rome starts flexing its muscles and they say, we want to be the universal empire, and so they start fighting and they finally defeat the Greeks.

I couldn’t believe where the battle took place. You can’t make up stuff like this. You know where it took place?

Corinth. Is that amazing? How come we don’t talk about that more? I heard that expression from up here this week. Why don’t we talk about that more?

So the Romans defeated the Greeks in the great battle of Corinth.

Wow. This took place in something like 164 years before Jesus was born.

The Romans slaughtered every one of the Greek soldiers. Everyone.

They just slaughtered them. The women they raped and then took as slaves. The children they took as slaves. For about 120 years, the city of Corinth was nothing but flat. They weren’t going to leave it for the Greeks to repopulate it again.

After that battle, it was over. So for 120 years, nothing happens there. It’s a barren, desolate nothing. But you see, Corinth had this super geographical location.

If you can picture the Mediterranean over here on this side, and I’m reversing it for me and I’m kind of giving it to you. Jerusalem is over here. This, this corner. If you reach out this arm, this is Rome over here.

There’s a lot of water in between called the Mediterranean. Okay. You know what’s almost exactly in the middle? Draw a straight line between the two. Corinth.

So the Roman Empire, the Roman Emperor sees that they could use that city again as a terrific commercial hub. Yeah, just like we talked today about all the logistics and stuff. Boy, Corinth had the right place. So he says, we will rebuild Corinth now. He said this in about 44 years before Jesus.

You might recognize his name. His name emperor was Julius Caesar. He said, we will rebuild Corinth now. Did they take all the old stuff? Did they rebuild it the way it was?

Not at all. They brought in the best architects in AD 44. They brought in the best engineers, the best road builders, the best sewer builders, the best aqueduct builders, the best artists and sculptors. They rebuilt that city and it was prime.

Now, who’s going to live there? You don’t dare give it back. To the Greeks. So Julius’s first idea was, let’s use it as a retirement center for all the old soldiers who served us so well. So it became a good retirement hub for the Roman army after the soldiers were done fighting.

Now you. I think you know that there were almost no Romans in the Roman army, okay? That’s not how they populated their armed forces. They. When they defeated another force or country, they took the prime young men there and they put them in their army.

It was rare when you heard an expression, the Italian regiment, that was something special. So the army was filled with French, German, Spanish, Moroccan, Egyptian, Persian, Romanian, Hungarian men. They were retired to Corinth. They let a few Greeks come in, and they also let the Jews come in. Talk about a polyglot.

Okay, that’s Corinth. What do you think? They brought with them their religions. Right. So you have this multitude of religions.

Now, what was also going on there? And this is well before this time period that we’re talking about. Oh, I see this. My. My first section is done.

I got to be careful here. The part one time is up. They also were. Let me start the sentence again. Every Greek city had to have a patron saint.

Okay? It was just what you did. So the. You remember the patron saint in Ephesus was Diana. She was the goddess, the Greek goddess of fertility.

Okay? So even 6, 700 years before Jesus, before all the war I described took place, the Corinth people decided that they would pick a Greek goddess as their patron saint, and they were pretty smart. They picked Aphrodite. That was kind of one up on Diana.

Diana was just fertility. Aphrodite was sex, and sex sells, right? So I suspect that when Julius Caesar and his architects and builders came in and they rebuilt the city, I suspect that the first temple they rebuilt was none other than the temple to Aphrodite. Yeah, they.

They had business there. It was a commercial center. The town was filled with drunken sailors. There was a lot of money going on there because this was a hub. This was the world’s first outlet mall.

I mean, stuff was coming in from all over the world. Yeah. So there was money there, drunken sailors there. Worship of Aphrodite. They had it going.

Okay? So you see, I get excited about this history stuff. Okay? I told you that we could say something about these.

These temples. Let me. Let me spend a minute on the temples.

The pagan temples. There were two kinds of pagan temples. Now, the sex temples were a pretty smart idea, business wise, and they were influential. But there was a part of the Population that was either too old or not interested. Anyway, there was still people out there to market.

So they had this other idea where they took usually some rather attractive women and they taught them how to. We use the expression speak in tongues. See, there’s two kinds of speaking in tongues. One is what happened the day of Pentecost where everybody was speaking different languages. Okay, that’s only one type of.

Type of speaking in tongues. The other kind is the kind I’m describing now where they train these usually women to empty their minds and let the spirit move them. They call it ecstasy, and then they started to speak things. Not words that you could understand, not words that they ever heard.

And the length, the label that they gave that kind of activity was called babbling.

Babbling. Now, it was kind of an interesting thing to see. First of all, the women were attractive. They kind of zoned out, and they start speaking this stuff.

It was a show. They figured, okay, people are gathering. We can make some money off of this. So they tied it. They said, well, this is the gods speaking these words.

Well, we don’t understand that. Well, what they’re doing is that they can tell you what’s going to happen in the future for you. Would you like to know that? Okay, yes, please. Give me a little bit of money and I will translate the babbling for.

For you, and I’ll tell you. What would you like to know? Well, I got a back problem. Is it going to be better in a year?

I want to sell my house. Can I sell my house? Let me ask the Babbler. So they had a business. It equaled the Aphrodite people.

Yeah, and we would call them fortune tellers. Okay, Now, I have some experience with fortune tellers. There’s a lady in our town. I went to her and I asked her a question.

And I said, when will I sell my house? How? If we put my house up or so, how long will it take? So she looked into the future, and she said, two months. Okay.

I went to an acupuncturist once. I said, how am I doing? She measured my pulses, and she said, wow, your adrenals are shot, and she said, well, what are you doing?

I said, well, I got three businesses. She says, oh, you better sell two. I said, okay, I’ll sell one first, and I said, how long will it take me to. To sell it?

I asked her a question about what’s going to happen in the future. She thought for a moment. She says, one year.

Do you know how long it took me to sell my Business.

One year. It was almost to the date. A fortune teller. Now, the first lady I talked about, her sign doesn’t say fortune teller. It says real estate agent.

But they’re looking ahead and they’re telling you what’s going to happen. This stuff sells.

Do we do anything like that? Do we look ahead? Do we want to know? Oh, yeah. When is my.

When is my back going to get better? When is my. Am I going to get a good pension in three years? Can you tell me when the kingdom will be established? Oh, yeah, let me work on that.

Anyway, okay, so big business in Corinth, fortune telling. All right, so Corinth was world center of Aphroditis. No, I’m sorry. Aphrodite. Yeah.

Excuse me, brother Aphrodite. Multiple nationalities, busy commerce, plenty of money. Distinctive type of pagan temples. Okay, so part two.

Paul.

Paul, this is the second time he goes out on a pilgrim trip, and he starts the pilgrim trip in eastern Turkey. He goes to the places he went on his first trip. He goes to Galatia, visit all those cities. Now, if you picture kind of the rectangle that we call Turkey, he was kind of in the middle.

I would say if you draw the rectangle and you go over, kind of in the middle of the right hand side of the rectangle, let’s call it. It’s kind of where Johnstown is, if you picture the whole country, and Paul wanted very much to go to the center of activity and commerce in Turkey. That was a place called Ephesus. It was a big city.

And he wanted to go straight across there. Kind of like where Los Angeles is. Okay. He wanted to go Johnson. So he starts out and the Holy Spirit says to him, no, not a whole lot of explanation, but it was a no.

I don’t know what happened. So then he went north. He kind of said, well, I’m gonna go. I’m gonna go to Minneapolis. He’s gone up there.

So the Holy Spirit says to him, second time, no. Wow. He says, okay, I’ll go to Winnipeg. That’s off to the right a little bit, they call it. First place was called Missia.

Second place, Bithye, and the Holy Spirit says, for the third time, no.

So he heads straight across, and he kind of heads for Seattle. They called it Troy, but I’m trying to make the map relate to the United States. So he gets over to Troy and he has a vision, and the vision says, can you come and visit us in Alaska? Macedonia.

So he ends up going there, has some success, some success in Philippi. Thessalonica, Berea. He also gets stoned within the, you know, he, he, it’s not a good trip. He continues down to Athens. They don’t beat him up, but they laugh him off the stage.

Resurrection. So he continues on, goes to the west, there’s. He’s running out of territory and he ends up in Corinth city. Looks pretty good. It’s a pretty new city.

Athens is thousands of years old. It’s like 3, 3 or 3,000 years old. So here he comes in. This town is only like 100 years old. This looks good.

So he goes to the synagogue and same response. They basically after a couple of Sabbaths, they throw him out. So he is depressed, he is discouraged. He said, you know, where is he going to go next? And his conscience is a little bit guilty because he had this horrible start trip with his blow up with Barnabas.

Nobody helped him more get established with the brethren than Barnabas. Barnabas introduced him to the brethren in Jerusalem who didn’t want anything to do with him. They knew who he was and Barnabas. So they, they basically excommunicated. At least they kicked out Paul and he had to go back up to Tarsus.

And Barnabas was in Antioch, and Barnabas goes from Antioch over to Tarsus and he says to Paul, come back with me and help me teach these brethren in Antioch. So Barnabas did so many things for him, and Paul was really low on the fruits of the spirit at that part of his career because he blew up at Barnabas, and it was so bitter that they like never talked again.

That was terrible. I’m sure that weighed on Paul’s conscience. So he is in Corinth, he’s depressed. He just got kicked out of the synagogue again.

And then an amazing thing happened.

He has what the scriptures say was a night vision. I would call it a dream, and the dream says, Paul, don’t be discouraged. I will protect you, I will take care of you. Nobody’s going to hurt you.

Keep on talking, keep on speaking, and here comes the amazing thing.

And it’s in the vision says, I have many people in this town who are my people. Wow, this is sin city. They actually called it sin city.

You know who this vision was?

Jesus Christ.

Paul has a vision of the Lord. Now the Lord talked to him in Damascus on the way to Damascus. The Lord probably talked to him when he was in Arabia and in Corinth, Jesus Christ talks again to Paul. We should be talking about that a lot too. I have many people in this town.

Are you kidding Me, Are you so naive to overlook these drunken sailors and these prostitutes and these babblers? And you’re telling me you’ve got people there? Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. That sounds so much like our world or what the kingdom is going to have to work with.

I think it’s one of the most amazing events that took place there. So, and I love Paul’s response in a nutshell. He stays there for 18 months. Now remember how the journey has gone?

He’s only stayed a couple days in each place and then he gets booted out, and here he shows up and he stays there.

Yeah.

Now he also wrote them letters, didn’t he? And you know, forgive this, forgive me for this one, but I see the parallel. There’s the in person visit, Paul’s there for 18 months, and then there’s the remote visit. What do we call the remote visit nowadays?

Zoom. So in their day they had in personal visits and they had epistles. Okay, So I. My hat’s off to Paul that he stayed there 18 months. It’s kind of cool because this is all recorded in the 18th chapter of Acts.

Okay, so that’s why that, that’s why they call it the 18th chapter. I think it’s the 18 months. They’re trying to help us with our memory. So I need that help. So if you look at the letters that Paul wrote, and it’s my opinion that he wrote four letters to Corinth, if you read in the what we call First Corinthians, he says in First Corinthians, listen carefully.

In my first letter that I sent you, what’s that mean? That means thank you. That means that what we call First Corinthians had a letter before that, and if you look at Second Corinthians, it’s really two letters.

I go into detail in a discourse I gave a while ago called Paul’s problem child, about the different letters to Corinth. Okay, we don’t have time to do that. Okay, so what we call First Corinthians. But it always bothers my conscience a little bit because I keep saying my conscience says, hey, how can you call it First Corinthians when it’s the second letter? You know, stuff like that.

So that’s my own psychological problem. So what we call First Corinthians, there’s something like 15 or 16 different kinds of problems there. They got brethren dragging other brethren into court. They’ve got immorality, they got stumbling going on. They don’t understand the resurrection and there’s marital problems.

I listed. I just made a list and it came out 15 things. So the, to me, the problem is, how do you prioritize this? How do we know out of the 15 things that Paul talks about that we should pay the most attention to, in what order do we put this?

So the first suggestion would be that Paul says something, that this is really important. Like he might say this is the foundation. Well, if he says something is the foundation, wow. We can’t argue with that. That’s.

That’s pretty important. So we’ve got direct statements from Paul. Paul also uses the expression highest. So that’s a good one too. If he says something is high, okay, that’s here, higher here, but highest.

There’s nothing else compare. So we’ve got. He says something about foundation. That’s a good one, and if he says highest, that’s very good.

And then we can look at placement within the letter. Letters about 16 chapters long, and what’s he talk about first? It’s probably why he writes the letter. So that’s going to be important.

We also know that authors put important things at the very end also. So we’re looking for these things in the book to prioritize. Paul’s thinking one other way is sheer volume. 16 chapters. What if he talks about one subject for four chapters?

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, and then he also talks about it again later on. So five chapters out of 16, we’re talking about 30% of this letter is on one topic. I would say all those things are pretty important. That’s how we prioritize. Forgive me, that’s how I prioritize.

What Paul says is important. So what does he say is the foundation? First Corinthians, 3, 10. Jesus Christ, he says, I’ve been all over, I’ve done all kinds of things. The foundation, he said, don’t worry about Apollos, don’t worry about Paul.

Jesus Christ. Now, what about this word highest? Well, he’s talking about in the 12th chapter, he’s talking about the gifts, and he says it’s okay. At the end of the chapter, he says it’s okay if you go after the gifts.

That’s not a bad thing. But the highest I’m going to talk about in the next chapter. That’s kind of, that’s kind of how it goes. They didn’t have chapters. Of course not.

But he says, I’m going to talk about it next, and it’s not the highest gift. He changes the word, and the word is, it’s the highest. Road.

Road as in narrow way? Yeah, that’s the highest. So that’s a priority. So number one, Jesus Christ Foundation. The highest road.

What’s the 13th chapter about? Agape.

You know, I always, I always had this slight wondering out of all this, you know, mess that Paul’s talking about or that exists in Corinth and then there’s this beautiful 13th chapter on love, and then it kind of dawned on me now that this was the city of Aphrodite, and remember last year I talked about the different goddesses and things and I, and there’s a part of Greek mythology that says Agape and Aphrodite were sisters. Remember that?

So it’s one thing to talk about love, but to these people this was something special because they had a problem, they had a problem with his Aphrodite stuff. So it was really a contrast. Okay, that’s good. How about the sheer volume? Well, the sheer volume, you know well what the first chapters talk about.

And they talk about the sectarianism and I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, and I challenge you to look up the definition of a sect and you’re going to find some eye opening things. Sectarianism tends to be used to be part of a large group and you have pulled away the group that pulls away think they have some unique truths that nobody else has. They pull away, they do things like they have certain traditions that are within their, they may dress differently, they may wear something different, etc. Etc. So I think that we have been given the priorities from Paul.

Now he goes to the action part. What do you do about this? And guess what? This brings us to the My assignment.

You thought I’d never get there, did you? So, and one of the things that I instantly loved about my assignment was that it used the Phillips translation. I love Phillips translation. So he says out of all this chaos, and I do love what Barclay said.

I love Barclay translation. Pretty equal to Phillips. Barclay says right at the beginning of this idea of what. How then, brothers, are we going to sum all this up?

You hear the kind of, the frustration. I think he’s, he’s getting into Paul’s head really well, how are we going to sum this up? This chaos? I love it. Everything should be done to make your church strong in the faith.

Now I consider the chairman a pretty good friend of mine, but I’m, I’m pretending he’s not quite there yet. So there is a Greek word that Paul uses in this section because Paul also says concentrate your ambition upon these things which make for real growth of your church. So he uses this Greek word, oiko dome. He uses it a lot, and it means to build up.

If you kind of trace the word, it goes back to bricks, and you build by putting one brick on the other. Okay, so we’ve got the priorities from Paul. We’ve got the idea of building, and now he tells us what to do.

Build up the church. How do you build up the church?

One brick at a time. What do you do? It’s like one text, it’s like one hug. It’s like one comment. It’s like one testimony meeting.

Maybe it’s one discourse. It’s one at a time, and you keep doing it, and you keep doing it. That’s the do part.

To whom? Who?

Where do you start? My suggestion, you start with your spouse. That’s probably the only person on the face of the earth that you have exchanged a vow with. That’s where you start uplifting. Paul says, I was told by God, by the authority of God to build up and never tear down.

So your spouse is where you start to uplift. Do good unto all men, especially to the household of faith. What’s next? Your children? Uplift, Never tear down the brethren, your neighbor, your co worker, Uplift, never turn out.

I was tempted when I read Paul’s description of priorities and he’s saying things about Jesus Christ. I was tempted to get up here and say, you know, you should not be studying your Ecclesiastes, should not be spending so much time.

And then I stopped and I looked at this again and I thought, is that maybe tearing down a little bit? And I thought it’s looking in that direction, and I took kind of a silent file that I don’t want to go there.

I’m a critical person. I was trained by General Motors to go into plants and find problems. I was trained as a management consultant to go into businesses and tell them what was wrong.

It wasn’t the best training. I’m don’t want any part of that. I want to be uplifting. I want to put one brick on top of the other and I want to start at home.

Click Here for the PDF transcript.