First Church of Christ Nancy Nelson

For a number of decades there has been a lot of discussion concerning topics of the supernatural like healing, speaking in tongues, and prophesying. It can create a lot of confusion.

Recently I heard about a church that has time set aside in its worship services for people to come and to be prayed for. On one occasion recently a gentleman came forward and happened to end up with the pastor who asked him what he desired prayer for. The man replied, “I need prayer for my hearing,” and before he knew it the pastor had his hand on the man’s ears and was boldly praying for his hearing.  At the end of the prayer and with the worship music playing in the background the pastor asked the man, “How’s your hearing?” to which the man replied, “I don’t know, it’s not until next Wednesday at the courthouse.”

Confusion over these topics isn’t just limited to churches in our culture; there was confusion in the First Century as well. And as we continue our study of the book of 1 Corinthians in our “Journey to Deep,” in this 14th chapter we will encounter some true frustration from the Apostle Paul. If you haven’t already done so, turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 14.

We continue our series, “The Journey to Deep,” today as we walk through Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth.  This week we are going to dig into chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, so grab your Bible or electronic device and turn to chapter 12.

The opening verse of this passage in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 actually puts us on a pathway which leads us to this “Journey to Deep.”  Look at 1 Corinthians 12:1: “Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant.”

Paul is trying to put this church on solid footing and point them in the right direction, so in this section he announces how each of them have been spiritually gifted by God and how they need to be using their God-given gift in order to build up the body of Christ, which is what we refer to as the church.  Paul wants to make it very clear that the church understands the importance of moving from sitting to service.

A couple of weeks ago I was flipping through the television channels one evening and I happened upon a program that was giving the viewers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how a live taping of a Hollywood television shows takes place. It’s a process that takes about four hours, and they shoot numerous takes of numerous scenes. All the while the studio audience has to laugh hard as if it is the first time they’ve ever heard the lines.

But one of the things I learned about the process is that the hardest working person on the set is not one of the actors or characters. The success of the taping is in the hands of the Warm-up Comic, a standup comic, who for hours must entertain the audience, keeping the crowd alert and laughing. One of the best in the business is a comedian named Ron Pearson.

One of Ron’s talents is balancing things, so during the taping of the show he would balance a glass on his chin, then some time later he would balance a microphone, then sometime later, in between scenes, he would balance a small stool on his chin.  But toward the end of the taping, he had the stage crew hand him a 12-foot industrial ladder and, standing right in front of the studio audience, he somehow lifted it, placed it on his chin, balanced it in the air while simultaneously juggling bowling pins. In all of my years of watching entertainers I have never seen such an incredible display of balancing skills.

Well, today we’re going to find out just how important balance is in the Christian life. In fact, some of these subjects are pretty heavy and weighty.  We’re in the third lesson of a study of the book of First Corinthians and today, again, we are going to try and cover the themes found in three chapters: 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10. The apostle Paul is going to challenge the church in Corinth to do a better job of balancing things. I’ve divided it into four balancing acts. So, get your note page out and get ready as we dive in, take some notes and fill in some blanks on this Journey to Deep.

When our kids were little, like most parents, we would take them in for a check-up at the doctor’s office a couple of times a year.  The first thing you do when you get to the doctor’s office is you…?  You wait.  It’s not a hard question.  You go to the waiting room, and you wait.  That’s what it is called, so that is what you do there.  Then they take you in.  The first thing they do is they measure your child—check their height, check their weight—and then they put those measurements on a chart so we can see how our child has grown and how they’ve matured over the years and since the last time they visited.  It’s a way to measure their maturity to make sure everything is developing the way it should.  If they’re not growing, if they’re not maturing, you know something is wrong.

In some ways this is what 1 Corinthians does for us as believers.  Paul provides these marks of maturity.  It allows us to gauge our growth as believers.  He planted this church three years earlier, and now he is challenging them to go on this “Journey to Deep” because they weren’t growing as they should.  Instead, he’s received these reports of immorality and division within the church.  So now he is writing, and he is challenging them to grow in their walk with God.

And so, we’re going on this journey together, as a church, as well.  If you have your Bibles, open to 1 Corinthians 5.  You have some notes in your worship bulletin, so please pull those out and follow along, because we’re going to go from chapter 5 through chapter 7 and there is a lot of material here.

In chapters 5 through 7 Paul talks to us about moving…as believers…from compromise to commitment.  His primary focus is sexual immorality.  There is this sexual immorality in the church that has compromised the church, has compromised these believers.  They are looking more and more like the culture, so he addresses that.

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is written to a specific group of people with unique challenges in their community. But the primary message of 1 Corinthians is evergreen—followers of Jesus are held to a standard of integrity and morality as we seek to represent his new way of life to our communities. Paul addresses a variety of experiences and seeks to help the church see them through the lens of the Gospel message. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection are what unifies a diverse body of believers and allows us to live in a completely new way fused with the hope of God’s Kingdom.

Together we will be challenged to move to a deeper level of Christian maturity, as individuals and as a church. A 10-week series beginning Sunday, September 12, The Journey to Deep will take you down a path to a more mature spiritual life.

Last week Karen introduced us to a challenge initiated by our Mission’s Team to raise $2500 to provide a clean water well among a people group where it’s desperately needed through a partnership with IDES – International Disaster Emergency Services. In many of the world’s poorest places, families have to walk miles every day to get water that is often dirty and unsafe for consumption. Through our combined efforts we can provide a source of fresh clean water in the name of Jesus to satisfy the physical thirst of a group of individuals, and at the same time pave the way for an open door to share the Good News of the Gospel with people who may be thirsting just as much or more spiritually. Jesus Christ is the living water.

As a basis for today’s message, I want us to use the word “well,” W-E-L-L, as an acrostic. We’re going to look at those four letters and what they mean to those who are thirsting spiritually.