As we look at this passage, we are reminded that things in the church in Corinth. aren't good, and Paul is trying to shore up some real difficulties that they are having here. Now remember, before we got to the love chapter, he was talking about issues in the church regarding spiritual gifts. And so, now Paul has set up that love is the greatest thing to have, and now he's going to try and, uh, get some of this stuff lined out.

 As I said, this passage is very well known, so much so, I come to it and I wonder what to say. It's very clear. We've heard it before. Sometimes just stopping and meditating on what the text says, when we know it and we can let it ruminate within us. is a really good thing to do, but then the video is too short or I just have to stand here and stare at the camera, so I am actually going to make some comments.

As we come to this passage, it's likely one you are familiar with. It is a well-known passage, and it's an awesome one, really. The way that Paul knits all this together and creates this image for us is fantastic. It really helps us to understand our role within the church, within the body of Christ.

And so, we see in verse 13, for in one spirit we were all baptized. Remember, Paul talked about that previously. We were all baptized in one spirit, into one body. And look at the distinctions he makes here. Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. In other words, it doesn't matter who you are.

 Now, as we come to chapter 12, we're getting a little bit more of an indication that there are other problems in the church in Corinth. We're going to see more of that as we move forward, but obviously there was some issue with the different ways in which gifts of the Spirit were being viewed. So, Paul doesn't want them to be uninformed about spiritual gifts.

 Boy, this, this church in Corinth has more issues than, than we can keep track of here, right? Now, all of a sudden, Paul is having to set them straight on the Lord's Supper. And notice what he says. I didn't highlight it here for those of you watching on video, but, but verse 20, when you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat.

As I mentioned, we find ourselves in another difficult passage here in 1 Corinthians with this beginning of chapter 11. There is so much cultural distance between us and the first century that we struggle to understand what this means. In fact, there's multiple interpretations of what it means. We do our best, but the culture is so different then, and there's so much time.

So, we see Paul finishing up some ideas regarding eating meat that has been offered as a sacrifice to pagan deities or pagan idols. And so, Paul starts out here by saying, you know, all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful. What he's saying is, you know, they're not really gods and it's perfectly good meat.

It's lawful for you. You can eat that meat, but it's not always helpful. And the idea here is that Paul is saying, you know, if somebody's conscience is saying you shouldn't eat that meat because it's been offered as a sacrifice to an idol, then don't do it in front of them. You know, he says if you go into the meat market and the meat's there and you think it might be from sacrifices, don't worry about it if it's not a big deal.

 So, Paul comes back here to the subject of idolatry. You may remember a few days ago, maybe a week or two ago, we talked about this food that was sacrificed to idols. And Paul says, are idols anything? No. Uh, he doesn't want them to participate though in the idolatry that these sacrifices are made to. And that's the issue here.

 So, we come to chapter 10 and Paul is giving the people in the church in Corinth instructions on how to live. And he starts out by saying, hey, I don't want you to be unaware that our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized Into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.

Well, what is he saying here? What is his concern? Well, he wants everybody to know these stories, you know about Moses the stories, you know about the people in the wilderness Not everyone there would have been saved. They all were a part of the people of Israel. They all passed through the Red Sea and they were spared.

 So, we have, again, a big chunk of text, but it's all driving to the point at the end of this chapter. So, we read this one big chunk as we see that it moves us towards this idea at the end. Paul is willing to do anything to be able to preach the gospel. He is willing to go to all kinds of people and try to understand the world as they do in order to be able to preach to them.

The message of the cross.

Well, this is another passage that we've read that has you wondering what all is going on in the church in Corinth, right? Clearly, a bunch of problems have been occurring there, but now we come to food offered to idols. Now, we don't have this as a category. We don't have to worry about whether or not we eat food that's offered to idols, but clearly this was a huge issue, or Paul wouldn't have brought it up, in the church of Corinth.

 Alright, we land in another passage that is difficult for the format we're using here, right? This is a lot of text. It's not saying really specific things that it's worth digging into deeply, but it's not really something that you can explain in short order. So, I'm once again going to do my best to sort of explain what's happening here in this text.

Well, this is another packed section. There's a lot to see here and there's some interesting stuff to look at. There's a lot to be looked at there with marriage and the conditions of marriage and all of that. But there's more detail that we can get into in devotional thoughts, right? It's so dense.

It's so thick. There's no way I could explain it properly in this format. So maybe we'll get to First Corinthians sometime in the future for Sunday mornings.

Alright, so we see Paul finishing up some of his thoughts regarding sexual immorality and his, his conclusion here is to flee this. Now, it seems like maybe Paul is quoting here some ideas that maybe were common in Corinth and maybe in the Roman Empire as a whole. This idea that, well, I can do whatever I want.

Well, Paul's saying not everything is helpful. Paul says, yeah, I am free to go out and do what I want, but, but I don't want to be dominated by anything. I don't want anything to run my life the way sinful things can. And then there's another spot where we feel like Paul is quoting something here, some idea within the culture.

Again, we land in another passage where our devotional approach here doesn't really help us out too much because there's just too much to dig into here. But I'm going to do my best to keep this within a limited time frame, but still give us something to ponder for our own lives. So, as we look at this, we're seeing Paul addressing something that's going on in the church there.

 Well, this is a little bit of a difficult passage to do for a devotional thoughts. Um, really to understand it, you have to do the whole chapter, uh, could really break it down. And plus, this is for devotional thoughts, not breaking it down verse by verse and really understanding it. So I'm going to do my best here to explain a few of the things, but then to actually try to apply it a little bit and to get the whole thing done.

All right, so as we look at chapter four, Paul is uh being pretty savage with the Corinthian church here, isn't he? He is kind of letting them know what he thinks about their attitudes and so He starts off by saying this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mystery Mysteries of God moreover is required of stewards that they be found faithful.