And his little five-year-old looked up and he was smiled and said,
Oh, it's okay, daddy. We're just playing church.
Yeah, it's kids so close to home that it's almost not funny, isn't it?
Arguments, though, are a part of family life, aren't they?
In the normal family, a part of life in God's family involves arguments, too.
Conflict does happen. Somebody said, where there's a will, there's a won't.
And that's true. Differences aren't always bad things.
They can be a healthy sign of honesty.
If two people always agree on everything, then probably one of them is unnecessary
or perhaps dishonest. But differences should not result in fighting.
We might think that in an ideal world, there would be no conflicts.
I understand that. I would prefer that.
I would prefer to live in an ideal world, and maybe you would, too.
But the reality we face is that we're not living in an ideal world,
nor is God's family yet perfected in holiness.
Through Paul's proclamation of Jesus Christ, God had planted a church in the city of Corinth.
This ancient city was legendary for its immorality that flowed really from its worship
of the goddess Aphrodite in her temple on the hill just outside the city market of Corinth.
These believers he's writing to, these former pagans
who had now been called into the fellowship of God's Son, as we saw last week,
these people whose journey in life had now been diverted from hell to become followers of Jesus Christ our Lord,
these people nonetheless were still kind of messy.
They were imperfect.
That should give all of us a little bit of comfort,
because the best of us is still a little bit messy.
We are imperfect people.
That's the reality that we live with.
Paul thanks God for the past of the Corinthians, for their conversion,
for the fact that they shared together in God's grace.
They had been called out from the world.
They had been set apart as God's own people.
He thanks God for the blessings that they enjoyed because of the gifts that God had given to them as a church.
But what he cannot thank God for is their present situation, the problems that they were in.
And one of the problems was conflict among the members of this church.
And so as we come to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 10, and we pick up our text for today,
you will notice that there is a change of tone.
Paul has been grateful and happy up to this point, but now he changes his tone.
It's more clear really in the original language in which he wrote than it is in our English translation.
We could read this way, but I appeal to you, or but now I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you,
and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought.
My brothers, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.
What I mean is this.
One of you says, I follow Paul.
Another, I follow Apollos.
Another, I follow Cephas.
Still another, I follow Christ.
Is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Were you baptized into the name of Paul?
I'm thankful that I did not baptize any of you, except Christmas and gas,
so no one can say that you were baptized into my name.
Oh yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanus.
Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anyone else.
For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel,
not with words of human wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
What matters about conflict is why it exists, and how one deals with it.
That is true whether you are in conflict in your business,
conflict in your marriage or in your family,
or conflict in any association of people that you may be a part of, including the church.
Conflicts are absolutely predictable.
The important thing is what we do with them,
and the best way to deal with them is head on.
I don't mean impulsively.
I don't mean arrogantly.
But the best way to deal with conflict is head on.
What I'm saying is this.
There are some people who in the midst of conflict pretend they don't have conflicts.
They're self-deceived,
but they would rather be like an ostrich with its head in the sand than to acknowledge the reality.
There are others who, although they're in conflict,
say and do things to make it even worse.
Others talk to everyone else except the person or the persons that they're conflicted with.
Others simply walk away from conflict in bitterness.
None of those is a godly response to conflict.
When conflict happens, it is much better to seek a godly and timely resolution.
Now Paul is not directly a part of the problem,
but he models to us how to deal with conflict nonetheless,
whether we're in leadership,
or we're a friend of somebody,
or we're a counselor to someone,
or we're in the conflict ourselves.
Paul gives us a model here as to how conflict can be dealt with.
I grant you it's not the only model.
There are a number of models for this sort of thing in the New Testament,
but we do find one here,
and it may be appropriate in your circumstances or in someone you know.
The first thing I notice that Paul does to help resolve this conflict is to make an appeal.
Verse 10.
He says,
I appeal to you.
Now let's face it.
Paul might have ordered them to stop it.
After all, he was an apostle.
If you think about the order of offices underneath the headship of Jesus Christ in the church,
there's not one that tops the apostle.
An apostle was one who had been with the resurrected Christ himself.
He had seen Christ,
had been appointed by Christ,
and Paul was one of them.
Although he says himself,
I was like one born out of due season,
because he did not walk with Jesus during Jesus' earthly ministry.
But he spent time with Jesus in Arabia over the course of three years.
We don't know all that that entails,
but Paul spent time personally with the resurrected Jesus
and received truth to pass on to us.
That's what these letters of the New Testament contain that he wrote.
Paul might have ordered them to stop it,
but how many of you have learned from dealing with conflict
that it doesn't work very well just to order people to stop it?
Your kids can be fighting in the back seat,
and you can say,
Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it.
It doesn't mean they're going to stop it.
And even if they stop it, it doesn't mean their attitudes are going to be right.
You can't order people to change their attitudes.
Paul was acting in the name of,
or in the authority of Jesus Christ himself.
And yet he chose to appeal.
It is a gentle word, a gentle word.
It is the word, the verb form of the noun translated in John, the comforter.
Jesus said, I will send the comforter to you.
That is the Holy Spirit.
He means one who is called alongside to help you.
This is the verb form of that.
He says in essence,
I come near you, and with genuine concern, I want to speak with you.
Now why did Paul appeal to them?
Because he deeply cared for their welfare.
And he knew that this church, because of the way it was acting,
was beginning to live in shame,
and to bring discredit to the name of Jesus Christ.
It's a little statement I want to drop into your heart.
You'll see it on the screen.
It says the unity of a church is its glory.
Remove it, and the church is disgraced.
Think about that.
The unity of a church is its glory.
And when it dissipates,
and it can so easily dissipate like the dew under a hot sun,
it's disgraced.
I wonder if we really comprehend this tragedy
that Paul so vividly saw in Corinth.
If we understand what conflict does to the cause of Christ,
that's why, in another little statement I want to put on the screen,
guarding the unity of the fellowship is the job of every member.
Because we together are the body of Christ.
We are the church.
And to guard and preserve that unity of the Spirit
is the responsibility of everyone.
And so Paul appeals to these people for three actions.
He says, first of all, I appeal to you that you, all of you,
agree with one another.
Literally he says that all of you speak the same thing.
Now Paul cannot possibly mean here
that they would speak in agreement on every issue.
But he at least means this, that they not quarrel
over secondary non-essential matters.
There was an expression in political life in that day among the Romans,
a Greek expression that simply said, drop the party cries.
We would say it today in Washington, stop the partisanship.
I thought I would get some amenions on that one at least.
I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with it.
And frankly, I think most of the American people are.
And Paul is essentially saying that to these believers.
Stop it.
Stop the partisanship.
He says, I want you to say the same thing.
I want you to get together and say the same thing.
Then secondly he says, so that there may be no divisions among you.
The word divisions here is the word sism,
which means to split or to rip or to tear.
It's used in Matthew 9 verse 16 of the tearing of a garment.
It's also used in secular history of that day of the splitting of wood.
Take a piece of wood and bring the axe down on it and split it in two.
Or it's used of plowing ground, splitting the ground open.
Paul says, I want you to say the same thing so that there's no splitting going on among you.
So that third action, you may be perfectly united.
Or literally it says, be perfectly joined together.
He's describing here the work of a carpet cabinet maker.
There we go.
A carpenter, a cabinet maker.
Someone who takes two pieces of wood
and forms them and fashions them and puts them together
so that they are joined as one.
Hebrews 11.3 says, by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command.
This is the same word.
It was perfectly brought together, joined together by God's command.
Dr. Galen, the famous physician of the second century in Rome,
used this word in his writings.
It was the word he used to describe a surgeon going in and taking two bones
and setting them, putting them together.
It's also used in the gospels of Matthew 421,
where the apostles were mending their nets.
They were taking the frayed fishing nets and mending them, putting them back together.
Paul says, I appeal to you to start saying the same thing
so that there are no splittings going on among you,
so that you may be perfectly framed and brought together.
And he asked for this to be evidenced in two specific ways.
He says that you be in the same mind and the same judgment, literally.
The same mind.
He's not talking here about everyone being an absolute uniformity of thought.
Everybody has opinions, and sometimes those opinions differ.
But he's talking about coming together in one mind in the sense of agreeing to work together,
despite the differences.
And the same judgment talks about unity and the matter of decisions and direction.
We can expect differences of opinions among us,
but we must never allow the differences to develop into divisions.
I came across a story years ago about a new choir member who came into the choir,
and he asked a man in the choir, well, what's your position in the choir?
And this gentle-mannered bass replied, well, I'm neutral.
I don't side with either faction.
Now often that is true in the fellowships of God's people.
So if we're going to resolve conflict, first of all, it means appealing to one another.
We can't order each other around, but we need to see Paul's heart here
and understand the consequence of disunity, what it does to the name of God.
Secondly, Paul states the case, verses 11 and 12.
You see, to resolve an issue, you have to have a handle on what the issue is.
Paul knows that as he begins to talk about chorals,
they're going to wonder how Paul knows anything.
And so he answers two questions that are never really asked, but they're implied.
The first question might be phrased this way, Paul, Paul,
what makes you think we have chorals?
Here's the guy with his head in the sand.
What makes you think we have chorals?
So Paul answers this question before it's asked.
He says, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are chorals.
A Chloe was a well-known lady in the Corinthian church, one of its leaders.
And some people from her household had come to Paul and told him exactly what was going on,
that there were contentions, there were debates going on in the church.
Paul in Colossians chapter 5 makes it very clear that such things come out of the flesh.
They are not of the Spirit of God.
And when differences develop into conflicts and contentions, it's of the flesh.
Very often we blame the devil for it and believe me, he gets his hand into it up to his shoulder.
But they originate in the flesh, a part of us that is still tainted by sin.
A quarrelsome spirit, someone has said, is a carnal spirit.
These people were being quarrelsome.
Now was it gossip on the part of Chloe's household to share this with Paul?
Or might we consider this a righteous thing for them to do?
Well, let's notice first of all that they were carrying news to somebody who could help.
It wasn't just a random sharing of a problem.
The news was being shared with Paul and they knew that Paul would be able to help them.
Secondly, notice that they were willing to be identified.
This wasn't done secretively or, well, this is happening but don't bring my name into it.
They were willing to be identified. This is not gossip.
These are concerned people who are coming to Paul and saying, here's the reality.
Is it right to squeal?
If you know your friend is taking drugs or abusing food, is it right to tell?
Nobody likes a tale-bearer.
How do we know when it's okay to tell somebody else?
Well, just notice. What's the motive?
Is it love?
If it's love, then it passes that test.
Are you willing to be identified in the report?
Not just pass it along anonymously?
Are you telling somebody who can make a difference?
If that's the case, then no. You shouldn't consider it squealing,
telling a tale out of school.
So Paul answers the first question, how do you know Paul?
Well, this is how I found out.
But the second question that's not asked, but it's implied by Paul's answer is this.
Paul, what quarrel are you talking about?
So Paul answers it in verse 12.
He says, here's what I mean.
This is it.
He says, you have divisions among you over personalities.
This was a widespread problem in this church.
And may I tell you it's a widespread problem in the church of Jesus Christ today.
In that church, there were groups who followed Paul.
Paul was the founder of the church.
He was the apostle who came and delivered the gospel.
They loved Paul.
Then there was Apollos.
Apollos came to Corinth after Paul left.
So he sort of succeeded Paul as their preacher.
Then of course there was a group that was loyal to Peter.
After all, Peter was one of the original twelve.
And he probably appealed to the Jewish element in the church because Peter was the apostle of the Jews, right?
And then you've got another group who trumped the other three.
This group said, we're of Christ.
We just follow Jesus.
They disavowed any human leader.
I would call these people the super spiritual people in the church.
Notice that Paul does not commend them.
He includes them as part of the problem.
Now the church was fractured over the very gifts which God had given to bless them.
These leaders.
A statement I'm going to throw on the screen by John MacArthur says it pretty well, I think.
Fractured fellowship robs Christians of joy and effectiveness.
Robbs God of glory.
Robbs the world of the true testimony of the gospel.
A high price for an ego trip.
Contemporary church, like the church at Corinth, is very prone to celebrityism.
As much as any church since Corinth, perhaps we find that it's endemic,
especially in the United States at this time.
But it's not just over personalities.
It's over worship styles.
It's over philosophies of ministry.
It's over Bible translations.
It's over secondary theological issues.
It's over which Sunday school curriculum you're going to use.
It's over which color of carpet is going to be put in the church.
It's over what kind of juice is going to be used in the communion service.
It's how we're going to partake of communion.
There are people who argue over whether the bread we're going to use in communion is
a piece of unleavened cracker or is that little melt-in-your-mouth wafer.
These are things Christians battle over, fracture fellowships.
Paul wants them to know that dealing, that the conflict that they had
that was over personalities was entirely out of bounds.
You see, when dealing with conflict, it's important to understand, as Paul did,
what the real issues are and to be able to state the case clearly,
which Paul does here, to a degree that it must have really cut them.
The third thing that Paul does is to bring perspective then.
You know, if we bring perspective to a conflict, it often shows how very foolish
the debate is in the first place.
Paul brings three quick questions to the table here to bring these personality
cults into perspective.
His first question is this, is Christ divided?
Is Christ cut up and distributed to groups in your church?
Is his body butchered and apportioned out?
You see, that's disgusting, yes it is, and Paul intends for it to be disgusting
and absurd to think that Christ could be divided.
He says, was Paul crucified for you?
Paul was absolutely repulsed by the notion that he or anyone else
should be elevated to Christ's unique role.
He says, were you baptized in the name of Paul?
Paul is saying in essence, this is not my church.
They had been baptized, of course, in the name of Christ.
They were united to Christ, not to Paul.
What you and I need to do in conflict is to step back and get a perspective
on what's going on.
Preacher Thomas Beecher was once asked by his brother, Henry Ward Beecher,
to substitute for him at the church in Plymouth in Brooklyn called Plymouth Church.
When the people in the church saw that the brother was there that Sunday,
some of them got up and started for the doors.
Imagine that.
Sensing that the people were disappointed, which is probably an understatement,
the substitute preacher, Mr. Beecher, raised his hands for silence and then he announced,
would all of those who came here this morning to worship the preacher
please withdraw from the church?
All who came to worship God, please remain.
That brings in a perspective, doesn't it?
The fourth thing Paul does is to begin to resolve the issues, verses 14 through 16.
He focuses on baptism, which may have been one of the primary issues,
upon baptism and who did the dunking.
And he makes it clear that he didn't consider who baptized them a legitimate point for division.
In fact, he didn't baptize personally, many of them,
or consider it worth remembering if he did baptize them.
When you're fighting a fire, you need to remember to extinguish a blaze.
You must remove one of the essential elements of combustion.
Remove the fuel.
Cut off the oxygen.
To extinguish a blaze, you must remove one of the essential elements of combustion.
And that's exactly what Paul does here.
He removes himself as part of the argument.
And in doing this, he's demonstrating how they should handle the other arguments as well.
He says, I'm removing myself from this.
I don't even remember who I baptized there except for these few people.
To resolve conflicts, we first go to the Word of God and see what it says about the debate.
And we bring that perspective first of all.
And then we take the next step to deal with whatever contribution we might have made to the problem.
Even if it was unintentional, Paul is not guilty because he had done something wrong.
He hadn't, but he was being used.
And so he removes himself from the debate.
One of the most difficult group of words to say are those seven that we learned in life action a few years ago.
I was wrong.
Will you forgive me?
When you can say that to your spouse with a broken heart, a humbled heart, it will remove the fuel from the fire.
When you can say that to your child, it will take away the bitterness that child feels because of some failure in your part.
When you can say that to a brother or sister in Christ, the fire will begin to burn low.
Because you've removed the fuel, you have dealt with the issues.
Finally, Paul restores focus in verse 17.
He says, Christ did not send me to baptize.
He said, baptism is not the focus, but to preach the gospel.
You see, it's the gospel that's the focus.
It's Jesus Christ who has the focus.
Not baptism, not personalities, not preferences.
It's the gospel.
When people in conflict get focused on the Lord instead of each other, they will be united in purpose.
So Paul is appealing to them.
Get your focus back on the Lord.
Here's the bottom line with conflicts.
Number one, they're inevitable.
It's a fallen world.
We still are messy, imperfect people.
Conflicts will happen.
Number two, they're fleshly.
Understand that.
They arise from our self-centered concerns.
Number three, they are destructive to families, to friendships, to fellowships.
Number four, they are resolvable with God's help.
With God's help.
If he could resolve the issue of sin separating us from himself for all of eternity,
surely then God can resolve the issues that separate us from one another.
Would you say amen to that?
Conflicts are instructive.
They tell us about ourselves.
And they tell us about others.
And they give us spiritual insights.
Conflicts are vulnerable.
Conflicts are vulnerable to humility and honesty.
To forgiveness and love.
They are vulnerable.
I know they seem hard-shelled, but they are extremely vulnerable to humility and honesty.
Forgiveness and love.
Finally, they are functional.
That is, they present opportunities for personal growth.
Conflicts are part of the trials that James tells us where to rejoice in.
That we're to ask wisdom to know how to deal with.
Because conflicts present opportunities for growth and for a better future.
God can use them, and he does use them.
During a hike, a Boy Scout troop came upon a short stretch of abandoned railroad tracks.
One by one, they did what all boys do.
They tried to walk on the rails from one end to the other.
But as they did so, in turn, each one lost his balance and fell off the rails.
Then two of the scouts, after whispering to one another, bet their friends that they could walk from one end to the other without falling.
Well, the friends laughed and said, we'll take you up on that.
And so the two of them each got on a separate track, and then they grasped each other's hands.
And they started walking down the track.
And as a result, they kept their balance, and they walked on the rails the entire length of that track.
If you're going to stay on track spiritually, you have to be in unity with others in the family of God.
It is absolutely critical.
Some of you will remember a television show some years ago and then some more recent movies that followed up on a very exciting, suspenseful program that dealt with plots that were deemed impossible.
Each of the shows and the movies began at some early point with finding a tape or some communication that said, your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to—and then the assignment was given.
I want to say to you, family of God, your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to mend the tears.
It is to heal the fractures.
It is to restore the unity and the glory of God's church wherever you may find a conflict.
You can also apply that to your home, to your family, to your office place.
I hope you'll choose to accept that assignment.
And this week, do what you need to do, as Paul did, to see that the conflict is dealt with.
Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for conflict.
Thank you because it is a trial that you bring out to good.
Our personal growth is good of your church.
For your own glory as we learn to walk together in unity as the people of God.
How good and pleasant it is that we should do so.
Father, I pray that every one of us who faces conflict in some arena of life this day will accept the assignment.
And we will track down what Paul shares with us in these verses so that we can do our part in bringing about the healing of those fractured relationships in our lives.
And this I pray in Jesus' name, amen.