1 Corinthians Series
1 Corinthians | Week Thirteen | Chapter 16
April 11, 2021 • Tyler Schenzel
This week Tyler Schenzel finished up our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 16. Paul talks about four distinct topics within this short chapter; money, his travel plans, standing firm in the faith and his final greetings. Tyler spoke about the various things that get in the way of living on mission such as our jobs, relationships, phones, hobbies and desire for comfort amongst others. We need to become people who live on mission; taking control of our schedules before they take control of us. Tyler encouraged us to hear from the Lord and walk through the wide door of effective work that is open for us. Just as Paul urges the Corinthians, we must stand firm in the faith, putting on the full armor of God and displaying the fruits of the Spirit in every area of our lives.
Easter Sunday | 1 Corinthians | Week Twelve | Chapter 15 pt 2
April 4, 2021 • Pastor Matthew
This Easter Sunday Pastor Matthew preached a message of resurrection out of 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection is what changed everything, it is the anchor of our faith and the thing upon which everything hinges. It launched the church, Christianity and the Kingdom of God. When Jesus died everybody assumed that He would do what every dead person does – stay dead. Nobody expected no body, which is why the resurrection changed and changes everything. Pastor Matthew led us in three points: 1. How can I be sure? All scholars believe that Paul was a real person who lived in the 1st Century, and there are seven letters that all agrees He wrote between 50AD and 60AD. Likewise, all credible scholars believe that Jesus was a historical figure and that He was executed by Romans. Paul wrote about the resurrection just years after it happened. He met with eyewitnesses and used a creed to teach the people: Christ died for our sins and was buried; He rose from the dead and was seen. Paul’s letters prove two things; first - that the resurrection was not a product of decades of oral transmission, and secondly - belief in the resurrection was around when eyewitnesses were still alive. No scholars believe that Paul was lying, because His life validated it. 2. What does it matter for me personally? The resurrection proves everything Jesus said about Himself. That He is the Son of God. The exact image of the invisible God. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The light of the world. The forgiver of sins. The Word made flesh. He was there before the creation of the world. He was and is and is to come. He is the great I Am. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Apart from Him we are all destined for an eternity without Him in hell. The wages of sin is death and apart from Him that is our destiny. Jesus paid the price for our sins, and conquered death. If Christ truly was resurrected, we are no longer bound to sin. Jesus’s power is REAL and we can be set free. We do not have to live in our sin any longer. 3. What does it matter for our world? Jesus is King, and the Kingdom of God brings life to dead places. Jesus is making all things new and partnering with His children to bring it to pass. We are people of the resurrection and we can see graves turned into gardens.
1 Corinthians | Week Eleven | Chapter 15 pt 1
March 28, 2021 • Jermaine Stewart
This morning, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 15:35 to end of Chapter 15. This section of 1 Corinthians is all about the resurrection. The Corinthians had let false teachings come into their churches and they were doubting the resurrection of Jesus and of the body. Paul passionately addresses these concerns, using the resurrection as the link between the present and the future. Just like Jesus we will be resurrected into a new body, into a present and heavenly existence. Pastor Jermaine made three major points: 1. There is a resurrection Paul calls out the Corinthians for not using common sense, and uses the image of a seed to demonstrate the continuity between our present body and our future body. 2. There is a resurrected body The body is both natural and spiritual. It is natural in its current age, but spiritual in the age to come. 3. The resurrected body/ state involves the body, and is a supernatural event performed by God. Adam was life receiving whereas Jesus is life giving.
1 Corinthians | Week Ten | Chapter 14
March 21, 2021 • Pastor Matthew
This week Pastor Matthew continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 14. Within Chapter 14 Paul expands on the problem of church disorder within the Corinthian church by outlining it in the context of two specific gifts; tongues and prophecy. At its core, his message is about using the gifts within the context of love for the building up of the body. He helps to ask and answer the question, are you exercising the gifts God has given you in the spirit of love? In our lives we need both private spirituality and public service and worship. This public worship setting needs to build up the body as our gifts are for laying our lives down and serving other people. Pastor Matthew shared three main points: 1. Clarity is important. The church needs a fresh, intelligible vision of God. In order to properly prepare people for the work of the Kingdom our services need to be clear and understandable. As well as we love our neighbor is as well as we love God and our aim in coming to church should be to come to church to serve others and build them up. 2. Balance is important. We are full humans; mind, body, soul and spirit. We all become what we worship, and in doing so we need to bring mind, spirit and body together. 3. Maturity is important. Maturity is what matters, and this comes with knowing what behavior is appropriate in which context. We need to be mature so we can fully use the gifts.
1 Corinthians | Week Nine | Chapters 12 & 13
March 14, 2021 • Luke Isaacson
This morning, Pastor Luke continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with chapters 12 and 13. Within these chapters Paul lists and clarifies the spiritual gifts. He tells the church in Corinth that the gifts are for each person for the purpose of building up the body and ultimately impacting the world. There are four primary views about spiritual gifts within the world today: Cessationist: the gifts ceased after the early church as there was no longer any need for them. Augustine held and taught this position. Charismatic: the gifts are alive and should be practiced today according to the limits of Scripture. This is the position Waypoint takes. Charismaniac: the gifts are alive, but their importance is overemphasized. In doing so the Bible’s authority is lowered and the place for contemporary revelation is elevated. Pentecostal: the gifts are for today, but the Holy Spirit is not within all Christians. The evidence for fullness of the Holy Spirit is in the speaking of tongues. Every single person who has put their faith and trust in Jesus has at least one spiritual gift. They are tools and not toys for the service of others and the building up of the church. In order to illustrate the gifts of the Spirit, Paul gives a picture of a body with many parts. Pastor Luke gave four applications on how we can operate in these giftings: 1. You’re uniquely gifted and the church needs that. God determines who gets what gift, but all are for operation within the wider body. 2. Contentment in your gifting brings unity in the body. The point of our giftings is not our giftings, it’s the giver. We need to accept our own gifts and appreciate the gifts of others. It’s not about ‘me’ it’s about ‘we’ as we go after Jesus together. 3. Killing comparison will bring joy in serving. Comparison is the thief of joy, and we need to stop comparing ourselves to our heroes. 4. If the body isn’t coordinated, then it’s not effective. The most important thing within all of this is love. Our gifts without love are pointless noise, and this is the heart of Paul’s entire message. It’s easy to get unloving when we move away from the heart of Jesus which is why we need to stay close to Him in order to be most effective within our gifts.
1 Corinthians | Week Eight | Chapter 11
March 7, 2021 • Bec Isaacson
This week, Bec Isaacson continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 11. In this Chapter Paul tackles two very distinct issues, head coverings and the Lord's Supper. The thread that ties both of these two very different topics together is order in the church. Paul was ultimately for order and unity, and against distraction and disrespect. Commentators routinely recognize that the first 16 verses of this passage are some of the most difficult in the New Testament for modern readers to understand as there are many layers of cultural context at play, as well as different interpretations of the word ‘head’. ‘Head’ could either mean authority, or source which drastically changes the meaning of the text. Regardless, within these verses Paul lays out his belief that women and men should be adorned in opposite ways. For women this meant having their heads covered, and for men this meant having their heads uncovered. At the end of the day, Paul was asking both genders to worship in a way that brought glory, honor and respect to their “head;” literally and metaphorically. Paul was asking the Corinthians to come to church dressed in a respectful manner and he urged both genders to show respect for God and one another by adorning themselves in ways that were culturally and gender appropriate. They were to lay down their individual rights and desires to bring others glory and not shame. They were to think and live beyond themselves. Paul definitely wanted the genders to be differentiated but he then also called for their unity and interdependence as well, as individualism is not Biblical and we need one another. The second topic that Paul covers in this passage is the Lords Supper, or communion. The Corinthian church were doing a terrible job at practicing the Lord Supper, as they were using it as an opportunity to get drunk, binge eat, humiliate the poor and segregate themselves from those who were different from them. Paul reminds them that the purpose of communion is to remember Jesus. The red of the wine is to remind us of His blood, the bread is to remind us of His body, and the fact that we all tear from the one loaf is to remind us of our unity as the body of Christ. In explaining communion, Paul was trying to lead the Corinthians in a practical lesson about how they can achieve the unity Christ was calling them to; a two-step process that involves us all understanding that we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that we have a point of rally in Jesus. This unity we have in Him is to surpass the normal social and cultural barriers that exist within our cultures, and we are instead to love one another sacrificially as the body of Christ.
1 Corinthians | Week Seven | Chapter 10
February 28, 2021 • Jermaine Stewart
This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 10. In this Chapter Paul uses the story of Israel as a warning to the church in Corinth. He encourages them to be self-disciplined, to flee sexual immorality and to and to do everything in their power to obtain the prize by loving God and one another. Our freedom in Christ is a great privilege, but one that comes alongside great responsibility. Paul encourages them to learn from the mistakes and example of those who went before them. As believers, we are all under three covenants: We are all in covenant with Christ. We are in covenant with our church leadership. We are in covenant with one another. How do we know if what we want to do is both lawful and beneficial? We pass it through the criteria of verse 24, in seeking the good of others. We have to make sure that the use of our freedoms do not infringe upon our neighbors freedoms. Everything that is lawful to be done is not always lawfully done, and therefore some of the ways we exercise our freedoms can cause our brothers and sisters to stumble, and in doing so our rights can become idols. We as a church need to be people who love consistently. We have to think about the good of the whole, as in our context we ourselves can become the very idols in our way.
1 Corinthians | Week Six | Chapters 8 & 9
February 21, 2021 • Pastor Matthew
This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapters 8 and 9. In this section of the book, Paul talks about food sacrificed to idols. In the city of Corinth, people worshiped pagan gods by sacrificing animals within their temples, and eating the meat afterwards as a meal. There were often leftovers, and these were sold to the general public within their markets. This is the reason that some Jews refused to eat meat at all, as they didn’t want to risk even getting close to pagan sacrifices. This is the primary issue that Paul is dealing with within these chapters. Within them, he sketches out the principles of Christian living in a pagan world before coming back to the specific topic itself. Pastor Matthew made three primary points: 1. The principles of Christian living spring from love, not knowledge. Paul says “knowledge puffs up;” bringing with it pride and arrogance. Instead of knowledge therefore we need love; practiced and put into action. We must figure out what it means to love the one true God with everything we are, and everything we have. God is both the world’s creator and redeemer, and if there’s any knowledge that we need to know, it’s of this God. Paul therefore warns the Corinthians to be careful, doing everything they can not to cause other people to stumble and sin. In the context of Corinth this came back to food sacrificed to idols, as before they became Christians, many of the people in the church would have been involved in shrine worship and would have therefore found it difficult to separate any part of their prior practice from the whole thing. The very smell of meat may have taken them back to the temple, and therefore Paul is asking the other believes to take this into consideration and practically love their brothers and sisters in Christ; prioritizing their love for them over their personal rights, knowledge and freedoms. Similarly, we must all hold up our rights up to the light of love. 2. Love relinquishes rights and freedoms. As Christians there shouldn’t be one single part of our lives that is not given to loving God. Everything about our lives should be devoted to Him. This has implications on how we live and how we treat others. Essentially: it’s not about us. Our entire lives should revolve around Jesus, and this has practical implications for us. First and foremost, we must be aware of our brothers and sisters and their consciences. We must sacrifice and relinquish our rights for them, laying our lives down. Our freedom is for something. It is a freedom from all the things that keep us from who God wants us to be, and a freedom for His service and the Gospel. This is why He set us free, and what true freedom looks like. God has given everything for the sake of the Gospel, including His own son, and He wants a return on that investment in the form of lives won through the Gospel all over this world. Paul asks and answers the question, who am I becoming for the sake of the Gospel? Paul’s rights and freedoms were nothing to Him. What mattered most was that people were being rescued from darkness and transformed by the Lord’s glorious light. This message has not changed. 3. Love requires hard work and discipline of our own lives. As Christians there are things we have to do not for our salvation, but for our growth. Our relationship with Jesus takes work, and requires laying down our lives everyday. Our entire lives need to be oriented around the Gospel, and laying down our rights and preferences for the love and service of other people. A big part of the Christian life is discipline and self-denial. Paul had his sight on nothing less than the renewal of all creation and the abolition of death itself. We are called to join this purpose, and be a sign of what’s to come.
1 Corinthians | Week Five | Chapter 7
February 14, 2021 • Luke Isaacson
This week Pastor Luke continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 7: talking about marriage, sex, and singleness. The big point is that both sex and sinlessness is a gift. Point One: Sex is a gift. Paul is giving a renewed vision for sex inside of marriage to the Corinthian church. Historically, sex has been viewed as two opposite extremes, either animalistic and sinful, or angelic and off limits. Neither of these views is correct, and every generation seems to miss it in some way when it comes to sexuality. Instead, we need to see sex through a Biblical lens, understanding that it is a good gift to be expressed and experienced within the safe context of a marriage covenant. If you are not willing to be completely vulnerable with somebody legally, consistently, emotionally, mentally and covenantally, you should not be naked and vulnerable with them sexually. Sex doesn’t create intimacy, it comes from intimacy. From that point, Pastor Luke gave five application points for married couples: Don’t withhold sex from one another, as mutual submission within marriage is key. Your spouse is your standard of beauty. If you start looking in any other direction you will run into porneia (sexual immorality). Sex takes work, but practice often and fight for it. It’s important to have healthy expectations and understand that God is in the business of restoration. Sex should never be used as a punishment or reward. The only time not to have regular sex with your spouse is to set aside time to pray. Not having regular sex opens couples up to temptation, and it’s important to fight for a healthy sex life. Don’t settle in this area. God created sex too good for it to be stolen. Point two: Singleness is a gift. In church culture, we haven’t always a done a great job with celebrating singleness, and we need to have a renewed vision for the gift and calling that it is. Paul had a celibate lifestyle, and calls others to do the same because single people can devote themselves to God in a way that married people can not. In your singleness, it’s important to guard yourself against porneia as a great sex life starts when you are single. Sex and singleness are both gifts, but it’s always, always about the giver – and dedicating ourselves most fully to Jesus.
1 Corinthians | Week Four | Chapters 5 & 6
February 7, 2021 • Luke Isaacson
This morning, Pastor Luke continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with chapters 5 and 6 and the topic of sexuality within the church. It’s important for us to remember that Corinth was an extremely sexual city. Prostitution and the worship of Aphrodite (the goddess of love, fertility and sexuality) were rampant and set the tone for the culture itself. The church in Corinth was celebrating their sexual immortality, and Aphrodite’s influence was not just over the city but within the church. This same sexual immorality is rampant within our world and culture today as well. For example, pornography in America is a $16.9 billion industry (a number which is larger than the GDP of 80 countries in the world) and 12% of all webpages and 25% of all google searches are porn related. The good news is that there is hope in Jesus. Pastor Luke tackled two primary questions, starting with: What is and what is not okay? In this passage Paul used the term “sexual immortality” five times, and this word in Greek is porneia. This word is the root of pornography, but is also much broader than that as well; encompassing everything and anything outside of Gods specific design for sex and sexuality. The Corinthian church were basing their sexual ethic off of their culture, and specifically within the framework of dualism. They believed that their true self was held in the spirit and soul, and therefore the flesh and the body were somewhat irrelevant and inconsequential. Within these Chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul reorients their sexual ethic away from their culture and instead around the Bible, starting in the creation story of Genesis. In Genesis we learn that we as human beings are image bearers of God and that our purpose is to worship Him and complement one another as male and female both relationally and sexually. Gods purpose was man and woman in a monogamous covenantal relationship together, and He said that it was good. The Bible therefore starts with a positive view of sex and sexuality, as we were sexual before we were sinful. As long as it in in the right context, sex is something to be enjoyed. However, we are born bent; and our desires, appetites, views and sexuality are not as they should be. God therefore draws a line for His people not because He is prude or a fun-hater but because He knows what is best for us. The sin in our life is always going to hinder our relationship with God and other people. Paul tells the Corinthians to flee sexual immorality because our bodies are a temple, they are not our own. When we become believers in Jesus our spirits are intimately connected with Christ, and we must therefore not defile them with sexually immoral acts. The second question Pastor Luke answered was: what about homosexuality? Typically, the church has handled this issue in two ways; labelling it either as the chief of all sins, or the other side embracing and celebrating it as fully acceptable. We need to come to a middle ground, understanding that homosexuality is not just an issue; it’s people. It’s bigger than an act. And although scripture clearly condemns the act of homosexuality, it does become more complicated when we tackle the identity and attraction elements of the topic. The bottom line is that following Jesus is one of cross bearing for everyone, and we all have burdens to carry and bear. Therefore, although our sexuality is super important, it is not the most important thing about us. God defines who we are, and we need to make sure our sexual ethic matches scripture and not culture. We as a church want to be a people who are shaped by Jesus in every single area of our lives. This includes our sexuality, which needs to be framed around the Bible, and simply not our culture or our times.
1 Corinthians | Week Three | Chapters 3 & 4
January 24, 2021 • Pastor Matthew
This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our 1 Corinthians series with Chapters 3 and 4. He spoke about power, and the counter-cultural nature of the Gospel. The Corinthian church was full of human wisdom. Their jealousy, divisions and quarreling were proof of their worldliness and immaturity. In his letter to them, Paul calls them to the alternative way of living by the spirit. A way that was not compatible with their behavior. People who have been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ cannot act in the same manner as those who have not. We must live crucified lives with Christ. Lives which are laid down for others and are founded upon humility. Our allegiance must be to the Kingdom of God and not to our countries or cultures. Our lives and our values must be shaped by the crucifixion, as God’s power is lived out by way of the cross. Paul boasts about the very things that the Corinthians distained, and he calls out their hypocrisy. The values that they held (their power, honor and riches) were the opposite of all that Paul and therefore Christ was calling them to. The power of God is expressed in a life that blesses those who curse, endures persecution, answers kindly to those who slander, practices forgiveness and lays their life down for Jesus and other people. We cannot receive the benefits of the cross without laying our lives down daily. We can not lay our lives down daily while being filled with human pride. Paul reminded the Corinthian church that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing; a message that is repeated all the way through the Bible. We live in a culture that doesn’t teach this. We as the church need to stop getting into fights and quarrels that have nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. We need to begin to look like Jesus. We need to lay our lives down and not get caught up in worldly things.
1 Corinthians | Week Two | Chapters 1 & 2
January 17, 2021 • Jermaine Stewart
This week, Pastor Jermaine continued on with our 1 Corinthians series, this week focusing on Chapters 1 and 2. The church in Corinth was experiencing huge amounts of division amongst themselves and against Paul. They were fighting over different teachers and ranking them against one another. They were forming clicks and dividing over them, quarreling amongst one another in the name of wisdom. Unfortunately, we see evidence of this trend continue in the church today as Christians bicker and divide over their consumer preferences. In his letter, Paul is lovingly exposing their sin. He asks them: where is your humility and your reverence? He points them back to the example of Jesus Christ and asks them to consider His life and death. He points them back to Jesus’s life of humility and of “going low;” concepts that were completely counter-cultural to both the culture of the time, and our current day. The foolishness and simplicity of the Gospel remains the most powerful thing on the planet. If we are going to boast, let us boast in Christ and in the Gospel.
1 Corinthians | Intro
January 10, 2021 • Luke Isaacson
This week, Pastor Luke introduced our 12 week 1 Corinthians series. He encouraged us to dive into the series alongside our devotional that can be picked up from the church or found online at: http://www.waypointomaha.com/1corinthians 1 Corinthians is a letter written by the apostle Paul. It was written to real people in a real place, which is why it’s important to understand it within its historical context. Paul arrived in Corinth as part of his second missionary journey and stayed there for 18 months. We can read about his time in Corinth in Acts 18. Corinth was the biggest city that Paul had visited. Four things that are important to know about Corinth: Corinth was extremely wealthy. They were a huge trade and port city. Corinth was very multicultural. Corinth was very religious. There were at least 26 sacred places of worship within the city. It was also the home of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Corinth was very sexual. A few years after his departure from them, Paul wrote multiple letters to the Corinthian church. He was addressing various issues within the church including divisions, sexual misconduct, false practices and theological misunderstandings. He encourages the Corinthian church to be set apart from the culture and the city around them. Pastor Luke concluded his message with two thoughts about the church in Omaha. The call for this moment in time is unity in our church and holiness in our behavior. We are to be a laundromat. We are to be a place where we point people to get clean through the Holy Spirit and because of what Jesus does in and through us.