Category: Church Stream

Posted on

May 27

 

I Corinthians 7-9

We are in the Church Stream today reading from the New International Version.

 

Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

7 – The Corinthians had questions about marriage. It was a racy town with an ungodly heritage, and sexual matters in the region of Corinth were anything but healthy and resolved.  The Christians needed to know how to handle issues within this realm and Paul set things straight right here.  In the matter of sex – if you are to leave it alone (because you are single) then leave it alone. If engaged, get it going and marry and don’t play games or defraud or be cruel but be availed and surrendered to each other within the “bedroom”.  Separating and divorcing is not OK. In other words, don’t be playing “musical spouses”. Paul’s advice is just smart, healthy and best.  The most important aspect of one’s life is that they live like a Believer; because we are!  Slave/Free, circumcised/or not, it’s all immaterial. We are Christ’s!  And about the married, the virgins, Paul has very good advice and we best listen to all of it.  Some groups have created marriage rules and forbidden marriage to certain people unless there is approval from a church committee. This is not a good thing. Some forbid marriage altogether based upon occupation or calling. There are pros and cons regarding this and the discussion is still open. It’s best to listen to the Lord and do what the Spirit tells each person in any circumstance.

 
8 – the issue with the meat sacrificed to idols (and remember, in the Greek, “idol” means “a nothing”) it is most important that we not be offensive or ebullient toward anyone else. We are to build eachother up and not be trying to “teach it to others” or, as the phrase goes, “stick to the other”    as if we were touting that we’ve gotten over the past but “youuuuu” are still hung up or reacting to what others used to be or used to be doing.  It’s nothing to be ugly or judgmental about. Drop these peripheral matters as quickly as possible and be peaceable and promote Church unity and encouragement.
 
9 – Paul was paid for his ministry in Philippi. Here in Corinth, however, as in Ephesus and in Thessalonica, he was not, but supported himself through other means of a trade that he had learned prior.  Paul wanted to be doing more that was asked of him and not to be demanding or even needing to ask for support. He also did not want to set an example that may be abused later by the slovenly or even false teachers who might even remotely think, “I’ll give you faith, but you’re going to pay me for it.”  Are ministers worthy of their hire? absolutely. But Paul is just laying this principle out so to make certain that there is not a hint of greed or selfishness that goes along with serving the Lord.
-Paul asserts that we are free in Christ and are to use that freedom to promote Christ and never to abuse the concept of freedom in that the exercise thereof may jeopardize others finding freedom in Christ also.  He also reminds us that this faith, this discipleship we live requires discipline.
 
The Thread through the Streams

In Exodus we read of the details details details required for the altar, the courtyard, the oil, the garments and the priests and more. This all pertained to God’s house. They give attention to all this and God says, “Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God.”  These details mattered!

 -In II Sam. there was a matter that needed to be dealt with cc. the Gibeonites from something that happened long ago.  David had some final words, this is vital! He built an altar and there was a detail that best be deleted when he took a census against better judgment and theological wisdom.  These details matter.

-David was fastidious to list his woes to God in these Psalms. These are confessions. We need to do the same and lay our concerns before God; EACH one and let him handle the details v.s. us living in neurotic denial and reactionary behaviors that are detrimental to our faith.
–Jeremiah opens with “cursed are those who do not obey the terms of the covenant.” Each part mattered and they had long become sloppy in Jerusalem. And refusal to mind the details let to rampant sin that only became worse and worse.
–Hosea basically itemizes the sins of Israel.  The riot act is being read to them and they have no argument
-in Mark, Jesus was asked four distinct questions and Jesus answered them line by line and decoded the true / ill intent of their hearts.  He then turned and warned the crowd against following the teaching of the leaders in Jerusalem during that time.  Not only were the rules these false teachers laying out extremely detailed and burdensome, they were just plain wrong.
–I Cor. 7-9 gave a goldmine list of details for marriage, status, freedom, attitudes, tenants for moving from a pagan world to the Christian world and how to manage the many phases that people found themselves in, payment to minsters, personal freedoms and more.  Hey, thank God for Paul and God using him so distinctively.
Posted on

May 20



I Corinthians 4-6

We are in the Church Stream today hearing the Apostle Paul instruct the church at Corinth. We are using the Common English Bible this week.

The Thread through the Streams

Looking over the terrain of the scriptures, we can almost feel it in our soul when God shows the vision to the 70 elders in Exodus. The Covenant is laid forth, they gather to dine and they see the dazzling blue above as if God opened a window from heaven and let them see in. “Watch this” <–they heard it back then and they saw. It was a spectacular gift of God.

-In II Samuel there is a rebellion getting some scary momentum. Will Ahithophel get away with this? No. Watch this. Will the army of Absalom snuff out King David? No. They are going down today. God will do them in – this rebellion will die in the forest, watch this.
-In Psalm 50:15, I can almost hear the question being asked of God and his reply, ” cry out to me, I’ll deliver you from trouble – watch this!”
-In Jeremiah they are justifying themselves thinking they will never be punished. “oh yea? watch this as the harvest doesn’t come in, mounted horsemen bent on obliterating you ride. You won’t want to watch this, but you will!”
-Hosea in ch. 11 especially muses at how frustrating this all is for God to call down punishment on His beloved children. Can they see it? God wants to show them compassion if they would watch for Him instead of looking for ways to err into sin.
-Right before Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time, there’s a “watch this!” as Jesus heals Bartimaeus of blindness. And think that the deed itself says the same thing to the blind man. Guess what?! He can watch Jesus now! Amazing.
-In Corinth there is a fellow engaging is a dark sin that leads to death / not just an ecclesistical inconvenience. He is arrogant about it. Paul almost retorts in his spirit to that man, “you think you are going to get away with this? Keep this up? Stay in the church? avoid evil and love your sin and not encounter grave punishment? Watch this as you get handed over to Satan himself.
Let’s everyday be watching for what God is going to do – it’s terribly marvelous.
Posted on

May 13


I Corinthians 1-3

We are starting a new book in the Church Stream! We are reading from the Easy-to-Read Version this week.

 

Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

God, thank you for caring for us enough to walk us through such matters as we read about today. Church and Christian Fellowship is the best place on earth to find support and comfort, safety, strength, discipleship, and teaching. You certainly love your bride; the church. And we are grateful – because it is us you love. Amen.

Paul wrote this letter from Ephesus to the Corinthian church after he had left the first time. Corinth was along a busy trade route. It was a cultural and wealthy city of influence. Paul was spurred to write the Believers in Corinth because leaders from there had come to visit him in Ephesus as they were in duress and vexed with how to handle troubles, sin, misconduct, plus relational and doctrinal matters back in Corinth. [btw, Olympic trials were held here before Paul arrived and shortly after he had left.] There was an Aphrodite Temple above town. It had been closed by the New Testament era but there were residual effects from it in Corinth, Paul ended up addressing this issue also. It became an influential church and Paul was fervent to see them “aright their ship”. For within a century there would be a population of 3/4Million people in the area, so now was the time to set the church straight.

1 – Paul encourages them that they are holy because they belong to Christ Jesus. The Greek culture had a goal of attaining a perfect body and a perfected mind. [E.g. the muscle-bound statues, the ‘thinker’, etc.] We can still view this art today. This was a Grecian’s grid of value. and Paul wanted them to know that their value was that they belonged to Christ. This was news!

 
Churches here (as elsewhere) had not built central meeting places. That happened a couple of centuries after Rome had committed to stop harassing and executing Christians. Churches met in homes, halls, fields, caves and were therefore almost never “all together” as a unified group. The tendency was to become competitive. They were following different factions they had created. Paul reminded them that they were all following Christ, together, so stop bickering. And it was vital that they understand the Cross. Greeks didn’t like it because they felt, “why follow a man who surrendered himself to die? I don’t want to die. I’ll follow Apollos! He’s alive…”
[or we’ll follow Peter or Paul or Aquila].  And then there were the Jews who were taught for 1400 years that a lamb was to be sacrificed, not a human. That was too much like Molech or the pagans in Rome. yuck!  As you see, Paul needed to explain the Cross to them….[and to us!] And because of this Cross, Jesus is your strength, your mind, your justification, your freedom.
 
2 – It was important that their confidence switch from being rooted in human thinking (mind worship) to confidence in Christ.  THIS is the root of true wisdom.  The Greek mind and language structure was a rather brilliant system – it still affects the way we think and talk even today.  But it is the wisdom of God, found in Christ Jesus, that we access through His Holy Spirit that leads to true wisdom that transforms us and the world.  This is the wisdom that Paul mentors us into finding and living by.  God has such marvels and wonders to share with us and bring us to, but we won’t find this life in Him via a human path or cranial activity. We will find it by surrendering to Him, His wisdom, His Spirit.
 
3 – Paul takes the time to tell them that the teachers that pass through their live are God’s Servants – not Their Masters.  Follow Christ, let the teachers guide you, and the arguing and comparing would simply cease – as it needed to!  The Greeks (and Corinth is a city in Greece) were very immersed in learning and growing and perfecting and building. There are structures from centuries before Christ that are still matters to marvel over today.  Paul, amid this thinking, asserts to them that THEY are a temple, Christ is at work on this temple. They must bring Christ into all their thinking and building and activity and hobbies and obsessions. Christ would then therefore be their “obsession”. <– We’re saying what Paul is implying though he doesn’t word it this way.  Paul simply wants Corinthians to latch on to a totally higher way of thinking, and wisdom and operating that supersedes anything they have ever known before.  Christ owns you and has so much to bless you with. Let Him.
 

The Thread Through the Streams

:You will all follow a higher wisdom, what God has laid out, or you will end up killing what you think it is you love.
 

In Exodus, God laid out the plan; the “Decalogue” and numerous subsequent laws. Each persons impulses and passions were not to rule the day. God’s Law was the law. What happens in the world, in villages, in families where God’s law is not followed? Eventually murder rules and worse.

-In II Samuel David is feeling the affects of not following God’s 6,7,8, & 10th Commandments. He repented and was restored, yes. But it ends up terrorizing and killing his children however.
-In Psalms, the Sons of Korah are at a crossroads many times. They are so down-hearted. Thankfully they choose to look up to God, and His higher wisdom, and to be encouraged and not let their feelings override their faith.
-Jeremiah is urging them to follow God’s laws and wisdom. But they follow their own vices and darkness – what they think they love.  And it’s going to kill them, their towns, and Temple too.
-Hosea tells them that they are living wrong (teaching their children wrong too), Your idols, your judges – it’s all poison and you will lose everything and be destroyed for turning against God.

-Jesus, in Mark, asserts definitively that He must die (so that you/us/we can live.  This is higher wisdom – the plan that God laid out. This must be loved more than our own lives or we won’t find life ever.  Our life is found in Jesus’ death. [born once/die twice – born twice/die once]

-The Corinthian Church will follow Paul’s higher wisdom and the Corinthian Church will turn from their selfishness or there is going to be no Christian testimony in this city or this region. Their love for Greek culture and argument and body and mind will be surrendered to Christian codes for living or this church is going to devour itself.
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