Bible in A Year: Episode 37

Intro • 00:00
Welcome to Read the Bible in a Year with Matt and Hannah, a weekly podcast from Fairfax Bible Church where we explore scripture together, uncovering its themes and design patterns. We’re glad you’re here. Now, here are your hosts, Matt and Hannah. Okay, here we go.

Matt • 00:16
Hannah, this is episode number 37.

Hannah • 00:20
Okay, 37

Matt • 00:22
I have a good one for 37.

Hannah • 00:24
All right, what do you got?

Matt • 00:25
Um, okay, so uh this is another one where this may not mean a lot to you, but If you are a DC sports fan, sort of if you orient your fandom around the teams of Washington, D. C. , there can only be one number 37. That is Mr. Steven Strasberg.

Hannah • 00:46
I’ve never heard of him.

Matt • 00:47
Never heard of him? Oh my goodness. He was our ace pitcher, uh well at least one of our ace pitchers when we won the World Series in 2019. He was the M V P of the World Series that year. Game six, uh I think he threw seven innings. Okay, so we’re talking about baseball This is baseball, yes. Uh he was a pitcher. He’s the pitcher is the one who throws the ball.

Hannah • 01:09
I n I know that.

Matt • 01:10
And the other team’s supposed to miss. And when Steven Trasberg would throw the ball, the other team would miss a lot. Unfortunately over the years he sort of got hurt a lot, so he he was never quite as good as we all would maybe want him to be, but when he was not hurt, he was amazing and he was extra amazing in the 2019 World Series, which the Nats won. One of the all-time great moments for DC sports. So Steven Strasberg, this is your episode.

Hannah • 01:38
Yep.

Matt • 01:39
I’m sure he’s listening.

Hannah • 01:41
I’m sure.

Matt • 01:42
He’s a big fan. I met him one time. Oh. Well, sort of. I was in the same room as him one time. He was a very, very, very shy man. Oh. It’s clearly uncomfortable with the uh it was like one of these sort of meet and greet, like kind of auction charity type things. I was there with my buddy Gar. And um And uh and he was just very uncomfortable. Other players are like, hey, hey, how are you? I’ll sign your thing, blah, blah, blah. But Stephen was just sort of over in the corner. hanging out with his wife and anyway, God bless him. Yeah, he was uncomfortable, but he was a great pitcher. And we don’t have a World Series without Steven Strasbourg. So there you go.

Hannah • 02:23
Great. Did you get a photo with him or anything?

Matt • 02:27
I wouldn’t dare.

Hannah • 02:28
Oh, yes.

Matt • 02:29
I wouldn’t dare. Yeah, I don’t know. I’d Yeah you’ve probably been around some famous-ish people. I have a little bit. I mean I don’t want to make it sound like I hang out with them, but I’ve I’ve had occasion to meet some fairly well-known people. And I don’t know. Uh it just I don’t know. I I’m always like I feel like you’re doing them a favor to treat them as a normal person. Sure. Sure. And so I may be I mean once or twice maybe I’ve snagged a photo with somebody, but usually I usually I’ll just chit-chat or just leave them alone and Yeah. Yeah. Um there’s another guy you wouldn’t he’s an he he was one of my favorite players when I was a kid. His name’s Barry Larkin. Uh he was a shortstop for the Cincinnati Reds back in the day. Uh and I ran him into him in the airport one time and we were just both sitting there waiting for our flight and so we just started hanging out and chatting and I don’t know, we talked for like an hour or something like that. Oh wow. So I always feel like when you just like talk to him. I feel like that is that sort of helps him out a little bit more than like the picture or the whatever. But if I ever met Paul McCartney, I would lose my mind. So I can’t promise I can’t promise I’ll be on my best behavior if I met McCartney. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about Paul McCartney or my celebrity encounters. We’re here to talk about First Corinthians.

Hannah • 03:42
Yeah.

Matt • 03:43
I uh I have a soft spot for First Corinthians.

Hannah • 03:47
Okay.

Matt • 03:48
Uh I was probably when I first started reading the Bible when I was uh I say a kid, but 13, 14, this was one of the ones that sort of clicked for me first. It was very readable. It was very like, oh, okay. I know what to do here. Like it was it wasn’t like wrapped up in like churchy language. It was very much like Here is some direct instruction on how to live your life as a Jesus person in a culture that is maybe doesn’t want you to do that. Uh so I’ve always and uh so I’ve always had a soft spot for this book. So I’m I’m really happy that we are at that point in our journey through the Bible here.

Hannah • 04:28
You make the letter sound very easy to understand, but I feel like it’s not. Like a lot a lot of it is not.

Matt • 04:37
You know, it’s funny because I think that now. I think now that I’m older and I’ve read it a bunch, I’m like, whoa, there’s actually a lot more going on. But when you’re 14 Oh sure just reading the Bible for the first time.

Hannah • 04:50
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt • 04:51
And especially if you’re reading like Romans or Galatians, it’s very this heavy doctrinal type stuff. And I wasn’t really hanging out in the Old Testament very much at all in those days. Um so just a book that was like just very clearly readable. And then now it’s years later, I’m like, whoa, there’s a lot of stuff happening in here. So

Hannah • 05:15
I think there’s a ton of cultural stuff happening that uh is confusing for us to understand what to do with all of this.

Matt • 05:22
Yes, I think we might hit a couple of those in this conversation.

Hannah • 05:26
Yeah, probably.

Matt • 05:27
Yeah, I would think so. Well, why don’t you give us an overview? There’s some interesting things about this book in terms of the time it was written, the people it was written to. Why don’t you give us a little bit of overview and uh and then we’ll get into it.

Hannah • 05:41
Yeah so um The reading plan lined up perfectly again. I love when it does that. So we’ll we’ll cover all of First Corinthians in this episode. Um, so if if we remember back to Acts, Paul spent a year and a half in Corinth uh on his second missionary journey. And so this church in Corinth that Paul is writing this letter to is um the church that grew out of Paul’s time that he spent there during that missionary journey and he brought the gospel to these people. So he knows them very intimately and very personally.

Matt • 06:17
Yeah, and Corinth kind of an interesting city.

Hannah • 06:20
Yeah.

Matt • 06:20
Uh very a crossroads city, uh like a really significant economic port, so very relatively diverse population, sort of a cross station in the old uh Roman Empire. So pretty interesting group of people here, I think.

Hannah • 06:34
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, very busy port city. It was a very prosperous Roman colony. um a lot of we’ll talk about some of the cultural influences of their uh the influence of Roman values and social structures and hierarchies in their social structures. Um very uh they cared a lot about wealth and honor and status. Um So yeah, there’s we’ll we’ll see a lot of that. And um Paul is probably writing this a few years after his time in Corinth, um, probably from Ephesus. And this is one letter in a series of letters. Um, we have two of those letters in our in our New Testament, first and second Corinthians, but there’s actually a handful of letters back and forth. So it’s important to remember we’re jumping into the middle of a conversation between Paul and the church in Corinth. And also we’re only saying one side of the conversation. Right. Yeah. So um it’s believed that Paul probably already sent a letter to the church before First Corinthians. He mentions that in chapter five, that he already wrote another letter. And then we know that the church in Corinth sent a letter to Paul right before 1 Corinthians was written because Paul is addressing a lot of their questions. that they wrote in that letter. Sometimes he quotes directly from their letter and then will uh respond to their questions or their statements. Yeah, and then Paul probably wrote another letter after 1 Corinthians that we don’t have in Scripture before he wrote 2 Corinthians. Um, because in Second Corinthians it’s referenced that Paul wrote this other letter with tears.

Matt • 08:36
Yeah.

Hannah • 08:37
That we we don’t have record of.

Matt • 08:39
Yeah.

Hannah • 08:39
So yeah, we’re jumping into the middle of a conversation here. Um, and it’s important to understand we don’t really have the full the full context or conversation. So when we’re trying to understand that, just something to keep in mind.

Matt • 09:01
Scene we’ve talked about, you know, I’ve mentioned like the Godfather trilogy or Star Wars or things like that. So you can imagine like a movie series, p pick whatever you like, Lord of the Rings, whatever. But if it’s say a four-part series and you only have two of the movies. But the movies keep referencing the missing parts. It’s like, well, what where did that what did that come from? And so it can be hard to know what the full picture is. You have to do a lot of sort of inferring and putting the puzzle pieces together based on what we p see Paul say in this letter.

Hannah • 09:32
Yeah. The other challenging thing is that uh Greek the original Greek did not use quotation marks. Like they just didn’t have quotation marks in their punctuation.

Matt • 09:44
Oh.

Hannah • 09:44
Um and so when Paul quotes from the letter that the Corinthians sent to him, uh translators have to kind of guess what’s being quoted and they add quotes in to the translation. So scholars actually kind of disagree about what is being quoted and what is Paul actually saying. Is this Paul making a command or is he quoting something and then refuting it? So there’s a a few um different opinions throughout the letter. Um so that adds to the challenge of understanding what he’s saying.

Matt • 10:20
Yeah, that’s that’s what it’s fascinating in so many ways though. It’s like, oh, okay, well something is going on, some set of issues, and we get a hint of these things. I mean Paul addresses the parts that Paul dress does address, he addresses very clearly. Um but it would be sort of interesting like if we were a part of the church at Corinth, it’s like what would How do we know what’s what’s going on here that merits a letter that’s written so strongly and stro so vividly and And it’s interesting, even though Paul is writing this to a very specific audience in a very specific time in a specific place, there’s so much of it that is relevant to the world that you and I live in. Uh 10,000 years later. So it’s fascinating. Well, why don’t we get into it? So the book starts pretty I mean he just goes right into it sort of challenging their sort of optic point of view. He addresses some sort of status and cultural issues right there from the b from the uh big bang or the go in chapters sort of one, two, three, and four. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on here.

Hannah • 11:24
Yeah, so one of the major themes of this letter is how radically the gospel challenges the values of Greco-Roman society, which the church in Corinth had adopted, or they live in that society, so naturally they’re going to have a lot of the same values. And so we kind of talked about how Corinth It was a city where honor and wealth and social standing, uh, public recognition, these were all really important values. And the Roman social structure was uh built off of this hierarchy They operated in an honor-shame society. Um, and so it seems like the Corinthian church had brought a lot of those values into the church. And so right in the first chapter, Paul addresses how they were kind of split or divided over different leaders that they preferred. And they were evaluating these leaders probably based off of worldly standards of wisdom or status Um and so they were arguing over who was the wisest or the most spiritually mature.

Matt • 12:33
You think they’re looking at like book sales, podcast downloads?

Hannah • 12:37
Yeah, exactly.

Matt • 12:38
Things like that. You think so?

Hannah • 12:40
Yeah, that’s probably what they were doing in the first century.

Matt • 12:45
Maybe. I’m sure it was some of that. I mean, because that’s what we do, right? We’re looking at well who has the biggest attendance numbers, who has the most followers on YouTube, who has the biggest podcast, who’s getting invited to The White House or big so big, you know, big sort of cultural gatherings. Yeah. So it’s kind of what we do. So may it’s obviously it’s not the same thing, but you can sort of get a sense of kind of how these conversations or how these things were shaken, ’cause we see this all the time in the culture that we live in.

Hannah • 13:14
Yeah. Yeah. And it would have been like, well, who’s the most eloquent speaker when they when they come to visit? How to what sizes the crowd that is like, oh, you know, Paul’s coming to town to preach. Like, let’s all, you know. So I’m sure they’re rallying around their favorites based on these like worldly uh markers of of success or honor or whatever. And so in this letter, Paul completely turns their understanding of honor upside down by reminding them that the The Messiah that they worship was crucified, which was one of the most shameful ways that somebody could die in the Roman world. And so um He also in chapter four describes the apostles themselves as this is like verses 10 through 13. He says that we the apostles are fools for Christ’s sake. We are weak. We are in disrepute. And we’re poorly dressed. Step it up a little bit. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Um, they’re reviled, they’re persecuted, they’re slandered. Um, and then he says, we’re like the scum of the world, which I just think is the funniest phrase. Okay. To like how dramatic you know, that’s such a I’m sure it’s hyperbole. Yeah. But I I think he’s referring to the Roman hierarchical uh social status.

Matt • 14:57
Okay.

Hannah • 14:57
The scum of the world is the lowest you could possibly get on the rung of the social hierarchy.

Matt • 15:02
Okay. Uh so I remember we had a guest speaker a few weeks ago, Britt Miller. Uh from Mason Crew, Athletes in Action. Yeah. He actually in his uh message he had a visual like that triangle, that pyramid shape, and sort of the emperor at the top and then slaves at the bottom.

Hannah • 15:18
Right.

Matt • 15:18
So is Scum of the Earth even below the slaves or is it like the same level?

Hannah • 15:23
I don’t know. I don’t know if that was a liter I don’t know if Scum of the World was an actual status or if or if that’s just the lowest thing that Paul could think of that would be below all of the rungs on the on the pyramid. You know, I think I actually I actually do think it’s the point is that Paul is saying that the apostle the apostles are so low in this structure that they’re not even on the structure. They’re the scum. Yeah. Underneath this pyramid of hierarchy.

Matt • 15:54
Yeah.

Hannah • 15:54
Yeah.

Matt • 15:55
And I yeah, I love your point about how if you’re going to um try and use your religious faith as like social currency, boy, it just you pick the wrong religious leader. ‘Cause you know, in a s in a society that sort of is uh you like the like mythological Roman and Greek gods that are all sort of personified and it’s all about sort of who has the most power and who can do the most things. And we’re talking about a guy that was crucified.

Hannah • 16:26
Yeah.

Matt • 16:26
That gave himself over to the authorities, let himself be killed. Now he rose from the dead, uh, which is kind of a big deal, and then we’re gonna circle to that uh at the end. But yeah, you wouldn’t like Zeus is not uh being crucified. You know, Apollos is not offering himself uh to you know be you know punished for somebody else’s sin. Like You you just wouldn’t do that in sort of the nomenclature and the stories of the the gods that were in their vernacular.

Hannah • 16:56
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so he paints the apostles as like following in the footsteps of their crucified Messiah, being the lowest in this upside-down social structure. And is encouraging the church in Corinth to totally flip upside down their value structure as well to be more in line with the upside-down value system of the kingdom of God.

Matt • 17:22
Yeah.

Hannah • 17:22
Yeah.

Matt • 17:23
Yeah, I th this is one of those when when I read this, I’m like, oh yeah, we totally do this. We are totally in our camps about Well, I like this podcaster or I like this past. I mean, gosh, it’s uh it’s h a huge factor in sort of church activity and attendance in America today. There are so many people that don’t actually go to church. because they just watch their preferred speaker on YouTube or on a podcast. And uh so but they’re not part of community. They don’t have accountability. They’re not Uh, you know, it’s they’re not actually in the life of a church. They just, you know, it’s sort of like you having every meal at McDonald’s or something like that. You just go onto YouTube, watch the person that you like the best. uh and then move along, but that’s not really what church is supposed to be. So yeah, we I mean we could look at the Corinthians and be like, oh those silly Corinthians, but we do the exact same thing in our culture.

Hannah • 18:15
Totally. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Matt • 18:17
Yeah, so he begins to challenge them and he makes reference there, uh, as you alluded to. He makes reference uh right about chapter, is it five? where there had been a letter before. So this is a conversation that’s going on. And you know it’s interesting in Romans we talked about uh kind of this sort of tension that needs to be uh addressed between Jewish believers. and Gentile believers and sort of in Romans the Jewish believers are sort of getting most of the instruction because it has to do with following the Torah and things like that. But here uh it is if it’s almost as if he were talking to those Gentiles, what would he say to them? Sort of what we’re experiencing with the Corinthians. And it I thought this was interesting. He’s really going back to Acts chapter 15. When the Gentile believers first came into the church and they were trying to figure out, well, we don’t necessarily need them to go through all the Mosaic Law, but we do need to give them some instruction. What do we teach them? And if you remember from listening a few episodes ago or reading, that that instruction was abstain from sexual immorality, uh, don’t deal with food to idols, and then don’t eat something that’s been strangled.

Matt • 19:27
Which is still an odd one.

Matt • 19:28
I still don’t know quite what that’s about, but that’s okay. Um and we hit two of those three in this letter. So there’s about what three, four chapters uh about sexual immorality and marriage. There’s this Very strange situation where uh one of the men in the church has taken up with his stepmother uh and there’s sort of an odd feeling, uh like the people are like, oh, look how free we are in Christ that we have this uh situation. Paul, isn’t this look at us enjoying our freedom in Christ? And Paul’s like, no, no, that’s not cool. Don’t do that. And then he gives them three chapters of explaining, hey, we talked about sexual immorality. This is what this relationship is supposed to be like. That is part of the marriage experience between a man and a woman. So Quit doing these things, behaving like the pagans do, and and moreover, quit being proud of behaving like the pagans do. In fact, you’re doing things e that even the pagans wouldn’t dream of. You’re actually going farther over the line than they do. And so stop that. Also, don’t be proud of that. Let’s remind ourselves why God created uh sex, that it belongs in marriage. Let’s go back to uh what how marriage is supposed to be. Uh and so he he gives them that instruction. Uh and then he gets to food uh that has been sacrificed to idol. He picks that up in chapter eight. And then I thought this was interesting. I’d be curious with your thoughts. I think often the the desire is, well just tell us tell us what the rules are and then we’ll follow them. And he doesn’t really do that. He doesn’t really say that it’s right or wrong to eat food sacrificed to idols. I mean he gives them some guidelines, but he doesn’t give them really bright lines. He sort of leaves that to them to determine. But he’s like, look. Pick pick a lane, but just don’t lord it over people. I I don’t know. I’m really curious your thoughts on this one.

Hannah • 21:17
Yeah, I mean the I think the whole Bible cares more about growing people into uh people who live according to God’s wisdom, not not just rule followers, but people who know how to uh engage with the spirit and trust his leading and his discernment to make good decisions in any situation that comes up. Because uh the Bible’s not gonna be able to comprehensively write rules for every single scenario that will ever exist for all ages. You know, but when the goal of the scriptures, I think, is to form us into people who live according to God’s wisdom, which takes effort and we have to be involved in that. uh rules you can kind of not be involved in. Like you just do them and there there’s no active participation in and making those decisions according to wisdom and discernment.

Matt • 22:19
Yeah, it’s it’s sort of like sometimes we think we want rules.

Hannah • 22:23
Sure, yeah. They’d be way easier.

Matt • 22:27
You would think I’ve talked about my fantasy baseball league before, right? So the guys that I play fantasy baseball with most of them went to Harvard Law School. together back in the day. So in the back in the day when uh we would get together and we decide what are the rules that are for the league going to be this year. Okay, you’re doing that with a room full of lawyers. who went to Harvard, these things would be like four or five hours long. Because lawyers just love to argue and they want to be a little bit more than a little bit of a few. Fun it was not fun. Not fun. No, not life giving. No. No, so warning to all of you, uh don’t get in a baseball league with uh Harvard Law School grads. It’s not fun. So don’t do that. Um but yeah, and I love how uh and this is kind of where it culminates in chapter 13 Uh actually let me look at it because I had something written down. What is this? Oh, in chapter 10, and this is part of what you were talking about before where he’s probably quoting from the letter that they had sent him. Because they’re saying something like, Well, all things are lawful.

Hannah • 23:35
Yep.

Matt • 23:35
We should just be able to do whatever we want. After all, Christ died for our sins, we’re covered, so now we’re just free to do whatever we want. And Paul’s like, well, no, all things are lawful. He doesn’t necessarily take that or counter that point, but what he says is not all things build up. Not all things are useful. So it’s almost like he’s telling them, you guys are having the wrong conversation. You’re kind of looking at what’s in bounds, what’s out of bounds, what’s allowed, what’s not allowed. You yes, you have this freedom, but what do you have your freedom for If it’s not to build up other people and invite them into the party.

Hannah • 24:15
Yeah, totally. Yeah, Paul talks a lot about how our freedom in Christ is governed ultimately by love. for others. Um, love for the the community, in particular, the community of Christ. So Freedom is not just unrestricted individual autonomy to do whatever we want, but our freedom is mostly freedom that allows us to love God and love others.

Matt • 24:43
Yeah.

Hannah • 24:44
Yeah.

Matt • 24:45
I really love the point that they made in the devotional this week when they were talking through chapters four and five, or five and six, I’m sorry, because uh they made the point it’s kind of weird to have two conversations set against each other where one is about this sort of sexual immorality situation. The other is about lawsuits. Yeah. And I love how they said in the devotional, whether it’s in the bedroom or the courtroom Um, it can be easy to use people instead of love people. I I don’t know, I just thought that captured it so succinctly. I I really I’d chewed on that for a long time that day.

Hannah • 25:18
Yeah.

Matt • 25:19
Yeah, so I think that’s so much of what he’s uh talking about, whether it’s in the sexual immorality stuff in the mid-part of the book or then the idol uh sacrifice. Where it’s like what what are you really doing here? You’re just using people and you’re just using each other and trying to find um the the lines instead of like really loving each other. And God has called us to so much higher than that.

Hannah • 25:43
Yeah.

Matt • 25:45
Yeah. Now uh chapter eleven What do we do with chapter 11, Hannah?

Hannah • 25:54
The first part?

Matt • 25:55
Uh yeah. Let’s see. I’m flipping over there. About head coverings. Head coverings, yes.

Hannah • 26:03
Yeah, no one knows.

Matt • 26:04
Are you gonna wear a head covering to church this week? Is that is that what uh should I expect to happen?

Hannah • 26:09
I don’t know. No one’s told me that I need to Uh like I I don’t know if there is a there’s not many churches that um really know what to do with this passage. Yeah. This is one of those passages that is debated about is Paul quoting Some of what the Corinthians put in the letter. Most most translators don’t put quotes in this um section, but there are several scholars that uh have writ written some commentaries. Um Lucy Peppiat is one scholar that has done some work on this section, but it’s like really debated what what Paul’s really trying to say here.

Matt • 26:57
Yeah. I mean there’s uh the couple things. Yeah, because there’s a couple of things that are just like w I mean, to it to at least to our ears, because we’re not part of this conversation and we don’t live in the first century. But they do come out of nowhere. Like the bit about, where is it here? Uh something about covering your head because of the angels?

Hannah • 27:16
Yeah, no idea.

Matt • 27:17
That one I really don’t I’m sorry. I just don’t know where that’s coming from. I don’t know what’s happening there. Yeah. Um yeah. Now I th I think in a larger point though Uh where he’s there should be a difference between men and women. Not necessarily in their status or the way that they’re treated. Um But the you know the the difference sort of acknowledging the difference between the genders and the sexes. There’s something to that uh I think to that that I think is an interesting point.

Hannah • 27:46
Um I feel like Paul is l also uh, you know, highlighting the unity. of the church here though. Like verse uh 11 and 12 in particular. He says, Nevertheless in the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as a woman was made from man, referring to Adam and Eve, Eve being taken from part of Adam, uh, then he says, so man is now born of woman. Uh, you know, because women give birth to all people. Right. And all things are from God. So I think he’s also unifying here. All things are from God. Yeah. You know. We’re we’re all we’re all united in the Lord. Yeah. Um, so I think that’s a significant part about what Paul’s trying to say in this passage.

Matt • 28:42
Yeah, I think so. It’s it’s also kind of right up against his instruction on the Lord’s Supper, which is apparently that was a pretty chaotic in the Corinthian experience. Uh you know, in the church that we go to, the Lord’s Supper, we do it roughly once a month, and it’s a pretty contained experience in our church service. We have the little wafer and the Beverage. You know, churches do this lots of different ways, but this is the way that we do it. It’s a fairly contained experience, usually by our senior pastor, but sometimes one of the elders or um Uh you know, others who have done it. But I guess in this experience it could be pretty drawn out. It would have been maybe even a longer, almost a full meal. It’s a little bit hard for me to imagine, but that’s how it does. And it looks like it was pretty chaotic. Like sort of the senior or wealthier people are kind of taking first stab at it and they’re eating everything up, and then the lower status people This is kind of going back to your original point about sort of flipping these upside-down values. So we’re not even when it comes to one of the very fundamental practices of walking with Jesus, experiencing communion or the Lord’s Supper together, you’re still using that worldly system to decide who gets to enjoy and feast at the table. And it just ends up being chaotic. Uh and so we it’s this I think this is where he says um you know, God is a god of order, not chaos. And so I think That was, you know, up against the sort of male-female conversation. It’s kind of kind of interesting to think about, you know, where where’s good order?

Hannah • 30:13
Yeah, he talks a lot about order through the next couple chapters too. I think it’s especially yeah, chapter twelve about the spiritual gifts.

Matt • 30:22
Yeah.

Hannah • 30:23
Um not speaking over one another and and having the worship gathering be orderly. And I think chapter 14, yeah, also talks about using spiritual gifts in the gathering and order in the gathering. And not interrupting each other, making sure there’s interpretation, using spiritual gifts that are building up the the body, um and not just for your own assumption of personal spiritual maturity or whatever the Corinthians were thinking.

Matt • 30:56
Yeah.

Hannah • 30:56
Yeah.

Matt • 30:57
Yeah. Uh so to all of our female listeners. I don’t believe you need to wear a head covering if you come to our church this weekend. No worries about that. But you know, all of us, uh be cool. Don’t be not cool. And uh if if we I don’t think we take the Lord’s Supper this week, but if we do, like do it orderly. And if we’re gonna like in our church service, like we’re gonna be orderly and systematic and not be all chaotic. So There we go.

Hannah • 31:26
We generally have a pretty orderly service. Like, you know, there’s not much like spontaneous.

Matt • 31:36
Once in a blue moon.

Hannah • 31:38
Yeah. Yeah.

Matt • 31:39
And Hang, our worship leader Hang is actually uh pretty good. I w I I can think of maybe like three equ occasions where he’s been like, I’m gonna change the last song. But he’ll send that on like the little chat thing that that a couple of us are on. Or some uh sometimes if something’s been long can be like, oh we’re gonna only do like one verse instead of three verses. But so he’s he’s basically on it, right?

Hannah • 32:03
Yeah. But there’s not like a chance that some random person in the congregation is going to be like, no, I’ve decided spontaneously, I’m just going to come up and pray. Right now, you know.

Matt • 32:14
We’ve been close a couple times.

Hannah • 32:16
Oh.

Matt • 32:17
We have been close a couple times, but no, it’s not happened in our church.

Hannah • 32:20
Yeah.

Matt • 32:21
Yeah. Good times. That’s on the other podcast. That’s on the Secrets of Fairfax Bible Church. That’s on that podcast.

Hannah • 32:30
Yeah. That sounds fun.

Matt • 32:32
Uh you you would think so. Not fun. Yeah, so there we go. And and so hey, uh I mean I read the Bible what, 25 times whatever it is now, um, there are still passages that I get to. I’m like, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what to do with that one. Yeah. And chapter eleven’s a great example of that.

Hannah • 32:50
Yeah. Yeah, I think in cases like that it’s really important to have humility when we come to the text, especially when like so many um scholars disagree and commentators disagree about one passage. Like we have to humbly approach the text and just seek the Lord’s wisdom and his spirit. for for understanding.

Matt • 33:13
Yeah, I kinda love it. I mean I I don’t spend as much time in the scholarship as you do, but I kinda love it when there’s like a little disagreement. Because if it’s like, okay, if these really smart people who spend Yeah. Major, major chunks of their life trying to figure this out and digest this and help the rest of us understand it. If they’re like, eh, I don’t know. My I’m throwing up my hands on this one. That just gives me great comfort. Because I’m like, okay, if they can’t figure this out, then I’m just gonna like lower my own expectations. Well, and just just trust the Lord, the tr the Lord will give me the understanding that I need, and I’ll just keep moving forward here.

Hannah • 33:50
My favorite is that Peter says that Paul’s letters are confusing. That’s good. Do you know what verse I’m talking about?

Matt • 33:59
That’s good. Yeah, it’s in one of his epistles, right?

Hannah • 34:01
Yeah, 2 Peter 3. 16. He’s like, there’s some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand. Which is I don’t know, maybe arguably my favorite verse in the Bible. Could be.

Matt • 34:13
I love it. Well, especially because uh you know some of Paul’s writings, uh like when he mentions Peter is kinda harsh like they had some they kinda had some confrontations.

Hannah • 34:25
You think Peter’s just throwing some shade at Paul? You’re like, your letters are confusing, Paul.

Matt • 34:31
You know, to his credit, I don’t think he is. I think he’s just like, look, I don’t know.

Hannah • 34:36
Yeah. Yeah. No totally.

Matt • 34:39
But I love it. He’s like our brother Paul, whose letters are confusing.

Hannah • 34:42
Yeah.

Matt • 34:43
And people trust them as they do the other scriptures.

Hannah • 34:46
Yeah.

Matt • 34:47
Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah. I would not be so generous to Paul if I were Peter. He’s way more mature in Christ than I am. So the culmination of the book Is, oh my gosh, it’s so beautiful. It’s one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible. Chapter 15. Yeah. I mean, it is It’s like if you’re listening to Handel’s Messiah and you finally get to the Hallelujah chorus, it just breaks out in worship and praise and excitement. I love it so much. So I know this one’s uh you get excited about this one too. So tell me.

Hannah • 35:23
Yeah, so chapter fifteen it really seems like the culmination of Paul’s uh letter here to the Corinthians. So throughout the letter he’s been showing them how the gospel should change the way that they live and every area of life. And here he comes back to the core of the gospel itself. Which is Jesus’ resurrection. And so apparently some of the Corinthians were saying that there is no bodily resurrection. We see that in verse 12. Um and so uh we don’t know exactly why this was the case, but it’s possible that they had some influence of some Greek philosophical assumptions in the church. So there was some like dualism that existed at the time, which was this divide between the physical and the spiritual. So like bodily existence was seen as inferior to like your your soul. So the idea of at death your soul being freed from the body It kind of fits with that philosophical idea that that would be better than like a physical bodily resurrection. So that’s one proposal of maybe what they had in mind. But Paul is clear that um Jesus’ resurrection and our resurrection go together. And so he’s like, well, if you don’t believe that we are going to be raised bodily, then You’re assuming that Jesus wasn’t resurrected. And if he wasn’t resurrected, then this whole thing that we’re doing here is pointless.

Matt • 37:00
Yeah.

Hannah • 37:01
Like the only reason we’re calling ourselves Christians is because Jesus was raised from the dead.

Matt • 37:07
Yeah.

Hannah • 37:08
So yeah, and he calls Jesus the first fruits or the the beginning of the harvest. So the assumption is that what God has already done for Jesus and raising him from the dead, we can expect uh God to do for those who belong to Jesus when he returns, and that will also be resurrected with Christ. in the new creation, um, in transformed bodies. And then um Paul has this beautiful hymn that I really like that’s uh verses like 54 to 57. Where he’s like death is swallowed up in victory. So this is maybe assumed to be a hymn that the church would have known. Um Death, oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Um yeah, and then Paul says, or well, he thanks God for giving us the victory. through our Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. Which is beautiful.

Matt • 38:10
Yeah. And then I love the last verse where he’s like, because of all this Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. What a what a way to wrap up the whole chain of thought. He’s like so You know, if Jesus rose from the dead, then anything is possible. Anything is impossible. Like more than we can imagine. Jesus is in the process of doing. So s hang in there. Labor. Even when it feels like there’s so much against you, like hang in there because if he rose from the dead, he’s made everything possible. I love that.

Hannah • 38:49
Yeah, he’s already secured our victory. So that’s that’s the encouragement.

Matt • 38:54
And I love how he just goes right at the point where it’s like if if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then we’ve got nothing

Hannah • 39:02
Yeah.

Matt • 39:03
Um, you know, because you will hear it say sometimes, well even if even if Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, it’s still a good way to live. It’s still a good set of moral teachings. And I love how Paul just doesn’t allow for that. He’s like, Nope. Nope. Yeah. I had a friend in college, my friend Rick, um, and his story about following Jesus basically is comes down to that. I don’t know if he was meditating on 1 Corinthians 15, but He tells a story about being in college uh and he was out one night and he came home and he was in his dorm and laid awake at night, and he’s like, What am I doing? And then the thought just sort of popped into his head. If Jesus really did rose from the dead, and if Jesus really is God, then what else is there to live for? And he couldn’t shake that question. And and so like the next day he like called somebody at Campus Crusade and said, It’s time for me to get serious about my faith and He spent years on staff with crew and and has been uh involved in churches, still, still investing in people, but he just tells that story. Everybody he would meet on campus That’s the story that he would tell. And gosh, so new people came to trust Jesus because of Rick’s simple story. So I love how Rick is sort of in his own way capturing what Paul’s saying here. Like this is the one thing that matters. If Jesus rose from the dead Everything’s in play. If he didn’t, then we’re wasting our time here.

Hannah • 40:25
Yeah.

Matt • 40:27
Yeah. Cool. Well, first Corinthians. Great book. But this is only one movie out of the four. We’re gonna talk about the sequel next week or next episode.

Hannah • 40:40
Yeah.

Matt • 40:41
Yeah. So apparently now I find this book very moving. And like, okay, cool, I’m ready to go here. But apparently the Corinthians did not because they needed a sequel.

Hannah • 40:51
Yeah. Well a couple a couple sequels.

Matt • 40:53
Couple sequels, yeah. So it’ll be interesting to see. You know, it’s hard for me to imagine wanting to argue with an apostle who’s writing scripture.

Hannah • 41:03
Well they didn’t really know he was writing scripture at the time.

Matt • 41:15
And uh so we’re gonna see that play uh a little bit. But beautiful book. I’m glad we had the chance to read it. And uh I like you love that it’s a nice clean finish. For our reading plan. So we just turn the page to 2 Corinthians next week. And I love Second Corinthians too, so this is gonna be great.

Hannah • 41:30
Yeah. All right. I think Second Corinthians ends perfectly in our our podcast uh rhythm as well.

Matt • 41:38
What a time to be alive. This is great. All right. Well let me pray for us and then we’ll wrap this up.

Hannah • 41:44
Yep.

Matt • 41:45
Uh Lord, thank you so much for sharing your word with us, for having it written down that we could see and read and understand. And Lord, so many of these things uh take a lot of work. We don’t live in the first century. uh Greece in the in the Roman Empire. There’s so many of these things that we have to do the work to translate and digest. And I even know some of the issues that popped up this week that some of our friends are really trying to wrestle with and figure out when when you talk about marriage and when you talk about uh loving each other when you talk about good order, uh Lord, how do how how what is uh our place in all these? How do we figure this out? So thank you so much for your spirit that leads us and guides us. Thank you for the community that is the church where we can Bounce these things off each other and live in these things together, even when there’s maybe some tension or lack of clarity, but we can do this together, be obedient to you, and you will lead us and guide us in this. And oh Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you for Jesus. He is the one who has made all of this possible through his death and resurrection. And Lord, if if it is somewhat um uh shameful to a group of people that their Messiah died on a cross, this uh bewildering bewildering, uh um you know uh terrible uh way to die. Well that’s not the end of the story. Jesus rose from the dead having victory over that shame and embarrassment, but then Giving us the victory of new life and a fellowship with you. So Lord, we can never talk about the resurrection enough or celebrate it enough. So we would do that. Everything is possible. because you rose from the dead. So thank you for that and thank you for giving us new life. Lord, we want others to experience that too. So help us to be good witnesses to that and help us to orient everything that we say and do around that fact and let that change so many of the preferences or assumptions that we hold that keep us from experiencing that life and keep us from experiencing love with each other uh that you have called us to live in. So Lord, help us to see where we need to give some of those things up and to do so with joy because of what you have done for us.

Matt • 43:49
So give us wisdom for these things as we ask in your name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks, Hannah. Thanks, Matt.