He Lives to Pour Out His Spirit closes out our sermon series He Lives! The portion of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that we look at was an answer about spiritual gifts. Before Paul goes into a detailed explanation about them, he reminds them in the first few verses of chapter 12 about a time when they were frustrated and a little angry. Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. These people weren’t trying to do everyday chores, they were trying to find God – Jesus Christ – the way to heaven. They didn’t know that Christ was revealed by the Spirit.
The Corinthians tried to find God by worshiping idols. Put yourselves in their shoes for a moment. You don’t know anything about Jesus. You know plenty about the god. In Corinth the prominent deity was Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Employed by the temple of Aphrodite were 1000+ of prostitutes. The society in Corinth was so crass and crude that the phrase to Corinthianize was used among the Greeks when someone had sex outside of marriage. Is it a wonder that when they tried to find God, when their conscience reminded them that they were a sinner, where did they go? To a prostitute! Talk about frustrating. Or let’s say they had problems weighing heavily on their minds. They tried to pray to the little statue of their god at home. Nothing happened. This seems silly to us. Of course nothing happened, we don’t pray to our car or the microwave. We would never worship idols, would we?
An yet the temptations for finding fulfillment in life in everything besides God still abound for us. The temptations to dive into sexual temptations online are everywhere. Anything that is more important than God is an idol. These don’t bring us any closer to God. Are you caught in sexual sins? Check out the website Conquerors Through Christ on how to resist – reject – and recover.
Want to hear more? Watch this week’s sermon, the last in our sermon series, He Lives to Pour Out His Spirit.
Book(s): 1 Corinthians
Series: He Lives
Tag(s): Holy Spirit
Speaker(s): Fred Guldberg