What Plane Are You On? | Nathan Cook

This sermon examines 1 Corinthians 3:1-9, emphasizing the importance of spiritual maturity and the risks of division in the church. Missions Pastor Nathan Cook contextualizes the struggles of the Corinthian believers, highlighting their reliance on charismatic leaders and cultural influences. True growth is illustrated as arising from a relationship with God rather than human authority. 

Listeners are encouraged to self-examine regarding cultural influences on faith and are reminded that spiritual maturity requires obedience to God's spirit. We are called for unity in Christ, urging the congregation to prioritize their identity in Him and to engage in actions that reflect Christ's teachings.

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Chapters

• 0:22 Introduction to Corinth
• 2:15 The Context of Corinth
• 7:37 Culture and Division
• 8:42 Identity in Christ
• 13:44 The Role of Leaders
• 15:54 Personal Testimony of Confrontation
• 29:04 Obedience as the Key
• 31:57 Closing Reflections and Prayer

Transcript

[0:17] If you have Bibles, do any of you bring Bibles? I see Stephanie's got hers.

[0:23] Yeah, I see a bunch of Bibles, right? Open up your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 3, and we're going to read verses 1 through 9 together.

[0:41] But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you? Are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. Let us pray together.

[1:48] Heavenly Father, I know that you want to draw our hearts together in unity. Lord, where we recognize you as the one true God and we find our identity in you, and not in personalities and not in things of the culture, not in things of the world, but to pray that you would help us to find our identity in you and you alone. And Lord, that we would love one another with the love of Christ.

[2:12] Open our hearts and our eyes to the truth of your scripture now. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

[2:18] All right. So let me tell you a little bit about what's going on in Corinth. OK, so if you read in Acts chapter 18, it kind of tells the story of how the church in Corinth was planted. And so there's a there's a small band of disciples, Paul and Silas and Timothy, who are preaching the gospel in Corinth. And as they're preaching there, they also meet some other disciples who've come to Corinth to teach God's word. And one of those is a leader named Apollos and also Priscilla and Aquila. And so Apollos was this amazing order. He was a great teacher, but he didn't quite have all of his doctrine in a row. And so Priscilla and Aquila kind of take him aside and they teach him kind of the deeper things of God and explain the scripture to him. And so now you have Paul and Apollos both that are preaching and teaching in Corinth.

[3:23] And so another thing that's happening in Corinth, that this was very common in Corinthian culture to have teachers that would come and teach from the public square. And so if you go way back into history, even during the time of Plato and Aristotle, there were people called the sophists, which means wisdom, but they were orators. They used rhetoric and would go into the, again, into the Greek public square and they would preach these messages. They weren't messages about the gospel, but they would teach philosophy and wisdom and they would use their great speaking ability to draw a crowd and to draw followers to kind of their cause. And the more followers that they had, the greater their status was and the higher their status was, the more political power that they had within the culture to affect change. And sometimes those sophists would use that power that they had to achieve through their great speaking really to bless the community. But most of the times they would use it for their own selfish ways.

[4:31] And so what's happening is that the Corinthians are still living according to their culture, and that culture is beginning to permeate the church. And so they're saying, some of them are saying, no, I follow Paul because he's a great writer. And others are saying, I follow Apollos because he's a great teacher. And that cultural understanding is creating division. And so Paul's coming in and saying, guys, Apollos and I, we're on the same team. We're all worshiping the Lord. Jesus is the one that we serve. Like, there's no need for these divisions. These divisions are creeping up, and it's partly like these divisions are what are keeping you from spiritually developing as Christians. You see, the Corinthian church at this point in time, they've all heard and received the gospel of Jesus Christ. They've professed faith in Jesus. They've received the Holy Spirit. Many of them are operating in the gifts of the Spirit, using the gifts that God has given them. They're not using them in the right way or in a well-ordered way.

[5:42] Oftentimes, we're going to see when we get to chapters 12 and 14, we'll see that they're using these spiritual gifts, but they're using it in a prideful way and in a very individualistic way. And so something has stagnated their growth, right? And they're really like, I cannot tell you how many parallels there are between the Corinthian church and what's going on in the church in America right now.

[6:09] Because we're in the same boat, right? Many of us in this room are in the same boat, that we come to church and have come to church for years and years and years.

[6:19] That we've professed faith in Jesus Christ, we've received the gift of His Spirit, but we've, for some reason, stagnated. That we're not growing and developing in the grace of God in the way in which He wants us. That we may not be fully submitted or surrendered to Him, or there may be this unity that's creeping into our church and creeping into our lives from the culture. And so when I read this passage and I prayed through it and I started thinking, God, what are some of the common parallels between what the church in Corinth was going through and what we're going through today in America? And so who are the orators in our day in the public sphere who are giving speeches and calling people to themselves to use political power to do change? And it's our government, right? It's that some of us follow the Republican Party, some of us follow the Democratic Party, and there is more tension there has ever been, it feels like, in American history between these political parties.

[7:25] And they're both trying to use their speech and their influence for what they believe is right.

[7:33] But in the meantime, it's just creating deeper and deeper levels of division. And there's a real danger of us identifying, over-identifying as a Republican or over-identifying as a Democrat and letting those political tensions and political ideologies divide us as the body of Christ, much less our country. But what I'm talking about, what I'm concerned about is the way in which it's dividing the body of Christ. Because if we put our ideology into a Republican Party or as a Democratic Party, it's the same thing of saying we follow Apollo or we follow... Paul, we're followers of Jesus Christ.

[8:12] And that we have to find our identity first and foremost in Jesus Christ. And once that identity, once we are fully rooted in Christ, that frees us up now to be salt and light in the world. That frees us up to go into any political party anywhere to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. To infiltrate both parties with the good news of Jesus. Because our identity is not in one party or the other. Our identity is in Christ and Christ alone.

[8:43] That's what gives us the ability to affect change. It's not in aligning ourselves with politics and power, but aligning ourselves with a crucified king, Jesus Christ, who came to serve. Another way that sometimes we get this wrong in the church is that we look for charismatic leaders to lead us, right? So there's a church that I know of that is a global Methodist church, right? And they're two years old, and they had a great leader. They had a great pastor who is very gifted pastorally. Now, he might not have been the greatest speaker, but he was very gifted pastorally, and he ministered to the people. And many people received God's grace through his ministry. But there was a handful of people in the church who decided our church is never gonna grow to the size we want it to be with this guy as our leader. We need someone who is more charismatic, who is a better public speaker, a better orator, who's a better preacher.

[9:55] And so even though he had done nothing wrong, that he had used his gifts in the way that God had given him, they removed him from office. They fired him so that they could find somebody who is a better, more charismatic leader so that their church could grow. That's a church that's operating in the flesh. It's a church that's operating according to a human standard and is not operating in the ways of God or in the ways of Scripture. There are all different kinds of ways that we can get these things wrong. We can let the culture influence the church rather than the church influencing the culture. And when we let the culture infiltrate the church and infiltrate our lives, we're going to stagnate. We're not going to grow. You know, Paul gave the sermon title, like living on two planes, like which plane are we living on? And so planes, not like a flying plane, but a plane is like different levels, right? So are we going to operate on a spiritual plane, letting the Holy Spirit influence the way that we live our lives and living according to the standard of God's word? Or are we going to live on a human plane, right?

[11:11] There's a real danger of us doing similar things to what that is. Sometimes when we are forming committees for the church and for the growth of the church, are we looking to somebody who's been a successful businessman and successful in the world or businesswoman and say, we want you to come and lead this committee because you've been successful in the world?

[11:34] Or are we looking to the spiritual gifts that God has given us? Are we looking to godly character? Are we looking to the things that the Scripture points us to, to say we need to follow leaders who are in line with God's Word and God's Spirit, regardless of whether they've been successful in the world or not? Because those two things are different. The church is a completely different organization than business, than politics. It's completely different. It operates differently. It operates according to God's word and God's standard and God's spirit. And the more that we align ourselves with God's spirit and God's standard, the more we're going to grow. It's not dependent upon a charismatic leader. In fact, Paul, in the chapter before this, talks about, he said, I am intentionally not going to use these same standards of speaking in this charismatic way to draw an audience to myself. Because if I do that, if I build in that way, what he's going to say in the next chapter is that it's not going to last. The church is going to be destroyed by fire. The work that I do will not last if I work according to a worldly wisdom and in a worldly way. The only way that this will last, that the church will last, is if we operate through the gifts of the Spirit and through the Word of God and through supporting and encouraging one another where all of us together are using the gifts that God has given us. And we're rightly aligned with the Word and His Spirit. And the Spirit is the one who is leading us, not a charismatic leader.

[13:00] There's a real tension in this room today. I feel a little bit like, because whenever I come to 11 o'clock service to teach and then Paul goes down the hall, I'm like, what's going on? Are we following a charismatic leader? I mean, I'm not as good of a leader as Paul is. There's no doubt about that. But I've got something to say. And you've got something that you need to hear, right? But I'm just pointing out because it's a tension that we can fall into. And it's always been there, not just for this church, for humans of all time, right? Right. And Paul will pick this up over and over again of teaching like, guys, just once you've made a profession of faith, that's not the end of the story. Once you received Jesus' salvation, that's not the end of the story.

[13:41] We still have to live according to his word and to walk that out. And that's the way that we glorify and honor God is by living in alignment with his word and living under the influence of his spirit. And that's something that we have to learn. That is the deeper spiritual truths that Paul's talking about is how do we get to the place where we can surrender our lives to the leading of the Spirit?

[14:02] How do we grow in our faith and live in that way? And so there are some really simple things that we can do, right? But they don't seem to be simple. And I'm just going to be real honest and just like give you a little peek behind what goes on at the church a little bit right now. I'm going to be a little bit vulnerable with you right now. But there are many of us in here who will not read the word of God for themselves. And you want to. And like Grant and I are like trying to figure out how to make this easier for you. So like we've talked about doing things like we read through the gospel of Luke together. And I asked Grant, I was like, Grant, and the people that you were having dialogue before, like when we structure that and you put out that all, you know, you broke it down into a reading schedule and had it laid out and made it really easy for people to kind of follow along. When you went back and you talked to people, did that help? He's like, no, they're telling me they still didn't read the scripture. It's like, there's nothing that we can do. There's nothing that Grant and I can do, right?

[15:04] It's about understanding that all of us are in this battle between our flesh and God's Spirit. And we have to make a decision to crucify our flesh, to die to ourselves. And so it may be if you're struggling, and I struggle with this too, of being consistently in God's Word. And the only way to get consistent is to wake up and say, God, I don't want to do this this morning. I don't want to read the Scripture this morning. would you put my flesh to death by the power of your spirit and give me the grace that I need five minutes in God's word this morning. And as we do that, as we surrender our flesh to the leading of God's spirit and align with God's word, we're going to grow. We're going to grow spiritually. We're going to grow deeper in relationship

[15:52] with God, and we're going to grow numerically. It's not about having a charismatic leader or the right speaker. If we get a better speaker than Paul and a better leader than me in here, we might fill the seats, but it's not going to last.

[16:07] The only thing that's truly going to last is when we align ourselves with God's spirit and refuse to live according to a worldly standard. So let me tell you the story of, and I may not make it through this, I might cry, but like, let me tell you the story of when I really learned this principle, where I wanted to operate in a very worldly wisdom. It made total sense, but it wasn't the right thing to do. So Kim and I, many of you know, moved into Binghampton many years ago. And, um, one, one day or like, I don't know how long we lived there a couple of years. And I was sitting out on the front porch, um, in my rocking chair and looking at the beautiful, like sunset in Memphis and drinking my sweet tea, having a wonderful Southern evening on my porch. And I see people one after another coming, uh, to the door, a couple, uh, couple doors down from me, coming up to the door, staying for a minute and leaving, staying for a minute and leaving. I'm like, oh my gosh, I think I've got a drug dealer for a neighbor. And so you guys know Marlon Brown. Many of you know Marlon Brown who works at SOS. Marlon Brown is my cultural insider. And so I always call him when I need advice on like what to do in the hood. And so I called Marlon. I tell him what's going on. And he's like, yeah, you got a drug dealer. I was like, okay, good confirmation. Now what? So I start to pray. The next morning I go and I have a time of prayer and praying about what to do. All right.

[17:33] Human worldly wisdom, what would I do? Call the police, right? That's a sensible thing to do. And so I'm praying and asking God, God, what do you want me to do? And so a friend of mine that morning told me like he had been reading through the book of Ezekiel. And I don't know, like I heard that and it struck a chord in me. It's like, I think I need to read the book of Ezekiel. And so I started reading in chapter one, and I read until I got to this verse right here in chapter three, verse 17. It says, Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, you shall surely die, and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.

[18:46] That sucked. I don't have a nice way to say it. God, are you telling me that I'm responsible personally for confronting this guy and telling him, stop, please? That makes no sense. I didn't want to do it.

[19:17] I jump up literally from the quiet time quiet time over that was a bad idea, go about my day I go to a friend who was a member of our church his name was Tim, he had a bad back he couldn't really work anymore he had been an electrician all of his life And I would go see Tim and just visit with him and we'd read scripture together and pray. And so I went to see Tim and I told him this story, like of what I thought God was calling me to do. I was like, Tim, I really think that God may be leading me to confront this drug dealer on my street. And Tim's like, yeah, that sounds awesome. I'll go with you. I was like, no, no, no, no, no, Tim. No, no, that's okay. I was like, just pray for me, right? When you don't have one to do something, you just say, just pray for me. So he prayed and he prayed this super, like he only read the King James version of the Bible. And he prayed this like really weird prayer about like, Lord, send your Holy Spirit to light upon Nathan's head. I don't know what that means, but it's stuck in my head. He's praying for the Holy Spirit to give me courage. And so I left Tim's house and I went back over to SOS and to visit with my friend, Eric Basie, who is the executive director there. I was like, Eric's been to seminary. Right. Eric will know that I'm taking this passage out of context and he will correct me.

[20:42] And so I tell Eric what's going on, the same story. I read the scripture to him. I was like, God's not really asking me to confront this guy. Is he Eric? And Eric's like, yeah, I think he is. And you know what? I'll go with you if you want to. We'll go. We can go talk to him right now. I was like, no, I don't think that that's a good idea. And so like, would you just pray for me? And so again, Eric prayed for me. I'm walking out the door of SOS and in walks Marcy. She's a, she's a homeowner. She's coming to get, get, um, get, uh, work done, uh, on her house and to turn in an application. And I had met Marcy before. And so like, as I'm walking out the door of SOS, I've turned to Marcy. I'm still looking for somebody who's like, Marcy, get this. I got a drug dealer in my house. I'm getting ready to go selling. I got a drug dealer in my neighborhood selling drugs. I'm getting ready to go confront him. And she's like, boy, you better stop it. You better call the police. You're going to get yourself killed. I was like, Marcy, you are the first reasonable person I've talked to all day. She told me exactly what my flesh wanted to hear. But I had already been prayed for twice and the Holy Spirit was on me. And so I get in my car and it's a three minute drive from SOS to my house. And as I'm driving, I start singing this song. I don't know. It's just the Holy Spirit's rising up in me.

[22:09] And what's the guy's name? Mike. I forgot. Mike and Tammy. Mike was the guy, the drug dealer. And I was like, Mike, Mike might have a gun, but I got the Holy Spirit sitting on my head, sitting on my head. Mike might have a gun, but I got the Holy Spirit sitting on my head. And so I'm just trying to pump myself up for this conversation I'm having. I'm driving and I get up and I pull up right next to Mike's house and I get nervous. I speed up and I pull into my driveway. I run into the house. Kim's not there. It's just me. And I get down on my knees. I'm like, oh, God, no, please don't make me do this. And again, God met me in prayer. His Holy Spirit met me. And I got up and as I'm walking out the door, there is this little, um, there's a little sheet of paper like this. There's a little track that we had made. And Robert, you'll, I saw you might remember these. It was from the firm foundation stories. We had taken the firm foundation stories and made these little tracks. And the first one was just on Adam and Eve. And I grabbed that track and I put it in my pocket and I walk out the door. I walked two doors down, a knock on Mike's house And Tammy, his girlfriend, answers the door and she's like, what's going on, Nathan? And I'm like, Tammy.

[23:31] And I totally freeze. I totally freeze. And I'm like, do you have any prayer requests? I just, and she starts telling me stuff. And like, I'm just in my head. I'm like, what's going on? I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry, Tammy. I'm sorry. I'm here to tell you that I think that you guys are selling drugs out of your house. And I'm here to tell you to please stop and that you're putting yourself in danger and you're putting the neighborhood in danger and kids in danger. And I'm just asking you, would you please stop? And Tammy looks at me and she says, you know what, Nathan? We haven't been selling drugs out of our house, but we've had a friend who's been coming over here just about every day. And he's been selling drugs out of our house. And just yesterday, we told him he had to stop and he couldn't do that anymore.

[24:22] Oh, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. And I, I, I start to, to turn around and to walk away. And there's Mike, her fiance, who's, who's coming up, coming up to the house. And I think, oh man, is he going to think like, I don't know why this came into my head. Like, is he going to think that like, I'm flirting with his girlfriend or something? What is he going to think of me? And so I tell Mike the exact same thing. I tell Tammy, I was like, Mike, I was just coming over here to talk to you guys. Like, I was concerned that you might be selling drugs out of your house. He's like, let me stop you, Nathan. And he's like, that was happening, but we've stopped it. We put it to an end. And so I'm like, thank you guys. I'm getting ready to walk home. And I feel in my pocket. I remember I've got that track. I'm like, Mike, hey, do you have a few more minutes?

[25:07] Can I share something with you? He's like, yeah, come on in. And so we go and sit down and I start just, we just go through, I was like, can I tell you a story from the Bible about Adam and Eve? And we talked through the story of Adam and Eve and talk about sin and rebellion. And I get to the end of the story and I asked Mike, I'm like, Mike, have you ever sinned against God? Mike looks at me dead eye in the face. And he looks at me like, no, I don't think I ever have. And Tammy jumps up off of the couch and she gets in his face. She's like, you liar. You liar. We're living in sin right now. Your wife's back in East St. Louis. We're living in sin right now. I'm like, Mike, I didn't mean to get you in trouble.

[25:53] Fast forward how many years 10 we lost track of mike and tammy they moved out of that house, complete random encounter not in binghampton in frazier we were dedicating a clinic for resurrection health. And, um, we're standing outside. We're having a party that's standing outside and they're right in front of me or Mike and Tammy. They had moved to pray. I'm like, Mike, Tammy, I haven't seen you forever. What's going on? They're like, Nathan, you're not going to believe it. Uh, this is Tammy. Tammy's like, Nathan, you're not going to believe it, but We've gotten married, and we're doing really well. And Mike's... Mike's lead to worship.

[26:46] Mike's lead to worship in our church. I wanted to send Mike to prison, to protect myself. And I think it's a completely reasonable thing to do.

[27:06] And that would have been operating on a worldly plane. God wanted me to operate on a spiritual plane, and he taught me how to do it. And he might have just taught you how to do it, too, through my testimony. I couldn't do that on my own, and I didn't do it on my own. It took the church. It took Tim and Eric to encourage me and to hold me accountable. It took me reading the word of God, but not just reading it for understanding, reading for it to direct my obedience. And for me to say, Lord, even if this hurts me, I'm going to do it because it is clearly your will. And one of the most beautiful parts, when I had time to kind of sit and reflect back on the story, And one of the things, the most beautiful thing of that whole story to me was the fact that Mike and Tammy, the day before, had said to their friend, you can't sell drugs here anymore. And I was like, God, you orchestrated all this for me.

[28:18] You orchestrated this to teach me how to obey your word. You orchestrated this for me to learn how to submit to your spirit. Mike had already taken care of the problem. It wasn't about us creating a safer place for our kids. It was about me learning how to operate in the gifts of the spirit, according to God's word, on this spiritual plane. And it was a gift for Mike and Tammy to hear God's good news of salvation in Christ. It was an opportunity for them to confront the sin of their flesh. It was an opportunity for them to operate on God's plane with His Spirit.

[28:59] If we will trust God's word with everything, it is right and it is true. There is no wrong word in here. We can trust it. We have to know it. We have to seek it out and to know it and to live by it. I'm going to finish with a story.

[29:20] Josh last week did a teaching about the Rosetta Stone. And if you guys know, do you guys know what the Rosetta Stone is? It's this artifact that was found by the French Napoleon's army when they were in Egypt. And so for a thousand years or so, like people no longer knew how to interpret Egyptian hieroglyphics. And so they were there in Egypt and they found this stone. And on the stone, there was writing in Greek and in Demotic, I think is the word, which is kind of like the spoken language, the common language of the Egyptians, and then these hieroglyphics. And so they were able to kind of take, they knew the people in France, the French people, they knew the Greek. And so they were able to use the Greek to interpret what the other languages were to say. And so it's what opened up kind of all this knowledge and deeper understanding about Egyptian culture was this through this Rosetta Stone. And so we've talked about in our house churches many years ago, like we would talk about the Rosetta Stone and that the key to the Christian life, to these deeper things, the meat that Paul's talking about. How do we get to the meat, pass the milk into the meat? It's through obedience to God's word. Obedience to his word is the Rosetta Stone that unlocks these deeper spiritual truths.

[30:46] Not just learning about it, not just gathering together in Sunday school classes or small groups to learn about God's Word, but then to take that knowledge and to live it out and to allow it to change our lives and for us to proactively submit to the Spirit and allow God's Word to change us. There are new, deeper spiritual truths, things that we begin to understand about God when we do that. But that story that I just shared with you helped me to understand what God really means when he says to love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute you. That interaction with Mike, like again, if I had operated on a worldly level, like it would have created a deeper division between us. But God wanted us to be reconciled. He was building His church through love, loving even our enemies. But it's not just something that if it stays on paper, it's not going to do anything. It's got to penetrate our hearts and get into our actions.

[31:53] And so I just want to close with a time of prayer. And as the worship team comes up to lead, just to have a time of some silent reflection. They're going to play. But for us, as they're playing, for us to sing and to reflect.

[32:10] Are we ready to surrender our lives fully to the leading of the Spirit? Maybe to ask God, how have kind of ways in which we've been living according to a worldly standard, maybe even created division in our own family or in our church? Are there things that we need to do to like confess to one another or to reach out to one another? Maybe just do an intentional act of love within our church to build unity. Because God is preparing us for mission. He is preparing us to send us and to do some mighty things for him. But in order to prepare us, to equip us to do that work, we need to be unified in the Spirit with the Word of God elevated and us ready to obey. And for us surrendering to the Spirit and trusting one another. That Paul and Apollos had to trust one another as they're ministering and laboring together in this common field that they had. And that if we're not trusting one another, the spirit is not gonna flow through us and is a powerful way as if we're united in one under Christ. So let me pray. And after I pray, guys, if you'll lead us in worship, God, help us to surrender to your word and to your leading through the power of your spirit. And Lord, I pray right now that you would just surface in our hearts what is creating disunity in our life.

[33:35] And Lord, give us the courage to face it and to confront it so that we might be one in Christ, just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one. Help us to be one. Amen.