Avoiding the Carnal Mind.

• We have all come to think of carnal as having to do with sexual immorality, but this word has a much broader use than that.

• Sometimes it does not even have an evil connotation, such as in Hebrews 9:10:

• “Being only (with meats and drinks and divers washings) carnal ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation.”

• 1 Corinthians 9:11: “If we sowed unto you spiritual things, is it a great matter if we shall reap your carnal things?”

• I would like to look at the meaning in connection with the message of Paul in 1 Corinthians chs. 1-4.

• He particularly deals with the ideas of carnality in chapter 3.

Let there be no schisms among you.• The initial admonition is not that there be

no differences among you.

• An impossible admonition.

• Peter acknowledges that there are many hard things in the writings of Paul (2 Pet. 3:16), things that must not be hastily decided.

• Paul writes that we are to receive the brother who is weak and not grill him on his position on every issue known to man (Rom. 14:1).

• The point is that we are not to take these differences and use them to create mini-groups within the Lord’s body.

• Paul had been told that there were such divisions among the Corinthians (1:11).

• The schisms among the Corinthians at first glance seems to have arisen from their preferences for various men.

• I wonder what weighty considerations the Corinthians had used in determining which man was their favorite.

• No doubt, how long his sermons were.

• How polished his Greek.

• How Jewish he was.

• What a wonderful voice he had.

• How proud I would be to bring my friends to hear him.

• How ineffectual he looked.

• The one thing that did not separate Paul from Peter, and Apollos from Paul was what they taught.

• Therefore we are not talking here about teachers of false doctrine.

• We are talking about good men who were all doing the work of the Lord.

• Actually the schisms arose from something more fundamental.

It was their attitude toward the cross of Christ.

• Paul was very aware of the mind set of the Greeks and the mind set of the Jews.

• I have often thought about how Paul must have felt as he traveled from Athens to Greece on the second missionary journey.

• He would have had ample opportunity to think about the Greek mind set, and since he was a Jew, he was well acquainted with their thinking also.

• The message of the cross is that through the death of Jesus Christ God provided a sacrifice whereby we could be forgiven of our sins.

• The Jew sought after signs, but they were signs of his own devising. “Now this is the kind of king I have in mind.”

• They were given abundant signs, but they rejected them, because of an agenda that they possessed.

• They wanted to preserve their traditions.

• They wanted to preserve their own glory: they loved the glory that is of men more than the glory that is of God (John 12:42-43).

• They stumbled over Him who was the chief cornerstone.

• The Greeks sought after wisdom: “Now this is the way I would do it.” “This is what makes sense to me.”• Because Jesus did not make sense to

them, they rejected the gospel as foolishness.• He did not make sense to them

because they would not see, they would not listen, and they would not learn.

• You see, the Corinthians had not yet fully accepted the spiritual nature of what the Lord was doing with them.

• Like Moses, they intended to do things the way that suited them.

• They lost sight of God who is the only one that really matters.

• God deliberately chose things, and used methods that did not make sense to the world, because He wanted to make the point that His success or failure did not depend on what the world did (1:26-31).

• God wanted the faith of men not to stand “in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (2:5).

The gospel is wisdom, and it is power (2:6-16).

• The wisdom that the apostles spoke was wisdom that had never occurred to men, nor even to the rulers of this world.

• For this wisdom to be appreciated it must be evaluated spiritually (2:14-16).

• For us to achieve the oneness, and the peace that the Lord offers us, we must reach for the spiritual.

• Our evaluation of others must not be superficial, and it must not be according to the flesh.

• This includes our evaluation of preachers and preaching.

We must not be carnal.• Carnal means immature, thinking

like a child (3:1-2).

• Carnal means thinking like the world thinks (3:3-4).

• Lining up after men, becoming political about who preaches, or whom we get to preach, is carnal.

• Any church that is going to act that way might as well close its doors, because it has forsaken the holy calling God has for it.

• What are preachers but servants doing their own work for the Lord, some more effective than others, with different styles.

• But whether one plants and another waters, it is God who gives the increase.

• We must look for dedication, faith, holiness, love for the truth, reverence for God, love for men – these are the qualities to consider.

The choice.• Our elders, desiring not to lord it over

the flock, have sought your input, but we must realize some things.

• We are not going to be able to have all the preachers suggested to move to Eastside.

• Giving input is not voting, and surely we all realize that somebody is going to have to decide whom to ask.

• The elders possess the final responsibility to feed the flock (Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:1-2).

• They are going to have to choose the man who will truly help them in that regard.

• They have spent untold hours going over your suggestions, hours involved in the selection process.

• We all have to understand that some of the men suggested will no doubt not be willing to move.

• The bottom line is that the elders will have to make the final choice, and it is up to us to work with them and to work with their choice.

• What if you had been at Corinth, and you were an “Apollos” man? And Paul was chosen?

• I’ll gripe, and I may even leave. What would you have called that kind of behavior? Carnal or spiritual.

• I beseech you to be motivated by the following factors:

• The man chosen will be a man thoroughly, thoroughly investigated.

• He will be a man that the elders believe will be a spiritual man, “full of the Spirit and of wisdom” (Acts 6:3).

• He will be either young or old or in between, but not all three.

• He may have children at home or his children may be grown and gone, but not both.

• He will have his own style of preaching, but so did the prophets and preachers of old.

• Eastside is the work of the Lord, and it is too big and too important to let anything deter us from continuing that work.

Conclusion:• I pray that we may be guided by the

Holy Spirit of God in our thinking, in our preferences, and in our reaction to the choice that is made.• I leave you with the beautiful

instruction that God gave Joshua upon his taking over the leadership of Israel after the death of Moses (Josh. 1:8).

• These words should be the motto of any preacher of the gospel.

• “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate thereon day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.”