Who Do You Follow? Series

WELCOME & INTRODUCTION

- Speak on the goodness of our being together this morning

- This series called “We Are Better Together”

o Intentional in pointing our minds to unity as a church family and as part of the churches of Christ.

TOO CHEAP FOR GRACELAND

On the morning of June 24, 1977 (around 1 AM), two teenage punks were beating up a third kid in front of the Skyland gas station in Madison, Wisconsin.

Suddenly, two limousines rolled up and stopped at the red light. One of the limo doors opened and out jumped the King, Elvis Presley. He was in town for a concert. Elvis immediately assumed a “classic karate stance,” challenging the punks to a fight saying, “I’ll take you on.”

That stopped them in their tracks. The kids shook hands with Elvis and each other.

“Is everything settled now?” Elvis asked.

When the boys promised not to fight anymore, Presley got back in his limousine and sped off, remarking to one of the other people in the car, “Did you see those guys’ faces?”

This incident would likely have been forgotten forever, had the King not died less than two months later. The fight remained fresh in local memory for 30 years and in 2007, a granite marker was placed on the spot. Skyland station is long gone; today it is a car dealership. But the marker still stands.

In this case, a fight was broken up by the King. This morning, we are going to see how Paul appeals to the people’s love of the King of kings should guide them in loving one another, abstaining from strife and quarrels, and coming together in unity for the Gospel.

Today’s lesson is called: “Who Do You Follow?”

READ 1 CORINTHIANS 1:10-17 [3 Slides]

10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.

12 What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius,

15 so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Christians are also called “saints” in the Scriptures many times. The sad part is how often we act less than saintly. As I have mentioned in previous messages, I’ve been part of a church that has split (or at least a large group of people left the church to begin another). It was not necessarily a good feeling. To this day, I am not sure what it was over. During our time away, our little church grew to love one another a lot and I made good friends with a few boys. But it was even sweeter to go back and reconcile with my childhood church.

In this passage we have a church that is dividing and arguing about who they were baptized by. For this church, the clout they were trying to gain by being baptized by the better disciple was fragmenting them and causing them to focus on the wrong thing. Paul’s desire was that they simply be brothers in Christ.

Deeper still today, I can see that our children are walking away from Churches of Christ maybe because of our focus not being on the right thing either. Hear me clearly: I am not saying our children are walking away from Christ. They haven’t given up on Jesus. They are not giving up on worship. They are not giving up on being servants. They are not giving up on discipleship. They are not giving up on a conviction to be part of a church or how to make a difference in our broken world.

I believe our children love the church and want to be active. I believe it may have to do with a similar attitude when it comes to how we do church and our fragmenting because of things like what Paul dealt with.

Jack Reese captures this heart with his 2005 book “The Body Broken.”

[QUOTE NOT IN SLIDES] “Some young people are leaving Churches of Christ desiring to experience something profound in worship, something engaging and relevant: they want to encounter the presence of God. Some find this in our assemblies; some do not. Several have said to me that they do not feel they have worshipped simply because they have participated in certain acts and rituals determined decades ago by people they’ve never heard of. They are not likely to measure their worship externally, that is to say, by whether thy merely have done the right things in the right ways for the right reasons. When they worship, they want to do so through means and in language that captures their minds and hearts.” (pg. 42)