Part four of a series. Read part three.

Editor's note: It has been our great privilege to send thousands of our Bible Reading Kits to individuals and churches around the world. One of the items in the kit is called More Precious Than Gold: How to Read and Study the Bible Profitably. As an encouragement to our readers around the globe to read and study God's Word to their spiritual profit, we are reproducing this resource in the five articles of this series. If you have never received a copy of our Bible Reading Kit, or would like a supply for your church or for personal ministry, please click here.

A Church That Started Well, But Declined Quickly

We can learn much about the benefits of studying God's Word - and the dangers of neglecting it - from the church at Corinth.

In Acts 18, we read that the Apostle Paul personally helped establish the church at Corinth. He spent eighteen months with them, instructing and establishing them in the Word. The Corinthian church got off to a good start.

But not long after Paul left Corinth, other things supplanted the authority of the Bible in the church. The Corinthian church quickly got into deep trouble, morally and spiritually.

Corinth was much like most major cities and even many smaller towns today. Many nationalities, languages, and cultures were represented among the people who lived and worked in Corinth. You could find every kind of religion and philosophy in Corinth - and every kind of immorality. Christians at Corinth lived in the midst of an alien culture - both geographically and spiritually.

But this church that had started so well made a terrible mistake with serious consequences. The church at Corinth became disconnected from the Word of God. It embraced elements of the worldly philosophies that abounded in Corinth at that time, and mingled them with Christianity. The church became uncertain of what it believed, and lost the will and the power to confront evil with the truth.

Soon there was open immorality among the membership, and the church didn't see this as a particular problem. People did not take their marriage vows seriously. People were living in relationships that God's Word condemns.

The church brought worldly practices into its worship, and with them came confusion and disorder. People partook of the Lord's Supper in a pagan manner. They took a sinful approach to the matter of spiritual gifts. There was preacher worship, factionalism, strife, and materialism.

The Corinthian church actually forgot the content of the Gospel message, and they had to learn it all over again.

This is how Paul summed up the situation: "But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted - you may well put up with it!" (2 Corinthians 11:4).

That is exactly what the Corinthian church did. It mingled man's error with God's truth. Neglect of the Word of God created a spiritual vacuum, and the influences of the unbelieving world rushed in to fill that vacuum.

So what did the Apostle Paul do? He did the one thing that must be done: Paul dealt with their problems, one by one, from Scripture. He employed the fourfold use of Scripture that we find in 2nd Timothy 3:16 - "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work." Paul called the church back to sound doctrine. He reproved their errors from the Word. He corrected them. He instructed them, pleading with them to follow the righteous path once again.

Next: Profiting From the Word: The Four-Fold Use of Scripture

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