No Suits Allowed (Part 1)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

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Dr. Mike Evendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

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We're in the book of 1 Corinthians and we've taken a detour because of the holidays and because of my health. I want to get back into this passage in this very book, 1

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Corinthians, and before we get to chapter 6 for our passage today, turn with me if you would back to chapter 1 because I'd like to set the stage for this book.

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This is a book that basically wants the church of Corinth to live up to its name.

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That is to say they've been bought with the price, they've been redeemed, Christ has purchased them with his own blood, and when that happens, there should be a change in your life and you should attempt by the

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Spirit's power to live up to who you are in Christ. I could ask it another way, if Jesus Christ has saved you and made you born again, should it make a difference?

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Or should you just carry on the way that you used to live? And we know the answer to that.

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If you continue to carry on the way you used to live, you ought to ask yourself the question, how could I be saved and continue to live like I used to live?

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And so Corinth was dealing with all kinds of worldly issues and the world was spilling over into the church more than the sanctifying process of the

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Spirit of God in Corinth was spilling over into the world. And so Paul writes this long letter, very long letter, to deal with questions and issues so Christ might be magnified in them.

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And so you don't think that it's some kind of list of do's and don'ts and moralisms. Paul sprinkles throughout this book

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Christ Jesus' work. So he'll say regarding marriage and divorce and fidelity in marriage, that you've been bought with the price,

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Christ Jesus. He'll say in chapter 6 when it comes to fidelity with your own body and holiness, he'll say you've been bought with the price.

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He'll say when it comes to church discipline in chapter 5, remember the Passover lamb. And so it's fine to exhort, it's fine to rebuke, it's fine to ask questions, but Paul does not forget that this is a gospel -centered book.

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You could call this book the gospel and problems in the local church. And everywhere you go, the solution to the problem is found in the gospel.

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Paul just doesn't try to say stop it, he says stop it and remember who you are in Christ Jesus.

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So we turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and ask ourselves, what's the first thing that's dealt with?

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And you remember that Paul gives the first reproof. Four reproofs, seven questions.

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That's the book. He gives the introduction in chapter 1 and then he gives the first reproof and that is stop being divided.

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You guys are divided because you worship the world's wisdom and because you worship leaders the wrong way.

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You worship them at all is something wrong. He says but you're just not unified. Then he goes to chapter 5 and he says here's problem number 2 after spending four long chapters on factiousness, he moves to immorality that's tolerated in the church.

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There will always be sin in the church. Sin tolerated is a problem and here we have a horrible kind of immorality tolerated in the church, chapter 5, 1 to 13.

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And then we have the next problem. So we've got lack of unity, immorality and now we move to the third of four problems found in chapter 6 verses 1 through 8 and that problem is when

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Christians sue other Christians. But it's a bigger problem than that.

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It's when the family of God stops acting like a family. Some of you might say well

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I'm never going to sue another Christian, I don't even know a good lawyer. There's a bigger issue. The bigger issue is this.

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If you've been saved by God, forgiven of every one of your sins, every one of those sins has been placed on Christ and he bore them on his body on the tree for you out of kind love and he's adopted you into his family and now we, the

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Christians here, our brothers and sisters, shouldn't we treat each other like family? I'll never forget when my mom died, five years ago is it, four years ago, and I sat down with my brother who's a pastor, my sister who just attends church regularly and I don't think she would consider herself born again.

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And we sat down and we said this, the estate's not that big, but if the estate's one dollar or a million dollars, let's get along and divide it up properly.

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Let's act like brothers and sisters, let's act like family, and let's do it because we want to honor mom.

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How shameful it would be if we're fighting greedily over the money that she has left us.

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Let's act like a family. And so similarly, if we know that as brothers and sisters in Christ we have been bought with a price, we're in the family of God, and we have problems, by the way, will we have conflicts in the church?

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As long as I'm your pastor, we will. Yes, we will have conflicts, so solve them like family.

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That's the issue. How does a family solve problems so that our father is honored?

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We want to honor him in everything we do, whether we eat or whether we drink. We do all of the glory of God, including solving problems in the church.

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And so Paul is going to say, Corinth, you're not acting like a family. And he uses this illustration of their unfamily -like behavior to address this problem.

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And by the end of today, I want you to remember that Jesus Christ has bought you, so you must live in light of that and treat each other like your family.

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I could probably push a little bit and say this, the family here that is blood -bought by Christ is more important to you, or should be more important to you, than your own family.

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This is a higher -level kind of family. This is an eternal family. This is a family that will last and last because it's blood -bought, and so we want to make sure we honor

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God in our family. And so today, let's look at chapter 6, verses 1 through 8, although the section is really 1 through 11.

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So let me read you this section, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 to 11, and I want you to look for themes as I read it.

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And I'll try to use some emphasis with my voice, so you pick up the themes. I'd like you to find questions.

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How often does Paul ask a question? I'd like you to look for this little phrase, this little refrain, do you not know?

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I'd also like you to look for the word brother or brothers, family. Paul's going to be asking questions, they should know this because he's been there for 18 months in the past teaching them these truths, and listen to the family language.

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Brothers and sisters, you mean you're going to sue your own brother? I'm going to sue my own brother, Pat Abendroth, another pastor, because he got my mother's china?

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That reminds me. Strife in the family of God reflects poorly upon the father.

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You want to make him look good. Don't you want to make God look good? Isn't that your life goal?

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God, I want you to look good in my life. I want you to show other people the Jim Elliott kind of mindset.

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You know, there is an advantage, a very practical, certainly eternal, but a very practical advantage to have

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Jesus as your Lord. So Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6, 1 -11, the last thing

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I want you to look for is, is there something to do with Christ's loving atonement to solve the problem?

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Verse 1, when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?

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Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?

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Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life?

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So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame.

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Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers?

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But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers?

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To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong?

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Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.

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Or do you not know that the righteous, unrighteous rather, will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

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And such were some of you, but you were washed. You were sanctified.

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You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the

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Spirit of our Lord. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, would you help us understand these truths so we can think more properly about you as your spirit assists us to love you more with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Father, we are very, very thankful that we are washed people, that we are holy, set apart, and sanctified people, that you justified us by Christ's great work.

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Father, we'd like to live in light of that. We'd like to love one another here in the church. Would you prevent this church from any kind of lawsuit, any kind of lack of love that stems from greed, or some kind of defending ourselves, wanting to keep our name?

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Father, we want you to be glorified. Help us to act with sanctified minds.

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Help us to be selfless. Help us to be spiritual. Help us to be Holy Spirit -driven.

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Left to ourselves, we'd be a mess, and so God, help us today and teach us this morning to love our neighbor as ourselves.

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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let me give you a few contextual things. I would love to have a

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Bible that had no chapters or verses. You know, those were added, and so the original

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Bible said no chapters and no verses. Now, the bad news would be if I said, please turn your

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Bibles to 1 Corinthians 6, 11, it'd be harder for me to locate that spot and for you to locate that spot, so I like them.

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But they split chapters in such a way that sometimes I forget that one chapter is connected to the previous chapter.

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For instance, in Galatians chapter 5, how is it connected to chapter 6? And with the chapter breaks, it gives me a mental break.

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Maybe you don't do it, but I do it. So here's my question. How is 5 connected to 6?

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Because you need to know that. Is Paul just picking things out of the sky? How is chapter 5 about immorality in the church?

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Incest of all things. It's not dealt with. How is that tied into chapter 6?

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Well, let me give you three thoughts, three contextual bridges, so you can get the context and get the flow, and therefore, you can understand it better.

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I want you to understand this text so you can understand the mind of God, so that you can honor Him and praise

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Him. Remember, at this church and at every church, you don't want just the pastor to understand the passage.

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You want to understand it, right? I want you to understand it. You are the ministry of Bethlehem Bible Church. So the first contextual bridge is this.

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Both chapter 5 and chapter 6 stem from false, evil desires of greed.

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The one is sexual lust, desiring more and desiring something that's not yours.

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Here too in chapter 6, it's the same thing, except it's not sex. It's money. It's property. It's things.

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Both stem from a false desire for pleasure. And so it's natural for Paul to say, listen, there's this problem with covetousness in chapter 5, coveting a woman, and in chapter 6, it's coveting something else.

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It's an issue of property, our money, our things. Second contextual bridge, look at verse 12 and 13 of chapter 5.

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Chapter 5, verse 12 and 13, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

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God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. Paul says,

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Corinth, Paul says, believers, you're not to judge the unsaved. Then in chapter 6, he says the opposite.

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So believer, why would you then be judged by the unsaved? Chapter 5, don't judge the unsaved people.

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Chapter 6, don't let the unsaved people judge you. And then the third contextual tie -in is this.

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Chapter 5 deals with a criminal offense, incest.

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Chapter 6 deals with a civil issue, a civil matter. Both are dealing with legal things.

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And so you can imagine, here's incest, which is a legal crime. And here is a property matter, a financial matter.

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And so how do Christians think about that? What do we do with regards to those issues? And so I think those three things help you see that Paul is just flowing logically and naturally through this passage.

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Statement of the day for this passage is, Christians are different because of Jesus Christ. They are family members, so act in light of that.

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Let me give you, for the outline this morning, five questions to drive that home. Five questions.

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Why are they questions? Because everything in chapter 6 is question -like, so I might as well continue the theme with my outline.

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Five questions that should help remind you, you should never take a Christian to court.

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That's the specific, but I can make it broader, that you should treat people in this church as family members.

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Question number one, found in the text. Would you dare to sue a family member?

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Would you ever dare to sue a family member? Maybe Lindsay Lohan's father would sue a family member, or she would sue a family member.

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But Paul uses this language. Would you dare sue somebody in your own family? Would you sue your wife?

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I sue you. Sounds weird. It's your own family. It's like husbands, you are loving yourselves if you love your wife.

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Same kind of principle. If you want to sue your own family member, you're suing yourself. Who would dare to do that?

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So look at the language. By the way, when we look at this language here, it's more intense in chapter 5.

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I can go back to when I preached chapter 5 in the middle of a church discipline case here. I had a headache then just trying to preach it because the passage was so intense.

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Chapter 5, there's no language in all the Bible seemingly like chapter 5, except do you know what?

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In chapter 6, it's more intense. The language of chapter 6 is much more extreme than chapter 5.

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How can I put this? In our society, we don't use shame anymore to motivate people.

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In the old days, I can hear my mother say, shame on you.

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That brings shame to you and shame to the family. Shame on you. That's exactly how

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Paul is going to motivate them. The shame that you would sue your own wife, your own brother, your own family member.

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Look what he says in verse 1. When one of you has a grievance against another, and of course, it's a fallen world and we all do.

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Does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Paul says, how dare you?

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If you ever sue another Christian in this church and the elders call you into the office, then the first thing

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I'm going to say is this. How dare you? Because it's a big thing because it says something about Jesus and what he's done.

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It defames him. It denigrates him. It just ignores him. Paul says, don't do that.

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And here's the thing about Corinth. There is no reality TV in Corinth. So what do you do for fun?

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There were no THX movies, no Dolby Sound, no internet. What do you do for fun? Do you know what the Corinthians did for fun?

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Besides the temple prostitutes, besides gorging themselves on food, do you know what they did for fun?

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They went to court. It's like the people's court. It was like Judge Watner for the day,

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Judge Judy or whatever else. They loved to go to court. And it was entertainment for them. And it was part of their life.

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They would breathe in the breath of litigation because it was interesting.

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And they were called up for jury duty often. One writer said, every Athenian was a lawyer.

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And right down the road is Corinth. And probably every Corinthian was a lawyer as well.

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The fabric of their life was lawsuits. And if you were a Corinthian and you had a problem with someone else, a civil matter, then you would try to deal with it one on one

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If you couldn't, then you'd get an arbitrator. They'd get an arbitrator. And then the arbitrators would try to meet. If that didn't work, there was another step.

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You'd have an arbitrator who also had behind him about 40 people. You'd have 40 people in your kind of little jury pool.

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If that didn't work, you'd go to the next step. And there could be thousands of jurors, one writer said, to arbitrate such a case.

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And if you had money, you were sure to win. The rich people dominated.

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The poor people got stepped on. And Paul says, now you're a family and you're going to go before the unbelievers to somehow get justice.

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And the problem for Paul is this. They didn't need to. Why? The Jews had it set up in such a way that they always settled their matters within the

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Jewish system. The rabbis would settle matters. If you had a problem, then you would go and you'd say, rabbis, could you please settle this?

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And what you say goes. And Paul is saying, why would you have to go to have some unbelievers judge the case when you have your own elders?

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The own elders of your church can deal with it. You don't have to go. You, like the Jews, have your own people who are wise.

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And by the way, Corinthians, aren't you the ones who keep saying how wise you are? We are wise.

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You're fools. You think you really have wisdom? Well then, you don't have enough wisdom to take this court case yourself.

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They didn't need to. They could handle their disputes within house. But probably what was going through their mind was this.

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You can see the flow. Let's see. I've got a problem with this person. He's got his property line across mine.

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I try to deal with it. He says no. If I go to those elders at Corinth, they're going to side with him.

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So maybe we can go to the public arena, and then I can get after him. And by the way, when you brought it before the public arena, how do you win the case?

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Defamation, slander, ad hominem attacks. I don't think I can get my case solved with Christians, so let's go elsewhere.

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That's probably what was happening. Paul says it's shameful. You're going to lose your testimony.

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You can't find one person who can figure this out. Of course, there'll be disputes, but settle your own disputes.

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Notice verse 1. Any one of you, when one of you, there probably was a specific case going on, but he makes it broader so everyone can learn.

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Don't take people to court. The gospel is Jesus gives his life.

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The gospel is for God so loved the world, he gave. The gospel is Christ freely gave his own life.

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The gospel is give, give, give, and now you want to go to court at what? Get, get, get.

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This doesn't make any sense. Calvin studied law at two French universities, and he said this about legal matters.

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Indeed, wherever lawsuits occur frequently, or the parties are obstinate in joining issue with each other with the utmost rigor of the law, it is perfectly obvious that their minds are inflamed far too much by wrongful, greedy desires, and that they are not prepared for calmness of mind and endurance of wrongs according to the commandment of Christ.

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If you've been wronged by a Christian, what do you do? Jesus said in Luke 6, but I say to you who hear, love your enemies.

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Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Jesus doesn't say take your dirty laundry and err it before unbelievers.

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So here's what Paul says. He's got all kinds of different ways to talk to the Church of Corinth, but here he just says the gall, the audacity, the pompous attitude that you would go to an unbelieving court.

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How dare you? And that dare is in the present tense, a continuing thing.

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It's happening probably at the moment. How dare you do that this very second? You've got righteous leaders.

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By the way, if you don't think your elders are righteous, then what are you doing learning about heaven and hell and having you teach your children on how to go to heaven?

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If you've got righteous elders qualified by 1 Timothy 3 and Titus chapter 1, you can go to them.

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By the way, lest I forget, if you have a case against someone here at the church and there's money involved or property or those kind of things, a civil case, then we would love to talk to you and we would love to help you.

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And the elders with unbiasedness, is that a word, without bias, we will help settle the case and you will move on.

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And what's the worst thing that can happen? We'll answer that in a minute.

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Does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? He could have said outsiders, but he says the unjust.

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That's what he calls them. Unrighteous, saints, believers, unbelievers. Look at that parallelism.

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They're exactly opposite. Those people there, they don't know the wisdom of God. You brag you know the wisdom of God and you should, he says to the church of Corinth.

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Those lawyers are unjust, unrighteous. Doesn't mean that every lawyer is as bad as he could be.

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Cicero said the courts will never convict any man, however guilty, if he has money. Apulia said that judges are gowned vultures and all judges nowadays sell their judgments for money.

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We've had quite a few lawyer jokes over the years. Some of those probably have truth to them, especially back in this day.

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Summary for Bethlehem Bible Church, love people, don't sue them.

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It's bad for the church's character. It's bad for Christ's character. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.