Too Immature to be Wronged

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Turn with me to the book of 1 Corinthians.
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We're going to find ourselves this morning in the 6th chapter of 1 Corinthians and we're going to be looking at verses 1 to 8.
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1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 1 says, When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 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? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? 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? But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.
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Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, as I come to preach your word this morning, my heart is my heart is broken over the fact that I know that this text of scripture has been so ignored.
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Not just in our midst, but in church in general.
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Lord, the willingness to maturely deal with wrongs, to maturely deal with being wronged.
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Has been so abandoned and so father, so many at the first sign of offense will run rather than reconcile, will sit in anger rather than sit in peace, will seek to gossip rather than glorify you.
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And so, father, when I read this passage, I read it with a heavy heart over the state of the church.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would take its words seriously and soberly this morning.
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I pray, Lord, for myself that you would keep me from error.
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Lord, it is such a fearful thing to preach wrongly in your name.
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So I pray that you would keep me from that.
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And father, I pray that you would use this time to edify your people.
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To bring conviction to the hearts of believers that we need to draw closer to you through Jesus Christ by the power of the spirit and be conformed daily to his image.
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And father, if there are those here who are not believers and there certainly must be, we pray, oh, God, that today they would hear the gospel, that by your spirit they might be saved.
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Father of mercies, do that which only you can do.
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Bringing conviction and conversion by the power of your spirit through your son, Jesus Christ.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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America is a nation that was founded on the concept of individual liberty, a concept itself which demands a just judicial system where there are unjust judgments made in the matter of law.
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Tyranny reigns.
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We've seen this in our own day.
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We've seen judges who make it their seeming their business to create unconstitutional decisions, creating legislation from the bench.
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And we've heard the term probably more often than we want to hear the phrase judicial tyranny.
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And the response to this has been a demand for justice, for personal liberty and for the upholding of the rights of each individual citizen.
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And in a sense, there is virtue in that.
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Throughout the Bible, we see that God does care about individuals and that God does care about the individual's safety, security and even property.
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Many of Israel's laws dealt with the fact that God cared for the individual.
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There are laws about what should happen if someone harms another person.
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There are laws about what should happen if someone steals from another person or if someone goes and injures or takes from or does something to.
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All throughout the Old Testament, all through the civil law of Israel, there are laws about personal and individual rights and how if those rights are violated, then the person who does the violation is to be punished.
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And this stands to reason because we learn in Genesis, when we read in the book of Genesis, that every man and every woman is created in the image of God.
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We bear what is called the imago dei or the image of God in ourselves.
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And because we are made in the image of God, the Bible says when a person injures another person, when a person attacks another person, when a person steals from another person, it is if that person is attacking God himself because God has created this person in his image.
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In fact, in Genesis chapter 9, that's what God tells Noah.
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He said there would actually be a capital punishment that would be responsible when someone murders another person because by murdering a person, they have attacked someone who bears the image of God.
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And because these things are true, one might come to think that individual rights are the most important thing that we possess.
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And in fact, that they're the things that we should stand for the most.
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How many of you have heard and said you've got to fight for your rights? And I'm not talking about a rock song.
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I'm saying we've got to fight for our rights.
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It's a very popular slogan in our land.
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And certainly this attitude has not been absent in the churches.
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Churches have long been at the forefront of fighting for rights, the right to worship as we choose, the right to assemble freely, the right to name the name of Jesus publicly without fear of persecution.
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Many of the rights that we enjoy today are privileges which our forefathers did not have.
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You understand that, right? There was a time where the things that we get to enjoy doing, preaching publicly, going out into the square and handing out gospel tracts, handing out Bibles, and making the name of Jesus known, praying in the name of Jesus.
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There were times in history where these things were severely dealt with, sometimes even at the cost of one's own life.
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And so for that, we are grateful.
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We are grateful to have the freedoms that we do.
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We are grateful for those who have taken stands.
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And I do not want to diminish that.
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Yet this morning, I want to make a radical suggestion.
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And I want to make this suggestion from the text that we have just read.
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Our individual rights, while they are important, are not the most important thing that we possess.
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I'll say it again.
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Our individual rights, though they are important, are not the most important thing that we possess.
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And believing that they are can eventually put us into conflict with one another because we believe our rights must be held up at all costs.
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Our rights must be paramount.
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Our rights must even be more important than the rights of others.
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And any wrong we suffer must be dealt with with immediate and severe retribution.
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In the end, we find ourselves with a church full of people who are not in the habit of exercising grace, but rather, they live with the demand that their own rights must have priority even in the church.
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And those rights are more important than anything else.
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Well, beloved, I'm going to hopefully show you today that the Apostle Paul takes that notion and he goes directly opposed to it.
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Paul is dealing with Christians in the first century who are taking each other to court.
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Now, some historical information is somewhat helpful.
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At this time, in the history of the world, in this particular location, Corinth, which was near Athens, so it was right there where sort of the hub of all things wise and all of the world's wisdom and all of the religious aspects of the pagan world were all sort of hubbed around this area.
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And one of the things that was enjoyable for the people was going to court.
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Their courts were like spectacles.
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And we kind of have that today.
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I mean, there's an entire network called Court TV that you can go on and just watch court cases all day long.
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And probably the most watched event in the history of America was the O.J.
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Simpson case where people tuned in daily to watch the proceedings of a court case to find out the next step in the saga of the whodunit.
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There was a time in, I believe it was in Athens, where there were juries where they would take people and they would come to the town early in the morning and they would pull from people and create juries.
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And like today, we have a jury sometimes of six, sometimes of twelve.
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They had a jury once in Athens of over 6,000 people because so many people wanted to be involved in this event that was happening.
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Cases in the court were considered spectacles of the day and they didn't have TV.
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This was their version of, you know, law and order.
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And so taking people to court and being in court and being a part of that was a big part of the lives of these people.
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And Paul is addressing them not because of that, not because court was the entertainment of the day, but Paul is addressing them because there were Christians in the assembly who, when they had issue with other Christians in the assembly that were of civil legal matters, and I want to stress the point that these are civil legal matters, meaning they probably dealt with some kind of offense or financial restitution that needed to be made.
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Instead of having those offenses or those restitutions dealt with in the church, they would go to these courts to seek restitution.
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They would go to these courts to find their satisfaction.
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And Paul tells them that should be unnecessary for two reasons.
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I didn't give you the outline in your notes, but if you want to write it down, these two reasons are really the answer to why Paul is saying this.
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Number one, if a dispute arises between two Christian brothers, the church should have people wise enough to arbitrate the situation.
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If a situation arises between two Christian brothers, there should be people in the church wise enough to arbitrate a peaceful resolution.
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But number two, and this one's the harder one.
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If a person does harm us in the body, we should not feel it necessary to have our individual rights vindicated.
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I'll say it again.
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If a person does harm us in the body, we should not feel it necessary to have our individual rights vindicated.
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And I'll say this, I'll freely admit both of these are pretty radical, but the second one is especially radical.
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And I say it's radical because the state of the modern church, as we've noted in our study of Corinthians, and we've been studying this passage, this book verse by verse, as we've noticed, it isn't like there's a first Baptist church of Corinth and a second Methodist church of Corinth and the Episcopalian church has its church down the street in Corinth.
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No, there's an assembly of God in Corinth.
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And that's not the assemblies, Pentecostal assemblies of God.
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What I mean is there's one church in Corinth where all the believers are together in this place.
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But today it's so widespread and so vast and so disconnected.
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I mean, there's church within a stone's throw of us that I don't know their pastors and I don't know their people.
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And it's hard for people to imagine today church leaders having the wisdom to settle disputes without showing favoritism or exercising injustice.
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And it's hard to imagine church members who are mature enough to suffer wrong without demanding retribution.
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Think about how many people have abandoned churches simply because they felt like they had their rights violated in some way.
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I'll give you some examples.
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Some might say, I have to leave this church because my needs aren't being met.
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Well, what's this? What's that saying? I have a right to have my needs met.
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And so I'm going to leave because my needs aren't met.
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Or somebody says, I'm going to leave because someone offended me, which is saying this.
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I have the right to not be offended.
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And my rights are paramount.
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Or I'm going to leave because there's a dispute that wasn't settled to my satisfaction.
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And I have a right to be satisfied.
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You see now how the idea of personal rights comes into this passage? Because Paul is calling the church to a...
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Let me try that again.
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Paul is calling the church to a higher level of maturity when it comes to the idea of us demanding the right of vindication.
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The title of today's message is too immature to be wronged.
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I hope you understand what I mean by that because that's Paul's concern.
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He's saying the problem in Corinth was the people were too immature that if someone wronged them, they had to have justice.
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They had to be righted.
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If they were wronged, they weren't mature enough to simply be wronged.
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So we look at the passage.
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I'm going to break it down into three parts.
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The first three verses is the situation Paul is dealing with.
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The verses five and six is the summary.
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And then verses seven and eight is the shame.
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So let's look first at verse one.
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He says, When one of you have a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Now, the word grievance there in some of your translations, it might have a different word there.
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But ultimately, the Greek word we have found means actually an issue of law, has something that is a legal matter between one and the other.
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We know this from the context, but we also know this by how this word is used in extra-biblical literature.
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Extra-biblical literature used that word grievance, and it has to do with a civil legal matter.
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This isn't a criminal legal matter.
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There is a place for courts.
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There is a place for having to involve the law.
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And God does say that the government bears an important role in ensuring that people who are needing to be punished are punished.
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And so if a criminal act occurs, and we know there are some churches that cover criminal acts, and that's important that we consider the fact that if something's happening, someone's doing something that's criminal, it would likely have to be addressed by the outside authorities that have that role.
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But here, Paul is talking about something that's within the church that's a civil matter.
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It's a grievance one to the other, and they're deciding to go to court before the unrighteous.
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Gordon Feig, commentator on this passage, says this, quote, everything in this church is in reverse order.
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If the church does not judge the outside, neither does it go outside with inside affairs, end quote.
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Well, what are you talking about there? Well, if you look back at chapter five, what we studied last in our last passage, Paul tells us in verse 12, he says, what do I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom we are to judge? And we talked about that last week.
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If you weren't here, I encourage you to get the recording and listen to it.
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Because Paul talks about the fact that when it comes to the sin of the world, we don't stand in judgment over the world because God has that handled.
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But when there's sin in the church, we have to address sin in the church and we have to call out sin.
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If it's something that is continual and habitual and ongoing, it has to be called the repentance.
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Right.
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And we talked about that for several weeks.
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And here Paul is saying, here's what's happening.
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You're not dealing with the sin that's inside.
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And when there is a grievance inside, you don't let the leaders of the church or the wise people of the church help you settle the grievance.
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You go outside to get your answers.
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You go outside to get your satisfaction.
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So you're literally flip flopped.
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You're judging the world, but you won't let the church judge the issues that are happening in the church.
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It's literally 180 degrees opposite of what is supposed to be happening.
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The Christians at Corinth were taking their civil disputes before the secular legal authorities.
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And Paul here in this verse calls them unrighteous.
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Now, I want to make a point about that because this could be pointing to the fact that a lot of the courts in Paul's day were unrighteous courts.
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Like in our own day, there were men in authority who were willing to take a bribe, who were willing to dispense their judgments based on partiality, and they were willing to dispense judgments based on the status of the people before them.
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And so the legal system in that day was not as Lady Justice who stands with her blindfold on with a sword in one hand and a scale in the other.
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You've seen that statue, right? The scale represents the balance.
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The blindfold represents impartiality.
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The sword represents authority.
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And that is supposed to be what law is.
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It's supposed to be balanced and unbiased and carry the weight of authority.
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But in Paul's day, there was partiality.
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There was biases.
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There was unbalance that was happening.
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So when Paul says, do you dare take your cases before the unrighteous? What he could be saying is, do you dare take your cases before people who have no responsibility before God to be fair and equitable? Or he could simply be saying, using the phrase unrighteous here, he could simply be making a juxtaposition between believers and unbelievers.
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Believers in Scripture are called righteous, not because we are righteous by nature, but because we have received the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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We have been made righteous in the eyes of God.
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That's why we're called the righteous.
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And unbelievers are called unrighteous.
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And I think in this case, I think that's more along the lines of what Paul's saying.
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I don't think that he's necessarily saying that every court in Corinth or every court in Athens was an unjust court.
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I think what he's saying is that when you're a believer and you're in the church and you have a dispute in the church, why would you take that in front of unbelievers? Why would you take that in front of people who don't have any understanding or care for the things of God? And then he says in verse two, 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? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? I want to tell you something.
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Honestly, that passage has always bewildered me.
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I'll be honest with you.
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I mean, obviously I've read it several times over the years, reading through the Bible and my own personal study.
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I've never preached on it.
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And I will tell you this, when I read that section where Paul says we will judge angels and it says we will judge the world, that's incredible.
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It really does bewilder me in my mind.
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I don't, I just, I have a hard time really understanding it.
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I'm going to tell you how I understand it.
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I believe that what Paul's talking about here is the Bible says, it says in several places, but in 2 Timothy 2.12, it says we will reign with him, talking about Christ.
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When Christ returns, his saints will reign with him.
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And I do believe that there's a sense in which we will be a part of the judgment reigning with Christ.
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In fact, Alistair Begg, great pastor, if you've never heard him, he's on the radio, wonderful Scottish accent, wonderful, great pastor.
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He said, he said, it will be as if we're in God's jury box and God is judging and we're there as part of that great judgment, his saints, his elect there as part of the great judgment on the world and on angels.
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And in this sense, I think it is referring to the angels that are fallen.
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They are under the condemnation of God and will be under judgment.
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But here's the, here's the part that I get that really gets me.
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Paul says this in the sense that this is something we should just all know and accept.
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And he says it in a way that it seems like everybody should just know this.
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Or do you not know that you will judge the world? I didn't know until the Bible told me that wasn't something that automatically came into my mind that I'm going to be part of that.
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Do you not know that you're going to judge angels? No, not until you told me.
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The point I'm making is they knew.
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Paul's assuming this is a, this is a theology that was so understood that he could make the statement.
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Do you not know in the sense that you should know in the sense that you should understand it? Some part of this eschatology had been taught by Paul before to these people.
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Some part of this understanding of the age to come was well enough understood by the Corinthians that Paul could ask them the question, do you not know with the assumption that they did know? You know this, you know this, you're going to be part of judging the world.
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You're going to be part of judging angels.
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How then can you not think that you should be able to judge trivial matters? Because here's the thing guys, everything's trivial when it's compared to the eternal.
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Everything's trivial in this life when compared to the life to come.
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It's the danger of getting so caught up in this life.
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I tell a story at funerals.
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I do a lot of funerals and I tell a story of a rope.
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I say imagine a rope that goes into a, over a cliff and the you're holding the end of the rope.
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I say I know that you can't, it doesn't really happen.
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You can't imagine a rope that goes forever but just in your mind imagine a rope that goes forever and you're holding the end.
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I said that's sort of like this life.
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The part that's going over the cliff that you can't see, the forever part, that's what's going to happen after we die.
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That's eternity.
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I said the part that you're holding between your hands, that's this life.
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And when you compare this to what's going over that cliff, it's not even to be compared.
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It's not even, you really can't even compare it at all.
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And yet we spend every amount of our waking energy focusing on what's in our hands without looking at the future, without looking at what's on the other side of that cliff, without looking at eternity.
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Right? And honestly that's the key to this whole passage because Paul's saying we're allowing the temporary things to overwhelm us even to the point that we're going to go to court over them again under the unrighteous.
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And yet we're not looking forward to the eternal things about the fact that one day you're going to judge angels.
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One day you're going to be part of a heavenly host of people that worship God forever.
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That should be the focus, not this.
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And yet we get so caught up and so angry and so inconsolable over this.
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And so Paul says, do you not know that we're to judge how much more than matters pertaining to this life? So if you have such cases, verse four, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? Now, for the sake of time, I don't want to get too far into this, but verse four is a difficult verse to translate into English from the Greek.
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And if you have a King James Bible, it's going to read much differently because they translate the way the verbs work differently in the King James than they do in the modern translations.
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And it's not because of some kind of textual variant or something.
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It's simply because of how it's translated.
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I'm going to read to you again the ESV, and then I want to read the King James and you notice the difference.
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ESV.
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If you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? That's a question, interrogative, right? That comes across as a question.
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But in the King James version, it says this.
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If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
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That becomes a statement of what you ought to do, not a question of what you are doing.
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The ESV seems to be asking the question, why would you take your cases before people that have no standing in the church, right? But the King James says this, if you have these cases, why not let the least among you judge, indicating this, that even the least in the church is wise enough because they possess the Holy Spirit and because they have the word of God, even the least esteemed in the church should be wise enough to judge trivial matters.
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You see how difficult that is, right? And here's the thing I'm going to tell you right now.
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It's not easy to translate.
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It's not one that I can simply say this is absolutely right.
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I tend to lean towards the ESV rendering on this, but I'll tell you both would be accurate because the question, should we take it to those outside the church? No.
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But it would also be accurate to say the least among us should be able to make righteous judgments.
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As I said, I'm not going to be dogmatic because both of them are correct.
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But then we have the summary beginning in verse five, Paul says, I say this to your shame.
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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? But brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers.
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Paul's saying here, this is a shame on us.
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This is a shame on us because if we have disputes among us and there is not enough maturity here to be able to have those disputes settled so much so that we have to go out and seek legal remedies to our disputes.
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What a shame.
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And what's interesting, if you go back to chapter five or rather chapter four, he says he didn't, he's not intending to shame them.
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But here he says, this is a shame.
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And I say this to your shame.
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Jesus said the world will know us by what? By our love.
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John 13, 35.
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By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.
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But Paul is dealing with people who are not loving one another, but rather have contempt for one another, so much so that they take each other to court.
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And that ruins the witness of the church, y'all.
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I want you to think about that because that's something that used to matter, but doesn't seem to matter much anymore.
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There was a time in history where people cared about the fact that the witness of the church and the reputation of the church should be upheld and that we didn't want to ruin the witness of the church.
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But nowadays, it seems like people don't care at all.
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It seems like the idea of being an ambassador for Christ simply has been washed away with the tide.
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Such language is antiquated.
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I can't believe, pastor, that you would expect us to be an example of Jesus.
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He knows I'm not perfect.
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And the idea that Christians should have a good reputation is laughable in many circles.
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And it's a shame.
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And I think there's sarcasm here.
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I've mentioned before that I think Paul uses sanctified sarcasm at times.
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And I think there's sarcasm here when he says, can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute? Because I don't know if you remember this, but we were studying chapters one, two, three, and four of first Corinthians.
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Paul's whole point there is that the people felt like they were very wise.
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In fact, they felt themselves to be among the elite of wisdom.
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They considered themselves to be almost royalty kings when it came to spiritual things.
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So Paul is saying, you guys who think you're the kings, who think you're the spiritually wise, who think that you are the best, the creme of the creme, the creme of the crop, whatever, you're the upper echelon of all things spiritual.
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There's not one among you who's wise enough to settle these things.
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So ultimately, it's simple.
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If a matter arises among believers, which requires a dispute to be settled, there should reside someone among us who can make a decision that's based on wisdom, a wisdom from God that can make a decision with equity and fairness.
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But that's only half the issue because there's a bigger problem.
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And Paul's going to address it in verse seven, the shame he addresses in verse seven.
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He says, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.
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Why not suffer wrong? Why not be defrauded? I would say this.
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This goes down as the most difficult to accept.
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In fact, it goes down like a very bitter elixir, like trying to get hope to take her cough medicine.
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She don't want it.
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And she lets us know she don't want it.
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And a lot of people, when they read this passage, it's just like that bitter medicine.
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They don't want it and they're going to let us know they don't want it.
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Because Paul is saying this, he's saying, if we have disputes that cause us to seek legal recourse, we have already admitted defeat.
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If we have disputes with one another that require us to go to court, we have already admitted defeat.
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No matter how the court case turns out, whether you are the victor or whether you are not, no matter how the case turns out, you've lost.
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And I know a lot of you immediately, your wheels, all them synapses are popping and all the wheels are turning in your brain and you're growing new ones because you're excited because you're thinking of every place where this might have an exception.
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Might I say that if that's your attitude, stop.
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If all you're thinking today is where there might be an exception to this, stop and listen to the heart of Paul, which is ultimately the heart of God.
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When he says, if you've got to find a way to take a brother to court, you've already lost.
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Because at some point, at some point, someone may have to accept being wronged and simply forgive.
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And that's the part we get upset about because the value of our perceived rights and the attitude is often this, I have the right to not suffer wrong.
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That's often the attitude.
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And I'll tell you something, that's often the attitude when I'm doing counseling with people, is both sides of the counseling situation, whether it's husband and wife, whether it's brother against brother or sister against sister or family against family, it's often this, I have the right to not be wronged.
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I know that being defrauded is not something anyone wants and no one looks for occasions to be wronged.
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But when something does happen and we are wronged, how should we respond in anger and retribution by demanding justice? Paul says, no.
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He says, why not simply just be willing to be wronged? And you say, oh, I don't like that.
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It goes against the grain.
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It's like petting the cat backwards.
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It just feels wrong.
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Brother Dale read this morning from Matthew chapter five.
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A person strikes you on the cheek, turn and allow them to strike the other also.
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And I have I have heard every which way possible people have tried and tried to make that not simply say what it says, that we ought to be willing to be wronged and not demand justice.
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And in the church, in this family that we have, and this is a family.
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By simply forgiving and not seeking our own vindication and retribution, we're demonstrating we actually trust that God is the one who's going to make it right.
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You remember how earlier I said that Paul has an eye toward eschatology in this because he's already talked about the fact that we're going to judge angels.
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He's already talked about the fact that we're going to judge the world.
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I do think that one eye of Paul is looking toward the future in this because ultimately, if we are wronged, God will vindicate us.
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What does the Bible say? Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God for vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
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We can know that no matter what happens, God's going to make it right.
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Maybe not immediately and maybe not in the way that we choose, but he will ensure our vindication.
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And I want to make this real for a moment, just for a second.
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I want to make this like, like, like maybe too real.
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In the past 12 years, I mentioned this earlier, but in the past 12 years, I have sat as an arbiter in many, many disputes.
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And I can honestly say in almost every case where the situation broke down and was unable to move forward is that most of the people involved were unwilling to handle being wronged with any kind of gracious maturity.
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I'll say it again.
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Most of the time where it was unable to move forward was because either one side or both sides were unwilling to have been wronged and move forward with any gracious maturity.
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They demanded apologies, retribution, satisfaction.
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In short, they demanded their rights.
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And the idea that they could suffer graciously was absolutely not an option.
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They wanted justice.
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They wanted it now.
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And if it didn't come the way they wanted it in the, in, in, in the, in the box they thought it should be wrapped in, they were going to pack up and move on, abandon the church with a heart devoid of forgiveness.
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And you know what? The sad thing is wherever they go, the next church is going to be just willing to accept them.
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No questions asked.
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And Paul, Paul ends this section with the ultimate statement of shame in verse eight, because he asked in verse seven, shouldn't you, shouldn't you be willing to be wronged? Shouldn't you be willing to suffer wrong? And all of us want to say no, but we know the answer is yes.
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Yes, we should be willing.
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And then verse eight, he said, but instead you yourselves wrong and defraud even your brothers.
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You see, the Corinthians were not at all willing to be wronged, but they were definitely willing to wrong others.
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Even those within the church.
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And this is really a contemporary problem more than we might like to admit.
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People are willing to be, to hurt, but not be hurt.
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Hear it again.
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People are willing, they want to be understood, but they don't want to understand.
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They expect their actions to be justified, but they want to condemn the actions of others.
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We wrong, but we expect forgiveness.
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Others wrong us, we expect justice.
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And that's the opposite of what God expects of us.
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God expects that we be marked by integrity, not seeking to wrong others.
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And he expects that we'd be marked by maturity, that if we are wronged, we are quick to extend grace.
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Even if it's undeserved, because that's what grace is.
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Grace is undeserved.
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The minute you think I can't forgive someone because they don't deserve it, get out your mirror.
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And if you don't got one, your cell phone's probably got a camera that'll turn the other way and look yourself in the face and say, you didn't deserve it either.
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And I want to get real for a second, because I love you all.
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I know you guys don't know how much our family loves this church.
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But I know also there are some of you that cannot take even the slightest bit of someone talking to you sideways.
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If someone says something even the least to you, you lack the maturity to be wronged.
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And you want to demand that that person either apologize or get their talking to.
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That's a lack of maturity.
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And there is some need to repent.
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If you are constantly offended, if you are constantly writing people off, then you should repent because God has not treated you as you deserve.
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How dare we treat others how we think they deserve? This past week, I had a moment of grace and I want to end with this story.
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I had a moment of grace showed to me, and some of you probably read this story.
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I posted it.
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I did three funerals this week.
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That's not very common.
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I usually do one a month, maybe.
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But for whatever reason, death came calling this week in a lot of people's families and they needed me.
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And so I had a service Monday at 11 o'clock.
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I had a service, I'm sorry, Monday at 2 o'clock, Wednesday at 11 o'clock.
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And I had a Friday service that I had written down for 11 o'clock.
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My notes said 11 o'clock.
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It's a Jackson National Cemetery.
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Jackson National Cemetery is a military cemetery and they only give you 30 minutes per service.
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You don't have any extra time because there's another service lined up to come in behind you.
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They literally do services all day long, Monday through Friday, and they're just constantly busy.
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At 10 o'clock, I'm standing in my bedroom, just about to get dressed to go because I'm supposed to be there at 11.
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Haha.
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My cell phone rings and I notice it's the number at the funeral home.
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So I pick up the call and I answer it and they say, Brother Foskey, where are you? I said, I'm getting dressed.
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I'm on the way.
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I'm supposed to be there at 11.
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I'm usually 30 minutes early and they know that.
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Brother Foskey, the service is beginning now.
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I said, no, I literally, I said, no, it's not.
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It starts at 11.
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And they said, it starts at 10.
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And my hands started to shake and my voice started to tremble because I know I'm not going to make it.
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The funeral director who was on site had turned his phone off.
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I couldn't call him.
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I was online with the receptionist, a sweet girl.
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I talked to her all the time and she's like, Brother Foskey, we emailed you.
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And they did, but I didn't look at it because I had it written down and thought I knew.
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So I jumped in the car.
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I made it from my house to Laney Road in a time that I'm not comfortable telling from the pulpit.
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I pulled up into the cemetery parking lot as the service ended.
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I'm walking from my car to the family.
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I don't know this family and they don't know me.
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I only met them over the phone and I had only talked to them over the phone.
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I'm walking out of my car.
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Everybody stands up and turns around, eyes on me.
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And my tears are literally welling up in my eyes because I am so ashamed.
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And a little woman, turns out it was the sister of the man who died.
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He died young.
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A little woman walks out of the crowd, walks over and put her head on my chest.
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And put her arms around me.
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And she said, Pastor, we're all human and it's okay.
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And I just started to cry.
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And the whole family said, Pastor, we know you didn't mean to do this.
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We know you wouldn't have done this on purpose.
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And we forgive you.
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And I said, I am so sorry.
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And I looked at the funeral director and he came and gave me a hug.
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And he said, Pastor Keith, he said, I know you and I know this isn't like you.
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And he said, if this is the worst thing that happens to you today, it's going to be okay.
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I tell that story because it so could have went the other way.
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The family had every right to be angry with me.
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They had every right to not want to show me grace.
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But instead, they gave me grace on top of grace.
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And I ended up spending another 30 minutes with them.
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We walked over to the columbarium, which is where they put the ashes in the wall.
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And we stood there and talked about the gospel and talked about Jesus and talked about their brother who died for 30 more minutes and praise God for their grace, because it opened up a door to talk about our shared faith in Jesus.
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Beloved, grace can be hard to give, but grace has been given to us.
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Can we not, by God's mercy, give it to others? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the grace that comes in knowing Christ.
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I thank you for that parable where the where the wicked servant came and was forgiven for all that he had in debt.
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And then he went and he was unwilling to forgive.
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And the master called that man a wicked servant.
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Father, have that be on our heart and mind that we don't want to be a wicked servant, but we want to be among those who are known, as John 13 says, known for our love for one another.
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Willing to forgive, willing to love, willing to show grace as grace has been shown to us.
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In Jesus name, Amen.