Such Were Some of You

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to 1st Corinthians, Chapter 6.
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1st Corinthians, Chapter 6.
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We're only going to be looking at a few verses this morning.
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I didn't feel that we would be able to make it past this point in one message.
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So we're just going to look at verses 9 to 11.
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Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.
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Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolators, 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.
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But you were washed.
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You were sanctified.
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You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
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Father in heaven, I pray right now for an extra measure of grace.
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Whereby I might preach your word with power.
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Not under my own power or my own talents and skill set.
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But under the conviction of Almighty God of the truth of the word.
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By the power of the Spirit that all who hear, who are numbered among your people, might be convicted and drawn closer to you.
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And those who are not, Lord, might be convicted to conversion.
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Lord, your word is truth.
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And sometimes it's hard truth.
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And I pray, Lord, that we would take even the hard truths to heart.
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And apply them in a way that is appropriate to what you have given us.
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And God, please keep me from saying anything that would be out of line with your truth.
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In Jesus name, amen.
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How often do we stop and think about eternity? Last week I talked about an illustration.
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I said, oftentimes in funerals I give the illustration of a rope going over a cliff.
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And I say, you know, if you imagine the rope goes on forever.
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The part that you're holding on to is this life.
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And the part that goes over the cliff represents what happens after this life.
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And we get so caught up in what happens to the part that we're holding on to.
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That we very rarely, if any, give attention to the part that's on the other side.
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And really that's the part that matters, right? If you compare the two as far as length and breadth, it's not even to be compared.
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This life is so small in comparison to eternity.
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And I've had people come to me after funerals.
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And say that that illustration really made them stop and think about the length and breadth of eternity.
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It's inconceivable, but yet it's exactly what we're going to experience when this life ends.
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And a concern about eternity should drive us.
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I think it does drive us in certain respects.
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And rightfully so.
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The Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3.11 that God has set eternity in the hearts of men.
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Now that verse has been interpreted differently by different people.
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And I don't want to push a dogmatic interpretation on it.
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But I think it does lend credence to the idea that we do have a desire to live on.
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We have a desire for eternity.
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Death is a reality, but it's a foreign reality.
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Because we were created to live.
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Adam and Eve were created to live.
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And death was the foreign attack against that life.
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It came in as a curse because of sin.
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Not as the established principle of life.
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Some people say, well, death is just a part of life.
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No, death is the part of life.
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It was the attack against life.
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Because life was what we were created for, not death.
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And we see this.
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We see people who try to prolong this life as long as they can.
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And we all do in a sense try to prolong our lives.
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Nobody just hopes death is coming.
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I guess there are some people who maybe have mental problems and they look toward that.
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But most people prolong their lives.
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We take medicine.
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We go to the doctor.
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We get our cholesterol checked.
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We try to keep the weight in check.
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We do these things to kind of keep our lives prolonged.
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And what often happens is as people get older and they realize that the game has an end.
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Oftentimes people become very religious in those last years.
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We talked about this in Sunday school.
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Oftentimes people who've never had any concern for God in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s.
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And when they see themselves starting hitting the 60s and 70s.
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They say, okay, well now I got to get right.
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I got to get that fire insurance.
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Because I want to make sure that if there's anything that I got to deal with, I got to deal with it now.
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Because in our early life, it's a far off reality.
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At least we think.
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But it's not.
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It's not a far off reality for anyone.
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The looming specter of death is over us all.
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And any one of us could die any day.
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But as we get older, the looming specter gets higher and higher on the horizon.
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And a lot of people want to get right with the man upstairs.
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That's the common lingo.
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And there's often a reasonable questioning of that kind of an attitude.
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Fire insurance is not what God sent his son to provide.
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But it just sort of speaks to the idea of what I'm trying to get around to.
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And in fact, I want to tell you, the original title of this sermon was Our Internal Inheritance.
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I changed it to such for some of you because you'll see in a little while how those two go together.
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But really the idea is eternity.
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Because this passage talks about the fact that our eternal inheritance is on the line.
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Our internal inheritance is at issue here.
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And that's why I say this is a heavy subject.
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We're not just talking today about your opinion and my opinion.
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Or what we choose to wear.
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Or where we choose to eat.
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Or how we choose to run our lives.
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Or where we send our kids to school.
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Or whether we homeschool.
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All of these things that are important in this life really are secondary to this question.
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Where are you going to spend eternity? That's huge.
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That's important.
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And this passage begins with, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And so this passage, it begins with the issue of eternity.
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It's an eternal consequence.
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And I have to tell you, I've thought about this many times.
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And I do not say this to put myself on a pedestal or to put myself in any type of position of hire.
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But I've said doctors deal with that which is going to die anyway.
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Medical professionals are valuable.
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And people who save lives, I could never for a second diminish what they do.
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But at the end of the day, all doctors do is kick the can down the road just a little longer.
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Because eventually the game is going to run out.
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I heard a doctor say that one time.
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He said all we're doing is kicking the can a little further down the road.
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It's eventually going to be game over.
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But this is eternal.
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What we're dealing with this morning is the forever.
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This can is going to keep going.
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There is no end game here.
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You're going to have an eternity.
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You're going to have something that when you close your eyes here, you're going to open your eyes somewhere else.
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I'm often, Luke 16, causes my heart really to beat fast when I imagine the reality.
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And if you don't remember what Luke 16 is, is when Jesus told the story of Lazarus, who was the poor beggar, who begged at the table of the rich man who had everything.
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He feasted sumptuously all of his days.
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And he wore expensive clothing.
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And the beggar just asked for that which was thrown to the dogs.
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And the picture here oftentimes gets confused because I think people think that, well, poor people automatically go to heaven and rich people automatically go to hell.
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The picture was one of attitude rather than one of necessarily station in life.
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The attitude of the rich man was one of greed and self-importance and pride.
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And the attitude of the poor man was one of destitution and relying solely upon God.
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And so we see the two, the divergence.
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The poor man dies and he is carried by the angels to Abraham's side.
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Now some places say Abraham's bosom, meaning he was embraced by Abraham.
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But whatever, he was carried by the angels.
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He had an angelic escort at death, which led him to his eternal comfort with Abraham.
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But the rich man of the story, the wicked man in sense, closes his eyes here.
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And it says, and he opened his eyes in the flames.
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No angelic escort, no explanation, no comfort, immediate, eternal, conscious hell.
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I mean, it's almost without the ability of the mind to even contemplate.
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And that's why, I mean, if I sound different than normal, this is when I sit and think about eternity, I get overwhelmed.
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Sometimes I wake up at night and I cry out to the Lord because of this reality.
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I mean, it really is.
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We are dealing with eternal consequences.
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And so Paul says in his conversation or his writing to the Corinthians.
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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? That question ought to be enough to just make us sit back and want to pray and ponder and wonder.
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Because it's so profound.
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I have an outline today and I'll give you the outline.
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It's very simple.
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It's the question, it's the deception and it's the declaration.
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That's the three parts of 9, 10, 11.
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And I'm just going to walk through it with you.
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But I want you to get it.
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I want you to understand the heart of this as I'm starting.
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The heart of this is this is eternally consequential.
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And this deals with the most important aspect of who you are.
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And the most important aspect of your life and your life hereafter.
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I remember one time I was with another, there was a Baptist minister, a friend of mine.
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We were on a cruise ship and we were sitting down.
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There was a lot of people watching a show or something.
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And we got bored with the show.
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So we walked out into the little hallway there and we sat down.
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And one of the guys who worked on the ship just happened to walk by and he sat down.
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And he kind of struck up a conversation.
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And the Baptist minister who was with me was sort of taking the lead.
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And I just sort of was listening.
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And he said, so what do you do here? And the guy said, you know, I'm a galley cook or whatever on the ship, blah, blah, blah.
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And he goes, well, that's nice.
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What do you plan to do in the future? And he said, well, I hope to retire one day and go live in the Bahamas.
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I'll go back and forth to the Bahamas.
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I'll buy some land in the Bahamas and go live down there or whatever.
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And he said, what are you going to do after that? And he says, what do you mean? He says, well, you got a retirement plan.
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But what are you going to do after that? And I just thought it was such a profound question.
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Because a lot of people plan for their retirement, right? They plan for those few years that they might get a little rest from all of life's stresses.
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What are you going to do after that? Man, that guy didn't know how to answer it.
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And I was glad because I was thankful that that was the question.
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And what are you going to do after that? How many of us think about the after that? It's so caught up in whether or not we're going to be okay before we die.
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Or whether or not our family is going to be okay after we die.
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And those are two important questions, right? I want to make sure that we don't, we're able to care for ourselves.
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And we care for our family after we die.
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You know, I have insurance if something happens to me.
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I want Jennifer to be, I don't want her to have to not know what's going to happen after I die.
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I want her to be cared for.
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But I want to know about my after I die too.
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And I want that for her and my kids and for you all.
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So Paul, like I said, there's three questions.
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Question, deception and declaration.
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The question is, I've already asked it twice.
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Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? This question is in the same construction as verse two.
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If you look back at verse two of chapter six.
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Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? We talked about that last week.
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Paul is, he adds that word or as a connection to what came before it.
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And he's asking the question based on that.
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And so to understand verse nine, it helps a little bit that we read what came before it.
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Verse eight says, but you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.
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Remember the conversation we had last week was about people taking each other to court.
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And Paul says you shouldn't do that.
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You shouldn't take each other to court.
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If there's any issue that's dividing you, the church should be able to settle the matter.
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And ultimately, if you're wrong, you should be able to be wronged.
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And just be gracious about it and it be okay.
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But the problem is you are defrauding and cheating one another.
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You're hurting one another.
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So ultimately, the context is Paul saying to the people, you are not living in accordance with your confession.
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Instead of being gracious to one another, you're taking each other to court.
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Instead of being willing to be wronged, instead you're only willing to wrong.
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And you are wronging one another.
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Some of you are defrauding, some of you are treating each other poorly.
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You're doing wrong and it's on the end of that.
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He says, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Because you're acting like the unrighteous.
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You see how it connects? See, a lot of people, I've heard sermons on 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, a bunch.
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Because by itself, it kind of stands out as a very important section.
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Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Neither sexually immoral, neither adulterers.
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You can make this list.
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And a lot of people do.
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They section off the list from the rest of it.
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But we can't do that.
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Context drives meaning, right? The meaning of this is the Corinthians are behaving like the unrighteous.
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They're treating each other like they're unbelieving people.
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And they're acting like unbelievers.
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And Paul's saying, don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And that's how you're behaving.
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Don't you know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And that's marking your lives.
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The question has within it the character of being an accusation.
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Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Yes.
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You know that.
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You must know that.
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And yet how you live in.
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Now, the phrase inherit the kingdom shouldn't be that hard for us to understand.
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To inherit the kingdom of God in the modern vernacular would be to go to heaven when you die.
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But it's more than that.
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Certainly not less, but it's more.
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Because the kingdom is, Jesus said, is among us.
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The kingdom is being in him.
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And so there's a sense in which there's a right now reality to being in the kingdom.
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Jesus said, unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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Unless a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
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So we, when we're born again, we have our entrance into the kingdom.
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We become citizens of a new kingdom.
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If you are born again, you're already a citizen of God's kingdom.
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You're part of it.
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Now, there's more to come.
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There's an eschatological hope.
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I don't use big words like that to throw you off.
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I wanted you to know what big words like that mean.
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And when you hear the word eschatology, that's referring to the end times.
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Eschaton means that which comes at the end.
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And so the eschatology is the study of the end times.
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You've heard people talk a lot about that.
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But when I talk about your eschatological hope, what that means is the hope of your eternity.
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The hope of what happens at the end of this world and the beginning of the next.
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Right? And the eschatological hope is that you're going to go from being a part of this world to a part of a world that comes.
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And you're going to be the inheritors of the kingdom of God.
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Because you are born into a new family and you're given a new inheritance.
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You are the children of God.
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And because you're the children of God, you are given an inheritance from Him which is an eternity with Him.
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What's the promise of believers? Is it golden streets and pearly gates? It's God.
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God is the promise of heaven.
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God Himself will be with them as their God.
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And He will wipe away every tear.
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You have an inheritance, if you are a believer, you have an inheritance of the kingdom of God.
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You're in it now, irrevocably so, but you haven't received the fullness of your inheritance.
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You're like the child waiting for that inheritance to be given.
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You're waiting for that time to come when that eschatological hope is realized.
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When we see Him as He is and we shall be as He is, the Bible says.
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Not in the sense that we get to become God, but in the sense that we are glorified with Him.
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But this passage says the unrighteous will not inherit that.
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Oftentimes people ask the question, as I said, I've done more funerals than I can remember.
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And almost every time I've done a funeral, somebody at some point has asked the question, Well, do you think they're in heaven? That's not always, it's never said from the pulpit.
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And it's very rarely said publicly.
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But it's almost always a hush question.
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Well, I wonder if so and so is in heaven.
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And a lot of people automatically assume, right? Because we live in an era of justification by death.
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It used to be justification by faith, but now it's justification by death.
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Everybody who dies goes to heaven.
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And people say, well, they were good people.
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The question is not whether or not a person is a good person.
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The Bible says no one is good, no, not one.
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The question is, were they righteous? And the righteousness that they have is not their own.
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It's the righteousness of Christ, which comes by faith.
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And the unrighteous, meaning those who are not in Christ, will not inherit the kingdom of God because they have no righteousness whereby to make their entrance.
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You remember the parable Jesus taught about the feast where the man came in and he wasn't wearing the garment that he was supposed to wear that was provided by the king? That's a big part of that story that people miss.
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The king provided the garment, but the man refused to wear it.
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And what happened to him? He was cast out.
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And the picture is, God has provided a garment.
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That garment is the righteousness of Christ.
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If we refuse the righteousness of Christ and we try to walk in on our own, we try to wear our own garments of righteousness, it will be as if we're wearing dirty, filthy rags, and we will be cast out.
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God has provided the garment of righteousness.
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He has provided the clothing to cover our sins whereby we can stand before Him.
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And without it, we will not make entrance.
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Without it, we will not receive the inheritance.
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So understanding this issue of righteousness is very important.
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The only righteousness that will ever get you into the kingdom of God is the righteousness of Christ.
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But, you say, now why would you ever but that? Well, let me say this.
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But, the righteousness of Christ comes to us not devoid of a changed life.
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When we are born again, when we are born again, our lives will change.
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We do not become perfectly righteous.
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We still rely on the righteousness of Christ.
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But we will see a marked change between who we are and who we were.
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And that's why I changed the title.
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Because Paul will say in verse 11, Such were some of you.
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Because the subject here is the unrighteous not inheriting the kingdom.
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And the issue is, some who call themselves Christians are still among the unrighteous.
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You can have the name of Christian and not truly have Christ.
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So Paul gives an outline.
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He says, here is what unrighteousness looks like.
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And by the way, this list is not comprehensive.
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This list isn't in any way meant to envelop all unrighteousness.
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But it does sort of fall into some categorical unrighteousness.
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I'm going to talk about that in a second.
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But this is the deception.
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Because he says in verse 9, and here's where we're going to, or actually the second part of verse 9, he says this.
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He says, Do not be deceived.
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This is where I think the deception comes in.
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Because I think there were some who were deceived.
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I think there were some Corinthians who were naming Christ but didn't have Christ.
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And so he says, Do not be deceived.
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Neither sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor violers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
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This is what we call, at least what some people call, a vice list.
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It's just a place in the scriptures where Paul or one of the other apostles will write a list of things that are designated as unrighteous things.
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Or unrighteous behaviors, or vices, that tend to mark those that we would identify as functionally unrighteous.
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I mean, honestly, if you knew somebody whose life was marked by sexual immorality, you would say they're functionally unrighteous.
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If you knew somebody whose life was marked by drunkenness, you would say that person is functionally unrighteous.
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We see lists like this in Romans, Galatians, Colossians, and in other books as well.
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None of them are all inclusive, but they all give examples of actions which mark the lives of unrighteous people.
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And there are categories, as I said.
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Some are sexual sins.
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In this list we have fornication, homosexuality, adultery.
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Other lists involve abandoning proper civilized behavior like drunkenness or reviling.
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Others involve one's personal gain like thieves or greedy or swindlers.
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Others involve God's prescribed worship, which is idolatry.
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But I want to look at this list specifically, not because I think it's all inclusive, but because there are some things in here that I want us to just touch on.
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I am doing verse by verse, and I don't want to skip this.
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We live in a day where a lot of things are simply said, they're just not sins.
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And one of the biggest things that's being put out now is sexual immorality is just not sinful.
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I heard somebody say the other day, well, people are just going to live together before they get married.
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It's just normal.
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I don't care how normal it is.
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It's sinful.
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Whether it's normal, because I'm telling you something, there's some weird stuff that's becoming normal.
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I mean, I don't even want to go there.
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But this is one of those places where we can look and say, OK, God has specifically condemned certain things.
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Not that we go around with our rulers tagging people on the end of the nose and saying you're condemned because of X.
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But we can at least have a place to say, here is where we know that this isn't an option.
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This isn't like whether or not we're going to eat pork.
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This is a question of God's unchanging, holy, moral law.
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There's nine things here.
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Unless you have certain Bibles, there's 10.
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And I'll explain why.
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Because there's one of them that in the ESV translates it very poorly.
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It combines two things.
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And that's another reason why I wanted to go through this with you.
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Because I like the ESV.
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I use the ESV.
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But every translation has certain things where I would say I think they could have done better here or there.
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Going down the list, pornoi.
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Pornoi is sexual immorality.
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We've talked about that word before.
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It's where we get the word pornography, which means illicit photographs or images.
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In the King James Version, it's fornicators.
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That's an important word because it's an outdated word.
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But it still has a meaning.
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My son was in a college class where the professor said sex before marriage is not a sin in the Bible.
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He said those words.
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He said the Bible never says anything about sex before marriage.
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I'm like, dude.
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Sorry.
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Sir.
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Even my son, he's like, it says fornication.
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What's the definition of fornication? Any unlawful sexual act.
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Well, what is the only lawful sexual act? That which is done in the bounds of a married relationship.
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So fornication, sexual immorality.
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This is clearly sinful.
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It's not something that can't be forgiven.
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It's not something that God, you know, doesn't have grace for.
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But if somebody says it's just not a sin.
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Yes, it is.
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Idolatry.
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The root of this is Lotria.
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And Lotria means service or worship.
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And it means to worship false gods.
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Now, we talk about worshiping false gods.
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This is...
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Time is not going to allow me to get through all this.
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But let me just say this.
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Worshiping false gods doesn't just mean that a person's an occult.
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Or a part of a group that's like the Jehovah Witness or something.
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That's worshiping God falsely.
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People...
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John Calvin said it best.
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He said the human mind is a factory of idols.
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Meaning we're just constantly creating something to put in the place of God.
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You know when those people, the Israelites, made that golden calf.
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When Aaron took all their gold and he fashioned that calf out of gold.
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You know what they said? This is the God who led you out of Egypt.
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They ascribed the work of God to a golden calf that they had made themselves.
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What do people do now? People ascribe any and everything to all kinds of things other than God.
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And they may not bow down in worship.
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But they put these things at the top of their most important thing in their heart and in their mind.
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And thus it becomes idolatry.
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It can be as silly as sports.
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And it can be as profound as family.
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But when we put something above God, it becomes idolatry.
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Adultery, moikoi, means a person who commits adultery.
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Aha, I was trying to be funny, but I missed it.
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But no, that's what it means.
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It means a person who commits adultery.
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These two seem to be on...
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It's interesting that you have sexual immorality, idolatry, and then adultery.
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And then it's going to talk about homosexuality.
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It's like you have idolatry sort of fits in the middle of this odds.
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Because you got three sexual sins and then idolatry not being.
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But idolatry is adultery against God.
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Because idolatry is when we cheat on God and we go to another God.
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In fact, in the Old Testament, oftentimes it's seen that way.
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As when Israel would abandon God and go after other gods, it was seen as almost like a cheating spouse.
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Right? And so I think that's how these fit together.
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Idolatry and adultery fit together in that way.
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We're cheating on God or we're cheating on our wife.
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And then it comes to the next one.
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And this is where I said I think the ESV misses it.
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Because the ESV says men who practice homosexuality.
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That is not what the Greek says.
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The Greek says malikoi and arsenikoi.
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Malikoi and arsenikoi is two different things.
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Malikoi is translated in the King James and in the New American Standard Bible as effeminate.
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And arsenikoi is translated in King James as abusers of themselves, which is an odd way of saying it.
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And the NIV says homosexual offenders.
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Here's the deal.
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Let me break this down very easily.
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Because I've heard a lot of people want to make the argument that homosexuality is not a sin.
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Malikoi means soft and it refers to the feminine action of a man in the homosexual relationship.
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Arsenikoi is the masculine act of homosexual behavior and it refers to sodomy.
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This statement is one of the clearest on the issue of homosexuality because it refers to both parties.
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I don't want to get too graphic, but you understand what I'm saying.
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It's talking about the feminine one and the masculine one in the homosexual relationship.
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It's very clear.
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And that's why I think when ESV says men who practice homosexuality, they're trying to combine the two and say that both parties are participants.
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Yes, but the clear text is making a point that neither one of them get to say I'm not sinning.
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Both are sinning.
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And somebody said, well, this is just about men.
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And that's true.
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Arsenikoi comes from the word koitis, which is where we get the word sex, and arsenikos, which is referencing man.
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So that does reference men specifically.
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And people say, well, then it's not talking about women.
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Well, go to Romans chapter one.
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Romans chapter one specifically talks about women who leave the natural affection for the man and burn with lust for one another.
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It refers to women and men both in the homosexual relationship.
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So it's not as if God doesn't address it all.
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He does address the entire gambit of that particular sin and is very clear that it's all sin.
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Is it unforgivable? No.
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Is it something that God can save people out of? Yes.
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Notice Paul will say, such were some of you.
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Some of the Corinthians had been homosexual.
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Some of the Corinthians had been adulterers.
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Some of the Corinthians had been idolaters.
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But that's what you were, not what you are.
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There's a hard push in America today that says if a person is a homosexual, they can never be saved out of that.
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And in fact, in some places it's becoming illegal to offer up any kind of therapy to help someone escape that because you're not simply accepting them for who they are.
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Paul says that's what you were, not what you are.
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And that's key.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Praise the Lord for that.
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Moving on, it talks about klepti.
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You ever heard of kleptomania? The desire to steal? You know what we do with everything that's a sin? We turn it into a sickness.
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That way we're not responsible.
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Klepti, thief.
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This should be without doubt.
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I love R.C.
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Sproul.
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Somebody said one time, what do you do if somebody says I don't believe in sin? He said steal their wallet.
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He said because they'll tell you that's wrong.
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Greedy.
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I like the King James Version.
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Covetous, because we don't use that word much anymore.
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Covetous means not just eager to have more, but it's an eager to have that which belongs to others.
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Drunkards.
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This is another area that I could shoot off for a long time, because the question about whether or not drinking or not drinking is a sin is so prevalent, especially in the South, especially those who've been influenced in Southern Baptist churches.
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The idea that you touch one drop of alcohol and that's a sin is very common.
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The Bible doesn't teach that.
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The Bible teaches that drunkenness is a sin.
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Drunkenness is the drinking for the purpose of losing one's self-control.
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There are places where the Bible talks about wine as a blessing from God.
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And the person who tells me that the wine in the Bible was not fermented.
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Then how did Noah get drunk? And why is there condemnation against drunkenness if there's no fermented wine? So what's not as strong as it was today? That may be true.
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The distillation process has had several thousand years of getting it right.
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But seven thousand years ago, Noah knew how to get drunk.
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And you know what drunkenness is.
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And you know if this is a problem for you.
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And you know if it is a problem for you, you probably shouldn't drink at all.
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And it's easy.
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Romans 14 gives the best answer to this.
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Because Romans 14 tells us that if you can't do something in faith, you shouldn't do it at all.
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Because that which is not a faith is sin.
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So if you can't have a drink in faith, then you shouldn't have a drink at all.
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Some people use that though to tell me because you can't have a drink in faith, I can't have a drink in faith.
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That's not true.
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Now I am not supposed to cause you to stumble.
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Which means I am not to encourage you to do something to violate your conscience.
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And I never would.
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At least not knowingly.
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But that doesn't bind my conscience to yours.
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Is that enough? I just had to say that.
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Again, I could spend a lot of time on each of these.
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Revilers is a person who is verbally abusive.
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That's probably oversimplifying what the word means.
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But that's at least the basis of what the word means.
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And I think it goes along with drunkenness.
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Because often times drunkenness is associated with people who are violent with their words.
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And so it says drunkards, revilers and swindlers.
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Swindlers is a person who is destructively vicious.
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And another translation of that word is extortioner.
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Alright.
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So we've gone through the list.
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And there's not a person on this planet.
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There's not a person in this room who's not broken at least one of those prohibitions.
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We could walk back through that list.
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And if you were honest with me and I was honest with you at some point.
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And I'll make it easy.
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Jesus said if you ever looked at a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery in your heart.
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Every man in the room, don't speak.
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This is why Paul can say in Romans 3.
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What shall we say then? Are we Jews any better than they? Certainly not.
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For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks are under sin.
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As it is written, none is righteous, no not one.
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There is none who understands, there's none who seeks for God.
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All have turned aside, together they've become worthless.
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And no one does good, not even one.
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Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive.
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The venom of asps is under their lips.
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Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
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Their feet is swift to shed blood.
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And in the paths of ruin and misery and the way of peace they have not known.
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And there is no fear of God before their eyes.
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That's what you were before Christ saved you.
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Not good, not even one.
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But then we get to verse 11.
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And such were some of you.
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But, by the way the word but, when you see it in the Bible, stop and think.
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Because that word but becomes a huge point in many passages.
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I think of Ephesians chapter 2.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sin, but God being rich in mercy.
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With the mercy that he loved us.
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But God.
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This is the same idea.
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Such were some of you, but you were washed.
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You were sanctified.
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You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And by the spirit of our God.
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Three words here, hugely important.
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Washed.
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I believe is in reference to our regeneration.
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I don't believe it's in reference to baptism.
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But it is what baptism represents.
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Baptism represents the washing that we receive.
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In fact, we hear the Bible talks about in the book of Titus.
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The washing of regeneration.
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So we know that the word regeneration and washing go together in a biblical sense.
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And that's the picture.
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When you came to Christ, you were washed.
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Regenerated.
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Cleansed.
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Made new.
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Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.
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Right? That's regeneration.
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And then he says you were sanctified.
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Sanctification, we often talk about, is the process of us becoming like Jesus.
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But in this context, Paul is using it a little differently, I think.
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Because he's talking about this positional change that happens.
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See, sanctification means to set something apart for cleansing.
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To set something apart for service or for a purpose.
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Right? The person who is regenerated, washed, is set apart and made part of the kingdom of God.
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The Bible says we are seated in heavenly places with Christ.
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So you were washed.
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You were set apart.
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And you were justified.
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Justified is a legal term.
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Which means to be declared righteous.
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See, this is the difference between Rome and the reformers.
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Because Rome believes that justification is something that you become.
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Meaning that you become just.
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And that's why you're saved.
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We are declared just.
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Do you understand the difference? One is a legal declaration of God.
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You don't become just in the sense of you become worthy or become righteous.
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You are declared righteous.
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Because God takes a righteousness that's not your own.
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Paul tells us this, right? I have a righteousness not of my own, but a righteousness which comes by faith in Jesus Christ.
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God takes a righteousness that isn't yours and he gives it to you.
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And now he can call you that.
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And I've heard Roman Catholics say, well that's legal fiction.
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God's telling a lie.
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No he's not.
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Because Christ was called a sinner in your place.
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Not as a legal fiction, but by an act of mercy.
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He became sin for us so that his righteousness could become ours.
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And God could rightfully call us righteous.
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So we go from being dead and trespasses and sins.
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Dirty and wretched.
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To being washed, set apart and declared righteous.
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And so Paul says, such were some of you, but these things have happened.
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When did they happen? When did you experience the washing of regeneration, the sanctification and the declaration of your righteousness? Some people, again, going back to baptism, some may say, well, that's when it happens.
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The Bible says we are justified by faith.
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And thus we experience the reality of what happens on the cross, what happened on the cross.
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When we come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And so Paul can talk to the Corinthians about that in that sense.
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He can say to them, the unrighteous are not going to go to heaven.
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The unrighteous are not going to inherit the kingdom of God.
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And the unrighteous are marked by all of these things.
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Sexual immorality, hatefulness, reviling and bad behavior and uncivilized behavior.
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They're marked by all of this.
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And such were some of you, but you were washed.
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Do you remember when you were washed? And again, I'm not talking about your baptism, even though baptism is a good thing.
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It's a good way for us to remember that time in our life when we were washed.
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Because, again, that pictures the reality of what happened in our heart.
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But do you remember when you were washed? Do you remember when you were sanctified? Do you remember when you were justified? Meaning that you received by grace through faith the Lord Jesus Christ? Or maybe that hasn't happened for you.
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Maybe you sit today unwashed.
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Maybe you sit today still a part of the world, not yet sanctified.
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Maybe you sit today unrighteous before God.
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Paul says, do you not know? The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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I preach to you every week with the desire that everyone under the sound of my voice would be righteous, not self-righteous, but made righteous, declared righteous by grace through faith alone.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to study together.
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I thank you for this passage.
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And so much is here that we didn't get to.
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I pray, Father, for all of us to understand afresh the responsibility that we have to consider the reality that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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And only those who have come to Christ through repentance and faith will be made partakers in that great kingdom, be made inheritors, be made your children.
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Your word tells us Jesus came into his own and his own received him not.
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But as many as received him to them, he gave the power to become the children of God.
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Father, let us this morning know that we're the children of God.
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Not deceive ourselves, but to have confidence in you and Lord, if there are those here who know not you.
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Lord, that they would find their confidence in you.
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The repentance of sin.
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Through faith in Jesus.
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By the power of the Holy Spirit of God.
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Wash them, sanctify them and justify them, we pray.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.