Sunday School: Judgments Before Unbelievers, Part 2 (1 Corinthians 6:1-8)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. This is the word of the

Lord from the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth. 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 then 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. 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.

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

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, as we come to our text today, guide us in your word, in your truth. May we understand how these instructions pertain to us, how they relate to us, how we are to live according to this rebuke that has been given to this church in Corinth.

And as Paul said elsewhere to the Corinthians, these things have been written down for our sakes, so that we may not do as they did.

Paul was referencing the Old Testament, the failures of the Israelites when he was saying this to the Corinthians.

But how we can take this that Paul said to the Corinthians and relate it to ourselves, that we may not repeat the same mistakes that they have made.

But we would walk in holiness and in uprightness. We would desire that unity that has been purchased by Christ, by His death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave.

Unity is not something we attain, it's something we maintain. For it has already been purchased by Christ and given to us,

His church. Lead us in righteousness as we read your word. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

As I was going back over this, this past week, there were a couple of things that jumped out at me,

I think, that I did not make note of last week. In particular, notice in verse 5 that Paul says, in the midst of a stern rebuke that he is making to this church, he says to them,

I say this to your shame. Well it was back in chapter 4, verse 14, where Paul said,

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

So how do we marry those two concepts? How do we understand this? That Paul says, I do not write these things to you to make you ashamed, and yet he says to them here, in chapter 6, verse 5,

I say this to your shame. Well there wasn't a reason for Paul to have to make them ashamed because they have already done that which is shameful.

So he's not trying to make them feel terrible over something that they shouldn't have to feel terrible over, but this continues in his admonishment.

Remember that word, to admonish means to correct with goodwill. And so he says to them to be ashamed of their shameful behavior, that they would not continue in this behavior, but that they would repent.

And instead of going to court, instead of dividing over one another, that they would encourage each other and build one another up as they are to do.

Now as we're looking at this section here, as we're looking at verses 1 -8, we typically understand this section as it's titled there, probably as you have there in your

English Standard Version, Lawsuits Against Believers. But we have never left the context of instruction that Paul has been giving from the start of chapter 5, and that is that they are to judge righteously amongst themselves.

And they've not been doing that. God has given them authority to judge, but they don't judge where they're supposed to judge, and instead they abdicate those responsibilities and give them to unbelievers, and they make unbelievers their judges, when the reality is, if we understand the hope of the gospel, we're going to be the ones who judge the world.

So why would you subject yourselves to them? So it's almost as if, in verses 1 -8, indeed

Paul is rebuking them for something, for behavior that is not reflective of how the body of Christ is supposed to look.

Indeed, he's rebuking them for that. But you could also consider 1 -8 as kind of an example to demonstrate to them how their behavior is not as Christ intends for His church.

For back in chapter 5, verse 1, he says, there's sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not even tolerated among the pagans, for a man has his father's wife.

Remember that episode we had a few weeks ago? You have this man that is committing incest in your midst, and you're not doing anything about it.

What did Paul say should have been their reaction instead? Verse 2, you are arrogant, ought you not rather to mourn?

Let him who has done this be removed from among you. So first of all, they needed to mourn over the fact that there was sin in their midst, and then secondly, they needed to remove the man who was sinful from their midst.

As we finish that chapter, God judges those who are outside, purge the evil person from among you.

Now notice in chapter 6, verse 1, there's no transition. There's no transition statement.

And as I said to you last week, it's just like you need to pretend that those verse markers in the big bold numbers are not there.

Like the verse markers, the chapter divisions are not divinely inspired. They were added over a thousand years after the

Bible was written. And my son's getting excited because he sees me getting excited. So if you pretend that chapter marker is not there, it just flows through into the next thought.

It's just continuing the same train of thought that Paul is on. He's not changing subject here.

Concerning sexual immorality, do this. Concerning lawsuits among you, you need to do this. He's still on a rebuke for them not judging as the way they should judge, according to the authority that Christ has given to the church.

There is an authority that is given to the church. I believe I mentioned this when we were back in chapter 5.

A lot of times we try to shrink back from that concept of the authority of the church because we know the

Roman Catholic Church really abused their authority. And they still abuse their authority even to this day in the sense that they claim the church has authority over the

Bible itself. Which is really quite a circular argument. Because how do we understand even what the church is?

How is the church defined? Where do we look for its definitions? We look to the

Bible. And so the church needs to be in submission to the law of God, to the word of Christ.

But the Catholic Church claims, hey, we wouldn't even have a Bible if it wasn't for the church. We're the ones that decided these are the books that belong in there.

And so since God has given us the authority over the Bible, authority belongs first to the church, then to the word of God.

Or they will say that there is, you know, it's a shared relationship. There's authority that's given to the church and to tradition.

So even that the tradition of the teaching that's in the church has just as much authority as the word of God.

You have the Pope that sits ex cathedra, meaning that he sits in the chair of St.

Peter and whatever the Pope says is every bit as authoritative apostolically as anything the apostles wrote down in the

New Testament. This is what the Catholic Church believes. And so the church, therefore, has authority over the word rather than being defined by the word and being in submission to the authority of the word.

So because we know that about the Catholics and even the Eastern Orthodox, they behave the same way.

Even the Mormons, they also are that way. When we see these false churches out there behaving like that, it tends to make us think, well, we should not say that the church has authority because they're wrong.

And then we go too far the other direction. Then we pull all the way back as if to say that there's no authority that's been given to the church at all.

All the authority relies on the word of God. Now it's true that God's word is authoritative and the church must be in submission to that.

We are never over the word. We are always under the word. But God has indeed given the church, he has given to the church authority insofar as the church exercises that authority according to what

God's word says. Remember when we were going through kind of the discipline section there in chapter 5, it looked very similar.

There was a language that Paul used there very similar to what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 to 17 in how we are to deal with sin, especially when it comes to a brother who has sinned against you.

And then in verses 18 to 20 there in Matthew 18, Jesus goes on to say where two or three are gathered in my name, there

I am in the midst of them, talking about church discipline. So if you issue a judgment, if you have to judge a brother or sister in the

Lord and remove them from your midst, if you have done so according to what God's word says,

Christ says, I'm right there with you. And you're not making any kind of decision that I am disapproving of.

There's been no division or brokenness in the body on your part. You've done as I've instructed you to do.

And Paul used the same kind of language here when he says, when it comes to this guy, when you are assembled, verse four, in the name of the

Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are delivered this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. And he says there later on that he's already made a judgment about this man.

He has already pronounced judgment. So the Corinthians need to make a judgment as the apostle would make a judgment as Christ would even make a judgment within their midst, where two or three are gathered, there

I am in the midst of them. And so there is an authority that the church has been given.

But as we saw in chapter five, the church is not exercising that authority. They are not exercising judgment as God has given judgment to them according to how it's defined in his word.

Instead, what are they doing? Chapter six, they're submitting themselves to unbelievers for their judgment.

We'll let you be our judges over us. And Paul says, are you kidding me? There's not even one of you wise enough to handle these kind of trivial things that are amongst you.

You have to go before unbelievers and let them be your judges. Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?

And if we understand that context of eternity, then why would we even here in our present subject ourselves to the judgment of the world?

Remember the example that I gave you last week, I think I used Iran in my example, but let's use

Canada, a neighbor a little bit closer. If the Canadian government were to send you a letter and were to say, hey, you're in violation of Canadian law, you need to come up here to Canada and appear in court and receive your sentence.

Would you do that? I'm not subject to your laws. Get out of here. Get lost. Stay up there.

I'm down here. That's what you would say to Canada. We're subject to the laws of the nation in which we live.

And so likewise, we understand that in Christ Jesus, according to 1 Peter 2, 9, we are a holy nation.

We are a nation unto the Lord. We are a new nation, a nation of priests, even as it says there in the text.

And so we do not submit ourselves to the laws of another nation, even to the laws of this world, but we are under the law of God.

So do not be judged by those who are not your judges. Now when we talk about this in like civic matters, so in other words,

I can drive all over the place as fast as I want to. I don't have to obey the speed limit because those laws don't apply to me.

The Lord says in Romans chapter 13 that you need to be in subject to the governing authorities for all the governing authorities have been given that authority by whom?

By God. Now they need to be exercising their authority also according to the limits that God has given to the governing authorities according to his word.

And sometimes the government steps outside of that authority. And when they do, we need to be subject to the

Lord and not to men. I would say a good example of that was when the government was trying to tell us not to go to church because out of fear of a virus, but we understand we must obey the

Lord and not men and desire to gather together again as the saints in obedience to the

Lord. And Hey, I'd hope also because we love each other and because we want to be with the saints and how wonderful a blessing it is for us as saints in the

Lord to worship God together. I did not get as far as verse eight last week.

So let me read verse seven again in verse eight and we'll finish up that particular paragraph. To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.

If you are taking a brother or sister in the Lord to court, you've, you've already done something that is defeating to the church.

You've you've torn down your brother or sister and therefore you've also torn down the church.

And remember Paul had warned previously in chapter four, the one who destroys God's house,

God will destroy him. So the one who has gone to court and had a lawsuit with a brother or sister is already, it's already a defeat for you.

Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded verse eight, but you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers, you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.

When you take a person to court and sue them, and we're talking of course in the context of the brotherhood.

So you're taking a brother or sister in the Lord to court in the context of them having defrauded you somehow.

If you have taken them to court because they defrauded you, you've now also defrauded them.

That's what Paul is saying there. So that which they've done to you, you've done also the same thing to them, but you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers.

It's just this cycle of repetition that continues over and over again. Hence why I finished last week in Matthew chapter five where Jesus said, if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other.

If someone sues to take your cloak, give him your tunic also. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

Don't escalate the conflict by reacting in kind or reacting more harshly than they had just treated you, but just let it go.

As you are able, as it is possible for you to do so, let it go. In Romans chapter 12, where it is said there, as much as it depends on you live peaceably with everybody.

And shouldn't we especially be exercising that within the church? Now here's something that I didn't get to last week.

What are some areas like we've talked about when we talked about these lawsuits here in chapter six verses one through eight, we had kind of clarified that as being, well, these are money issues.

They're property issues. So somebody is suing somebody else over money or property. These are probably the trivial cases they can't handle amongst themselves.

So they take to law amongst unbelievers and they let those unbelievers be their judges. What are some other ways in our context today where a brother or sister in the

Lord might take another brother or sister to court? Can you think of some other ways where we might see

Christians suing Christians? Say again. Malpractice.

What do you mean by malpractice? Well, if you go to the doctor and have surgery, he's a brother.

Yeah. And you too profess to be a Christian.

Do you sue that doctor for malpractice if he did? So you have a doctor who has not done his job well, and he has probably caused more problems than he was intended to fix with the practice that essentially you paid for, right?

You paid for him to do this work, but he did the work really, really terribly. And this doctor is a brother or sister in the

Lord. Should you take him to court or not? You're asking me that, right?

Woo, sister, that is hard. That is really hard. I tell you,

I would be in a lot of prayer and a lot of counseling before I made a decision on that. I definitely would. That's really tough because you're definitely talking about something where you now have to suffer the effects of something that he did wrong.

Something that I would have to ask there, and I think this is going to be a case by case basis.

This is going to vary according to scenario. Did the problem happen because he made a mistake that just one out of every six surgeries goes that way or something like that?

Would we chalk it up to some sort of statistical thing where sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you come out on the other end worse than you did when you went in?

Then it would have to be a matter of were you aware of the risks? Were you told those things? Was it said to you that this was a possibility?

Is this something that he necessarily couldn't prevent or was it something that he actually deliberately failed to do?

Something to that extent. Or is it the sort of a thing where the doctor came in drunk instead of, you know, are we going that far?

Where he did not do his job well because he wasn't even of his right mind that day or something to that extent.

You know, what are we talking about in terms of, in that case, I would hope that the hospital would want to step in and insurance and the hospital can duke that out.

And then it doesn't really even necessarily have to become us that takes one another to court over those things.

That's one of the benefits of kind of the insurance system that we have is a lot of times when that stuff is handled in court, we don't ever even have to show up.

The insurance company and the hospital, those people will duke that out and they will kind of figure that out. But anyway, like I said, case by case basis, there are definitely some things there

I would have to be in a lot of prayer over. That did not happen to me. She's saying that did not happen to her.

It did happen to a friend of mine. Yes. And she couldn't say, but now she's saying. Yeah.

Well, I, you know, I would say in that circumstance, let's say he is a brother in the Lord, but he's attending a different church.

You attend a different church. I would hope that somewhere in there, the churches are still coming together, elders and elders, offender and offendee, and they're coming together and talking these things out so that we come to a mutual understanding of mind.

And then we're settled and we're at peace with whatever decision is made between one another.

I would think that that would be a good way to handle that, especially when we're talking about in the context of the church. We're not just chalking this up to the fact that he's a brother in the

Lord. I'm a Christian, and so therefore I shouldn't do anything at all. There are some steps in there that should be taken in the interest of Christian fellowship and love.

So to express to that doctor, you did me wrong here so that he has an opportunity either to correct it or seek forgiveness or whatever it is that needs to be done.

Yeah. Any other examples of, yes, ma 'am. Attended, there was a big deal.

It leaked almost from day one. It was a brand new facility, and they claimed, this construction company, the owners and leaders claimed to be

Christians, but they never fixed the roof. The church actually did sue them because they went as far as they could go trying to get them to work with them.

So was the guy in the construction, was he a Christian? Is that how that went? Yeah. Claimed that he was.

See, that's another thing. We got to be careful too that those claims are legitimate.

So this was a situation where a church had hired somebody to do some work. They did some work on the roof, but the roof leaked.

It didn't work out well. And so the church actually ended up suing the man, even though the man said that he was a

Christian. Now here we even have a matter of a church doing the suing.

This is not even like a Christian and a Christian taking one another to court. But the church is doing the suing.

Even if the person is an unbeliever in that case, you have the church that is suing somebody who's an unbeliever, even if that man was an unbeliever.

You still have to think. I think there's still some things we need to think about as a church. Like optically, what does this look like to the world?

Is this the kind of thing that we want to be showing? You know, the big church over here that's suing the little guy.

Is that kind of the picture that everybody's perceiving? Whereas, you know, you go to a case like what happened with John MacArthur's church,

Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, when the state of California was issuing all these fines and penalties and threatening to shut their doors and take away all this stuff from them just because they wanted to gather together and go to church.

What did Grace Community Church do? They sued the state of California. Now, when

I heard that they were doing that, I was like, go John! You know, that was my reaction to that. And that particular case, who's the big guy in that case?

Well, optically, according to the world, it's the state. Now, we know the big guy really there is... The one who has

God is always in the majority. But in this particular case, in the eyes of the world, the state of California is the big guy and they were acting illegally against the church.

And that's one sort of situation where, yeah, it's definitely right for the church to have taken the state to court so that we can demonstrate before the world our desire is to serve

God and the state won't let us do that. So ideally, when we look at the Old Testament, anytime somebody committed a crime or stole, they were supposed to make up for it.

So I think, in a way, we can look at that like, you know, there's physical hurt, harm, damage to a property, whatever the case may be.

I think another case that would be totally ridiculous would be like, oh, so -and -so defamed my character.

Like, you know, kind of like six and stones type of thing. I think that would be a totally different view as believers suing another believer because so -and -so said something that made me look bad, which we see in the world all the time, versus they ran into my wall, knocked it down, and, hey, can you guys take care of it?

They don't have insurance, whatever the case may be. Right. That's a little bit different than when it's something that's, quote -unquote, made up.

Yeah, sure. Okay, so Oscar presents a couple of things here. First of all, when it comes to, like, say, for example, somebody's stolen something from you or they defrauded you or took whatever from you, the

Old Testament does give laws as to how you handle that kind of a crime, that kind of offense that has taken place.

The person who's stolen has to restore it plus extra. It's usually how that goes. So when a church is handling those matters among believers, we have an instruction that's given to us that we might hold or oblige the offender to do, to make restitution according to what the

Bible says that restitution should look like. The other thing that Oscar presents there is, like, what about if somebody just defames your character, what we might refer to as libel or slander in legalese, right?

If somebody is just saying something about you and making you look bad in front of other people, how are we handling that?

Are we taking those kinds of things to court? Are we confronting one another and coming to an understanding of one another according to what

God's Word says? How about on social media? Now, this is not a law court, but it sure is the court of public opinion, right?

Somebody says something bad about you on social media, and how do you respond? Do you try to mess that person up in front of everybody else and go, yeah, well, let me tell you something about them, and try to bring their character down the way that you feel like that they have brought you down?

And as Oscar was kind of pointing out, there's a lot of relativity there. Like, how much do you decide that this person actually tore you down, that you have to, you know, equal weights and measures, do the same thing to this other person?

How far do you go with that? Yes, sir? I think that you have to take into consideration what you want to get out of this.

Is this personal pride? Is somebody attached to you? Do they attach to your integrity?

I think that an integrity of a Christian ought to be forward enough where the people can understand whatever's been said has been said wrong on that street.

Absolutely, right. Jesus said that we need to turn the other cheek. Yeah. We need to sit down and figure out what we're trying to get out of this.

That's right. So even in that sort of a situation, if somebody makes a kind of comment about you online, turn the other cheek is the principle that we should apply even there.

What are we trying to get out of this? Are we in the midst of this conflict? Are we trying to honor the

Lord? Or am I just trying to vindicate myself in some way? Yes, Bill? What happens is a felony.

That's something you normally would contact. Yeah, you give that over to the state. Right, right, right.

Yeah. But let's just say you make the decision to do nothing. And then this person does the same thing somewhere else.

And the police find out and say, why didn't you file a complaint if this was a felony and get us involved?

Yeah, now the church is in trouble. Because they should have said something about it and they didn't say it. Yeah, so Bill is saying, what about felony?

We talked about that. I think I've brushed over that a little bit last week anyway. But if you're talking about a major crime, this is something that, again, in Romans 13, it is said to us,

God has given the authority to the government. He has established those governing authorities for that reason.

1 Peter 2, Romans 13, that the power of the sword has been given to the governing authorities.

They are supposed to praise that which is good and punish that which is evil. So if you're talking about a major crime, well, that's easy for us to handle in the church.

We turn that over to the governing authorities. If somebody commits a major crime or something like that. And then, and I gave this example back when we were in chapter 5, then the church still needs to decide what that person's standing is in the body of Christ.

Even though you've given it over to the governing authorities. Like you found out they murdered somebody. Or you found out they caused some sort of or committed some sort of sexual offense.

Or you found out that they have stolen and actually have a whole lot of money. And, well, that's pretty serious. We need to tell them about this crime that we know this person in our midst has done.

You might say to that person, we're going to give you an opportunity to turn yourself over to the authorities. And then if you don't do that, we're going to be contacting them.

But that's where it's still an obedience to the law of God. God has given that authority to the government that they would handle those kinds of cases.

The sword is not ours to wield, but rather it is given to the governing authorities.

And so they would be given over to those authorities. But then we, as the body of Christ, still need to decide what is their standing here in the church.

And even if that person ends up going to jail or going to prison, there might be a time in which they would be removed from the church.

They would be excommunicated, just as the instruction that's given in chapter 5. But if they are repentant, then we would want to restore them in a spirit of grace to the brotherhood of Christ, even if they're still in prison.

Do you believe that the grace of God could be demonstrated to a prisoner even to that degree?

Go ahead, Bill. That was what you were going to say. Yeah, right. Yeah. So even a person in prison could be restored to the body.

Yes, ma 'am. Yeah. Oh, yes.

Oh, I absolutely do that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So you pay for somebody to do work and they don't do the work or they do a bad job at the work.

Can we, as Christians, tell other people, hey, don't do business with that guy? Yes, I absolutely do that. Yeah. So I'll caution people on those kinds of things.

But what would be our responsibility as Christians to pay for or not pay for a job that wasn't done well?

And it just depends on what your agreement is. If you did have an agreement to pay for the work, even if the work was bad,

I would still encourage you to pay whatever your agreement is, you pay it, because otherwise he's going to come back and sue you.

And he's going to say, hey, you agreed to this money and now he's going to take you to court. And most likely, if you have it in some sort of contract or agreement, he's going to win, even if he didn't do the job well.

It doesn't look good for his business, but one way or the other, we as Christians need to be committed to those things that we've pledged to.

For as the Lord said, let your yes be yes and your no be no. If you've made arrangements, you had agreements ahead of time, then then fulfill those things.

I can tell you a story about Todd Friel, who is the founder of the organization

Wretched. He told me that when Wretched first got started, their first studio was actually on the

InTouch campus. InTouch is whose ministry? Does anybody know? Charles Stanley. Right.

So the very first studio that they had was there at Charles Stanley's campus,

First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. And Todd told me, you know, and he said it was amazing to us that they even let us have studio space because Charles Stanley's not a

Calvinist, but Todd is. And so he said, even even us Calvinists and some of the harsh things that we were saying.

And he said we were we were way more radical in the early days of Wretched than we are now. But yet they were still welcoming to us and gave us a studio and loved to have us.

And we felt like we were part of their ministry. He said watching them do ministry, watching

InTouch do ministry. And watching how gracious they were and the kind of integrity that they tried to maintain in the eyes of the world.

Todd said that was a real ministry to us. And he said, I'll give you an example of this.

He said InTouch had a lot of money. Charles Stanley's ministry had a lot of money and that money does help a lot of people.

That ministry was spread out far and wide. The gospel reached all over the globe. But yet whenever some sort of business or organization, whoever it might have been, was demanding of InTouch, you owe us money.

Even if they really did not have an actual claim to that money, InTouch just paid it.

Some worldly person unjustly was demanding of them money and saying we did this service for you or there's this law.

You'll see in the old westerns sometimes sheriff just makes up a new law.

People have to pay the money. It could be something like that. Somebody just makes something up. Now you owe us money for that.

InTouch would never fight it. They would just pay the money and they would continue right on doing ministry.

And by doing that, they demonstrated so much grace. They didn't try to be stingy with their money.

They were just freely giving with what the Lord had given to them because it's not ours anyway.

Ultimately it belongs to God. We're going to have to stand before God and give an account of that which was entrusted to us.

When it comes to this money, if the world demands it more than we love it, fine, they can have it because it belongs to them anyway.

It's got their faces on it. They can have it. But when it comes to what

God has given to us, we're going to be faithful in all of that. I remember

Todd sharing that with me and what kind of a ministry that was to him to see InTouch kind of behave that way even in the face of people in the world.

You're talking about unbelievers threatening to sue you and yet InTouch would just say, fine, here, have the money.

That's a perfect example of fulfilling that which Christ had said in Matthew 5.

If one smacks you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Now we come to this next section.

Let me make one more point before we move on from that. What is the most likely way that a brother or sister in the

Lord will take another brother or sister in the Lord to court? It's the most common way we see happen in America even today.

Divorce. Yep. We will take one another to court before unbelievers in divorce.

And how much do Paul's words resonate in that particular scenario to say, was there not somebody among you who could have helped these things out?

Brother goes to law against brother. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between brothers and sisters in the

Lord? Now, it's sad that in my experience as a pastor, a lot of times when husbands and wives come to me, that they're at the very end.

And they've got nowhere else that they need to go. Or they say, we've got nowhere else to go.

We've tried everything else. We can't seem to make this marriage work. We're coming to you. Most of the time when that happens, it's the last straw.

It's like this is it. I want to divorce this person. I can't handle them anymore. How much of that could have been prevented if they had come to somebody much, much sooner?

And it doesn't have to be a pastor. It can be a friend. Again, as Paul says here, is there not anyone among you wise enough to settle a dispute, even in a marriage?

And if we start those things early enough, we head off at the pass pretty early. Any of those things that could develop and balloon and become much bigger deals in which we go before the world then to have to dissolve a marriage.

Now, there are going to be situations where that has to happen, and there's not really much that we can do about it.

For example, you've got a situation where in a marriage, one of those partners has been incredibly unfaithful, and they just won't repent, and they won't do anything to try to repair the marriage.

They're just going to continue to go on and be rebellious. Now, there's differing opinions on this. Some would say that it should still not result in a divorce.

I just want to let you know I don't necessarily take that particular view. But in those kinds of situations, since the

United States government, for example, does acknowledge that this union that exists between these two people is legal, it's law -abiding according to the eyes of the government, then in those cases you have to go to court, and there's not really anything that you can do to avoid that.

But in most of these situations, especially in those situations that I've encountered as a pastor, these things have been preventable.

They were preventable long before if we would have sought help from the body of Christ to do that which is honoring of the

Lord, not trying to do what's best for me and so on and so forth, what I want out of this, but we honor

God and we honor one another. We love the Lord. We love each other. So now verses 9 through 11, and we're probably not going to get all the way through this here.

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Now, because I don't have the time left here to really do a proper exposition of this, let's save the exposition to next week, but let's keep these things in context with what we've just read and what we've studied today and last week as we've been here in chapter 6.

So notice here that some of the sins that Paul lists are sins that he's listed before, right?

We saw these things come up before. Look back up in chapter 5. Paul says in chapter 5, verse 9,

I wrote to you in my letter, talking about the previous letter before 1 Corinthians, of course we don't have record of that, but he says,

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or what else?

The greedy, the swindlers, the idolaters, since you would need to go out of the world.

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of what?

Sexual immorality, or greed, or is an idolater, a reviler, a drunkard, or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one, for what have

I to do with judging outsiders? So Paul is saying, this is the behavior of outsiders.

This is what you expect of people who are outside of the church. This is exactly the way that they behave.

They're sexually immoral, they're greedy, they're drunkards, they're revilers, they're swindlers. That should not surprise you when people who are outside of the church act like that.

But how are we who are inside the church supposed to act? Not like that. So when there is a brother, when there's a professing brother or sister in the

Lord who acts like that, when it comes to the kind of judgment, the kind of discipline that Paul has said to the church that they are to exercise, he says to them, don't even eat with such a one.

And that person is evil and there to be purged from your midst. Now, as I said previously, when we were in chapter five, it says in Galatians chapter six that we should correct one another, but keep watch on yourselves lest you too be tempted.

And in 2 Thessalonians chapter three, do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.

So even if it comes to excommunication, that is not to say you are not a Christian at all, but it is rather to test and see is the

Holy Spirit of God actually in you? Will you be convicted over this sin? And will you repent?

And we're not regarding you as our enemy, we're warning you as a brother so that you would turn from your sin back to the

Lord Christ. You would be restored in grace even to this body and the grace of God is demonstrated among us.

But we are not to behave in such a way that it could be said of us that there are any of these vices in our midst.

There is not to be sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, men who practice homosexuality, thievery, greed, drunkenness, reviling or swindling, cheating one another.

We come right back up to the defrauding one another as Paul had laid out in verses one through eight. These things are not to be in our midst.

Same list of vices that Paul had given previously in chapter five, but now he gives them again and expounds upon them a little bit.

It's actually two sets of five. So we have sexual immorality that's been expounded out and explained as sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, men who practice homosexuality.

There's actually two words there for that. I'll explain that next week. And then five more vices in verse 10, thievery, greed, drunkenness, reviling and swindling.

So you have 10 vices split into two categories of five, sexual immorality and then the list of other vices.

And Paul says this to the Corinthians, such were some of you.

Now you were that, you used to live in that. Before you became a Christian, this is the way that you were.

But also note that he says such were, how many of you? Some of you, which means there's some of you that haven't yet repented of this.

Hence why back up in chapter five, purge the evil person from among you. Such were some of you, but you were what?

You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So let me bring this home back to what we just read in verses one through eight.

What does it mean to be justified? Can you tell me what it means to be justified?

Yeah, we're clean, we're innocent before God. God declares us innocent. Are you guilty? You were until God declares you innocent.

Like there's no reason to be justified if you weren't guilty of anything. It is only the guilty who come to Christ and seek forgiveness who are justified.

So all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God as it says in Romans 3 .23, next verse, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by faith.

Now one way to remember this, I hear pastors do this every once in a while, one way to remember what justified means to be declared innocent is right there in the word.

Justified, it's just if I'd never done it. So there's your definition of justified.

Now that's cute and it works, helps us to remember the definition of justification, but the reality of it is we did do it.

We did it. We sinned, we rebelled against God, what we deserve for that?

Death, judgment, eternal separation, the wrath of God forever in hell, that's what we deserve.

But God was gracious toward us and didn't leave us dead in our sins, didn't leave us under that sentence and condemnation of death, but he gave his son to die for us so that whoever believes in him will not perish, but we will be justified and we will be declared innocent in the presence of God.

In the heavenly registry, there are no sins held against us, they are paid by Christ.

Tetelestai, it is finished, paid in full.

Now that's important here because Paul is saying to the Corinthians, you have been declared innocent in the court of our heavenly

God. So why are you treating one another as guilty and taking each other to human courts to be tried by them?

That's the context. Now we lose that context sometimes though, we lose that context why?

Because we like to take verses 9 through 11 and we like to make them the anti -homosexual verses.

Now indeed, these verses say homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So when it comes to having to teach that to somebody, this is a great passage to use. But don't lose the context, don't lose the reason why

Paul has said that. It's because this is the way the world is, but you've been pulled out of the world and you are not to look like them.

If you are washed and you are sanctified and you are justified, look like it and live like it in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. Now this, verses 9 through 11, these are hinged passages.

What do I mean by a hinged passage? Because we're going from the lawsuits among believers into the next part, verses 12 through 20, which is about sexual immorality.

And Paul is going to get very individual here. Each one of you are individual bodies and each individual body, as a follower of Jesus Christ, is the temple of the

Holy Spirit. So do not give that which is the temple of the Holy Spirit over to sexual immorality.

And that's what we're going to consider next week. So these hinged verses right here, verses 9 through 11, perfectly in context with what we just read about lawsuits among believers and it's also in the context of where we're going next and that's with regards to living in purity and not being subject to sexual immorality.

That's where we're going to finish today and we'll pick up there next week. Okay, I do have one minute left, so let me close with prayer and we'll be dismissed.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for the time that we've spent in your word and I pray that you continue to work these things in our hearts.

May we be convicted to check ourselves in light of your word.

It's easy for us to want to be everybody else's judges. That's certainly the easy thing to do. But we need to examine ourselves according to what is said in the word.

As James says in James 1, that the word of the Lord is like a mirror. And if we look into God's word and yet we walk away and we don't do what it says, we're like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and walks away and forgets what he looks like.

So let us not just be hearers of the word that we have considered today, but let us be doers of these things also.

And if we have been washed clean by the precious blood of Jesus, let us walk clean as followers of him.

It is in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. Thank you and go with the Lord. Amen.