WWUTT 1503 Do Not Be Deceived (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) Part 3

The Apostle Paul said to the church in Corinth, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Don't become as those who will not receive God's kingdom. When we understand the text.

This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the word of Christ for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

The Vice List in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Thank you, Becky. We're back to our study in First Corinthians chapter six, verses nine through 11. This is part three of our exposition of this section. And once again, making you aware of the subject matter, I will be discussing sexual immorality.

We'll go on to looking at what is said in verses 10 and 11 as well, but still talking about the sexual immorality mentioned in verse nine. I will be reverent in the way that I address this subject, but still making you aware of the topic.

Let's begin by reading in verses nine through 11 from the Legacy Standard Bible. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. 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 effeminate, nor homosexuals, 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, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. So we come back again to verse nine. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

And here we have listed in verses nine and 10, those who are unrighteous. And you might even consider this an expansion of the list that Paul gave in chapter five. He said in verse 11, but now I am writing to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person.

And we have sexual immorality mentioned here in verse nine. Or if he is greedy, and we have greed mentioned in verse 10 of chapter six. If he is an idolater, we have idolatry mentioned in chapter six, verse nine.

Or if he is a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler, those things are mentioned as well. We have drunkards mentioned in verse 10. But there is a few more added to this vice list when you come to chapter six, verses nine and 10.

So if you have brothers among you, you have people in your church, they're calling themselves a brother or a sister in the Lord, but they engage in these things. They're to be put out from your midst.

And in fact, in the way that Paul mentions the severity of these sins and how public they are, you're to go straight to excommunication. This is not just a matter of one brother having a disagreement with another brother, or one brother has sinned against another brother.

This is public sin. This is something that they are engaging in that might even be outside the church. So therefore, they're to be excommunicated from the church. That's what Paul had laid out in chapter five.

We get to chapter six, and we have brothers are taking one another to court. And so Paul confronts that matter, verses one through eight, and rebukes the church for placing unbelievers as judges over believers, who are going to judge even angels in the very end.

So why would we subject ourselves to the judgment of persons who have no standing in the church, the church which is eternal, that will be reigning with Christ forever? Do you not know who the unrighteous are?

That's kind of what Paul is asking in verse nine. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Who are the unrighteous? What are they guilty of? And then he mentions that in verses 10 and 11, prefacing it with saying, do not be deceived.

Do not be okay with these sins. Even if you are not among these who are listed here on this list, in this vice list, don't be tolerant of it. Do not let it be in your midst, in your church. Don't partner with it.

Don't be associated with it. As Paul will say in his next letter to the Corinthians, in second Corinthians, he says, don't be yoked together with unbelievers. So almost as if he has to issue to them the same rebuke, don't be aligned with them.

Don't be deceived by these sins. Do not be deceived into thinking that any of this is okay, because neither the sexually immoral, nor the idolaters, nor the adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor the homosexuals.

So there's our sexual immorality listed there. We went through most of that yesterday. Now again, the NASB and the LSB, the New American Standard and the Legacy Standard Bibles, translate this out as the effeminate and the homosexual.

So nor the effeminate, nor the homosexual will inherit the kingdom of God. The ESV, the English Standard Version, and the NIV, New International, just lump those two together as men who practice homosexuality.

Now because those two translations have come out that way, and this is not on the translator, you can listen to my argument yesterday to hear why it comes out two different ways between these four translations.

So what I'm about to say here is not on the translator, but there are some who look at those two translations, the ESV and the NIV, and what they conclude is that as long as a person is not engaging in a homosexual act, they're therefore not guilty of homosexuality.

They're not themselves homosexuals. And so as the argument goes, you can have an orientation. You might have a desire or a same-sex attraction, right? You've heard that term before, surely. So you have the desire for same-sex interaction, but as long as you don't give in to it, then you're not sinning.

And I wanna push back on that because of what Paul says to the Colossians in Colossians 3, verses five and six. So by this argument, I wanna say to you, listener, do not be deceived. Do not be deceived into thinking that as long as you don't do the act, then you're not in sin.

Because Jesus said in Matthew 5, he rebuked the Pharisees for saying, hey, as long as I don't commit adultery, I'm fine. And Jesus said, well, if you've even lusted after a woman in your heart, you've committed adultery with her in your heart.

So it starts in the heart. It's a heart matter first, before it becomes something that you do on the outside. So Jesus confronted this in the Sermon on the Mount. Paul says in Colossians 3, verses five and six, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you?

Sexual immorality? We start with that again, right at the beginning of the vice list. Impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, on account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

All of those things that are listed there in verse five are sexually immoral sins. Because as Paul goes on, he mentions other sins that are not the same as what he mentioned in verse five. So in verse seven, he says, in these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. There's a different set of sins there in Colossians 3 .8. So consider what is said in Colossians 3 .5. Put to death the sins, what is earthly in you, the passions of your flesh, sexual immorality, impurity.

So now you're still talking, and Paul is gonna confront this as we go on in 1 Corinthians 6. He's gonna confront impurity here as well. Passion, evil desire, and covetousness. So we begin with sexual immorality, and that would be anything that would be practiced, again, sex that's outside of marriage.

Any sex that is outside of what God intended sex to be. Enjoyed between a husband and his wife. Any other kind of sex is sexually immoral. But then what you have after that are sins committed with the mind.

So sexual immorality covers that which is committed with the body, but then Paul confronts the mind. Impurity, that could be body and mind. Passion, that's just mind. Evil desire, we're talking just what comes from the heart of a person.

And covetousness, see that's the sin on the list of the 10 commandments that deals directly with the heart. All the rest of the nine would be external sins. Like you could see, you could observe somebody committing those sins.

Covetousness is the one sin on the list of the 10 commandments. Thou shalt not covet, the 10th commandment. That's the one that you cannot look at a person and see, oh, he's coveting. I mean, certainly a person can do some things that can demonstrate covetousness, but you would not be able to know just looking at a person that there's coveting going on there.

So that's the one that deals with a heart issue. A person desires something other than what God has for them. They want something else. God is not enough, and what he's given to me is not enough. I need this other thing in order to be satisfied, and they've essentially made that thing God.

And so covetousness deals directly with the heart. And as it's lumped in here with all these other sexual sins, covetousness is mentioned as idolatry because it's worshiping something other than God. It's placing above God a value on something else, valuing something above God.

If I could just have that thing, I would be satisfied. I'm not satisfied enough with God. I have to have this other thing as well. That's coveting, and that's idolatry for it's positioning something higher than God.

And again, as it's listed among sexual sins here, it goes right to the heart of sexual immorality, literally, going, or spiritually, you could say it that way, going right to the heart of the sexual immorality.

It's coveting. It's desiring something that God does not desire for you. And if you desire that which God does not desire, you are sinning. God does not desire any of his creatures made in his image to engage in same-sex acts, same-sex fornication, lust, impurity, homosexuality, whether that's lesbianism, whether that's sodomy, you even lump in everything, all the perversions on the list of the LGBTQ acrostic, okay, all of those letters and what they represent all falls under the category of sexual immorality and therefore also homosexuality.

All of these things are an abomination to God, and even to desire those things incurs the judgment of God. You may not be engaging in the act itself, but you want it, you desire it, so to desire what God does not desire for you is itself sin.

Do not give in to the teaching, the false teaching that claims you can't change anything about your orientation. You've prayed about it. God hasn't changed anything about your desires. Therefore, just accept who you are, and as long as you don't give in to it, then you're just fine.

No, because you're basically giving a person permission to lust at that point. It's okay for you to lust as long as you don't do it, and if you have that desire in your heart, you've prayed that God would change it, and he doesn't change it, well, just accept that it's fine, it's natural, it's who God created you to be, just don't give in to it in sin.

No, you're giving them permission to sin because you're giving them permission to desire that which God says no is wrong, it's sin. Don't ever desire sin. That's covetousness and therefore idolatry. Are you still alive?

If you're listening to this, the answer's yes. If you can still hear my voice and hear this podcast, you're still alive, right? So you can still be praying for God to change your desires, to reorient your desires, to be not of the things of this world, but to be of Christ.

Put to death what is earthly in you. Again, Paul says in Colossians 3, 5, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry, even those desires, put them to death because on account of these, even the desires, the wrath of God is coming.

Desire Christ. Don't be comfortable with desires of the flesh. Desire more than anything, the things of Christ. It's really quite distressing, the number of Christian ministries out there that are giving permission to same-sex attraction and saying that there's nothing wrong with same-sex attraction when scripture clearly says, yes, there is.

It is sin. And if you desire to be like Christ and have the mind of Christ, then don't be okay with those desires. Seek Christ, ask God to change your mind and your heart. And he says in Ezekiel 36, a new heart will I give you and my spirit I will put within you.

Jesus said to Nicodemus in John 3, to enter the kingdom of God, you must be born again. Be born again in Christ. Be a slave to righteousness and not to unrighteousness. So that's 1 Corinthians 6, 9. As we finish those things up there, do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals.

Not the giver or the receiver in a homosexual act is basically what's being said there. In the culture in that particular time, apparently there was something different about a man who was effeminate, about a man who was a recipient of a homosexual act versus the one who actually gave it.

The effeminate man was even lower than the giver, but nevertheless, they are both sins that God will judge. He will judge with fire, just as he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus said in Luke 17, 32, he told his disciples, remember Lot's wife.

What did Lot's wife do? As Sodom burned with the judgment and fire of God, she looked back. She disobeyed what was said to her not to look back. She looked back at Sodom and was turned into a pillar of salt because her looking back represented in her heart that she desired the things that God has said that he would judge.

And even in her midst, right there in her very presence was judging these things with fire. And she looked at it because she still wanted the things of Sodom more than the salvation of God. Do not desire these earthly passions, my friends.

And that's what Paul is saying to the church in Corinth. Don't be deceived. Don't be led astray by these things. Don't desire these things. Those who do them will not inherit the kingdom of God, not even thieves, those who steal from others, not even the greedy, those who long for and pine for what other people have.

You have covetousness that's talked about there with regards to greed, nor drunkards, those who subject their minds and hearts to debauchery. They're filled with wine. They get drunk for a time. As Paul said to the Ephesians in Ephesians chapter five, do not be filled with wine, which leads to drunkenness and debauchery, but be filled instead with the Holy Spirit.

Be filled with those things that are eternal, not with those things that are temporary and never ultimately satisfy anyway. Leave you feeling worse at the end of that trip than when you started it. But with Christ, with the Holy Spirit, we have satisfaction eternally and we'll be fully satisfied in God now and forever.

Remember the beginning of Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, or as it is in the legacy standard Bible, because this is the true translation from the Hebrew, Yahweh is my shepherd. I shall not, what? I shall not what?

I shall not want. I shall not be in want. I don't need anything else because Yahweh is my shepherd. I am fully satisfied in Christ. The revilers, those who hate one another, who spread malice and deceit, slander and gossip, who want to cut other people down, who envy each other, revilers, those who are filled with wrath against each other, not even swindlers, those who cheat one another, lie to each other for money, these will not inherit the kingdom of God.

All of these things that have been mentioned here on this vice list, verses nine and 10, these are all fleshly desires. They're all worldly things. They're all things that long for the stuff of this world and not for the kingdom of God.

If you don't want the kingdom of God, fine. Then what you get is the wrath and judgment of God. Such were some of you, Paul says in verse 11. Now, it's interesting here that he says, and such were some of you, because some of them there were still of these things, namely, the people that Paul mentioned from chapter five, verse one, through chapter six, verse eight.

You have sexually immoral that are mentioned in there. You have those who are greedy and are swindlers. They're thieving. They're even robbing from each other and taking one another to court over that which doesn't even really belong to you anyway.

These will not inherit the kingdom of God. If they do not repent, they show themselves to be of the world and not of Christ. So Paul says, such were some of you. You were these things. And this certainly is the case with everybody there in Corinth.

At some point, they were exactly what is listed there in verses nine and 10. But those who have been called out from the world and have actually put away worldliness and put on Christ, you were washed.

You were sanctified and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God. You are washed, symbolizing baptism. So you were even baptized, showing that you are buried with Christ in your sins and risen again to new life.

Paul has talked about baptism here with the Corinthians. Has he not? That's come previously in the letter. So you're seeing an order of things that Paul has addressed already with the Corinthians here in this letter up through chapter six.

You were washed. You were baptized. You were sanctified. You are being grown in righteousness. You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. You have been declared innocent by Christ.

So therefore live in that way as ones who used to be part of this world. You used to be part of this fallen kingdom which is coming into judgment, but now you are part of the kingdom of God. So live as kingdom citizens of God.

Washed, no longer walking in immorality, but live in holiness, live in purity. And that's where Paul's gonna go next here in chapter six. There were things that the Corinthians were saying among themselves, like all things are lawful for me.

I'm a Christian now, so all things are lawful for me. Well, that's true, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. So you may say all things are lawful for me, but if you're still being mastered by sexual desire and drunkenness and some of those things, well, you cannot say those things are lawful because God has said they are not of his law and people who are of his kingdom will therefore follow the law of the kingdom.

You love God and you love one another. If you are not doing these things, well, you're not of the kingdom of God. You're of the kingdom of this world that is coming to judgment, aren't you? If you've been justified, if you've been sanctified, if you're washed, then live as those who have been brought from death to life in Christ Jesus.

No longer walk in these sins, but walk in Christ. Amen, my brethren? Desire Christ. That's my desire for you, that you would desire Christ above all things. We'll pick up in our study of 1 Corinthians 6, beginning in verse 12, God willing, on Monday.

Prayer for Purity and a Pure Bride

Heavenly Father, thank you for this word today and teach us to be those who desire to live pure lives, upright, godly in this present age, looking to Jesus who is the author and the perfecter of our faith.

Let us not be deceived. Let us not tolerate the things of this world and certainly not let those things into the church, but we desire to be pure and we want the bride of Christ to be pure and kept until the day of glory.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus, we pray in his name, amen.

Show Wrap-Up and Weekly Schedule

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hutes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study When We Understand the Text.