1 Corinthians 6 (Part 1)

1 Corinthians chapter 6, it goes like this.

We're going to stop right there. Let's pray. Jesus, open our hearts. Allow the ministry of Your Word to go deep within us. Lord let us see here today what needs to be heard from the Scriptures. Just as You taught the Corinthians so many years ago through the Apostle Paul, You continue to teach us through the eternal, timeless Word of God. Speak to us we pray, Lord God, we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen. I don't know how many of you have ever thought about how cool it would be to be part of the early church and think, wow wouldn't that have been great? Those people were just amazing. That was an amazing time. Just read 1 Corinthians, that'll cure you of that. They were dealing with the same issues, the same challenges, the same problems that we deal with today. In fact, in some cases, even more so. Paul had obviously gotten word of the existence of lawsuits between believers, and you can tell by just reading this that he's horrified at the idea of such a thing existing. And it begins here in verse 1 by saying, “when one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints?” You'll notice here that Paul doesn't deny the need for settling differences. This has been around as long as people have been around. We've needed mediation from time to time. When the nation of Israel was going through the wilderness, Moses himself was basically trying to resolve all of the differences that were coming up among the people of Israel. You'll remember it was his father-in-law who saw him doing that from morning to night and pulled him aside afterwards and said, dude, what are you doing? You're going to kill yourself. You need to raise up some leaders to help in this process, and Moses thought that to be good advice and did that very thing. But this has been going on a long time, just the need and the kings of Israel. Do you know that the Book of Judges? We think of the judges, when you read through the Book of Judges, we think of those guys as deliverers, but it’s not the book of deliverers, it's the Book of Judges. Primarily the function that those men, and in one case a woman, actually did for Israel is that they judged cases. They were the court. People would come to them and have their issues resolved when there was an issue between people, and so this is nothing new. But what Paul can't understand about what's going on is how the believers are going about resolving their differences and notice the strong question that he asks. Do you dare to go before the unrighteous? Do you dare to take your issues into a secular court? Now, please understand, when Paul is talking here about grievances between brothers, he's talking about what would probably be, to you and I something equivalent to small claims court alright? He's not talking about crimes against the state or against the federal government, in which case the state and the federal government gets involved trying a case. It's actually not brother against brother, individual against individual, it's maybe the state doing the prosecuting, or at least attempting to against someone or some group or whatever. That's not what Paul is talking about. There are other passages in the Word, such as in Romans, that very much lead us to believe that God ordained governments to punish wrongdoers, and Paul talks in the end of Romans about how that's a good thing. But we're talking about grievances, issues between individuals and you can understand how something like this would come about, I suppose. You’ve got a home builder over here and you’ve got a carpenter craftsman who's doing something and they contract together to work together, and maybe one of them says to the other one, hey you didn't do what I told you to do, and the other, the next guy says, well, you weren't very clear in your instructions and I'm sorry it wasn't done the way you wanted it, but I've spent money and time doing this so I need my money. And the first guy says, I'm not paying you a cent until you do the job right. Who's going to resolve that issue? I mean, those sorts of things come up. They still come up today, and so somebody's got to resolve the thing, or the men are going to come to blows, and what was happening here is we had two believers living in Corinth who couldn't resolve their issues and so, they went to court to settle it there. And you might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute, what's wrong with that? Isn't that what the court system is for? Well, fundamentally, yeah but first of all, there's some things that you might not know about the way the ancient court system ran. First of all, in Gentile nations, at that time, Greek related, oriented cities, the court for these kinds of personal litigations was found in the marketplace. That wasn't a Jewish thing. The Jews did things at the city gate, but this isn't a Jewish city. This is a Greek city, and so it was in the marketplace. And what that means is, it's basically done out where everybody can see it, hear it and know about it, and you might be interested to find out that back in those days, the Greeks considered litigation to be a form of entertainment. And you thought the people's court did that first. It's been going on for a long time, like Solomon said, there's nothing new under the sun. All this is happening in such a way that the whole town is witnessing these squabbles, and in this case, it's involving two men who claim to be followers of Jesus, but because they couldn't solve their problem they're suing one another in open court. And you can see what's going on here, and if you can't, if you're still wondering, what the problem is that this behavior is contrary to what Jesus said ought to characterize our lives. It's contrary to how we're supposed to treat one another. It's contrary to how we're supposed to view one another. Let me put a passage up on the screen for you from John chapter 13. Look at this. This is Jesus speaking here, and he says,

Well, what are they going to think if they see your litigation against one another? And again, we're talking about brother against brother. Brother against sister. I mean, women probably didn't go to court, probably couldn't go to court back then, but they certainly can today. You've come a long way, baby. And now it can easily happen between woman and woman, woman and man, whatever, and what exactly are we showing the world by this? We're showing a witness that is essentially ruined by this public display of infighting and that's just the first problem that Paul saw with this sort of a thing, was the destruction of their witness. But I want you to see what Paul is suggesting here in verse 1. Let's read it one more time as an alternate course of action. Look at verse 1 again. “When one of you has a grievance against one another or against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous?” And then these last few words, look at this. “Instead of the saints.” Notice that. He says, why don't you take it instead in front of the saints? He's not, he said, well, where do we find some saints? Well, if you're from a Roman Catholic background, you can't because they're all dead. In fact, that's a prerequisite to being a saint. You have to be dead and that doesn't help much. Talking to dead people doesn't work very well at all. Fact of the matter is, there's nothing in the Bible that says that saints are dead, in fact, saints are very much alive. In fact, the Bible says, if you are a born-again Christian, you are a saint. How's that for a shocker? We're all saints. What he's saying is, isn't there somebody in the church that you could bring this thing before and have them make a decision, render a decision, related to your grievance, whatever it might be?

And Paul is recommending what we know today as Christian mediation. I don't know, you may have opinions about this, but it's basically the idea that instead of turning to secular courts, if your grievance is against a fellow believer, you decide to allow the leaders, well it doesn't even really have to be leaders, it could be anyone. You just basically make an agreement with the individual to say, we're going to allow somebody or group of people in the body of Christ to judge this case based on its merits and we're going to allow them to render a decision, and we're going to abide by that decision without complaining. There's a tough one. But that's what Christian mediation basically is, and the first benefit is basically that it keeps our squabbles out of the courts for all to see. It protects our witness as people who ought to care about one another, ought to be concerned about our brothers and sisters in Christ who are family. Even when you see a court case today among family members, don't you just don't you just grieve? It's like wow, here's a well, husbands and wives do it all the time and divorce court I suppose, and then there's all kinds of other issues that go on potentially between family members, and when it's a family against a family you're like wow, what brought you to this point? And that, that is basically the way Paul saw any litigation between believers. You guys are family. You're supposed to care about each other, but you're suing each other. What is this? What exactly is going on here? The first benefit is keeping that whole picture out of the court, but the second benefit of bringing it before believers rather than the secular court system is that you know, or at least you get to know, that the people who are deciding your case are going to apply not just the law of the land, but the wisdom of God. And I’ve got news for you, the wisdom of God trumps the wisdom of man. The Law of God, the guidelines of God trump the law and the guidelines of man. There are some things that in man's court, it's just they just don't know. It's like, how are you going to do this? I've been on jury duty several times, sat on a couple of cases. You don't always get to sit on a jury when you go to jury duty, but I have and I enjoy it a little bit, but anyway, that's another thing. But I've always hated cases where it's one person's word against another, and of course the whole court case thing is predicated upon the idea that they're going to bring evidence that corroborates one side or the other so that it isn't just one person's word against another. Although in civil cases, that is many times just exactly what you have to deal with, I mean, that's all you have to deal with, and you have to base your, render decision based on the preponderance of evidence, whatever that's supposed to be. In God’s Word, you know what it says? It says, “let every matter be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” That's God's wisdom. In other words, what he says is if it's one person's word against another, you're stuck. I mean, unless God steps into the situation and reveals some sense of direction, but see, man doesn't necessarily abide by God's rules and man will throw, they'll throw you into court as a jury, to render a case where it's just one person's word against another and you've got to just do your best. The Bible says that Solomon once faced a decision very much like that where there were two women, each of them had a baby very close to one another, and you guys remember the story. One of the women during the night was sleeping in bed with her child, rolled over on the child, suffocated the baby, but woke up first, noticed that her baby was dead and walked over and exchanged her baby for the other woman's baby who was also sleeping with her child, and then in the morning when the woman who got up, found a baby next to her dead, and realized eventually this is not my child. But of course, the other woman who had replaced the dead baby with the live one said no yeah, it is so that's your baby. Well now, what do you got? You got a she-said, she-said situation where there were no other witnesses, and you'll remember how God gave Solomon very unique wisdom to be able to deal with that issue in a way that the courts just simply can't do. So that's one of the benefits of Christian mediation, that they're going to be applying the wisdom of God, the principles of God’s Word, and so forth and it's just, I mean, a lot of our law, don't get me wrong, is based on Christian values anyway, but there's a whole lot that is ignored. But the apostle goes on to speak of another reason why going to the world for judgment is untenable. Look at verse 2. He says, “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?” Now, just please understand here. When Paul talks about the believers judging the world, he isn't talking about us judging the world now. Do you guys remember we ended the last chapter by Paul saying, it's not my job to judge those outside the Church. You remember that? And I made a big deal of it, how we as the Church have gotten off and we have been judgmental and condemning to the world and how that's not our role.

--- Well, Paul's looking at the future and he's saying there is coming a time when the believers, saints, will judge the world and he's not talking about final judgment here. He's not saying that you and I are going to sit on thrones and we're going to say, you to the fiery pit. It's not what he's saying. That's not the judgment that we render. Remember, judgment means to render a decision. Paul is referring to the Millennial Kingdom, the 1,000-year reign of Christ on the earth, where Jesus is going to judge the world for that 1,000-year period. That doesn't mean judgment day goes on for a 1,000 days. Again, judging here refers to he's going to be the court. Jesus is going to be the court. He's going to be the Supreme Court. But guess what? We're going to be judges under him during the Millennial Kingdom. That's what Paul's talking about. He says, do you not know during the Millennial Kingdom, we are going to help Him judge the world during that time. And so, he says, and if you're going to be doing that, aren't you competent to try trivial cases? Well, wow, Paul, what are you calling trivial? We never think anything of ours as trivial. In the scope of eternity though, that's what Paul's looking at. Now, Paul's talking here about what we should be able to do today, and he's bringing it up because this whole process by which they were resolving their problems was a glaring inconsistency of who they are in Christ, and in verse three, Paul goes on to ask yet another question. “Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than the matters pertaining to this life?” And Paul asks this question, like we know the answer. He says, do you not know that we're going to judge angels? And we're all like, huh? Honestly, there's really nothing else in the Word. Paul had obviously talked to the Corinthians about this, I guess because he talks to them like they should have known. But you know what? We really don't know anything necessarily about this. How are we going to judge angels? I don't know. And by the way, by angels, he's talking about fallen angels. All we know is somehow, some way the Bride of Christ is going to be involved in the process of rendering decisions for those evil minions of Satan, and how, when exactly, to what degree, we'll have to just stay tuned and see what happens here. But Paul goes back to his point in verse 4. He says, “So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? 5 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.” ---

And when he says wise enough, he means understanding the wisdom of the Word. We're not talking about worldly wisdom. It's not like a church would say, well, yeah, we got a guy here in the church, he's actually a secular judge. He's wise enough. Not necessarily. Wisdom. We're talking people who know how to apply the wisdom of God right? Not just the wisdom of the world. We're not talking about having Judge Judy get saved and do the same thing in the Church that she's doing on the bench. That's not what we're referring to. The wisdom we're referring to is the wisdom to apply God's Word and so forth, and notice he talks about the damage that goes on. Notice that phrase, he says, look at verse 6 with me again, “but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?” Can you notice, just hear the incredulous attitude and that before unbelievers. You guys are doing this in front of the world, and he's horrified by this because instead of showing the world a community of faith that has been transformed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and our union with Him and one another, instead we're acting like selfish, greedy children who will stop at nothing to have our way. I want my way. And that's why Paul makes the statement that he does in verse 7. Look at this. This is a very sobering statement. He says, “To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you.” Those of you who have an NIV on your lap, your verse is a little more punchy. It goes like this, “The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you've been completely defeated already.” Wow! I mean, the intent of that statement is obviously very strong, and Paul, make no mistake about it, considered litigation between believers an admission of defeat, a sign of defeat. And if you don't agree with him, then he'd probably say the same thing to you. You've already been defeated. You see, you have to understand the passion of this man, the apostle Paul. He considered the integrity of the Gospel message to be paramount. The integrity of the message that we share to the world, he considered it to be the most important thing, and that integrity, you guys, is seen in our lives. It's seen in how we treat one another, how we respond to one another, how we forgive one another. That shows the world the veracity and power of the Gospel that we purport to proclaim in front of people. I'm a Christian. Really? What's that mean? Well, I'll get back to you in a minute. I've got to get to court because I'm suing the pants off my brother. But I'll get back to you on that Gospel thing. We'll talk about it. You'll like it. Gospel is a great thing. Hang on a minute though, this jerk crossed me and I'm going to get mine from him, so as soon as I'm finished though, we'll get back and talk about the Gospel. Okay. Do you guys see the inconsistency, the problem with that? And that's what Paul is trying to bring out. He's saying, our lives are a direct reflection of the Gospel and what people are potentially looking at, and Paul was willing to sacrifice for the Gospel. He was willing to sacrifice for the integrity of the Gospel. Do you know one of the reasons why when Paul went into a new area when he planted a church, one of the reasons he didn't take money from the local people was he wanted to protect the integrity of the Gospel, because there were charlatans even back then who went from town to town preaching just so they could fill their money bags. Paul talks to Timothy about those who even considered the Gospel as a means to financial gain. Well, Paul didn't want anyone assuming that was the case with him, so when he came to a new area, he would allow churches from other areas to support him, but he would not allow the local people to support him. He worked, he worked with his hands day and night as a tent maker and then preached and ministered to the people at any opportunity that he got other than that, to protect the integrity of the Gospel. That was very, very important to the apostle Paul and in the same manner, whatever threatened that integrity, such as believers fighting against one another in open court, Paul saw that as an unwillingness to put God first and to put the Gospel in the place that it needed to be right? We're in the middle of verse 7, and Paul has a very penetrating question that he's going to ask them. Look at this. He says, “…Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not just rather be defrauded?” Why not? Why not do that? Why not just, in other words, why don't you just let people cheat you? What are you so afraid of? Let them cheat you. Let them take it. They want that? Let them have it. See, that was Paul's heart. Let it go. Let it go. Just, is that more important than the integrity of the Gospel? When you take a brother or sister to court, you are communicating in no uncertain terms that this case and what it involves is more important than the eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what you're saying, make no mistake about it. That's what Paul is saying when he says, why not just rather forget it, let them roll over you. That's called sacrifice, and Paul was willing. You want this? You can have it. You think this is yours? Fine. It's yours. I don't care. My God is my provider. He's able to take care of me. I'm not going to worry about that situation. But we do worry about those situations, and we can't let go those situations, can we? We just can't most of the time. Somebody wants my property, are you kidding me? I've worked hard for this. Never mind as Christians, we recognize that God is our provider. Oh yeah, that's right. We say that, but we don't really believe it. We believe I worked for it, and I have a right to it. And you want to know why we can't give it up when somebody has a dispute with us? It's basically because of what Jesus expressed in Matthew chapter 6. Let me put this one up on the screen. Mathew 6:21 (ESV)

…where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. That's why we can't give it up, because it's our treasure, and we can't give away our treasure any more than we can give away our heart. It would kill us. It would just kill me, and that's why we staunchly defend our money, and our rights, and our property because that's where our treasure lies, and it proves undeniably that this world and its treasures are what we are living for, what we're protecting at all costs. You can't have my stuff, right? And that's why Paul says that the presence of lawsuits proves that we have already been overcome by the lure of the world. We've already been, we've already been consumed by junk and stuff, goods, and as a result, Paul then goes on to say in verse 8, he says, “But (instead) you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!” Even your family members. You see, this whole argument is predicated, as we've said, upon the idea that the Corinthians really had no working understanding of what it means to be the Body of Christ. Paul knew and understood, and he was trying to communicate to them, that means we're family, but they weren't getting it. They missed all that, and it was a sad demonstration, frankly, of what is really important in their lives. And in a further attempt to get them to understand the depth of this matter, Paul says in verse 9, look in your Bible there. He says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived:” And then he gives this laundry list of sins, which is by no means comprehensive, but he says, “neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” Let me, can I paraphrase this for you for just a moment? I mean, if I may be so bold as to give you the intent of Paul's message here. He's saying, listen, the very people who are rendering judgments for you in the secular courts, the very people you are going to, to get a judgment on your grievances, grievance between brother and brother or brother and sister or sister and sister, those are the people that God has rejected in His eternal kingdom because they were unwilling to turn from their sin and come to the cross of Jesus Christ for forgiveness, and because of that, those people have been rejected. They're outside the kingdom of God. and because they are rejected under God's, because of their refusal to accept God's forgiveness, they are themselves under judgment, and you're going to them for judgment. Those who are under judgment, you go to them to get a judgment, and he's showing the inconsistency of the matter. The point of Paul listing all those sinful actions is to jolt the Corinthians into seeing that they're acting no less sinfully than all the people who aren't inheriting the kingdom of God. He's, and Paul would do this from time to time. He would say, you know sinning doesn't cause you to lose your salvation, but it sure makes you look like those who aren't saved to the point where you can't even tell you guys apart. That's a problem. Furthermore, for believers to act just like the world is to take on a very dangerous frame of mind. And then Paul reminds them of their salvation. Look what he says in verse 11 after giving this really fairly horrific laundry list of activities and sinful behaviors. In verse 11 he says, “And such were some of you…” In other words, this is the kind of lives you guys lived before you came to Jesus. You guys were in this list: adulterers, idolaters and on and on. You guys were this, you were this. But then he reminds them, look at what he goes on to say. “…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.” Boy, this is something every born-again believer needs to hear from time to time, and especially, especially, when we are tempted to give in to our sinful nature and do things that we know we shouldn't do. We need to hear that you've been washed, you've been sanctified, you've been justified. It's Paul's way of saying, guys, this isn't you. This isn't you. You've been saved for better than this. You've been saved for more than this. This isn't the new you. This is the old you. This is the you that Christ died for. This is the you that He gave His life for, that He suffered for, to get rid of. He suffered the punishment that you deserve so that this wouldn't be you anymore. It's the old you. It's the selfish you. It's the you that's preoccupied with the treasures of this world, and that's not you. It's not the new you. That's not the Christ in you. There is a wonderful passage in the book of Galatians that I have spent my Christian life trying to understand the depth of, I have yet to mine the depths of it. Paul says, listen, this is what we are in Christ.

It’s that statement where he says this life lived in the flesh is now lived by faith. That's the part that messes us up. You see because if I take my brother to court, I'm not living my life by faith anymore. I'm not saying, God, I trust you. I trust you with my life. I trust you with my possessions. I trust you with my money. I even trust you with the judgment of this situation. Even if you don't render a decision in this thing in my lifetime, I trust you. I trust you. The life I live in the flesh in this body, I now live by faith and see, and that's exactly the opposite of what the Corinthians were doing. They were living it by worldly standards. Right and wrong and stuff like that. They were reverting back to the flesh, and we do too, right? We do too. We revert back to the flesh from time to time, and when we do, we have to admit it. We get convicted. We become aware of the situation, maybe by the Word of God or somebody says, what are you doing? Maybe it's an attitude of unforgiveness that they hear come out of your mouth toward a brother or sister in the Lord and you're just expressing this unforgiveness, and somebody goes, whoa that doesn't sound like Christ in you talking right now. Well, I'm just and then we come up with all our excuses. Well, I'm just mad. They shouldn't have done that. Yeah, probably not but it's your response that God is really most concerned about for you. God will take care of that brother or sister.

What he's most concerned about is your response in you. What are you going to do about this? That's where we have to just own the thing. Go, yeah, you're right. Yeah, that is very un-Christlike of me, my response to this thing. So, what am I going to do? I'm going to confess it. Lord, forgive me for having this attitude toward my brother or my sister. Because you know what? That's not You. That's not You and me. That's me and me, so, Lord, please forgive me. This is family, and even though my flesh doesn't want to even say that, doesn't even want to admit that this person is in my family, the fact of the matter is they're trusting Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and that makes them family. And if I have feelings that are very harsh and unkind toward a brother or sister in the Lord, that's my problem. That's my problem, and it's a problem I need to bring to the Savior, and I need to bring it to the foot of the cross, and I need to drop it there and be forgiven for my end of the bargain, not what they did. There's no, yeah but, in God's kingdom. There's no, but what about them, in God's kingdom. In God's kingdom it's always, no, this is about You and me. This is about us. This is about our relationship together. Jesus says, I'm the Savior, you’re the saved. This is us. This is us talking here now. Nobody else is even involved. What's this blackness I see in your heart, this inky blackness of, unforgiveness and bitterness and stuff that would drive you to do these sorts of things? We need to say there's a better way to live. There's a better way to resolve problems than the world chooses to do it. There's a better way. The people's court might be fun to watch, but between believers, there's a better way. It's a Christ centered way. It applies His Word, His heart, and we need to come to the Lord and say, Jesus, I need your strength to do it because I don't have what it takes, in and of myself, to love my brother or my sister in that way, but you do. And I want to care enough about the Gospel. I want to care enough about my relationship with you that I'm willing to do what's right even if I lose my money or my rights, because we come to God and we say, you know what? You are so able God to restore whatever is lost. I like to quote that verse that, my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory. (Philippians 4:19) But the question is, do I believe it. That's the question we can all quote wonderful versus big deal. The question is, do we believe them and are we willing to put those promises on the line when we're faced with it?

Let's stand together. Let's take a moment here this morning to pray about these very things. I don't know of anybody here who has a lawsuit against another believer, so don't think I've been talking to anybody personally. I don't do that anyway, but just so you know, I’m not aware of anything. If I was, I would talk to you, but we just talked about this cause it's in the Word, it just came up. It's the next section in 1 Corinthians and this is what we covered. Now, that being said, I do know that rifts within the body of Christ issues and feelings of anger that can very easily turn to bitterness, those things do exist. They are a reality in the body of Christ, and it's the same, it's the same teaching. It's the same application. It's not you. That's not you. That's the flesh, okay? The life you live in the body, you ought to be living by faith in the Son of God. So let's start living by faith, and let's start believing that God can resolve these issues. Let's start believing that God can take care of these problems. Let's start believing that even if I have to sacrifice something for the sake of the Gospel, that God is able to restore it to me, pressed down and shaken together. That's God's business. That's, it's all His anyway, isn't it? It all belongs to Him anyway. Somebody wants to take my tunic; I'm supposed to let them have it. I don't even have a tunic. Whatever the modern-day application is. If somebody says, walk with me, one mile, I'm supposed to go two. Just give it away, God will restore it back. That's living by faith. Whatever is going on in your heart, whatever it may be, just lay before the Lord. Just give it to Him to say, you know Lord, busted. Do that work in me so that I would reflect the integrity of the Gospel in the way I handle this situation. Let's pray. Jesus, we love You. We don't always show it very well, but we do. And sometimes Lord, just like the Corinthians we get swept away into the way the world does things, and it's not your way, and it's not us. It's not the new us. It's the old selfish us, and Lord, we ask You to forgive us. We confess to You right now we've had wrong attitudes; we've had wrong heart toward people and we're sorry. And we've had grievances that we haven't been able to resolve. We ask You to forgive us. We ask You, Lord, to allow us the privilege of reflecting the integrity and the beauty of the eternal Gospel in all that we do and say. Be our strength oh, God. We ask this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, amen.