Dealing W/Scandals

Title: Dealing with the scandals

Introduction: Today we are going to look at how we as the body of Christ are affected no matter what denomination you are from and how we need to deal with it when the scandals keep attacking the church..

Reading the newspapers and watching the TV News at night, we see again and again how the Episcopalian Church is being rocked with a ‘openly gay bishop’ appointment and ‘the molestation scandals of the catholic church’ and the ‘bishop that denies Christ’s deity in the Methodist church’. Everywhere you look, there seems to be some sort of scandal giving a black eye to the church. Sitting here in our little church it, we may say that it does not affect us. We are so small, how could it possibly affect us. It does.

When we go to use the gifts that Paul has told us about in the previous 12 verses of Corinthians, what are some of the responses you get? How does a person respond when you talk to them about going to church? Have you found yourself defending your faith from attacks of nonbelievers?

I have.

I have endured people telling jokes about religions and tried to defend the cause of Christ only to be ridiculed by some of those I work with. It would be easy to say, well, that is their church at it does not affect me but it does affect us. If you ask the average person how they feel about the church, you well get one of two responses.

The first one I got most of the time was, I believe but I don’t need to go to church. When you probe deeper you find out that the main reason they do not want to go is that they do not want to be associated with the scandals and they do want to be labeled as supporting something like child abuse or homosexual behavior.

The second reason I got was that they wanted to go but did not think they would fit in. Asking a few more questions, I found that the underlying reason behind that was they were still comfortable in their sin and did not want to give it up.

You may be asking yourself, How does this apply to this weeks scripture Pastor? Lets look at verses 13 and 14.

(13) For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. (14) For the body is not one member but many.

We are all one body and as such, any scandal involving the church involves us. Just as any grace and honor that is bestowed upon the church honors the whole church. It is our place as Christians to stand up and defend our church. We are the members of Christ’s Holy Church. We are not just members of our little church. We should stand up and defend matters of faith whether it is at work, in the schools or at the government level that the persecution comes from.

We have been given the gift of faith.

Ephesians 1:22-23 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, (23) Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

Romans 12:4-6 For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: (5) So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. (6) Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;

We are the church. We are Christ’s representatives to the world. We are his ambassadors so to speak. Any scandal that affects any part of the church affects all of us. Just because we are not members of the Catholic Church does not mean that we turn a blind eye to the sin in it.

We live in a society that celebrates the bad news in life. The headlines of some of the best selling newspapers have been about tragedy. Last Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The day after he was assassinated was the third busiest day for newspapers in history. There were only two times that had more paper sales than his assassination. The first is Pearl Harbor and the second was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. We as a society have glamorized and glorified the bad aspects of our lives.

We have let the devil deceive us as a society to believe that he does not exist. He has been busy at this and if you ask the average person, they do not believe that Satan does indeed exist. We have come to believe that is our upbringing or our societal environments that have created the monsters we read about in the paper and see on the news. That’s a bunch of bull.