Grow Up! - Measuring Your Spiritual Maturity
Measure #3: Actively Intolerant of Evil
1 Corinthians 5:1-13 – September 22, 2013
An Arkansas mountain man named Elias came walking into the little town store one day. And, to his friends’ surprise, he was washed, his hair combed, his beard clean, and he had on a three piece suit and a Bible under his arm.
His friends said, “Elias, what are you doing all dressed up?”
Elias said, “I’m goin’ to New Orleans. I hear the place is full of loose women, naughty shows, gamblin’ joints, and that the liquor flows like a river down there.”
One friend said, “So why do you have a Bible under your arm?”
And Elias said, “Well, if it’s as good as they say, I’ll probably stay through Sunday.”
There are those folks out there who don’t seem to make much of a connection between their relationship to Christ and their value system. But as followers of Christ, we should not just recognize evil, or avoid evil. We should actively oppose those evils that destroy people’s lives and hurt the cause of Christ.
Today we are talking about one of the clearest signs of maturity in a follower of Christ: an active intolerance for evil. And by that, I mean we do not stand by and silently “feel bad” about what’s going on. We do not just stand there and listen while evil is being spoken, we do not just stand there and watch as wrong is being done, and then, in some safe place complain to a friend, “Wasn’t that terrible.” No, the mature Christian speaks and acts in opposition to evil, especially when it appears within the church.
And by that, I don’t mean that we have a bunch of “religious policemen” running around telling everyone what they’re doing wrong. We’re all sinners and we all fall short. I’m talking about those things that are deeply destructive to the spiritual welfare of others.
So today I’m going to give you a couple of illustrations of how this works and then point you to the clearest example of this truth being lived out.
And here’s why it is so important that we understand this: allowing destructive, inappropriate behavior & attitudes to go on and on within a body of believers makes a church spiritually sick and it destroys that church’s witness in the community.
So if we want our church to be strong and healthy, and if we want to reach our community, we have to have the maturity to refuse to give evil a home in our church family.
In our Scripture verses, in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul called out these believers in Corinth because they were allowing something to go on in the church that was immoral, embarrassing, and was damaging to their witness and their influence in the world. A man in the church has taken his father’s wife, his step mother, as his new live-in girlfriend.
When Paul says, “It is actually reported…” that this is happening, he’s saying, “It is common knowledge. People outside the church know about this and are talking about this.” And to make matters worse, the people in the church are not embarrassed. They are proud! Proud of how tolerant they are in this situation.
But there is nothing to be proud of when we overlook those things that are destructive to the health of our church or destructive to our Christian witness.
Paul says basically that people who didn’t know Jesus and didn’t follow Jesus could look at what was going on and say, “Even I know that’s wrong. If being a Christian means allowing that to go on, then I want no part of this Jesus thing.”
And, friends, it is absolutely no different today.
• When our world hears believers speaking viciously about other believers today,
• When our world sees believers mistreating other believers today,
• When our world sees followers of Christ living a life of self-centeredness, pride, meanspiritedness,
• When our world sees Christians shamelessly and persistently living in ways that we say are wrong,
…we are doing real damage to the Kingdom of God and our witness in the world. So Paul calls us to do something about it when these situations arise.
First I want you to see that tolerating evil in the church is immature and cowardly.
What is it that would make us keep silent when we see something harmful or hurtful going on around us? It’s got to be one of two things:
• Either we are afraid that others might reject us for taking a stand, which means we care more about the opinions of others than faithfulness to God, which is immaturity and cowardice,
• Or we don’t really know the difference between right and wrong, which again means we are immature in our faith.
Suppose you were sitting at the dinner table with your family, and one of the people around the table starting talking in a way that was hurtful to another family member. Would you just sit there and ring your hands and say, “Gee, I wish they would stop, but what can I do?”
What if they began telling your children that it was OK to do things that you knew were wrong and dangerous? Would you stay silent and just wish they would stop?
What if they started acting in a way that was harmful to the family as a whole… cooking meth in the basement, bringing X-rated videos into the house? Would you look on helplessly, or just call a friend and talk about how terrible it was?
…or would you stand up and say or do whatever was necessary to protect the health and safety and integrity of your family? Wouldn’t you demand that the harmful influence, the evil, be expelled from your home immediately?
If we truly care about the health of our church home, we will not stand by silently.
If we truly care about our witness in the world, we will not allow negative, destructive behavior to go on and on.
To do anything less is cowardly and spiritually immature. To put it another way, “Mature Christians have a backbone.”
When Nikita Khrushchev was premier of the Soviet Union, he criticized many of the policies and terrible actions of Joseph Stalin. Once, as he denounced Stalin in a public meeting, Khrushchev was interrupted by a shout from a heckler in the audience. The man shouted, “You were one of Stalin's colleagues. Why didn't you stop him?”
Nikita Khrushchev shouted, “Who said that?” There was a long, agonizing silence as no one in the room dared move a muscle. Then Khrushchev replied quietly, “Now you know why.” (Today in the Word, July 13, 1993)
Speaking out, standing up is not easy. It takes courage. But the mature follower of Christ would rather speak up for what’s good and right than to allow evil to go unchallenged.
So that picture of how we guard our home life is the first illustration of this truth. The second illustration comes from the human body. And the basic truth is this:
“Just like our bodies, a church family needs a healthy immune system.” And here’s what that means. The immune system of your body has a specific job: identify anything in the body that doesn’t belong there and get rid of it. So if you cut yourself, and germs get in that cut, the immune system identifies the cells that don’t belong - the infecting bacteria - and it attacks those cells. Because if your body allows these harmful outside organisms to remain and grow, it will eventually kill you.
As a church family, we must have an immune system. At the first sign of those attitudes and behaviors that destroy our harmony and our witness, every one of us needs to be a part of that immune system that speaks up and says, “I love you brother, I love you sister, but that attitude, that kind of speech, that action does not belong here in this church family.”
Second, notice, that following Jesus means having the courage to speak out against evil. As you read through the gospels, that Jesus did not allow evil to go unaddressed. He didn’t go around pointing out every sin that people committed. He reached out to those who were struggling. He ate with the tax collectors and prostitutes. But when a situation arose that created barriers between people and God, Jesus had a “zero tolerance policy.”
So when the Pharisees insisted that their rules were more important than people’s salvation and wholeness, Jesus confronted them bluntly.
When his own disciples tried to shoo away the children who came to him, Jesus got angry and said, “Don’t you stop them, because the Kingdom of God is for them, too.”
Jesus said in Matthew 23, “You Pharisees slam the door of God’s kingdom in people’s faces, and you won’t even go in yourself.” He confronts their spiritual blindness and deadness.
If you truly follow that Savior -- if He’s your example -- how can you allow evil, mistreatment, hurtful and destructive things to go on around you while you say nothing?
At the top of the sermon notes section, I have a quote there that I have seen many times: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Our Savior never sat in silent inaction when there was a hurtful evil that needed to be addressed. If you truly want to be like Jesus, that requires the courage to stand against the destructive attitudes and actions we encounter in this world.
But notice what Paul explains in verses 9-11 of our text for today:
As followers of Christ, we should not withdraw from the world around us. Yes, it’s broken, it’s sinful, it’s misguided… but we’re called to be salt and light in this world.
We’re called to be the presence and the influence of Christ in this world. So we can’t hide inside the church and pull up the drawbridge behind us. If we’re not present in the lives of those who need Jesus, we will never lead them toward Him.
You see, they had it completely backwards. In that Corinthian church, they went out into the world and picked up the immorality and selfishness and pride and brought it back into the church. And they thought that was just fine.
But what they needed to do was to pick up the wisdom and the grace and the character of Christ from within the family of believers and take that out into the world.
In the world, our work is to influence and transform a broken world. But we can’t do that if we are no different than that world. That’s why Paul says in Romans 12, “Don’t be conformed to the world’s pattern, but be transformed as God renews your mind, your values…”
So if we are hurtful and destructive and selfish and prideful, if we are manipulative and contentious and immoral inside the church, we have nothing to offer our world.
That’s why we have to hold each other to a high standard in our speech and behavior… the standard of Christ himself. And we can’t shy away from this. We can’t let evil and hurtful things be said or done and then stand by silently while wringing our hands in helplessness. We need to have the backbone to require that our church family life be protected just like our personal family life should be. We have to be that immune system in God’s family that recognizes when negative influences and hurtful speech and destructive behaviors appear and we need to have “zero tolerance” for those things.
When my children said things and did things that were not right for them, were not healthy, were not things I wanted to see or hear in our family, at no point was there any question that I loved them, that I valued them, that I accepted them. But it was also abundantly clear that those words, those behaviors were not to be repeated in the future.
In verses 6-7 of this passage - 1 Corinthians 5 - Paul talks about these destructive and evil influences as yeast - something that may appear small but that can quickly influence and change the whole batch of dough, the whole atmosphere of the church.
It reminded me of a story that I will tell you in closing. I had a church member named Jeff, a young man in his 30s, who told me about a lesson his grandmother taught him. Jeff had been flirting with some things that he knew and his family knew were not healthy, were not in keeping with their values. And she wanted to help him understand the danger of tolerating or accepting even a little bit of something wrong in his life.
So Grandma called Jeff into the kitchen one day and said, “Jeff, how would you like it if I baked a big pan of brownies for you to share with your friends.”
Young Jeff said, “That would be great, Grandma.”
So Grandma said, “Well, I was thinking about using the very best butter, an good fresh eggs, and that really expensive cocoa powder your Mom got me for Christmas. How’s that sound?”
Jeff said, “Sounds great, Grandma.”
“And of course,” she said, “I like to add a little honey, and just the right amount of vanilla extract. How’s that sound?”
“That sounds good to me, Grandma,” Jeff said.
“Oh, and Jeff, when I have that big bowl of ingredients all mixed up, there’s one more thing - just a small thing - that I want to put in these brownies. I know it may sound strange, but I want to put one tiny little dab of dog poop - not more than a teaspoon full - in your brownies for your friends. Is that OK?”
Jeff got a strange look on his face. “Are you kidding, Grandma?” he asked.
“No, Jeff.” You seem to think that allowing a little bit of bad in your life is OK. So I thought that, with all of those good ingredients, you wouldn’t mind just a little bit of bad in your brownies. If I fix ‘em that way, will you eat them?”
Jeff said he never has forgotten that day in his Grandmother’s kitchen and the lesson about allowing even a little bit of something nasty, evil, rotten, and inappropriate in his life.
In our spiritual lives, that’s a sign of maturity -- that we understand the hurtful and destructive nature of evil words and actions, and that we refuse to look the other way, refuse to sit in silence, but instead will speak up
• to guard the health of our fellowship,
• to guard the hearts of those who might otherwise be hurt, and
• to guard the witness of our church in the community.
(Closing Prayer)
