December 9, 2001
1Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? 2Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? 3Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? 4If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. 5I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? 6But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. 7Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? 8Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. 9Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. 12All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. 13Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. 14And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power. 15Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid. 16What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. 17But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit. 18Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. 19What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.
While I was out scavenging for artifacts for the Tour of Bethlehem this week, I went to a local pharmacy to get frankincense and Myrrh – the real stuff!
You talk about authenticity; we’ve got it this week in Bethlehem. Actually the pharmacist took a whole lot longer than you would expect. He took a lot of time just looking up some of the information about those spices. We learned a lot more than we needed to know.
These were the gifts the wise men gave to baby Jesus. And why did they bring them? They brought them to honor him. And that is what our message is about in today’s text…choices that honor God.
This passage is Paul’s fatherly advice to a young congregation of folks who had kind of gotten off the mark. They started well, and God had blessed. They had exhibited all the wonderful spiritual gifts, and they had experienced a great deal of power from on high; many wondrous and miraculous things had happened. But, like most of us, when we “get full of ourselves” they had fallen off the straight and narrow.
The congregation had really gotten off the mark somewhere along the line, and Paul wrote this letter to get them back on track. That’s a corrective for us today as well.
You might say, Preacher, it’s Christmas. Can’t you preach on happier themes? Folks, I can think of nothing happier than if all of us were making choices that honor God.
This chapter is all about Christians and their behavior, especially towards one another. Paul had heard that in Corinth Christians were taking other believers to the courts. He said it ought not to be that way.
Someone has estimated there are over a million lawyers in this country. I have a friend who has had a great many dealings with lawyers – almost all of them bad! He said to me one time: Russell, what would you call a thousand lawyers buried in the deepest part of the ocean? Answer: A good start! Well, there are a lot of jokes like that.
Attorney at law is sometimes not the most revered profession. Especially considering some of the nonsense lawsuits. Who can forget the woman who drove through McDonald’s, spilled coffee on herself because she’s a klutz, and then was awarded a million bucks by the courts?
There was a case in New York about a man who attempted to commit suicide by jumping in front of a subway train. He also had a case of the terminal klutz – he missed! Actually, the train hit him a glancing blow and he lived. The courts awarded him $650,000 for his injuries!
This is the problem with our thinking about the legal system. There is, as one writer opined, a symbiotic relationship between unscrupulous lawyers and greedy people. What I am going to say about that this morning is that we have a calling to do better than that! We must have a better attitude than that. We ought to be lifting this country out of that greed to a higher plane.
Paul talks about judging within the context of the church, and he makes the point that there is a difference between judging spiritual issues and temporal issues. My paraphrase of verse 4 is: Even the dumbest, worldly-wise, but deeply spiritual man makes a better judge than the PhD who doesn’t know a thing about God. Where would you rather be thought of as wise – heaven or the world?
Paul sternly rebuked the brothers for taking their fellow believers to court – the pagan court…and that before the unbelievers. What tone does that sound like to you? Paul is getting in their face. He is telling them that problems, differences of opinion are going to happen in the human family – that is a matter of the inevitability of being human beings. However division between brothers is not inevitable. Brothers can settle things between brothers.
I told you when we were first seeking the Lord’s will about my coming here as your pastor, that I would not pastor a “hornet’s nest.” If we had a problem we would settle it “in house”. We’ll get face to face and work out our differences as brothers who love. There’s nothing – EVER – that brothers can’t work out, right?
Now, where did I get such great wisdom? Paul said it – there’s always a way for brothers to work things out. However, I’m preaching to the choir here – this church learned a long time ago how to handle difficulties – you go by the Book! That means love, work out your difficulties and move on in the Kingdom for Jesus’ sake!
Paul said (v.7) that if you don’t act that way, you’re already defeated. It is much better to be defrauded than to parade your differences before the pagan courts. After all, which is more important, your brother in Christ, or your stuff? You have to make up your mind about that. If you said, Why, it’s my brother in Christ that’s more important, you’ve answered well. You’ve given a Kingdom answer.
Paul is not forbidding all lawsuits – or use of the courts. There are times when that system, set up by God Himself, is the only recourse you have to get relief if you have been treated unfairly by that system. However, if it is a brother in Christ who is doing the mistreating, you don’t run to the courthouse, you first attempt to settle things among the brethren.
For example, if I have a problem with a brother about some money, and we can’t seem to reach agreement, I might enlist the Deacons to act as arbitrators. They would make the decision about who owes whom, and we would leave it at that – both deferring, rather than causing division.
If we act with any other attitude it is anti-evangelistic. Notice in verse 12 Paul mentions that virtually every lawful activity is legal for him – even lawsuits. It’s just that not everything is the best thing. His meaning is clear. When you were an unbeliever, you had all the rights in the world to act like one. When you chose to follow Christ, you chose to pick up a cross. Beloved, condemned prisoners have no rights! Following Christ means you put to death the rights you could have claimed as an unbeliever, and follow Him to Calvary.
So Many Choices
Our choices are inextricably linked to what’s in our heart…what we care about. A builder in the Midwest offered a special deal on “extras” he could put in some houses he was constructing. That section of the country is tornado alley, so one of the extras was a basement “tornado room” guaranteed to save the family. Of the ten houses he sold, nine families chose the tornado room. On the tenth, sold to a couple in their late 70’s, they rejected the safe room, and opted for a hot tub!
Now, that couple figured what was important to them was tied to how much time they imagined they had left, and the chances something bad would happen. It was all based on them. If you figure that way in the Kingdom, you’re going to spend a lot of time in God’s “woodshed”.
Like Paul, we have got to remember that our hearts are (or should be) tied to every other heart in the body, and every potential heart that God is calling into the body – translation….all the saved and the lost.
So, after all these pages of introduction, let me give you the sermon in three questions that you can use as a test to see if you are in line with what Paul said we need to exhibit as members of the King’s kids….When you make your choices about the way you live, what you do, and how you treat others, it will be good to ask these three questions:
Is it holy before the Lord?
Is it helpful to the body of Christ?
Is it a hindrance to a lost person?
Why these questions? Paul gives the answer in the final verse of the chapter:
For ye are bought with a price:
therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit,
which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 6.20
Which are God’s.
We belong to Him – so we have to care about what He cares about. That’s why we make choices that honor God.
There’s a line in the Old Testament written by Isaiah that tells the result of God’s gamble, (Isaiah 53:6): "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." Although God has a right to own us because he created us, he gave us the option of freedom, and we all left. We chose sin and did not love him as he wanted to be loved. In response, he chose to send out his own son to look for us, to hunt us down, to find and redeem us at a terrible cost--the cost of his own life.
A shepherd notches the ear of a lamb born to his flock and has rightful ownership. That lamb deliberately walks away. The shepherd searches near and far to get that lamb back. A long time later, he finds not a baby lamb but a grown sheep for sale at an animal auction. The shepherd recognizes his mark on that sheep’s ear.
He goes to the auctioneer and says, "I can see the mark. That sheep is mine."
The auctioneer says, "Listen, you must bid and pay just like anybody else."
The shepherd bids and pays an outrageous price, far above any reasonable market value in order to get his lamb. He now has a double right to own this sheep: from birth, from redemption.
God has a right to own us as creator and because he has paid the blood of his own Son--an outrageous price far above our market value--in order to redeem us back again.
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Footnotes
(1) Leith Anderson, "The Lord Is My Shepherd," Preaching Today, Tape No. 136.
