The Unrighteous Will Not Inherit The Knigdom Of God Series

Series: Do You Not Know?

Sermon: The Unrighteous Will Not Inherit the Kingdom of God

Text: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.

Introduction:

What Paul has to say here is very plain and simple. He is forthright and blunt. The situation in Corinth was serious. There was a man there who was fornicating with his mother-in-law. That was bad enough. To make matters worse, the Corinth Church of Christ was proud that they were being so tolerant in accepting this man. Corinth was a very worldly city and the new Christians there had a lot to learn about morality. Paul’s instruction to the church in 1 Corinthians 5:13 was “Purge the evil person from among you.” By the time Paul had written 2 Corinthians, the man had repented and Paul instructed the church to forgive him and comfort him and reaffirm their love for him. This instruction is appropriate for us as well: forgive, comfort and reaffirm.

Lesson:

This list is not based on the narrow-mindedness of the Church, but the holiness of God.

One of the reasons that the church is often viewed as being narrow minded is that people just don’t comprehend two things: the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man.

Turn to Isaiah 6, beginning in verse 1: In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

When seraphim talk, we’d better listen. The seraphim are one of the types of angels. I am not an expert on angels, but I believe that these seraphim are the same as the four living creatures mentioned in Revelation. From the limited descriptions that we have, it appears that most of their time is spent worshiping God and giving him glory, praise and honor. What the seraphim say is “Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of Hosts.” In Hebrew, they didn’t have bold, or underline or exclamation points! If you wanted to emphasize something, you repeated it. If you really wanted to emphasize something you repeated it three times. God is described many ways is scripture: he is strong, he is merciful he is love. But only one attribute of God receives the three fold acclamation. YHWH our God is Holy, Holy, Holy. This is found in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8.

I want you to notice what happens to Isaiah when he realizes that he is in the presence of the Holy One of Israel. He falls apart; he declares I am ruined, I am undone, I am lost. Isaiah figures, “It’s over, I’ve had it, surely I will die for I have stood in the presence of God.” If we could jus grab a glimpse of his glory…but even that would be more than we could bear.

Look at what happened to Peter when he encountered Jesus and realized for the first time that he was standing in the presence of the Holy (Luke 5:1-10). On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, 2 and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. 7 They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9 For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”