I know. I love it. Would you pray with me please? Father, we thank you that in Jesus
Christ we are made complete. That because of his coming into the world, his death and
resurrection, we are alive in him, that we are forgiven in him, we are made righteous
in him. We thank you that we are safe and secure in his love until that day that you
call us home. Our hearts are filled with such joy and hope because of that. Thank you Father.
Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, it's good to be back with you this morning. We enjoyed our trip to the Midwest last weekend
for a family wedding. We arranged our trip through Minneapolis. And normally that works
pretty well because there's a great airport there. But during the spring season, you never
quite know what the weather is going to be in Minneapolis, especially in late March,
early April. We were watching a storm develop in the Midwest before we even left. We took
off from San Jose. The pilot told us how long the flight was going to be, three hours, blah,
blah, blah, whatever it is. And it all looked great until about an hour out of Minneapolis.
And he came on and said, well folks, I've got some bad news. Now you never like to hear
a pilot say, we've got some bad news, right? He said, while we've been flying, the situation
in Minneapolis has deteriorated rapidly. Right now they've closed the runways except for
one of them. It doesn't have the best of the avionics on it, and so they're slow and landing.
We're going to be in a holding pattern out here in western Minnesota for a while. He
said, we've got 50 minutes of fuel to play with. Now my wife heard him say, we've got
50 minutes of fuel. That wasn't quite what he said. He said, we've got 50 minutes that
we can circle, and then we're going to have to go to our alternate destination, which
is Bismarck, North Dakota. You don't want to land in Bismarck, North Dakota. So we began
this process. You've all been through this. It's nothing new. He updated us from time
to time. But about 40 minutes into that 50 minute window, he came back and I said, well
folks, here's some good news. He said, there were lots of airplanes in front of us doing
the same thing we were doing, but they were lower on fuel than we were. They've all gone
to their alternate destination, which opens up the way for us to potentially get in. And
sure enough, within 10 minutes, we were on the ground. We landed on the ground about
the same time our flight to Kansas City was supposed to leave. However, there's a storm,
remember? And so guess what? That flight is exactly by two hours. Time to stroll through
that huge airport in Minneapolis, get some dinner, stroll to our gate, and we did that.
And we sat down about 8.30 and it said, the flight's going to leave at 9.05, but there's
nobody at the gate. It wasn't long before it said 9.30. And then it said 10.05. And
then it said 10.30. And I'm beginning to look at my watch. We've got an hour and a half
flight ahead of us. And about 10.30, somebody showed up at the gate and said, well, folks,
the good news is that the crew that's taking you to Kansas City has just arrived from North
Dakota. And they're at the other end of the airport. As soon as they can walk here, then
we will take off. So sure enough, by 11 o'clock or a little after, we were on the airplane.
And the pilot came on and she said, yes, she said, we're going to take a little time getting
out tonight because we've got to de-ice. Never good news. We're going to have to de-ice.
But it should have put us about 20 minutes behind. So we're looking at our clocks and
11.20 comes and goes, 11.30, 11.45. Finally, at 12 o'clock, we're still sitting at the
gate. She came on and said, well, folks, I guess you didn't hear me make the announcement,
and we didn't, that they were changing a tire on the airplane out there in this blizzard.
And so it's taken us a little longer to get away from the gate, but we're going now. And
so we left the gate. We inched, almost literally inched out to where they were doing the de-icing.
Well, the snow has come down as frozen Elmer's glue. It will not come off the airplane. It's
taking each airplane 30 minutes to be de-iced. And so by the time we took off, it was after
two o'clock in the morning, got into Kansas City about 3.30. But the good news is that
the hotel didn't charge us for that first night because we were so late getting there.
But it was a hard start to the weekend, but it was a great weekend being with family.
All of our kids and grandkids were there. And it was the son of my sister who passed
away a year ago. It's always a very tender and precious time to be together as a family
and share in that wedding. Thank you, Pastor Day, for filling in last week so capably and
talking about the Lord's Prayer. I appreciate you doing that.
We are going to turn in our Bibles this morning back to 1 Corinthians chapter 5 where we pick
up our text in verse 9. This is where we left off the last time we were together. We're
going to lump some paragraphs together. And I've entitled the message this morning, The
Hard Side of Holiness. The Hard Side of Holiness.
Have you heard of Bodine Bakery in San Francisco? They're the ones who make the original San
Francisco sourdough French bread. Actually, they began their baking operation in 1846.
I was watching a program on yeast a few weeks ago on one of the cable channels, and they
talked about the bakery there. And they said that, as you know, they use genuine yeast,
not Fleischmann's or one of these packaged yeasts, but they actually use a yeast dough,
a mother dough that goes all the way back into the 1860s. So there is a genetic connection
between the bread you're eating today and the bread the people have eaten for the last
150 years from Bodine Bakery. It's great bread. You know, yeast is not a chemical. Yeast is
a living organism. You knew that, didn't you? It's of the kingdom of fungi. Doesn't that
make you feel good about eating bread, yeasted bread, of the kingdom of fungi? Sounds like
some African country, doesn't it? Paul compares yeast to sin. He says a little yeast works
through the whole batch of dough in verse 6. He's going to pick up on that theme of
the yeast and the dough and the necessity of living holy lives. Warren Wiersbe finds
four similarities between yeast and sin. Number one, and this is in your notes, you may want
to follow that and fill in the blanks, it may be small, but it's potent. It may be small,
but it's potent, just like arsenic is small, but it's very potent. Yeast is the same way.
Secondly, it works secretly. You can't see it. Sin is the same way in our lives. We can't
see it necessarily, but it's at work. Third, it creates corruption. It always does. Yeast
does its work through corruption. Sin corrupts everyone it touches and everything it touches.
Third, it spreads. A little bit of yeast spreads throughout the whole loaf, much like a malignant
cancer will spread if it's not dealt with. That's why Paul wrote this letter. He was
concerned that their attitude of tolerance toward what God said was wrong was going to
harm them as God's family and that the church's vitality would be destroyed. Already, he says
the name of Christ was being disgraced in Corinth because of their attitude about the wrong
behavior of their member who was in a sinful lifestyle. What did the Corinthians think
about this man? They were broad-minded about it. They didn't see anything particularly
wrong. They were oblivious to the shame that embracing this man brought to their church.
It reminds me of the denomination today that has, as its little slogan, open hearts, open
minds, open doors. It sounds wonderful on the surface, but what they mean by open minds
is being tolerant towards what God calls wrong. Tolerance of what God calls wrong is never
a virtue. It's actually self-condemnation. Paul's appeal is that God's family, those
for whom the Passover lamb, Jesus, had been sacrificed, that they would forsake the yeast,
the attitudes of sinfulness that had overtaken them and return to holy living. That's why
he uses the analogy in the early text here that we studied last time. He says, keep the
feast with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.
Holiness is vital for us as God's children who live in a pagan world just like the Corinthians
did, a world that is driven by its lust for pleasure, for possession, for power and prestige.
But Paul calls these believers to the hard side of holiness. Now our Father is holy.
Our Father is holy and He tells us, His family, to live in the world without becoming like
it. We are to live in the world without becoming like the world. We have a hard time making
that distinction of points. Because you see the hard side of holiness gets into the cracks
and the closets of our lives, into those places that are out of sight and invisible. The hard
side of holiness involves the decisions we have to make that are painful, that constrain
the natural desires that we have, that really mark us out in the world as being different
from others. The hard side of holiness involves things like who we hang out with, getting
reparation for wrongs that are done to us, and choosing to act in ways that may be contrary
to the learned patterns of our past lives. The hard side of holiness. We can't justify
reviewing in our past patterns by simply saying, that's the way I am, that's my nature. Our
Father says, look, I am holy, I want you to be holy. I want you to be transformed. I want
to change you. That's what this text is about. Our text provides guidance for living in a
pagan world. Let's take a look at the first paragraph. It begins in chapter 5 and verse
9. He says, I've written to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
Not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy, and swindlers,
or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this what? This world. He says, but
now I am writing, now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls
himself a brother, but is sexually immoral, or greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard,
or a swindler. With such a man, no not even to eat. What business is it of mine to judge
those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside,
but you expel the wicked man from among you. The first thing that Paul says, and I am going
to sum up these paragraphs, is this. Be careful of your associations. Be careful of your associations.
Now Paul had already addressed this. He says in a previous letter, it's a letter we don't
have. It was not inspired by the Holy Spirit and has not been preserved for us. But Paul
had written them once before. And he had told them to be careful of their associations.
What Paul had said was, do not associate with sexually immoral people. This was an important
word for Corinth. Because we have already talked about how broad immorality had been
entrenched into that city. Paul says don't get mixed up with immoral people. Paul uses
this term twice here in this text. And then he uses it again in 2 Thessalonians where
he says, if anyone does not obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of him.
Do not associate with him in order that he may feel ashamed. Now the Corinthians had
misunderstood what Paul meant in the first letter. They thought that he had meant cutting
off everybody in the world who lives immorally. And yet at the same time they had retained
as a member of their church a man who was living in gross immorality. You can imagine
how that looked to the pagans who were watching them. And so a clarification is needed. What
does it mean? What does Paul mean when he says keep away from, don't associate with
immoral people? Well Paul clarifies it by saying number one, separation is not isolation
from the world. He says that would mean leaving the world itself. You can't do that. How would
you fulfill the great commission? That would actually mean not being like Jesus because
he came into the world and he actually associated with sinners. Separation is not isolation
from the world. But secondly he says, separation is an expectation within God's family. Paul
then goes on to list six specific sins or lifestyles that are of concern to him as he
thinks about this. He says these are lifestyles that should not be within the family of God.
He says I expect you to keep away from people who call themselves Christians and who are
involved in the lifestyle of immorality. We've talked about that. It means sexual looseness
or greed. Those who are living just to have more things in life. That's their bottom line.
Stay away from those who claim to be Christians and who are involved in idolatry or in gossip.
The word gossip here is the word that means abusive language. It means to speak harshly
to others. To be verbally abusive. He says drunkards. Those who are given to addiction
whether it be alcohol or drugs. Any other kind of intoxicants. If there's a person who
is characterized by that, stay away from them. He says if there's someone who claims to be
a part of the family and who lives a lifestyle of fraud, who plunders other people, who scams
people, who's a swindler, stay away from that person. He says don't even eat with a professing
believer who lives that way. I want to tell you something. That is the hard side of holiness.
That's hard for us to do. Particularly if we have within our circle of friends somebody
who's living like this. Remember we're not talking about somebody in the world. We're
talking about somebody in the church. Somebody who's a professing believer. The NIV has
a helpful note. I think you have it there in your notes. I've copied it for you. Calling
oneself a Christian while continuing to live an immoral life is reprehensible and degrading
and gives a false testimony to Christ. If the true Christian has intimate association
with someone who does this, the non-Christian world may assume that the church approves
such immoral ungodly living and thus the name of Christ would be dishonored. This is Paul's
concern. He says God is going to judge the world, those who are outside. That's not your
responsibility. But He is saying to them and He says to us. It is your responsibility to
judge those within the church. It's everybody's responsibility to take action in his own life
to keep away from Christians who make chronic choices to lifestyles of sin. The hard side
of holiness is just this. Be careful with whom you associate. Now we have to throw up
some cautions at this point lest it be misunderstood. God has not called us to be censorious or
judgmental of other people. A spirit of pride or arrogance. God has not either called us
to be careless about this. There is a balance. And when we see a brother who is making sinful
choices, we are to go to that brother and seek to restore him. But if that brother continues
to make those choices time after time and there is a lifestyle this way, then we are
not to associate with him any longer. I think we should always do this also after having
examined ourselves first, right? To make sure we get what's in our own eye out before we
go to our brother and deal with him. God's disposition is to bless his family but He
demands holiness as a condition. This is the hard side of holiness. But it's not all that
Paul wants to say about it. There is another issue. And we find it beginning in verse 1
of chapter 6. It says, if any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before
the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints
will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge
trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of
this life? Therefore if you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges even
men of little account in the church. I say this to shame you. Is it possible there is
nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead one brother
goes to law against another and this in front of unbelievers. The very fact that you have
lawsuits among you means that you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather
be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead you yourselves cheat and do wrong and you
do this to your brothers. Let me summarize this paragraph this way. The hard side of
holiness means to be agreeable to settle disputes in God's family, within God's family. Now
Paul introduced the subject of judging in chapter 5 verse 12. And so now he goes on
to an actual problem that was in Corinth. This is not hypothetical. Believers were suing
one another in Corinth. The problem was that God's children were seeking legal remedy
for what was apparently petty offenses. They were bringing these things to a civil court.
These are not criminal things. Now these are civil offenses that had taken place. And
they are bringing these things to the world's legal system. These are not spiritual issues.
These are material issues of some sort. Paul calls them the things pertaining to this life.
The word is pragma where we get our word pragmatics. He is thinking about practical, petty, financial
kinds of things that had happened between believers. When Paul says this he is not belittling
civil courts. There is certainly a place for them. He is not disrespecting them. But he
is saying that believers ought to settle agreeably between themselves and if necessary let the
church participate in coming to that agreement. Someone may say, well so what? So what if
another believer takes a man to court? Takes a brother to court? Paul says there are four
consequences of that. First of all it degrades your testimony. It degrades your testimony.
Verse 1 verse 6 says imagine how unbelievers will interpret your actions. It degrades your
testimony among the pagans. Number 2 it really exposes your greed he says. You are cheating
and doing wrong. The word cheat there means to take unfair financial advantage of another
person. This was far more about money than it was justice. I have known believers who
have been of this mindset. Not necessarily against other believers but every little chance
they got they sued looking for thousands of dollars to be given to them by an insurance
company or someone else. Jesus said you know the commandments. Do not murder. Do not commit
adultery. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Do not defraud. The very same word
that Paul uses here. Do not cheat others financially. Number 3 it dishonored their position. He
says look Corinthians you have been seated with Jesus Christ. You are someday going to
judge the world. Now we have other texts in scripture where this is said that we are going
to sit with Christ on thrones and participate in his judgment of the world. But he also
says you are going to judge angels. This is the only reference that I know of to this
in the Bible. Is he talking about holy angels who are going to be rewarded for service?
Is he talking about judgment of demonic spirits? I do not know. But he does say you are seated
with Jesus Christ and someday you are even going to judge angels. Can you take care of
petty things among yourselves? If you have been appointed to that kind of judgment eschatologically
in the future can you handle the pragmatics of life right now among yourselves? You are
dishonoring your position by doing this. Thirdly he says it defeats your case anyway. He says
as soon as you go to court you are already defeated. There are no losers. No winners
rather. You are all losers. Losers of respect. Losers of fellowship. Losers of your testimony
among the pagans. And so Paul gives them a proposal. It is an alternative way of dealing
with it. He says first of all settle these things with arbitration among yourselves.
Verse 5, the last part of the verse. In fact he even uses a bit of sarcasm here. He says
find even somebody who does not know very much in the church. He should be qualified
to settle these kinds of things. Settle it with arbitration. Find somebody to judge between
you instead of taking it to the civil courts. And then he says this is the hard side of
holiness remember. Suffer loss if necessary. Now Paul is not suggesting that there be some
kind of a separate court system set up here. He is saying that the court should appoint
mediators. And when the decision is rendered it is better to experience loss on your part
if need be so that harmony is maintained in the church and Christ's testimony is maintained
in the world. Now the basic problem here is that they were demanding their own rights
rather than yielding them up to God. Do you ever struggle with that? I do. I want what
I want. I want justice for how I have been offended. I want my case to win. Paul says
you can't approach holiness that way. You need to yield your rights up to God. Now this
all raises a question. It is a question I have been asked a number of times. I am sure
Dave you have been asked this question and we have all faced it in our own thought process
when we come to this text. Is it always wrong for a believer to go to court? Is it always
wrong for a believer to go to court? Chuck Swindoll has four guidelines to help us with
this question. The answer basically is no. It is not always wrong. I have heard people
say that. I disagree with it. I respect their right to their opinion. But I think Swindoll
helps us here by giving us four guidelines that we need to think through before we would
go to court. Number one, here is a guideline. When the dispute with a fellow Christian is
not related to the local church. In other words, if it is a believer who lives in another
city or goes to another church, it is not easy for one church. Now maybe the two churches
can work together to bring arbitration. But that may open the door for the necessity of
a lawsuit. Secondly, when the motive is not pride or greed but justice. We have to really
check our hearts on this. It is easy to deceive ourselves. Third guideline, when the issue
does not bring shame to the church of Jesus Christ in the eyes of the world. And fourth,
when you are absolutely confident that it is the will of God and have complete peace
in the inner person. So if you can pass those guidelines, you may choose to proceed. That
is what Swindoll is saying. I think essentially he is right. But the hard side of holiness
is this. Settle disputes whenever possible outside of court even if it means loss. That
is not easy. Especially if you are the loser. But Paul is not finished. He wants to go on
and talk more about the hard side of holiness. He says in verse 9, do you not know that the
wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, he says. Neither the sexually
immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves
nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of
God. Strong, strong verses. And he says, and that is what some of you were. 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. Here is how I would summarize this text. Be mindful of the kingdom
to which you belong. We live in a world in which there are two kingdoms that are at work
opposing each other. The kingdom of darkness that controls the world system and the kingdom
of God. Those who belong to God's kingdom are called out of the kingdom of darkness
to a lifestyle of distinction and holiness. God calls us to live differently than our
culture. And in these verses he brings about a contrast. Do you notice that? He talks first
about the lifestyle of one who is in the kingdom of darkness. These are those who will not
inherit the kingdom of God. They are lost. Now they may get saved. But up to this point
these are the lifestyles of those who are not in salvation. They are not in God's kingdom.
And he gives us a specific list. Do you notice it? If you compare this list with the one
earlier in chapter 5 you will notice some overlap. There are four additional ones that
he adds to this list. Specifically he says adultery which is a form of sexual immorality
but Paul nails it. He calls it out and he specifies it. He mentions male prostitution
which was very common in the city of Corinth and particularly related to the worship of
their gods. He speaks about homosexual behavior whether it be male or female. Very common
in the Roman Empire. I read somewhere this week that all but one of the Roman emperors
practiced homosexuality. That was Rome. Paul says that is the lifestyle of someone who
is in the kingdom of darkness. Then he talks about theft. Have you ever heard of kleptomaniacs?
Kleptomaniac is someone who is unable to control himself from stealing. We get our word kleptomaniac
from this Greek word klepti. It's those who steal by trick rather than by force. So Paul
outlines the kinds of lifestyles that belong to the world out of which God has called us.
Now he gives in contrast the transformation of one who is in the kingdom of God. He says
some of you were these very things. I think we would all have to say if we are honest
then we ought to be honest. That we are somewhere in that group. If not in thought, indeed.
We can say we were some of these things ourselves. But Paul goes on to say you were washed. You
were sanctified. You were justified. Anybody want to say amen to that? God has washed
us completely. He has cleansed us from the defilement of past lifestyle. It no longer
is a stain on us. He says you were sanctified. God set you apart. He made you holy. You were
justified. God declared you now through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross to be
righteous in His sight. He has cleared you legally before the law. Now it's very clear
from the text that all of this was true about the Corinthians as it is true about us in
the family of God today. We still struggle with what was our past. Just like they did.
Some of them were beginning to fall back into the shadows of what they had been saved out
of. You see the past patterns that were cleansed of, the guilt of them, those patterns are
still imprinted on us. And so God takes us through a process of cleansing and of holiness.
He makes us new people. He transforms us little by little over time. There's an old hymn that
we used to sing, I'm pressing on the upward way. New heights I'm gaining every day. The
point is that the journey that we're on as God's family is a journey toward the goal
of perfection. But we aren't there yet. Just like the Corinthians. And that's why He has
to write this to all of us. And He says, look, your Father is holy. Please remember He's
called you to be in the world without being like the world. Here's what the world is like.
God set you apart for something better. He's destined you for the throne of Jesus Christ.
He wants to clean up your life now so you can get out of those dark patterns from the
past. He wants to continue and make you a new person so that day by day, little by little,
you're growing toward the goal. That's what God wants from us. I close with the statement
that you see at the bottom. Our Father calls me as a child in His family to come out of
the world so that I can go back to the dark kingdom as His light. Would you say that with
me together? Our Father calls me as a child in His family to come out of the world so
that I can go back to the dark kingdom as His light. If we don't come out, we can't
go back. If we're not becoming light in the Lord, we can't be light in a dark kingdom.
And so God calls us to holiness. God calls us to change. God calls us to transformation.
And it's a wonderful process. It's a wonderful thing. Are you on that journey? I hope you
are. If you are still a part of a lifestyle that God condemns, and you've never confessed
that to the Lord, would you bring it to Him today? And say, Jesus, You know what I am.
You know the pattern of my life. You know the lifestyle I've lived. But I come to You
confessing that, that I receive You as my Lord and Savior. You know what? At that moment,
you'll be washed. You'll be sanctified by Jesus Christ. You'll be justified in the eyes
of God. And He will begin working in your life to make you a new creature. And if you
did that some years ago, forsake the shadows. Turn your back on them and keep walking with
Him. Let's pray together. Father, I pray the holiness of life, cleanness of life, Christ-likeness
of life, will be something that each of us in your family will reflect a little more
every day. And when we stumble and we fall backwards as we all do, Lord, give us quick
confession of that. Don't let us walk on in darkness. But bring us to the point of confession
so that we can come back, walk with You, and know greater holiness. Lord, we cry out to
You for holiness in our lives this day. Let's stand together, please, and let's sing this
song together.