Alright, let's turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 6. I'm going to attempt to get through
the first eight verses. And the title of the lesson is,
The Life of Grace. Now last week, we looked at one
of the problems going on in the church at Corinth. Gross, unpenitent, Open sin. We're not talking about somebody
who slipped a little bit or somebody who made some mistakes. We're
talking about open rebellion and gross, just gross, unpenitent
sin. And most everybody believes that
he was an influential man, maybe even an officer in the church.
Might have been a preacher, a deacon. But it's obvious that he was
a well-known man because his sin was known by everybody. Everybody
in the town, everybody in the church knew about it. Now my friend, your life is your
life out there. That's your life. And you can live your life any
way you want to. Any way you want to. You can
live in open rebellion. You can live in open sin. This
world will tolerate just about anything from what I can tell. But when you profess faith in
Christ, what you're saying is, I'm not
my own. I've been bought with a price.
And your life is not your life anymore. It belongs to Him. You remember in Philemon, you
remember how this man had left the church and he'd left some
debts and he went out, he struck out, he left his responsibilities
and stuff and left out, but he was converted while he was out
there by the Apostle Paul. And Paul wrote that letter back
to reconcile, who was it, Onesimus? He wrote it back to reconcile
Onesimus. And what he told him was this. He said, now if there's any debt,
any debts that this man owes, you put it on my account. That's
what he told him. And then he said this. But you
owe your life to me. You remember that. While you're
making out the debt and while you're transferring, you remember
that. And what I'm saying to you this
morning is you apply that same thing to Christ. We owe our lives
to Him. Our lives are not ours anymore. And the life that I now live
in the flesh, Paul said, I live by the faith of the Son of God
who loved me and gave Himself for me. We live for Him. And here's the thing I want you
to understand in this lesson what's going on here. Everything
you do in life, it doesn't just reflect your name, it reflects
the name of your Lord. And it reflects the reputation
of this church. And it reflects the reputation
of this pastor. Everything you do, everything
you say, your temperament, your business dealings, everything
you do, people watch you. They care less about you until
they find out you've made a profession of faith or joined a church,
and then they watch you under a microscope. They watch every
little thing you do and say. When we make a profession of
faith and identify ourselves with God's church, it's no longer
a matter of our name and our reputation, but the name and
reputation of our Lord. And therefore, gross, unpenitent
sin must be judged and not allowed to continue. We can't allow it.
I'm going to be honest with you. The last thing that I want is
to have to judge anybody. Is there anybody here that would
be happy to judge? I mean, that's the last thing
we want. We want to rejoice in Christ.
I want to point you to Him and rejoice with you. I rejoice when
they took Richard last week and put him under the water and he
confessed faith in Christ. I rejoiced with him. That's what
I want to do is rejoice. And I want us to come together
in fellowship and love and rejoice and praise God. But these judgments
have to be made and they're contrary. These judgments are contrary
to the life of grace. It's just contrary. It's not
what we want to do, it's what we have to do. And we always
make it the last thing. Gross, unpenitent sin cannot
be allowed to be practiced and ignored by the church. Now in
today's lesson in chapter 6, Paul points out another fault.
Here's another fault let go by those who were preoccupied with
glorying in themselves and glorying in their oratory and in their
services. and tracing back their roots
to see which minister they were converted under and all this
type of thing. And they were just totally oblivious
to the church coming apart at the seams. They set the gospel
aside and they went to glory and then themselves and then
their speech and one man could get up and speak for an hour
and just hold everybody spellbound and everybody wanted to be, they
wanted to side with him, you know, and glory and him and another
one this one or another one that one and so on. But in this church, all of these
things began to happen. And it was just coming apart
at the seams, this open, unrepentant, gross sin going on. And then
today, he talks about this. He talks about members of this
church were taking one another to court to settle their disputes
and to settle their differences. I don't know what kind of disputes
they were, whether they were land disputes or money disputes
or contract disputes, just typical problems arising, as they do
all over the world. And Paul's rebuke of the way
they were handling their problems has two parts in this chapter. First, he tells them that their
problems ought to be settled amongst themselves on the basis
of love and grace and not in the courts of this unbelieving
world. Failure to resolve our differences
in love and grace causes the gospel we preach to be held in
contempt by wicked men. They look down here and you say, We have a man over there preaching
the gospel of God's sovereign grace. And we drive an hour. We drive an hour and a half.
We drive 30 minutes. We go down there. We hear this
man. And we rejoice in the message. And we do all these things. And
then you turn right around. Next week, you're down at the
courthouse. And this guy's sitting on one bench. And you're sitting
on the other, waiting on the administrator to come in, the
judge, to settle your disputes. You don't think that causes men
to hold the gospel you preach in contempt? Well, that gospel
is not doing anything for anybody. There's nothing changed about
him whatsoever. And then secondly, Paul teaches
us that true believers ought to endure injuries. They ought
to endure these misunderstandings with patience, love, and forgiveness
rather than seeking revenge and compensation. Listen to him here
in verse 1. Dare any of you having a matter
against another go to law before the unjust and not before the
saints? Now, Paul's not here trying to
run down the court system. That's not what he's doing. He's
not saying that you go out here in the world
and you agree to build a house for so much money and this guy
won't pay you and you've done the work He's not saying that
you can't go down there to the courthouse because you're going
to get an unfair judgment from the court. Some people, you may
have to take the court to get your money. You might have to
do it. But not in here. Not among the
brethren. Not among the brethren. And actually,
he tells us the very opposite of that when it comes to the
world in Romans chapter 13. He tells us to be subject to
the higher powers. What powers is he talking about?
He's talking about the court system. He's talking about the
police department. He's talking about the army, the navy, the
air force. You be subject to these powers.
You be subject to the laws of the land because these are ministers
of God for your good and God's put the sword in their hand. But Paul's rebuke is that we
let these petty differences become a reason for slander to the church. I want you to think about something. If our children borrow money
and don't pay it back, you going to take them to court? Or are you just going to swallow
it down and say, this was a bad decision on my part, it was too
early, whatever. You're going to swallow it down
and you're going to bear it. He's not going to be over at
his house every day, and every time you have a little event
at the house, get together and say, now you know you still owe
me money, don't you? No, you're going to forget it.
You're going to forget it. Why is that? Why do we do that? Because we share a common name.
We share a common name, and because we love one another. And we want
them to learn to live responsibly, and so we discuss the problem,
and we try to get them to follow up on these things. But in the
end, we usually just wind up forgetting about it, going on,
going on. And my friend, this ought to
be even more the way we deal with these things in the church.
Now, let this be established. Believers love one another. They
love one another. They don't love one another if
they love one another. If you put that word if between
you and another believer, then you're going to have to take
that same if and put it between you and the Lord. What kind of offenses did we
have? What kind of debt did we owe?
You see what I'm saying? So let that be established. Believers
all love one another. He that saith he is in the light
and hateth his brothers, he is still in darkness. Herein is
love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His
Son to be the propitiation for our sins. And beloved, if God
so loved us, we ought also to love one another. God's love
is manifested in the mercy and grace He's given to us freely
in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where it's manifest. That's
where we see it. And for giving us our debts to
Him, and taking our debts to be His own, and laying down His
life for us, bearing our iniquities, bearing our sins in His own body
on the tree. And if this is how the love of
God is manifested, and He assures us that it is, then so ought
we, he said, to love one another in that same way. Now, I know
we can't do it under perfection. That's an impossibility. I'm
not a perfect creature. But that's the type of love that
we ought to have. Our lives as children of God
are to be lived and loved. He that loveth not, it says,
knoweth not God. And then secondly, we're saved
by grace, and we ought to be gracious to one another. That's
the basis of our hope before God, is the grace of God. So
why do I expect something different out of you? Huh? Fellowship's fellers in the same
ship. We're all in the same boat. We've
all got a common problem. We've all got a common solution.
We've all got a common salvation. Paul said, I've come to tell
you about the common faith. Our Lord gave a parable about
a man. He forgave a great debt. You remember reading that parable?
He forgave this man a great debt. This man thought it was the end
of the line for him. But he had a gracious master.
And his master forgave him that great debt. And he went out. He went down the road. He didn't
make it two blocks down the road. He run into this fellow that
borrowed a little bit of money off of him. It didn't amount
to nothing. He got him by the throat, had him over on the side
of the road, getting ready to take him and put him in prison
until he... I mean, he was dressing this
guy down. You gonna pay me the uttermost
farthing. Put you in prison. And then his
master found out about it. And he called him back in. And
he addressed that same problem. And that's what Paul's doing
here. He's talking to these people. They're taking one another to
court. They're trying to exercise justice. Listen, our fellowship is not
based on justice. It is based on mercy and grace.
And are we going to fall? You bet we are. You bet we are. We strive not to, but we are. The debt our Lord has freely
forgiven us so far supersedes these petty differences that
we have. And He that has forgiven much The Bible said, he loveth
much. And the greater our perception
of God's grace, the greater ought to be our capacity to be gracious. And then mercy. How great is
the mercy that God has shown to us? You can't even calculate
the riches of the glory of His grace and mercy does. We can't
even calculate it. And a man who's conscious of
God, mercy ought not ought not have a problem, that man ought
not have a problem being merciful. He ought not have a problem being
merciful. God's been merciful to him. It
shouldn't be a hard thing. And then here's the thing, whether
it be love or mercy or grace, these things are all directly
related to our sins and debts and unjust acts toward God. And
so you take these things, and here's the same thing. This guy
owes you a debt. you know, justice ought to condemn
him. The same things that apply to
you toward God, that Christ paid and did for you, the same thing
applies over here. The exact same things. But these
are so petty compared to these. Verse 2, Do you 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? Know ye
not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain
to this life." Now, true believers are endowed with spiritual wisdom. And as they continue to assemble
themselves together and worship God, they grow in grace and knowledge
of Christ. They grow in wisdom. They grow
in wisdom. And one day will reign with Christ
and judge this evil world. How foolish then take our differences
before the unjust courts of wicked men. You know that Noah, by his
faith and obedience to God, in a sense, judged this world. And
God judged this world through those things. He sure did. He condemned this world. Isn't
that what Peter said? Condemned this world. And so
does every believing soul who walks and lives in obedience
to Christ. And the judges of this world
are not equipped to judge spiritual matters. You take them down here
They are not equipped for that. Not equipped. Only God's elect,
those who have been converted, those who have been born of God,
those who have grown in grace and knowledge of Christ, they
are equipped to make these spiritual judgments, not this wicked world. This world, the judgment of this
world is basically this, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Huh? Justice. Justice. And even the angels are judged
by God's saints. When we believe the Word of God
and look to Christ for redemption and righteousness, while fallen
angels continue on in darkness, it's a clear judgment of their
falling condition before me. We judge angels even now. Even
now. And if we have a wisdom given
us of God to discern heavenly things, Shouldn't we be able
to judge these little petty matters? Huh? We'll be able to do that,
shouldn't we? Verse 4, if then you have judgments
of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are
least esteemed in the church. This is a difficult passage here. This is not telling us to take
Somebody in the church here who didn't finish high school, who
don't really have any common sense, who's at the bottom of
the rung, and give him these matters to decide. That's not
what this is talking about. You read that next verse there,
and you'll see that that ain't what he's talking about. What
he's saying here, and every writer I read agrees with this, is not
to take your deacons and elders and your pastor and let them
handle these judgments. He's saying, you take somebody
out here that sits in a pew week after week after week. He's been
here and he's got some wisdom. You take him. I mean, he don't
have a big name and reputation. He don't have all that in the
church. And these elders, they're to be held in high regard by
the church. But he's saying, take somebody
who's not an elder. And now you're going to get the
true wisdom of that church. And he's going to discern these
things. And he's going to deal with these problems. And then
you'll come to find out that most of these things, we've talked
about this and talked about this, but most of these things are
settled quickly. And they're settled individually.
And they never get to that point. I went to 13th Street Baptist
Church for a long time. I went to Don's Church up in
Danville for a long time. And I can only remember one or
two cases in all that time of any kind of a public judgment
of the church. And even then, it was a quiet
matter. And some folks had to be asked to leave. They were
troublemakers, had been troublemakers, had been going on and going on
and going on, and yet the church kept it down and kept it quiet
and tried to resolve it. They went through all the, you
know, having groups of men come and try to talk and it didn't
do any good, and finally they were asked to leave. And some
other things. But my point is this, this is
not something, we're not going to gather in here every Wednesday
night or say one Wednesday night of the month and have a business
meeting and start picking each other apart. That's not what
he's talking about here. Our problems ought to be dealt
with as quietly and quickly as possible. All right, verse 5.
I speak to your shame. Is it so that there is not a
wise man among you? Know not one that shall be able
to judge between the brethren? Who d'ye call forth? A wise man. A wise man. But brethren, goeth
the law with brethren. and that before the unbelievers. My friend, this is why Paul spent
four chapters of this book laying the foundation of gospel preaching
in the assembly of the saints. This is how we're made wise. You're not made wise by somebody
standing up here saying, now you need to be wise. You're never
going to get anywhere than that way. You get wisdom through Christ. Christ is our wisdom. So I stand
and I preach Christ to you. I may never tell you that. But
you're going to get wise hearing about Him. That's the only wisdom
there is. This is how we're made wise.
And this is how we learn how to conduct ourselves in business
and in life. Husbands, love your wife half
as Christ loved the church. Same thing applies to your children.
Same thing applies to your employer. or your employee. This is how
we learn to conduct ourselves in business and life, and this
is how we learn how to deal with everyday problems and avoid these
harmful things. But they left that gospel off,
and they was over here glorying in things. All these things that
appeal to the flesh. Wherever the wisdom of God in
Christ is neglected, men and women are left to their own ideas
and reasoning, And their assemblies are full of contention, full
of immorality, and full of ignorance. You are going to find it every
time. Every time. These men glowed
in their own wisdom and gifts, but did not have enough spiritual
discernment to judge themselves. Verse 7, Now therefore there
is utterly a fault among you, because you go to law with one
another. Why do you not rather take the
wrong? Why do you not rather suffer
yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, you do wrong, and defraud,
and that your brethren. I just have a few remarks here,
and I'll wind this up. It's a spiritual crime to take
your brother to court. He's committed a crime against
you, and you're fixing to commit a crime against the other brethren
and against God, taking Him to court. And you're not going to
correct one crime by committing another one. You see what he's
saying here? It's a spiritual crime to not
suffer the wrong for the sake of your love for Him and for
the good of the church. There's the second crime. When
a brother defrauds a brother, that's a crime, and it should
never happen. Never happen. I mean, I encourage
you to pay your bills, and pay your bills on time. If you agree
to pay money back, pay it back. Pay it back. And that goes double
for those of you in here that love one another. If we borrow
money from another one, pay it back. You owe the debt. Pay it
back. But my friend, if they don't
pay it back, bear the wrong. Bear the debt. Bear the debt. Oh, that God would enable us
to walk in love and learn to be kind and merciful and gracious
to one another. That's what it means to walk
in love. That's what it means to walk
in grace. This is the life of grace. It's
what we do. It's what we do. God help us
to be able to do it for Christ's sake.