1 Cor. 6:1-11
Interesting that Paul’s illustration
of his point this week is about Christians dragging their brothers and sisters
through lawsuits in unchristian worldly courts. Last week I mentioned all the
silly warning labels. You do know don’t you that all those silly warning labels
exist because of people suing each other for every little thing, right?
Since now I have mentioned the warning labels again, I will just toss in here one additional thought that occurred to me about that. I had said last week, those silly warning labels mean that there are people out there who need to be told those things because they don’t have enough sense to know better without being told? Can you understand that God looks at people who don’t listen to his warnings about sin in the same way that we look at people who don’t have common sense about simpler things?
But there is one significant difference. We think of those silly people and laugh at them as they get what they deserve for being so dumb. God doesn’t laugh at the silly people. He loves them and has done a lot of work to protect them from getting what they deserve. That’s what Christ on the cross is all about. “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.” Can anyone here claim that they should not be counted among the silly people that Jesus came to save?
But now Paul says, those who are saved will judge the world. How do you get to be a judge? I know, judges are elected to the bench, but who gets nominated? Lawyers, right? And they have to know the Law. They go to Law school. They practice law, and if they’re really good at it, someone might nominate them to run for the office of judge. Most of the time, (may I say all the time?) Judges are people who are very familiar with the Law. So if, as Paul says, “The Lord’s people will judge the world,” then I think it would be a good thing for all of God’s people to become as familiar with God’s Law as they are able to do.
I am willing to bet that wasn’t the first thing that popped into your mind as you heard this text read his morning. Most of the messages I have heard based on this text, and I must admit I haven’t heard very many sermons using this text, but still when it is preached, the message tends to be about how Christians should not be dragging each other into the worldly court system. And the illustrations are drawn from stories of congregations and Christians who have sued each other for all kinds of reasons and what a bad show that is to air their dirty laundry out there in the public eye.
But that message is so obvious you don’t need to hear it. That problem is not prevalent among us. Our conflicts are not that serious. I don’t know of anyone of us in this congregation who is looking forward to having their day in court, thinking they’re going to win a suit or prove their case. So this message must go to the heart of the matter and that turns out to be what I began with.
God’s people are going to judge the world. Paul says we are even going to judge angels. It says we are going to. That doesn’t mean we are ready now. A good judge has to be very familiar with the Law. God’s judges must be very familiar with the Law of God. So I believe the message we ought to walk away with today is for each one of us to take very seriously our responsibility to study God’s Law in God’s Word so that we become competent to judge such weighty matters.
Now in this life, we do get to practice law. But I mean practice as in use the proper exercises to learn how to be a good judge. Let’s realize that when we do our Bible study we are in Law School. Practice also means doing the test cases in simpler matters, such as the common ordinary everyday kinds of conflicts that arise as we try to live together as the family of God. We will have our internal conflicts with each other, but we can rely on God’s Word to guide us to peaceful resolution if we practice His Law.
But in order to practice law successfully, we have to know the Law. That is one of the foundational reasons why your personal involvement in Bible study is so important. Law students also discuss the law with other students. That way they teach each other, sharing each other’s profound and important insights and also correcting each other’s misinterpretations and false conclusions. That is one of the foundational reasons why your personal involvement in small group Bible study is so important. All of us need to talk to others about what we get out of our Scripture reading so we can all be sure we get it right.
You might object, “But pastor, we’re not under the Law. We are under Grace.” That is certainly true! But that is no reason to ignore the study of God’s Law. In fact, the better you know God’s law the more you will appreciate the magnitude of the Grace that saves you. Besides that, maybe when you think of God’s Law you begin to have in mind all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament worship and dietary rules, or if you think of the Ten Commandments, or if you think of any kinds of oppressive cultural rules and commands that you suffered as a child in churches where they don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t hang out with people who do. If that’s the sort of thing you think about when you think of God’s Law, you are in desperate need of a refresher course in the Truth about God’s Law.
So here it is real quick: Love. Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your mind and with all your soul. And love your neighbor as yourself. Furthermore, love your enemies. By this all men shall know that you are mu disciples, if you love one another. That’s the Law of God, the Law of love.
The rest of the Word of God is filled with all kinds of instructions and examples of what godly love looks like along with a lot of failures to obey the Law of Love so we have a lot to learn about how to love the way God loves. So to practice Law, in God’s way, is to practice Love. To practice Love we need to be instructed by and changed by God’s Word. This is why studying God’s Word is so important. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Over and over the Scriptures direct us to meditate on God’s Word. This activity takes time and discipline but brings much spiritual benefit and reward. Meditation is focused thinking about a Bible verse or passage in order to discover how we can apply its truth to our own lives.
I have provided a bulletin insert that teaches how to meditate in God’s Word. I encourage you to tuck this page into your Bible if you don’t already have some such tool to help you. Use it tomorrow when you take some time for fellowship with Jesus and open up your Bible to see what God wants to teach you. But now let me tell you a short story that I got from my e-mail subscription to Standing Strong Through the Storm.
When Laos was taken over by a communist government, the leading pastor, Rev. Sail was put into a prison camp for three years of “re-education.” He referred to it later as his university experience. During that time he led five men to Christ in the camp. He had no Bible so he discipled these new believers on scriptures he had memorized and internalized. Later those men became leaders in the church. That’s how you practice the Law of Love and become qualified to judge the world as an agent of God. If you were taken away today and had no Bible, could you lead someone to Christ and disciple them in the law of God? Do you believe God wishes you could? Are you practicing that today, using the Bibles we have?
Joshua 1:8 says, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”
Here’s another story from the persecuted Church. A worker who was teaching Christian leaders in Vietnam shares this experience: I’ll tell it in his words. As I started sharing, I immediately realized that not one of these pastors owned a Bible and that they were waiting to hear from scripture. When I began, one pastor raised his hand. “Excuse me brother, is that the Bible or is that you?”
“This is scripture,” I answered and immediately the leaders took out a notebook and eagerly started writing every word down. I then understood that this was the only way that they could collect scripture verses. I wanted to cry.
As I continued the teaching, the same question came once again. “Excuse me brother, is that the Bible or is that you?” “This time it’s me,” I answered and suddenly everybody put their “Bibles” down and took out a different notebook and once again wrote down every word I said. Then came lunch break and the leading pastor stood up. “We will now have a time to test our Bible knowledge,” he announced.
I wondered how my Bible knowledge, with more than ten Bibles at my disposal, would measure up with these leaders who do not have their own copies. The leader asked the first question. “What does it say in Obadiah 2:4?”
I shrank in my chair. Please don’t look at me, I thought. I know there is a book of Obadiah but I must confess it has been some time since I read it. The pastors started laughing and then one raised his hand. “Obadiah only has one chapter, brother!” I felt so ashamed. How is it possible I did not know this and these believers without their own Bibles knew.
Then came the second question. “What does the Bible teach in Nahum 1:7? An elderly pastor in the front row raised his hand like an eager school child. He then started quoting the scripture: “The Lord is good, a strength in the day of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.”
“Well done brother,” said the leader. “You may sit down now.” But the elderly pastor was not finished yet. “Please,” he asked, “may I continue?” After a nod, he quoted the whole book of Nahum faultlessly. I was also later introduced to another believer who came to know the Lord only during recent years. His passion for the Word of God is displayed in the fact that he has already memorized seventy-eight chapters of the Bible.
Doesn’t that kind of knowledge of Scripture put us to shame? It is true that because we have easy access to printed bibles and on-line bibles our circumstances do not force us to rely on memorized Scripture. But let me say this, do you remember when Paul said in our reading today, “I say this to shame you?” He was talking about their bad habit of using the pagan court systems when he said, “If you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?”
Paul was arguing thus to encourage the Corinthian Christians to handle conflicts in the fellowship according to God’s Law of Love rather than the human laws of rights and privileges. Since the earlier part of his letter to the Corinthians also insisted that Godly wisdom is far superior to human wisdom, it was all the more reason for them to be stung by this rebuke and change their ways. But as I said before, suing each other is not our problem. Our problem has more to do with is whether or not we really practice God’s Law or even know it well enough to practice it.
So, also included in the bulletin insert I already mentioned is an easy method for memorizing Scripture. The key is to read a longer passage, rather than verse by verse. Don’t excuse yourself by thinking you’re too old either. You will be rewarded just for making the effort. As an added bonus, this kind of mental exercise will help keep your brain healthy and alert. For example, the man I read about who taught this method of memorization was still teaching seminary classes at the age of 92!1
The clear question is what do you want? Do you want to just be a hearer of God’s Word, or are you also willing to be a doer? And how can you be a doer if you don’t know it because you don’t study it. How much of God’s revealed will is not known to us because you don’t know Scripture? The reason I started this series in the book of 1 Corinthians is because God laid it on my heart to provide for and cultivate a spiritually healthy church. God’s Word is the food of the Church. Too many people are starving their spirits to death because they don’t take God’s Word seriously enough to commit it to memory and put it into practice.
In this section of 1 Corinthians Paul was dealing with a glaringly obnoxious form of conflict resolution; suing each other in pagan courts! We are not guilty of that. But we do have our conflicts, and the principle of Paul’s teaching is that by God’s Word we ought to be able to handle our smaller conflicts with much grace and love. Most of the conflict in this congregation of which I am aware, in which people have solved their problem by leaving this fellowship, left because they didn’t know God’s Word well enough to truly practice God’s Law of Love.
Now you may think that’s just my opinion. And I suppose that’s true but it’s based on my knowledge of Scripture and on my conversations with the people who have left. But more than that it is based on my experience of God’s grace at work in my life. Test it out for yourself. Look into God’s Word, open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and make sure through your own study. In his day Paul was very proud of the Christians in the city of Berea. The Bereans looked into the Scriptures for themselves and examined the teachings to make sure they were getting the good stuff. They took responsibility for their own spiritual health. That’s the essence of discipleship.
Now in closing, I hope you do not think I have laid too heavy a burden on you. I may have given the impression that we have no real power to deal with conflict, to forgive each other or to love each other in God’s way until after we have memorized large portions of Scripture and know the Law. That is not what I meant at all. In truth it is the other way around, those Asian examples of devotion to God’s Word I talked about loved God’s Word because God had loved them enough to break through the darkness of their own cultural heritage and love them, forgive them and fill them with such joy that they could forgive the little sins that were committed against them, sins as little as ferocious persecution.
First God forgives us and pours out his amazing grace into our undeserving hearts. Remember the woman who had lived a life of sin loved Jesus enough to wash his feet with her tears because she had been forgiven her many sins. But the Pharisee, student of the Bible though he was, didn’t love much because he didn’t realize how much he had been forgiven.
The God who loves us and made us knows what’s best for us. He forgives our sins and for that we are grateful and love him back. Do we have any better way of loving him back than to learn His Word and do what he says? But in the immediate, if you have come to the foot of the cross and experienced the grace and forgiveness of God in your own life, then you already know how to love your enemy, just do what Christ has done for you. Filled with the Holy Spirit and the joy of the Lord, pay it forward. Bless your enemy. Pray for those who hurt you. Release the bitterness of the pain they have caused you. I know the children of God can live that way.
Let us pray, Oh Lord, help us to examine our lives in the light of your love and see if there is any root of bitterness that holds us captive so that like the unmerciful servant Jesus talked about we refuse to forgive a brother or sister some small injury, even though Jesus has forgiven us all our sins. Bless us Lord! Help us to perceive how amazing is your grace so that we are filled, by faith in Jesus, with the same spirit of love and grace that sets us free to truly love you and each other in the way that fulfills your law of love. Amen.
1 http://thegoodbookblog.com/2012/jan/28/the-easiest-way-to-memorize-the-bible-what-i-learn/
Since now I have mentioned the warning labels again, I will just toss in here one additional thought that occurred to me about that. I had said last week, those silly warning labels mean that there are people out there who need to be told those things because they don’t have enough sense to know better without being told? Can you understand that God looks at people who don’t listen to his warnings about sin in the same way that we look at people who don’t have common sense about simpler things?
But there is one significant difference. We think of those silly people and laugh at them as they get what they deserve for being so dumb. God doesn’t laugh at the silly people. He loves them and has done a lot of work to protect them from getting what they deserve. That’s what Christ on the cross is all about. “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.” Can anyone here claim that they should not be counted among the silly people that Jesus came to save?
But now Paul says, those who are saved will judge the world. How do you get to be a judge? I know, judges are elected to the bench, but who gets nominated? Lawyers, right? And they have to know the Law. They go to Law school. They practice law, and if they’re really good at it, someone might nominate them to run for the office of judge. Most of the time, (may I say all the time?) Judges are people who are very familiar with the Law. So if, as Paul says, “The Lord’s people will judge the world,” then I think it would be a good thing for all of God’s people to become as familiar with God’s Law as they are able to do.
I am willing to bet that wasn’t the first thing that popped into your mind as you heard this text read his morning. Most of the messages I have heard based on this text, and I must admit I haven’t heard very many sermons using this text, but still when it is preached, the message tends to be about how Christians should not be dragging each other into the worldly court system. And the illustrations are drawn from stories of congregations and Christians who have sued each other for all kinds of reasons and what a bad show that is to air their dirty laundry out there in the public eye.
But that message is so obvious you don’t need to hear it. That problem is not prevalent among us. Our conflicts are not that serious. I don’t know of anyone of us in this congregation who is looking forward to having their day in court, thinking they’re going to win a suit or prove their case. So this message must go to the heart of the matter and that turns out to be what I began with.
God’s people are going to judge the world. Paul says we are even going to judge angels. It says we are going to. That doesn’t mean we are ready now. A good judge has to be very familiar with the Law. God’s judges must be very familiar with the Law of God. So I believe the message we ought to walk away with today is for each one of us to take very seriously our responsibility to study God’s Law in God’s Word so that we become competent to judge such weighty matters.
Now in this life, we do get to practice law. But I mean practice as in use the proper exercises to learn how to be a good judge. Let’s realize that when we do our Bible study we are in Law School. Practice also means doing the test cases in simpler matters, such as the common ordinary everyday kinds of conflicts that arise as we try to live together as the family of God. We will have our internal conflicts with each other, but we can rely on God’s Word to guide us to peaceful resolution if we practice His Law.
But in order to practice law successfully, we have to know the Law. That is one of the foundational reasons why your personal involvement in Bible study is so important. Law students also discuss the law with other students. That way they teach each other, sharing each other’s profound and important insights and also correcting each other’s misinterpretations and false conclusions. That is one of the foundational reasons why your personal involvement in small group Bible study is so important. All of us need to talk to others about what we get out of our Scripture reading so we can all be sure we get it right.
You might object, “But pastor, we’re not under the Law. We are under Grace.” That is certainly true! But that is no reason to ignore the study of God’s Law. In fact, the better you know God’s law the more you will appreciate the magnitude of the Grace that saves you. Besides that, maybe when you think of God’s Law you begin to have in mind all the rules and regulations of the Old Testament worship and dietary rules, or if you think of the Ten Commandments, or if you think of any kinds of oppressive cultural rules and commands that you suffered as a child in churches where they don’t drink, don’t chew, and don’t hang out with people who do. If that’s the sort of thing you think about when you think of God’s Law, you are in desperate need of a refresher course in the Truth about God’s Law.
So here it is real quick: Love. Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your mind and with all your soul. And love your neighbor as yourself. Furthermore, love your enemies. By this all men shall know that you are mu disciples, if you love one another. That’s the Law of God, the Law of love.
The rest of the Word of God is filled with all kinds of instructions and examples of what godly love looks like along with a lot of failures to obey the Law of Love so we have a lot to learn about how to love the way God loves. So to practice Law, in God’s way, is to practice Love. To practice Love we need to be instructed by and changed by God’s Word. This is why studying God’s Word is so important. Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
Over and over the Scriptures direct us to meditate on God’s Word. This activity takes time and discipline but brings much spiritual benefit and reward. Meditation is focused thinking about a Bible verse or passage in order to discover how we can apply its truth to our own lives.
I have provided a bulletin insert that teaches how to meditate in God’s Word. I encourage you to tuck this page into your Bible if you don’t already have some such tool to help you. Use it tomorrow when you take some time for fellowship with Jesus and open up your Bible to see what God wants to teach you. But now let me tell you a short story that I got from my e-mail subscription to Standing Strong Through the Storm.
When Laos was taken over by a communist government, the leading pastor, Rev. Sail was put into a prison camp for three years of “re-education.” He referred to it later as his university experience. During that time he led five men to Christ in the camp. He had no Bible so he discipled these new believers on scriptures he had memorized and internalized. Later those men became leaders in the church. That’s how you practice the Law of Love and become qualified to judge the world as an agent of God. If you were taken away today and had no Bible, could you lead someone to Christ and disciple them in the law of God? Do you believe God wishes you could? Are you practicing that today, using the Bibles we have?
Joshua 1:8 says, “Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.”
Here’s another story from the persecuted Church. A worker who was teaching Christian leaders in Vietnam shares this experience: I’ll tell it in his words. As I started sharing, I immediately realized that not one of these pastors owned a Bible and that they were waiting to hear from scripture. When I began, one pastor raised his hand. “Excuse me brother, is that the Bible or is that you?”
“This is scripture,” I answered and immediately the leaders took out a notebook and eagerly started writing every word down. I then understood that this was the only way that they could collect scripture verses. I wanted to cry.
As I continued the teaching, the same question came once again. “Excuse me brother, is that the Bible or is that you?” “This time it’s me,” I answered and suddenly everybody put their “Bibles” down and took out a different notebook and once again wrote down every word I said. Then came lunch break and the leading pastor stood up. “We will now have a time to test our Bible knowledge,” he announced.
I wondered how my Bible knowledge, with more than ten Bibles at my disposal, would measure up with these leaders who do not have their own copies. The leader asked the first question. “What does it say in Obadiah 2:4?”
I shrank in my chair. Please don’t look at me, I thought. I know there is a book of Obadiah but I must confess it has been some time since I read it. The pastors started laughing and then one raised his hand. “Obadiah only has one chapter, brother!” I felt so ashamed. How is it possible I did not know this and these believers without their own Bibles knew.
Then came the second question. “What does the Bible teach in Nahum 1:7? An elderly pastor in the front row raised his hand like an eager school child. He then started quoting the scripture: “The Lord is good, a strength in the day of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.”
“Well done brother,” said the leader. “You may sit down now.” But the elderly pastor was not finished yet. “Please,” he asked, “may I continue?” After a nod, he quoted the whole book of Nahum faultlessly. I was also later introduced to another believer who came to know the Lord only during recent years. His passion for the Word of God is displayed in the fact that he has already memorized seventy-eight chapters of the Bible.
Doesn’t that kind of knowledge of Scripture put us to shame? It is true that because we have easy access to printed bibles and on-line bibles our circumstances do not force us to rely on memorized Scripture. But let me say this, do you remember when Paul said in our reading today, “I say this to shame you?” He was talking about their bad habit of using the pagan court systems when he said, “If you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?”
Paul was arguing thus to encourage the Corinthian Christians to handle conflicts in the fellowship according to God’s Law of Love rather than the human laws of rights and privileges. Since the earlier part of his letter to the Corinthians also insisted that Godly wisdom is far superior to human wisdom, it was all the more reason for them to be stung by this rebuke and change their ways. But as I said before, suing each other is not our problem. Our problem has more to do with is whether or not we really practice God’s Law or even know it well enough to practice it.
So, also included in the bulletin insert I already mentioned is an easy method for memorizing Scripture. The key is to read a longer passage, rather than verse by verse. Don’t excuse yourself by thinking you’re too old either. You will be rewarded just for making the effort. As an added bonus, this kind of mental exercise will help keep your brain healthy and alert. For example, the man I read about who taught this method of memorization was still teaching seminary classes at the age of 92!1
The clear question is what do you want? Do you want to just be a hearer of God’s Word, or are you also willing to be a doer? And how can you be a doer if you don’t know it because you don’t study it. How much of God’s revealed will is not known to us because you don’t know Scripture? The reason I started this series in the book of 1 Corinthians is because God laid it on my heart to provide for and cultivate a spiritually healthy church. God’s Word is the food of the Church. Too many people are starving their spirits to death because they don’t take God’s Word seriously enough to commit it to memory and put it into practice.
In this section of 1 Corinthians Paul was dealing with a glaringly obnoxious form of conflict resolution; suing each other in pagan courts! We are not guilty of that. But we do have our conflicts, and the principle of Paul’s teaching is that by God’s Word we ought to be able to handle our smaller conflicts with much grace and love. Most of the conflict in this congregation of which I am aware, in which people have solved their problem by leaving this fellowship, left because they didn’t know God’s Word well enough to truly practice God’s Law of Love.
Now you may think that’s just my opinion. And I suppose that’s true but it’s based on my knowledge of Scripture and on my conversations with the people who have left. But more than that it is based on my experience of God’s grace at work in my life. Test it out for yourself. Look into God’s Word, open to the Holy Spirit’s guidance and make sure through your own study. In his day Paul was very proud of the Christians in the city of Berea. The Bereans looked into the Scriptures for themselves and examined the teachings to make sure they were getting the good stuff. They took responsibility for their own spiritual health. That’s the essence of discipleship.
Now in closing, I hope you do not think I have laid too heavy a burden on you. I may have given the impression that we have no real power to deal with conflict, to forgive each other or to love each other in God’s way until after we have memorized large portions of Scripture and know the Law. That is not what I meant at all. In truth it is the other way around, those Asian examples of devotion to God’s Word I talked about loved God’s Word because God had loved them enough to break through the darkness of their own cultural heritage and love them, forgive them and fill them with such joy that they could forgive the little sins that were committed against them, sins as little as ferocious persecution.
First God forgives us and pours out his amazing grace into our undeserving hearts. Remember the woman who had lived a life of sin loved Jesus enough to wash his feet with her tears because she had been forgiven her many sins. But the Pharisee, student of the Bible though he was, didn’t love much because he didn’t realize how much he had been forgiven.
The God who loves us and made us knows what’s best for us. He forgives our sins and for that we are grateful and love him back. Do we have any better way of loving him back than to learn His Word and do what he says? But in the immediate, if you have come to the foot of the cross and experienced the grace and forgiveness of God in your own life, then you already know how to love your enemy, just do what Christ has done for you. Filled with the Holy Spirit and the joy of the Lord, pay it forward. Bless your enemy. Pray for those who hurt you. Release the bitterness of the pain they have caused you. I know the children of God can live that way.
Let us pray, Oh Lord, help us to examine our lives in the light of your love and see if there is any root of bitterness that holds us captive so that like the unmerciful servant Jesus talked about we refuse to forgive a brother or sister some small injury, even though Jesus has forgiven us all our sins. Bless us Lord! Help us to perceive how amazing is your grace so that we are filled, by faith in Jesus, with the same spirit of love and grace that sets us free to truly love you and each other in the way that fulfills your law of love. Amen.
1 http://thegoodbookblog.com/2012/jan/28/the-easiest-way-to-memorize-the-bible-what-i-learn/
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