And now we're returning to our series that we've begun in January on 1 Corinthians, but I asked you to take your Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Let me refresh your memory. The apostle is dealing with a church that has many, many problems. It is a young wild group of stallions Who are coming right out of paganism? They've been involved in all kinds of things that one would hardly even mention and now they're supposed to be the holy people of God and it's a mess. But Jesus is in the middle of them and the apostle knows that and he calls them saints and reminds them that they are his brothers and sisters as bad as it may look from time to time. He begins to address their problems. It's what we call a highly occasional or ad hoc letter. It's very obvious that he's being asked questions or situations are presented to him to which he's responding and it's very easy to see what those are. The first four chapters we saw that he tackled probably the most difficult problem in corn and we probably wouldn't have guessed it, but actually thought about it. We saw this does make sense. The division that was in the church and in this case they were following Peter, Paul, Apollas, they were dividing up and and basically the apostle says you're going to know where until you get yourselves together, to you love each other and it takes in four chapters to show it and the rich were being separated from the poor and the powerful from the impotent and it was just a mess. Now when we come to chapter five, he launches into another problem and it really takes us through chapters five, six and seven to deal with the entire problem of sexual morality in the church. To Corinthianize was to be involved in sexual immorality in Paul's day. The city of Corinth had a reputation and so he tackles their second most difficult cultural problem beginning with chapter five. We have in last time, three weeks ago, we saw that the apostle says look you're doing things that are even considered outrageous among the pagans and rather than being shamed by it, you're buzzing about it. You're saying that your body doesn't matter because your spirit is saved by Jesus and look how free you are as Christians, you're no longer burdened by your sin and therefore you just go sin all the more. This cannot be, as a matter of fact, you're not only deceased to sexual immorality but you must be the ones who do it. You discipline yourself, you're a family, start acting like a real believing family and encourage and exhort and even review one another and in this case he says if you find someone non-repencing, you must disfellowship the brother with the hopes of course that he comes back. The apostle made it clear at the end of chapter five, I'm not talking about unbelievers. You don't separate yourself from unbelievers engaged and all this stuff, they're the ones who are seeking to reach that they may be saved. He said I'm talking about people who profess to be believers from whom you must separate yourself and they conclude his argument by saying in verse 12, chapter five, what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church or you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside, expel the wicked men from among you. He says here's the problem with sexual immorality, here's how you deal with it, you judge yourselves and you discipline yourselves. He says I'm not talking about disciplining unbelievers, that's not to be done by the church. We're to proclaim the good news to the unbeliever. It's only when they say I want to be part of the family that they enter into the family discipline. So the problem he's saying you really have twofold, the sexual immorality problem and the judgment problem or lack of judgment and discipline. Now when we come to chapter six, he takes off on both of those issues. Next week, I've asked a real expert among us, the newly married Jacob to address the sexual immorality issue. I am a coward. Beginning with verse 12 and chapter six, Chuck will be dealing with that and by the way, this will be a great time for you to bring your friends who may be struggling in this area of their life. There is hope and there's grace in this area of our lives and there's joy and Chuck will describe that to you next week. The first part of chapter six has to deal with the judgements and here the apostle is going to say, look, we don't judge those outside, but we also do not ask those on the outside to judge us. We judge ourselves and these Corinthians were so entirely confused that they were being moralistic and legalistic toward the outsiders. They were being libertine toward themselves and they are being outright pagan by looking to the civil courts to adjudicate their cases among themselves. It was totally dysfunctional. The apostle kind of launches off on this issue in the first 11 chapters of chapter six and that's our text and folks, this is not a remote problem in the first century of the Greek world and the Roman world. Every week that goes by, did I pass for the church, I'm aware of heartache and disappointments and human relation problems. We all have them and once I deal with them most are my own and usually I call them. This is a real problem and we also see in the church of our day that we are going to outsiders to get our way. We are often going to civil courts and litigating and doing other kinds of things that the Bible never warranted and so it's a very relevant issue for us, for our families and our friends. Let's pray that we'll hear this word as it really is. It's God speaking through the apostle Paul by the power of the Holy Spirit to people in the year 2000. Let us pray. Gracious God, this is your word and we are your people and may there be a happy marriage between the two. As we listen to your word, as we hear your voice and as we open our hearts and our lives to put it into practice Lord, we need your help for everything in us tends to go our own way. And so is your sheep, is your people, is your servants. We gather around your gracious throne and pray, speak O Lord for your servants. Listen, Amen. First Corinthians, chapter 6, hear the word of God. If any one of you has a dispute with another, dare you 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 than things of this life? Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, a point is judges even men of little account 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? 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 you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead you yourself cheat and do wrong and you do this to your brothers. Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. 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. 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. O men are like grass and older glory as like the flowers of the field, the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. Some years ago a man named Abe Lemons was the basketball coach at the University of Texas. And the athletic director, Delos Dodd decided to fire him and so he was fired. And the press asked Coach Lemons how he felt about it. They said, are you bitter toward athletic director Dodd's? No, I'm not bitter. He said, I'm just going to go buy a glass bottom car so I can see his expression when I run over him. And that seems to be the case in the way in which we feel when people do things against us. Every day of our lives we're facing some form of temptation to be bitter against someone else, to revenge against someone else. TSLE at once said most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important and there are a lot of us out there wanting to be important. There will always be problems in the church, there will always be problems in your life and the question is not whether you're going to have problems. The question is how are you going to deal with them? And what you see in the text is first of all how the Corinthians by nature without explanation, without guidance, were dealing with their problems. Here's what they were doing, verse 1. If any of you has a dispute with another, dare you take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints. This is what they were doing. They were going to the ungodly or the word literally is unrighteous. That's going to be an important word, I'll come back to it. But he said you're going to the unrighteous for judgment. Now here's the setting in Corinth. It's a little church, it's just begun, it's fragile. They live in an ocean of paganism and in Corinth you know there are typles to Aphrodite and typles to a policy and so on, the typles to gods everywhere. And out in the marketplace where the typles were, you will find the east market, the west market, the south market, the north market, the big agro there, big marketplace. Right in the marketplace is what is known as the Bama and in English you would transliterate it, B-E-M-A. And the Bama was literally kind of a throne of justice. It's right out in the marketplace in the open, outdoors. If you cannot resolve a difference with your friend or your customer or your supplier or your partner, you come to the Bama and you will get judgment from the Roman Pro Council. Now the practice among the Jews was and in some ways still you find this tendency is to resolve the differences among the Jewish people. And religiously they had a conviction that they were the ones who knew God and therefore they solved the problems in among themselves. It was a great embarrassment to the Jewish community if they had to go outside to get judgment for an inside problem. You could look at the Dead Sea Scrolls for example with the Coomron community and you will find that they had very intricate laws for how they were going to deal with themselves. They were not going to look at their outsiders because they were a specific religious community community with moral and spiritual convictions. The interesting thing is that among the Greeks and the Romans they operated the same way so that in both Greek and Roman social and religious groups they resolved their differences among themselves. And it was an embarrassment to them to go to the Bama to go to the Roman Pro Council to get their differences adjudicated. And they puff up all the same just like you did in the first Corinthians 5. Look folks, even the pagans are not as bad as you are. I mean even say they don't sleep with their stepmother, even they are embarrassed by that. And there's a sense in which you say even the pagans don't go to the Bama right away to get their differences adjudicated. And look at yourself and it uses very strong language. He says, damn you go there for judgment. Well, what are we supposed to do? Well in verse 4 you see what he says. And you have disputes about such matters and that's a technical word for a suit. A legal matters. If you have disputes about legal matters, a point as judges even men of little account in the church, he says look, take the least knowledgeable man in the church and let him be your judge. Rather than to go out to the Bama with the pagans and have them adjudicate your case. Now you get some reasons here. Look in verses 2 and 3 and you see the primary thrust of his argument. Now I'm going to give you some other arguments while he's making sense here. But here is the ultimate argument. It is what would be known as a theological or technically an eschatological argument. He is saying, do you not know that the saints will judge the world in verse 2. And if you were to judge the world, can't you deal with these trivial little earthly cases? These old temporal cases, about property and money and families and households and so on? You're going to be judging the entire world. And he goes on to press his case. Do you not know that we will judge angels? Good and bad angels will be brought before us. We will be seated with Christ at the right hand of God participating in the judgment that is exercised on the entire world. You see, we've been given the mind of Christ. We've been given not just the mind of Solomon, the wisest man in the face of the earth. We've been given the mind of Christ and therefore we have an eternal perspective that brings judgment into this life. There is the primary and ultimate motive for not looking to the unrighteous. We should look to the righteous rather than the unrighteous. It's not because you're better people. It's not because you deserve it. It's not because you're smarter. In some cases, it's not even because you're more moral. It's just because God has made you righteous. You can look at the very end of the text in verse 11. He uses a technical word here that comes up again. He says, now look, all these people that are not going to enter into the kingdom of heaven, that doesn't mean that anybody who's done any of this stuff, it means someone who's committed to that lifestyle. If they're committed to being a swindler, if they're committed to worshiping idols, if they're committed to flandering, if they're committed to homosexual behavior, if they're committed to anything that's listed there, if that's their lifestyle, they, says the Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ, will not enter the kingdom of heaven. There is a difference, and it's not just because their behavior is worse. It's because something objectively has happened to the church that has made it different, and eventually our behavior also changes, but the fundamental thing is in verse 11. He says, and you were some of those folks, what do you look at down your nose at them for? That's exactly where we came from. We did the very things listed there, but he said, here's something that's happened to you, and the word but in the original language is in front of every phrase, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified, and the word justified is the same word for being made righteous, but you were made righteous. There is no judgment against you. You've been acquitted. There's no condemnation. You've been set from this category of a condemned sinner to this category of an innocent son and daughter of God. So why would you go leave this category? It is the same word for being made righteous, but you were made righteous. There is no judgment against you. You've been acquitted. There's no condemnation. You've been set from this category of a condemned sinner to this category of an innocent son and daughter of God. So why would you go leave this category where Christ has invested Himself, acquitted His people, the price of His own blood, and you go over here to this side where there's no acquit, all there's only conviction, and there's guilt, and there's burden, and there's pain, and there's still unremitting sin. Why would you leave this category to go to this category? Why would you leave Solomon to go to Ahead? That's the question that's being asked. And He said, escalatively, don't you see that not only is He made two categories of people, but He's moving you toward your ultimate goal of being judged in the universe? In chapter four, the Apostle Paul has to straighten out their thinking by saying, look, saying to them, look, you think you're supposed to be healthy, wealthy, and all the rest as Christians. You will be someday, but not now. Look at me on the classic case. He said, I'm like the ones being drugged at the end of the parade as refuse. Well, if I'm that way as an apostle, don't you expect that maybe this life's for me tough for you too? So we saw the problem with the already and the not yet. They wanted in the already what was not yet. But here the Apostle is saying, you've got something already and you're postponing it to the not yet. And the already is, you're an heir. Don't demean yourselves. Don't resign from your inheritance. Don't act like somebody who's still guilty. Don't act like somebody who's not been adopted into this family. Be yourself, you're saying, as sons and daughters of God. Now what do we do? Look at verse four, here's the advice. If you have disputes about such matters, appoint as judges, even men of little account in the church. Well, what the Apostle Paul is saying is that if you have disputes among yourselves, brothers and sisters in the Church of Christ, that you should be able to adjudicate this yourselves for the reasons that we have stated. Now I would like to state some very important qualifications. The first one is this. It is very obvious from the Pauline Corpus alone that we among all people are to be those who honor the authority of the civil courts. Paul in his day was being persecuted by Nero and his minions. And he says that we are to bow to the civil magistrate, even Nero, who persecuted Christians and killed them because they were Christians. Now we don't have civil magistrates that bad. And I haven't found a case in American history where we ever had anybody that bad. And the answer still is you submit to your president and to the congress, houses of congress, and to your governor, and to your mayor, and to your policemen, and to the civil courts. And Christians are to set that example. That's number one. Number two, we are to be people involved in the civil courts. Some of you are in the legal profession, and some of you may be jurists yourselves. And if you are, we thank the Lord for you, and we encourage many more of our young people to think about a career in the legal field. All the joking aside, what more wonderful place for Christians to serve than to bring the moral law of God to bear on the civil law of the land. And those of you who are involved in the legal profession, of course, have a calling that goes beyond being a scholar of the civil statutes. You must be a scholar of the word of God. And you cannot always impose your religious will, nor should you, but you must bring to bear God's will for all peoples from his moral law in the Bible to the situation in front of you as a jurist and as a lawyer. And we thank the Lord for you and want to pray for you this morning. That would be the second thing. And certainly we would say that all of us are to use the civil courts when it is appropriate. Now, there may be a lot of complaints about civil courts in our days. I have a few myself. But think what this country would be like without them. And we are to use them and thank God for the civil courts. They're there for a reason. And when you have a dispute between a believer and an unbeliever, there may be a no other place to go, but the civil courts. Or if you have someone from another church who is not acting like a believer or whose church is not acting like a believing church, you may have no court recourse, but to treat them like an unbeliever and go ahead and pursue justice in the civil realm. But having said that, what the apostle Paul is saying is that when you have your disputes among yourselves, especially, could we say, among members of Second Presbyterian Church or within your own church, certainly among members of evangelical churches in Memphis, don't go to the Bama in the outdoors where it gets published in the newspaper. And Jesus' name is drug through this and two people who are supposed to belong to him and be in the family together, supposed to be in a functional family where we can resolve our cases. And we go to those who don't necessarily believe to resolve our case. Now, dear friends, with all due respect to the massive learning and intelligence on our Supreme Court and those men and women are brilliant, I, in some cases, could take a child out of fourth grade Sunday school and bring more wisdom to some of their judgments. It does not take a spiritual rocket scientist to know that human life is to be protected whether it's in the womb or out of the womb or halfway out. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that we have a private organization, namely the Boy Scouts, for the development of young men. And that private organization says, we think the practice of homosexuality is immoral and therefore we don't want them to be our leaders. And it comes before the Supreme Court and they seem to be leaning against the moral side. I say, you know, I think I could take a second grade out of our study school and give them some wisdom. And my question to you is, why do you want to use that system? When God is giving you this system, with elders, take the least elders among us, take the newest Christian among us. I believe we could do a little better in a good number of the cases. In fact, Justice Scalia says the same thing. This is what he said. Judges can tell you of brothers and sisters permanently, and he's talking about natural brothers and sisters, permanently estranged by litigation over a will. Or of once friendly neighbors living and undying enmity because of a boundary dispute that is, in financial terms, inconsequential. Whatever the legal rights and wrongs that such matters, these results are not worth it. That's the Supreme Court, justice who's saying that. I don't want to ask you. When's the last time you were in civil court and you saw the plaintiff in the defendant walking out arm and arm, patting each other on the back? When is the last time you were in civil court and you heard the plaintiff or the defendant stand up in the middle of the case and say to his or her lawyer, let me have the floor for just a moment. Your honor, I want to confess, as I've listened to this case and rethought about it before God, I've been wrong in this and I think I owe restitution to the other party. The lawyer will probably shoot them, not a Christian lawyer, of course. When's the last time you saw those things happen? Scalia doesn't see them happen. Why? Because the civil system is an adversarial system and I'm not trashing the American judicial system. But it is an adversarial system. Christian reconciliation is concerned about justice, number one. And justice is defined by how God defines it in the Bible. Number two, Christian reconciliation is concerned about relationships so that when you have a case against a brother or sister, we're not only concerned about fairness in the possessions of material issue at stake. We're concerned about your love for them and their love for you and we deal with it. And thirdly, Christian reconciliation is concerned with your relationship with God. When's the last time you've heard someone say in court, your honor, I think I've sinned and I need your help that I can live a holy life, but I hear it in church a lot. So dear friends, you do not solve your problem. When you have a dispute with one of God's people and you move it to the Baima, out there in public for everybody to see these two Christians squabbling with each other, you actually eliminate the most important prospects of Christian reconciliation. Here's what the Apostle says. In chapter four, verse 14, he says, I'm not writing this to shame you. In chapter six, he says, I'm writing this to shame you. This is completely contrary to what our values are, to what our love as a family is, to our promotion of the kingdom of God, to glorifying the name of Jesus Christ and to understanding who we are as heirs of the universe who will judge angels good or bad. It's a total denial of what we know about ourselves. Now some of you will say, preacher sounds really good and biblical, but there are some problems. And I say, I know that. And the problems get complicated with corporate life. I mean, I don't know. Maybe there is such a thing as a born-again corporation, but I don't think I ever met one. So you couldn't really say there's a Christian corporation, so how do you deal with it? Well, there are some complexities, but it seems to me if you have a brother on the other side, wouldn't it be nice to at least get an audience with him? Oh, the lawyers don't want to. Well, fire your lawyers. Get some new ones who are more interested in just, you're getting what you want out of it. Why do we go to civil courts instead of church courts? Because we want to make vengeance. We're mad. We want an adversarial environment. We want to list a whole bunch of reasons why she did this and she did that and while they have custody and all they have the house, we like that environment of her mad. God doesn't like it. And Jesus doesn't like his name taken to the marketplace like that. He loves his people and I'm telling you folks, we cannot imagine what he's done for us. Oh, we look back on it and we look forward to the, we're looking through a glass darkly. If we had any idea what he's done for us and where we're headed, we wouldn't try to go with these trivial matters. And he says to the plaintiff, would you rather be cheated? Then he dragged my name through the public marketplace in the mud. And he says to the defendant, have you not already lost your case because you cheated your own brother in the family? He says, do you wise Corinthians who are so proud of your wisdom? Is there not one wise person here? You're better than this he's saying to them. You're more important than this and you're wiser than this. Now there are cases with insurance companies too. What do you do with that? Well, seems to me maybe the two parties can at least start talking. If your insurance company doesn't want you to talk, get a new insurance company. There are some who will do it. You say, well, if I go about this kind of thing, how do I know it's legally binding? You can make it legally binding. And the church can get that for you. Do you realize this? It's going to take some extra work. But on the other hand, I tell you this is a lot cheaper. Abraham Lincoln understood that. He once I met a guy come to him with a case. He said, this man owes me $2.50 and I want to sue him. Lincoln was a young mate though. I sue for $2.50 and then he thought, okay, I'll take the case. He said, it'll cost you $10. The guy took it. This is how silly it is. The guy took the case. Dave Lincoln $10. Lincoln went off and paid the other guy $5. And he kept the other guy for himself. Case solved. The other guy returned $2.50 to his client. He kept $2.50 for himself. Lincoln ends up $5. It's all that's happening to you folks. You're not building friendships. You're not really solving problems. You're not changing the world. God wants to change you and change the world. So how do you do it? Well, a lot of churches. Most churches don't have a conciliation ministry. You don't belong to church like that. If you're a second, you do have a conciliation ministry. Some of our deacons, especially our lawyers, who are dedicated to this and put themselves together, they'll hear any case. And all you need to do is call Paul Switz, who's working with him and he gives the case over to them and we can handle it. If it's from another church, our people will call their people and we'll end panel and arbitration board from two churches or three churches. So that we can find reconciliation, love, restored relationships, repentance. How do you think you got in this mess? Is it a hundred zero percent fault? Usually not. We want to help you change your life. This is what the Apostle Paul is saying. So dear friends, let us do it God's way. Let us enjoy really forgetting each other. In reward, Beatrice said, every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends. And I'm convinced that we need a much larger cemetery to bury one another's faults. The Lord Jesus put it like this. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Gracious God, we thank you for what you've made this to be. No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind can conceive. What you have stored up for those who are your people. And yet you've given us the mind of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ and you've given us of your spirit. So we do seek to apprehend these things and to pull them into the lifestyle in which we live. And so we ask the Lord for your help. We pray that you will be merciful to us as a people. Forgive us all of our sins, Lord. So many of us here, maybe even this morning, have never heard such a thing as we've just studied. We didn't know any better. We especially pray for your forgiveness and your mercy to be upon folks who may have crossed the line and gone to the bama when they shouldn't have. We pray for those of us who have known better, but I found it more convenient for our own estate to handle it otherwise. And we especially pray for these folks among us that you'll grant us your mercy, Lord, to change our hearts so that we really care about more than anything else in this world as Jesus Christ in your glory. And loving you because you first loved us and you removed the stain of sin from us and the condemnation and therefore Lord will only bring ourselves before your court with joy and gratitude. And we pray, Father, that you will help us to help others, that we may be peacemakers wherever we go in the name of Jesus Christ knowing that He is the Prince of Peace and He is the answer to every problem we face. And we pray for a mighty movement in our community of peace and of forgiveness and of mercy. Help us of God for we are but men and women and we are weak. These things we pray in the name of Jesus Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us and who died for us that we may be purified of people eager to do what is good. Amen.