When the Church Judges Itself

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[0:00] Well, thank you, Eric. And I'd like to invite you to find 1 Corinthians chapter 5. It's printed in your bulletin. And this is continuing on in Corinthians. And so this is exciting. And I want to give a little introduction to what we're looking at today and a shorter introduction today. Just as a reminder, this letter is a corrective letter. This letter is a letter written from the Apostle Paul to the church that he planted in Corinth. He had spent a lot of time with them. He had invested a lot of energy into them. And he's getting reports back and had already received reports back that there were all sorts of things going wrong with this church. All sorts of things. And the list is long. But it's a good letter for us because the church is so important to God. It's how he wants to bring. The gospel to the world. And so the church has to function well for that to work to go forward the best way it can. And so that's what Paul is thinking here is the church, this church he's writing a letter to, really needs to straighten out and deal with some real problems within its midst. And these problems you'll see, and they're related, the problems are both doctrinal problems, problems with teaching, but they're also problems with behavior.

[1:17] And these two things are not separate from each other. They're very different. very much linked together. And so as I mentioned earlier on, there was a false understanding in this church about the knowledge of the Spirit. And people thought that if you had more of the Spirit, you were both superior to other people because you could exhibit other spiritual gifts that they didn't have, but also that if you had the Spirit, the body became less important so that what you did with your body didn't really matter much. And there was real problems with that too. And we're going to see a very big example of that in today's reading, so prepare yourselves for that. There were warnings that Paul gives about being prideful and arrogant and making distinctions amongst themselves, this pecking order, this privilege from one, this higher cast in the church, privileged over a lower cast in the church, and that was based on how much they knew or how many spiritual gifts they could exhibit, as mentioned, or even their wealth. And so even inside the church, it was merely a matter of how much they knew, how much they knew, how much they cared, how much they cared, how much they cared. And so Paul was hearing the strata of the society

[2:20] around that. And always Paul and Jesus are saying the church has to look different from the world. It has to operate by different principles. But this church is looking too much like the world. In fact, we'll see today, this church looks worse than the world. It's going in the exact opposite direction. And so Paul is really concerned. So it's a painful letter, but I want to say that it's also a letter of hope because it ends, and we'll get to this in the end, it ends in a letter of hope. And so Paul is really concerned. And so Paul is really concerned. It ends with the resurrection. It ends with all the reason together why the crucifixion made sense, so that your body and your soul could be completely redeemed together and be reunited with God. And so there's this hopeful tone at the end, but to get there, we have to wade through some difficult issues in a local church. And as I said, it's important for the church to be led by the Spirit because it's God's chosen vessel for bringing the gospel to the world. And how healthy the church is has a direct relationship on how well it can do that work. And so if Paul's hope is that this church would truly bring people to know the gospel, his hope then is that the church would be a healthy church. And to do that, he has to address

[3:34] both the false teachings and the false practices or the false behaviors that are taking place in the church. So that's the background. Let's go to our reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and you'll see what I was talking about just a few seconds ago. Here's how it goes. Chapter 5, verse 1. Paul writes, It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not even occur among pagans. A man has his father's wife, and you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this?

[4:19] Even though I am not physically present, I am with you. In spirit. And I have already passed judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.

[4:48] Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast, works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

[5:18] I have written 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 world. But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother or sister, but is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a swindler. With such a person, do not even meet or eat.

[5:53] What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? Yes. God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen.

[6:20] Well, what I'd like to do is kind of go back over the history of the church. I'm going to go back to the history of the church. I'm going to go back over all that. And I'm going to point out three things. I'm going to call them the three laters. These are three things that we're going to look at later. And they're all related. They're all connected to each other. But I want to go back sort of through this and sort of unpack what we just read. So I'm going to start with that. And the first thing is that Paul has received a report from someone in the church.

[6:46] How that happened? Maybe somebody wrote him a letter. Maybe somebody was there, traveled back to where Paul was, probably in Ephesus, and said, you know what? There's some problems in that church you planted. And maybe they were being tattletales. But really, I think it was just that, look, there's a problem here. And they might respect your authority. Now, the question is, did they respect his authority? Some of them thought Paul was great. Some of them thought Apollos was great. So he has to reestablish his authority with them, which he does in the chapters before this. But nonetheless, he has some authority and he has to address this problem. So he has to write this letter.

[7:23] And so the thing that concerns him, among the many things that concern him, is that a man has had relations with his stepmother. And he says that even the pagans or the Gentiles consider this wrong. This is not behavior that people outside the church would normally do. And so you have the Roman author Cicero. He writes about somebody who has done this. And in Cicero's view, even the views of those times, that was scandalous. You just don't do that. That's vain. Very much disrespecting your father in a patriarchal society. It's unheard of. You wouldn't do such a thing. And so those outside the church thought that that was a bad thing. But here's the very interesting thing. And maybe you caught this. Paul is really mad because it seems that the church in general is proud of this man.

[8:17] That's odd. So not only is the church doing something that the outside world wouldn't do, the church is. They're evidently proud that this is happening in their midst. That's stunning. And it points to a bigger problem. More on that later. So that's our first later. More on that later. So what does Paul do? He says, you know what? You need to clean house. You're supposed to meet. You're going to meet. And you're going to exclude this person from your fellowship. You just have to do it. And he tells them that these sins have a way of affecting the whole church. The whole health of the whole church is at stake. He says, It's like a small amount of yeast in dough that spreads completely throughout the batch. Instead, they really are supposed to be like the bread that the Israelites made at the Passover. And you may remember this story. They had to make haste. They didn't have time to wait for the bread, the dough to rise and then stick it in the oven. They had to make their dough without yeast. And they had to bake it as fast as they could. And they had to take it on their journey because they were leaving Egypt. And not coming back. Coming back. Despite the fact that they many times wanted to come back. But they had to be ready.

[9:31] And so there's more on that later too. Okay, that's the second later. And he reminds them also that in a previous letter, which we don't have. Did you notice that? Paul is alluding to a letter that he had already written them. But if this is 1 Corinthians, if you're a computer buff, you might say, Well, there must be a zero Corinthians somewhere. Because a lot of computers start their numbering system from zero. But if this is 1 Corinthians, you might say, If there is, we don't have it. So that's one of those great, wonderful mysteries of the New Testament is, What if someday we could unearth letter zero from Paul to the Corinthian church? What would that one say? I'm dying to know. It would really be a great find. It hasn't been found. But we think from this line that he probably wrote at least one previous letter to this. And there's other places where it seems like maybe there were other letters that we don't have. When we get to heaven? Well, go to the Bible. Go to the library and find them there, I'm sure. So that's exciting.

[10:29] So, I got lost there. He reminds them that in a previous letter, which we don't have, I said that, They were warned about fellowship with men such as this. So he said, I already told you this. Not only are you making the wrong choices, but you're not even following my advice. You don't fellowship with people who do this kind of thing. Now, here's something really important. He does not mean that they should not.

[10:56] He says, Okay, this is an important distinction. In fact, they should associate with such people outside the church because such people need the gospel. He's only talking about people who claim to be Christians but are doing this bad behavior.

[11:14] People inside the church who do such things while claiming to be followers of Jesus and claiming to have the gifts of the Spirit are poison for the church body. They're like yeast that goes throughout the dough. What he is saying is we are to be engaged in the world and with sinful people in the world. It is not up to us to judge the lives of those people outside the church. But the church can and must judge the conduct of those who claim to be followers of Jesus. And more on that one later, too. So that's our third later that we're going to get to. But in this case, Paul's judgment is that the man must be excluded from the body for the sake of redeeming. His own soul. And for the well-being of the church. So Paul actually cares about this man. He's angry. But he cares about him. And he says the medicine has to be pretty firm. That love has to be pretty tough. But that's the only thing that will wake him up. So that he will realize that his own soul is at stake. And then he may come back like that one lost sheep that we go looking for.

[12:16] So I've kind of set a few things up. And I want to come now re-engage with those three later things. The first. I was challenged. This was really a challenge to me as I read this, to understand that the church, or at least some people in the church, were proud of this man's behavior. Can you imagine it? You know, that the people in the church are like, oh, he's carrying on a relationship with his stepmother. Good for him. Well done. Like, why would they think this was a good thing when the whole culture around them thought that that was actually a very bad idea?

[12:52] But it does begin to make sense, because we remember from our introduction to this letter that a false understanding had taken root in the Corinthian church. And I think this pride over this man's sin has something to do with that. And the thinking was that to have the gifts of the Spirit freed them from the requirements of the body. And by the way, I'm not going to go into too much detail on that, but I'm going to go into a little bit more detail on that. By being so spiritual, he could then do what he pleased with his body, even if it was countercultural. And that was just a sign of how spiritual he was, that he cared so little about it. That's kind of crazy. But I can only think that that's what they were thinking. Look how spiritual he is. He doesn't even care what he's doing with his body. He doesn't care about all these other things.

[13:42] Now, there's two ways that this can go when you're so spiritual that the body doesn't matter. One is to deprive yourself of all the desires and appetites of the body, and that's called asceticism. It's kind of a removal from the world. It's to go off, to eat very little, to drink very little, to kind of decide that pain doesn't hurt in a way. And so you even experience pain as a way of escaping from the world. And you would spend your time in philosophy or reading. And it's very much the same thing. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. You're not going to be able to do it. It's very much a separation from the world and very much also saying, what happens in my body doesn't matter. I'm not going to feed my body what it really needs because that in itself doesn't really matter or it's even sinful to do. The flip side of that is something called libertinism. This idea that I can do anything with my body. There's no food I can't eat. There's no drink I can't drink. There's no sensual pleasure that I should deny myself because none of this really matters. What really matters is how much I know, what's going on in my body, and how much I can

[14:46] spiritual gifts I'm exhibiting, how much greater I am than other people in the body. And so that doesn't matter what I do with my body. So I think we can understand maybe why they were proud. This man was so advanced in the spirit that he could do this with his body and it really meant nothing at all morally to him. And evidently this teaching had taken such root in the church that enough people in the church were even proud of him for taking that body and taking it. And so I think we can understand maybe why they were proud of him. And so I think we can understand maybe why they were proud of him. And so I think we can bold step to do this thing. And I think actually if we want to find maybe an answer to the question what does this mean for us today, boy you just can't get much more than 1 Corinthians to kind of indict the current church on its practices. This happens today. People who tell others that they can get away with monumental sins because they're so spiritual. They're entitled to it. They have needs that nobody else understands. They rationalize it away. And there's this failure to call sin actually sin. They have this higher understanding of it. The rest of us wouldn't get it. And so we've already seen that Paul is correcting this false teaching. He says what you do with your

[16:07] body matters. It's not separate from your spirit. It's intimately linked with your spirit. Your body and spirit are not separate poles on either side of the world. They're so separate. They're so connected. What you do with your spirit makes your body feel a certain way. What you do with your body has implications for how your spirit is. How your relationship with God is.

[16:27] And he even says the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit rests in the body. It animates it. It moves it. It is incarnationally involved in the body because it directs our voices. It directs our actions and our steps. The Holy Spirit is the one who runs our life. Spirit can't work through us without our bodies. It's all connected. So you wouldn't defile this thing that the Holy Spirit wants to do to bring the gospel to the world. You wouldn't do that if you understood it that way. And so the task before Paul is both to discipline this false behavior, but also to correct this false teaching. The body matters. What you do with the body matters. You are not to be proud of these elevated sins, but you are to be ashamed, truly ashamed by them. And you should confront and deal with the person who has done these things as an example to the church so that, and this is the next point, that the church doesn't get poisoned by that yeast. So that's the other later, the next later, the second later. Paul understands the church. He knows what the church is. He knows what the church is. He knows what the church is. church is. He knows why he planted the church. And he understands that churches are destroyed

[17:44] when they don't address negative behaviors inside them, and negative teachings, false teachings, but negative behaviors especially. And so you'll notice if you read Paul's epistles, he spends a lot of time in many of them talking about how they are to treat each other, how they are to conduct their lives together. It actually matters because if the church is handicapped, if the church is held back by its own internal unhealth, it will not be able to do effectively that thing it's been called to, which is bringing the gospel to the world. So that's why he spends a lot of time warning all the churches that he writes to. I want you to think about a fictional or not so fictional church. A church maybe down the block from your house, a local church, right? And you would go to that church and you would say, as a visitor, and you would start to notice things after a while. You would start to notice that maybe people spend more time talking about each other than they do spend talking to each other. They're triangulating around each other all the time. Maybe in that church gossip is rampant and it's destructive. Maybe in that church decisions are made to appease the people who yell the loudest at the meetings, just so that we won't be hurt.

[19:07] By the volume of what they're saying. Where there's open sin that's not addressed by the church, so that it looks like that's just normal. That's just the way things are here. And nobody wants to confront. Nobody wants to love in the tough way of saying in Matthew 18, like, this is wrong. Oh, you're not going to listen to me? Well, let's bring somebody else along. Oh, you're not going to listen to us? All right, now we have to bring it to the whole church because this is important. And to do that step that Matthew 18 calls for. But that doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in some churches. And this list could go on and on and on. There's probably a book written about all the kinds of mistakes that churches make. And that's just four of them right there. But it could be much longer. And churches like this, they limp along. You think about what God says to his people. He says, how long will you limp along? You have one foot in each camp. That's no good. You have to choose a side. So these churches limp along and they're barely able to do any kind of missional work for Jesus because they're so unhealthy. And if you're a healthy visitor to that church, you would stay long enough to realize that it's a toxic environment. And you would say,

[20:22] well, unless they have a really good children's program, then we're just going to, you know, we're just going to find another church because it just doesn't feel safe here. It doesn't feel right here. I don't want to be in this environment.

[20:36] Now, what's interesting is a church like that may actually grow because it will attract other people who thrive in toxic environments, who love the drama, who need a place where they can engage in their own destructive behaviors and not get confronted from it. And you'll probably find that they had actually gone to some other church before and they were confronted about their behavior and the way they were doing things. And they left in a huff and they're looking for another church. And they're not going to be confronted from it. And they're not going to be confronted and they're looking for one that will let them slide by with all this stuff. And if you let them, then pretty soon the church is mostly composed of these people who need a lot of care and a lot of love. But that kind of love is tough. It confronts. It says, look, we love you. But that doesn't mean that your behavior can continue that way here in our body. It doesn't work. I remember once, this is a different church. Somebody from the community came up to me and he said, I think I should join your church.

[21:41] And there was like 80% of me was like, hooray, we need more people. You know, like pastors think this way, like, oh, we would always love more people to join the church. But then 20% of me was like, hmm, let me ask you a question. What's happening at the church you're leaving? Oh, well, I don't like the pastor and I don't like the leadership and I don't like that, you know. And it was this long kind of, it kind of got, got long. And I thought, oh, well, I guess if you join our church, that's just all going to happen all over again is my guess. I could just kind of sense it, you know. And I said, you know what? I think, I think as tempting as it is to have you join our church, I'm going to really encourage you to go back to your pastor and your leaders at the other church that you're thinking about leaving and work through these issues using New Testament principles and see if that relationship gets better so that everybody will feel better about it. And I never saw him again, never heard from him again. And I think, I don't know if he did that or not. I think it just wasn't the answer he was looking for. He was looking for a new place to sort of land and start developing grudges. And then eventually he, he would leave again. I don't know that, but I, I, you know,

[22:56] you have intuition. Sometimes you think pretty good bet. And actually, um, when pastors get together, they do talk about these things and they, they, that's a pretty well-known phenomenon in churches is that you have people who change churches about every three or four years. And, uh, they only leave when they're finally sort of confronted by their, about their behavior. Um, sad. So Paul says no to this. He says, you, he says a little bit of yeast and let, unless it's cut away from the batch of dough, we'll soon mix in and infect the entire church.

[23:40] And that's, that's hard, right? That's hard because we definitely have people where we want to love them as they are. Um, but what this man had done was so over the top and the reaction to it was so incorrect. And it came out of such a poor understanding of what the gospel was and the teaching of the church.

[24:02] Paul said, we need to do some radical, basically radical surgery here. We have to cut that piece of the dough out so that it doesn't become the new normal for the whole rest of the batch. And so he reminds them of Passover. Uh, and he says yeast in this case, yeast is like an analogy. He says, it's something that slows down our obedience to God. If the people had to make their bread, but they had to wait for the dough to rise, it would have slowed, slowed down their Exodus from Egypt. It might've exposed them to the judgment of the angel. And so they needed to, they needed to be obedient and they needed to move quickly and they needed to, to make their bread without yeast. And that's the analogy that Paul is sort of creating here is that the pure church is a church without yeast. The pure church doesn't get bogged down in these things. The pure church is obedient to God and it's healthy and it can move. It's nimble. It's ready to go when God calls it. And so it's a church without yeast. And so it's a church without yeast. So if you look at some of the verses for the end of verse one, verse one, verse one, verse one. So if you look at some of the verses for the end of verse one, verse one. So if you look at some of the verses for the end of verse one.

[25:17] So if you look at some of the verses for the end of verse one. Sometimes you just have to act Sometimes you just have to act Sometimes you just have to Sometimes Sometimes whatever it is. Okay. I spent more time on that than I wanted to, but it doesn't mean that I love that topic. It just means that it's actually deep in my heart. There's a spot where it's challenging because you love people, but sometimes you have to love them enough to give them stern consequences. And that's the most challenging kind of love. And the goal of all discipline in the church, and this is very important that you hear this, and we call it discipline, but really it's care, is that we care about people so that they have a right relationship with Jesus. And we have to admit to the reality that what they're doing is bad for them and bad for the church. And sometimes you have to take decisive action and it hurts like crazy. It can lead to sleepless nights. But in the end, it's what God calls us to do and what Paul calls this church to do. And there's other examples of this. Matthew 18. So it's not something you do lightly. It's not something you do with others. It's not something you do with others. It's not without prayer and contemplation, but it's something that has to happen for the church

[26:35] so that it can be ready to do the missional things that God calls it to do. All right, that brings us to the last later. And this one's shorter, so that's good. Paul says not to associate with a member of the church who is in open sin like this man, but he does not say that they should not associate with people outside the church who have such problems. Because if they did, he said, then they would have to leave the world altogether, right? You absolutely must associate with people outside the church, even if they are adulterers or idolaters or greedy or all the rest, because that's what Jesus does. Doesn't he go and have a meal with the tax collector and with prostitutes? And that's what got him into so much trouble. Jesus was absolutely great. engaged with the world, incarnationally in the world, sharing table fellowship with all kinds of people. And that's the pattern for our life together. So the distinction is, is someone in the church? Have they claimed that Jesus is their Savior? Have they claimed that they have the gift of the Spirit? If so, then they have crossed a line, you know. And if they've claimed all those things, but yet persist in these negative behaviors, then you have to disassociate from

[27:58] that person because they're either lying about one thing or the other, and they're a threat to the functioning of the church. But if somebody has not crossed that threshold, we want them to cross that threshold. And to get them there, we have to mix up with them. We have to be amongst them. We have to live among them, share a table with them, talk to them, be around them, and not be afraid what other people will think. Think of us for being seen with them. That's a huge distinction. So the question is, are they already in the church? Do they claim to know Jesus? Do they claim to have the gift of the Spirit? And if they're doing bad things, then okay, we have a real strange case here which we need to deal with. But if they've not claimed any of those things, then yes, absolutely associate with those people. Paul says you've got to love the body and you have to take care of it. You have to take care of your body. It's the temple of the Holy Spirit. And you have to love the world and you have to stay engaged in it, even to the point of associating with the lowest of the low. Because Jesus does that. He leaves the 99 and goes looking for the lost one, doesn't he? And there's a one lost one in your neighborhood. There's a one lost one

[29:10] at your work. I've told you this maybe once before. I remember being, there was a wedding at the church and somebody related to somebody related to somebody came to the wedding, but he didn't know the Lord. And he didn't know the Lord. And he didn't know the Lord. And he didn't know the Lord. And he didn't know the Lord. And he didn't know the Lord. And he sort of sat way in the back and kind of left as soon as he could. But he managed to catch him before he got in his car and went away. And he said, I almost didn't come in the church because I thought I'd get hit by lightning. He was serious. He wasn't even making that up. He said, because of all the things that I've done that I know are wrong. And what do you say?

[29:43] You say, you can walk in the church and I can come out and talk to you. God's not going to strike you dead. God wants to forgive you. God wants, a relationship with you. You don't need to fear approaching God with an attitude like that. He was very close to God when you think about it. Very close, incredibly close, closer than many people who claim to be Christians, I would say, because he understood his own sin and he understood the holiness of God. All he was missing was one small piece.

[30:16] That one lost sheep is worth looking for. It's worth dying for. It's worth risking. For. Because that sheep matters. The sheep matters to the shepherd, right? For the time that the shepherd is looking for that one sheep, it's the only thing that matters. The rest are somewhere else. The rest are safe. And eventually they all get reunited together.

[30:43] So I want to say again, there is that time when the one sheep matters to the shepherd more than all the rest. It's not forever, but it's for a time. Paul cares about this man as well. I think that's what we, it's hard to find it here, although you do see it. And I feel like we should have given him a fictitious name at the beginning because I kept saying this man. So I'm going to call him Herkimer, which is a funny name that Kaya and I talk about as a name for somebody that we almost, you know, named her brother Herkimer or something like that. And since nobody I know is named Herkimer, it won't offend anyone, really. So Paul wants Herkimer to be saved too. He wants to follow the process of Matthew 18, escalating the consequences for behavior so that the person will wake up and repent. Although there's not time for this. The sin is so egregious in this case that he's actually recommending the church move straight to expelling him from their midst because what's happened is just so over the top.

[31:47] But for Paul, leaving him in the church at this point is not an option. It's bad for the church. It's bad for the church's mission. So, and finally, and this is relevant today, and actually it always is relevant. Paul says something really interesting that evangelicals, I think, have forgotten or missed. He says, and this is, you can read this, right? You can go find, and you say in verse 12, it says this, what business, I love that word. You know, my dad, I think I told you this once, when we asked him something that we weren't supposed to ask him. He said, I love that word. We weren't supposed to ask him, like, I don't know. We'd say, hey, Papa, how much money do you make? Because we're curious. And he's, you know, actually it was our business, but he would say things like, well, that's none of your beeswax instead of business. It was just kind of a nice way of saying none of your business. But so I guess you could say Paul saying, what beeswax is it of mine to judge those outside the church? I love that. He's like, why do I need to do that? What's the point of that? I don't need to judge people outside the church. I need to bring them the gospel so that they can be saved.

[32:52] And then he asked a rhetorical question. Are you not to judge those inside? The answer is yes, of course. You don't judge the people outside. You judge the people inside so that the church can be healthy. And I'm like, wow, like who is not reading this passage? Like I can think of a lot of people, and I hate to say it this way. I think a lot of people, like I could send this to them on a postcard and go, oh, isn't this interesting? Sometimes I think they've been doing it backwards. And they're saying, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't like this. What business is it of mine to judge those inside the church? That would be uncomfortable. Am I not really to judge those outside the church? That's far easier. And it makes me feel pretty superior too. So that's like a total bonus. Paul is saying you got to do the difficult thing. The difficult thing is to judge those inside the church. It's not easy. It's not fun. It's very uncomfortable. And it's filled with landmines, honestly, because our own conduct, then, comes up. So you have to be really thoughtful about how you do it. Judging those people outside the church, oh, that's so fun. You know, look at how screwed up those people are.

[34:04] No, that's the exact opposite of what Paul is saying. And I've said this before. I think the world is getting pretty tired of Christians right about now. It breaks my heart. There's all sorts of reasons for it. And every time I think about it, the list gets one longer. But, we should be leading on all sorts of issues because we have the scriptures and we have the spirit to guide us. And so why are we so far behind, right? And we're on the wrong end of so many things. And one of them is being judgmental about the morals of people outside the church.

[34:41] And so not only are Christians goofed up on science, Christians are, I'm not going to even start the list. It drives me crazy. But they're also judgmental. They're judgmental about other people. They're creeping into other people's bedrooms and finances and saying, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do this. All the while often getting caught doing those things themselves. It's tragic.

[35:05] For sure, we have to live by our convictions. And that's a powerful example. We have to be like a light on a hill. Our good works have to glorify our Father in heaven. We have to live by the 10 commandments. They're not the 10 suggestions. We have to live our own lives dependent on the Spirit. To make us whole and righteous people. But we don't expect other people to act that way. And we don't judge them when they don't or can't. Think about this. How is it that we avoid sin?

[35:37] Think about it. How do we avoid sin? Do we avoid it by our own power? Or do we avoid it by the Spirit's power living in us, moving through us, directing us, informing our conscience? I think we avoid sin by the power of the Spirit. It's not our own effort. And how do we know what sin is? How do we know when sin is sin? Doesn't the Spirit guide us and teach us? Doesn't the Scripture inform us of what those things are? So here's the question.

[36:13] How can we expect someone who does not have the Spirit and does not have the Scripture? How can we expect such a person not to be able to do that? How can we expect someone who does not have the Scripture? to sin or even know what sin is? And then how could we judge them for that? And that's the same line that Paul is talking about. When you become a believer, it exposes you to a much higher moral standard because we have the ability to spot sin in ourselves first and we can rely on the Spirit to guide us. We have no business judging people outside the church, but we have every business judging those inside their church if their behavior is destructive to the church. That's what Paul is saying. So it's heavy stuff. I tried to lighten it up with beeswax and herkimer, but it's heavy stuff, okay? Here's where it ends. It's pointing us forward. And there's good news at the end. I told you that at the beginning. If there's a wrong way of thinking about the Spirit, what is the right way? And that's what we're going to be seeing next, like spiritual gifts, speaking in tongues.

[37:19] Love. And we're going to see in future chapters that the Spirit does many things for the church. It gives gifts for the well-being of the entire church body. It enables powerful ministry. It works through the human body. And what about that body? It's so important. It's so important that we need to pay attention to it, to what goes on in it and what comes out of it. And most importantly, the body, and this closes it all up at the end of 1 Corinthians, is the body has the hope of rest. Resurrection. Bodily resurrection. Spiritual resurrection all together. And it ties it all together into this beautiful package of good news. This beautiful book that we have here of both confrontation for bad belief and bad behavior, but also incredible hope about what actually can come when the Spirit does move properly through the body. So we have that to look forward to. And I really am looking forward to all of that. Let's end with a word of prayer.

[38:18] Father, thank you again for this word, this challenging word. Lord, I admit that some of this is hard to do and none of it is enjoyable. But Lord, help us to be a church without loving, ready to obey, ready to move at a moment's notice, ready to be faithful. Help us to care for everyone. Lord, help us to stay engaged in this world. Help us to go looking for the one lost sheep and bring them home to you. Lord, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.