November 6, 2011


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You guys doing good? Good. You look chipper today – got that extra hour of sleep. Don’t you love Daylight Savings fall back time? I hate it when we have to spring forward, but I love the fall back. If you are visiting with us today, we want to give you a special welcome; we’re really glad that you’re here. Today is Orphan Sunday, which is a nationally recognized thing where churches come together and they highlight that need for foster care and adoption. We have definitely jumped in with both feet on that and I want to encourage you to be praying for that ministry and be praying about how you might be a part of it. The thing that I love about Step In and the thing that I love about Live 1:17 is that you can be a part of that in a variety of different ways and different levels. God’s not calling all of us to be foster parents, God’s not necessarily calling all of us to adopt, but there are different ways in which we can be involved in that. Today, right after 2nd hour, at 12:30, up in the Point is a meeting for Live 1:17 – that is open to everyone, they told me to invite you all to come. You can come if you have any interest or any questions about that whole ministry. Well, today let me explain to you how we do things around here, especially if you are a guest. We do a series of messages; what that means is we will usually dive into a subject, a topic, a passage of Scripture and we’ll spend some time in it, looking at it from a variety of different angles, mining out as much truth from that as God would have us have. We’ll try to thoroughly exhaust it and then move on to the next thing. We are in week number five in a series of messages called Cow Tipping. Basically what we’ve been saying is that anytime in life that we make too big of a deal out of something that isn’t that big of a deal, then it can easily become a sacred cow. When that happens, we take our eyes off of the most important things. Now, to do that is human. Every person in here, me included, we have a tendency to allow our opinions and our perspectives – if they go unchecked, it can eventually become a sacred cow. And it is really destructive to relationships, to marriages, to organizations, to businesses, and especially to churches. So we’ve been saying over the last several weeks that in order to stay healthy, we need to tip the sacred cows regularly – we just need to go cow tipping. Our guide through this is a guy by the name of Paul. Paul was an apostle, he was a church planter, he wrote most of our New Testament, he was a preacher, and he was an author. Paul starts this church in Corinth, he is with them about eighteen months and the church grows to about 50 or 60 people and Paul moves on to start more churches. And it is just a matter of time before this little Corinthian church begins to develop some sacred cows of their own, as we all do. So they start arguing and they are divisive and they are making too big of a deal out of things that aren’t that big of a deal and there are certain things that they need to actually make a bigger deal than what they are (as we are going to see today), but they don’t; they just kind of ignore it. And so their marriages are suffering; their relationships are suffering; their finances are suffering; their witness is suffering. People living in Corinth, they look at this church and they think, “Why would we ever join you? Because we’ve got our act together way more than you do.” This is cause for alarm for them, so they write Paul a letter, saying, “Paul, we’ve got some serious issues

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going on. We need you to mediate this. We need you to speak some wisdom into this.” So Paul’s responses back to them are 1 and 2 Corinthians. They aren’t really even books; they’re letters that he writes back to try to tip some of these sacred cows. Today, we’re in 1 Corinthians chapter five. So if you’ve got a Bible, or an electronic device, go ahead and turn there and find that. We are going to work our way through these thirteen verses. As we jump into this content, I’ve got a couple questions that I want you to answer here today. Here’s the first one: How many of you in this room don’t like to be judged? Go ahead and raise your hands. Yeah, every hand in the house should go up, by the way – this is not a trick question. I don’t like to be judged; I don’t know that I’ve met anybody who says they like to be judged. Even if we should be judged, we don’t like the process, right? Now, what about this question: How many of you have ever judged? Hmmm. A little inconsistent, right? Got a little hypocrisy in this room – and I’m right there with you, man. I don’t like to be judged and if I am going to be very honest … I judge. Daily. Hourly. Without even saying anything – someone walks into a room and you kind of size them up and all of a sudden, boom! Judged. It’s like, oh, man, I can’t even believe I did that, but I did. And I placed them into a category or assumed some things about them that aren’t necessarily fair. We all kind of live in this tension between not liking to be judged, yet we judge all the time. If you want to make somebody angry in our culture, one of the fastest ways to do that is to judge them, right? To sit down with them and say, “You know what? I don’t think what you’re doing is right.” See how that goes for you. Especially if you don’t know them. To say you’re wrong, this is something that shouldn’t be happening – is inflammatory language within our culture. This is one of the big reasons that many people give for staying away from the church. It’s one of the things that many people say they don’t like about Christianity. That Christianity in general and the Church specifically is too judgmental. We don’t like this, we value our individualism and we value our autonomy. In fact, one of the most familiar passages of Scripture in our world today, right behind John 3:16 is Matthew 7:1. Jesus said in that passage, “Do not judge or you too will be judged.” You listen to that and rip that sentence out of context and take it at face value, it’s pretty black and white, right? It’s like well, Jesus said it – we should never judge. So here’s the question that I want to pose this morning as we jump into chapter five: When is it ever appropriate to judge another person? Is it ever appropriate to judge another person? I really think this is a huge battleground in the lives of so many of our young people because our media is constantly saying we shouldn’t judge, we shouldn’t judge, we shouldn’t judge… The irony is that by even saying that, you have to judge. Right? There is always going to be a place and a time for us to judge. So when is it ever appropriate to judge? Let me go ahead and answer the question. I want you to stay with me, all right? Because as we work through this material, there is going to be a lot of stuff for us to process. The answer to that question is yes. Not only is there an appropriate time to judge, but it’s absolutely necessary at times. The questions we have to ask in front of that are Who? (Who should be judged?) When should they be judged? Why should they be judged? And how should they be judged? Paul actually answers all those questions here in chapter five. It’s appropriate to judge sometimes. Let me give you a couple examples of this. When I was a senior in high school – I have a sister who’s two years younger than me – one weekend my mom and dad went out of town, so it was just the two of us at home, by ourselves. And she had a bunch of friends over one Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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Friday night. They were all outside and I ended up going to bed early. And I got up the next morning, on Saturday, to mow the yard – walked out and her car was parked right in front of the house and the trunk was slightly popped open. So I walked over there to shut the trunk. When I did, I opened it up to shut it and when I opened it up, there was a brown paper bag that caught my eye, coming out from underneath the carpet of the trunk. So I lifted up the carpet where the spare tire compartment is found and there were several bottles of alcohol, in brown bags, kind of lining the center of the spare tire. Ha ha ha – busted! Right? So I collected all the bottles – she’s a sophomore, barely sixteen – walked into the house, she’s in the living room watching TV. I lined up all the bottles on the counter, as any good big brother would do. And I walked in and said, “Hey, I’ve got something to show you.” And she came in and I called her out on it. Now, is that judging? Yes. Was I a “goody two shoes”? Perhaps. I’ll own that, okay. But she’s my younger sister, she’s under age, it’s illegal. It was appropriate and it was the best thing – to make a judgment call there. By the way, she’s turned out great – great marriage, great kids – she probably listens, so “You’re welcome.” No, it had nothing to do with me; she’s got her own stories. Let me give you another one. A couple years ago there was a church of about 300 that called me and said, “Hey, we’ve got something we’d like to get your advice and counsel on. We have a worship leader who – he and his fiancée – we just found out they are buying personal furniture for their home on the church credit card. They’ve not turned in any of the receipts and we just caught them lying about it. What should we do?” And I said, “Well, I think immediately you need to go sit down with them, you need to tell them that you know, you need to take the credit card away, you might need to fire them.” Is that judging? Yes. Let me give you another one (while we’re having fun): there were a couple guys who came into my office a couple years ago. They said, “Hey, we’re in a Life Group together. We just found out that one of the guys in our Life Group is having an affair. We all know about it, but he’s not addressed it, he’s not talked about it, but it is very clear this is happening. The issue is that he keeps coming to Life Group, brings his Bible, sits through the Bible study offering his two cents into stuff. We are really uncomfortable with this. His wife is hurting, his kids are hurting. What should we do?” And I said, “Well, I think you need to go sit down with him one on one. You need to ask him if this is true. You need to let him know that you know. Then you need to urge him to end the relationship, to reconcile with his wife and kids and until that happens, he’s not allowed to come back to Life Group.” Is that judging? Yeah. Let me give you a Jesus one (before you leave –some of you are like what church did we walk into? Let’s go!): In the Gospels, we read about how there were moments when Jesus judged and moments when He didn’t. All right? In the Gospels, we read about Jesus going up to the religious leaders, the guys who were claiming to know God and represent God and said they knew the Scriptures well, and Jesus would just judge them. Publicly. He would say: You guys are liars; you’re two-faced; you’re a brood of vipers; you’re ripping people off – you need to stop. And then we also read in the Gospels, where He walked up to a guy by the name of Matthew, who was sitting behind a tax collector’s booth and everybody knew Matthew’s reputation: he was a liar and he was a cheat and he was ripping people off. What did Jesus say to him? He said, “Matthew, come follow me.” That’s a little bit different, isn’t it? He would say something very similar to a wee little man named Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus climbs up in the tree to get a look at Jesus and Jesus looks at him and sees him – he’s a liar, he’s a cheat, he’s got a reputation, he’s ripping people off, he deserves to be judged – right? Jesus says, “Come down. I’d actually like to hang out with you tonight?”

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That’s a little bit different. There was another opportunity where this woman was actually drug in front of Jesus – she had just been caught in the act of adultery – how humiliating. This is not even an issue of did she do it, did she not do it. No, she was caught and they brought her in front of Jesus and Jesus had an opportunity here to judge her very publicly. And He looks at her and He says, “I don’t condemn you.” That’s a little bit different. You read through this at face value and you say, “Jesus, aren’t you being a little inconsistent? Sometimes you judge, sometimes you don’t judge. Is this totally subjective? Did You get enough sleep last night? Are You hungry? Are You just grumpy? Is that the determining factor?” Jesus is demonstrating this principle here that Paul actually lays out for us in chapter five: That sometimes it is very appropriate to judge and sometimes it is not. We have to ask the question, “Who should be judged? Why should they be judged? When should they be judged? And how should they be judged?” Because sometimes, even though judging is really difficult, it’s the most loving thing that we can do when it’s done well. Paul is going to walk us through an example here. Look at verse one of chapter five. He picks this up and he says, “It is actually reported *So, he is exasperated by this. He is like, “I can’t even believe I’m hearing this!” It is actually reported …+ that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. *Then he tells us what’s happening.+ For a man has his father’s wife.” So this is what’s going on: Paul is a bit beside himself because he’s recently received a letter, a report, a phone call, something where someone said, “Paul, you won’t believe what’s happening in the Corinthian church.” And not only is that what’s really bad, but it is the fact that they are not doing anything about it, that they are actually kind of enabling this behavior by kind of sweeping it under the rug. Now, keep in mind the backdrop here: The city of Corinth was a very pagan place; lots of promiscuity; I compared it to the New York City of the first century during week one of this series. We might also compare it to Las Vegas. You know, if any of you have ever been to Vegas, you’ve walked down The Strip, you know that you don’t even have to be looking for anything – it’s just handed to you. You blush at what you end up seeing on the Las Vegas Strip. And he says all this stuff is going on in Corinth – there is some sexual sin happening in the church that would embarrass the city of Corinth. That’s pretty bad. If Las Vegas looks at your personal life and goes, “Ewww, gross,” you know you’ve crossed a few lines. Paul spells it out; he says here’s what’s happening: A man is dating his mom. That’s gross, right? Now what does this mean? It says “his father’s wife” so is this his biological mom or is this his step-mom? Well the way that it’s worded, I think we can assume that it meant his step-mom, but either way, it’s just Kentucky scary if you ask me. (Should I not have said that? Slipped through the filter, all right.) It’s just a little scary. Honestly, who cares if it is his biological mother or his step-mom; it still just makes you uncomfortable. Paul says this is happening right under your noses and you guys aren’t doing anything about it. What we need to understand here is that what this guy was doing was considered a capital crime under Roman law. So not only is this a moral thing, this is a law thing. Under Roman law, to do this – to date your step-mother – was a capital crime punishable by banishment or death. That’s how the pagan culture saw it, yet the church is just kind of looking the other way, they’re just kind of dismissing it. Paul goes on in verse two, he says, “And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.” So he says here: not only are you guys passive about this, but you actually kind of are thinking it’s cute. You’ve looked at them and said, “Aww. They look good

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together. They’ve finally found their soul mate.” Paul says: you guys have grown arrogant about this and instead of just dismissing it, you should be broken over this – you should be mourning this. Now what Paul is implying here really gets at some deep, deep roots. He’s suggesting here that one of the reasons why you don’t want to actually sit down and call this guy out on this sin is because you’ve got some unaddressed sin going on in your life. Have you ever said this, or heard somebody say this: Well, who am I to judge? And it sounds so good, doesn’t it? But sometimes that’s a cop out. Sometimes that’s “Well, I don’t want to deal with my own junk, so I’m not going to call you out on your junk. And if I kind of ignore your junk, then hopefully you’ll just ignore my junk and we’ll just be happy.” Right? And so, if I start painting moral and theological boundaries around you I might paint myself right out of bounds. Paul says that is not a good enough excuse. You should be broken about this and you should be mourning this. And then, you should actually remove him. He goes on in verse three: “For though absent in the body, *so he’s saying, hey I’m not here with you right now, I’m hundreds of miles away, but+ I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.” So Paul says, “Hey, if I would be there with you right now, I would have stood up and I would have already said something.” Now the language that he uses here, he’s using legal terms. It’s as if he is a lawyer in a court of law; that’s the kind of language that he’s switched over to here. He says: One of the possible reasons why you’ve decided to neglect this guy’s sin is because you’ve got junk in your life. The second possible reason that you’ve decided to neglect this is because you’re not sure if he’s guilty or not; aAnd you don’t want to call him out for something that maybe he’s innocent of. Paul says, “That’s noble, but let me do the heavy lifting for you: he’s guilty. I’ve already pronounced him judged. I’m saying that from a distance here.” Then look at verse four: “When you are assembled *so the next time you are able to gather together+ in the name of the Lord Jesus *so that’s talking about whose name we’ve gathered under and that definitely influences our spirit+ and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man *… oh, wow – what’s the word there? You don’t want to say it do you? I don’t either. You are to hand this man …+ to Satan for the destruction of the flesh …” Wow. It’s that like Raiders of the Lost Ark stuff going on there. Is this shrunken heads and flaming torches? I mean that is dramatic language. How many of you that just makes you uncomfortable? Go ahead; you’re lying if you don’t raise your hand – I’m uncomfortable and I’m the preacher. All right? That makes me uncomfortable to read that. What in the world does that mean? Now understand that this is the same guy who wrote 1 Corinthians 13. What does 1 Corinthians 13 talk about? You’ve read that one haven’t you? You like that one – it’s the love chapter. It’s read at every wedding I’ve ever attended. What does the love chapter say? Love is patient, love is kind, it keeps no record of wrongs. Same guy said Hand. Him. Over. To. Satan. Paul, how in the world do you reconcile these two seemingly dramatically opposite perspectives on this? What does it even look like, right? Have you ever handed anyone over to Satan? It’s like, “Frank, I’m really sorry. You need to break up with your step-mom and you need to pack your bags. You’re going to spend a month with Satan. Um, Frank, this is Satan; Satan, this is Frank. Here are our numbers, if there’s an emergency, give us a call. Have a nice time…” I mean, what does this look like? Now, I don’t mean to make too much light over this, but here is what Paul is saying here. I do not think he means a literal handing over for the damnation of his soul. That’s not what he means. And the reason why

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I feel that way is because of how he finishes up verse five. Look at the end of verse five – what are the words here? “… so …“ (You guys can talk by the way.) “… so that …” In the Greek that is a little expression known as henna and it basically means to explain that which came before. So Paul knew that when he says “hand him over to Satan” people are going to be like, “Whoa!” and then he says, “so that” – let me explain this to you – “so that his spirit may be *what’s the word?+ saved in the day of the Lord.” That’s restoration talk. So understand here that he’s not saying, “Hand him over for the damnation of his soul,” but “Hand him over so that he can be restored.” So he says I need you to sit down and judge him because we love him. I need you to actually even suggest that he needs to go away for a while because he is so important in the life of our community. And he says hand him over; basically he’s already been running with Satan anyway, let’s just go ahead and formalize it. Let’s just call it out for what it is; let’s call a spade a spade. Now I think this is important to understand: When it comes to sitting down and having those tough conversations, even if it means suggesting (within a church context) that a fellow believer needs to be removed for a while before they can come back – understand this – removing him was simply to define the separation that was already there. Just to go ahead and define the separation that was already there. So let me clarify some stuff here. We’re not talking about making a mistake, because we all make mistakes, don’t we? We’re not talking about even just sinning in general because every single person in this room sins on a regular basis – we just have this sin nature, this bent towards this. What he’s talking about here is an habitual, ongoing, damaging, pattern of behavior that I either refuse to acknowledge or I refuse to take ownership of. It’s this idea that yeah, I’m a sinner and I’m going to make mistakes every day and so are you – but whenever I cross the line and embrace my sin and say, You know what? I know it’s wrong, but I’m having too much fun doing it, or I know it’s wrong, but it would be too uncomfortable to stop doing it or I know it’s wrong, but I think eventually God will forgive me. Paul says that is grounds right there to sit down with a fellow believer and say we need to talk about this. Removing him was designed for his own good, the protection of the church, and to hopefully fast-track the restoration process that he would hopefully choose for himself. That’s hard to hear, but does that make sense to everybody? It’s this idea that it’s for my good, it’s for the protection of the church, it’s for the restoration process I hopefully choose for myself and so, yeah, as much as this pains us, you need to leave for a while. We grieve over that, we love you, but you need to actually go run with Satan for a while because you’re already running with him anyway and you need to go ahead and see where these decisions are going to take you. The intention here is not to destroy the person; the intention here is to destroy their desire for sin. That’s a very different thing. Some of you right now, as I’m talking about this, some of you are squirming a little bit in your seats and I’m right there with you. This is kind of a difficult subject to talk about. But maybe the reason why you’re squirming is because you’ve been a part of a conversation in which you felt deeply convicted that someone needed to be called out on something and then you went and sat down with them and they didn’t receive it well. And, in fact, they called you a few names and it ended the relationship. You’re like: Man, I’m never doing that again. Maybe some of you, you were on the receiving end of that. And somebody came to you and maybe they didn’t have their facts straight and they accused you of some things that you were innocent of and it angered you. Maybe some of you were part of a church and there maybe needed to be some discipline that should take place and it just got fumbled and it all got messed up. But because of that, we have a tendency to say, you know what – let’s just not deal with this ever

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again. But in 2 Corinthians, chapter two (you can look that up a little bit later this afternoon), Paul addresses another individual in the church that they needed to sit down, they needed to call some stuff out on him and this guy had been removed from the congregation for a period of time and Paul says to them in 2 Corinthians 2, Now is the time to welcome him back. Now is the time to receive him; now is the time to forgive him. Do not let him be overcome by his sorrow. And so, when this is done poorly, it’s a messy thing. I’ve been able to be a part of a handful of these things, where it was not only handled well, but it was received well. Let me tell you – it is a beautifully redemptive thing. It is such a sweet, sweet time of restoration and hope and you see the body of Christ coming together in it. But most of us are kind of too afraid to actually go there. Paul kind of gives us the consequences if we don’t. Look what he says in verse six: “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.” So, a common analogy that the Bible uses for sin is leaven. So, just as leaven gets into the bread and works its way through all of the bread, Paul says just a little bit of secret sin that we embrace behind closed doors will spread and influence the entire body. You may not or others may not be able to see it, but it will contaminate the whole church. To illustrate this, I need a volunteer this morning, and I need a volunteer who likes Mountain Dew. Okay? Do we have a volunteer who likes Mountain Dew? Right there. You’ve even got it – you brought one in with you! That’s awesome. You come on up. She’s busted! Give her a hand as she comes up, all right? Aaron: Do you know what you just volunteered for? Volunteer: No. A: Alright. Good. What’s your name? Volunteer: Susie A: This is Susie, give Susie another hand. Come over here Susie. Susie: This is the first time I’ve ever done this, too. A: That’s all right. Hey, I want you to come over on this side. Susie, we’re going to judge you today – no! We’re not going to do that. Okay, so what we want to do here Susie is – I know you like Mountain Dew, so I’ve got here the throwback cans. Do you like the hard stuff? You like the hard stuff; she does. So this is pure cane sugar. What I want to do Susie is I’d actually like to pour you a cup of Mountain Dew. (I feel like I just caught you smoking or something. It’s like you’re going to smoke all these cigarettes until you break the habit…) So anyway, Susie … does that look good to everybody? Legitimately Mountain Dew, looks good. It’s pure, all right? Now what I want to do, Susie, is I’d actually like to top it off here with just a little bit of gas. A little bit of unleaded gas here, let me just put a splash in, right? Okay, just a splash; it’s not a whole lot. Now what I want to ask you guys – do you see the gasoline in there? No. All right, so you can’t see it, okay? So, that’s good. So what I’d like for you to do Susie – would you drink it now? Knowing that the gas is in it? Come on Susie. Should she drink it? Hey, don’t judge! Should she drink it? No? All right. I wouldn’t recommend you drink it; the guy first hour almost did – we almost had to take him to the

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hospital. We wouldn’t drink this even though there’s more Mountain Dew in here than gasoline, just a little bit of gasoline, even though we can’t see it, contaminates the whole cup. Give Susie a hand. Susie, that’s a cold one, you take that. Thanks so much. Susie: Thank you! Aaron: So Paul says here in this text, just a little bit of leaven – now here’s the conviction for you and for me: have you ever said, “You know what – I know I got some junk in my life that I need to deal with; I know that I’ve got some unaddressed sin in my life, but just as long as I keep that quarantined behind closed doors, in our family, in my own life, then it’s not going to hurt anything.” Paul says that’s wrong. Anytime you embrace something that you know to be wrong, it’s going to contaminate everything. He says sin, in essence, really works a lot like cancer. You don’t mess with sin. Sin doesn’t play games. Some of you here today have had bouts with cancer; maybe you are in the middle of cancer; maybe you have a family member who’s been diagnosed. Whenever that diagnosis comes from the doctor, what do you do? You seek to remove it, right? You know that there’s going to be some pain involved. It may require surgery, it may require radiation, and you don’t expose your body to those treatments because you hate your body. No, it’s just the opposite. You expose your body to those treatments because you love your body and you want to see that cancer removed so that way the body can be healthy once again. This is exactly what he’s saying. Many of you know that not that long ago, the founder and CEO of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs, passed away from his bout with cancer. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. And for about nine months his wife and his colleagues and his friends urged him to have a pretty important surgery to remove this thing and he wouldn’t do it. He said you know what? I’m just going to manage it; I’m going to try to change some things about my diet and change some things about my lifestyle and I think that I can beat this on my own. And about nine months went by before he finally caved and had the surgery, but it was too late. The cancer had spread. This is exactly what Paul says about sin. Here’s the deep, deep conviction that I wrote out in my notes this week: You want to know who has the power and the influence to bring down the mission of this church? Every single one of us. It’s our personal sin that we refuse to acknowledge and repent of but we embrace behind closed doors. Paul says just like a little bit of leaven, just like a little bit of gas in the Mountain Dew, it just contaminates everything. Then he goes on in verses 7-8 and says: “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” So, what Paul is saying here is that in the Old Testament, God’s people before they would celebrate the Passover, they would go through and they would clean their houses. It was like spring cleaning. They’re dusting, they’re vacuuming, they’re cleaning everything up and this was in preparation for the Passover. It was meant to be symbolic. It was a foreshadowing of the spotless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who would come to die on a cross for our sins. So Jesus came to be both fully God and fully man. Have you ever wondered: why did Jesus stick around for 33 years? Well He stuck around for 33 years so that way He could go through everything you and I would go through. That way He would be exposed to temptation and He would have these seasons of sadness and difficulty and inter-relational conflict. Jesus would go through everything that we’ve gone through and yet, He made it –

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spotless. He was tempted, but He never gave into that temptation. And so He goes to the cross as a proven – I mean it would be one thing to come into the world and say “hey, I’ve been here five minutes and I managed to stay spotless”. Well, great for you, Jesus. Why don’t you live my life and see if you can do that? No, He lived 33 years – never sinned. Went to a cross as the spotless Lamb of God. Shed His blood. Gave His body. Walked out of a tomb. In essence, what He did was He took your filthy, stained rags and exchanged them for His spotless ones. So when you claim the name of Jesus Christ and you accept the gift of the Holy Spirit, God looks at you as spotless – even though you’re not. And it’s not because of anything you’ve done to work for it, it’s because Jesus did the work for you. He cleaned you up. So Paul says, “Jesus cleaned you. You’re not perfect; you’re still going to sin and you’re still going to mess up. We all are. But when you embrace that sin, when it’s premeditative sin, then in essence what you are doing is you are taking the grape juice and the tomato sauce and the mud and you are throwing it on the spotless robes.” Wouldn’t that make you angry? Any of you ever have kids and you’ve scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed to get a stain out of their shirt and then you put it on them the first night and they dump chocolate ice cream all over the front? And it’s because they were being careless. Or any of you ever get your kids all ready to go to like a dinner or family reunion or maybe Easter Sunday – get them all looking really good and go outside, going to take pictures, and they go outside and your son jumps in the mud. Right? You’re just like: Aaarrgh! You know, you just want to kill them because you’ve worked so hard to clean them. Paul says that’s a little bit of how God feels. He knows you’re going to trip up – that’s why He sent His Son to die for you. But when you intentionally embrace that sin, he says that’s offensive to God. Now, other people will say, “God is a God of love, I think eventually He’ll forgive me.” Yes. God is a God of love. I’ll tell you what God really loves: He loves holiness. He loves people who say I’m not perfect, but I’m going to be a person of integrity. I’m not going to embrace this sin; I’m going to embrace my Savior. And temptation is an opportunity to actually celebrate holiness. It’s an opportunity to give in and it’s an opportunity to celebrate holiness. Then Paul gets to verse nine and verse nine is really, really important – it clarifies so many things for us in the church. He says, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people – not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.” I love that. It’s like: Trying to escape all the sinners? Well, get on a rocket ship and go to Mars. Okay? Because you’re not going to be able to do that. Now, what he’s addressing here is a misunderstanding with the Corinthian Christians. He says “in my former letter”; so there was a letter that was written prior to 1 Corinthians that we don’t have and in that letter he said, “I told you not to have anything to do with sexually immoral people.” And they interpreted that as my neighbors and my co-workers and my family and friends who are not Christians – don’t have anything to do with them. Let’s just hunker down in our Holy huddles at church and judge the rest of the world. And Paul says, “No, that’s not what I said at all. In fact, I’m saying the opposite. I want you to go out and rub shoulders with those who are far from Christ. I want you to interact with them. I want you to extend grace to the Matthews and the Zacchaeuses and the adulterous women – that’s who you should be extending grace to. But the problem is that you want to rain down judgment too much on those outside of Christ and then you’re sweeping the sins that are right under your nose under the rug.” He says you can’t expect the world to operate under a standard in which they’ve never signed up for. Now, just imagine here for just a minute – those of you who are maybe here today and you’re not Christians or maybe you’ve got

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friends and family, a common objection is “I don’t want to go to church and I don’t like Christianity because they’re too judgmental” - just imagine if the church could just get this one thing right, how differently it might change people’s perspectives on Jesus. Where we were willing to accept people where they are and call out our own hypocrisy. It’s this principle that we’re talking about: those outside of Christ – patient love; those claiming Christ – loving judgment. Now, there’s a whole bunch of other layers to that; I’m just presenting a bunch of other questions for you, aren’t I? Because I’m saying that and you’re saying, “Well, Aaron, what about this? What about that? What about politics or culture?” Understand: we could spend a ton of time on that. I’m just asking you to stay and just let this simple principle sink in. How would it change your neighbor’s perspective if you love them right where they are? Now you can tell them what the Bible says about sin. You can introduce Jesus to them. But, Paul says, refrain from raining down judgment on their soul because that’s God’s responsibility and His alone. Now look at how he finishes up the passage in verse eleven: “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler – not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. ‘Purge the evil person from among you.’” So Paul’s basically saying, in these last few verses, he’s saying this judgment deal is a matter of jurisdiction. Okay? So outside of the church, I don’t really have any jurisdiction there; inside of the church we do. And here’s a question that I wrote out in my notes as I was kind of coming to the conclusion of this; I said, “Why is it that he never mentions the stepmother again?” I mean he calls out the guy (I’ve called him Frank; sorry for all the Franks in here. Every time I’ve said that, your heart started beating out of your chest. It’s just hypothetical.) – why is it that he called this guy out but he never mentioned the stepmother again? This is what I wrote in my notes: it’s very possible she wasn’t a believer and he had no jurisdiction over that. So here’s what I want to do as we kind of bring down the application here – I know that many of you have your own personal situations, stuff going on in your lives – let me try to answer four simple questions here of application for us here today. Here’s the first one: Who should be judged? Who should be judged? This is a question that you have to ask of yourself when you’re facing this dilemma. So I’m speaking from the perspective of Christians here – you’re a Christ Follower – it’s very simple: other fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, those who have claimed the name of Jesus, those who’ve accepted the gift of the Holy Spirit. Proverbs says wounds from a friend can be trusted. So what that means is you should care for them; you should love them. And you should love Jesus and His church. If you can’t answer yes to all those questions then you are probably going to cause more harm than good. This can also be reversed. If somebody comes up to you and says, “Hey, I’ve got an issue with you,” do they care for you? Do they love you? Do they love Jesus and the church? All that stuff needs to be ironed out. Let me just say this: don’t let the first conversation, the first email, the first phone conversation be a judgment conversation. That’s not fun. Right? “Hey, Tom. Nice to meet you, Tom. Sit down. I’d like to judge you.” It’s not going to be heard very well. But whenever we can develop enough relational deposits, those withdrawals can be made and they’re effective. Here’s the second question: Why? Why should we judge? And I’ve already said this, but let me just reiterate it: we should judge when there is an ongoing, habitual pattern of sin that I either refuse to see or acknowledge. I’m not talking about mistakes, because we’re all going to make mistakes. I’m not talking Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

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about tripping up every now and then. I’m not talking about a witch hunt. Don’t follow each other home from church today and say, “Aaron, they went 10 miles over the speed limit. Let’s have an intervention.” Right? That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about an ongoing pattern of destructive sin that’s destroying some things and it’s seeking to contaminate the entire church body. Here’s a little prayer that I wrote out, where basically I would just say you know what – it’s killing me that you are embracing the sin for which our Savior died. It’s just killing me and so I need to talk to you about it. Here’s the third question (I think this is the most important): When should we judge? When should we judge? Now this is difficult because I would say most of us in this room don’t like confrontation, do we? And we shudder at having to sit down with somebody and have a difficult conversation and we’re afraid of fumbling it up. We’ve maybe been the recipient of somebody who was too harsh to us; we never want to be that to other people. This is where Matthew 7:1 becomes so pivotal. Jesus said in Matthew 7:1, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” Now we need to read that entire passage to understand what Jesus is saying. Because Jesus is not saying don’t ever judge. What Jesus is saying there is don’t judge as a hypocrite. And that’s a different thing. Don’t say, “Hey, who am I to judge?” Once you deal with your stuff, then you’ve earned the credibility to judge. So He gives this parable; He says if you’ve got a two by four sticking out of your eye, then don’t go up to your buddy and say, “Dude, you’ve got a speck of sawdust in your eye.” You need to remove the two by four first because, we would all agree, that’s the bigger problem, right? And once you remove the two by four out of your eye, then you can effectively go up to your buddy and say, “You know what? You got a speck of sawdust in your eye and I know what I’m talking about because recently I had a board in my head and it wasn’t very much fun. But I’ve removed it and it was painful, but life is so much better now and I just want to warn you about that.” Here’s what happens then – when we do that, we turn those opportunities where we could potentially be hypocrites and we turn our hypocrisy into credibility. Turning hypocrisy into credibility is basically us just coming clean before God and saying, “God, is there any way in me?” The way that we do that is we go to God exhaustively and thoughtfully in prayer and say, “God, search my heart, search my mind.” Ask other people: Is there anything in me that I need to come clean of? This is why Life Groups are so important. This is why accountability is so important where you’ve got somebody who’s a friend, somebody who loves you and cares for you, who’s not trying to shoot at you and tear you down, but they love you and so they are willing to say, “Hey, you know what – I think you’ve got a speck of dust in your eye. You need to remove it.” Here’s the fourth question: How? How should we judge? This is tough because we easily get emotional. We can easily come across and our tone is all off and it’s wrong. We can get the setting messed up. Don’t confront over email. Nobody can understand or interpret your tone there. So how should we do this? I’ve tried to simplify it down to basically three statements – I’ve actually boiled them down into questions that you can write down and ask of yourself. Here’s the first one: Is your heart broken? Is your heart broken? So, whatever situation that is – if it’s with a child, if it’s with a parent, if it’s with a coworker, if it’s with a friend and they are doing something that’s damaging or destructive – when the sin of my brother or sister in Christ has broken my heart … then I’m ready to talk them. Until that day, I just need to be quiet. Until that day, I need to pray that God would continue to work. Unless it’s broken my heart, I have no right to speak into it. Here’s the second question: Can you envision restoration? So it’s kind of stated this way:

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When you can envision their restoration, which is basically a restoring of the marriage, a restoring of their relationship with Christ, a restoring of their life as a child of God – until you can envision that and you relish that more than busting them. Because how many of us, man we’ve been there. It’s like, “I can’t wait to sit down and call them out because I’m going to embarrass them and they’ve got it coming. They deserve it.” If this principle energizes you, that’s a red flag. It shouldn’t energize you. You should be grieving over this as you go. So, can you envision their restoration? And here’s the last one: Do you want grace for them more than you want wrath for them? Do you want them to experience the grace of Jesus more than you want them to experience the anger of your wrath? And until that day comes, then we’d just be better off to kind of keep it to ourselves and pray that God would be working in that situation. So here’s what I want to do today as we wrap up: I just simply want – because it’s real easy to hear this message and envision someone else, do you do that (“Man I really wish Sarah was here because she really needs to hear this.”) – instead of doing that, let’s just make this real personal and I just want to give you a prayer that I want you to pray the rest of this day and even this week. This is simply the prayer: God, is there any sin in me that I’m embracing? God is there any sin in me that I’m embracing? And maybe I’m intentionally embracing it, maybe I’m just accidentally embracing it – I don’t even realize that I’ve done that, but I’ve refused to acknowledge it or I’ve been unable to see it. God, is there a plank in my eye? And if there is, give me the strength and the courage to remove it so that way I can exchange my hypocrisy for credibility. So that way I can see clearly once again that it really is possible to be a sinner and yet to live a holy life. To know that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and I’m not going to continue to throw mud and grape juice and tomato sauce on those rags that He made clean. It doesn’t mean that I earned my salvation; it just means God’s done so much for me that I just want to pursue holiness and that will give me the right to speak into another brother or sister’s life, and God can come alive in their life as well. Let me pray for you this morning and then I’ll let you go. Father, we come to you right now and we thank you so much for the passages of Scripture that make us feel good. And perhaps we thank you for the passages that sting a little even more because we know that through that we grow. And so God, I just pray that every single one of us today, me included, as I leave here today and as I go home, God, the prayer that is to be on my mind and on my lips is “God, is there any sin in my life that I’ve been embracing and haven’t even realized it?” And Father I pray for the courage and strength, that we would be willing to pull that plank out of our eyes so that way Your church can be healthy. That way others can come to know You; that there would be no barrier here. God, we thank You so much for Your grace that You’ve given to us and we want to handle that in the best way that we can. So we thank you. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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