Sunday January 15th
Here is the Sermon Sunday, January 15th.
I Corinthians 6:9-20
“Bought for a Price”
This passage in I Corinthians could have been written last week, even though it’s 2,000 years old. Just two years ago at the biannual Church-Wide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that church body made the decision, not only to begin ordaining practicing homosexuals as pastors, but they instructed the various ministries of the ELCA to actively find ways to incorporate men and women who were living in “same gender relationships” into the leadership of the church. In other words, they were instructed to actively recruit people living openly in unrepentant homosexual sin to be pastors and other spiritual leaders of their congregations and of the entire national church body.
The afternoon of the same day that this decision was made, a small tornado blew through Minneapolis. It didn’t do very much damage as tornados go, but two things that it did do were: it ripped the cross from the top of the Church building were the conference was being held, and it demolished the “Beer Garden” in the patio of that church, that had been set up for the people attending the conference. And of course, since this is the 21st century and the age of the internet, someone made a video of these things and put it up on YouTube and it went viral. It was seen by thousands of people within a few days.
When asked about these things, the leadership of the ELCA made a mockery of anyone who thought that God had expressed His displeasure over their decision, implying that anyone who thought that, was foolish and ignorant. But I would have to say that if you think that that was nothing but a coincidence, your understanding of how God deals with His children is seriously defective. That tornado was nothing less than a gentle slap by a loving and grieving Father across the backside of His rebellious and erring children.
And ever since that decision, the ELCA has been hemorrhaging members by the thousands and congregations by the hundreds, who have concluded that the leadership of the ELCA is no longer responding to the Word of God.
Look at the verses we just read. They say, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God?” And then it gives a list of sinful behaviors that illustrate what he means by “unrighteous”.
I want you to notice about four things in this passage. First of all, it does not say, “The people on this list are not God’s children,” or “God hates the people on this list.” What it does say is that those who live this way “will not inherit the Kingdom of God.”
You can imagine a father who has a child that he loves dearly, but who spends his whole life thumbing his nose at his father, mocking his father’s opinions and everything his father believes and stands for. There may very well come a moment when that grieving father finally has to make a drastic, extreme decision, and in spite of how much he loves his child, he might say, “If you go on this way and I don’t see a change in your attitudes and behavior, I will have to disinherit you. I will write you out of my will, because I can’t give everything I have spent my whole life building to someone who hates me and everything I stand for, and let you destroy it all.”
This is what the Word of God is saying in these verses: “If you go on this way, if you refuse to repent, you will not inherit the Kingdom at the end.”
Then He says, “Do not be deceived!” The only reason for God to cause His apostle to write this phrase in the middle of this passage is that He knew that sometime in the future, maybe 2,000 years later, someone would come along and try to convince God’s own children that these things don’t matter, and that since it’s all by grace anyway, “all things are lawful;” anything goes, your behavior is not important, and God doesn’t care if you continue engaging in these sins as a Christian.
Another thing that this passage says, and I want you to notice this, is that the Christian church is full of people who used to live this way. The list mentions fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers (that would be blasphemers, who reject and make fun of the things of God), and extortioners. And then it says, “And such were some of you.”
Do you ever catch yourself thinking, “If the people at my church ever found out the things that I have done, or had any inkling of the terrible, dark thoughts and temptations with which I struggle every day, they would never let me in the door?”
These verses, with their serious, dreadful warning against sin, are at the same time so full of redemptive power and hope!
These verses reveal a closely guarded secret: the Christian church is full of former drunks, former addicts, former adulterers, former idolaters, former thieves, former blasphemers, former extortioners, former homosexuals, and former anything you can think of that’s wrong, and sinful, and horrible. That’s who we are.
“And such were some of you.”
I was serving a church in Mexico full of people who had taken these words to heart. When I read them one Sunday morning, I looked out over the congregation and I could see people hearing the first part, and saying, “That’s me!” And as I read the second part, “And such were some of you!” again, they looked me in the eye and said, “That’s me! I was an adulterer, a blasphemer, a drunk, a homosexual... but I was washed in the blood of Jesus, sanctified and set apart to be God’s own possession, made holy, and forgiven, just as if I’d never sinned. And here I am!” Both parts are true.
Do you find yourself on this list?
Welcome to the club. And in fact, even those few who haven’t been at least one of the things on this list, will have to admit with those of us who find ourselves here, that in their hearts they certainly find the same sins. Jesus said, after all, that “a man who looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” and that “anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.”
The world and the devil will tell you lies. They will make you feel like no one else in your church has ever been tempted the way you are, much less done what you have done. They will tell you that no other Christian could ever understand your weaknesses.
Or the world and the devil lie to you and tell you that there is no hope for change; after all, you were born this way, born with a weakness for adultery or an attraction to members your own sex, or you were born an alcoholic or an addict and there is no hope for you to ever change.
Dear friend, let me tell you: the Christian Church is full of sinners just like you and me. The Christian Church is full of former adulterers, and former liars, and former blasphemers, and former homosexuals.
All you see when you look at me or at any other Christian is the semi-finished product. You don’t know the past and you can’t see my heart. All you can see here this morning is the result of almost sixty years of stumbling along after Jesus as I follow Him; fifty-nine and a half years of falling on my face and getting up again and being forgiven again and strengthened for the next round of temptation and learning slowly to keep my eyes on Jesus.
Let me give you another shock. I’m not going to ask anybody for details, because some things are nobody else’s business - that’s why they call it Alcoholics Anonymous, for example - but let me ask you this: How many of you here today find yourself, apart from Jesus, somewhere on the list in the first part of these verses? Let me see your hands!
Another thing I want to point out about these verses is that they don’t treat one or two of these sins as worse than any of the others. The Bible here reveals that God views them all as equally sinful. It calls us to repent from covetousness and thievery just as it calls us to repent of adultery, fornication, and homosexual sin. There is a tendency among Christians to think that adultery or homosexual behavior is worse than any other sin, while covetousness or lying is not quite so bad. But God doesn’t see things that way.
He does go on to say that yes, certain sins are more damaging to us personally than others. He points out that while other sins take place outside of our own body, sexual sin of any kind - whether it is heterosexual or homosexual sin - is damaging to our own body. And we can see that this is true. Statistics show that 96% of the cases of AIDS in North America are still directly related to male homosexual behavior and to sexual promiscuity; the other 4% are mostly laboratory accidents, and addicts who shared a dirty needle with someone who was infected.
God doesn’t hate homosexuals, and neither do we. I have friends and relatives who are homosexuals, and I have watched some of them die of AIDS. The average time from when the virus goes active in your body to death by AIDS is five years. I have watched these friends die, slowly wasting away for years, and it’s horrible!
And besides AIDS and a whole raft of other terrible, incurable, sexually transmitted diseases, involvement in sinful sexual behavior messes up the hormone balance of your body and causes all kinds of terrible results. These things are well known in the homosexual community, but no one wants to talk about them.
The most important thing I want you to remember from these verses is this: Jesus bought you with a price; The Apostle Peter put it this way, “...you were not redeemed with perishable things, like silver or gold... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (I Peter 1:18-19).
Since you have been purchased, redeemed, bought, you are not your own. You don’t belong to yourself, and your life - your soul and your body - aren’t your own, to do with as you wish. You belong to the one who bought you. And by Him, no matter what you were before, or what you still are or would be still without Jesus, you are justified, sanctified, and washed. You are His own Holy possession, set apart from the rest of this world and set apart from your former sinful lifestyle, for Him.
Welcome to the Kingdom of the redeemed children of God. We all understand what you’re going through and what you are dealing with, because we are no different. Who we are today is the result of pure grace: the unmerited favor of God, because of the great love with which He has loved us.
You may struggle your whole life with certain temptations because of your particular genetic makeup or because of the lingering effects of your past; we all do. You may also sometimes fall again into the same sins that characterized your life before, or into new ones you never thought would ever bother you.
But just like the rest of us here, you are accepted by God, received because of Jesus as His own beloved child, and forgiven. You are called to repentance, to a change in the way you live. You are washed, sanctified - set apart for God, made holy - and justified, forgiven, and redeemed by the blood of Jesus.
As we come to the Lord’s Table this morning, remember these things: You are here by His grace, His mercy, and His redeeming power. You are strengthened day by day and kept by His sanctifying power. You are weak, but He is strong. You are forgiven, cleansed, and set apart day after day by Jesus.
And so are we all.