This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day five together of our look at 1st Corinthians chapter five. What a
chapter to walk through. Honest words, tough words, but words that can make a
difference in my life, your life, my church, your church, my family, your
family, words that can change everything.

Sometimes we only like to look at the nice parts of the Bible. The Lord is my
shepherd. We don't like to look at these parts of the Bible that talk about sin,
but the truth is we all sin.

We all need His forgiveness. And He's willing not only to forgive your sin, but
also to begin to lead you in a life out of that sin. And we talked earlier this
week about the relationships that we have with those who are not believers and
the relationships that we have with those who are believers and how those are
different.

Paul comes back to that at the end of this chapter. In verses 12 and 13 he says,
"What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to
judge those inside?

God will judge those outside, expel the wicked man from among you. " That's
clear. Paul says this man needs to be outside of the church.

And as we said earlier this week, it was so that he could experience the truth
of what it meant to live apart from Christ with the hope and prayer that it
would lead him to come back to Christ for forgiveness. He wouldn't live in some
false lie of a world where he thought he was in the church, but he could also do
whatever he wanted. In these verses, Paul talks about this distinction of
judgment of the outsider and the insider.

He's talking about those who are following Jesus and those who are not yet
following Jesus. He says those who are outsiders who are not yet following
Jesus, that's God's business, not ours. We're not to judge them.

But those who are inside the church, that's our business. We are to make a
judgment with one another. Those within the church, those outside the church,
two different relationships.

Now, in order to understand these, we have to go back to what we talked about at
the very beginning, the nature of judgment and what that means. When Paul says
here, "I want you to judge those who are inside the church," what's he talking
about here? Well, he's not talking about what we talked about earlier this week,
the ultimate judgment that they have.

Remember, day one, God, only God will judge eternity, three kinds of judgment.
The judgment of eternity is in God's hands alone. The judgment calls that you
have to make through life decisions based on the way somebody is acting, that's
something all of us have to do throughout the day, every day.

And then passing judgment, reacting, bringing some kind of a penalty upon
somebody, some kind of a discipline upon their lives because of something
they've done. That's what we're to do for each other as believers. But we don't
do that for people that are outside the church.

Now, when Paul says, "Pass judgment on each other," what's he talking about?
What do we do for each other as believers? Well, there's been a lot of goofy
things that have been done down through the ages.

And I think we've got to get to the core of this. It's pretty simple. The nature
of judgment is what we talked about yesterday.

Don't associate with them. We don't judge a person's eternity or their
relationship with God. Our judgment is one of association.

The word associate that we looked at yesterday literally means to mix together,
to allow a closeness with someone that allows them to be an ingredient in your
life. And Paul says, "Pass judgment on them. " Don't let them mix with you in
that kind of way.

And that day, a meal was a very important thing. It wasn't just a fast food meal
like we eat sometimes. It was a relationship time.

It would take the whole evening together, like many parts of the world still
today. It takes three or four hours to eat a meal together because you talk, you
associate. Paul says, "Don't associate.

" That's how you pass judgment. That's what he's talking about here. That's all
that he's talking about here that I see in these verses.

Now, people could add to it and say, "Oh no, we need to have this penalty or
this penalty. " Well, that's just adding to the Scripture. If you look at what
the Scripture says, the judgment is, "I'm not going to associate with them.

" The truth of the matter is, the book of 1 Corinthians, these chapters that
we're looking at, you really get a doctoral degree in judgment and what it
means, judgment and judgmentalism. One of the great favorite verses of people
today, words of Jesus is, "Don't judge lest you be judged. " People say that out
of their mouths without realizing the depth of understanding that it takes to
really understand what it means, to dig into what it means.

And that's what we're doing. We're digging into what it means. We judge by
saying, "I'm not going to associate.

" That's what it means to pass judgment. And we do that only with believers.
With unbelievers, no hint of that kind of judgment.

Now, just to confuse you a bit as we look forward in 1 Corinthians, just to add
to this, we're going to see in later chapters that although God is the ultimate
judge, we're going to be judging with him. I just wanted to give you one more
zinger this week just to make this thing of judgment just a little more cloudy.
But even in making it cloudy, as we look into it, I hope that this has happened
with you this week, as we look into it more closely, all of a sudden the light
begins to dawn.

And here's the light that I hope has come into your life as we looked at this
chapter this week. Here is the principle of this chapter. It's about believers
and unbelievers.

And in this chapter, Paul says, "Freely associate with those who are outside of
the church without acting in judgment upon their sin so that you can be a light
to the world. " It is not our job to go out into the world and judge everybody's
sin. That's not what's going to bring people to God.

It's our job to go out and be a light to the world and point to God as the
ultimate judge one day. So freely associate with those outside the church
without acting in judgment. Now, how about our relationship with other
believers?

In that relationship, we're to have discipline in our relationship with those
who are inside the church so that they would not be encouraged to sin and so
that I won't be influenced by their sin. And by the way, the influence of that,
the result of that is the same result. We'll be a light to the world because
it's our love for one another that's a light to the world.

What do we take away from this chapter? We take away that Paul, inspired by the
Holy Spirit, is much more concerned about our relationship with immoral
believers than with our relationship with an immoral world. That, if you really
take a look at that, that'll hit your heart because the truth of the matter is
much of the church today accepts immorality within the church or within our own
lives and we even cover over our acceptance of our own immorality by pointing to
an immoral world.

So we do the exact opposite of what this chapter says to do. We judge the
immoral world and we accept immorality in our own lives and in the church. Of
course, the world looks at us and doesn't see light when that happens.

Look at the example of Jesus. Jesus went to parties with immoral sinners, but he
spoke words of condemnation towards the religious leaders who were influencing
others away from God. You see, this chapter reminds me, it reminds us, that the
greatest danger to my spiritual life is not the person who's running away from
God.

The greatest danger to my spiritual life is the person, the friend, who says
they're running with God when by every action I can see they're running away
from God. They're living a lie. So the question out of this chapter is what am I
going to do?

I don't know about you, but I want to be a light to the world. I want Jesus to
see what's real. And so my prayer for us at the end of this chapter is that God
will give us the grace, the strength to associate with those who are not
believers and let them see the light to protect us from the feelings that we
have that we want to judge them in order to make ourselves feel better.

And that God will also give us the strength to live with discipline in our lives
and our relationships as believers, to have the courage to say the hard thing so
that because of that, rescue from sin will happen, new relationships, deepening
relationships will happen, and the result will be more light, more love in this
world. Let's pray together that exactly that would happen. Jesus, that's what we
want.

And we know through your spirit, that's what you're working to do. So that's
what we ask. We ask that instead of being judgmental towards a person I know at
work or at my school, somebody I come into contact with on a daily basis, maybe
in a store, instead of thinking judgmental thoughts towards them or saying
judgmental things about them, Lord, help me instead to be praying for them to
come to know you and to be thinking, how can I be a light?

How can I let them know that Jesus is real? Jesus, protect me from the
temptation to allow my judgmentalism to build a barrier between me and this
person who does not yet know you. And Lord, we also ask for the courage in our
relationships as believers to confront sin, to confront it in our own lives, but
also to confront it in other people's lives with humility, with grace, but also
with courage and strength.

Lord, we never want to do this in a sense that you have made us the judge and no
one else is. Lord, the truth of the matter is we live in relationship, we live
in a family. So anytime I need the courage to say to somebody else why you go in
that direction, I also need the courage to be able to listen to someone who's
saying to me, why are you going in that direction?

Give us that courage, we pray. And out of that, let our love increase. And out
of that, let more light, more love come into this world.

Let more people come to know you, Jesus. That's what we pray would be the result
of our relationships with the world and our relationship with one another as
believers. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Join us next week. We're going to talk about what do you do when
Christians disagree.