When Things At Church Go Bad

Introduction

I have been preaching the gospel for about full time at least for about 35 years. And you would think, having done something consistently weekly for that long, that all the first have been met, that there’s nothing new to happen in this endeavor, but that is not the case. And just recently that was proven. Because after 35 years of preaching the gospel, just within the last month, a first happened. And that first is somebody asked me if I could preach that sermon again.

And so this morning you’re going to get a rerun. This is a sermon that you’ve probably heard before. Now, the good news of that is that it’s been a few years ago when this sermon was preached. And so you may not remember that sermon, and that’s okay. I kind of didn’t remember it myself. And so, but full disclosure, this is a sermon that’s been preached from this pulpit before. You can go to our YouTube channel and watch this rerun again if you wanted to. But it was a lesson that was that I was encouraged to preach again because of the principles that are in it. And it is one that will well fit within our theme, our family theme this year, and that is that we are family.

And so that may be partially what prompted the request to do this one again. And it’s one that fits kind of within this part of our theme that we’re to be restoring our brothers and sisters, our concern for one another. And the title of this rerun is When Things at Church Are Really Bad. If you have your New Testaments, go with me to the book of 1 Corinthians. We’re going to be looking at 1 Corinthians chapters 5 and 6, kind of as our text. We’ll be looking at other passages throughout the book of 1 Corinthians. It probably doesn’t surprise you that that would be our text for a lesson entitled Bad Things Happening at Church, because Corinth certainly seems to be the poster child of that.

Now, a couple things about that. Well, first of all, did y’all see the news story recently about the man that they discovered who had been abandoned on a deserted island for decades? A Navy ship had seen some sign of life on this island and sent a small ship, and sure enough, there’s a man living on that island. He’d lived on that island for decades, and they were there to rescue him. And they began asking him some questions because he had three huts built on this deserted island. And the leader of the rescue group asked him, What do you need three huts for? And the man explained. He says, Well, that hut there’s where I live. After I realized nobody was going to rescue me, I cut down some trees and some other brush, and I just built a place to get up out of the weather and a place to live.

And the guy said, Well, that makes sense. That was that was smart. But what about that building? And he he said, Oh, that building, he says, that’s where I go to church. He says, I’m a religious person. I believe in God, and even though it’s just me, I felt like I needed a separate place to go and to worship God. And so after a while, nobody was finding me, and I was here. I decided I was going to build a building, a church building where I could worship God. Well, okay. That makes sense, they said. Well, what about that third building? What’s that building? He says, Oh, that’s where I used to go to church.

You know, church problems are kind of the norm, aren’t they? Unfortunately. We have difficulties getting along with one another, and as this guy may be with ourselves sometimes. And so I think it’s important. In fact, you could argue that this entire lengthy epistle, 1 Corinthians, was written because of the reality of church problems and how we need to deal with them. But I want to add this disclaimer. Put this asterisk by this sermon here. That this lesson originally and in its rerun form today was not intended to indicate that I believe things at South Bumbi are really bad. I don’t. But much like a marriage, the best time to deal with problems is before they get really bad. And maybe even before there are problems.

If there’s something like that, I don’t know about it. But these are some principles that will help us in the good times, the really bad times, and all the in-betweens that we might find ourselves. And so let’s talk about this concept. That was certainly again the case in the church at Corinth in the first century. If this was a Bible class and we were going chapter by chapter or almost verse by verse through 1 Corinthians, I would tell you that as you open your Bibles up to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and would thumb through all the way through to chapter 16, on every page that you opened in 1 Corinthians, you’d find a problem. One right after the other. David read in our Bible reading this morning the problems of just divisions.

Some said, I’m a Paul guy, I’m a Cephas guy, I’m an Apollos guy, all of that divisions that were there amongst them. There were preacher issues. That’s what those were. There was just divisions. They just had trouble getting along with one another. We get over later into chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14. They were abuses in their worship services. There was immorality in their groups, such shocking immorality that Paul would say that was not even named among the Gentiles.

Even than the immorality in our world today. So that was saying a lot. There was problem after problem. In chapter 6 that we’ll allude to here in a little bit later, they were taking one another to court. We don’t know really the basis of those lawsuits, but they were lawsuits, and it seems to be spoken of in the plural sense that there was more than one. That a brother, to use modern day terminology, was serving papers to the other and having their day in court of some lawsuits against each other. Just problems after problems after problems. Things were really bad in the church at Corinth. But I think there’s two lessons, two takeaways for us in this epistle, and in particular in these two chapters, chapters five and six, where we kind of hit the apex, I think, of just how bad things were in the church at Corinth.

1. Churches Have Problems

Point number one is guess what? Churches have problems. As long as there are people in churches, they’re going to be problems. That again was the case in Corinth. But don’t think that in the first century, Corinth was the exception to the rule. It wasn’t. Now, you might argue that Corinth had taken it to an extreme. But almost every church that we read about in the first century had problems. The churches of Galatia, Paul wrote a letter to them because they had problems. That problem was false doctrine. People were teaching something, and some of those Christians were believing those teachings that just simply weren’t in a line with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church at Thessalonica, two letters were written to them because they had problems, and some of them had just quit working, and they completely misunderstood the teachings of Paul and others about the second coming of Christ.

We’re studying the epistles of John. And when we get to 3 John Wednesday night, the church where Diotrophies worshiped had problems. And that problem had a name. His name was Diotrophes. When we go to the Revelation letter, chapters 2 and 3, the letters written to the seven churches of Asia. Do the math in five of those seven churches, those letters dealt with problems they were having. And some serious problems. And that’s not to say that the two letters, the two churches where no problems were addressed, that’s not to say they were perfect. They probably had problems too. They just didn’t get included in those letters. And so churches have problems. They had them then, and we’re going to have them now. Let’s think about the categories or the types of problems that churches experience today that if we’re not careful, that we’re not immune to.

Most, if not all of these problems, if we allow worldliness and selfishness to have its place, those differences will become a source of division and of problems. Churches have problems many times because of poor leadership. In some churches, we have elders who are just ineffective leaders. Some elderships that just are doing nothing. They’re not leading, they’re not guarding, they’re not doing anything to watch for the souls. In other churches, there’s elders who are doing maybe worse than doing nothing. They’re doing something, but they’re doing something wrong. They’re leading ineffectually, they’re leading in a direction that that church does not need to go.

As there was in Corinth, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, their sinfulness to one degree or another among members in local churches, and that sin that will always cause problems.

I don’t know how to phrase this because if I said we just need to accept that fact, that might improperly imply that that’s the way we like it, and that’s not the case at all, but there has to be some level of acceptance of that, doesn’t there? Just accepting the reality, not that it’s the way it ought to be, in the way that we or certainly God would have it to be, but it is just the way that it is. And this is my point in saying that there has to be some level of maybe understanding’s the better word than acceptance, that churches are going to have problems. And that is because sometimes, and maybe the greatest fallout of church problems, is that sometimes individual Christians will let those problems, those issues drive them away from the Lord because of what somebody is doing or not doing in the local church, I will make the decision that I’m not going to just separate myself from that person or that issue, but from the Lord.

Turn with me, if you will, to the Psalms. Hold your finger there in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, and go to Psalm 106. The Psalms are these educational poems, educational songs, and many times what the Psalms will do is retell a portion of history, obviously, of Israel’s history. And Psalm 106 is one of those. Psalms 106 is not necessarily an uplifting song because it tells their history, but it tells specifically the negative history, the things Israel did wrong. And in that list of the things that Israel does wrong, the psalmist, the songwriter, is going to have a stanza about Moses. Moses was a great leader, but one thing he’s going to point out about Moses, as we know as students of the Bible, is that Moses didn’t make it into the promised land.

Do you remember the story of why Moses didn’t make it into the promised land? Remember God that many times would give them water as they were wandering in the wilderness. Water come from the rock, and sometimes Moses would strike the rock. One time God told Moses to speak to the rock, and Moses struck the rock instead in his anger, fails to give God the glory, and because of that incident, God says, Moses, you’re not getting to go into the promised land. And so, first of all, we have just the sadness of that story that a great man, a great, not just spiritual follower of God, but a great spiritual leader of God’s people, ends up not receiving the promise. But notice how the psalmist puts it.

Are you there opening your Bibles to Psalm 106? Look at verses 32 and 33. It says, speaking of the nation of Israel, they angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses on account of them, because they rebelled against his spirit, so that he spoke rashly with his lips.

And he sinned because the people got to him. He did this on behalf or on account of them. And the point I want to make, the lesson I want to draw from that is, is that Moses, the reason he missed out on the promised land, is because he let the people get to him such that he sinned not just against them, but against God. And that can happen in our lives. We can be a part of a local church where things aren’t perfect. And maybe a part of a local church like that at Corinth where things are far from perfect, where things are going wrong. Things are not the way they ought to be. And we like Moses can let those things get to us to the degree that we end up doing something rash and just saying, I’m giving up on Christianity altogether.

And my plea for everyone is please, don’t let anyone separate you from your God. Don’t let any group of elders, don’t let any preacher or teacher anger you, upset you, frustrate you, discourage you to the degree that you end up missing out on your promised land. I think about the statement that the apostle Paul would make in Ephesians chapter 6. Remember Ephesians 6 is that text about putting on the whole armor of God? And he tells us from head to feet, all the pieces of God’s armor that we’re to equip ourselves. And he says in verse 13, we’re wearing that armor so that we might be able to withstand in the evil day. That’s the day of struggle, the day of persecution, the day of temptation that’s going to try our souls.

And he finishes that verse and that plea by saying, and having done all to stand. He says, you equip yourselves from battle and you do everything you can to stand. And I think there’s an application for that in regard to others. You do whatever you can to withstand the devil. You do whatever you can to stand in the face of temptation and persecution, and in Moses and sometimes our case, in discouragement and frustration and even anger at our own brethren. You do whatever you can to be able to withstand and to stand. Because churches are going to have problems. The other lesson we can learn from this text in this New Testament church is that we must, and that’s the point of this epistle, isn’t it?

2. Do All We Can to Maintain Unity and Faithfulness

We must do all that we can. All that is within us to maintain unity and faithfulness. Go back to 1 Corinthians, and this time let’s start at the beginning, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And let’s look how important unity is among God’s people. 1 Corinthians chapter 1, he says, and in verse 10, now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same things, and there to be no division among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. Skip over to chapter 3, verse 1. Chapter 3, verse 1, he says, And my brethren could not speak to you as spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ.

I fed you with milk and not with solid food. For until now you’re not able to receive it, and even now you’re still not able.

For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? Chapter 11, as he emphasizes, chapter 11 emphasizes the importance of unity and the danger of strife and division. First Corinthians chapter 11 in verses 17 and 18. He says, I now in giving these instructions, I do not praise you, since you come together, that is in their worship assemblies, you come together not for the better, for the worse. For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. He goes on in chapter 12 and emphasizes how there had been divisions because of the spiritual gifts, those spiritual miraculous gifts that were intended to build them up and to unify them had actually been used as a source of division.

And so throughout this letter, the apostle emphasizes the importance of unity and the detrimental aspect of division. Unity is so important. It’s emphasized over and over again among God’s people. And as the book of 1 Corinthians would tell us, that unity is our responsibility. That it’s not something that’s just going to happen, as we might say, automatically or organically. It’s going to have to be our responsibility. Let’s look at the best illustration of that in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. As unthinkable as it might seem to us, 1 Corinthians 6 tells us that again, that brother was suing brother in court. Again, we don’t know the specifics of that matter. It seemed to involve money. That’s no big surprise there, I don’t guess. But they were taking to court one another to court against the other.

And Paul’s advice to this, understanding that unity was paramount, he says this, 1 Corinthians 6, verse 7. Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you should go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong? Why do you not rather let yourself be cheated? Your translation may say, be defrauded. I won’t tell you that was asking a lot. That was asking a lot in the first century Roman society. It’s asking a lot in our 21st century American society. Unity is so important, Paul says. Division is so detrimental to the cause of Christ. That what you might sometimes need to do is just to be wronged. To be cheated. And I’ll tell you, that’s not easy. It’s not an easy pill to swallow.

I’ve told you about the justice system in the Chapman family when we were growing up, haven’t I? I had three brothers. I was the youngest of the three, but the Lord and my parents looked out for me. They made me extra large. And so though I was the smallest, I was the biggest in our family. And we did a lot of fighting. I cannot emphasize to you how much fighting we did among those three brothers. And we established, I don’t know who established it, probably my older brothers. We established a system of justice. If you hit me, I get to hit you back. In fact, we had a constitutional convention and we changed that rule that if you hit me, brother, you hit me, I get to hit you back twice.

Once to make it even, second was the penalty for it. That was our system of justice. And we didn’t just pull that out of thin air. That was kind of built on the American system of justice, wasn’t it? We got our rights. You wrong me, then you need to be wrong. I’m going to take you to court and we’re going to settle these things and we’re going to make it right because you did something wrong and you shouldn’t get away with that. I should be made right. And Paul is not saying that’s a bad system. In fact, that’s a biblical system, eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But what Paul is saying, what the Holy Spirit through Paul is saying is that unity is so important that we might need to suspend the normal rules of justice.

If that’s what it takes to maintain unity.

If that’s what it’s going to take to create unity.

Except the wrong.

Jesus. Our salvation, our redemption, our reconciliation to our Father was so important that God would allow the normal system of justice to be suspended so that we might be reconciled to God. He let a wrong happen. He let an innocent man be pronounced guilty. More than that, he let his own beloved son be mistreated, abused, and violently put to death by the very people he had created and the very people for whom he was dying. Because reconciliation to God was that important. Unity is that important as well. In the previous chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, though, also emphasizes that it’s not just unity that we’re after, because unity in and of itself, by itself is not necessarily commendable. We can all agree and be a hundred percent agreement, but what if we’re all wrong?

Then that’s unity is not necessarily commendable or applaudable. And so we put 1 Corinthians 6, the idea that unity is paramount. But we mirror it or pair it with 1 Corinthians chapter 5, where the apostle is emphasizing that this unity must be coupled with faithfulness. There was a brother in their midst who had committed this unthinkable, unspeakable act of immorality.

Conclusion

And in that case, Paul doesn’t say, eh, let him get away with it. That was the advice of chapter 6 when it was just a personal issue. But no, in this one, discipline was to be exercised. Because faithfulness was equally paramount with unity. And so, yes, there’s going to be problems, sometimes small, sometimes as in Corinth, catastrophically large problems. And I think the key to dealing with those is first of all to recognize that’s the way it is. Churches are going to have problems. And let me add this little point here. Growing churches are going to have bigger problems. Many times churches that don’t deal with issues and don’t have any problems is not necessarily a good thing.

And so growing churches are going to be messy churches. And so we understand that.

Strive to build and maintain unity and faithfulness at all costs. And so may God help us to be the type of people that we ought to be, the type of Christians that we ought to be in this local body. God’s blessed me with you. And God’s blessed me with the opportunity to be able to love you, to worship with you, to fellowship with you, and to grow with you. And I pray that that will continue. It might be that you’re subject to the gospel invitation this morning that you need to respond to that gospel. Hear, believe, repent, confess, or be baptized, or maybe you’ve done something to bring about a lack of unity, a lack of spiritual relationship to your brethren. If so, would you let it be known right now as together we stand and as we sing?

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