Sexual Immorality in the Church - Day 234 Through the Bible

In the cabin garden - near Mt. Celo Church

My Lessons and Applications from Today's Readings

God Speaks At Last to Job Concerning Job's Tragedy - Job 37 and 38 - In Chapter 37 Elihu, the youngest of the "friends", completes his judgment against Job's wickedness, against Job for forgetting his place before God.  In Chapter 38 God answers Job.  He first reminds Job (as does the Lord's Prayer - as does all of Scripture) that this world - our lives, our circumstances - begin with and are about God and His Plan.  It is about God - as Creator - as Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent - above all and in all.  God reminds Job - and us - of our position as creatures with finite, limited knowledge constrained by time and temporality.  We are not only not creators, we were not even present to understand the beginnings and underpinnings of all of creation.  Our eternal spiritual knowledge is even more limited.  Then the LORD answered Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations...Who determined?...Who stretched?...Who shut in?...fixed...commanded...caused...?  Have you entered...walked...seen...?  Tell me if you know all this."

My Lessons and Applications:  This is the beginning - with Job before God - with us before God - acknowledging God's Majesty and power over all creation and our humility before Him as the creatures of His Hand. This is the point at which each of us must begin before we can hear God's voice and follow Him. This is from today's Psalm reading: "Know that the LORD, He is God.  It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.  We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.  Enter into His presence with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise." (Psalm 100:3-4)  When Jesus taught the disciples the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13), He began the same way:  "Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed be THY name, THY kingdom come, THY will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Then the prayer proceeds to the needs, the forgiveness, the guidance and protection we pray for from Him - all based on the fact that He is our Father.  Then the prayer ends where it began - with acknowledgement and praise of God's Sovereignty and Providence: ..."for THINE is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever."  Am I able to get back to this beginning truth when crying out to God, "Why?"  I have so little knowledge of the circumstance humanly and even less spiritually.  I may never know the why of a situation, but this is where faith is tested and tried.  Do I have this fire-tested faith of Job? "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him?" (Job 13:15) Of Shadrach,  Meshach and Abed-Nego of furnace faith? "If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up."  (Daniel 3:17-18)  Circumstances should not dictate my faith but give voice to and evidence of what I have learned in my daily walk and communion with God - that regardless of what life throws at me, I am God's and He is mine.

Sexual Immorality in the Church - 1 Corinthians 5: 1-13 - Incest has reared its ugly head in the church at Corinth, and Paul is chastising the church for not only not standing up against it and dealing with it but for being "puffed up" about it, proud of their tolerance of it.  "And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from you...Your glorying is not good.  Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Therefore purge out the old leaven...For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth...Now I have written to you to not keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner - not even to eat with such a person...Therefore, 'put away from yourselves the evil person.'"

My Lessons and Applications - My first reaction to this is always a quickening in my spirit at the harshness.  "Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."  I will let other theologians better versed than I speak to this.  Jesus keeps coming to my mind with, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."(John 8:7)  After more meditation on the rest of the chapter, I do know the truth of this - that the condoning of sexual sin or other sinful patterns of behavior will destroy an entire church and often many other marriages and families who are a part of that assembly.  I have personally witnessed this in one of the largest churches in America in another state.  Deacons had known of the sexual immorality - or had been told of it - and refused to believe or act upon it.  Other young husbands and fathers seemed to take license from the minister's behavior - and adultery and divorce were not uncommon.  This same church, at the same time, had a deacon indicted for money laundering through his car wash.  The list goes on. (When you have the pattern of one of these sins, there is a strong likelihood the others will exist also.)  At an interview at one of the well-known evangelism associations, I was asked if I would be able to accept a fellow employee caught in adultery.  I responded that I would expect the leaders to deal with the situation Biblically or I would not be able to remain there if I were employed - that I felt it would give credence to adultery.  One of the male interviewers asked if I would not be able to forgive a brother in Christ in this situation.  I said yes, though the forgiveness is with God, but that I also felt his witness had been marred, and then I shared the church story above.  The end of that story is that the church moved from that building and city with a new minister.  But 30 years later, my life - my marriage and family - and those of many others were traumatized by the acceptance of the "leaven" that permeated the whole church for decades.  Am I willing to speak up when I see a fellow believer in a pattern of sin that is eternally and temporally destructive to himself, to his family, to others?  Am I willing and able to walk away from church or other gatherings that hinder my walk with God?  Am I allowing the Holy Spirit to convict me of my sins, to repent, and to turn from any sin in my life?  Do I continually bring my life back to the foot of the Cross, knowing what the real cost of my sin is.

Many Christians tend to misunderstand Jesus' admonition: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" (Matt. 7:1).  He is not saying not to judge at all, but not to be hypocritical.  We are to judge ourselves first before judging others.  "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Matt. 7:5)  The apostle Paul tells us to judge believers in our fellowship but to leave the judging of unbelievers to the Lord.  "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church?  Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside."(1 Cor. 5:12-13)...The best policy, however, is always to search inwardly first.  If we are honest with what the Lord exposes in us, we will most likely be too busy to judge others. 

Jim Reimann commentary on Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening.