Run With It: Time is Not Our Buddy

1 Corinthians 5:1-5 ESV

“It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

“For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

So many people think that time is on their side, as though time will never end, as though time will always be their faithful companion giving them all the time that they want to continue living in deliberate and habitual sin against the Lord. They don’t take God at his word, and they don’t take his words to heart. For they don’t really believe that God will judge them for their wicked ways. And so they have made time their idol, and they believe that time will not let them down.

But all of us are going to one day breathe our last breath and then time for us will be no more. And if we continued living in deliberate and habitual sin, without regard for God and for what his word teaches, then what God promised will happen will indeed happen. We will not be saved from our sins and we will not inherit eternal life with God regardless of what our lips professed. For it isn’t lip service which saves us. What saves us is God’s grace and God-given faith which walks in obedience to the Lord’s ways.

And now sexual immorality is skyrocketing (increasing rapidly) in today’s modern institutional market-driven churches. So, it is not just one man in one congregation who needs to be dealt with. According to statistics well over half of Christian men are regularly engaged in porn viewing, including perhaps as many as 1/3 of pastors. And that is not even touching on all the other areas of sexual immorality and deviant behavior among men, women, and children. And these institutional churches (ICs) are arrogant.

For most of them now are compromising the truths of the Scriptures in order to draw in large crowds of people from the world. And so most appear to now be gearing their gatherings toward attracting the people of the world to their gatherings, and so they have altered the whole meaning of “church,” and they have altered and diluted the gospel message to make it more palatable to the flesh of man and the people of the world so as not to offend the people of the world, so that they will feel at home “at church.”

And so sin is running rampant in today’s modern market-driven ICs. And instead of mourning and grieving over this rampant sin, so many are coddling these people in their addictive sin. They are teaching them that God’s grace covers it all and that God does not judge them, or they tell them to just claim who they are in Christ if they begin to feel guilty about their sin. And many pastors are also engaged in deliberate and addictive sin patterns of behavior and so they are not leading their people in holiness.

So, it is all backwards of what it should be. And those who are being sinned against, and who are being hurt by these who will not repent of their sins and who will not obey the Lord, are sometimes or often treated as the enemy, and the enemy is treated as the victim because they don’t want to offend sinners in their sin. They don’t want to come across as judgmental because they want the world to want to come to their gatherings and to keep coming back so they can build their earthly kingdoms.

1 Corinthians 5:6-8 ESV

“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. 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.”

And we are now way beyond a little leaven permeating a single congregation of professing Christians. Where we are now in America is that nearly the whole of what is called “church” here in America is being infected with habitual and deliberate sin, especially sexual sin which is predominant today. And it isn’t just that nothing is being done to stop it, but most appear to be making allowances for it by teaching altered gospel messages which make no requirements for genuine repentance and obedience to our Lord.

And so if today’s church leaders were to cleanse the old leaven out of their congregations, they would have to remove most of the people, including many of their pastors and themselves. That is how huge this situation has become. And if you try to tell them the truth of what the Scriptures teach with regard to what our salvation is supposed to look like, and regarding God’s requirements of us in order for us to be saved and to have eternal life with God, it appears most are just ignoring such messages and they are continuing in their deliberate and habitual sin without conscience.

1 Corinthians 5:9-13 ESV

“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. 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.’”

This is not happening in most of what is called church here in America. Now there may be some congregations of believers in Jesus who are following these instructions, but I am not aware of any who are doing so today. For it does not fit with their marketing schemes and goals and mission and purpose statements for their “churches,” i.e. their businesses. The ones they seem to be coming against are those who are taking God’s word seriously and who are living morally pure lives in obedience to the Lord Jesus.

So, most everything called “church” today is flip-flopped from what it is supposed to be. For the church is not a building built by human hands, and it is not a corporation under the state, and it is not a particular church denomination, nor is it a social club or a civic center, or a specific physical location. But this is what many have made it into. Yet the church, in reality, is us the people who are believing in Jesus with God-given faith and who are following our Lord in faithful obedience and surrender to his will.

So, what can we as individuals do about this? Well, we can make certain that we are walking according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh, and that we are living morally pure lives in honesty and integrity and that we are not engaged in deliberate and habitual sin ourselves. And then we can get the word out to as many as possible with regard to what the Scriptures teach on this subject. And we can spread the truth of the gospel which teaches us to die with Christ to sin and live to him and to his righteousness.

And we can pray diligently for the Lord to change human hearts and to bring revival to his church and to bring the addicted to sin to true repentance and to walks of obedience to our Lord. And we can guard our own hearts and minds against any kinds of temptations to enter back into that world of sin and of worldliness. And we can set an example by how we live our lives as to what a Christian should be like in character and in actions. It doesn’t mean we are absolutely perfect, but holiness should be what we live in practice.

[Matt 7:21-23; Matt 24:9-14; Lu 9:23-26; Rom 1:18-32; Rom 2:6-8; Rom 6:1-23; Rom 8:1-14,24; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 13:11; 1 Co 6:9-10,19-20; 2 Co 5:10,15,21; 1 Co 1:18; 1 Co 15:1-2; 2 Tim 1:8-9; Heb 9:28; 1 Pet 1:5; Gal 5:16-21; Gal 6:7-8; Eph 2:8-10; Eph 4:17-32; Eph 5:3-6; Col 1:21-23; Col 3:5-17; 1 Pet 2:24; Tit 2:11-14; 1 Jn 1:5-9; 1 Jn 2:3-6,24-25; 1 Jn 3:4-10; Heb 3:6,14-15; Heb 10:23-31; Heb 12:1-2; Rev 21:8,27; Rev 22:14-15]

Above All

By Paul Baloche / Lenny Leblanc

Above all powers above all kings
Above all nature and all created things
Above all wisdom and all the ways of man
You were here before the world began

Above all kingdoms above all thrones
Above all wonders the world has ever known
Above all wealth and treasures of the earth
There's no way to measure what You're worth

Crucified laid behind the stone
You lived to die rejected and alone
Like a Rose trampled on the ground
You took the fall and thought of me
Above all