[0:00] Okay, how we doing? After that passage, really good? So, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, I was at this wedding reception last night too, and about 10.30 I've been praying through this sermon and the implications of it, and I was like, what am I doing teaching on 1 Corinthians 5?
[0:21] It's craziness. Usually people skip these passages. These are kind of like the hot potato passages in Scripture. We're about to hit a whole bunch of hot potatoes. I mean serious hot potatoes in Scripture and theology, and I have realized over the years of being married to my wife that I'm not as good of a communicator as I thought I was.
[0:40] And so I'm sure that I might bother some of you in my communication. I'm sure and hopefully that Scripture will bother you also. And so this is just a beginning, an introduction. Hopefully you will continue to discuss these things in your community group and talk to each other.
[0:56] And if I say something that really offends you, please come up and talk to me because, again, these are huge topics, right? And so you're studying these and you're reading these, and we're going to talk for about 30 minutes.
[1:09] And I've been thinking about this, you know, for weeks and trying to figure out what's going on here and how do we do this and how do we teach this well. And so I think maybe I should just start off by asking, is there anybody in here sleeping with their dad's mom, dad's wife?
[1:27] Anybody? Okay, maybe we should just close the sermon then and say amen and we can go home because we don't want to think about this because it's too crazy. But then I started thinking about verse 11. Is there anybody in here who's a Christian and they're struggling with pornography or immorality?
[1:44] Are there anybody in here who's a believer and they're struggling with greed and covetous? Or is there anybody in here who's struggling with idolatry, that we've made idols and we've worshipped them instead of God?
[1:56] Is there any of us in here who struggle with drinking too much? Is there anybody in here who struggles with swindling and being greedy and vicious with their words?
[2:07] And is there anybody in here who's a reviler, that they gossip, they use their words abusively to people and they hurt people, especially those above them in leadership or their spouses? Are there any of us in here struggling with those things?
[2:21] And I realized that I have to say yes to many of these things. You know, and I wanted to talk about that today. What does it look like for us as a church to go on a journey?
[2:32] When we started this church, we prayed that we'd be a church that would open up and share everything with everybody and that we would not hold things back, realizing that if we keep things in the dark, in our soul, in our brain, and in our heart, that Satan destroys us, right?
[2:49] So one of the things we pray about as staff and elders all the time is that we would be a church that would realize that and realize that we've been hiding in the dark too long and it's time to bring these things into the light and let God and the Holy Spirit heal us from these things.
[3:03] And so I wanted to start to talk about this passage by sharing a story that I remember really well. It was October 25, 2010.
[3:15] And the reason I remember that is only two weeks after we started Watermark. And the story and the true story, what happened was that in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra, there was this massive earthquake that hit and it rumbled everybody about 9.45 at night.
[3:31] And this earthquake triggered this massive tsunami that just kept building up and building up. And it started pushing and it started heading towards these Mitanawe Islands and towards these areas.
[3:46] But this wasn't the first time the earthquake had happened. And so in 2004, this huge earthquake hit and caused a tsunami and it wiped out half of India. And so what they did is they placed these buoys, these NOAA buoys, these dark buoys all around the islands to act as a warning sign.
[4:01] And so that whenever the water level went up, these buoys would go, you know, alert, alert, alert. And they would send out this warning to all the villages and all the islands. And so people would be aware that this huge wall of water is coming and we need to get away.
[4:16] And so this water of wall is coming. But over time, those buoys that they had placed in there in 2004, it's, you know, it's 2010 now, they were just neglected.
[4:28] I mean, no one checked up on them. No one bothered to check them out and make sure they were functioning properly. No one tested them. No one even went out and said, hey, are they still there?
[4:41] They just assumed that these buoys were still there and they were going to be protected by it. And when this big wave of water hit these buoys, instead of saying, alert, alert, alert, nothing happened.
[4:52] I mean, there was no warning and the people were sleeping and this huge tsunami slams these islands. And in an instant, 4,000 homes are destroyed and 20,000 people's lives are upturned and hundreds of people are washed out to the sea, all because this system that they had designed and put in place didn't function properly because we neglected it and we didn't talk about it.
[5:16] We didn't discuss it amongst ourselves. It's terrifying, isn't it? It's terrifying to think if you were one of those people and you're thinking that you were going to go to sleep and you were safe because people were taking care of you and in an instant, you're wiped out.
[5:31] And that's kind of what's going on in this church in Corinth. We've been studying about this church in Corinth and this church started in this city that is very much like Hong Kong. It's all about power and it's all about money and it's all about education and it's all about relationships and it's all about idols and it's all about image.
[5:47] I don't know if you've realized it, but in Hong Kong it doesn't really matter how well you're doing. It just matters that you look like you're doing well, right? And that's what we struggle with in the church all the time because we come in and we wear these masks and it looks like we're doing well, but inside in our soul we're not doing well.
[6:02] We're really getting beat up by these tsunamis and this is what's happening to this church in Corinth. These tsunamis are hitting and what we're going to see is the problem that it causes is that people just become arrogant.
[6:16] The people become prideful and they've become just like their city, the church. This small group of 150 people who've been struggling and fighting to walk with the Lord and to be good businessmen and to be good husbands and to be good wives and be good children.
[6:30] They've just become complacent and they've become prideful and they've just stopped thinking about what it means to walk with God and instead of having this protective barrier of buoys around their families and their church and their community, these things have been wiped away and now their lives and their hearts and their families and their churches are at risk.
[6:54] I mean, there's this huge disconnect in these people's lives. They don't realize what is going on and what the church is all about and they've separated their spiritual life from their physical life.
[7:05] Have you ever done that? I struggle with that often that we separate what we do with who we are. We forget what the church is about. We just come in and most of us struggle with thinking about whether the church is just a club that we come on Sunday and that we leave.
[7:24] And we struggle with this idea of sin entering into our midst and what does it look like and why we're here as God's people. What do we do with these things as we get buffeted by these waters that continually beat us and beat us and beat us?
[7:40] I mean, there's a lot of stories in the Old Testament about this happening to God's people. I was reading one rabbi's commentary and I know you're going to think I'm incredibly boring. I told one of the staff that.
[7:51] He goes, well, you got a lot of free time. And I was reading this commentary about this guy talking about these Old Testament stories and he was talking about the community of God and the people. And he said that, you know, most people don't understand what the community of God is all about.
[8:05] And he says it's kind of like you're on this boat. And you're on this boat that's going on this journey. And all of a sudden you turn over and you look down and there's this guy on this wooden boat and he's drilling this hole underneath his bed.
[8:18] And he's drilling it through the wood of the boat. And you look at him and you say, what are you doing? He goes, don't worry about it. It's just my area. It's just my area.
[8:30] It's not going to affect everybody else. It's just me. It's just me. It's my area. And this rabbi said that's how we think of the community and that's how we think of sin in our lives. We think that we can just drill holes in the bottom of the boat and it's not going to affect anybody.
[8:44] It's just going to affect us. But what he says is that you and I are here and we're in this journey. If you're God's people, you're in a ship and you're on this journey. And everything you do affects everybody in God's family.
[8:58] I mean, I think we don't. And I struggle with this, right? We come in and we don't realize that the person next to you and the person next to you, these are people that are going to be in heaven with you. You don't realize that the person next to you and the person next to you, they might need the gifts, the talents, the care, the love, the personality that you have.
[9:17] And if you just get up and leave and never communicate with people or never serve, then that means that that person next to you and the person next to you, they're worse off because the hand or the leg or the foot just walked out the door and they really need a hand or a leg or a foot or a heart or an ear.
[9:35] And the story says that we don't realize it because we don't realize also that we're sitting in here in this community and that we actually need the person beside us. And that person beside us might be the person that we need to talk to because we're really struggling with something.
[9:53] They might be a little further along in their journey in business and in marriage and family and singleness and we're just getting beat up by the storms over and over and over and we get up and we leave and we don't realize that the answer to this is what God has said all along and the answer is the church and the community and the people of God.
[10:11] But we don't realize that and so we teach our kids that it's okay not to value those things and we might not say it but we do it by our actions and our words and so our kids learn and so what we do is we pass on this crippledness from our generation to our kids' generation to the next generation.
[10:30] But you and I are meant to be in this ship together and we're moving in this direction and whatever we do affects everybody else. Does that make any sense whatsoever? I hope I'm not getting too heavy but for me it's just a burden because I feel like I struggle with this a lot and the people of Corinth struggle with that a lot too.
[10:48] There were things going on in their church that were out of control and in fact the problem in this passage is intense and it's leaven, it's sin and the idea about leaven is that when you put the leaven in the dough you put the yeast in the dough it permeates everything.
[11:07] Okay, so I have a confession to make. I've tried to stop drinking Diet Coke. There's something in me I just, okay so I went to Christina's parents' mom's funeral and there was something in me like you need to just cut down and stop it so I've tried to stop drinking Diet Coke and so I've been drinking tea instead and so I've been boiling tea and making tea and drinking tea like a madman because I'm addicted to caffeine I'm sure and the thing I've learned about the tea pot and the kettle is if I don't boil it well enough or if I leave it sitting just for a little while that the sugar in it starts to ferment and if I don't handle it just right I mean I can go out of the room and studying and I can come back in an hour and a half and the tea starts to get cloudy.
[11:53] Have you ever noticed that? And then if I just leave it for like three hours that the tea is undrinkable, right? It's like in some of those restaurants you're going in and you take a drink of tea and you're like oh wow this is really bad you need to clean out the leaven out of this thing and the guy goes what?
[12:05] And but it's but that's how sin affects us, right? And that's what goes on and that's what's happening in the church because we forgot what the church is about we forgot that we're God's people we forgot we're hands and feet and we're in a ship and everything we do affects each other and the sin that we do affects each other and so Paul writes this letter and it's not the first letter he wrote to this church and this church is struggling with this guy and he is actually he's sleeping he's shacking up with his dad's wife and so it's not his probably his mom but it's his dad's wife and we know that it's a continual thing that it's happening over and over because Paul wrote about it in a letter that we don't have maybe a year or two before and so he's readdressing it here again and the thing that surprises him as he talks about this is that this sin isn't even what the Romans would do if you read Roman law and you read the Greek law this thing is like out of control most Greeks and Romans they believed in everything else and everything else is good but what you don't do is you don't sleep with your dad's wife because that's that's like the Oedipus syndrome right
[13:09] Oedipus the boy who falls in love with his mom and the Greeks have a whole tragedy about that and so you just don't do that but they were doing that here and Paul is just freaking out over that and the biggest thing that concerns Paul in verse 2 is not that this guy is doing it but the biggest thing that concerns Paul is that people aren't doing anything about it and so they just look at him and they kind of smile maybe they say things like well you know that's a personal matter maybe we shouldn't be too involved or you know this is just the age of tolerance we need to be tolerant and we don't want to be intolerant or intolerant or we don't want to be harsh we don't want to be mean maybe if we say something to him and a lot of commentators think that this guy was probably a very wealthy person in the church that he's probably a very well to do person that he was donating a lot of money to the church the church might have even been meeting in his home and so there's a sense that they didn't they were afraid to say anything because they would lose this money from this patron and so instead they let this yeast just continue in his heart and it just became deferment and get more difficult and more difficult and people in the church were saying you know it's grace and God has freed us and Christ has freed us and who cares about what we do sexually and it's okay we can do anything and Paul's looking at this and he goes what are you doing this guy's been drilling holes in the bottom of the boat for two years and you haven't done anything about it you gotta do something about it guys because it's not good
[14:31] I mean in the Hebrew culture you know what they would have done they would have taken the guy and the girl and taken them outside the city and they would have stoned them to death I mean it would have happened just like that there wouldn't have been no discussion over the sin and the blatantness of it but as Christians we struggle with that we don't know what to do and Paul was talking to them and we struggle with this idea well that's not loving because Jesus wouldn't do that right but Jesus did do that and it's my fault because I didn't put it in your bulletin but I put Matthew 7 which talks about before we go to talk to people we guard our hearts we ask our hearts we take the logs out of our eye before we talk to our brother but in Matthew 18 Jesus lays out these very specific strict guidelines for how we deal with people in sin and so I'm going to read it to you this is what he says if your brother sins and go and reprove him in private and if he listens to you you have won a brother and you just mark over that love because that's what love is he goes but if he doesn't listen to you take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed love and if he refuses to listen to them then tell it to the church and if he refuses to listen even to the church then let him be as a Gentile sorry tax guys but as a tax gatherer that's the worst thing you could be in Jesus' day was a tax gatherer
[15:52] IRS Ed back there you had the worst profession in Jesus' day sorry about that buddy anyway but he Jesus said really clearly hey this is this is what we do and this is how we treat people and this is what we do when our brother sins and we follow these rules and we follow this pattern and if we don't do that we don't love them because he says the problem is that with Christians we see something happening in a person's life we see a person walking around and they have a booger hanging right on their nose right here and we think if we don't say anything about the booger right there that the booger will go away am I freaking you out little BT and so there's little BT hanging there and so but you're not saying anything to the people it's just hanging on there and that person's walking around and they have a booger hanging on their nose and we look at those people and we say wow we love them so much we're not going to tell them that there's a booger hanging out their nose but Jesus but Paul says no and he says the problem with the church is that by the time we get to say something to somebody all the holes have been drilled in the bottom of the bolt all the damage is done and the person's heart who's struggling with the sin their heart has become so hard because no one's loved them enough to say to them at an early age dude you have a booger hanging out of your nose but they just walked around for years with a booger hanging out of their nose and I'm probably going to stop right now because my wife's going to talk to me about that afterwards but it's kind of like cancer right we don't want to go to the doctor because we're afraid he's going to tell us we have cancer and that's crazy right you think you have cancer you go to the doctor so he can tell you and so you can get it fixed but most of us live in the church and we just ignore those signs and those things happening and so Paul says you know I can't ignore it anymore because I've been talking to this guy and we've gone through this process and he says this is what I'm going to do because it seems like they're waiting for him to come make a decision and Paul says you make the decision even though I'm not there yet because I'm coming but this is what
[17:46] I'm going to tell you we're going to do we're going to push this guy outside because we love him because if we don't push him outside he's going to be destroyed and if we don't push him outside he's going to not only destroy himself but he's going to destroy the people around him and if he don't push him outside he's not going only destroy himself and the people around him he's also going to destroy the name of Christ.
[18:09] That's love. And so Paul says, make him out, push him out there, give his body over to Satan. It's very strong words in verse 5. There's a lot of controversy over what it means, but what it basically means is you're in this boat, and this guy's acting up, and you stop at the next island, and you drop the guy off at the island, and you keep sailing.
[18:31] You put him out into the world. Sometimes we don't do that because we want to love people, but what happens when we keep people in the church is that they just get into this atmosphere, and there's sin in their life, and things are eating their lunch, and they're getting hit by tsunamis, but they're in other Christians, and so they don't ever think about it.
[18:50] They don't take it as a serious thing. And so sometimes you can do really well in a church surviving, right, even when you're struggling with things. And that's why people, when they get kicked out of churches or when their sin gets found out, they go to other churches right away because they realize that the church is this safe place because there's grace and there's love, and they can just keep doing what they've always been doing, drilling holes in the bottom of the boat.
[19:15] And Paul says, no. I mean, if you love that guy, you go to him. If you love that girl, you go to him, and you tell them what's going on because their soul's at stake, their heart's at stake. It's going to hurt them.
[19:27] The buoys are going off all around them, and you're seeing those buoys flashing, but you're not telling them about those buoys. And so they're just going to get drowned and drowned and drowned.
[19:41] He goes on and he says, he gives three reasons why we, as God's people, we must talk to each other about this sin. We must allow people to speak to us and talk about these things.
[19:54] And the first reason he gives is in verse 5, he says it's for that person, for their soul. That if you don't love that person enough to talk about the struggles they're having and their lives they're having. And again, I'm not talking about just sin, right?
[20:06] I'm not saying, okay, the guy messed up, you saw him yelling at his wife. But you're seeing this pattern of things happening in people's lives, and you love that person enough, you want to go to them and talk about, yeah, I see this pattern happening.
[20:18] What's going on? How are you doing? Are there holes being driven in your boat? Are you drowning? Do you need help? How can I help you? You know, one of the things I think why the church doesn't want to talk about these things, about disappointing people and sin and things like that, it's because we also don't do a very good job when people need us, do we?
[20:42] I mean, there's people sitting right beside you who need you. And they're struggling. They need you to pray for them. They need you to ask how they're doing. They need you sometimes to give them money because they can't make it to the next paycheck.
[20:54] They need you to help them with their kids. They need you to a billion different things that we all have needs as a body and as a family. And sometimes as a church, we just don't do very well with that, do we?
[21:04] I mean, I remember when my mom was going through a divorce, my dad left our family, you know. All the guys in the church, the elders and the leaders, when a divorced woman comes walking in the house, man, they'd step away and get away from her.
[21:19] They didn't want to come and minister to her and help her. And a lot of us do that. I do that, guys. We're so busy. We're so focused on our own worlds and our kingdoms.
[21:33] And there's people around who are drowning. And so if we have a hard time encouraging people when they need it, for sure we're going to have a hard time encouraging people when there's sin in their life and they're drowning and they're struggling.
[21:48] And so Paul says we do it for that person because we want to save them. And we're hoping that as they go forth into the world and Satan beats them up and they look at what they're going on, that there's this wake-up call and they wake up and go, what have I done?
[22:00] Where have I left? You know that most of the men I counsel who have extramarital affairs with their wives and they leave their families, within three months, there's this huge sense of regret for doing it.
[22:12] Because it's almost like they've woken up and they've realized what they've done, what they've given away, the choices they've made, and there's this huge sense of regret. And they've had this wake-up call. And that's kind of what Paul's talking about here.
[22:22] That when you put people outside of the church after this process that has gone through, that there's this wake-up call and that people see, what have I done? And the Holy Spirit starts to soften their heart and they come back.
[22:35] Now the amazing thing about this guy is that eventually the church does this. And in 2 Corinthians 2, we read about this guy coming back into the church family. But it's taken them a long time and as they've done it, the damage has been done.
[22:49] The second reason we do it, Paul says is found in verses 3 through 8. It's this idea of leaven and the sin coming into our lives. And basically what he says is that if you don't remove people who struggle overly and they don't have any desire to get better, they don't have any desire to get fixed, that this sin, this leaven, goes into everything.
[23:07] It affects everybody. And you know that. If you have a really bad performer in your work, they have a terrible attitude, do you leave them in your workplace?
[23:19] I mean, you don't, do you? Because if you do, then everybody's going to start grumbling. Everybody's going to be angry, right? If you're on a sports team and you have one selfish player, you don't leave that selfish player on your sports team.
[23:31] Because that leaven, that sin, that disgruntledness spreads out into everything and it affects everything. And Paul's saying as Christians, one of the reasons we deal with sin, one of the reasons we talk to people, one of the reasons that we might ultimately have to remove people from church for a period of time.
[23:49] And again, the heart is that they always repent. They always come back. But one of the reasons we do that is because the sin in their life affects everybody. And it will start to tear up the church.
[24:02] And then after a while, everybody's going to start drilling holes in the bottom of the church. And the boat is going to start to sink because everybody has a bad attitude. And it's happened throughout the history of the church.
[24:14] And there's a lot of stories about it in the Bible. There's a lot of stories about people who said, this is my sin, it's only going to affect me. And they go out and they do it and it decimates the whole family of God.
[24:27] David did it. Moses did it. There's a story after story of people who think it's just my sin, it's just me. But what we realize is that we're in the same boat and everything affects it.
[24:39] And the reason we don't think that is because we're prideful. We've stopped listening to God's spirit. The final reason that Paul says, we have to do it, we must do it, we must let go of these people, we have to deal with these things.
[24:55] And he talks about some serious things there. When you go back to verse 11, you look at that, he's talking about, hey, if there's people who are dealing with sexuality, sensuality, they're struggling with pornography, prostitution, extramarital affairs.
[25:09] If they're, and you know, what I've come to learn is, it's not bad to struggle with these things. I mean, we struggle with these things. We're all broken, we're all sinful. The problem comes is when we stop struggling with these things.
[25:21] The problem comes when we start saying, that's okay, because God's going to forgive me. Well, that's okay if I do this, because it's going to be okay, because God's going to forgive me. And that's where the sin starts to grow and starts to multiply and starts to affect everybody.
[25:35] And Paul says, you have to be careful of that. And he finally says, and the last thing he says is, the number one reason, I think the number one reason we deal with sin and issues in our life, the reasons we put up these buoys in our community group, and we put up these buoys around our relationships, and our marriage, and around our church, and these buoys are called community.
[25:53] And these buoys are called elders. And these buoys are called fellowship. And these buoys are called the word of God. And Sunday gathering, and wherever else you gather, and prayer, and all these buoys we put around ourselves to protect ourselves.
[26:12] And Paul says that when the person finally steps out from those buoys, the number one reason we talk to them about these things is that their sin, their sin, and I know people hate to use that word today, their brokenness, they're not doing what God has called them to do, that their sin not only affects them, and not only affects the church, but it affects everybody.
[26:39] I mean, people who are not Christians now look at the church, and they see that this church is allowing a guy who's sleeping with his dad's wife into the service.
[26:54] People don't want to go to church anymore. I mean, how would you feel if you're sitting right next to somebody and they swindle you out of millions of dollars? And the church continues to allow them to do that.
[27:07] How would you do in your communion time when you're sitting down and the person next to you has stolen your wife away, or your husband away, or your boyfriend away? How would you do if you know that that person next to you is totally unethical?
[27:20] And the elders have looked at it and they've just kind of smiled and go, yeah, it's okay, but we're a different type of church. We're not going to talk about those things. What would that do to your feeling about the church? What would that do to your feeling about God?
[27:34] I have many friends who don't come to church because of the way their friends acted to them as Christians.
[27:48] And what they say to me is, well, you know, they're acting no differently than my friends. The only difference is they use church as a cover for their lives. And Paul says, if we don't deal with these things, Christ is hurt.
[28:04] And the body of Christ is made the less. I'm not talking about sinlessness. And I'm not talking about perfection.
[28:16] And I'm not talking about never stumbling. Because if you know me, you know that I stumble. We all stumble. All the elders, all the leaders. Watermark is a place for broken and sinful people in God's word, the gospel.
[28:29] But what I'm talking about is people who sin and then they don't repent. People who sin and don't ask for forgiveness. People who sin and hurt people and don't make things right.
[28:43] People who sin and say, yeah, I understand that, but they just keep doing it over and over and over. That's what he's talking about here.
[28:54] And he's saying, we need each other. I need people in my life who care enough about me to come alongside and say, how are you doing in these areas? And you need people in your life who care enough about you to come alongside with you and ask you, how are you doing and what kind of holes are you drilling in the bottom of the boat lately?
[29:14] And are your buoys connected? And how are the warning signals happening in your life? But the church in Corinth, they didn't listen. And so because of that, God's name was made worse and things were hurt.
[29:31] And so Paul is writing this letter and he's urging them and he's urging you and he's urging all of us to take church seriously. To take sin seriously.
[29:46] To take loving your brothers and sisters next to you seriously. You guys don't understand and I don't understand but what we have here, what you have and the people around you is God's gift to you while you're on this journey.
[30:11] And the question is, how are we going to use this gift and how are we going to build this gift and how are we going to make this gift stronger? Does that make sense? We need to hear this guys because there are waves that are going to hit you this week and they're going to mow you over.
[30:31] And you might get up and reset those buoys but you might not. And you might let those waves just keep drowning you and drowning you and if you don't have somebody in your life who's going to come alongside of you and loves you enough to say, how are you doing?
[30:44] What's going on? How can I pray for you? How can I help you? If you don't have people in your life like that, you're going to be lost.
[30:57] And in the same way, if you're not one of those people, if you're not one of those people who come alongside of people and you're not one of those people who are helping them patch up those holes as quick as they drill it, you're trying to patch them back up and you're trying to help them understand what it's doing to the whole community.
[31:08] If you're not one of those people, then you're not being who God meant for you to be. And the church is the less. And God is the less.
[31:19] God's people are the less. So how are your sin buoys? What are the things in your life that warn you?
[31:33] Alert, alert, alert. I want to end with three questions or three thoughts that have been going through my mind these last couple weeks.
[31:48] The first one is this. is there someone around you right now who's being torn up by sin and struggles?
[32:01] Bad choices they are making? Is there somebody around you right now that you've been ignoring for a long time? And you know in your heart there's something going on. You know in their heart that they're not doing that well.
[32:13] You know in their heart that maybe they're struggling with their finances and how they're using them. Maybe they're struggling with pornography. Maybe they're struggling with being a little too nice to people who aren't their spouses. And you've watched these things but you haven't said anything because you're in your mind you might be saying you know that's not loving for me to judge and to come into their life.
[32:32] Or you might be saying I'm just too busy to help them. Who is that person? My prayer for you this week and for all of us is that we would ask God to come into our hearts and to give us the courage to talk to them.
[32:51] Now don't go to them and say Tobin Pastor Tobin told me you're a sinner and I gotta tell you about these things and that's not the process. The process is you're praying you're talking to them you're coming alongside and you're saying hey can you help me I want to help you what's going on in your life because I want us to be on this journey together and I want the boat to be healthy and I want you to be healthy.
[33:11] Usually after I do a talk like this there's a lot of people going out there and be careful because you might have people come to you. I mean if people love you at Watermark and in your family hopefully people will come to you sometime in your life.
[33:26] And they'll ask you questions they'll ask you how are you doing and how are your how are your sin buoys doing and are they up are they working perfectly and how they ask you might really offend you.
[33:39] You might really get angry. But the passage says that they're doing it in love and even if they don't do it totally the way you would like for them to do it my prayer is that you would realize that they love you and they care for you.
[33:55] And even if there's 20% truth in what they're saying even if there's 5% truth in what they're saying the message that they're giving you is God's message to you to wake up and to check the things in your life.
[34:11] So who's struggling around you? What does it look like for us to go to them this week and pray for them? And finally this is the one that we need to really look at is are there areas in your life that you're ashamed of?
[34:29] Are there areas of your life that you don't want the buoys around?
[34:43] Are there areas of your life that you realize that if people look deeply into these things they would see holes drilled all over your property? Or maybe it's with your relationships and how you're treating people in your office or your helpers or your spouses or your children maybe it's your ethics at work maybe it's your money and how things are happening maybe it's your sexuality maybe you're an immoral person and you're struggling with pornography and these other things and they they're killing you but you've put up this facade and this face and this wall that looks like there's 10 billion buoys protecting you but in reality there are 10 billion buoys but they're not connected they're not saying warning warning warning and the waves just keep kidding you my prayer for us right now and this week is that we as God's people would get our lives right before him the passage says that we celebrate the Passover lamb what it means is that Christ died for you it means that
[35:56] God takes sin so seriously that he sent his only son to die for you and in response to that as God's people our response is to clean out the leaven clean out the sin clean out the things that entangle us and slow us down and ask for forgiveness and help and repent and hand those to the Lord and walk in newness the words he used is truth and integrity again it doesn't mean perfection it means truth and integrity my prayer for us as a church is that we wouldn't forget this message of the church of Corinth that we wouldn't allow our lives to go so long until we get swamped and that we'd realize that people around us need us and we need them because we're not going to make it on our own a lot of us in here think that church is you in a little dinghy going by yourself but the reality is according to
[37:08] God's word it's this large ship and if you're in deep sin you're swimming beside the ship the passage is about getting back in amen the amazing thing about the gospel is that Christ and God is a God of second chances my prayer is that we as a people would remind people about this and be involved in each other's lives father thank you for this day thank you for your word that is living and active thank you for your spirit that comes into our lives and prompts us father I thank you for this community the people of God I pray that we would not be like the church of Corinth I pray that we would not become prideful and arrogant and self-sufficient but that we would realize that we need you and that we would need each other I pray that we would realize that we are in a world that is hostile to us and wants to destroy us and the only thing that will save us is you sometimes you do that through your word sometimes you do that through your spirit but your word says you always do that through community may we be a people who understand that and know that we're in the same ship going in the same direction worshiping the same
[38:37] Lord father I pray for my brothers and sisters in here right now who aren't in that ship who think that they're doing well and they're basically not doing well I pray that they would ask the people around them who brought them today or me or somebody here what does it really mean to be a Christian what does it look like to be a person who is a saint but a sinner at the same time what does it look like a person who struggles with these things instead of allowing them to overwhelm us and to control us what does it look like to be a person who understands grace and mercy most of all an awesome savior and God and what I pray for us as a church that we would never forget why we're here that we're not here just to start a club and to make it look really nice in our boat and have everything we need in our boat for ourselves but we're here to reach people who aren't in the boat we're here to be real and authentic and honest to challenge each other to encourage each other to point each other to your son what I pray that we would never forget that we would never allow the waves to sink us that we'd always trust in you father we love you we desperately need you we pray these things in your son jesus name amen