Sermon Tone Analysis

Stovall Weems is the founding pastor of Celebration Church in Tennessee.

Unfortunately, he was proven to have misused church’s finances.

He was forced to resign in April, and now is using Celebration Church for defamation.

If you do a simple Google search, you will find that pastors are beginning to sue their congregations for defamation.

I am not planning on doing that.

What happens is there is a allegation for sexual abuse or for financial mis-dealings, or something else.

The pastor, instead of working through channels within the church, immediately turns to secular courts and sues for defamation.

That is troubling for me.

What adds to this troubled feeling is the amount of congregation members who are suing each other.

Something bad happens, and the immediate response is the court.

Should this be?

Paul says “no.”

He holds up two mirrors to the Corinthians.

The first mirror is who they are in their sin.

The second mirror is who they are in Christ.

Let’s read the passage.

Two mirrors.

Who they are in their sin.

Who they are in Christ.

This week we will talk about the first mirror.

Next week, we will talk about the second.

Pray

Do you know what the purpose of a mirror is?

According to Wikipedia, A mirror reflects light waves to the observer, preserving the wave's curvature and divergence, to form an image when focused through the lens of the eye.

That’s nice, but what is the purpose of a mirror.

The purpose is so that you can see what you look like and see where you need to change.

Paul holds a mirror up to the Corinthians, and us, showing us what we look like and where we need to change.

What We Look Like

Let’s talk about what we look like.

If you don’t want to know, you can walk out right now, without any judgment.

Sinners

We look like sinners.

Paul says first, that the Corinthians look like sinners.

That is the human condition.

We naturally, when left alone, do things that hurt others.

Most of the time, we do it without thought.

Other times, we do it with a lot of thought.

Either way, we are sinners and we hurt each other.

Here in Corinthian, someone hurt someone else.

There is a dispute.

Someone was cheated, something worthy of going to a small claims court.

And, it happened a lot.

I am not so naive to think those sort of things don’t happen in churches today.

I’m not so naive as to think that doesn’t happen here.

If you flip through the history of Calvary Bible Church, the minutes of the congregational meetings reveal some fascinating stuff.

People were pretty mean to each other.

One pastor resigned because he did not feel adequate to lead the church in becoming nice to each other.

Now, we probably wouldn’t willingly defraud each other, but we might unintentionally steal from each other, as someone loans us something and we don’t return it.

I have a stack of DVD’s placed by our piano that I found while reorganizing our collection that do not belong to us, and I need to return.

We might say some things that hurt someone else, unintentionally or sometimes intentionally abusing each other.

Perhaps we are wanting to speak the truth to someone, but we forget gentleness, as Paul writes:

Maybe we hear something about someone else, and we pass that tidbit along to another person, engaging in Gossip, and slandering a person, without knowing whether that tidbit was true or not.

Whatever you want to say about it, we are sinners.

We hurt each other.

John says it this way:

We look in the mirror and see that we are sinners.

Unforgiveness

Not only are we sinners, but we are steeped in unforgiveness.

So, the Corinthian man has been hurt.

Something happens, and he wants to be justified, righted, etc.

He brings the fellow to court.

This is a man who is so intrenched in his selfishness, that he wants the person who has hurt him to feel hurt also.

Now, I know, this is only human.

And yes, I know there is someone who is saying, “But, shouldn’t the guy be held accountable?”

That will come.

Don’t worry.

What we are talking about right now is forgiveness.

Think about what it means to be a Christian.

We believe that we are sinning, that we have eternally hurt our Creator and our God.

Our actions deserve in eternity in the Lake of Fire, doomed to forever separation from all the blessings that come from the nearness, care, and protection of God.

God would have been completely just and righteous to condemn us to our fate without another fault.

Because, in all honesty, that is what we would have done if it were us.

God, however, forgave us.

He sent his son to die for us, taking our punishment on himself, allowing us to walk scott-free.

Not just that, but guaranteeing us an eternity in His presence.

And, we do not have to do anything to earn this gift.

We just have to accept it.

That’s what God did for us.

Why are we not willing to do it for each other?

If we believe that Jesus Christ died for our sin, paying the penalty for our sin, so that the Holy God cannot hold that sin against us, why do we refuse to believe that Jesus Christ died for the sin of the person who hurt us, that the Holy God does not hold that sin against him, so we should not either.

Who are we to hold those around us to a higher standard and a higher punishment than God himself does?

Paul said in Ephesians

Forgiveness means that we release the person who has hurt us from the debt they owe us.

A Christian looks at a fellow Christian and says: “I acknowledge that what you did was wrong and deserves God’s judgment.

And I realize that the judgment fell on Jesus.

He willingly paid the price for that action.

Therefore, I cannot hold this wrong against.

I cannot make you pay a debt that has already been paid.”

Is this easy to do?

Not at all.

Which is why the Corinthians were not practicing forgiveness.

Which is why, when the rubber meets the road, we don’t practice it either.

We look at the mirror and see that we are sinners, steeped in unforgiveness.

Disunity

The natural end result of sin and unforgiveness is disunity.

When we continually hurt each other and we continually hold those sins against each other, fellowship meal times are really empty.

Pretty soon, one church splits and another church dies.

Truly, the Corinthian church is showing a blueprint for the process of a church’s death.

I’ve seen it.

You’ve sin it.