January 22, 2012
1 Corinthians 7:24-35

Godly answers for ungodly questions

 

“The word of the Lord!.”

I say that phrase frequently after reading the scripture on Sunday mornings, but I wonder how you might hear those words:  the word of the Lord? 

As a word about God?

As a word for God?

As a word from God?

Or am I simply saying, “That’s the end of our Bible reading for today?”

Sometimes we jump to conclusions about the meaning of a phrase. We think we know what it means, but we don’t because we don’t understand what lies behind the words.

If I were to tell you, “the witness was lying on the stand,” you might think I’m speaking about a courtroom perjury, when I might really be talking about the man in the prone position on the deer stand when he saw Bobby shoot the unfortunate hunter.

Or if I say that Freddy really piled it on at the dinner table tonight,” you might think I was talking about the big helpings of mashed potatoes when I might really be talking about his whopper lies about some of his accomplishments. Freddy really piled it on at the dinner table tonight.

So when you hear a phrase like, “This is the word of the Lord,” what do you hear me saying?

When I say, “this is the word of the Lord,” I always consider myself to be saying, “These are the words that belong to and witness to the Lord Jesus Christ.”  And then I usually spend the next twenty minutes explaining how this particular passage actually actually accomplishes that.

Not because they are words on the pages of the Bible.  Simply because I’ve read some words on a page doesn’t make those words the word of God to me unless those words are made to come alive by the power and the presence of the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. And when the words are made alive, some people might say, when they are empowered by the Spirit of God, they can bring God to life within us.

          The word of the Lord.

          Now I said the phrase after this passage.  This is the word of the Lord.  And the word of the Lord on this occasion has said, “Please don’t take what I’m about to say as a command from God.  Don’t take what I’m about to say as the word coming directly from the Lord.  I am making a statement that is based only on what I know at the moment.  And I may not have all the information I need to make a statement absolutely  compatible with what God wants. I’m giving my best opinion on the subject, but you won’t learn the complete answer here.

          I am glad Paul says that.  

          Because there are situations that arise from time to time and we can search the scriptures only  to find that nothing that we read directly tells us what we should think or what we should do.  Some people say with all reverence toward the scripture that the Bible is the rule book for life, but it’s not like the rule book for football where you look under a certain section to learn about the various ways a team can score. There’s no direct answer.

          The twelve year old girl was sick for several mornings, and the family took her to the doctor.  She was pregnant, and when the parents got her home, she finally admitted under duress who the father was.  They actually beat it out of her and were stunned to learn that it was her forty-six year old uncle and he had threatened to kill her if she told of his little secret visits.  Now there are some directions in the Bible on what you might do to the forty-six year old uncle, but if you followed them you will find yourself in prison, but there is nothing in there about what to do when the twelve year old doesn’t want her uncle’s baby. There’s nothing in here about what to do for this child.

I recall the woman who had been on dialysis for years.  Three mornings a week for ten years and each treatment left her nauseated for the rest of the day. Twenty four hours later she would feel well enough to eat, and be all right for the rest of the day only to return the next morning to dialysis and another day of sickness. 

Finally she got tired of it and told her family, “No more.”  What do you do when someone might have gone to be with God ten years ago but because of technical advances was still alive?

Keep them alive and miserable? Or let them receive eternal life?

There’s nothing in the Bible that speaks directly to what a woman should do if her husband gets drunk and beats her and puts a gun to her head and threatens her.  For those who want to toss out that word about wives submitting to your husbands, they should remember that it’s followed by an equal word for husbands.  “Love your wives as Christ loves the Church.” And if the husband doesn’t love the wife as Christ loves the church, but beats her and threatens her, what does the Bible say to that?

There’s no word in the Bible about what steps to take when you’re a salesman working on commission and every time you raise the bar on sales so that you’re making more money that the boss, and the corporation hires another sales man and gives them some of your accounts.
          What do you do, God?

          There’s no commandment in the Bible about what to do when a woman wants to have a baby but not in her own body, or whether or not to clone her dying brother. 

          And what you and I are left to do is to do what Paul did concerning what was happening down at Corinth and based on what do know about the persons and message of Jesus Christ form our best opinion.

          This is not the word of the Lord. It’s my opinion. That’s what Paul says. And among the many crises faced by the church at Corinth was this particular one.  Someone had raised a question.  Here’s a new situation.   What we have believed about life has been turned upside down.

What some of us used to believe was that if we sacrificed to the gods of Rome, those gods would protect us.  Others of us used to believe that by believing in the one God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that this God would let them all grow old and die peacefully in our sleep with everything set in order for the future of our children and our grandchildren. 

          And then, because of the preaching of Paul and Simon Peter and Apollos, our thinking has changed.  We believe now that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead and elevated to the right hand of God the father almighty. And we believe that soon and very soon Jesus will return for us.

 And believing that his return was imminent, someone had raised the question.

We have some young people in our midst who want to get married. But seeing that Christ is returning for us very soon, we wonder if there is any point in planning a wedding.  Is it better for a man to marry or to remain as he is?
          From Paul’s response, at this particular time it’s clear that he also thinks the gig is just about up.  “In view of the impending distress,” Paul says.  “With the form of this world passing away, because the appointed time for the return of Christ has grown very short, the best thing for you to do is to stay right where you are.”

          If you are not married, then don’t get married. If you are married, stay married.”

          Because maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, Christ will return.  And why go through all that trouble of creating a deliberate change when chances are you won’t be around to cut the wedding cake. 

          It’s important to know what’s going on behind the words.  People who don’t know what was going on in Corinth have taken these words found in the Bible, “It is better for a man not to marry,” and made it into a generalized statement -- that Paul doesn’t believe in marriage.  They’ll even create some sort of doctrine out of it. Some have denied priests the privilege of marriage by quoting such scripture clearly meant to be spoken as an opinion given at a particular time and place and in response to a particular question or crisis.

There are people today, some of them preachers who are simply taking verses from hither and yonder in the Bible and tossing them up without any explanation and failing to recognize that they may be leading people into confusion.  I’ve know some who get so confused about what they’ve been told to believe they just give up trying to understand God altogether.

When Paul said it was better for a man not to marry,” the background on his statement is that he was convinced that all of humanity’s gig on this planet was just about up, but he would later write letters revealing that he had come to see that the only gig that was up was his own.

          It bothers some people to think that Paul could change his mind about something.  But as new situations arose, he had to adjust his thinking.  That can come with a price.  Some people will lose confidence in you.

Sort of like the people who lost confidence in the politician. I knew this man.  He was a good man who basically lost his seat in Atlanta because after he received some new information on a subject, he was willing to change his mind and say, based on this new information I no longer believe that what I said should happen should happen.  His opponent got hold of his earlier statements and played the tape of his making the old statement and then of his making the new statement without offering the information that had been learned, and the message was, “Listen to what he promised this group.  Now listen to what he said to this group. He’s a liar, telling people what they want to hear.”

 He was an honest man who lost credibility because based on the new information he learned, he changed his belief. And yes he lost the election.

Because his constituents took the easy way out.  They just believe the slanders.

But the better way is to actually study to understand that the scripture says different things on different occasions because it is speaking of different times and situations.

To the proud and arrogant, Jesus says, “Lest you become as a child,” but to the ones at Corinth who have put no thought into their faith, Paul will say, “when I became a man I put away childish things.”

Sometimes when a person jumps on board with Christ early in life, they usually hear or think they hear some things about God that may be more of someone’s opinion rather than a more complete picture of the truth.  And sometimes when they find that some of their early beliefs don’t really hold up to the light, they get disillusioned.  They leave the church, or leave the faith, which is the easy way out.

The harder way and the better way is to learn what lies behind some of our beliefs to see that our faith doesn’t really lie in words on the page but in the living word to whom these printed words witness.

Paul says, I am giving you an opinion here, not a commandment, and it’s based on the present distress.  It’s based on the understanding of life as I see it now.  Soon and very soon, Christ will return. But Christ didn’t return when Paul and those early Christians believed he would.  New information came and a new understanding changed their minds, and you can imagine some people saying, “Well, they were wrong and you just can’t trust those preachers.”

But what’s not to trust?  Paul was saying up front. This is not a commandment.  Based on the current information, this is my opinion. 

So, why should anyone listen to Paul? Because he knows all the answers? Or because he knows all the scripture, or because he’s got his degree from the school of respected teacher Gagaliel?

Why should anyone listen to us?

Paul gives his reason.  Because I hope you’ve found me to be trustworthy.  What makes my opinion a good opinion is found in my own character.

Well, isn’t the Gospel the truth whether the speaker is a liar or not? Yes, but you won’t likely believe the truth if the speaker of that truth proves to be of poor character.  So many people have excused themselves from church by saying they don’t trust the people who speak for it.

The character of those who proclaim themselves to be Christian is what causes the message to be heard.  And how does proven character come about? Paul says to the church at Rome that proven character is developed by persevering through tribulation.  It’s the person who faces these crises and keeps his faith and has lived through them with their faith having grown and strengthened who is given the credibility and earned among people the credibility to be heard.

It’s the person who faces the crisis and is willing to change what she might believe about how God’s word is acted out in the world, but at the same time never loses her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

          It’s not that we cling to dogma that’s going to restore our society to a desire for godliness. It’s that we persevere in our willingness to bring the Spirit of Christ into the places that have no answer found in the written word, but which are nevertheless found in the Living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord.