Sunday 23rd March
Read Psalm 101
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This is a Psalm of personal dedication to the Lord with many of the early verses starting with the personal pronoun “I” – “I will sing of your love …. I will be careful to live a blameless life —” etc.
All Christian life starts with a personal commitment to the Lord and not with a kind of half and half drift. In marriage services each person is asked to make a solemn commitment to the other and not just drift into a relationship while it feels OK. So also everyone is challenged by God and must make a decision. The other thing about this personal Psalm is that it also includes what I will NOT do….”I will not look with approval on anything that is vile …. I will have no part in what faithless people do”. If we cleave to Jesus we must turn away from those whose lives are antagonistic to Godly living. Let us check our lives in what we do and how we live for that is what the Psalmist asks us to do.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
Monday 1 Corinthians 4:14-21
Doubtless we have many close friends in faith but here Paul wants to bring out that he is a father in the faith because it was through his ministry that the Church in Corinth was born and because of that he wants the Church to pay special attention to what he says. He is not at this time able to visit in person but he is sending young Timothy who he regards as a son in Christ and who will remind them of everything Paul taught them, and teaches everywhere in all the Churches.
Some obviously thought he had abandoned them and wouldn’t come back but he wants to disabuse them of this, saying that he does intend, the Lord willing, to come to them and if there are still some who are arrogant, talking of their own authority and power, he will come “with a rod of discipline”. What that will mean he leaves to their imagination but we should note that the Apostles’’ power in the early Church was not to be sneezed at – remember Peter dealing with Annanias and Saphira in Acts 5. However Paul’s wish is not that but to come in love and with a gentle spirit when he comes.
Tuesday 1 Corinthians 5:1-5
Some say that the Bible doesn’t say much about sex but it does, and here Paul weighs in, challenging the Church that they are accepting sexual behaviour that was immoral and not even accepted by the pagans around. A man was sleeping with his step-mother. It is the Church’s pride and arrogance that Paul is against, the couldn’t-care-less attitude of the Church, that he finds intolerable and he says that the man ought to be disfellowshipped until he repents – this is included in the ‘handing over to Satan’ which he mentions in v5. Sexual immorality is not something that can be happily accepted in the Church. It is wrong and it spreads.
On sexual matters the Church had before them the Law of the Old Testament which the Jewish members would know well and the apostles would teach. In Leviticus 18 God tells Moses to say to the people that they are not to live as the Egyptians or the Canaanites and he gives sexual do’s and don’ts amongst which is this practice amidst many others (18:8). The Bible does speak of sexual matters, we only need to think of the prophets in the Old Testament, or in the New, John or Jesus as well as Peter and Paul in the New. It is only Biblical illiteracy that blocks people’s understanding of the nature of God’s intention in sex. Perhaps we should remember some of Jesus words, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, u‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matt 19:4)
Wednesday 1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Paul uses an illustration used by Jesus of the spreading effect of yeast (sin) telling the Church that they must not treat the individual as a welcomed brother because his sin will spread. Bad company corrupts good morals as Paul will say later in the letter (1 :Cor 15:33). If the suggestion is right that the man in 2 Corinthians 5:6-11 where Paul speaks of welcoming back a repentant brother refers to this man, then the disciplinary action had its saving effect.
The temptation is to “let sleeping dogs lie” when immoral behaviour is found within the Church but, as has been seen in the present day, many have suffered through members and clergy ignoring not grasping the nettles. I remember once having to take action on a B.B. officer who left his wife and lived with another woman. I told him that he couldn’t continue as an officer while he didn’t attend to his relationships. It caused difficulty but it had to be done.
Paul refers to the Passover saying that now that Christ had been sacrificed for us we need to “keep the festival” i.e to live in sincerity and truth (v8).
Thursday 1 Corinthians 5:9-13
Having told the Church to exclude the man sleeping with his step-mother and to have nothing to do with him, he wants to make sure that they are not misunderstanding him to say that they ought to have nothing to do with people outside the Church who are living immoral lives. If that were the case they (and we) would have to leave this world. He makes sure that this is not what he is saying. If we are going to be witnesses to Jesus and ambassadors for the Kingdom of God we must certainly meet and deal with immoral and ungodly people. He was saying that it is within the Church that they ought to watch who they are having fellowship with, God will judge those outside but they must properly judge those within and he closes with the definite “Expel the wicked person from among you”. Such action however should never be a first resort, only after the opportunity to repent and amend their lives is given to the immoral person.
Friday 1 Corinthians 6:1-11
Now the apostle turns to general behaviour among the members of the Church turning to those who have been at loggerheads with each other. He tells them that they ought not to take issues outside the Church but deal with it themselves. He asks them to think whether they should be taking disputes with each other outside the Church to be judged by those whose lives are quite the opposite to how the Church ought to be living their lives.
He tells them that they will judge angels in the future Kingdom of God and seeks to shame them be asking whether they have no-on in the Church wise enough to judge disputes?
However on top of that he tells them that having lawsuits among themselves is an indication that they are defeated in their Christian lives. He counsels them to rather be cheated or wronged than go to law with each other. And he goes further telling them (obviously through what he has heard from those who came to him from Corinth) that they were acting in a wrong way. He wants to remind them who they are and that they are changed in Christ not what they used to be:- “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). He says you were washed, sanctified, justified in Christ and by the Holy Spirit so wake up and do what is right.
Saturday 1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Paul now returns to the subject of sexual immorality and, coming after the issue of taking people to law, I wonder if there had been some case/s of legal pursuit because of the incestuous man and his step-mother. Anyway Paul starts by saying that although the believer has a right to do various things yet not everything is beneficial. He repeats this in his letter to the Romans (Romans 14:13-23). He quotes a well known saying about eating – “food for the stomach and the stomach for food” – but he says this is NOT applicable to the body and sex. The body is for the Lord and the Lord for the body reminding them that as the Lord was resurrected from the dead, so they would be also. The next verses are quite profound and deserve a lot of meditation and prayer; he tells them that their bodies are members of Christ’s body and challenges them to think whether it would be right to unite their body to a prostitute? He recoils with horror telling them that to engage with a prostitute in sex would unite their bodies – “the two will become one in flesh” – but whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit”. The stomach may be designed for food but the body is not designed for sex although sex is part of the union of husband and wife leading to the fruitfulness and growth of family life.
He tells them to flee from sexual immorality, a word which is applicable to the Church down the ages and has given rise to the general rule of chastity outside and faithfulness with marriage. The apostle then speaks of sexual sin as being different from all other sins in that it sins against one’s own body and he tells them that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in their bodies because they are bought at a price. He concludes with “therefore honour God with your bodies”.
