2026.5.3 TFHC – Lawsuits, Still Following The World | 1 Corinthians 6:1-11
May 3, 2026, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI [https://easycloudai.com/beluga/].
Lord Jesus, thank you for our time together. Thank you for your Word. And as we dive into it tonight, may your words give us more than Bible information, but give us Bible transformation.
Lord, may we be shaped into the image of Jesus Christ, be restored to the image that you created us to have, and to walk as your obedient children. And Lord, use this time, we ask, to shape our lives.
We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Okay. “You turn graves into gardens./ You turn bones into armies./ You turn seas into highways.” The last two, I know where they are in the Bible. Elijah and the dry bones. And of course, Moses and crossing the Red Sea. Where did He turn a grave into a garden? Anybody know? He emptied the tomb, but did it become a garden?
Well, then He didn’t turn the grave into a garden.
I love the song, but I think the title in the main verse is a stretch. That’s all I’m saying. Isaiah, I’m with you on your literalism here.
All right, all right. But I’m going to keep singing it because, you know, I get the general point. God transforms things that are dead and bad, dangerous, into things that are wonderful, good. God causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Amen.
So I took a you just saw me do that, right? I just got to tell you, not that these things are all that reliable, but there was like a 12-minute test to take on where you land on the autistic spectrum. And I just want to say my wife is far further down on the scale than I was. I’m like, “Well, you’re probably not diagnosable, but “
All right. Well, you really want to get in this conversation?
So here’s where I’m not. Yeah, here’s where I’m not. Though I can be very literal, I also really get humor and irony. And, you know, my favorite book of the Bible is the Psalms, which autistic people are like, “What?” You know, “Give me the Proverbs.” So, yeah.
However, I get bored easily with social interactions when people are talking about things I’m not interested in and have to fight really hard to not check out. So I’m like, all or nothing, right? I go on forever about, you know, and monopolize a conversation about things that I am interested in. You’ve all experienced that. You’ve asked me a five-minute question, and two hours later you’re like, “Okay, enough.”
And, yeah, I have some, like, tics. I have some physical, you know, a few physical things that I do that are kind of, like comforting and stuff. So, yeah, yeah, I’m not Rain Man or nothing, but, you know, just saying, just saying.
And I think that was just an example of it. The graves in the gardens. Like, hey, wait a minute, that’s not in the Bible. So all you literalists out there go, “Yeah, we’re with you.”
All right, so 1 Corinthians 6:1-11. Let’s go there.
> 1 If any of you has a dispute against another, how dare you take it to court before the unrighteous, and not before the saints? 2 Or don’t you know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the trivial cases? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels how much more matters of this life? 4 So if you have such matters, do you appoint as your judges those who have no standing in the church? 5 I say this to your shame! Can it be that there is not one wise person among you who is able to arbitrate between fellow believers? 6 Instead, brother goes to court against brother, and that before unbelievers! 7 As it is, to have legal disputes against one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves do wrong and cheat and you do this to brothers and sisters! 9 Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or males who have sex with males, 10 no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. 11 And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:1-11, CSB)
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength and our Redeemer.
> 14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
Okay, none of you are suing anybody else in this room, are you? Great. Great. Okay, good, good. I just thought of that. I just thought, you know, that’s another reason to be against divorce, because you sue somebody for divorce. You’re suing another believer. There you go. All right. Well, there you go.
Lawsuits are continued evidence of the Corinthians’ immaturity. That’s the point of the letter. Paul is rebuking their pride, and he’s rebuking their immaturity.
It’s okay to be immature, but one of the problems with immaturity is immature people think they’re mature, right? Immature people think they’re mature just when they begin to mature. You know examples of that, right? Teenagers who know everything, you know, your teenage kid, they just know everything. And then, like 10 years later, they’re calling you on the phone for advice. It’s amazing how much smarter you get as your kids, you know, grow up a little bit.
I remember one time, my 15-year-old daughter, you know, she finally got that little 15-year-old girl attitude going on. Well, you don’t know about adolescent daughters, but they’re a treat. And so, my 15-year-old daughter just told her mother, “No.” You know? “Clean your room. Clean your room.” And she said, “No, I don’t want to clean my room.” And she just, you know, just stood up to her mom and I thought, “Wow, you talk to your mom that way? Come over here, step into this room with me. I’m going to talk to you. How’d you do that? I’ve been trying to learn that for 20 years. How’d you pull it off? That was awesome.”
It’s not a true story. That’s the non-autistic part of me. See, I can get a joke.
All right, so they’re immature.
The first piece of evidence: there were divisions in the church. Remember, we spent a long time on divisions in the church.
Second piece of evidence: they not only allow for sexual immorality in the church, they celebrate it. And the excuse is, we are so free in Christ and we’re so forgiven, it’s cheap grace. We’re so forgiven by grace. We can do anything we want and excuse anybody who does anything they want.
And now the third piece of evidence by the way, he’s going to get back to sexual immorality. But the third piece of evidence is “There are lawsuits among you.” And this is a sign of immaturity.
And here’s what the Corinthian church they were a new church; they were a young church, and they were gifted by the Holy Spirit. All the spiritual gifts are in operation in the Corinthian church, which is great. Spiritual gifts are great, but the gifts were puffing them up, thinking, “Look at us, look at how mature we are because we speak in tongues and prophesy.”
And Paul says, “And then you go and sue one another, and then you go and indulge in sexual immorality, and then you go and have divisions.” These are clearly signs of immaturity. Just because you speak in tongues and you get a prophecy right once in a while, it doesn’t make you mature. It makes you gifted. Right?
I’m a sports fan all sorts of gifted athletes. Very immature, very immature. And by the way, there’s a lot of them who I really admire their maturity because at 19 years old they’re thrown millions of dollars of money and they don’t destroy their lives, which I would have done at 19 years old. I’d have destroyed my life.
So just an aside, but giftedness does not equate maturity.
And then Paul, before he rebukes them, or in his rebuke, he actually tells us how amazing our standing is in Christ. He says, “You’re taking your disputes before secular judges. Don’t you know your destiny? Don’t you know who you are? You will judge the world. You will judge angels.”
We already have the role, and I don’t know if judging angels I don’t even know what that means. It may mean we get to judge the fallen angels, the demons who have tortured us our whole life. That would be quite a nice assignment, right?
And that would be the one time in your life you could say this, or the only other time you could say it is using it as a sermon example to make this point. So, I can say this right now because I’m using it as a sermon example. You can’t just go out and go say this, but that would be the one time you could honestly, without sinning, look at another being, another created being, and say, “Go to hell.”
So if you always wanted to say that, maybe you’ll get a chance, maybe you’ll get a chance. All right? Or, you know, do it the sneaky way. Become a preacher and say, “Haha, I can say it in this sermon because it’s still okay.” So now you can go home and say, “My pastor said ‘go to hell’ in the sermon today.”
All right, so this is incredible again, a lot of our problems come from forgetting who we are. A lot of our problems come from losing our identity as sons and daughters of the living God, as brothers of the risen king. We are princes and princesses. And so what the Bible often says is, “So act like it.”
Now, don’t act like spoiled royalty. That’s what we are. We’re kind of like spoiled tabloid royalty. But that’s not what royalty really is supposed to be like. Royalty is supposed to be noble. You know, read The Chronicles of Narnia. C.S. Lewis has a great understanding of royalty and kings and queens. And that’s what we’re supposed to be like. That’s what we’re supposed to be like.
Be who you are in Christ, and then you won’t be who you aren’t.
And so, dear ones, lawsuits are scandalous. We disagree with the world, and yet we take our grievances to them? Really?
He says these are people who are what? He gives a list. “These are people who are sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, swindlers who are not going to inherit God’s kingdom. And if you submit to them and if you follow them and you fall back into that world system, you neither will inherit the kingdom of God. Why are you taking your disputes to these people?”
And this is to their shame. Isn’t there anybody wise enough in your church to settle disputes?
Let me tell you something. It’s still a problem, right? This was not just a problem in Corinth. It’s a problem today. Because, listen, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ll tell you the number one reason people leave church, the number one unspoken reason people leave church. They’ll come up with all sorts of lame excuses, but I think here’s what it is a lot of times: conflict resolution they’re having conflict with pastor or leadership of the church or another person in the church.
And when we have conflict, we typically move into fight or flight. And because it’s wrong for Christians to fight, we flight. And that’s better. Because when Christians do fight, they really fight dirty because it’s wrong to fight publicly. So they fight passive aggressively and get all sorts of spiritual, weird stuff going on.
But there’s a better thing than either fight or flight. It’s called conflict resolution.
Now, I’m not going to go into an hour discussion on conflict resolution, but conflict resolution is huge. I do it in marriage counseling all the time. I say, “All right, here’s what you do.” And basically, it starts with what your premise is when you find yourself in conflict. Every human being, when we find ourselves in conflict, here’s where we land, here’s where I land: I want to win this fight. I want to win this fight, right? I want to show that I’m right and that other person is wrong because obviously I’m right. It’s self-evident. It’s obvious. The other person is thinking the exact same thing: I want to win this thing; they’re so wrong.
And so then we talk over each other. We don’t try to understand the other person. We use manipulation and we get, we just We want to win the fight.
No, no, no. Here’s how you do conflict resolution. Here’s the thing I’m going to give you tonight. Not going to give you the whole package, but here’s the thing: Just start somewhere completely different. Married people, this is very helpful. It’s very helpful. Really, all relationships. How can we resolve this conflict? Not, how can I win this fight? When you start there, everything changes.
Now the other ingredients, and we’re not going to go into detail because I got other things I want to say tonight. The other ingredients are: learn how to listen until the other person feels understood; learn how to talk where you express your feelings and the nature of the conflict, but don’t attack the other person; learn how to say you’re sorry; and learn how to say, and mean, “You’re forgiven.” Those four things, they really work. And you can resolve conflicts instead of running away. You can resolve conflicts instead of running away.
And you know, when you come to somebody and say, “Let’s resolve the conflict,” that’s so much better than the passive-aggressive thing we do, which is, “I just want to tell you this in Christian love,” and then open up both barrels on them. Right? “Here’s where you’re wrong and stupid and mean. And here’s where I’m right and holy and perfect.” No. “Hey, I got a problem “
And a lot of times people don’t even know you have conflict with them. They’re just, you know, like me. I step on people’s toes all the time. You know, I just say insensitive things. I treat something trivial when they’re… Because I joke around a lot and somebody’s coming to me with something serious, but I don’t pick up on it that it’s serious, and I make a joke about it. And then, you know, they’re wounded.
Listen, I do this all the time, so I’ve probably done it to you. Sorry. But you come talk to me, all right? You know, I might start by getting defensive, but I’ll work around it and just try to listen to you.
So, resolve conflicts. Don’t sue somebody. And if you need help, come to me. People, if you’re in conflict with somebody, come to me. I’ve reffed this. I’ve refereed conflict resolution many times and not always usually with married couples who have gone too far into their fight before they ask for help, it’s harder to referee that match.
But you know, early on, when the conflict’s not as big of a stake as marriage and stuff and the deep hurt that people have been carrying for 20 years and all that stuff we can settle this. We can work this through with just a few simple principles, if the parties concerned are really intentional about resolving the conflict and not winning the fight.
So there are people who can settle our grievances. There are people in the church who can do this.
And listen, when we take our problems into the secular courts, we bring disrepute to the church. “Oh, they’re no better than us. They’re worse than us.” You know, when Christian pastors fight publicly, name call, throw mud, we bring disrepute into the church. We don’t know how to resolve conflict.
And Paul says, “Listen, there’s something better than taking it to the court. It is just forgiving the person and being wrong. Walk away. Walk away and forgive the person.”
But we have a very heightened sense of justice when we’re the victims, don’t we? “They need to pay. They need to know how much they hurt me, by golly.” What do we say? “I need to get even.” No, you don’t. No, you don’t. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t want to get even with you? Aren’t you glad God doesn’t want to get even with you?
Listen, when I have that life review, if Jesus gets picky on me, He’s going to say, “All right, Kevin, here’s the things I have against you.” Huge scroll. And I’ll go, “Oh, my gosh.” And then He’ll say, “Oh, no, that’s just scroll one.” I’ll look behind Him, and there’ll be a mountain of scrolls.
Forgive one another. What does the Bible say? Forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you. Forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you.
Wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God. Two ways Paul is using this here. First of all, he’s saying, why are you taking your disputes to wrongdoers who aren’t even going to inherit the kingdom of God? But secondly, he’s telling Christians, “When you do that, you then are participating in their world. You’re going backwards. You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. You were set free from these things. And now you’re going back into that whole world. Listen, you got to live in that world, but you don’t have to submit to it. You don’t have to submit to their values. And that’s what you’re doing. And so you’re putting your very salvation at risk here. You’re rebelling against the kingdom of God.”
We enter the kingdom of God by grace, through faith. But some people make the mistake of thinking the day we enter the kingdom of God by God’s grace, through faith, it’s all good. No, that’s the beginning. We celebrate new birth, but we also celebrate every birthday when people grow up, until you get my age, then you just celebrate one every decade. And the birthdays are no longer “happy birthday.” They’re like, “Hey, dude, you’re still alive. Great, great. We don’t have as much hope for 90 as we do for 80. But, hey, you made 80.” You know, I’m just glad the way I abused my body, I’m glad I made 60. And you know, I might make 70. I’m getting close. I’m getting close.
And you’re thinking, “Kev, you don’t look 70. You don’t look a day over 67 and a half,” which is what I am.
All right, so we are saved by grace, through faith. That’s how we enter the kingdom. But we inherit the kingdom through perseverance, and that’s still by grace, through faith. It’s still God pouring out His Spirit on our lives and us believing on Him and trusting on Him and walking with Him. But we inherit the kingdom by perseverance. We got to not quit walking.
And there’s an argument in the church about the people who do quit walking. One side says they were never really Christians. That’s why they’ve quit. And there are Scriptures that support that. Another side says, “No, they were legitimate believers and they’ve turned their backs on God.” And there are Scriptures that support that.
And that’s a conversation for another day. If you ask me that question, and we’re not in the context of church, where I got other things to say, you will get a long answer, guaranteed. I find there are very few people who like my long answers. However, both the Miller boys seemed like them once in a while. I appreciate that.
Jacob once said you know, I gave Jacob this big, long thing. Then I apologized. I said, “Jacob, I’m sorry.”
He goes, “Oh, no, I like to poke the bear and see what comes out.”
I said, “Okay.”
And Isaiah seems to endure them as well. I don’t know if he always likes them, but he endures. He endures them politely.
Stevin and Ats, you guys are great on Thursday night, but you know what? You deserve it, Ats, with your questions. You’re begging for it. You should know better by now. You should, be like, “Wait, before I ask you this question, I’m going to order food.”
All right. We inherit the kingdom by continuing along that path. But when we continue to willfully rebel, we harden our hearts.
Listen, the “once saved, always saved” conversation. I’ll just give you this. People always say, “Well, you think you can sin and lose your salvation?” No, I don’t think you lose your salvation because you struggle with sin. I think you lose your salvation because you no longer want God.
Now, where does sin come into that? Willfully, continually rebelling without repentance and seeking to get better, giving up the struggle, throwing in the towel and saying “I’m just going to sin this way” hardens your heart.
And so somewhere down the road after you start doing that, you don’t want God anymore. And you already know that, right? Because when you willfully and disobediently sin against God, and then the next day you’re supposed to get up and have your quiet time, how many of you jump into that quiet time? Or are you thinking, “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this”?
It hardens your heart. And so you become like the Pharisees, where you blaspheme the Holy Spirit and you no longer believe.
And let me tell you I’ve told this before, but let me just remind you of this. When somebody comes to you and says, “You know, I really explored Christianity and I didn’t do it,” or “I was a Christian at one time, but I’ve fallen away.” And a lot of people will give you some you know, philosophical, theological usually it’s the problem of pain. You know, “How can there be a God when, you know, there’s children’s cancer wards, you know, and drunk drivers take out innocent families, and ” And it’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re right. We Christians for 2000 years have never really struggled with those questions. We’re just a bunch of naive idiots who think, ‘Gee, if you say a few prayers, life will go hunky dory for you.'”
It’s like, no, we understand that. I’ll tell you why we understand that. It’s our story. Listen, there’s pain in this room right now, right? There’s not one of us without it. Not one of us without it. And so we get that.
I remember one guy. I didn’t know this guy, and I shouldn’t have done this, but he’s on social media and he’s whining on one of my friends’ streams. Here’s what he’s whining about: “I hate those happy, clappy celebration songs in worship because they don’t do anything to help me when I’m grieving and lamenting. My sister just died, and I go to church, and everybody’s clapping and praising Jesus, and I just don’t feel like doing that.”
And I should have just not hit the keyboard, but I did. And I started off, “Hey, man, I’m sorry. That’s rough that your sister died. That’s rough. But should the church then reject the biblical admonition to rejoice always?” And that’s all I said. I didn’t give any examples. I should have. Maybe that would have been better.
Oh, but he fired back, “How cruel of you to mock my pain.”
Now, I really wanted to mock his pain. I wanted to give my dad’s answer to whiny alcoholics when he was a sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous. You get these alcoholics who would call him, “Yeah, my boss doesn’t like me. My wife’s mean to me. I need a drink.”
And my dad, my dad would say, “Never coddle alcoholics, Kevin.”
No, he wouldn’t say that. He said, “Never coddle drunks. Don’t coddle drunks.” He said, “When they call me and tell me that, I say, ‘Ah, get off the cross. We need the wood.'” So that’s what I wanted to tell him next.
But here’s actually what I wanted to tell him. But I just thought, “No, you know, I made a mistake jumping in this in the first place.” Because I don’t have a relationship with this guy, I don’t have the right to pastor him. But here’s what I wanted to tell him: “You know, you’re right. But you know that little old lady over there who’s clapping and raising her hands? Her husband probably has Alzheimer’s. And that guy in the back row that you’ve never talked to and you think is kind of snobbish? Two years ago, his child died. And that guy over there who just keeps coming, but he’s no longer coming with his wife? That’s because she’s filed for divorce. In other words, dude, those other people who are singing those rejoicing songs? Like, you’re not the only one in that crowd hurting in life. Maybe that’s why Paul told us to sing those songs. Because in the midst of the pain, they give us hope. They reorient our perspective.”
I didn’t say any of those things. I just thought them. And I’ll tell them to you.
So, dear ones, every person who loses their faith loses their faith not because of the suffering in the world, not because of theological and philosophical issues. And I say “every” and I’m pretty sure this is true maybe you know, “every” and “never” are pretty dangerous statements. But here’s the reason they’re no longer walking with Jesus: Not because of child cancer wards. It’s because you’ve heard me say this. They don’t want to quit smoking weed. They don’t want to quit sleeping with their girlfriend, and they don’t want to hear another tithing sermon because they’re going to do with their money what they want to do and all that.
Again, I know there are greedy churches out there who are always hitting people up for money, manipulating people for money, and guilting people into giving money. I try really hard not to do any of those things, the Firehouse Church tries really hard, our leadership tries really hard not to do any of that. So listen, you do what you want with your money. I will never manipulate you or guilt you into giving money. All I want to say is tithe or go to hell. But otherwise I will never be, I will never be heavy handed or manipulative or anything about that.
So But again, in my experience, people who say “All the church wants is your money” are not telling you anything about the church. They’re telling you about their attitude toward what they perceive to be their money. “No, I want to do what I want with my money. And I don’t want somebody else with their hand out, saying, ‘Hey, why don’t you give some money to these missions and the poor? And your pastor has no marketable skills, so, you know, let’s employ that poor guy and whatever.'”
That’s why people leave. And that’s why people don’t persevere. And that’s 40 years of pastoral experience. People want to excuse their sin. They don’t want to confront it. It’s hard to confront your sin and especially hard to confront the sins that are sticky, right? We love talking about the ones we have victory over, but the ones that are sticky, we get tired of confronting them. We say, “Jesus, I did it again.”
He is okay with that. He said, you know, 49 times, seven times. And He didn’t mean that literally. The point He’s making is: you are to continually forgive others and God will continually forgive you. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
> 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9, CSB)
But if you go on sinning willfully, not resisting, not struggling, not dealing with it, not confessing, not repenting, you will harden your heart and you’ll walk away. And you’ll come up with some lame philosophical theological reason to do so, to justify the fact you just wanted to be selfish.
So there.
Persevere so you do not fall back into what? A lifestyle of sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, homosexuality, thieves, being greedy, drunk, verbally abusive, swindlers. None of those things lead to the inheritance of God’s kingdom.
What does lead to the inheritance of God’s kingdom? Walking in faithful love to King Jesus and loyalty to King Jesus all the way to the finish line. Perseverance.
And you do that by faith and by the power He provides in His grace. We were washed by God. The pollution of sin is gone. When we stand before Christ, when we stand before God the Father, He will see us clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The great exchange. When we enter the kingdom, we take off the old sin-stained garments, and we put on the garments of Jesus, and we are cleansed from our sins. We’re washed. “What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
Listen, all religions in the world are the same. Balderdash. Of course, they’re not. There’s no other religion in the world that says there is an answer for the pollution of sin.
You see, when sin enters your life, it’s not like this one isolated thing sitting over here. It’s like dye. It’s like watercolor entering into a glass of water. The minute that one concentrated drop gets in, the whole thing gets polluted. The whole thing turns blue. That’s why there’s no such thing as isolation. “Well, I only do this when nobody’s looking and it doesn’t really hurt anybody else.” Listen, if it hurts you, which it does, it hurts other people because you’re less the person that you need to be. Right? If your ship is not sailing correctly, you’ll run into other ships whether you want to or not.
I use this example. Suppose you were going to come over to my house for dinner. Suppose you’re going to come over to my house for dinner and I’m whipping up some brownies. You like brownies? I love them when they’re fresh out of the oven and soft with powdered sugar on them. Jill makes great brownies. They’re so good. I used to love them in my pot smoking days, but for another reason. We won’t go there. But now I just love them without the added chemicals.
And so I love brownies. Let’s say I’m making you the good kind of brownies, and you’re coming over to my house. All of a sudden, the dog’s making a ruckus in the backyard. So I go out in the backyard to bring the dog in. It’s barking at the other dog at the fence. And those dogs would sit there for four hours and do that because they’re stupid dogs. “Get in the house,” you know, “quit barking at the other dog.”
So I bring the dog in. I realize when I came in, I stepped in something that the dog had done, and it’s all over my foot.
And so I was stirring those brownies with one of those little red spatulas, you know, those rubber spatulas you use. And so I just, you know, I just take my shoe off, and I use that spatula. It’s pretty good for that. Just gets that all off, right?And I get that all off and then maybe I wash the spatula a little bit or not.
But you know, I just, I get that all off and I start stirring those brownies again.
Now you come over to my house, and I made those brownies. And suppose before you eat those brownies, I say, “Hey, I gotta tell you a funny story.” And if I tell you that how many of you would eat those brownies? No. Why? Because a little dog doo pollutes the whole batch.
Now I gotta say, one of the men that I respect most in this world, my brother-in-law he’s a pastor, he’s a counselor, he’s a wise man. He’s also cheap as anybody can be. I mean, he’s very generous, giving to the kingdom, but he’s so frugal. He’s so cheap. He picked up a penny once in a parking lot and he squeezed it so hard it groaned. All right, so that guy’s cheap. And so I tell him that. I use that story in a church. And everybody’s like, “Of course we wouldn’t eat those brownies.” And he’s doing the math, and he said, he goes, “Well, actually, how many particles of poop actually got in the brownie mix?”
And he didn’t do that because he’s a glutton and he loves brownies. He did that because it would be hard to waste all those brownies. You know, it wouldn’t be common sense.
But you’ve been washed.
I’m doing a pretty good job getting back from rabbit trails tonight, aren’t I?
You’ve been washed. God, what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. All the poop’s gotten out of your brownie mix, all the dye. God takes that blue dye that polluted all that water, and it all comes out by Jesus. The solution to pollution. It’s Jesus.
You were sanctified. You were sanctified. You were set free. You were redeemed by God. You’ve been set free from the power of sin. It no longer owns you. You belong to the Spirit, and you are becoming like Christ.
And yes, in this world, it’s progressive, and we have leaps forward, and then we have years of struggle. Whatever. It’s progressive. But here’s the promise: He will perfect the work He has begun, and you will be like Him. In fact, He already sees you like that, seated with Him in the heavenlies.
The Christian life is becoming who you are in Christ. That’s what it means to be sanctified. you’re becoming who you already are in Christ. And that’s what you are. You have been sanctified. It’s already happened by His work on the cross.
And you are justified. God has looked at you and the devil has accused you, and God says, “Not guilty.” The cross in the book of Revelation, it says that He saw Satan fall from heaven. When did Satan fall from heaven? When Jesus died on the cross. Why? Because in heaven, he was the accuser of the brethren, and now his accusations are hollow because Jesus has justified you.
“All this is given to you by the gift of God, by the work of Christ, and in the power of the Spirit through God the Father.” The Trinity’s right there in Galatians or in 1 Corinthians 6:11. When anybody wants to argue about the Trinity, look at what it says.
“And some of you used to be like this, but you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified.” In the name of who? The Lord Jesus Christ. By what? The power of the Spirit. Of whom? Of our God. All this accomplished on our behalf by God.
> 11 And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11, CSB)
And so, the point is, why would we foolishly return to the world’s ways of living? Holding on to your childish sin is so not worth it. It’s so not worth not becoming like Jesus. Let it go.
“But I keep going back to it.” Yeah. I promise you, one day you’ll be free. You may need to take more steps to be free. Like, one of the steps you might need to take is stop dealing with this sin alone and confess it to a brother or sister in Christ who you trust. Because I’ll tell you what, when the monster gets out of the closet, the monster gets a lot smaller. Gets a lot smaller.
And right next to us, there’s a whole group of people who are discovering that tonight. Stand in front of a group of people and say, “I’m an alcoholic.” And all of a sudden, this thing that’s defeated you your whole life now becomes an enemy that can be defeated.
My dad, 30 years, lived that. Lived that 30 years. He came out. He came out and just owned it. Confessed it. Talked about it with a group of people every week. Never took another drink in his life.
Now, he never went to Donuts-aholic, but he’s good now. He’s good now.
Why would you go back? Why would you go back? Why would you trade in, for a lousy bag of marbles, eternal riches, eternal glory?
And so, dear ones, I have two admonitions, two takeaways for you tonight.
Takeaway number one. Pray this prayer like I pray almost every day. God, by your grace, I pray that I will be faithful and fruitful to the finish line. I pray that I will be faithful and fruitful to the finish line. I’ll keep putting the right foot in front of the left and the left foot in front of the right. And I won’t let anything stop me. I’m not going to quit. I’m not going to quit this journey.
And then the second thing, here’s the second takeaway. Don’t sue Christians. In fact, don’t sue unbelievers. Don’t sue people. I mean, there may be instances that are okay, you know? I don’t know, some kind of accident that wasn’t your fault, you know, or something that, you know, it’s just faulty by the government or something. You can sue the government. I’m okay with that. You know, you got a million dollars of medical expenses, and they caused it. Go ahead. That’s fine. But if somebody was mean to you in church, just forgive them. And if you find you can’t resolve the conflict, just resolve the conflict.
All right, so we’re good. Nobody’s here quitting tonight. Nobody here’s going, “Oh, this is my last Sunday being a Christian, Kev. I just want to go back to drinking and chasing women.” No? You’re good. Okay, good. I thought maybe Stevin was right on that ledge, but, you know, it’s pretty good. All right, Jamie. He’d be a fool. He’d be a fool. You’re as good as they come. So Yep, he believes it.
All right, dear ones, don’t quit. Turn to somebody next to you and say, “Don’t quit.”
Or for those of you who’ve been coming for a long time, like all of you, how’s it go? You cannot lose if you do not quit. All right, memorize the proverbs, but hold on to a few Kevinisms, and you’ll be good.
On the night that He was betrayed, He took bread and He broke it. He gave it to His disciples, and He said, “This is my body, which is given for you.”
In the same way, after supper, He took the cup, gave thanks to His Father in heaven. He said, “Drink this, all of you, for this is my blood. And in this, it declares the forgiveness of sins.”
You’ve been washed. You’ve been washed. You ever feel like you need to take a shower? There you go. You ever feel like your relationship with somebody needs to be renewed? Here you go.
Every once in a while, my wife and I go, “Hey, we got to go out to eat.” Why do we got to go out to eat? Because we’re going to sit down for an hour over food, which we both like, and what are we going to do? She says, “We’re going to reconnect.” We’re going to talk. We’re going to talk. We’re going to hang out together.
So, whatever it is, this renews our relationship. So come and eat.
The post 2026.5.3 TFHC – Lawsuits, Still Following The World | 1 Corinthians 6:1-11 [https://thefirehousechurch.com/2026/05/03/2026-5-3-tfhc-lawsuits-still-following-the-world-1-corinthians-61-11/] appeared first on The Firehouse Church in Bremerton, WA [https://thefirehousechurch.com].
