Why The Law?

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Now this series that we're going through is called Unexpected and as I've mentioned I think I was thinking about this this fall we're always trying to work ahead a little and so sometimes it works really well and sometimes it doesn't but you know I don't just we don't just try to fly by the seat of our pants from week to week okay I know that might make a lot of sense but so this fall I was just thinking through the last five ten years actually I don't know how long most of the things that we've gone through were not expected the big things you know from COVID to a couple of hurricanes let alone on the national and international stage things have popped up unexpectedly nobody predicts these things too well that's one aspect but the other the good news aspect is the greatest things in my life I don't know about yours are the things that happened that I never planned for I was hoping to get married someday but I never thought I'd meet my wife in Cullman Alabama was the first time we met at this one church event in Cullman has anybody been to Cullman Alabama just okay yeah well I don't think there's much there but we met she was universe she was at the University of Alabama Birmingham and I was up in Huntsville Alabama as an associate pastor at a church we met there her parents happened to be members at the church in Alabama in Alabama not Greenbow but is that but yeah and but boy Wow life-changing most of the things in your life that have been life-changing are things that happened to you rather than things you planned for and that's true for the Apostle Paul unexpectedly Jesus enters the picture when he was an absolute enemy of the gospel right in the book of Acts we see that story and unexpectedly he becomes the Apostle that spreads the gospel to more places on earth than any of the other 12 or maybe all 12 combined so we're going to be doing this series we're going to come to a conclusion in just a couple weeks to that in March when we get to what season the 40 days up between before Resurrection Sunday on Easter the church often a lot of churches go through a season they call Lent which stands for did you know what it stands for for the lengthening of the days in the spring that's all it means I don't I thought there was something deeper but no and but we're going to be starting then kind of a series that with that time is a focus on the passion of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection and we're going to do a series called come follow me as we look at passages in the Gospel of Mark Matthew excuse me and how Jesus called his disciples how he talks about discipleship and how he walks them with himself to that cross and so I think that's going to be a great series starting in just a couple of weeks but today we are back at first Corinthians chapter 6 okay so let's read just these first eight verses when one of you has a grievance against another does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the Saints or do you not know that the Saints will judge the world and if the world is to be judged by you are you incompetent to try trivial cases do you not know that we are to judge angels how much more than matters pertaining to this life so if you have such cases why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church I say this to your shame can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle the dispute between the brothers but brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you why not rather suffer wrong why not rather be defrauded but you yourselves wrong and defraud even your own brothers Wow what's all going on here that's good question basically the Corinthians were doing what was expected in that day and age and Paul calls them to live unexpectedly so we're gonna look at three points about today why the law why does the law not work and why what does work instead so Paul says why the law he says brother goes to law against brother and that before unbelievers so what was going on is the Christian fellowship at Corinth was not much larger than today it probably might have been smaller than who's here today but something about this size and they were having disputes between them in the Christian fellowship and instead of solving it they took it to the courts they didn't even try to solve it they just took it to the courts they were no different actually William Barclay writes this in his commentary he says the Greeks were naturally and characteristically a litigious people the law courts were in fact one of their chief amusements and entertainment isn't that interesting they had a judge duty to in a Greek city every man was more or less a lawyer and spent a very great part of his time either deciding or listening to law cases wow they wasted a lot of tim...