Welcome to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church in Donaldson, Arkansas. This is Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching in our regular Sunday morning service. Good morning. Good to see you all here today. enjoyed our song service, our prayer, and the scriptures Brother Dan read this morning, so important, pointing out to us the importance of God's Word in our personal lives. This morning, I've been praying about this message, and I always try to pray that the Lord would bless me to speak on something that somebody in the audience stands in need of. And the Lord knows your needs. And he knows the needs of this church, and sometimes we wonder, am I preaching on this because I want to preach on this or because the Lord wants me to preach on this? And so we do try to be careful in our prayers on what we should preach. But I want you to go to the book of 1 Corinthians this morning. And I want to do an overview of this book. This has been on my mind because I see so many churches in our present day straying from the biblical pattern that we find in God's Word. And it's important for us as a church to continue to go back to the book and to make sure that we as a church are running our church, you might say, worshiping in a way that's pleasing to God and in the way that we find within the sacred scriptures. And these books are preserved for that very reason that we can go back to the Bible and we can read what the way that the apostles and Christ taught us to worship that's pleasing to God. And I believe it's important for churches to always be comparing their church to the testimony of God's Word. As a matter of fact, Brother Dan just read Psalms 119, 105, 106, and 107. which is an encouragement to all of us to read the Word of God, because not only do churches need to be looking at the Word of God to make sure that we're continuing to follow the biblical pattern, but in our personal lives we need to read the Bible. I don't know how many times I've been reading the Bible, and I've come across something that's kind of hurt, you know, it's stung a little bit. I said, wait a minute, I'm a little off base here and I need to get back on track to what the Bible says I should be as a person. And it's amazing how many things can get us off track in this world. So don't think that as a church, at Harmony Church, we've been here for over 100 years. Don't think that we are not a church that cannot get off pattern or off base concerning the biblical pattern. or we as people, as individuals, that we as well can get off base. And we need the Word of God to constantly be accomplished to us, to bring us back to what we should be. And so this church at Corinth, and I want to mention this to you, this church had only been constituted for about 50 years. 50 years. That's not very long for a church to be constituted to receive a letter like this from the Apostle Paul. pointing out many of the problems that they were already involved in in their particular church. And I think it's important for us to recognize if a church can be this far off base in 50 years, that we as a church and as a people had better be careful because we can do the very same. I look around the world today and I see so many churches that are far away from what this Bible teaches a biblical pattern should be. Let's look at this church for just a moment. I want to remind you where it is, where it came from. This church is located at a place called Corinth. This is 1 Corinthians. And Corinth was kind of like the Las Vegas of their day. All kinds of sinful vices were found there. Whatever you wanted to go do, you could do it in this place. And it's amazing to me that the Lord chose that particular place to put a church. I mean, if I was going to put a church somewhere, I'd find, you know, a nice little community somewhere. People were generally living pretty moral lives, and I would say, this is where I'm going to put my church. But you know, the Lord chose to put this church in a place where there were all kinds of vices and sinners. And I know we're all sinners, I want you to understand. But it was God's sovereign choice to put a church in this place. And we find that the Lord led Paul to this place called Corinth. In Acts 18, I'm going to read this, you don't have to go over there, but it says, Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace, for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee, for I have much people in this city. Now, if you'd have asked me if there was a lot of people in that place, I would have said, I don't think there's any of God's people over there. You know, sometimes we're quick to judge, you know, in some of these bad places in the world, and we say, I don't think there's any of God's people over there. Well, you might be surprised at how many are over there that would really benefit from a minister coming there or a church being in their locality and them having the opportunity. We should always be thankful that there's a church in our vicinity because I can tell you there's a lot of places today where there are no churches. But it was through the ministry of the Apostle Paul that this church was founded. And when Paul went there, he found some people that we know pretty well in the Bible, Aquila and Priscilla. This is where he found them. They were tent makers. And Paul was a tent maker himself. That was how his trade, secular trade, you might say. And he actually did that a lot, even during his ministry to support himself. And so he finds Aquila and Priscilla there and they are converted to Christianity and they become his friends. And so this church is constituted in this place. And so Paul, after it had been constituted for a while, Paul starts getting some communications from this church about some of the problems that were within the church. So Paul didn't constitute the church and then forget about it and say, well, that church is constituted. I'm not going to have anything else to do with them. He remained in correspondence with them, and you'll find in 1 Corinthians 1 and 11, verse 11 if you're there, he says, For it hath been declared unto me of you, my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among you. Now, they wrote to Paul about some of the contentions and problems of this church. And they wanted him, they needed his help, and they recognized they needed his help. And that's good for a church to reach out when they're having problems to other ministers to, if they need so, to get some help. And so, Paul couldn't get to this church immediately. So what he does is he writes this letter to them addressing these problems that the house of Chloe had told them about. Now, some of these were problems they were dealing with and some of them were just questions that they said, well, what should we do about this? And what should we do about that? And Paul writes this letter, which becomes, by the way, One of the epistles in the Bible because he's inspired to write this so he's writing the information to them But we can glean from that today as God's people and churches and so we can glean from the information here and say okay Well, these are the problems that they were having in that church. And here's how we as a church should deal with them And so I think it's important for us to read this book, this First Corinthians from time to time and see the problems that they were encountering in this church and recognize how that we as a church should handle them. And you need to know that as a member of the church because it may come up in conference one day. we may be dealing with a problem in this church and if it comes up in conference you need to have some information about what goes on here and how you should respond as a member of the church because many times we're divided on certain subjects and that's one of the reasons we need to preach on first Corinthians and other places like that and Paul writes this letter to them And this letter that he writes to them is not like this sweet little letter that he writes to the church at Philippi. Now, the church at Philippi wasn't having any problems. And Paul referred to them as his joy and his crown. I mean, he was very close to these people. They had ministered to his needs when he was in jail. And the church was not dealing with a lot of problems, but this church had a lot of problems. And when Paul writes this letter to them, it's not a sweet little letter. I'm not going to say he's letting them have it, but I'm saying that he was very He was very clear and forthright in what he said to them. He didn't draw any punches because he recognized that their need was great and they'd better deal with their problems or their church was going to be torn to pieces. And that's something that he did not want to see. So I'll just read to you what he wrote to them in his second epistle. And I'm going to get to the problems here in just a minute, but I want you to understand the importance of this letter. When he wrote his second epistle to them in 2 Corinthians, the first epistle was so stinging. Here's what he wrote in 2 Corinthians 7 and 8. For though I made you sorry with a letter, I do not repent, though I did repent, for I perceived that the same epistle had made you sorry, though it were but for a season. So he recognized that that first letter, he hated to have to write it. He was sorry about it, but he knew that he needed to. And so he writes this letter to them. Now there's about 13 problems. I count, there's 13 to 15 problems in this church. If you'll read this epistle, You're going to read the, and I'm just going to kind of give them to you right now. Don't worry, we're not going to deal with all 15 of them this morning, okay? I'm going to deal with maybe the first three or four, if we can even get to that many. I'm not even going to try to get through anything. But I want to kind of get your attention here that when you read this epistle, you'll understand what it's all about and why Paul wrote it. So one of the problems was there were divisions in the church. There was sexual immorality in the church. There were lawsuits against one another before unbelievers, you know, Christians were going to the courts of the Gentiles, which didn't believe the same thing about law anyway. There was a problem about the understanding of marriage and divorce. There was a problem about eating meat offered to idols. There was a problem of taking care of their ministers financially. And I don't think that was a problem, it was just something they probably wrote about and wanted to know how they should do it. There was a question about the head coverings in that day, which we don't even know about hardly today. Their conduct during the Lord's Supper, they were having a problem there. the use of their spiritual gifts, worshipping and speaking in turn in their church, about women keeping silence in the church. Also remember the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians is a great chapter concerning the resurrection of the dead. The Apostle Paul spent a lot of time trying to get this church to understand about the resurrection. Also about how to take up collections for the poor saints. Now, all those problems were going on in that church. So don't think... These are common problems, by the way. Common problems in every church, a lot of these are. Churches go through these. If you've been around this church very long, you've been in the church for very long, you've seen these problems come up, and you've seen churches have to deal with them. You know, if everybody lived perfect lives, we would not have to have a letter like this, would we? And if all of our children were perfect little children, we'd never have to discipline them, would we? When you're talking about discipline in churches and going through these problems in churches, it's just like a family. A lot of times, mom and dads, when they're dealing with discipline in their homes, you can have a difference of agreement between mom and dad. Everybody does it. And so the same in a church. It's important for churches, when you're dealing with the problems in churches and trying to keep your church on track, that we understand that We need to be of one mind, we need to talk about it, we need to go to the scriptures and see what the Bible has to say about it. So the first problem that we find here is in the first chapter. I'm just gonna go to verse 10. And Paul writes, now I beseech you brethren, I'm begging you brethren, that's what that means, I'm begging with you, cause Paul doesn't wanna see this church torn to pieces, you understand? He loves this church. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that ye may be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment." Now, we need to understand that one thing that Satan was always trying to do was to tear up a church. I mean, you can look around the country today, and there's places where there used to be churches, and they're not anymore, because there's been problems that's come up in churches, and they didn't deal with it in a biblical way. And so, we understand then that Satan always wants to divide a church, he wants to divide a family, he wants to divide husbands and wives, you know, he loves to divide. And so Paul is writing this church and he's telling them, I want you to be of one mind. Now the problem with some of them there, now there's some other problems he didn't mention, but one of the problems there was they were arguing over who they were baptized by. One of them said, well, Paul baptized me. I'm a little bit better Christian than you are. I'm on a higher spiritual level because Paul baptized me. It's as if he infused some kind of spiritual thing into their brain when he baptized them. And one said, well, Cephas, you know, Cephas, he baptized me. And so in verse 12 through 16, he writes, now this I say that every one of you saith, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, and I of Christ. And he brings it back to the equation there. Who is really the head of the church? He said, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? He said, you know, we're not supposed to be looking at men, okay? We're here for one purpose, and that is to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope if anybody's here this morning, you came because you love the Lord Jesus Christ. We're here to worship Him. We're not here just to hear a message or hear some preacher get up here and entertain everybody. We're here to get a message from the Word of God, which is the truth, which hopefully will resound in your heart and give God glory. That's what we're here to do. It's all about Him. It's all about Him. And so Paul says, now this is kind of a stinging statement, he says, he says, I thank God I baptized none of you. But Crispus and Gaius, and he should say, I had baptized in mine own name, and I baptized also the house of Stephanus, besides I know not whether I baptized any other. So some of these are saying, well, Paul baptized me. And here comes Paul, and he says, I really don't even remember it. So you can see that the Apostle Paul is not trying to make a big thing over how many people he's baptized, who he baptized. And he doesn't want the people doing that either. So I know a church now that's really dealing with a huge problem. It's way away from here, so you wouldn't know where it is or the pastor or anything about it. But they've been dealing with the problem now for about six to eight months. They've had three pastors in there to try to help them with this problem. And it's still there. Finally, the pastor resigned. And now they're still dealing with it. There's three people in that church that are bound and determined that this problem is not going to be solved. And I don't really know what the future of that church holds. It's sad to see what divisions within a church can cause. But anyway, Paul points them to the head of the church, who is Jesus Christ. One other point I'm going to make in this before I move to the next problem is that we should always be praying for the peace of the church, right? We should be praying that we would love our brothers and sisters in Christ, which is sometimes a hard thing to do because, you know, we all have our problems and, you know, we have personal differences and sometimes we can, you know, we can find fault in people. It's easy to find fault. But we should be praying that we would always love one another in the church as we should, but we should also be praying for the peace of the church. The Apostle Paul writes something in almost every one of his epistles. And it's called the Apostolic Benediction. I've mentioned it to you before. But in Romans 1 and 7, and it's found in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians. It's in almost every one of his epistles. And it goes like this. When he begins his epistle, he writes, To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints. And here it is. Grace to you and peace. from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's a prayer that Paul wrote at the beginning of every one of his epistles, and that's a prayer that we should all be praying every day, to pray that our church would be blessed with grace and peace. We need God's grace, that we can come here and that the preacher needs grace to preach, we need grace to hear, we need grace to be what we need to be. And we need to have peace. Peace is a place where we find that good things happen, where there is a peaceful place. It is a place where we can find that God's Word can prosper in a place of peace. You can have the best preacher in the world, but if you don't have peace in a church, nothing's going to come from it. Nothing will come from it. Peace is a great environment to see a church grow and prosper. The second problem in this church is sexual immorality. That's something that in our modern day that you don't hear spoken about very much. I guess one of the reasons that that came to my mind is Marilyn and I were at a banquet this week, a business thing, and we were seated at a table. And we met some people, and they were very nice people, and they found out I was a pastor of a church, and they told us where they were going to church. And the husband said, well, we have a gay preacher at our church. And he said, I really have a problem with that. But his wife said, well, it doesn't bother me at all. And I got to thinking about that, and I'm thinking, you know, where have we gone today in Christianity concerning what a church member should be? how we should live in our churches and represent the person of Jesus Christ. And it is amazing to me how these people have been married for probably 50 years or more. I mean, they apparently have lived good lives. And you would know that she would not want her husband to go out and find a harlot and hang around with her and then come back home. I mean, she would have an understanding, somewhat of an understanding, of what, you know, what a sin is, what morality is. But I'm amazed at people today that they love God. They love the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe they're God's children. But I'm amazed at people today that can see what's going on in churches like this and they would have a gay minister and have no problem with it. No problem with it. And of course, it made me think about this book, First Corinthians. And I'm thinking, well, maybe some of these churches have just taken this book and thrown it out the back door or cut it out or something. Because here in this church, we find that a church deals with a person that's involved in a sexual sin, and they deal with it as a church. And so let's just look at this just for a minute and see what it says. Let's go to chapter 5. We're going to skip over. So here's something that had been reported to the Apostle Paul. He said it's commonly reported. Now this is not something that the Apostle Paul was snooping around to find out on somebody, you know. But he says, it's reported commonly that there is fornication among you and such fornication is not so much as named among the Gentiles that one should have his father's wife. Now there's no explanation needed here. You can see what's going on between a member of the church and so do we think that this person that's involved in this should be called to be the pastor of the church? No. You understand they're about to deal with this problem. And so the apostle tells them what they are supposed to do. In verse 4, he says, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're wanting to put this person out, and he tells them to put this person out of the church. Because the spirit of the church is going to be destroyed of what a church should be. You know, if there is no discipline whatsoever in the church, then we can come to church and live any way we want to. We can commit any sin we want to. Now, we're not talking about here, and I'm going to get to that in just a minute, about the forgiveness of sin. We're going to get to the forgiveness of this man in just a moment, because that's something that a lot of our churches have forgotten totally about. They forget you're supposed to forgive anybody. Or if somebody's done something, you can never forgive them. That's how far our churches have strayed in the other direction. But Paul says, your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? And that's what we see in Christianity today. The whole lump is being leavened by the allowance of continual sexual sins continuing in the church and doing nothing about it in the church. So Paul says in verse 8, Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and in truth. And you can go ahead and read the rest of this. But in verse 13 he says, Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person. Now that person was living wickedly at that time. But I want you to understand that this person is going to come back and ask the church to forgive him. He's going to repent of his sin. If you read 2 Corinthians, you'll find the Apostle Paul uses a lot of ink in 2 Corinthians to tell that church. This man is full of much sorrow. It was definitely some repentance that was observed by the church concerning this man. Now, this man didn't just jump up and say, I'm just going to go back and... They observed that this man was sorry for his sin. And the apostle encourages them in 2 Corinthians to forgive him and restore him to full fellowship with the church, and that's exactly what they did. They restored that man to full fellowship in the church. But the point I'm making is that we're all sinners, right? And we all come to the church and we come to the Lord Jesus Christ and sometimes with a lot of baggage in the past. And we're not talking about somebody coming to the church and repenting and becoming a member of the church that we shouldn't forgive them. We're talking about somebody that is a member of the church and how that we as a church should respond to that. and that we are required of God to deal with that problem in a biblical manner, and if there is repentance observed, we are also required in a biblical manner to forgive that person and receive them back into the church. Now, modern churches today don't do this. They don't even know their membership. They don't know what their membership's doing. The churches are so large, they don't know anything going on within the church, and that's probably part of the problem. But we understand that even in the Old Testament that a person, a man and a woman that had committed adultery in the Old Testament, they were to be stoned to death. That's what was required of the law. And to me, when I look at that, what was required of the law being stoned to death in the Old Testament, then that's a picture of withdrawing from a person or putting them out of a church in the New Testament. You know, it's not supposed to stone anybody to death, but yet it is a sin. from a believing church member that has been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and made a profession of their faith that they are supposed to honor the Lord in their lives. And so we find that the apostle gives us what we are supposed to do. Now I want to go to the forgiveness part of this. Let's go to this sixth chapter. Let's look over here now. Here's something that our churches have greatly aired in this matter. And it's concerning the forgiveness of sinners. I've known people, and I'm getting right down to the nitty gritty this morning, folks, because I think we need to. But I've known churches that have had people come to the church who had been through a divorce, and they said, you can never be a member of our church because you have a living wife. They made a mistake in their life, or whatever happened, maybe somebody was unfaithful to them and they couldn't remain married, or who knows what. There have been churches that have said, you cannot be a member of this church. And I'm thinking, where is the forgiveness of sin? We don't know when a person was converted. So let's look here. I want you to see this in chapter 6. I want to begin reading in verse 9. I want you to understand what Paul is writing here. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? A person that's living an ungodly and an immoral life is not going to enjoy or be a part of the Kingdom of God. They can tell you how great they love the Lord, they can tell you what great fellowship they have with Him, but I can tell you they're not having fellowship with the Lord. You cannot have fellowship with the Lord and the devil at the same time. Now I'm not saying that we're all perfect people. I'm saying we all are sinners, but there are some sins that the Lord is not gonna have fellowship with people over, and he's gonna mention some of them here. They shall not, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, which is a gay person, nor abuser of, excuse me, effeminate person is a person that dresses, a male that dresses like a female, by the way, and abusers of themselves with mankind, that is a gay person, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. Okay? That basically means if a person is living in one of these sins, you are not to receive them into your membership. Do you understand? Do you understand? We have a right as a church to receive people into our membership. That's why we vote when somebody comes forward to receive a person into membership. We want to see a repentant person in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're not supposed to go back and ask them all the mistakes they made in their life because I can tell you everybody here has made them, right? Let's not act pious this morning like we're not sinners ourselves. Every one of us, almost every one of us, have been involved in some very serious sins in our lives. But you see, when the Lord gets a hold of you and brings you to a place of repentance in your life, you're supposed to give your life to the Lord. And the church is supposed to recognize that and receive you. Now notice what he says here. We've just mentioned some pretty bad sins. We've mentioned homosexuality. We've mentioned drunkenness. We've mentioned thieves. We've mentioned all this. And then Paul says, and such were some of you. You know, remember where they are? They're at Corinth. They used to go to the temple of Acrocorinthius. Acrocorinthia, I think was the name of it, where they had the consecrated prostitutes. Some of them have been up there. Some of them have been involved in it. Paul didn't say when the Lord had touched their heart and brought them to a place and convicted them of their sin, and by the way, that's one of the ways that you know a person is a child of God and you know a person is ready to be baptized, is when they are touched in their heart because of their sin. It's not a time for the church to say, well, we're going to go back and examine your life. No, it's a time to say, hallelujah Lord, you've converted another sinner, you've brought somebody to the throne of grace, you've shown them their sin, their need of repentance, and their need of the Lord Jesus Christ, and their need of the church. And so we've got these people here, I'm sure when Paul wrote this, some of them had probably forgotten what they were, or what they had done. You know, sometimes as Christians, we forget what we have done, and then somebody else comes to the church and we're pointing our finger at that person at what they have done. We all get a little self-righteous and almighty sometimes in our own personal experiences. But we should always be glad when the Lord changes a person. I mean, can you imagine? We hear it all the time in our society today. I'm a gay person and I can't change. That's just the way I was. I was born that way. According to this book, you can change. According to this book, God can change you. The sin you're involved in, God can take it from you and you can repent of it and you can live a moral life honoring the Lord Jesus Christ because there's people right here that did it. We have the evidence of it. And such were some of you past tense. So, the point I'm making here is that When we become members of the church, we're expected to honor the Lord in our life. If not, we're going to expect the church to deal with us. And we're supposed to do it as church members. I know it's difficult for the church to do that. It's hard to spank your children. It's hard in the church to deal with discipline. Because we all look back in our lives and we say, well, my gosh, look what I've done. Why would we discipline this person? They've done anything I hadn't done because the Bible says you're supposed to do it. You know, the Apostle Paul wrote this epistle. Let me remind you that he murdered Christians. He had them put to death. Imagine how he felt when he wrote in this book that you're supposed to put some people out because of the sin they were involved in. He knew it was right. He knew it was right. He could have said, I've done worse, but he didn't. He said, this is for the good of the church. This is for the health of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just like we have to discipline children to have a healthy family. So, sexual immorality in the church. I'm gonna go on to one more here, because that's all I got time for. They had a problem with lawsuits before in believers. I'm not gonna get to that, because it's really sketchy as to what they were really suing one another over. I'm really not sure. I've never read any commentator that knew what it was all about either. It's something that's going on in that day that, in their society, that would be difficult for us to understand today. But let's go to chapter seven. We got a, he writes about, marriage and divorce a little bit here. And you can read all of chapter 7, but I've already mentioned to you how some of our churches have said, well, if you've got a living husband or a living wife and you've come to a place and you want to honor the Lord and His church, well, you can't possibly be a member. And Paul makes it clear, yes, you can. You know, we need to remember that whatever mistakes we've made in our lives, we can ask the Lord to forgive us and then we can get it right, can't we? Isn't that what God would want? To ask God to forgive us and then get it right? And then do it right? Get a wife and a husband and live right like you're supposed to? Isn't that what God would want? I believe that's what He would want. You read in chapter 7, that's exactly what He wants. He said, now concerning the things whereof you wrote unto me, so they're writing him about this problem that they're having in their charts. It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Well, it's good, you know. You know, if he never touched a woman, well, I'm not going to say what I'm thinking, but you can see that a lot of problems would never have occurred. But Paul recognizes that, you know, the way we're made, you know, we're attracted physically to the opposite sex, right? And so Paul says that nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have their own husband. So here we are, we want to live a moral life and the way you're going to live a moral life and you're going to be involved in that way is to be married to that person, okay? To be married to that person. So, I'm going to skip part of this, but I'm going to come on down here. And in verse 8 he says, If they cannot contain, let them marry. It's better to marry than to burn. And to the married I command you, yet not I, but the Lord. Let not the wife depart from her husband. And if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife." He's talking about two people in a home and they've got different beliefs. One was a Christian and the other one's not. And Paul was saying, okay, if your wife's not a Christian and you are, don't get rid of her, okay? Hang on to her. Try to work this marriage out. Maybe she'll be converted one day and she'll come to your church and be a great member of the church. You know? Maybe she'd just have another Christian faith in our day. In that day, they didn't have all the Christian faiths. But, you know, she may believe a different way, and so that's the way it is. You know, sometimes you just have to agree to disagree in a home. And I think that's what the Lord would want you to do. But he's saying, don't run off. I know some people have acted so pious, and they've felt so pious in their belief that, well, if my husband doesn't come around the way I believe, I'm going to get me another husband. Paul says, that's not right. The Lord doesn't want you to do that. He wants you to try to remain married. But he goes on and he says, you know, the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife and the wife by the husband. But he said, but if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases. God hath called us to peace. If you're a member of the church and your wife or husband just totally leaves you, You're not under a bondage to remain single the rest of your life. God is giving you the opportunity here to understand that you can get remarried. And he's trying to give them every opportunity they can to work the thing out here. But if somebody just ups and leaves you, you don't have to relive the rest of your life single and lonely, the Apostle's saying. So there are reasons for divorce and marriage that are found within the Scriptures. Unfaithfulness is one of them. And we could go into many others, which I'm not going to go into this morning. But this is a church that was having all kinds of problems. All kinds of problems. These problems in this church at Corinth are common to every church. We find it in many families. We find it among the best of God's people. The best of God's people. So I encourage you to read this book. To go through it, understand some of the problems that they were having. that we can understand that there is a scriptural way to deal with all of it, and to recognize that this is an interesting thought for you as I close. These people that were members of the church in the very beginning were not perfect people, okay? They were just like every one of us. Thank you for listening to SuccessfulSavior.org, the ministry of Harmony Primitive Baptist Church. This has been Elder Neal Phelan, Jr. preaching from one of our regular meetings. Come and join us as we worship God in the simplicity of Christ every Sunday morning at 416 North Hall Street in Donaldson, Arkansas. At Harmony, we don't have many things that are so common in the religion of our day, but we do have a successful Savior. We invite you to come and see.