Transcription
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So let's get into our text tonight, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Now, as we come into it, we, we should probably sort of correct a, a misunderstanding that a lot of people have. Many people, when they take a look at the church today, and when they take a look at the church in the book of Acts, they say, "Man, how far we've fallen! Look at that church in the book of Acts. Look at the passion and the purity and the love for the Lord and all that they had." And we think, you know, we're a million miles away from being where the early church was.
Well, might I remind you that the book of Acts only gives us part of the story of the early church. It's not that it's an untrue story, it's just not a complete story. If you want to find out what the church was like in the first century, when Paul and Peter and James and John were apostles and ministering in the church, that church that was so close back to the original time of Jesus, you should take a look at the entire New Testament, not just the book of Acts.
And when we take a look at the church as it's described in this first letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians, we say, "Gee, maybe we're not so far from the early church after all." Because so many of the same problems that they had, we have today. And I think you'll see exactly what I'm talking about as we come into 1 Corinthians 5:1.
"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife." Paul begins just by saying, "Listen, you Christians in the city of Corinth, there is sexual immorality in your midst." Now, when he, he uses that term sexual immorality, it's a single Greek word. It's the Greek word *pornea*. Obviously, we get our, uh, modern word pornography or pornographic from that ancient Greek word. And in the ancient world, the word *pornea* originally just referred to going to prostitutes. But before the New Testament times even came about, the Jewish community would use this Greek word *pornea* to refer to any kind of sex outside of marriage, including homosexual conduct. This is its sense in the New Testament. It's a broad word, it comprehends all sorts of unbiblical sexual behavior.
And might I say, if you go through the New Testament and read the letters of Paul, you'll often find him condemning or, or calling it sin when he comes to the subject of sexual immorality. And a lot of people say, "Well, you know, I'll tell you why that's true. It's because, uh, Paul was just sexually repressed. He had a lot of hang-ups about sex. And, you know, if only he could be free and liberated like we are today, he wouldn't have had this, this uncomfortable attitude towards, uh, sexual activity."
Friends, *pornea* appears so often in the New Testament sin lists not because the first Christians had a lot of hang-ups about sex. Instead, one of the great reasons why is because when you took a look at Greek culture, it was rife with sexual immorality. Now, there are certain cultures that don't have a great deal of trouble with sexual immorality because they have a very strong culture which honors sexual purity. And in those cultures, uh, perhaps the message among Christians wouldn't have to be so strong, because everybody knew just from the culture that this is how you live, that this is how you act. Might I say that ancient Greek culture was not one of those cultures. The ancient Greeks thought that sex was just a "do whatever you please" sort of thing. Sexual immorality was an accepted fact of life for the common person in Greek culture, but it was not to be so among the followers of Jesus.
Now, verse one describes just the specific type of sexual immorality that was present in the Corinthian Church. Look at it again with me. He says, "is actually reported." By the way, do you like that wording? "Is actually reported." It's like Paul's amazed, he's dumbfounded, he can't believe it. "It is actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you, and that such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife."
Now, apparently, somebody was having an ongoing sexual relationship, either, either as being married or living together in some way with his stepmother. That's the reference to his father's wife. So, do you get the picture here? There was an individual, a man in the Corinthian Church, he said he was a Christian, he was a part of the church, he'd be there at the meetings, and he was either married to or living with his father's wife. Now, it, it seems that this was his stepmother, because it doesn't call him his mother. And it seems also that probably his father was deceased. And it would also say that the woman herself in question was probably not even a Christian, because she is not even addressed in the letter.
Paul is saying, "Here's the problem. You've got a man in your congregation who is living with his stepmother." It says there in verse one, it says that a man has his father's wife. The verb "to have" is a very soft or diplomatic way to describe an enduring sexual relationship. In other words, Paul isn't referring here to a one-night stand, to a, a fling, which has its own moral problems. But we just need to say what Paul is referring to right here. He's referring to a sexual relationship, an ongoing one, between a man and his stepmother.
Now, today, that would just get you on Jerry Springer and one of the other talk shows. But in, in Paul's day, he thought that this was cause for concern. In his own mind, and if you especially notice in verse one, he says, "and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles." Friends, Paul understood that this kind of incestuous sexual relationship would be considered taboo even among the pagans of their culture. Yet the Christians in the city of Corinth were accepting this as a matter of fact.
You can dig into ancient documents and see that the ancient Roman writer and statesman Cicero said that this kind of incest, where a man, this kind of incest where a man would have sexual relations with his stepmother, that it was an incredible crime and practically unheard of. And this was a pagan Roman. Truly, it was not even named among the Gentiles. And might I say also that the scriptures plainly and clearly speak against this kind of relationship. Leviticus 18:8, Deuteronomy 22:30, and Deuteronomy 27:20 all speak specifically that this type of sexual relationship is forbidden by God.
But do you see what's bugging Paul in verse one? What's bugging Paul is that it didn't seem to matter among the Corinthians at all. Look at verse two. It describes the reaction of the Corinthian Church. He says, "And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from you." You see, here's the situation. It's almost as if Paul is not shocked. Paul is not shamed that the man was sinning. What grieves Paul desperately is that the Corinthian Church doesn't seem to care.
As a matter of fact, instead of dealing with the man's sin, you see what they're doing? It says, "instead, you're puffed up." Now, you understand what that reference to being puffed up is, right? Paul isn't trying to say, "Gee, you Corinthians are putting on a lot of pounds here in the Corinthian Church, too much at the potluck suppers." That's not the idea. Puffed up is proud. You're swelling with pride, you're getting a big head. You see, as bad as the sin itself was, Paul was more concerned that the Corinthian Christians were taking the sin so lightly and that they were unconcerned about this behavior.
You saw it in verse two. He says, "and you have not rather mourned." I think it's fascinating that previously in this letter, Paul had been dealing with many, if you want to say, the mental problems in the Corinthian Church, their, their problems in thinking, their problems in, in, uh, how they were seeing things in the Christian life. But now Paul is starting to deal with their moral problems. And do you see the connection? Their wrong thinking about God has led to a lot of wrong moral problems as well.
Now, do you see what Paul's prescription is at the end of verse two? He says, "that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you." Paul is saying, "Here's the solution: take this notoriously unrepentant man away from the protection of the fellowship of God's people." Yet the Corinthian Christians were not doing this. Why? How could the Corinthian Christians just let this go on in their midst?
Now, let me say something as a pastor, and, and in having to deal with sin in the congregation from time to time. The first thing you have to say is, there is some degree, some level of sin that goes on in the congregation that's just unknown. Right? I mean, you could be having a life filled with sexual immorality, but if nobody at the church knows about it and you keep it a big secret, then nobody knows. The church can't be criticized for confronting what it doesn't know about. So, I mean, it's sad when Christians carry on that way, uh, and it's, it's detrimental to the life of the whole body, not just that individual. But secret sin is secret sin, and it can't be dealt with when it's secret.
But sometimes, when sin becomes known, it's all too common for churches not to deal with it. Right? Why? Why don't they deal with it properly? Well, often times they're so concerned about keeping it a secret that they don't deal with it. You see, instead of addressing the problem, instead of really dealing with it in a biblical way, churches often times can respond more like politicians and think, "Damage control. We got damage control to do. How do we fix this?" And fixing it usually means smoothing it over, not addressing the problem.
I tell you, there was another problem in the city of Corinth. The city of Corinth was a city notorious for sexual immorality. And the pagan religions did not value sexual purity. In other words, it was not hard for a Corinthian Christian to think that you could be religious and then still act any way you wanted to sexually. Greek culture could say the following statement matter-of-factly, and this is what the Greeks said: "Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children." And so they dismissed it.
You say, "But wait a minute, David, the Bible clearly says this is sin. Couldn't they just read their Bibles and look at it?" Well, it's very interesting when you go back and look at the ancient rabbinical writings. There was an ancient rabbi at the time known as Rabbi Akiba. And Rabbi Akiba said that if a person came to Jesus, if they were, excuse me, if they came not to Jesus, they came as a proselyte to Judaism, that every relationship that they had in the past no longer mattered. And so the man and the woman would therefore be completely new people, and none of their family relations mattered anymore. So they could carry on such a sin, and God wouldn't care because they were completely new people.
Well, you see, that could be a twisting of this idea that we're new creations in Christ, isn't it? Because you may be a new creation in Christ, but you're still a son or a daughter or a father or mother. And, and it doesn't destroy those relationships, it should affect them, but it does not destroy them. Now, I think what's interesting about that is what I'm trying to explain to you is the Corinthian Church may have been relying on the teaching of this rabbi to give them an excuse.
Friends, if you're looking for an excuse to justify your sinful behavior, look around and you can find somebody who will say, "It's okay according to the Bible." You want to practice, uh, immorality, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, drunkenness, whatever. Look around, you can find somebody who will tell you from the Bible it's okay. And if you're looking for an excuse like that, look, you can find it. Maybe that's what the Corinthians were doing.
But I think that more than anything, more than damage control, more than a bad interpretation of the Bible, what was more than the bad moral environment in the city of Corinth, what was really the problem of the Corinthian Church is connected back with the word that Paul uses in verse two when he says, "you're puffed up." The real problem among the Corinthian Christians was that they were probably allowing this in the name of tolerance. This notorious sinner was in their midst, everybody knew it, nobody would address it, and they went around patting themselves on the back. "Aren't we filled with love? Oh, we're the love congregation. Oh, how we love one another. My, anybody can come here and, oh, it's just because we love everybody so much. Look how accepting of this brother we are. We're accepting him just as he is. Look at how open-minded we are."
Friends, we should never underestimate what people will allow in the name of open-mindedness. And that's probably exactly what was happening among the Corinthian Christians. The Corinthian Christians were proud of their, their acceptance of this man. It wasn't that they were ashamed of it. It wasn't like, "Oh man, yeah, I know, you know, we're doing it, but it's not right, but it's just so hard to confront him." That wasn't the situation. They were proud. They thought they were getting brownie points. "Look how loving we are." Instead of glorying in their supposed tolerance, they should have been grieving, both for the man and they should have been grieving about what they were supposed to do to them.
So look at what Paul says in verse three. It says, "For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged as though I were present concerning him who has so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus."
Wow. All right. There's two things, more than two, but two pointed things that we need to deal with in these verses. First of all, I want to just deal with this thing that Paul says that he's absent in body and present in spirit. And when he goes on to say in verse four, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're gathered together along with my spirit." And now I'm almost embarrassed to bring this up, but it's amazing how goofy teachers in the body of Christ can take things and twist them. But friends, do you know that there are Christians who say that Paul was speaking of astral projection here, and that Christians should do the same thing? And they purport to have done the same things. I mean, some very notable pastors in, in the Christian world today talk about how they practice this kind of astral projection, and there they are, and there somewhere. Friends, that's just nonsense. Matter of fact, it's, it's occultic, is what it is.
Paul is saying that he's represented in their midst by his letter, and the letter is a valid extension of his apostolic authority. Paul does not have to be physically there to exercise his apostolic authority. He can do it through the letter. Distance did not make him any less an apostle. You know, it's not like Paul's apostolic authority had a 100-mile radius. No, he was thousands of miles away, but he goes, "Listen, when I write this letter, it's like I'm there, and this is what you need to do."
I want you to notice also that Paul is pushing his authority hard here, isn't he? I mean, he's taking authority. He says there in verse three that he has already judged. Paul says, "Listen, I'm not suggesting to you, I'm not saying, 'Well, let's have a conference or a committee.' You say, 'I've decided this matter. You better listen to what my judgment is.'" But at the same time, Paul doesn't take too much authority, because he recognizes that it all must be done in the name and in the power of the Lord Jesus, where he says in verse four, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." He doesn't say, "In the name of Paul the Apostle." Paul is speaking authoritatively, but because he knows he's speaking in the name of the Lord.
Now, there's another point we have to consider here. You saw what Paul said in verse three. He says, "For I indeed have already judged." And a gasp issues up from the congregation. They say, "Now, Paul, don't you know what Jesus said? 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.' Come on, Paul, you're breaking Jesus's commandment." My friends, can I just tell you that this is perhaps one of the most misunderstood, uh, passages in the entire Bible? "Judge not, lest you be judged." It's right behind, uh, the second most misunderstood passage in the Bible, which is "God helps those who help themselves," which isn't even in the Bible. But people take that passage that Jesus said, "Judge not, lest you be judged," to mean, in their minds, that everybody is completely unqualified to make moral judgments of anybody else.
Now, might I say, if you just look at the life and ministry of Jesus, I think he made a few moral judgments of people. Just look at what he said to the scribes and the Pharisees. Now, could you imagine scribes and the Pharisees going back to Jesus, "Judge not, lest you be judged"? Come on. No. But what Jesus was saying there was very important, and we need to take it to heart. What he said in Matthew 7, verses 1-5, is extremely important for our Christian lives, because a lot of Christians are guilty of this sin. What they're guilty of is hypocritical judgment. What Jesus says very specifically is that you should never judge another person by a standard you would not judge yourself by. Jesus goes on to say, after "Judge not, lest you be judged," he says, "For the same measure that you judge other people, God's going to judge you." And it would be wrong if Paul was practicing sexual immorality for Paul to say, "Now, you Corinthians, stop your sexual immorality." They had every right to say, "Judge not, lest you be judged. You won't apply that same measure to yourself. Don't apply it to us."
And friends, we got to do the same thing in our lives, right? We should never, never judge anybody by a standard we wouldn't judge ourselves by. Isn't it annoying when some people are perfectionists to others, not to themselves? Look, if you want to be a perfectionist, at least be it unto yourself, but not unto other people. Now, Paul is not breaking that commandment. He is perfectly willing to apply the same standards to himself that he's applying to the Corinthian Christians.
So, if we've dealt with the idea of being absent in body, we've dealt with the idea of Paul judging, but you know the one that really caught your eye in this passage, right? Let's read it again in verse four: "In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh."
Now, friends, how could the Corinthian Church deliver such a one to Satan? You know, is there like a Devil's delivery service? You call them up and have them pick up this individual, and they cart him off in a wagon or something going straight to hell? You know, what's that deal? No, my friends. The idea here is, in Paul's mind, there's the Lord's domain, and then there's the devil's domain. The Lord's domain is the church. That's where his people gather, that's where his morality is present, that's where his love is flowing through his people. The devil's domain is the world. It's outside of the church. And by putting this man outside of the church, into the world, he's putting him into the devil's domain. What he's doing is he's removing the spiritual protection and the social comfort of the church. He is not saying, "Inflict an evil on this man." He's not saying, "Take him out back and beat him up." Though, believe me, as a pastor, there's been times when you felt like doing that to some people. Well, praise the Lord, it quickly passes, and you get back into the spirit. But no, what Paul says, what Paul says is, "Put him outside of the church into the devil's domain."
Now, I want you to consider how often it is that God protects us from the attacks of Satan, even when we never knew about the attacks. Think about it in the book of Job, right? There is Job, just doing his thing on earth. I mean, he's oblivious, and there's this whole battle going on in heaven where Satan says to God, "I want him, I want him, let me do this to him, let me do this to him, let me do this to him." You know, God says, God says, "No, you can't do that. You can't do that." God says, "Okay, you can do that, but only up to this point." Satan wanted to do a lot worse against Job than God allowed him, right? God was protecting him.
Or I think of when Jesus spoke to the disciple Peter and he said, "Peter, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, and when you have returned, go and strengthen my brethren." Now, isn't that amazing? What did Satan want to do to Peter? A lot. But the Lord was stopping him. And friends, I tell you, God can take, in measure or in whole, that protection off of your life. And isn't that frightening? And by putting this man outside of the spiritual protection and the social comfort of the church, they were putting him out in the devil's domain.
Now, when I think about what God was telling the Corinthian Church to do here, I think about it how it works in our, uh, church scene today. You know, today, so many people can leave so many churches without a second thought. You know, it just doesn't bother them at all. And sometimes that speaks to the weakness and the immaturity of that individual Christian. And I'll talk about that in a moment. But doesn't it also speak to the weakness and the immaturity of our churches? Shouldn't the church be a place that you miss if you're not there? You know, for a lot of people, to put them outside of the church, be, "Oh, hurt me, hurt me, you know, boy, now, now, you know, it's the best thing that ever happened to me." But the Corinthian Church, as bad as it was, was a place that people would have been missing if they were put outside of it.
Friends, doesn't it also say something about the, if they can willingly neglect the assembling together of the saints and prefer their isolation? I mean, Paul regards this as a punishment to be put outside of the fellowship of the saints, and a lot of Christians embrace it as a relief, as a preferred mode of living the Christian life. Something's wrong there, both in our churches and in the walks of many individual Christians.
Now, I think there's another important thing that this would do in the life of this man who is sinning. And you're picturing the situation in your mind, right? I mean, they're putting him outside of the church. I think it serves another purpose. It serves the important purpose of removing any false feeling of security that the sinning man might have among the fellowship of Christians. In other words, you know, if he was there after a while, they would just ignore his sin, and they would let him ignore it, and they would just pretend it wasn't there. And the man wouldn't face his sin, and the church wouldn't make him face his sin. What putting the man outside of the church said is basically, "Look, we got to face up to this. We can't ignore it. We can't play a big game of 'Let's pretend there's a sin problem in your life,' and it has to be addressed."
Now, I want you to notice something else in verse five. It tells you what the purpose of putting this man out of the church was. Did you notice it there? He says, "deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." In other words, the purpose of putting this man outside of the spiritual protection and the social comfort of the church was the destruction of his flesh. Friends, not his body, but his flesh. This man, though he was a Christian, was at the time given over to the sins of the flesh. And Paul is saying that by putting this man out of the fellowship of the church, he'll be given over to the sinful consequences of his flesh. They're just giving him what he has earned. They're letting him bear the consequences of his sin. And the hope is that by wallowing in the consequences of his sin, the sinful impulse of his flesh in this particular area will be destroyed.
Now, friends, as a Christian, you know what it's like to do battle against the flesh. I don't need to explain that to you, right? We all know. We all know what it's like to battle against the flesh. Look, the old man is dead, he's been crucified with Christ. But I still have a flesh within me. And the flesh, well, the flesh battles against the spirit. And God wants me, in partnership with Jesus Christ, to do what he did to the old man. He crucified the old man. And now God says, "Let's crucify the flesh too, and do it daily." And Paul hopes that by putting this man out of the fellowship of the Christians in Corinth, it's going to lead him to crucify the flesh with its passions and desires.
Might I say another thing? Those words, "deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh," that was a favorite verse used under the terrors of the Inquisition, when Christians, and I say that advisedly, because I don't believe they were Christians, when churchmen would actually torture other people trying to lead them to repentance. Can I just tell you that's not a recommended form of evangelism, friends? It's not. You know, they use this verse to just to support that. They say, "Well, look, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh," and "We'll be the agents of Satan." How foolish. What darkness the church was in those days. But friends, it's not what Paul's talking about at all. Paul isn't talking about destroying the man's physical body. He's talking about addressing the spiritual power of his sinful flesh.
And why? For what purpose? At the end of verse five, "that he may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." The goal of the discipline is clear: the salvation, not the destruction, of his spirit. Though this man's conduct was clearly sinful and it needed severe correction, Paul does not write him off as forever lost. And the effective use of church discipline may still see this man to salvation. Friends, all discipline that is ever done in the church is always to be done in an attitude of restoration and in the hope of restoration. It's not done to punish somebody. It's not done to get back at somebody. It's not done because you're angry at somebody. It's done not to condemn them, but to restore them.
Paul wrote in another place, in 2 Thessalonians chapter three, he says, "And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with them, that he may be ashamed. But then he goes on to say, 'Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.'" Well, that's the attitude that the Corinthians were to have. They were to disassociate themselves with him in some way or another, but they were not to count him as an enemy, but as a brother who needed to be corrected. Warren Weby says, "Church discipline is not a group of policemen out to catch a criminal. Rather, it is a group of brokenhearted brothers and sisters seeking to restore an erring member of the family."
And might I say this, that Paul does not say that the church should or could take away this man's salvation. You know, that was another teaching that was current in the church for centuries and centuries, and it still is the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, that the Pope has the power to grant salvation and to take it away. That if he excommunicates you, you're not just put out of a church, you're going to hell, period, end of story. But my friends, can I just say, and you know this to be true, the church does not grant salvation. It certainly cannot take it away.
Now, there are cases for the good of the church and for the good of the sinner when someone should be put out of the congregation. But the church never has the power to revoke someone's salvation. Now, some people call this excommunication, some people call it disfellowshipping someone. And in this situation, they are to be put outside of the congregation until they repent. Now, I know the question that's on all of your minds. You're wondering, "Has this ever happened here at Calvary Chapel, Shady Valley?" Not yet. It hasn't. Now, there have been a few cases where it was seriously contemplated, but the person left of their own accord before church discipline could be exercised.
And I tell you, should the day ever come, I, I would just simply ask you to do one thing, because it would be like a bombshell, wouldn't it? If we stood up before you on a Sunday morning and said, "Brother so-and-so is living in a sexually immoral situation. It's, it's a habitual, confirmed sin in his life, and over many months, we've tried to minister to him, and not only will he not stop the sin, he's absolutely unrepentant." That's the real issue, isn't it, friends? The Apostle Paul, or you, or I, would go to the mat all day long for a brother or sister who said, "Oh, I, I know I'm doing this, but I hate it. I keep slipping into it. Please help me stop." What Paul cannot stand for, and what we cannot stand for, is the notorious sinner in our midst who says, "Yeah, I'm going to do it, and I don't care what you or the Bible or anybody else says."
But if it should ever come the day where we have to identify such an individual and tell you, "You're just not to regard them as a part of this church family, and you are not to embrace them with open arms of fellowship. You're not to hate them, you're to pray for them, but to not act as if they're a believer." If that should ever happen, I make one request of you as your pastor. I ask you to please trust the leadership of this church. Do you know why? Because there will be many facts and details in the situation which the leadership will not disclose. And often times, the leadership of the church is at a real disadvantage because the person in question does not hesitate one bit to disclose their side of the story. But the church, out of dignity, out of the fact that such conduct should not even be named among the people of God, will often not publicize many of the facts of the case. And so, often times, it's easy to make the leadership of the church look very bad in a situation like that. And often times, the desire is to justify ourselves. "Well, we'll lay it all out on the table." Rarely, rarely should that ever be done. Instead, you just have to hope that as a pastor, as the leadership of the church, that you've developed enough track record of trust with the people that they'll trust you on this one.
And most of all, you would hope that that person would come to repentance. But can I be very honest with you? That in today's culture, in today's church culture, I should say, this rarely brings a sinner to repentance. Do you know why? Because they just go to another church in town. And when they go to that other church in town, they don't go and say, "You know, I got kicked out of my other church for sexual immorality." Oh, no. They get out the fiddle and, "Oh, you won't believe what they did to me at the other church. Oh, you just won't believe it. Oh, my gosh. Oh, poor brother." And they love and they bring him in, and he just pretends as if it never happened the way it did.
Now, friends, while it is true that some churches have been cruel towards their members, and some churches have unjustly, for some political reason or for some fleshly reason, disfellowshipped somebody, it does not mean that the church should never practice the biblical principles that Paul teaches here. It's to be done for the good of the church and for the good of the sinner.
I'll tell you what happens in a church where there is some kind of sin, some kind of immorality that becomes known in the congregation that's not repented of, that's not dealt with. You will start to see that sin spread like wildfire through the congregation because Satan knows it's open season. Friends, we should never be surprised when Christians sin. I shouldn't be surprised if you sin, you shouldn't be surprised if I sin. But what we should say as Christians is that when we do, we will repent, we will deal with it rightly, and we will go on and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, there was to be a meeting of the church where Paul would spiritually be present in his letter, and in the name of Jesus, they were to exclude that man from the fellowship.
Verse six. He's going to go on and describe their thinking. "Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Again, do you notice how Paul is addressing this? It gives you insight into the Corinthian mindset. He says, "Your glorying is not good." The Corinthian Christians were proud and pleased to be ignoring this man's notorious sin. They were glorying in it. "Aren't we tolerant? Aren't we open-minded? We'll accept you just as you are." They thought it showed the whole world how loving they were.
But you know what it's like? It's like a person being loving to their body by ignoring a cancer. "Oh, I wouldn't want to kill, I wouldn't want to cut away part of my body. Oh, no, I wouldn't want to do that." Boy, that, and it's cancer, and it's eating you, its way, it's eating away. I can say, and, and you can rightly see too, that Paul is much more concerned about this sin in the entire church than he is about the sin of the individual man. Both of them are bad, but it's the sin of the church that's worse in this case.
As he says here, "a little leaven leavens the whole lump." The leaven that he's talking about isn't just, uh, yeast. How they would leaven bread back then is like we would do with sourdough bread, you know, how that's done, right? They wouldn't go down the store and buy some Fleischmann's, uh, yeast. You couldn't get it like that. They would use a pinch of dough from a previous batch. And what they would do is, is they would put that pinch of dough, and you know, sourdough bread, you put that in, and it permeates the whole lump. It makes it puff up. And so a little bit of leaven can affect a whole lump of dough. And he goes, "A little bit of sin in your midst will corrupt the entire body if it's winked at in this way."
Going on to verse seven: "Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump." Now, I think that would be a great name for a Christian group to call themselves, you know, like a, like a fellowship group or, you know, a singles group or something. "The New Lumps." That's what it is, biblical, isn't it? "Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened. For indeed, Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
So, purge out the old leaven. At the Passover feast, all the leaven, all the yeast, anything made with yeast, cookies, crackers, breads, cakes, whatever, clear it out of the house. All the leaven to be gone. And Paul's saying, "This is how it should be in the Christian life."
Now, I don't know if you're aware, but in, in the, the similarities between the Old Testament and the New Testament, uh, the Passover is a marvelous picture of the work of Jesus on the cross. For it's just a powerful picture. And immediately following Passover was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, where all the yeast was to be taken outside of the house. What do you see the picture? It's like Jesus does the saving work in your life, and then what do you do? You clear out all the sin. You clear out all the leaven. And so he says, "Do this. You truly unleavened, you've been made new. Jesus Christ has taken the sin out of your life. Now do it." He says, "Let's keep the unleavened bread with sincerity and truth."
And notice this, going on to verse nine: "I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people." Now, Paul had told them, seemingly in a previous letter, to avoid sexually immoral people. By the way, some people are troubled by this idea that there was a previous letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we don't have. Some people think, and by the way, might I tell you that, uh, Mormons believe that that somehow means that the Bible is incomplete. We don't have this letter that Paul wrote. I mean, he wrote a letter previous to this to the Corinthians, and we don't have it. My friends, not everything that the apostles wrote was inspired scripture. I'm sure that that first letter was great teaching and very edifying to the church at Corinth, but it was not to be inspired, eternal scripture. And not everything they put their pen to paper about was what Paul's shopping list, his laundry list, what inspired scripture. We don't have that. It's just nonsense.
But in this previous letter, Paul said, "I don't want you to keep company with them." Now, might I say, what this word "keep company" has the idea of in the original Greek, it literally means to mix up together. In the context of social relationships, it means not just to be an acquaintance, but to have a mixing together with that person. And Paul says, "Listen, I don't want you to mix your life together with someone who's a sexually immoral person."
And Paul wrote that in his letter, but apparently they misunderstood him. Because look at verse ten: "Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world." You see, poor Paul. I feel sorry for Paul. You know, sometimes when he got the news from the city of Corinth, he'd just go, "Oh, you know, what are they thinking?" He writes to them, "Don't keep company with sexually immoral people." Now, what Paul meant was sexually immoral people in the church. He says, "Listen, you have to say sin is sin, and I'm not going to pretend that that, uh, this is just going on."
And friends, I don't know if you've ever done that in your life. I have. In my mind, I remember one occasion very vividly, where there was this man who, let me tell you, he had a lot of spiritual problems. He thought he was one of the two witnesses of Revelation. Oh, yeah. One of those. And, and conveniently, conveniently, the other witness was this gal that he wanted to live with. How about that, huh? And, and of course, to do that, he had to divorce his wife and leave his two precious boys. And so I talked to him, and I talked to him, and I talked to him in a lot of love, and I talked to him in a lot of patience, and I pleaded with him, "Don't do this, don't do this." And I told him, I said, "Listen, the day you file for that divorce, things are going to be different between me and you. It's not going to be the same anymore." And I pleaded with him, and I pleaded with him. And one day, he filed for the divorce, and he comes into me, free and easy, just like everything's the same. And I said, "Don't talk to me." I said, "The only thing I have to talk with you about is your repentance." And he's like, "Oh, what's the problem? Hey, hey, man, you know, don't 'bro' me." And I wouldn't talk to him. He was really offended. He was really put off by the fact that I was mad.
But friends, there comes a time where you have to say to another person, "The only thing I'm going to talk to you about is your repentance. You want to talk about that? We'll talk all day long. But there's nothing else for us to talk about." Now, Paul was saying, "Don't keep company with sexually immoral people," and he meant in the context of the church. The Corinthians took his word and put it in the exact wrong context. They said, "Oh, well, look, you know, I work by this pagan, and they're sexually immoral, so I guess I got to quit my job." And Paul says, "Listen, if you don't hang around with sinners, you're going to have to go join a monastery somewhere. You're going to be rubbing elbows with sinners. They're in the world."
By the way, this is exactly the approach many people take to holiness and Christian living: to get as far away from the world as possible. In ancient times, this was the whole spirit behind the monastic movement in the early, in the medieval church, you know, "Oh, I really want to follow God, so I'll go away to a monastery, you know, in the middle of the desert, and there I can be pure and serve God. I won't have all these worldly things around us." Yeah, but the world kept on going to hell.
Now, Christians can do it in a more limited way, you know, you go and you, "Okay, you know, I'm going to buy my tires at the Christian tire shop, and shop at the Christian market, and, you know, this at the Christian that, the Christian that." And pretty soon, you, you insulate yourself so where you're not rubbing elbows with any unbelievers. Now, instead, Paul says that without approving the sin of sinners in this world, we should expect that they would be sinners. Friends, it shouldn't surprise us or offend us that those who do not know Jesus are covetous or extortioners or idolaters, right? Should that surprise us? Should it surprise us that they're guilty of any of these other sins? But we should expect Christian behavior from our Christian brothers and sisters. And the Corinthians had it all wrong. They were expecting Christian behavior from non-believers, but not from their own congregation.
Instead, Paul commands, if you notice here, verse ten: "But I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those who are on the outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? Therefore, excuse me, but those who are outside, God judges. Therefore, put away from yourselves that wicked person."
Now, Paul says, "Don't even eat with such a person." Now, it's a little hard to know exactly what Paul's getting at there, and I'll suggest you one of two options. You know, that in the early church, it was very common at their weekly meeting that they would have a potluck dinner together, and at the end, or during that potluck dinner, they'd receive communion. It was kind of just a, a thing that they did all the time. When he says, "Don't eat with such a brother," he may mean, "Don't let him come to your fellowship meeting." This, this weekly time when you get together for worship and the word and, and to eat together and to fellowship and to have communion. He may be saying, "He can't come to that."
Or he may be saying, "Don't have close personal relationship with him." Because eating with somebody in that culture was a close personal thing. You know, today we've pretty much detached, you know, a personal relationship or, or, you know, friendship or anything like that from eating. You know, man, we go to McDonald's and, you know, super-size some combo meal and just scarf it down without even talking to the person next to us, and then we go on. That's not how it was done in the ancient world. You know, in the ancient world, it was a special thing to have food to eat. And so when you had food to eat, you made a meal out of it. I mean, you, you made it fancy, you made it nice, and you made it luxurious, just by enjoying each other's company. Paul says, "You shouldn't be enjoying this man's company this way."
And then he goes on to say, I think this is very striking here in verse twelve: "For what have I to do with judging those who are outside?" Outside, says, "those who are outside, God judges." In verse thirteen, he says, "Isn't that interesting that so many Christians are busy judging those outside of the church, and they neglect purity within the church? They get it turned all opposite." In other words, in other, uh, in contrast to that, I should say, Paul says, "Do you not judge those who are inside?" And he says, "Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person." The Corinthian Church, the Corinthian Christians, were failing to judge where they should have made judgment. They should not have winked at the notorious sinner in their midst, and they should not have considered themselves loving to do so.
Friends, let me just conclude with reminding ourselves of the two reasons any confrontation like this is really hard and it's really difficult. It's much easier for me to stand up here where there is no situation, you know, current like that and talk about it, than to actually deal with it when you actually have to deal with it. It's tough. But you know why it's worth it? It's worth it for two reasons. First of all, for that individual Christian life. This is not fooling around. This man in the Corinthian Church could be on his way to hell if the church does not step in and exercise proper discipline. If they love that man, they will do it.
But secondly, it's for the good of the church, isn't it? And to see that the congregation of the Lord, not that it's this, you know, holier-than-thou society where we go around acting like we don't sin. Friends, that should never be the message from the church. But it should be, you know what? When we sin, we repent of it. It's not so much that if a person falls down, it's, do they get back up and keep walking with the Lord? That's how it should be. And may God help us to do exactly that.
Let's pray and get into a time of [Music] worship.