Choir singing. E kolo mea nui makahonua O kamana o i'o, kamana o lana Ame ke aloha Ke aloha kai oia e O mai kaina mea a pau O mai kaina mea a pau. Verse five. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Your face is beautiful And your eyes are like the stars Your gentle hands have healing They're inside the scars Your loving arms, they draw me near And your smile, it brings me peace Draw me closer, oh my lord ♪ Draw me closer, Lord, to Thee ♪ Captivate us, Lord Jesus ♪ Set our eyes on You ♪ Devastate us with Your presence falling down ♪ And rushing river, draw us nearer Holy fountain, consume us with you. Captivate us, Lord Jesus, with you. Your voice is powerful and your words are radiant bright. In your breath and shadow, I will come close and abide. You whisper love and life divine, and your fellowship is sweet. Draw me closer, O my Lord, draw me closer, Lord, to Thee. Captivate us, Lord Jesus Set our eyes on you Devastate us with your presence Falling down In rushing river, draw us nearer Holy fountain, consume us with you us Lord Jesus with you. Let everything be lost in the shadows of the light of your face. Let every chain be broken from me as I'm abounding In my hand every hour I'll see you Captivate us Lord Jesus Set our eyes on you Devastate us with your presence falling down Ereshki, river, draw us near Holy fountain, consume us with you Captivate us, Lord Jesus, with you Captivate us, Lord Jesus, with you you Okay I hala bai aku ai He ke kanaka o ke o manohano Kaulana i ka waiwai Pane mai e ka opio E ku'u haku mai kai E ahau e kau e hana aku ai Iloa'a e ke halana E ha'ami e ha'adili lo'i I ka'u mau waiwai U li'a ha'aimai a'u I loa'a e ke holanau E ha'ami e ha'adili lo'i I ka'u mau waiwai U li'a ha'aimai a'u He's the Waa'a, a.k.a. Old Amount. Let me walk through paradise with you, Lord. Take my hand and lead me there. All my earthly pleasures I will gladly give. Teach me how to love and how to share. Freedom, lust, and vanity were my norm. Then I found your love divine. Now on my knees I pray that I can find a way. Let me walk through paradise with you. Oh, my Lord, my Savior, take my hand and lead me on to paradise. Lord, just let me follow in your footsteps. Let me walk through paradise with you. my lord my savior take my hand and lead me on to paradise lord just let me follow in your footsteps let me walk through paradise with you If you could all take your seats, we're going to get started. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I don't have any announcements this morning. Anyone else have anything they need to bring to our attention? Darlene. Anything else? Okay. Good morning. Would you all please stand with me as we open with Come, Christians, Join to Sing, hymn number 225. Come, Christians, join to sing. Alleluia, amen. Loud praise to Christ our King. Alleluia, amen. Let all with heart and voice be His throne rejoice. Grace is His gracious choice. Alleluia, amen. Come lift your hearts on high. Alleluia, amen. praises fill the sky. Alleluia, amen. He is our guide and friend. To us he'll not descend. His love shall never end. Alleluia, amen. Praise ye the Christ again. Alleluia, amen. Christ shall not end our strain. Alleluia, amen. On heaven's blissful shore, His goodness we'll adore. Let's pray. Father, we lift our voices to you. We lift our hearts to you, not because of our current situation. not because we feel good about the world, not because we even feel good about our lives. We lift our hearts in adoration to you because we have no place else to go. And we do gather together now and join to sing in praise to your son, Jesus Christ. Acknowledging as we talked about last week, that you are sovereign. You are in control of viruses. You are in control of quarantines. The heart of the king resides in your hand and you move it like a river of water wherever you will. And we pray, Father, even now as we go through all of these things and we consider what it is that we are singing in praise to you as this song concluded on heaven's blissful shore. And we think of those who are on the verge. And we think of their families. We ask Father for Elizabeth that you would grant her strength as we heard this morning how she's bedridden and that's just not a positive thing for someone in her condition. We ask Father for ultimate strength that ultimately you would bring her to full recovery. We pray, Father, for Mary Willox, whose family is coming now even to spend time with her, and as they've done about all they can do, we ask, Lord, that if it is your will that you would give her the strength to push through, And if it brings honor to your name, Father, we ask for full restoration in her case also. That she would be able to traverse that threshold. We thank you, Lord, for her confession of faith in you. and what joy that brings to the heart of those who love you, and what joy and comfort it brings to the hearts of those who love her. And we also pray, Father, now for the Murakawa family as they've all gathered there around Mark's dad and whatever else, Father, that They may be going through now. We ask that you would comfort them with the assurance of your goodness. And as these things remind us of our own mortality, may we remember even as hopefully this virus has taught us that we are all mortals and we are not intended to be on this earth for eternity. That this world is not a world of permanence, but one day will be destroyed. And we are destined as your children to live in a world that is recreated, that is pristine, that reflects purely and brightly your own holiness. And we ask Lord for these that we have brought before you, that even in these moments of uncertainty or moments of certainty, as they face what they do not know, as they even face the prospect of death, may you call to their remembrance. that death has no sting, that the grave has no victory, that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a destiny that is sure. Father, we also want to ask prayer For others who are ill, we think of Micah Kalauli, as he has this fever, that you would bring it down and allow his body to heal. And for Fred Dietman, who had this kidney stone procedure yesterday, We ask, Lord, that you would bring his blood pressure down and that he would be able to clear all the stuff that he has to in order to go home, give his body strength. And Father, we have gathered this morning in the name of your son, under his banner, that you would receive us into your very presence into your very throne room, the throne room of grace, not because of the unrighteousness that riddles our souls, but because of the righteousness that we have in Jesus Christ. His blood, we confess, is sufficient to wash away all of our sin. And Father, we ask that when you look at us now, you would not see our sinfulness. You would see his righteousness. And with voices of song, with ears to hear, with our very thoughts, we seek now to bring honor to your name. We seek now to manifest your excellence. that we who are gathered here, those who are gathered away from us by video, would all be able to see amongst us that you are good, that you are excellent. And may we all bow before your glory, receive the worship that we bring. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Now I was going to. Take a few weeks to work. Andrew rep back into the leading music rotation. But. Aaron Peppers was nice enough this past week to vacate his his position. Got he got his guitar playing finger stuck in a machine and he and he can't drum so good. So Andrew was willing to step forward and lead us in a few songs. Andrew, will you come and lead us in our music? All right, so for this next song, let's ask the Lord, who is the fountainhead of every blessing, to move our hearts to sing His grace. I'm just gonna go ahead and stand. ♪ Of every blessing ♪ ♪ To my heart you sing thy praise ♪ ♪ Streams of mercy never ceasing ♪ ♪ All for songs of loudest praise ♪ ♪ These have mellowed this silence ♪ ♪ Sunlight fading comes above ♪ ♪ Praised on high ♪ I love you. He's a smiley man, a stranger Wondering from afar for a while He who has to take the danger He's provoking pressure Oh, to grace how great a feather may be I must bring to Thee! Let my goodness, like a feather, find my wandering heart to Thee! Come to wonder, Lord, I feel it! Oh, to Thee, O God, I call! Here is my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for my false love. Oh, that day when free from sinning I shall see my lovely face. I will be. And let's sing about who the Lord is, immortal, invisible God. Invisible bodily bodies Invited, accessible, hidden from our eyes Both flaccid, both florid, the ancient of days Almighty victorious, thy name we praise silent as mine, nor one, nor race, how new as in mine. I trust in thy fountain, my soaring afar, thy mountains afar. We've blossomed and flourished as bees on a tree. And year and year, but not ancient bees. Oh Oh And then this song here, I'll do one scripture reading, all right. I'm learning. It's been a while. Well, we're all learning, too, because it's all new for us. You can go ahead and have a seat. I'm gonna do the New Testament reading later on, but for our reading of Psalms, of the Psalms, from the Psalms, I want to look at the first Psalm, Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. So this song will probably be new to many of you. It has, but as we sing it, please really focus on the words because of these words, it has become one of my favorite songs. And so what we'll do is we'll sing through the first verse, and if you know it, join in. If not, what we'll do is after we sing the first verse once, so that you hear the tune, we'll repeat the first verse together, and then we'll sing the other verses, okay? So this song is called Yet Not I, But Through Christ in Me. What gift of praise is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for heaven how to give. He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace. To this I bode, my hope is only Jesus, For my life is wholly bound to His. Oh, how strange and divine I can sing, All is mine, yet not I, but through Christ in me. Okay, let's go ahead and stand together and let's sing that verse again. What gift of grace is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give. What gift of grace is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give. Oh, how sweet and divine! I can sing, all is mine! he will stay I later on in weakness and rejoicing for in my need his power is displayed to this I hope my shepherd will defend me through the deep and valley he will lead I shall overcome, yeah. The future sure, the price he had to pay For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon And he was laid to overthrow the grave To this I hold, my sin has been defeated Jesus now I With every man I long to follow Jesus For He has said that He will bring me home And day by day I know He will renew me Until I stand with joy before the throne To this I walk My hope is only Jesus All the glory evermore to me When the rage is unleashed in my lips How may He get my life but to rise in me? T'is I hold my hope is only Jesus When the race is complete, still my lips shall repeat Yet not I, but through Christ in me When the race is complete, still my lips shall repeat Yet not I, but through Christ in me Let's pray again. Father, we ask that you would receive these songs of worship, even as we affirm all that you've done for us, all that you're doing for us, and all that you will accomplish for us, in us, and through us. We do pray that you would bless the reading of the word of God. We ask that you would bless the singing of songs of worship. Bless our time of meditation. Bless our giving. Bless the preaching. We confess that if your Holy Spirit does not quicken our hearts, then our hearts are dead. That if your Holy Spirit does not illuminate to us your word, then the word remains shrouded. Reveal to us your truth, for it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Please be seated. Rookie mistake right there. left my Bible in my chair. You know I'm going to get all the comments now. I was watching this pastor from Hawaii never even bring his Bible to the pulpit. The records show I did bring my Bible to the pulpit. I just didn't bring them late. You cannot be more Hawaii than that. Open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 5. We'll be looking at verses 1 through 8 this morning. I ask that you follow along silently as I read out loud. It is actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not even tolerated even among pagans. For man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the whole leaven that you may be a new lump. as you are really unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. Let me begin this morning by saying this, that the church is part of the solution. The church is part of the solution. You would think that with the way we often hear people speak about the church, that the main problem is the church. If the church would just do things right, then everything else would run smoothly. If it wasn't for the hypocrisy in the church, then this whole world would be a better place. The problem, it seems, even when you read what Christians write in social media and other public forums like that, it seems that Christians in this day and age have nothing good to say about Christians. They find the flaw, they find the disparity in their thinking, and that becomes the paradigm through which every thought, every issue within Christianity is viewed. Folks, according to the Word of God, not according to my empirical evidence, not according to my own experience, but according to the Word of God, the church is part of the solution. When we speak disparagingly about the church, we vilify the bride of Christ for whom Christ died. I mean, it says it right here in 1 Corinthians, right? That when you do that, you argue and fight. You argue with the ones for whom Christ died. Ephesians 5 even puts it a little differently when he talks about the responsibilities of husbands. Paul says, husbands love your wife even as Christ loved the church and died for it. There's a very real sense, folks, when you say, did Jesus die for your sins? You can say yes, because Jesus died for the church. The church is called the pillar and buttress of the truth. Paul tells Timothy that. The pillar and buttress of the truth. It's the foundation of the truth. And it is the primary objective of the church to disseminate God's truth. This word right here. We need to give deference to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Paul has been arguing that up to this point in first Corinthians. We need to give deference to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We need to approach them with grace. It just seems to me that I don't know whether it's the algorithms on Facebook or what, but somehow Facebook has weeded out the concept of grace and we are gracious with no one at this point. By the way, I say that sarcastically in case anyone from Facebook is watching. I don't wanna get sued. It's us, we're doing this to ourselves, folks. We're doing this to one another. And we need to understand that the church is part of the solution. Now this does not mean that the church is without her problems, right? And this does not mean that the church is beyond criticism. But you know there's a vast difference, vast difference, then when somebody comes up and criticizes me, who I don't know from Adam, and they say something like, you know, I heard you online, and I heard this message that you preached, and I thought you were blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I may or may not respond to that email or message, but if I did, I would respond graciously and say, thank you for your input and probably try my best to take it to heart, but it wouldn't affect my day. Now folks, if Karen comes up to me after the service and she says, you know what? You said something during the service that was tremendously unloving to this person, or was tremendously arrogant. You know what I'm gonna do with that? I'm gonna take it to heart. Because two people can tell me the same things, right? I don't know one of them, but I am absolutely positive, I have no doubt in my mind that the other one loves me and has my best interest at heart. How am I gonna take that? The church is not beyond criticism. In fact, if the church were beyond criticism, then Paul wasted all of his time writing the epistles, right? Because basically the epistles and then even the other epistles from Peter and John and then the book of Revelation all have very direct criticisms of the church. I mean, think about this passage. I alluded to Ephesians 5.25, husbands love your wife, Christ loved the church, gave himself for the church. The next verse 26 and then verse 27 says he did this so that he might sanctify her sanctify the church having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present her present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. She might be holy and without blemish. I long for that day. I long for the day when every decision that I make as a church leader is beyond criticism. That'd be so awesome. I long for the day when my thought process isn't caught up and mixed together with my own flesh. when I have to go through a very careful and deliberate process when I think about things to say or think about decisions to make of trying to weed out my own selfish ambition from these things and try to lay the decision pure before the Lord, I long for that day when we as the church can be presented before God, holy and without blemish. Don't you? Well, guess what? That day is not today. We are blemished and the church will be blemished and will continually need to be scrubbed and washed by the word until the day that we are with our Lord. Paul tells the Ephesians that the church needs to be washed. Why does the church need to be washed? The church needs to be washed because the church is filthy. It's dirty. It smells bad. It looks bad. It's all disheveled. That's us, right? Yeah? And if that's us, that's also the Corinthian church. The Corinthian church was a church that was in need, perhaps not even of a good scrubbing, it was in need of a good bleaching. It was dirty. It was infected. It was toxic. And as far as they were concerned, everything was just fine. The big issue thus far in the book of 1 Corinthians has been their division. They've been divisive. They've been factional. They've been dividing into these little factions that just argue for no good reason. And part of the reason that they did this, as we can see at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, was because the Corinthian church, these believers, had acclimatized to the ambient cultural temperature. They had acclimatized to the ambient Roman culture. You remember we talked about the fact that Corinth was a place where they had the Isthmian games, and they were all used to this idea of competition, and they were all competing with one another within the church. And beyond the Isthmian games, they also had these competitions of oratory and rhetoric, and they would have these guys come through who were great orators and could and could give a great speech, and then they would compare, well, which speech giver, which orator is a better orator? Back and forth, back and forth. And this part of their culture just kind of overflowed into the Corinthian church to the point where within the church, the church itself was starting to fight about who's the best speaker? Am I the best speaker? Is he the best speaker? Paul terms it, he says, in the terms of Paul and Apollos and Cephas, but later on in, I think it was chapter four, he says, but I only did this so that I wouldn't embarrass who the actual people are. And it seems that as they had acclimatized to the dominant, to the ambient Roman, Greco-Roman culture, that they were completely unaware, completely unaware that anything around them had changed. The church thought that everything was just fine. You know, we're not sure what to do about these two ladies who are fighting, and so they write to Paul and say, what about this? And Paul says, you think your problem is that you got a couple of ladies fighting in the church? There was so much to correct. And the mind boggling thing is that it seems the Corinthian church didn't even have the first clue that anything was even wrong. Here is one of the huge obstacles to their coming to terms with their problem. Their problem was so systemic. and buried so deeply internally inside them, and it was so deep that it was not obvious to them that anything was actually wrong. I'm not even sure if I should tell this story, but it illustrates it so great, but it's really embarrassing to me personally. Okay, this is taking one back from embarrassing my kids, so maybe this will make us even. You don't even know sometimes that something's wrong with you, right? Someone who's trained can look at you and say, I'm looking at you right now, and you need to get to a doctor. When we were on Oahu this past time when we were there, we were sitting around my sister's table, And she kept looking down at my hands. And right now, she's an eye nurse. I don't know what it's called. She's a nurse that deals with eye surgery. She's that kind of nurse, like she said. But she's done emergency room stuff, trauma center and stuff. And she looked down at my nails. And she just couldn't stop looking down. And finally, she said, OK, Daniel, you need to tell me what's going on with your fingernails right now. Because my fingernails were turning a strange shade of gray. And for her, that set something off in her mind that that might be something that needs to be looked at. Now, folks, that's the way it is with us sometimes when our problems are so internal. And they're so deeply buried that you have this systemic problem. And the systemic problem doesn't even manifest itself in ways that you realize something's wrong. You're all concerned about my nails now, aren't you? OK. OK. So here's the deal. When I had my beard, I got some hair coloring. to try and slowly fade the white out. And right in front of everybody, I didn't know what to say. I was like, I got hair coloring stuff. And it's all over. And the thing is, is that it's supposed to color the keratin in your hair, hair here, hair here. And your fingernails are also made out of keratin. And so if you don't get it off right away, it starts to turn your fingernails. gray and dark black. But it still illustrates the point well, even to my embarrassment. That's why I keep shaving now, because I don't know how long I have to go before I can start putting that stuff in, and it's going to be white. Man, this is live, isn't it, online? I could normally call for editing, but I think I'm bummed. The point for the Corinthians was this, that their problem was so systemic, it was buried deep, so internal, that it wasn't even obvious to them that something was wrong. They had, in essence, just to build an analogy here, they had, in essence, a cancer of their spiritual leukocytes and corpuscles. It was as if they had spiritual leukemia. They had a spiritual cancer of love. Their love was completely riddled with cancer. It wasn't working. It didn't work correctly because it was filled with stuff that wasn't supposed to be there. Their love was malfunctioning because they weren't exercising it properly. And they had this internal thing going on, this conflict going on, and they didn't even realize, they thought, oh, just two ladies are fighting, but they didn't realize there was a systemic problem inside of them that went all the way to the bone. They did not love each other like they should, and the kind of love that they professed was completely useless. Why do you think that Paul takes Romans 12 and 13 and 14 just to focus on love? I mean, 12 says you need to love. Basically, he says you need above everything else, spiritual gifts. We use 1 Corinthians 12 to talk about spiritual gifts as manifested in the church. when really it's not about spiritual gifts. It's an introduction to tell them, you need to pursue love. And it gives us a little insight into spiritual giftedness, but it doesn't outline a theology of spiritual giftedness other than to say, all this other stuff, yes, important, but it pales in comparison to your need, of your need to pursue loving each other. Verse 14, he kind of brings that up, I mean, chapter 14, he brings that up again and couched in the middle of that. 1 Corinthians 13, we call it the love chapter, right? And sometimes we act as if Paul wrote that just so that we would have something to read at weddings. And the reason it looks like that is because 1 Corinthians 13, in the middle of this intense argument, trying to emphasize to them that they are so spiritually sick to the core that their love is not working, that they need to pursue love and get it right. Paul writes what amounts to a love poem, that love is patient, Love is kind. It isn't jealous. It isn't puffed up. It does not, as the King James says, vaunt itself. Why? Because the issue here, in their division here, the two ladies that are squabbling, the big issue isn't that they had a minor disagreement and they'll get over it. The issue is that they didn't love each other well. The factions that had arisen within the church because they didn't love each other well. Everything else that was going to go on in the church was there. It's going to come back to this same issue. They don't love each other well. This is the internal problem. It's the root of the sickness. Now, how do you convince someone who is sick that he is sick? When you walk up to them and you say, listen, I've seen these problems and you're sick. And they say, I'm fine. Okay. Now what? In the midst of their division, Paul, gets to the symptoms. And he starts with one symptom of their sickness, of their dis-ease. He starts with one of the symptoms that is absolutely undeniable. Basically, he's got all of these factions going around, they're all swirling around, and he says, aha, here's a problem that we can all agree on. Let's start with this, because listen, you saw what this problem is, right? This problem is a guy who takes his father's wife, and is having an ongoing sexual relationship. Mind you, this woman, because she's not addressed in that at all, it's not because it's all the man's fault and not her fault, it's because she's the one in the church, excuse me, he's the one in the church, and she's not. And so you address the problem with the person in the church, and what's the problem? And the problem is massive. And it's embarrassing, it should be embarrassing, And Paul says, okay, here's a good starting point. We all agree in this area that this is a problem. This is sin. This is kind of, what was that phrase that Martin Luther used? I think it was Luther that said co-belligerent, right? Was Luther the one that came up with that phrase, do you remember? No? I've heard it referred to, I'll put it that way to save myself. I've heard it referred to as something that Luther would talk about as co-belligerent, so he would, this is one place where we can all agree and you would start the unity at the co-belligerence. We all agree that this is wrong. So the big issue that he tackles then is this sexual sin where this man takes, has an ongoing sexual relationship. In fact, the word that he uses is the general word for sexual sin. It's the word pornea. And this pornea that he's involved in is of a man who goes in and has an ongoing sexual relationship with his stepmother. Look at how he begins to frame this. Remember that if this issue is so big and blatant, and we can't agree that this is a problem, then when it comes to the issue of the fine points and the razor-sharp edge of how we ought to love each other internally, how in the world is Paul going to get through to them if they can't even agree on this blatant sin? Verse one says, it is actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even by the pagans, for a man has his father's wife. A man was in an ongoing sexual relationship with his stepmother. As far as Paul's Jewish background and the Jews in the congregation, this is particularly hideous sin. If you have a cross reference in your Bible, then it's very likely that the verse where this is cross-referenced to is Leviticus 18.18. Because Leviticus 18.18, in that holiness code for Israel, one of the relationships that was forbidden was for a man to go in to his father's wife And remember in that day, we're not just dealing with divorce and remarriage, we're also dealing with polygamy. So his father may have had more than one wife, and it was unlawful for the son then to go in and say, well, you know, my dad doesn't love her like I love her, and to take what isn't his. You guys see now why I didn't want to preach this as the first sermon coming back, right? This is an uncomfortable topic to discuss in public. In Amos, the book of Amos, you don't have to turn there, but Amos chapter two, verse seven, we see that this sin is so hideous that it becomes the analogy that the Lord speaks through Amos in condemning the northern tribes of Israel. Amos is there to condemn them and what he condemns them for in verse 7, in Amos 2, 7, the last part of the verse says, a man and his father go into the same girl so that my holy name is profaned. What was the result of this sin? The result of the sin was that the name of God was profaned. What is the result of the sin in Corinth? He said it's such a horrible sin that the pagans don't even approve of this. And so what did it do? It defamed the name of Christ. In Amos it became the standard by which Israel was punished and cast into the clutches of the Assyrians. The point is, is that by Jewish standards, it was very clear that this was something that was hideous and not to be tolerated, egregious, even to the point of saying that this was a sin that was worse than most sins. According to Old Testament standards. But you remember that this church isn't in Israel. This church is in Greece. It's on the Corinthian isthmus. And remember we said that they had acclimatized, or they had capitulated in many ways, not to Jewish culture, but they had capitulated in many ways to Greco-Roman culture. Well what did the Greco-Roman culture think about this sin? Because Rome was a sexually licentious culture. The level of human depravity exercised by the Greco-Roman culture, I'll put it this way, I would feel very uncomfortable describing to you their level of sexual disease. These people were so sexually depraved and so licentious in their culture Some would even say that the Greco-Roman culture of the first century, the first century in which Paul and Apollos and Peter, they moved around the Mediterranean in that very empire. People would say that that culture would make the decline in American culture look like a, you know, a kindergarten. Now has American culture declined as far as our sense of morality? It hasn't just declined, right? It's kind of fallen off a cliff, it seems. We don't have any standard of right and wrong anymore. It just seems that there's no way to, other than just general consensus, and how is general consensus moved? You know, let's make some movies about it. You can make about 10 movies about a particular topic. If you can get them going, then pretty soon the rest of the world goes, the rest of the country goes, oh, I guess that's normal. But the Greco-Roman world was so disgusting. Just all kinds of things that even in our culture we think that's just too far. Not only is it too far, it's really unthinkable. I don't want to describe. Just so that you get an understanding of the culture, they had normalized rape. Everybody lived in a caste system, right? And if you were in a higher rank than other people, men were allowed to force themselves on basically anybody who was in a lower caste. And you might be frowned upon and people would say, you know, that was bad form. And you might also, in a case, you know, suffer the wrath of an angry husband or something like that. But in general, There was no law against it. No law against it. And this is one of dozens of things that I didn't want to read about this week that I did. Now folks, this practice of taking your father's wife is so egregious. Remember all the things that Rome allows? A lawyer from, I think it was the beginning of the second century, a Roman lawyer writes about this concerning that period of time, and he says, his name is Gaius, and he wrote a series of books called The Institutes. He records that this very practice, this very practice, this specific practice was deemed illegal by Roman standards. This was so egregious that Rome said, nah, too far, too far. Now listen, this is why Paul says that this kind of sexual immorality isn't even tolerated under Gentile or Roman mores. So how does Paul propose in this passage that they deal with the problem? There really are three things that need to be true of the church. And it's something that we even need to keep in mind in our day and age as we are the church. Maybe we don't have this particular problem, but remember, Paul is only using this particular problem because it's so egregious. This is something we need to keep in mind for all of our problems. All of the sin that a church may accidentally allow into her ranks, into her family, the first of these things that needs to be true is that we need to confess that there is a problem. We need to confess that there is a problem. We never get to the heart of any of this if we do not acknowledge that there is a serious problem. That is exactly what the Corinth church was loath to do. They wouldn't do it. There was no problem as they were concerned. There was a small tangential skirmish here, but it's not really a problem. In fact, Paul says that they were proud. Paul is essentially in verse two asking them, You guys think that you're such a wonderful church and yet this is going on. Verse two says, and you are arrogant or puffed up. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. Why were they proud? Now, there's two different views of why they were arrogant and proud. Some people will say, and I've held both of these views at times, so I don't think either of them is heretical. Some people will say that they were proud because of their toleration of this sin. That they were like, you know what? Most other churches, like that church in Ephesus and the church in Thessalonica, those churches are so closed-minded that they won't allow these people just to express their love however they want to. You know, we're an affirming church. We affirm these things because love is love, right? So some people think that that's what's being said here, and the fact is, if that was what was being said by the Corinthians, it would be egregious, because it would be egregious for that to happen today. When the Bible is clear on something, the church doesn't have an option of saying, you know what, the Bible's clear on this, but eh. I mean, we're the church, we're the people, right? So we can do whatever we want. It would be wrong, I don't think that this is what this is saying though. What I think is being mentioned here in verse two, and then later in verse six, speaking of their boasting, is the fact that they're just bragging about being such a good church. We're a great church. We're a wonderful church. I mean, you guys have never seen a church like the Corinthian Bible Church. or the Berean Bible Church of Corinth. You've never seen a church so good. We're, you know, we're just a lot more balanced and we're just a great church. And Paul is saying, you're a great church? How can you be boasting? How can you be puffed up about yourselves as a wonderful church when you have this thing, this cancer growing right smack dab out of your face? No, the first thing we have to do is to confess. You know what? We don't have anything to be proud about. Because there's a big problem. We have a big problem. The second thing. The second thing I am back and forth about how to put this. I have here written, because it's more graphic, I have the second point after confess that there's a problem. The second thing is submit to radical surgery. I mean, surgery is a pretty radical step, right? You're cutting through someone's skin, their first layer of their immune defense, and you're exposing them. It better be pretty serious. It's a very serious step, and that's why I did that. Maybe you could say, submit to radical intervention. That would be the other way to put it. Verse three says, for though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Now folks, that is radical. Do you understand what's being said here? He's literally saying if the problem, if somebody is engaged in this kind of sexual sin, your solution is to excommunicate them, is to put them out of the church, is to recognize them as you would an unbeliever. This is radical. Because we're one body, right? We're one body. And we see what happens when part of our body is taken from us. Whether that's because people have to move away, or people pass away, it always has a very profound effect on our body. Why? Because they are a part of us. I'm always curious, when people come back who haven't been at Berean for a while, and they look around, I'm always curious, you know, what percentage of the people here were actually here when you left? I'm tempted to ask Andrew that, but I won't. I won't put him on the spot like I did last week. And I won't call him out and call attention to him this week like I did last week. But it's always a curiosity of mine because we do have such a high turnover in this church, right? People come, they live here for a few years, they move away. Some people come and they try it out and they think, well, it's not for me. Some people come and they switch jobs and they have to leave. There's all kinds of reasons why people come and go. Some people come, they get mad at me, and then they leave. That's always a good one. But The fact is, is when people leave, we feel it, right? And there better be a good reason for that. And do you notice here, folks, do you notice here that this is a very, very serious issue? So serious that we have to submit to what amounts to A spiritual amputation. And guess what? If something needs to be amputated. It needs to be amputated. Now, why would you have to go through this surgery? You have to go through this surgery in preparation for recovery. But you can't start to recover until you get rid of the infection. And not even that, but the actual person that's being cut out here in verse 5, it says, You deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. It seems to me that the idea here is that you put this person out and being out from the blessing of the church because there is when you gather with a group of people like this who love the Lord and who are committed to walking in his truth there is a collateral blessing that extends to when you are around people who are just honest and kind and nice and benevolent that collateral blessing can extend miles beyond the boundaries of the church. And what ends up happening is there's a lot of people who like those boundaries. They like that collateral blessing and they're going to get as close as as you can. But the fact is, is that even for those who are true believers in the church, that blessing extends to us. What happens when you are outside that realm of blessing outside the church? then you don't get that overflow of what God's doing in my life. You don't get the overflow of God convicting me that I need to be more loving. Some of you will remember years ago when I got a phone call. I've used this illustration before, so I'll go through it quickly, but it illustrates the point. I got an email from somebody, a guy who was in Aberdeen, Scotland, and he said, I just got to reach out to the churches. I don't know anybody there, but I'm getting a job at University of Hawaii Hilo. I just finished my PhD in some kind of biology. And he said, I'm getting a job there. And me and my family need some place to stay for probably up to six weeks when we first get there, because I'm not going to get any pay. And he was just finishing up as a PhD student, didn't have any money left. And I wasn't about to answer this, and I invite some stranger into my house for six weeks, no less. And I thought, there's no way I'm gonna do this. I thought, well, this is too big of an ask. And of course, at the time we were going through, I was preaching through 1 John. And 1 John talks about hospitality. And I was like, really? Like almost to the week, it was like within a week of getting that email, I'm preaching through this text that says, talks about hospitality and inviting people in, other believers in who are, and I'm like, seriously? And so I wrote a letter, I didn't write a letter back right away. I noted the day that he was supposed to be here, that he was supposed to leave. And I put that on my calendar and then I wrote him an email two days before he was supposed to leave. My assumption in that was if I tell him six months out, he's just going to stop looking. And so I'm just going to, folks, then the guy came and they ended up staying with us for like a week and a half. You guys remember the White Houses, right? And they moved over to Oahu and abandoned us. This is the kind of blessing that flows through the church. Why did they get that blessing? They got that blessing because the Lord was working on my heart at that time, and it wasn't magical. In a way, it was mystical, but it was just kind of a natural outbreak. If I'm reading this, and this is who I'm supposed to be, and then this guy comes and asks for help, and then I say, well, this is what the Bible says I'm supposed to be, but this probably doesn't apply because You know, they're so far away. And I don't know them. When you dismiss somebody from the church and excommunicate them, you do remove them from the collateral blessing of the church. Now, folks, what happens? You get comfortable within the blessing of God and you forget, just like Israel did, we sometimes forget that the provision that God has put around us and the way he's cared for us is all in that same idea. That God is just, God just loves his people. He does things through his people. You remove this man and he's removed from that and it might open his eyes so that he can come to repentance. And it says so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. So you have that surgery to prepare for recovery. You also have the surgery to prevent infection. to prevent infection. Paul here uses the language of Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. Look at verse 7, he says, cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened for Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Verse 6 says, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? cleanse out that old leaven. Leaven here, as is often used in scripture, is an analogy to sin, and it's the idea that when you allow sin into some place, and you just allow it there, and you think, well, as long as it doesn't touch me, and as long as it doesn't affect the church too much, it's okay, but what you don't realize is that sin is inherently infectious. And it just spreads piece by piece, part by part. The yeast begins to release its spores and it infects the whole lump and the whole lump becomes leavened. Everything becomes contaminated if you don't cut it out. The medical, I guess, analogy to this would be something like gangrene or MRSA. You don't just put topical ointment on a bacterial infection that is resistant to antibiotics. Had a friend who slide tackled somebody up at Shipman Park one time, just like you would in a normal soccer game, and got a little strawberry on his leg. And it got worse and worse. And now he's got a hole about the size of a silver dollar in his leg, because they had to dig it out and skin graft and all that kind of stuff. It spreads. It's infectious. You have to cut it out. to prevent infection, and then the third reason for that radical intervention is to prove our positional sanctification. To prepare for recovery, to prevent infection, and to prove our positional sanctification, it says, for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Why do we get rid of the sin? We get rid of the sin to live up to the spiritual reality. Guess what? As Christians, because our sin has been paid for by Christ, we don't pay for any of it. And just like Paul tells the Romans, then that means he's giving us grace, so what should I say? Should I continue in sin that grace should abound? No. You live up to and you strive to please the Lord, the one who died for that sin, to prove our positional sanctification. So we confess that there's a problem. We submit to radical intervention or radical surgery or even amputation. And then third, we celebrate Passover. We celebrate Passover. Notice at the end of that verse, it says, for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now folks, it's possible that there's a reference here to the communion of the church, of taking communion in the Lord's table. but more so I think that when he says here that we do this in sincerity and truth, that we constantly, daily, moment by moment, live in sincere, truthful celebration of what Christ did for us. Be constant about your remembering of the cross. Don't be flippant, right? Don't be flippant about the cross. Be constant, be sincere, be truthful as you constantly celebrate the cross. So, a church in turmoil, a church that is riddled with factionalism, A church that has been acclimatized to the ambient culture, immoral culture. At the very least, at the very least, Paul is saying, can we agree on this? That fornication is bad. Very, very bad. that this kind of sin needs to be dealt with, and that we as a church ought to pursue Christ always. This is how Paul starts his declaration of their need for love. Can we at least start with this point of agreement, that these egregious sins, and folks, he uses this But I think it can be illustrative to us if we don't have anybody in our congregation who is having an ongoing sexual relationship with his stepmother. If we don't have that, it could be illustrative to us of other sins. Are we tolerating these sins? Can we at least agree that the church should not be tolerant of sin, open sin? Should we be gracious? Should we be gracious about people growing in Christ and that nobody is going to be perfect? Absolutely gracious. In dealing with sin, we should be gracious. But when there is open, flagrant, and defiant sin in the congregation, a sin that will not be repented of, where the person literally says, I kinda like what I'm doing, and forget you. And forget the church, and it's me and Jesus. then we as the church need to take sin seriously, and we as the church need to pursue Christ. Now, now that we can all agree, we're ready to continue in the book. So verse, no, I'm just kidding. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you so much We thank you for your love. We thank you for how you care for us. We thank you, Lord, that you did not leave us here on this earth as your church, as the church of your son, Jesus Christ, without any instruction concerning this, that we would be churches that are filled with infection and in the process of perpetual death. but you have taught us how better to pursue Christ. May you help us to take these things seriously. May we walk in truth. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. For our closing song, I asked Andrew if he would come back up and play that song that we learned today, and that will be our closing song, and then I'll come up and close in prayer. All right, let's stand and sing one more time, yet not I, but through Christ in me. Here we go. What gift of praise is Jesus my Redeemer? There is no more for heaven now to give. He is my joy, my righteousness and freedom, my steadfast love, my deep and boundless peace. To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus. for my life is wholly bound to His. Oh, how strange and divine, I can say all is mine, yet not I, but through Christ in me. is through the deepest valley we'll lead. Though the night has been won, and the shadows overcome, my sin hath been made. For Jesus bled and suffered for my father, and he was raised to earth again. To this my hope, my sin hath been defeated. I I know my hope is Yet Father, we have heard your word. We have sung your praises. Our hearts have meditated on the truth of who Jesus Christ is. And we pray now that as we go from this place that the word of Christ would not quickly depart from our hearts and our minds, but that it would be the subject of our meditation all the week long. And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and forever. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You're dismissed.