The scripture reading is Exodus chapter 12. We are in 1 Corinthians 5, and Paul makes reference there to the Passover. And so I thought it would be good for us to refresh our memories by reading Exodus chapter 12 and this account of the Lord's instruction to the Israelites as they're about to come out of Egypt. Exodus chapter 12, verse 1, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb, according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, Then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons, according to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. And you shall keep it until the 14th day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roast it on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning, you shall burn. In this manner, you shall eat it. with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. As a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven out of your houses. For if anyone eats what is leavened, From the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day, you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day, a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But when everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. For on this very day, I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever. In the first month, from the 14th day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening. For seven days, no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened. In all your dwelling places, you shall eat unleavened bread. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, As he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses. And the people bowed their heads and worshiped. Then the people of Israel went and did so. as the lord had commanded moses and erin so they did and there we have the the word of the lord and that that great picture then of the sacrifice of the lamb of god the lord jesus christ s his blood covering his covering his his people well we come in our consideration of Paul's first epistle to the church at Corinth. And we began last time in chapter five. And there's a few other points that we don't want to miss. And so we're back again here in this chapter. Let's pray and ask the Lord's blessing then on the ministry of his word. Father, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for the Scriptures, where we can say it is written, and it's written by the hand of God. The Scripture is given to us by inspiration through men that you chose to write your word, that your truth and doctrine might be preserved. as a blessing to your people and to your church. And so, Father, we come to your word now, acknowledging it is your word. We pray that by your spirit, you would enable us to understand it, that you would use the power of your word to renew our minds, that we might better serve and honor you. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen. Well, as we saw last time in 1 Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul rebuked the Corinthians for their arrogance. Because in their arrogance, and this is a sin, the part of the Corinthians that we see all through Paul's writings as he's rebuking them, their arrogance, in their arrogance, they were tolerating gross habitual, ongoing, open sin on the part of a particular member of their church. And Paul admonished them, as you remember here, in the opening of this chapter. It's actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated, even among the pagans. And he rebukes them for their arrogance and told them that not only should you not be boasting about how wide and open and accepting you are here in your church, you should be grieved that such a thing is in your midst. And so he instructs them to put the man out of their fellowship. Well, what I want to do is show you, by way of illustration, how faithful Christians in eras gone by faithfully obeyed the Lord's instruction here and didn't permit this kind of evil then in their church. Now, Paul, it's important for us to understand Paul is not talking about being a church, a place, a group of Christ's people where the slightest little sin is going to be hammered on. And we all sin. If it were for sins that we all commit, we'd all be excommunicated from the church. That's not what Paul is talking about. Paul is talking about sin that is ongoing that characterizes the sinner's life. And so he's a person that's unrepentant. They're a hypocrite, you see. They profess Christ. They're a so-called brother, but they are walking in sin. That is the situation that he is addressing. Well, I wanted to point you to some faithful Christians, as I said. from days gone by. And it concerns Christians that came into New England in the day. You've all heard of the Mayflower. And they had another ship called, I think it was called the Speedwell, and numbers of other ships. But they came over from England and really colonized, then, this nation. And one of the false claims that we're hammered with, you probably have heard this maybe since you were even a kid. We hear coming from what I just unashamedly call nowadays the lying left, okay, the lying left. One of the lies of the ungodly that hates Christ and hates his church is that our nation, America, was not founded as a Christian nation. And so we should be throwing all this. Our money shouldn't say, what does it say? In God we trust, right? It shouldn't say that that should be done away with. The Bible and any reference to the Ten Commandments saying that's got to be out of the schools, everything. We just need to be cleansed of all of this stuff. That's what's causing the trouble here is this religion thing. And that kind of a thing that goes on. And so Satan, who's behind it all, uses his minions in various ways to propagandize, that just means to brainwash people into this idea that, no, this was all a lie, that what needs to happen is that Christianity needs to be purged from the nation. But people like that. don't want to be confused with facts, all right? They just make these statements, these declarations, and expect people to believe them, which so many people do. But what I want to do this morning is give you some facts about how this nation was founded, and then by people that we can then look at as an example of obedience to the word of God in their churches. And we'll bring it back into, then, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Now, most of you have heard of Cotton Mather. And I left the book over there on my desk. But he wrote a pretty thick, now it's a two-volume set. I don't know if it is still in print or not. But it's entitled The Great Works of Christ in America. Now, you don't want to dismiss Cotton Mather as, again, So much of the propaganda that you hear is, oh, he was one of those superstitious, wicked, mean-spirited people that killed off the witches in the Salem witchcraft trials and so on. Cotton Mather was, in fact, a godly man and a very intelligent man, in contrast to how he's much maligned in our day. the great works of Christ in America. Now, one of the problems is that when people make the claim that America was not founded as a Christian nation, they don't go far enough back into history to the real beginning. The real beginning of this nation didn't happen in 1776. It happened when God brought his people from England over into this country, into New England. So I'll give you some quotes here by Cotton Mather. He surely knew a whole lot more about this history than we do. He lived it. He was in it. He lived in the mid to later 1600s. Immigration, you might say, colonization was happening in the early 1600s. So he knew these things firsthand. He said, for example, one main end or goal, one main end of all of these undertakings, that is, these people leaving England And they did so at great cost and peril, as he said, to settle in the new world, which they called a howling wilderness. A howling. And it was. But one main end of all these undertakings was to plant the gospel in these dark regions of America. And I am now to tell mankind that as for one of these English They called them plantations, just, they mean colonies, okay, that were planted. As for one of these English plantations, namely Plymouth, the first one, right, this, that is the bringing of the gospel to America, this was not a main purpose or end, but the sole end upon which it was built. That's what, you know, now I can remember as a kid in grade school Thanksgiving would roll around. And what would happen? Now, see, this would be politically incorrect today. But what would happen is, well, all the kids, you know, you would dress up as pilgrims or you would make paper hats and whatever as pilgrims and turkeys and you'd hear stories about the pilgrims and the Indians having this feast, and so forth. Now, that's not so much what happened. There's so many distortions that have come our way. There was a handful of friendly, kind, native people. One of them was named Squanto. Cotton Mather mentions him, and so on. But for the most part, And again, to even say this is politically incorrect, right? But the gospel is politically incorrect. It was a savage land, and it was filled with savage people. And one of the biggest threats to the church, the establishment of the church, was that they might just be slaughtered, then by the savages and some of those things happened. Well, he goes on here, he also says, all of this they cheerfully underwent in hope that they should settle the worship and order of the gospel and the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in these regions. Now, the reason I mentioned what it was like in grade school for me when I was a kid, the teacher never mentioned that these people were Christians, and they came to establish Christ's church in the darkest regions then of the world. That was never mentioned. Just turkey and dressing, and everybody is dressed up like a pilgrim, and everybody's getting along, and these kinds of things. They underwent tremendous suffering cheerfully. Now what's interesting about this is that the thousands of people that came over from England, lots of them had never even seen one another. They didn't know each other. But this was a movement of God to move his people to establish his church then in this nation. What were some of the things that they suffered, that they underwent, as Cotton Mather says, cheerfully? They left the comfort, estates, and sometimes wealth of their homeland. Some of these people were of nobility, but they were genuine Christians. They risked life in crossing the Atlantic, a journey of many weeks. That's something that would be very difficult for us to even comprehend, right, what that would be like. Risking death at the hands of violent savages in the New World, famine and the elements, and the cold, sickness, drought, things from which up to half of them died in the early years. Of the first 100 that came over, 50 of them died in the first season. Almost all of them were sick. And oftentimes, there was only five people that were well enough to minister to and help those who were sick. And yet, they went. They knew these things. They experienced these things. And they went out like Abraham went from his homeland into a place and a region that they had never seen. And their first priority was to establish a church and to call godly pastors over to minister and shepherd to those people. Now, that was at Plymouth. Before long, though, a second colony was established. And this one was at Salem. in Massachusetts. Listen to Cotton Mather describe it. A beginning thus made upon the purpose of planting a country of English and Reformed Churches. These were Reformed Churches that came. They made application to two non-conformist ministers who were still back in England to ask them to come over to the New World to serve the cause of God and of religion in the beginning of those churches. thus driven out of their native country, sought their graves on the American strand. Now, see, one thing that was happening in England is that the Church of England was practicing things that we would call Romanisms, all right? They were adapting things that were unbiblical, that their source was the mere tradition of man, not the word of God. And so there were people, the Puritans, who refused to conform. What were there? A couple of thousand Puritan ministers that were kicked out of their churches and forbidden by the king to return to them and to preach there. And so there was this persecution going on in Salem. And so these pilgrims were going to the New World to establish churches that would practice biblical Christianity, where the word of God would be their only source of authority. He goes on, these ministers came over to Salem in the summer of the year 1629. And with them, there came over a considerable number of excellent Christians who no sooner arrived, but they set themselves about the church work, which was their errand there. This pilgrimage went on for 12 years, this movement of people from England together to carry on this transplantation. It was indeed a banishment because really they were being banished by the persecution from the Church of England rather than a removal which was suffered by this glorious generation. And you may be sure sufficiently afflictive to men of even men of a state that is wealth and standing, breeding, and way of life, conversation, as the hazard which they ran in this undertaking was of such extraordinariness that nothing less than a strange and strong impression from heaven could have thereunto moved the hearts of such people. The God of heaven served as it were a summons upon the spirits of his people in the English nation, stirring up the spirit of thousands who had never seen the faces of each other with the most unanimous inclination to leave all the pleasant accommodations of their native country and go over a terrible ocean into a more terrible desert for the pure enjoyment of all his ordinances." Now listen, he's really saying here now the reason that he wrote these records, this history of Christ's work in America. He said, it's now necessary that we make known to posterity the reasons for this undertaking, the movement of God to establish his church, lest they come at length, passage of time, to forget and neglect the true interest of New England, the true reason that it was founded. And that's what's happened in this nation, that over the centuries and as time has gone along, the true purpose of the existence of this nation has been forgotten. And Satan has always been working with his lies and his assaults to destroy Christ's church. So like the law of God in the days just before godly King Josiah, the law of God has been forgotten in this nation, you see. So how did our nation begin? Well, it began with the great works of Christ in America. And it began when he moved his people to leave everything and go out, not knowing where they were going, into a howling desert to take his gospel and establish his church in a land that, get this, now don't forget this, in a land, in a place that was unknown to the apostles. When the New Testament, in the New Testament, when the apostles talk about obeying the great commission of Christ to go out into all the world and preach the gospel. Now, of course, the Lord Jesus knew, but his apostles in his early church, they didn't have any comprehension that America even existed. They're thinking, the world of the Roman Empire, and even it reaches, and so forth. But it wasn't until, what we could say, the fullness of time on God's calendar, when it was time to take the gospel into these dark regions, into this, as they called it, a howling desert. And these are the real roots, then, of our nation. This is interesting. Cotton Mather, he listed a few of the things that the Lord used to impel his people to leave England and go to America. He says, first of all, a majority of the visible church had come under desolation. The visible church. Similar to our day. Good luck trying to find a biblical sound church that wasn't infected with the traditions of men. And that's what had happened in England. In Christ's remnant, his true people had had enough of that. Secondly, it had become, in England, almost impossible for a good and upright man to maintain his godly walk without being the object of scorn and contempt. Now one of the things this tells us is that history repeats itself. The condition of our nation today and the churches in our nation, this thing has been played out before. This is almost 400 years ago and the pilgrims, these Puritans, were experiencing the same thing. Now get the next thing that happened there. This one really hits home. The schools of learning and religion were so corrupted as that most children, even the best, the wittiest, and of the fairest hopes are being perverted and corrupted and utterly overthrown by the multitude of evil examples and licentious behaviors in these schools. And that's where we're at today. That's where we're at today. You know, you read this history, and you look at this, and how they were motivated to move, and to head out, leave England, and go to a place where they could practice godly religion, right? And you start thinking, we need a place like that. You know, maybe time for a mass. Well, but where would you go today, you see? We don't have any dark howling wilderness. We're on the edge of what we've got right now, and so here we are. But these are the same things. The schools have become so corrupt that even children, intelligent children and children from good Christian households, they're being corrupted in the schools. And so these people wanted to take their children away from that. Now, what we want to do is, this morning, in relation to 1 Corinthians 5, then, is consider, then, how did these godly people, these genuine Christians, who looked to the word of God as their only authority and not the traditions of men, how did they govern and operate in their churches? Well, here's one example, again, from Cotton Mather. was admitted to their new churches without regard to a blameless and holy life. They resolved upon using discipline in the congregation against scandalous offenders according to the word of God. And some scandalous persons were denied admission into the communion of the church. And this began to raise, catch this, a good deal of trouble, right? They faithfully said, no, you say you're a Christian. You're one of these so-called brethren that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 5, but you're living a scandalous life. We will not receive you into our church then unless you repent. Well, what happens? The fangs come out, right? And here's an example. of one of the things that happened. He says, of these kind of people were especially two brothers, one a lawyer and the other a merchant, both men of parts that stayed in reputation in the place. These men gathered a company together, separate from the public assembly of the church, and gathered a following. Isn't that what happens so often, right? They gather a following using the very common prayer book in their meetings. Now, what were they doing? So these guys had come over. Why did they bother to leave England and come over? Well, they must have had some kind of ulterior motive. We don't know. They claimed to be Christians. They'd come out of the Church of England. they still held to the traditions, the false, unbiblical traditions that were written in the Book of Common Prayer that the Church of England used as its guide for worship, and which the Puritans rejected then, you see. And so what these guys did is, well, you refuse to let us into your church? Fine. We'll gather a group of people, and we'll have our own worship. And we are going to use the Book of Common Prayer. That's what we are going to do, you see. And so here they go with this divisiveness. The governor, perceiving a disturbance arising among the people for these reasons, sent for these brothers, who accused, to the governor, the ministers of the Reformed churches of departing from the orders of the Church of England, and claimed that these Puritans were separatists, schismatics, divisive, and would shortly become Anabaptists, and what all that entailed. The ministers, however, gave good answer to these charges. And the governor, who was a godly man himself, made a verdict in their behalf, in their favor. So the brothers returned to England with very furious threatenings against the new church in New England. And yet that new church continued and flourished under the pastoral care of Mr. John Higgins. Why don't churches practice church discipline? Why don't churches today obey Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians 5? Why is it? Well, they don't want trouble. You see, it's going to be costly. It's always costly to stand for Christ. And so they don't do it. Well, Cotton Mather also mentions here that before 1640, there was about 4,000 pilgrims that came over from England. And it didn't take too long. Over a period of 50 years, as he says, much of that howling wilderness became a pleasant land. And there was 100,000 people. total at that time. So God blessed his church and protected his church against many, many threats that Satan would use to destroy it. But as these Christians obeyed his commandments, they kept his day holy, they were careful about their testimony and how they walked, he blessed them. And they obeyed Paul's instruction Listen to it again, 1 Corinthians 5. For though absent in body, I'm present in spirit. And as if present, I've 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. And again, he goes on later in the chapter, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those who are outside Purge the evil person from among you. So there it is. Purge the evil person from among you. Now, Paul is going to go on now, and that's why we read about the Passover in Exodus 12, to show that in the Old Testament account of the Passover concerning putting all the leaven out from their houses during that seven-day period of time, What the Lord has given us in the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a picture of Christ's redemption and of his church, all right? So listen to him do this here in verses 7 to 8. 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. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, that is, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." So what is Paul saying? After he rebukes the Corinthians, he instructs them, as he's instructing us, be who you are. You know, that's so much of the theology of Paul, that he, you know, Ephesians, and goes through three chapters or so. And then he says, therefore, right? And essentially, what he's saying, be who you are. Don't you know who you are in Christ? Be who you are. So Christ is our Passover lamb. He has been sacrificed, then, once and for all. And in a sense, then, we are celebrating Passover continually, not by re-sacrificing Christ as Rome does, but rather that we celebrate a continual Passover in this sense, as Paul applies it here. We are a new lump. We are unleavened. Christ has purified his people. from sin. We've been made new creations in Christ. And so our lives and our churches are to reflect that the leaven has been taken away from us. So no church and no individual member of a church is ever going to be blessed by the Lord if we become arrogant and disobedient, as these Corinthians then were. They boasted about how wonderful their church was when in fact it wasn't wonderful at all and they needed to cleanse out the leaven and put the wicked man out. You know, it's easy for us, so easy for us to be affected by the thinking of the world. And one of the tenets of the world in which we live is that it's mechanistic, that There is no supernatural. Or if there is the supernatural, that is to say God, he never messes with us. He doesn't intervene with us. I mean, maybe he might give a good thing now and then, but surely he doesn't intervene. And many of our churches seem to operate that way. that they can just disregard the Lord's commandments and yet expect him then to bless them. And surely he would never chastise them. He would never do that. But this Corinthian church, because of their neglect, as we'll see later in the book, this Corinthian church had been chastised for their disobedience to the Lord. Some of them, the Lord had struck dead. And some of them, he struck down with illness. These early settlers of America, these people who were godly people, our brothers and sisters in Christ, they knew full well that if their efforts to establish Christ's church in America were going to be blessed, then it was necessary that they be obedient to God's word. And when they got lethargic and careless and began to neglect things, maybe they neglected the Lord's day, maybe they just neglected their churches, or maybe they were being more conformed to the world, they knew that when something happened to them, it was the hand of God calling them to repentance. So what were some of the things that happened? Plagues, famines, severe drought and cold. They knew this is the Lord, and we are to improve upon. We're to learn a lesson from this. We are to repent, and they would call fastings and holy days, fastings to humble themselves before the Lord, to confess their sin, and to then repent. What is the worldview that you and I have been infected with so much? It's that when something like that happens, be it a famine or a plague or hurricane or whatever, you're not even to consider God had anything to do with that at all, right? Something good happens to us or whatever, then, well, that could have been God, after all, we deserve and so forth, right? But the idea, the idea that God had anything to do with a famine, or a drought, or a hurricane, or a tornado, or a flood, or any of these kinds of things. A plague, right? The idea, the very idea, if you believe such a thing, you're marked as a fool. Well, these people knew full well that their God was sovereign, that God is sovereign. So this comes back to, well, what do we believe? Do we believe? in God at all? Who is God? Has he revealed himself? Has he spoken to us? Is the Bible then the word of God? Do we really believe these things? What does Paul say in Romans 3 about man and his sin? There is no fear of God in their eyes. And that's what we see today. There's this bold, evil sinning and demonstrating that we live in a nation where the people do not have any then fear then of the Lord. Well, we do practice church discipline in this church when we become members of this church. The covenant that we profess to enter into with one another includes the fact that we will look to our persons, ourselves, that we would live a godly life in Christ. And we would be careful then how we walk. And that furthermore, that if we were to become negligent and walking in sin and we then we should expect to be admonished by the pastor, the elders that are admonished by one another and that in this church we practice church discipline. Now we've had to practice church discipline in years past, numbers of times, probably didn't practice it at times that it needed to be practiced and that's on my and the elders' shoulders then. Hopefully, we've learned by that. But the cases that we've had to deal with, and many of you are aware of them, the sin was plain and obvious. And yet, what has happened so often, it's one reason that there's not more people here than used to be, is that when we've practiced church discipline, according to Scripture, and we've confronted an unrepentant person and even put them out of the Church, what do they do? Remember those two guys that Cotton Mather talked about? They go out, and they like to gather a following. That's what they do. They like to gather a following. And so most of the time, what has happened, there's been other people, other members of the Church that have gone with them, gone out. Well, now, Paul's instruction. Paul's instruction is that not only are we to put a wicked person, a hypocrite, out from our midst, and by the way, for that person's benefit as well, so that they might be brought to repentance, but we are not even to eat with such a one. What does that mean? Well, it means then that the whole church needs to stand together And if a person, a wicked, unrepentant person is put out of the church, you're not going to go eat with that person. You're not going to socialize then with that person. We're going to steer clear, have nothing to do then with that person. And if we refuse and we continue to fellowship with a person like that, we're being blatantly disobedient then to to the Lord, you see. But God blesses his church for obedience to his word. And by way of encouragement, I wanted to tell you, I think God is blessing this church. I think God is blessing this church. Probably, see, I've been your pastor for over 30 years. I would say that the last three years have been, in some ways, the hardest, but the most fruitful. You say, well, what do you mean fruitful? The place isn't packed. We're not a mega church. In our sanctification, in our growth in the Lord, And I'm seeing you be more faithful to remember the Lord's day, to keep it holy. And that's encouraging. That's the Lord working with us then, you see. I think that another part of God's blessing on our church is that if a wicked person creeps in among us, right, claiming to be a Christian, and this happens to the best of churches, creeps in and wearing a disguise, that it won't be long before they will not be comfortable here. They won't be comfortable. And that is God's blessing as he's protecting us, removing then the leaven. Again, some of you, numbers of you were here that over 30 years ago, right? When our upstairs sanctuary was full or pretty full, all right? Well, what was it? If you were here and you look back on that, you know that what we had here, the place was infested with leaven. That was the problem. The leaven wasn't being put out. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed. He's drawn us out of the kingdom of darkness. He's saved us. He's made us new creations. Be who you are. And we look back on that as a result, then, like a garden that's left to go to weed, Maybe out of all those people, there might have been five, really, that we could see any indication that they truly knew the Lord. Now, Paul concludes his instruction on this subject with this clarification. He says, starting in verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter, he had written to them previously, not to associate with sexually immoral people. Now, he wanted to make sure that they didn't misunderstand. He says, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters. Since then, you need to go out of the world. I'm not talking about people who don't even claim to be Christian, all right? But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, all right, who claims to be a Christian. Don't associate with him if he's guilty of sexual immorality, or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those, now look at this, inside the church whom we are to judge. We're to be wise in this, you see. God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. That is his command. And I know that I'm not exaggerating by saying that there is gross and rampant disobedience to that command of Christ in most churches then today. Paul's not teaching here some kind of monastic life. Come on, you guys. Isolate yourselves from the world. Get thee to a nunnery or a monastery or something like that. That history teaches us that doesn't work very well either as far as holiness of living. He says, you know, to separate from sinners completely, you'd have to go out of the world. In fact, you'd have to die because you still got sin in your flesh, you know, the remnants of the old man. And so I'm not talking, Paul says, I'm not talking to you about isolating yourself from people in this world. But we are to separate ourselves from people who claim to be Christians, but who walk in sin. Now, listen to this observation. Many, if not most, professing Christians, people who claim to be Christians, excluding the liberal unbelieving element that calls itself the church. So I'm not talking about that element where licentiousness and we're going to embrace it. You can be walking in all kinds of sexual immorality and still be a Christian and this kind of thing. I'm not talking about the liberal, then, unbelieving so-called church. But many, if not most, professing Christians focus upon separating themselves from sin in the world. Right? I don't do this. I don't do that. I don't hang out with people like this, and so forth. They separate themselves from sinners. But they neglect to separate themselves from professing Christians who walk in sin. And those are the very kind of people that Paul's telling us not even to eat with. And so they get it all wrong, and the leaven is left among them, you see. And the church ends up with a bad testimony then to the world. I can remember as an example of this years ago in a church that we, one of our earlier churches that we planted a long time ago, he told me, he got a hold of me and he told me that there was a woman in the church that was being very divisive. I mean, a real troublemaker. And it was a real problem. She and her husband had moved there from another state. And their old pastor had, and this happens all the time, had highly recommended them as the most saintly people and so forth, rather than to lie. and telling the truth. Well, she was trouble there. And so I told that fellow who was on the board of that church, I pointed him to this passage in 1 Corinthians 5. And I told him, that's what you need to do. If she won't repent of her sin and cease her divisiveness, you have to put her out of the church. You have to do that. And his response was so typical, so typical. I've heard it. over and over again from pastors and other members of churches, oh, oh, we couldn't do that. That would divide the church. Well, you know, if obedience to the word of God divides your church, your church needs to be divided, because it means you've got a whole bunch of people in there that are walking as Christians, but in fact refuse to believe and obey then the Word of God, but they never did do that. And I told them then, after some time, and I found out they hadn't done anything about it, I said, you know, this is a pattern with you guys. I know you well enough. This is a pattern with you. You are supposed to be leaders of the church, but you always refuse to do the hard thing that God calls you to. I wrote to them a letter along those lines. And he later told me, oh, your letter created quite a stir. But they still would not then obey. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Now think of this. What if the Israelites, at that first Passover, When Moses gives them the Lord's instruction, what if any of them refuse to obey the Lord in regard to this leaven? I like leaven in my bread. I don't want to eat that flat stuff. I'm not going to do that. We'll put the blood on the doorstep. And probably there were some, unbelieving, that didn't even do that. But we'll put the blood. OK, we'll do that and so on. But we'll keep a little of the leaven here in our homes. What do you think would have happened to them when the angel of death passed over? We don't need to wonder. Remember Exodus 12, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven out of your houses. For if anyone eats what is leavened from the first day until the seventh day, That person shall be cut off from Israel. That person, you're gone. You're not going to be in the midst of my people. It might even be harsher than that. It might have meant at that time death. But they would be cut off from the people. You're outside the camp. You're not going to be here. our presence. He repeats it in the 19th verse, for seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he's a sojourner, a foreigner, or a native then of the land. Well, there it is then. That's the clear instruction of the Lord. And it is obedience to God's word that Evidence is a couple of things. It evidences whether we really are Christians, as we claim to be. But it also results in this is the kind of church and the kind of individual that God blesses for obeying then his word. If we love Christ, if we're born again, then we're going to love Christ. And if we love him, we will obey him. Father, we thank you for these truths and commands from your word. We believe them. We pray that you would forgive us for the times when we have been neglectful in cleaning out the leaven. We ask your forgiveness for the times that so often happen that we don't clean out the leaven of sin from our own lives. And so we pray, Father, that by your spirit, you would impel us to see our sin and to hate it and to repent of it. And we pray this all in Christ's name, amen.