You've got to wonder if the author of that hymn didn't have Pilgrim's Progress in mind. Because he comes under conviction in the first place he goes, he gets detoured to Mount Sinai and the law and finds no comfort there. So until he's pointed by evangelists in the right direction and to Christ. And so I can remember a lot of years ago, a long time ago, probably the early 70s, that, you know, Corey Ten Boom that wrote The Hiding Place book was pretty well known. I mean, eventually they made a movie and so forth. But The Hiding Place, and it was talked about a lot in the experience of her and her father. And I think she was the only survivor of her family from the Holocaust, but they were arrested for hiding the Jews in their house. But I can remember reading that book, and just to show you how kind of the Lord turns the lights on, even though I was raised going to church and so forth. But I can remember telling Verla, it must have been about 1973 or something like that. But I was reading that book, and I remember telling her, hey, She's saying that Jesus is the hiding place, you know? Duh, that's the point of the whole thing there. But it is. He is our hiding place, our covering, then, of righteousness. Well, the scripture reading this morning is Revelation chapter 5, speaks about the Lamb of God. And we're going to see that Paul talks about the Lamb of God and the Passover and so forth in 1 Corinthians 5. in a moment. So here we are Revelation chapter five beginning in verse one. Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals. And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though it had been slain with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals. For you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. Then I looked. And I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders, the voice of many angels numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that's in them saying, to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever the four living creatures said amen and the elders fell down and worshipped there is the word of god and uh... the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world well as we come to are passage here this morning once again in our series of in first Corinthians. Let's ask the Lord's blessing as we come to his word and also I want to mention I forgot this until earlier, but I wanted to us also to remember to pray for a lady Kathleen Kathleen. She's an elderly lady lives back in the Midwest and she I talked to her this week, and she specifically asked us to pray for her. She's having to care for her husband who has dementia and increasingly, and she's been trying to do it all herself. And she's trying and trying to find some help and something, and she asked us to pray that we would be able to, that we'd pray for her that she'd be able to find someone. to help. She's a solid and genuine Christian that I've talked to many times, and she's been very much encouraged by our church. And so Kathleen, then, is her name. Father, we thank you for your word now as we come to it. We thank you that the Lamb was slain for our sin. And Father, as we learn more about the Lord Jesus Christ and specifically about his church, your church, the body of Christ, we pray that you would teach us and by your spirit illumine our minds that we might grasp more clearly just what your church is and what it means to be a member in the body of Christ. We pray this all, and we want to remember Father Kathleen. We ask your blessing upon her. We pray that you would provide someone to help her, to help her care for her husband, or even a place where he can go and receive that help. And we pray this all in Christ's name. Amen. Well, here we are then again at 1 Corinthians 5. We wanted to look at it one more time. Specifically, we wanted to talk about Paul's reference in verses 6 through 8 to the Passover and the implications of the Passover then for us. So just to renew or refresh our thinking here, let's follow along as I read the first eight verses here. It is actually reported that there's sexual immorality among you. and of a kind that's not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who's done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I'm 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 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, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, I think that, just a note here, I think that one of the things that is very much lacking in local churches today that profess to be Bible-believing. And I don't say this with any intent to be boastful or anything about our church and our ministry here, because we've had to learn this as well. But if you listen to the preaching that is present in so many local churches today, They don't begin like this. This is not the content. It's hard for me to describe. I've never really been able to really pin it down. But as I've referred, I think I've mentioned this to you before, and you're all familiar with this, how Lloyd-Jones, every single sermon, every single sermon, he began in the same way. Jason remembers this. the text of Scripture to which I would call your attention this morning. That's how he always began it. He went right to the Scripture. And he looked at it, and he would have spent more time on this passage here than we will. But nevertheless, you see, we have to stop Looking at the people in the church that profess to be Christians and adapting our preaching to them, you've got to come down to their level. You don't want to get too intricate here in your preaching and examining this text carefully. You're going to lose them. Well, I would say this. If the preaching of God's word in clarity and in detail, loses someone, they're not a Christian. They're not born again. They have a serious problem. Or at minimum, it's the same error that the apostle rebuked the people in the book of Hebrews. You guys, you should be teachers by now. We shouldn't have to be going over the ABCs and the milk. You should know this by now. And so he admonishes them. But at any rate, Hopefully, this is where we begin. We begin with this passage of scripture, and then we don't just leave it, all right? But it directs what we're going to look at this morning. So Paul mentions the Passover here and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now, as we just saw in Revelation 5, the Bible declares many, many times that the Old Testament Passover was, and remains so, a picture, then, of the redemption effected for us by Christ, that He is the Passover Lamb, that the Old Testament Passover was always pointing to Him. It was a symbol not to be embraced in and of itself, but it was to point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. So, for instance, Exodus 12, the instruction about the Passover, 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 the household 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 and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it." Now that must have been something. that when Israel, well, the first Passover, but then when Israel faithfully observed the Passover, that at the same time, all of these households everywhere, the lamb was being killed, bled, its throat cut. And this is to be a reminder, also to be a reminder to us of the shocking nature of sin. I mean, here's this little lamb, these little lambs, innocent, right? Innocent, and yet put to death in a bloody sacrifice that this is what sin does. It results in death. But these lambs and their blood point us to the Lamb of God, who Revelation, John spoke of in Revelation, worthy is the lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing. This is the first thing that John the Baptist preached. John chapter one, he said, the next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, remember what he said here, behold, everybody look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And all of those Jews should have been putting two and two together at that point, What do you mean, the lamb? Well, yeah, the lamb that your scriptures have been pointing you to. Philip, the evangelist, explained the chapter, the part of which we read already this morning, Isaiah 53. Remember when the Lord took him out there into the desert to the Ethiopian eunuch? And here's the eunuch, and he's got a scroll. He's in the middle of nowhere in his chariot. And this scroll, he's been to Jerusalem, and somehow he bought this scroll. I'm sure everybody that is an archaeologist or whoever would love to find that scroll that he bought there and he had. But it was a scroll, the Old Testament, of Isaiah, of Isaiah. And here he is. He's reading this as he's going along. He's reading. Isaiah 53. So Philip ran to him and heard him reading. Apparently, he's reading it out loud. Isaiah, the prophet, and asked, do you understand what you're reading? And he said, how can I unless someone guides me? And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. Now, the passage of scripture, you see the providence of God in all of this, of course, he was reading was this. like a sheep he was led to the slaughter and like a lamb before its shearer is silent so he opens not his mouth in his humiliation justice was denied him who can describe his generation for his life is taken away from the earth and the eunuch said to Peter about whom I ask you does the prophet say this about himself or about someone else so this This man had insight, but he still didn't see this clearly. Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. And the eunuch believed, and he was baptized there then in the desert. So there's many other examples in the New Testament which tell us that Christ is the Passover lamb. of whom the Old Testament spoke so often. Now, in connection with that first Passover in Egypt, and at Passovers after that, the Lord told the Jews that they were to celebrate a seven-day feast of unleavened bread. And that ties in here in 1 Corinthians 5 as well. Here it is in Exodus 12. 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 what 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." Now, here again, the Apostle Paul recognizes that this whole business of the unleavened bread is pointing to something, which he's going to explain to us. In the Bible, leaven's an interesting thing. Leaven can represent, well, most often, leaven represents something bad. It represents sin, normally. There are times, and Matthew 13 is an example where it represents something good. Matthew 13, Christ told them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leaven. So there it represents the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, and how just as leaven spreads through the dough. the kingdom of God is spreading than right now. But it's normally a symbol of sin. So for instance, Matthew 16, Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And they didn't understand. They're talking about what? He didn't bring the bread or what's going on here? but later on in verse 12, then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching, the leaven, of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The teaching, false teaching and hypocrisy among them. That's what the leaven represented there. And he says to the churches of Galatia, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, just as he's gonna tell the Corinthians here in this So here it is, listen to it again here, verses four through six, 1 Corinthians five. When you're 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, by the way, just incidentally here, you see Paul, exercising his apostolic authority. He's commanding them to do this thing. This is not an option. In fact, he tells them, I've already judged this man. I've already handed him over to Satan, and you are then to do the same. Now, what would have happened if there's somebody in Corinth at that time Well, now, Paul, you know, I just don't see it that way. That probably wouldn't have gone really well for them. But often, that's the same thing that happens today, is that people will, here's the word of God. The word of God commands, it has apostolic authority, it has God's authority, and it is to be believed. and obeyed, you see. He says, your boasting's not good, and then here it is. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? So here's what was going on, as we've seen in the church at Corinth. There was this man who was living in unrepentant, ongoing, and open, shocking immorality. must have been almost some incestuous thing. He has his father's wife, whether it be stepmother or whatever it was. It was such a heinous sin that Paul says, you're allowing this in your church. This is a sin that not even the pagans around you there in Corinth, as gross as the society was in Corinth and in immorality, Not even they approve of this. And it's almost an implication that there would have been civil laws against a person marrying. I think in some of our confessions of faith about marriage, it's something not to be of a close consanguity. I might have the word wrong there or something. But it was a rank, open, shameful sin. And so he admonishes, Paul admonishes the church. They were permitting this to be in their midst. In fact, they were arrogant about it. They were boastful about it. Now, what was going on in their minds that they would boast about something like that? Maybe it was something like, well, you know, all things are lawful for us. And they apparently said that. We'll see that later on in 1 Corinthians. In Christ, you know, all things are lawful. It doesn't really matter. This whole Christianity thing is a spiritual thing. It doesn't have anything to do with the body. But they were boastful about this, you see. And so they were deluded by the culture then around them, and even worse. So in commanding them to put this man out of the church, this is where Paul points them to the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So here it is again, verse six, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, what Paul is telling them here is what we find him so often saying in the New Testament. Be who you are. You are a new lump. Be a new lump. Don't permit the leaven of sin there to be. That's not who you are. You're not that old lump then anymore. He says it again in Ephesians 4. That's not the way you learned Christ, assuming that you've heard him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self. created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. One of the biggest deficiencies in the evangelical church is that a superficial and shallow view of salvation in Christ, right? Yep, I've believed in Jesus, I'm saved, When I die, I'm going to heaven, Jesus forgives my sins. There it is. But how does that really affect your life? Yeah, Christ does forgive our sins. And the Christian is on his way to heaven, you see. But what else has happened? What else has happened when Christ saves us? We've been born again. That means you're made a new person. You are not who you used to be. So don't live like you used to be. That person was put to death with Christ on the cross. Be the new person. Put on, then, the new self. So the leaven of sin has no place in the individual Christian's life or in the corporate life of the church. And Paul says, Look at, if unrepentant sin is permitted to be among us, and this is why he picks the imagery of leaven, I think. He says, if you let unrepentant sin be permitted among you in the church, it's going to leaven the whole lump, all right? It's gonna leaven the whole lump. Sin spreads. Sin is an infection. It's contagious. It's an infectious disease, and it will spread like a plague in the church. If you let, for instance, what we already heard in the first hour about Harvard, at some point in the history of Harvard, originally Harvard was started as a college to train godly men and pastors to be pastors in the church. That's why it was started. Somewhere along the line, probably earlier than later, somewhere along the line, sin, leaven, was permitted to show up. It showed up, some person, and it was not put out, and it spread. And it spread into, well, what would you find? Is Harvard? I guess maybe there's a Harvard Divinity School, but I can assure you that Harvard Divinity School doesn't believe the Bible's the word of God and would deny. It's kind of like all brands of divinity can come our way. It will spread. Denominations that started out godly and sound biblically are corrupt today. and seminaries and so forth. Why? How did this happen? Because a blind eye was turned to someone who was introducing some kind of false teaching or living a sinful life. Some kind of sin came. And so you see, these things have to be nipped in the bud. We can put it like this. Sin is dangerous. If left unchecked, if embraced and ignored among us, will always spread to the rest of the body. This is the explanation of why churches, denominations, and seminaries typically become infested with sin and false doctrine over time. Sin must be nipped in the bud, lest it blossom and bear more fruit. And that's what will happen. But what is the typical reaction here? Well, most professing Christians deny that it is sin or that it's all that dangerous, right? That it's all that dangerous. They might say, well, yeah, it's not really not a good thing, but it's not that serious. It's not really a threat, you see. That's the kind of thinking. than that happens. And so it's ignored to these shameful consequences that we see. What happens when maybe you're a whistleblower in a denomination? Let's take a denomination of churches and say you were a pastor in one of these churches or a member in one of the churches in a denomination. And you say, you know, I've been seeing a pattern in what's been coming out of the seminaries, or I've been seeing a pattern in what's being taught and preached in the sermons in our church. You know, this doesn't seem to be biblical. Something is wrong. And normally, what will happen when someone calls attention to that? Well, it's usually minimized. Come on. It's not that. We don't think that's really what the person meant and so on. And so these things are ignored out of the, well, you know, we need to be loving toward one another and not judgmental and so on. But Paul says, don't you know? that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Don't you see that one person's ongoing sin will infect, for instance, the young people, the young people in the church? And it defames, then, the name of Christ. We've probably all, to a degree, at one time or another, I know I have, As I look back now and say, you know, we should have dealt with that issue a lot sooner than we did. We should have got on that. Or we can tend to minimize sin. You know, we can be, all of us, pretty dull sometimes. And so over time we say, you know, this guy in our church here, been around for a lot of years and stuff, but have you noticed, you know, we're not really comfortable around the guy. You know, you never know when the guy is going to go off on you and just kind of assault you with his words, right? It can be very, but we just say, well, you know, he's just a difficult person and we have to deal, you know, so we have to be patient. There's a place for patience. But when you see a recurring pattern that characterizes a person like this in sin, it needs to be dealt with. It needs to be dealt with. The person needs to be sat down and confronted and said, you know, characteristically, you assault people with your mouth, with your words. Your words are not. salt and gracious for the moment. They're unwholesome. It's a characteristic of you. And you may not see it, but you need to own up to it and repent of it. You can't let this. The Bible calls a person like that who assaults other people with their words, he calls them a reviler. A reviler. to vilify and attack someone with your words. So there was in our church up in Alaska, we were just there for a little under three years, but they'd gone through kind of a split church before we got there. And one man and his wife in particular, they'd been there from like day one. in that church, but those people were kind of instrumental in driving off the previous pastor. But they hadn't been confronted. And they were both, both the husband and the wife were characterized by, they were revilers. They were graduates of a very legalistic, you'd recognize the name of the school, a Bible college, a very legalistic Bible college, and graduates of it. And so you never knew when they were going to just go off on you. But they were excused for years, for many years, all the time. People knew that. People that they had worked with them in starting the church and so forth, and people knew it. But they weren't confronted and they weren't disciplined for it. And so when I was there, when Verl and I were there, one Sunday and I think we were using some RC Sproul teaching videos in the Sunday school class and actually come to mind there was a There was another couple there that graduated from that same Bible college. And they could be the same way as well. But at any rate, at the end of one of the other Sunday school classes, I remember now that a young guy was teaching. He was in the Air Force there at the Air Force base up there. And Elmendorf, is that it? Yeah. And so anyway, he was a sound Christian. And his wife was. And he was teaching this class. And he had showed a short video that illustrated some scriptural points. And right after the class ended, this same couple stood up and the woman said loudly for everybody to hear, that's not the word of God. That's that video. But where is the word? You know, just like this. And I can remember that at the next elder meeting, that young man came and talked to the elders. This is what happened. I just wondered, what are we going to do about it? Well, nothing was going to be done about it and nothing was done. You know, I wasn't in on the history of the thing. I knew that it was, but I, you could also tell that these other men that were elders, they'd been letting these people then get away with that sort of thing. Well, that's not to be. permitted. That's leaven. That's wickedness. And it is unrepentant sin, then. So Paul says again in Ephesians 4 about the body of Christ. Now, in 1 Corinthians 5, as Paul is talking to us here about this wicked man in the church, and how sin is to be handled that's ongoing and unrepentant in the church. 1 Corinthians 5, then, is a central passage on the nature of the church. The nature of the church. So for example here, the church is the body of Christ. To one degree or another, probably all of us have somewhat of a deficient understanding or view of the church. All right? Well, listen to Ephesians 4. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbors. Now look at this. For we are members one of another. We are members one of another. Romans 12. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another." The community in which we live, I'll just nail it down to this rather than saying the world in general, it's true of the world in general, but the community in which we live here, with rare exception, the churches in our community deny this truth in practice, in practice. They'll say the church is the body of Christ, but in practice they deny it. And one such example is what? They typically tolerate unrepentant, open sin. They tolerate it. So if we don't take care, we can be infected by the spirit of this community, which sees the church. You know how most professing Christians in our community, do you know what their thinking is about the church? It's this. It's a social club. It's a social club. It's a place where you come, and it's Christian. It's Christian, and we do Christian things and so forth. But in the end, it's a social club. And membership in the church is just like membership in a social club. It's nice. It's kind of on a piece of paper, or you have a card that you carry. But it doesn't intrude into your life, right? It doesn't intrude then. But that's not the body of Christ. That's not the church. If you're a Christian and you've been born again, well, if you're not born again, you're not a Christian. So there'd be a better way to put it there, right? But if you're a Christian, you are a living member of a living body You are joined to Christ and therefore joined to other believers, other members. It is a living entity. The same spirit, the Holy Spirit, indwells each one of us. Ephesians 2. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure," now catch this, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. So you see those words, joined, together, being built together. Peter really lays it down here, 1 Peter 2, as you come to him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God chosen and precious. You yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So a Christian, a true member of the body of Christ, is called to be a holy priesthood, offering sacrifices that are approved by God. Romans 12, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Now, as I said, most professing Christians don't get this. And I can remember when I didn't get it. Probably to a degree, maybe not all of us fully comprehend it right now. But I grew up, I've told you before that I grew up in a family that claimed to be christians and most of the time my parents were members of a local church uh... they they bounce us around then quite a bit but uh... i look back on that time in my life and definitely as a teenager uh... as seeing the church is kind of optional now i knew that you were supposed to go to church on sunday and and most most all the time then We did, but if something else came up, it wasn't that big of a deal. You know, you could be excusive. You know, if my dad would say, well, what do you say we just go up to Aunt Janie and Uncle Don's house on Bald Mountain and go hunting today, you know, instead of going to church, right? And my mom would say, well, she kind of, Didn't like that, but OK, here we go, and off we go. And that's how I was brought up. And I can remember then when Verla and I first married, and we moved to Portland. And we went to a church in southeast Portland. Actually, it was in Milwaukee. And one Sunday, there were a lot of seminary students there from Western Seminary. And one Sunday, one of the young seminary students announced he was going to start a new Sunday school class. teaching some basic doctrine, and so on. And we signed up for it, and we went. Well, one thing came up, and then another came up. Sometimes I had to work on Sundays, and I was deputy at the time. And sometimes I had to. It didn't work out. Sometimes Verla would go by herself. So there was things like that that were happening. But one Sunday, then finally after that, we went back to church. And went to that class, went to Sunday school and went to the class there, and the young guy was there that was going to teach, and there was nobody there. And he said, well, the class has been canceled for lack of interest, you see. Nobody had been showing up. Now, it didn't dawn on me that I was one of the guilty parties here. But, because when we, you know, if I had to work or something, I wouldn't call the guy and say, oh, man, I can't make it today, I have to work, you know, and so forth and I didn't even bother then to do that. It was kind of like, you know, you guys all ought to be really, you ought to feel really privileged when I show up on Sunday because, you know, here I am and I think you understand what I mean. My thinking was all wrong on that but it never dawned on me for a long time that my entire mentality of the church was wrong. That's what the problem was. It wasn't just a matter of, I should go to church then on Sunday. My thinking about what the church is, is wrong. So it's been encouraging then to our church. And Jason and Callie, pretty early on when you guys came, I need to become a member. I want to become a member. I can remember when Callie told us that, I thought, well, it kind of took me aback. Because it's like, I haven't heard anybody say that for quite some time. But you see, it's this matter of a recognition Becoming a member of a local church is an acknowledgment that we as Christians are members of the body of Christ. And the church is more than just a social club. It is a living entity. It's why Christians call one another brothers and sisters in Christ, that the church is one body, individual stone. One temple, a holy temple, and each one, we are individually members of it, you see. Well, as long as our thinking about the nature of the church is wrong, we're not going to think that sin is that big of a deal in the church. I mean, what's the byword that you hear now over and over again, right? Well, hey, we're all sinners. And then it's just blown off, you see. We don't want to be too harsh or judgmental here. And I know that our church is regarded by other churches in the area as being harsh and judgmental, harsh and judgmental, because we practice, then, church discipline. Well, this was the attitude, then, At Corinth, I wanted to read to you a couple of quotes from, this is really a good commentary on 1 Corinthians by Gordon Fee. And he had some really helpful, I think, statements here related to the, right on this passage, 1 Corinthians 5. He says, the great problem with such discipline, as Paul's talking about, in most Christian communities in the Western world, that's our country here, right, is that the thinking is that a person can simply go down the street to another church. You know, here's the sinful man. So here at Corinth, Paul's talking about this church discipline as handing him over to Satan, right? this very spiritual thing that's effected then by the church. But now, in our day, it's like, oh, yeah, well, that church put me out, said I couldn't come there. I'll just go down the street to another church then. He says, not only does this say something about the fragmented condition of the church at large today, but it also says something about those who would quickly welcome a person who's under discipline into their church. You know, it's like, wait a minute. And I've told you before, most of you know that, when this has happened with us repeatedly over the years, The other pastors where these people go, they don't call us. They don't check. They just welcome them in then, you see. And we're the bad guys. For he goes on here, perhaps it should be added that if one were to be so disciplined in our day, too often that disciplined person's attitude is take it or leave it. Eh, so what? Big deal. As far as the church is concerned, And it probably says more about the condition of the Church itself than about the person who was put out. Maybe the most significant thing we can learn from such a text here in 1 Corinthians 5 is how far many of us are removed from a biblical view of the Church in which the operations of the Spirit of God is so real that being excluded from such a church is regarded as a genuinely sobering matter. And he goes on to note here that when Paul says that he's there to hand this person over, put him out of the church, hand him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his soul might be redeemed, in the day when Christ comes again. And that's a tough passage. There's been some different takes on it by commentators and so on. But it does seem to indicate, when Paul says this, that the flesh to be destroyed by disciplining the person and putting him out, it may not mean that person being struck with some physical plague or ailment or even killed by the Lord. Now, some of them at Corinth had been killed by the Lord, as we'll see in 1 Corinthians 11. But it could also mean, as some people would indicate too, that it will work to destroy his sinful flesh so that he will come to repentance and be saved on the day of the Lord. His soul would be saved. But you see, if we don't believe that, and apparently most churches don't seem to believe that, they think that they're being loving by letting the person continue in their midst, you see. But they're not. The thing to do then is to put the person out. Gordon Fee also had a couple of excellent points in the way of explaining the meaning of leaven and how it worked here in this business of being a new lump rather than the old lump and so on. So listen to what he says here. What is in view here is not A bad apple spoils the whole barrel, although there's some truth in that, right? But what is in view here is not yeast as we know it. Apparently, the NIV, he says, translates this yeast. He says, as we, you know, yeast, you know, you go buy it in the little packets and maybe you mix it up in some water and mix it in with the flour and so forth. But he said, yeast in itself was not plentiful in ancient times, and in which case, in any case, that yeast, like we know today, is fresh and wholesome. But leaven in Paul's day was not so. It consisted, the leaven that Paul's talking about here, it consisted of keeping back a little portion of last week's dough, allowing it to ferment, then adding it to this week's dough. which in turn was thoroughly fermented to give it lightness, and like we do maybe with sourdough bread then and so on then today. But in the New Testament, leaven became a symbol of the process by which an evil spreads insidiously in a community until the entire community has been infected then by it. The purpose of this removal of the leaven, as Paul speaks of, reflects the process of starting over with a batch of unleavened dough. He says that you may be a new batch, that is, that they might be a people without the leaven of sin in their midst. So that's what we are to be. But here again, I think you can see the problem here when a church refuses to practice church discipline and put the wicked person out from among them. Their whole thinking about the nature of the church is wrong. It's very, very, very then deficient. So that what we've experienced here in this church over the years and in this and this leaven has spread through the churches and the whole community, is that if there's been a person, and we have disciplined people before, but here's this person that's known to have a reputation, right? Here's this professing Christian, and they have a reputation in the church, in the community even, as having, let's say, a terrible temper, and a vile mouth, okay? I remember one guy that was like, he was a member of this church. And so you sit the person down and say, you know, you're walking in sin. This can't be permitted in Christ's church. And what is the reaction? Not just on the part of the sinful man, but on the part of the rest of the church. They've been infected by this attitude of, you did what? You said that to this poor man? How can you do it? I've never heard of this. And apparently, they never heard of it then, you see. But here it is. There's this idea that the church is just a social club, and my life is my life. And nobody else has any business interfering then with my life. And so as a result then, you end up with a church that the leaven has spread, cleared through, and it is a place of falsehood because the leaven of hypocrisy has taken over. These people that claim to be Christians, it's just a front. It's just a disguise. Then, you see, they haven't put away falsehood and embraced, then, sincerity, then, at all. And so it would be very good for us, each one of us, to think seriously about these things. And especially, then, in light of 1 Corinthians 5, what is my thinking about the church? What do I think about it? What do I think about the Lord's Day? Why is it important for us to be members one another and in the church and remember then the Lord's Day, you see? Because these things tell us, this is one way of examining ourselves to see whether we be in the faith then or not. Father, we thank you for these truths from your word. We pray that you would enlighten our minds and take these scriptures and apply them to our thinking so that we understand more thoroughly and accurately what your church is and who we are as members of it. We pray, Father, that you would give us strength and courage to be obedient to you that this church might bring you glory and honor and a light shining in a dark world. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen.