Welcome back to our study of the Corinthian letters. My name is Bob. Today we're going to begin 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1. Now Paul has been leading up to some of these issues that he has to deal with. One of the main things he's dealt with already is the divisions occurring in the church because people were following men. We've covered that and established that, I think, pretty well. He's done that. I've just been following his lead. And you see him as kindly as he can, loving these people, letting them know that he cares about them, he wants to be their father, and so on. And he praises them in a lot of ways, but he gets firm, too. But in the back of his mind, he knows where he has to go. And now, as we see some of the things that are going on in the Church of Corinth, we wonder how he could have been so patient, so kind in dealing with them. If he truly is a father, he wants to, you want to discipline those kids sometimes. And here it comes. Verse 1, it's actually reported. I cannot believe this. It's actually being reported. that there's immorality among you. Not just any ordinary immorality. It's of such a kind that the Gentiles don't do this. They don't get away with this. They surely would not promote it. They would surely not be proud about it. They would hide it if they ever did something like this. Now that's in Paul's day and that's in Corinth. Corinth was considered a wicked city. My friends, What about America? This immorality, I'll explain in a minute, but as you hear it, you will not be so shocked. I suppose it's pretty hard to shock an American. I'm talking to people who are not Americans, I think, now and then. According to the statistics I get, I'm speaking to people at different times all over the world, so I don't know about your country. your lifestyle and the way people are there, but I know how they are here and it is hard to shock an American. So on the news all the time we read about horrific immorality in this country. It wasn't always like this. It has exploded, it has gotten worse, and without revival we are headed for damnation and judgment in the United States of America. So, remember that you, as you're listening to this, you're a part of something that's very evil. And you may not get shocked as I read this, but Paul was, in those days, and he said that even the world didn't behave like this. What was it? That someone would be having a sexual relationship with his father's wife. Now, who is your father's wife? Well, that would be your mother. Well, I'm not sure that he's talking here about the actual physical mother, or he would have just said, your mother. It could be that here was a believer who hadn't given up some of these things yet, like a second wife or third, still thought that was okay, or that the original mother had died, and that this was a second wife now, We don't know who this woman was, but I'm pretty sure that we would call this a stepmother. But that's kind of beside the point, isn't it? That somebody would be having a sexual relationship with his stepmother. I'm thinking of Reuben in the Old Testament, who had a sexual relationship with one of Jacob's concubines. And there are probably some other stories that I'm not thinking about that are recorded even in the scripture, but Paul is going off here. Because Paul knows that we belong to something holy. Holy, holy. The church of Jesus Christ is a holy institution. There's just no excuse for somebody in the church having this kind of a relationship and carrying it on as though it was an okay thing. And that's what he gets even more angry about in verse 2. You have become proud. What are they proud of? Well, that I can relate to. I can understand that. It's not good, it's evil. But I understand that because I see it in today's church too. I see a pride about tolerance. Oh, we're a loving church here. We just accept anyone, anybody can come to our church, be a part of it, take communion, be in the meetings, just do, you know, we just are open here. Anybody that wants to participate, Jesus is calling all people to himself. Well, he is, but he's also calling for repentance to all people and In the church, no one's allowed to come in there and flagrantly disobey the Word of God and cause the flock, the sheep, the little ones in particular, to be offended. Those people are in big trouble if they are allowed to continue. And the church is in trouble too. You've become proud. You should be crying every day. What is wrong with you? You should be in tears. I want you to think about your own church. Is there somebody in your church who is just flagrantly in sin? Everybody knows about it. He's not like shamed and, oh, I wish I could overcome this. I'm so sorry. I'm going to keep coming to church. I'm going to hide. I don't want anybody to know about it. That's one kind of thing. That's not good because that person could get the victory if he wanted it. But we're talking about a person who is not ashamed at all. and believes that everybody ought to just accept this. He knows that it's considered wrong by the church, but he's going to keep doing it anyway, because, yeah, that's just how we are, you know, we're Christians, and Jesus loves everybody, and he died for everybody, and I'm okay. No. No, Paul says, that brother, if you want to call him a brother, needs to go. What? What? Yeah, that's what it says. So that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. If you were sorrowful, if you understood the sinfulness of sin and what you are allowing here, you'd get that guy out of there. Like right now. You should be crying before God for mercy on the church and on this brother. Get him out of there. You believe in excommunication? Yes, of course. But that's a Catholic thing. So, by the way, it's not Catholic in the way the Catholics were doing it. And I guess still are, I don't know, in some places of the world. But the Catholics would send a person out of the church, and then out of the world. Kill them. Send them over to what they call the secular authority. They would say that technically the Roman Catholic Church never killed anyone, But they allowed the state to do that. Not only allowed the state, they demanded that the state do it. And the state was run by the church. And the state did everything that the church told them to do. What could they do? That's what the Inquisition was all about. There's a lot of evil history there. Some of God's special favorite people died at the hands of the Roman authorities in that day. because of what they called excommunication. But that's not excommunication, that's murder. That's merciless murder. Now in many cases they were given chances to repent. In many cases there was a merciful priest who would show up and try to help them through this thing. But if they would not recant, and many times the things that they were believing are things that you believe as an evangelical Christian. And I'm assuming or thinking that many of the people listening to me are evangelical Christians. If you believed, if you continue to believe some of the things that you believe right now back in those days, you'd have been killed like this. You'd have been sent out of the church, put in jail then, and that's not being talked about here. Paul just says, get him out of there. It's not just about him, it's about the church. We want the church to be pure. At the same time, we don't have authority over men's bodies. We don't kill. This is a spiritual warfare we're in. We're not involved with putting people in jail and hoping that people will kill them. They're not at all. No, we want that person to repent. If they don't repent, however, if they don't repent, and that's coming up in verse 5. Before we get there. I, Paul says, on my part, I'm not there with you right now. I don't know when I can be there, but you listen to me. I am there in spirit. Put a seat out for me this week, because I'm there. I'm there all the time. My heart's with you. My love is with you. The Holy Spirit that's in me is in that church in my name. And you can just count on it. I'm going to be there every time you meet. So I'm there. And I have already judged that guy. I've heard about it. So in my spirit, I'm there, and I'm seeing you guys, I'm watching you, and I'm telling you, I've made a judgment. This man has to go. I've already judged him. As though I were physically right there with you. Wow. Now that's authority. I can't say that to a church. You can't either, probably. There's authority in the church and in the leaders of the church. The apostles had it at that time. They were number one. They've passed that authority on down to the pastors of our day. We don't need apostles today in this sense. The apostles have gone on and they've laid the foundation and now we have pastors who have authority and they need to take that authority. Oh, it's hard to do. Oh, what would happen if church discipline took place as the apostle is describing right here? What would happen if a pastor knew of an immoral situation that was just very blatant and everybody just knew about it and the man wasn't repenting, he was even boasting about it and pretty much assuming that Like King Agag of the Old Testament, well, the bitterness of death is past. They're not going to bother me. I thought I was going to get in big trouble because I know this is not considered good, but they're just accepting it. So I guess it's okay. And that's exactly what you do when you allow sin in the church. You make people think that things are okay. That sin is acceptable. That's the message you're putting across. Is that what you want to do, pastor? I don't know how many, if any, pastors I'm talking to, but would you pass this on for me? If there's a sinful situation in your church, do you have the nerve, the courage, Christian, to go to your pastor in love? Hello? We're not talking angry confrontations here, but in love and prayerfully to go and say, you know, brother so-and-so is still doing this. What are we going to do? Is that pastor courageous enough to stand up before the congregation and say, we have decided that we're going to have to do something about the situation dealing with and call the name and let the church know this guy is going to leave us for a while. We love him. We love him so much. And we love the church even more. And because of that love, because of that love, Because we care about the precious body of the Lord Jesus Christ, the church. Because we care about this brother hearing the message of repentance so that he can be saved. Because we care, we're going to ask him to not only step down, but step out. And not come and fellowship with us. You know what happens? And I believe he should do that. I really believe. You know what's going to happen though? Nine times out of ten, that brother's going to go down the street You don't have to go too far to find another church. And he's going to walk in, he's going to tell his story to that church, that pastor. And that pastor, if he's not listening to that other pastor too much, if he's not knowing what's going on in the community too much, he's going to hear that story and the church is going to hear it. And they're going to feel so sorry for that brother who got abused by that other church. and they'll take him right in and they'll love him and he'll keep on in his sin. That's the way the American church runs. You can always find a place to bring your sin and feel comfortable with it in the American church as it is. It's not always going to be that way. Don't count on it, sinner. It's going to change. It won't always be this way. Listen to this in verse 4. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm already there, remember. I'm already there, but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you are assembled, and I with you, we're all there together, you and me and the Lord, with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want you to deliver such a one, this guy that's living with his stepmother sexually, I want you to deliver that guy to Satan. What does that mean? for the destruction of his flesh. Well, it does mean killing him, no? No? It means when you step outside the church, outside the protection of the body of Jesus Christ, you are in Satan's territory. And you, anything that happens, can happen. You as a Christian are not going to pray that that will happen. You're just going to put him out. No communion with us. You can't come and pray among us anymore. You can't come and hear the word of God here anymore. You see how difficult this is to do in a setting where there's media and you can hear the word everywhere and you can fellowship anywhere. Excommunication doesn't seem to say a whole lot. I've heard of people trying this. What happens is they get a black eye and they get hurt, the pastors that do it. But at least they were faithful. And on that day, when Jesus comes, those people will be rewarded who did the right thing. You don't have to worry about that. Even if you weren't successful in helping the brother, you've got to do the right thing. It's easy for me to say, by the way, I'm not a pastor. I'm not responsible for a group like that. I would like to think that I would do this. I know it's the right thing to do. He says, I want this guy's flesh destroyed so his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. He says, even if the man dies, even if Satan comes against that man while he's outside, and that man dies, at least, as he's dying, he'll be repenting. He'll repent, he'll realize how awful is the thing that he did, and he'll come back to the Lord on his knees. If we leave him in here, he's going to stay proud, he'll never confess his sin, and if we don't confess our sins, then Jesus doesn't forgive us our sins. That's another principle that has just gone far away from us. The Bible says, if we confess our sins, He, Jesus, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. But the opposite is true too. If we don't confess them, what's He going to do? He can't forgive us. If you've got any sin in your life, you need to confess it. So this guy is going to be thrown out of the church for the destruction of his flesh. outside the protection of the church. What's it like? When's the last time you were out there? Oh, don't try it. Don't try it. I don't know how there are so many people who say they are Christian who stay away from the church. Don't you know how dangerous it is just to be a part of the world? Well, I'm listening to the Bible on, okay, you're at least getting some word. Imagine a Christian, though, and there are some of these too. No fellowship whatever. No word whatever. They're just living out in the world. Well, you know, they don't have a prayer, literally, unless somebody in the church is still remembering them in prayer. And yes, you are allowed to pray for that person, that God will save him and bring him back. The idea is not to get him out. The idea is to get him out and get him back by his repentance, by him seeing what he did and how evil this thing was. No, this church is boasting about it. Oh, we're the church who accepts everybody. we just love everybody come on in with your sin and they don't say that of course but that's the message don't have to repent to be a part of this church just come on in fact we'll make it comfortable for you we'll make this church look like the world so that when you come in here you won't even know you're in church won't that be wonderful hey I'm so tired of unholy churches aren't you The church is the church. When people come to us, they need to change. We don't have to change. All things to all men, that's on an individual level, but the church must be the holy church. We don't change its music into worldly music so that worldly people will come. We don't change its practices into unholy practices so that people who do those kind of things will come. We don't say everything's okay, just don't worry about it. We know you're weak, everything's gonna be fine. You just do your best and God will take care of the rest. Oh, such sickness in the church. Who will be strong? Who's hearing this? Who will hear this and be strong in your local church? That's all we've got, you know, we have some para-church things going on. What I'm doing is para-church. Trying to reach out to Christians to just feed them a little extra and really to support your local church. If your pastor is truly a man of the word and I'm just coming alongside of him and teaching what I believe he should be teaching and is probably teaching. Giving you a little extra. The local church is where it's at. That's where you touch people. Just listening to a sermon is okay. It'll help you even. But you need to be with them. You need to rub shoulders with them. And find out what's wrong in you. Because that's what happens when you're with people long enough. Things start to develop that are bad. I mean, people's feelings get hurt. And then you realize, this is something I need to work on. But if you isolate yourself from the body of Christ all the time, will you ever know about yourself? Where do you have the worst problems? Probably at home. That's not an indictment. That's just natural. That's how things are. In your own home, the worst and most difficult relationships are the ones that are the closest. He wants you to have close relationships in the church for reasons that we don't even understand yet. But much of it has to do with you growing up. You'll never grow up if you don't know what's wrong inside of you. Your boasting is not good. You've been going around bragging that anybody can come to your church. Verse 6. Don't you know that a little bit of yeast just runs through the whole loaf? You put yeast in the mix and you mix it all up and the yeast is everywhere, right? That's what it's supposed to do. It makes the whole loaf get bigger and bigger and bigger. Expand. becomes something that it wasn't before. Well, for us who eat that kind of bread, that's a good thing. But he's using this as an example of a bad thing. Now, what was it that was the leaven? Was it their pride or the man's sin? I think it's the man's sin here. It was only one man doing one sin. So, relatively speaking, a little bit of leaven. Now, it wasn't a church of 10 or 20, it was probably hundreds in that city. Paul was told by God, I have many people in this city. So it was a good-sized church. Only this one guy. But this one guy, his leaven, his yeast, his evil character and behavior was giving a message out to the whole body that this is okay you can do this get away with it there's a picture of the Passover meal that Paul is painting here verse 7 and 8 he says clean out that old leaven get rid of the yeast that got into the bread get it out of there so that you can start over you can be a new fresh lump isn't it wonderful how the Lord keeps allowing that He allows us to get rid of that sin, to confess it and get rid of it, and in this case literally to get rid of a person as necessary for a while, and to let us start all over again. When that guy's gone, you'll be a new lump, as you are in fact unleavened. Let's get the old leaven out. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. Why does he put that in there? Because it was the As I said, a picture of the Passover meal. You had the lamb, the Passover lamb, and then you had the unleavened bread. And those two things were there, along with other things, for picture purpose. You were supposed to see something there, the lamb being Jesus himself. The unleavened bread, the perfection, the holiness, the cleanness that God wanted, with no sin. No sin in the lamb. It was supposed to be a perfect lamb. No sin in the bread. Everything's sinless and perfect, he says. And Christ, our Passover, has already been sacrificed. We've got that part. That part's been done. Jesus did his part. Now, where's the bread part? What about the bread? Let's get the bread clean, too. Let's celebrate the feast, verse 8. Not with the old leaven. That's against the Mosaic way. You can't have leaven, any leaven. in the bread. It's just got to be unleavened, unyeasted. Don't want it to rise to be something that it isn't. We want that bread just to stay as it is. Sincere, pure. And not with the leaven of malice. That's bad stuff and wickedness. We don't want that to be among us, he says. Verse 8. But let's have that unleavened bread of sincerity. truth we got to tell this man sincerely the truth sir this is sin will you repent he says no you say go make it simple make it quick and uh don't drag it all out he doesn't need several weeks to think about it he's been thinking about it that's why he's so proud get him out now Oh, we've got to deal severely with sin in our own lives. Kind of easy, isn't it, to deal with sin in the lives of somebody else, in the life of the church. Kind of easy, sometimes. I said it was difficult a while ago, and for some pastors, that's politically very incorrect for them. They don't want to lose people. They know that if they take this hard stance on sin, people are going to go. On the other hand, people out in the congregation, they would find this kind of easy, because we love to judge. They wouldn't want to take the political route for it, but they kind of like the idea of the drama of this thing. Let's get this guy out of here. Let's see what that does. But if you would point out something in their own life that needs to be changed, it might be a different story. All right. So there's wickedness in the church. How about your church? What are you going to do about it? Paul said, you know, I wrote you a letter. Ah, there it is, verse 9, I wrote you a letter. This is not 1st Corinthians, I told you before. This is 2nd Corinthians or more. This might be 15th Corinthians. We don't even know. But I wrote you before something you didn't understand. I said, I want you guys to stay away from bad people, from immoral people, sexually immoral people. See, he's talking about this immoral man in the church. And he's saying, you remember I wrote to you to stay away from immoral people? Well, I didn't mean all immoral people in the world. My goodness, you'd have to leave the world. That's exactly what he says. I didn't mean to stay away from all covetous people because the world is just filled with covetous people and swindlers and robbers and cheaters and idolaters. He says you would have to go to some other planet. to get away from them. You've got to work with these people. We're in fact supposed to go into all the world to preach the gospel. You're going to have to have contact with these people. I didn't mean them. I meant this guy and guys like him that are in the church parading around as Christian because for some reason they want to wear that name. Some of them think that just by hanging around the church they get to go to heaven. Some of them have seen that there is a certain amount of respect in some areas, some places, for the Christian that others don't have. And so in their pride, they want to come into the church, they want to feel like they belong there, it could be a family thing, where they've been in this church for ages, they're just going to hang around, going to stay there. And they're going to be in the church. Well, those kind of people. When you see them, if their sin is not flagrant enough for them to be cast out and they stay in the church for some reason or another, don't hang around with them. Get the message to them. You're not going to be liked for this either. And they're not going to like you for ignoring somebody in the church. But if you've got a, and he says so-called, at least in the New American Standard that's what it says, if you've got a so-called brother who's the immoral, He just is. You know he is. Nobody else maybe knows, but you know. Stay away from him. A covetous person, idolater. A reviler. That's a person who is disrespectful, verbally abusive to other people, especially authority figures. A drunk. Yeah, drunkard. A swindler. Folks, don't even sit down at the dinner table with them. Find another place to eat. Let them know you cannot associate with their sin. Let them know that. Let them know that Jesus does not accept their sin. That they've got to repent of this. Wow. He says, what do I have to do about judging outsiders? And that's going to get in the next chapter. We're going to talk about the judging of people. That's not our business. The Bible and all of its laws and all of its commandments are to the Christians. It's for the Christian people. We're not judges over the world. We judge people who are inside the church though. We have to. Not in a condemning evil sort of way. But we have to discern. We have to let people know what sin is in the church. Those who are outside, God will judge. Remove the wicked man from among yourself. Quotes there from Deuteronomy 17, 7, purge evil out of your midst. Heavy, heavy stuff. Can you handle this? We'll take chapter 6 Lord willing next time. Thanks for joining me in today's study. By God's grace we will continue soon. Be sure to read ahead in the text, 1 Corinthians 6 for next time and be ready for that next lesson. I've written and recorded Many other teachings on sermon audio. I'd like to invite you to check them out. Talk to you next time. Bye bye.