If you would, open your Bibles in the New Testament to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. That text will be our focus in this time this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We'll be reading the entire chapter here at the outset of our sermon, but before we do read it, let's bow and ask God to bless both the reading and preaching of His Word. Heavenly Father, Your Word indeed is truth. And as we open scripture together this morning, we confess that it is indeed, oh God, your word written for our edification and instruction, that indeed all scripture is breathed out by you and is profitable to your church. Lord, we come to a text this morning that speaks to us of a subject that is hard to hear. Indeed, is not one that we would often desire to examine if left to ourselves to decide for ourselves what we ought to reflect upon. And yet, oh Lord, you have called us to preach the whole counsel that you have revealed to your church. And so, oh, God, as we come to this text, we pray that your spirit would give us eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to believe that, indeed, your way is right, that your way is best, that you would give us, oh, God, wisdom and grace to be submissive to your word in every respect. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen. First Corinthians chapter five here now, God's holy inspired word. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is 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 has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the 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. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is 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 outside. Purge the evil person from among you. This is the word of God. May his blessing always be on it. First Corinthians is a fascinating letter. In fact, it will, Lord willing, be the next book that we preach through after we finish the Gospel of John, however many more years that takes us. It's a fascinating letter. It's probably the most topically arranged of all the New Testament epistles. Paul just works subject by subject through a report that he has received concerning disorder within the Corinthian church. That occupies the first six chapters of the letter. In chapter seven, he finally gets around to the list of questions that the church had sent him that he originally sat down to write before he found out from Chloe's household all of the other things that they had neglected to mention. The church in Corinth is beset by pride, division, all kinds of difficulties associated with a lack of compassion for the brothers, a lack of humility of mind. False doctrine is running rampant. The worship assemblies are absolutely in chaos and disarray. And yet, unlike the letter to the Galatians, Paul at the beginning and end of this letter is able to express his gratitude for these brothers, his confidence in the overall salvation of this congregation, his hope that indeed these things can be put right, even as he threatens them in chapter four to say, when I come to you again, do you want me to come with a ride or in a spirit of love and gentleness? He is their spiritual father and he is prepared to take them out to the woodshed. And that's essentially what he does in this first Corinthian letter. Chapter 5 mentions one of those issues that they had failed to include in their letter to Paul. A man in the Corinthian church who was apparently a member had his father's wife. And Paul is outraged. He says, even the pagans among whom you live know that this is wrong. And by the way, in the ancient world, to live like a Corinthian was a known saying. It was a figure of speech because Corinth was so flagrantly immoral. It was to be a playboy, to be sexually promiscuous, and yet even the sexually promiscuous Corinthians would have looked somewhat askance. at an incestuous relationship like this. Now, almost certainly this woman is not a member of the church because Paul does not make any reference that would suggest that she is to be identified with the covenant community. He refers to her in a very different way, his father's wife. And it is unlikely, I think it goes without saying, but we probably need to say that this is actually this other man's mother. It's almost certainly a stepmother. Presumably this man has shacked up with his stepmother, whether his father is still living or not, we do not know. Regardless, the word of God in the book of Leviticus explicitly forbade this kind of relationship, period. And yet Paul says, rather than being grieved by this sin, the Corinthians did not even see fit to ask the apostle about it. Beyond even that, Paul says, you are puffed up. Literally, the Greek says, you're arrogant. The ESV translates this. You are puffed up in your heart and in your mind. Why in the world would any church be puffed up in view of sexual immorality of that sort existing among them? I want you to think with me for a few minutes about this text, because it has a lot to teach us. It is not the only passage in Scripture that speaks to us on the question of church discipline, but it is the most extensive discussion of church discipline to be found within the canon. And in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul lays out very clearly and emphatically the responsibility that the church has to police itself. And we need to hear this because we live in a day and in an age where the only thing that is not tolerated is any kind of moral judgments that are made, which is itself, by the way, a moral judgment, or in this case, an immoral judgment. No, our society is content to let anyone do practically anything with anyone that they choose to do it or pretend to be anything that they want to be. So long as you're not a Christian with clear moral standards. Paul understands that the church must police itself if they are to be faithful as the people of God. He understands that there are significant issues at play here. That the church will be corrupted if this kind of situation goes on unaddressed. And it's very much like raising a child. If you wait to establish boundaries, then you are already too late. Young parents have to decide what the rules in their house are going to be at the beginning of the relationship, because you have to be consistent. And one of the things that Kirsten and I have often counseled young families about, young parents about, is don't make a rule that you're not willing to enforce. Not everything has to be off limits. Not everything has to be against the rules. But if you make a rule, you have to enforce it. You cannot compromise. You cannot be inconsistent. You cannot say one thing and do something else. And it's the same way in God's family. It's the same way in the church. Church discipline is where we find out whether we actually believe the things that we preach. It's where we find out how important the gospel actually is to us, because it's all well and good to say that the gospel is at the center of our lives. That is the most precious thing to us in this world. It's all well and good for us to preach strong sermons against sin, exalting Christ as the savior of men. It's another thing when those doctrines have to be actually applied within our own fellowship. And we need to be faithful in practicing discipline because Christ commands us to do so. And if for no other reason, that would be a sufficient reason. But there is more than just that. Paul says, you are doing this to this brother. You are going to discipline this brother so that he might be saved. and so that the church might be protected from the harm that sin will inevitably cause. In the first two verses, Paul kind of sets the stage for us, as it were. It is actually reported there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. I've wondered about that. I've wondered how long we will be able in this society to preach this. Because the reality is that we are increasingly living in a society where every sort of sexual relationship is considered to be acceptable. Remarkably, what would not have been the case even a couple of years ago is now the case, that gender identity is defined by a person's professed preference. And surely you have to know that incest and pedophilia... are not far behind and already have very public proponents and supporters. At this time, Paul can say that even in notoriously immoral Corinth, they understood that incest was a species of immorality. But apparently the church was too enlightened for that. He says in verse 2, you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. That's the proper response, but instead they are, as we said, literally puffed up. What could you possibly be puffed up about? I want you to understand that Paul is not arguing, if I understand him correctly, that they are arrogant because of other things. I think he's saying that there is some way that they are puffed up with regard to this specific situation. Are they proud of this man's boldness in shacking up with his stepmother? I think not. I suspect that if we had gone to the church in Corinth, we would have find a general sense that this was sinful, that this was wrong. In fact, Paul says that there's one man living in this situation. He doesn't indicate that there are more involved in it. You would think that if they were approving of the behavior, that you would see more of this appearing within their fellowship. What are they puffed up about? Let me suggest to you that it is their tolerance. How patient they are. He says, even your pagan neighbors know that it's wrong. They know it's wrong. But look at how loving, look at how supportive, look at how long suffering they are. Look at how tolerant they are. They want to give this brother time and opportunity to grow and to mature. Well, listen, we need to be very long-suffering when it comes to weak and immature brethren. And we need to give them time and space and all of the encouragement and help that is within our power to give that they might grow and mature. But this is a different matter, Paul says. This is not a problem of immaturity. Even the pagan knows that incest is wrong. He says this kind of public, presumptuous, impenitent sin needs to be disciplined right now. Some of you may have in your minds Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 17, where Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, if you've won your brother, you've gained your brother. If he will not hear you take two or three others. If they will not hear them, tell it to the church. If he will not hear the church, then let him be to you a Gentile, a tax collector, an outsider, an outcast. You may be thinking Paul has leapt right over Matthew chapter 18 here. I can almost imagine some Christians that I've known in other places who would even criticize the apostle Paul, perhaps for not following Jesus's instructions. You're supposed to go to that brother first. No, no, no. Paul says this is publicly known. This is not a private sin between two brothers. This is not a matter where something was said or done in private between two Christians, and it needs to be settled in private between those two Christians, if at all possible. Yes, even a private sin could escalate to the point that an impenitent offender is excommunicated by the church. How significant is sin? John says in 1 John chapter 5, all lawlessness, all sin is lawlessness. All wrongdoing is sin. Paul's not diminishing the significance of private sins. They could reach this point of excommunication as well. But here, we're not dealing with a question of he said, she said, this person did this against that other person, and nobody was there, and there were no witnesses, and we don't know what really happened. No, we're dealing with a known situation of presumptuous immorality. Everybody involved knows that it's wrong. And for some reason, the church is not acting upon it. The Corinthian church was puffed up when they should have been mourning, Paul says. You could see examples of this kind of corporate repentance, even in the Old Testament. You remember in Joshua chapter 7, after the victory at Jericho, Achan, by his sin, brought contamination into the camp, taking some of the items that had been consecrated for God. He takes them for his own possession, hides them in his tent. And no surprise, Israel loses the next battle, a battle they should have easily won. Praise before the Lord is on his face before God. And the Lord's response is, why are you mourning? Why are you wondering what is happening? There's sin in the camp. You've got to deal with that. Sin contaminates the camp. Sin contaminates the whole. And when there is this flagrant disregard of God's law, the congregation has to take action about it. In Ezra chapter 9, Ezra receives word that among the returned exiles there are Israelites who have married pagan women. And he is literally stunned, speechless. He sits before the Lord, unable to say anything for a period of time. And when he finally begins to pray, we have one of the great prayers of confession to be found in all of Scripture. And he does not say, God, I can't believe what these men have done. He says, Oh God, I am too ashamed even to lift up my face to you. After all of the kindness that you have shown to us, we have disregarded your law. There's a corporate solidarity to those prayers. We need to understand what the Corinthian church, up until this time, apparently did not understand. And that is, if you allow high-handed sin to continue within the congregation of the saints, you are implicated in that sin. We must repent of that sin. You say, I didn't do that. I wasn't involved in that sin in any way. No, but when the congregation stood by silently, when a brother did something that everybody knew was an offense to the Holy God, then the whole congregation bears guilt for that. That's why Ezra prays the way that he does. That's why Daniel in Daniel 9 prays the way that he does. That's why Paul says here, the whole church should be mourning right now, not proud of anything. They ought to be ashamed. This is not a weak brother who has simply transgressed because he doesn't understand the Word. That would be a completely different matter. This is not a private offense between two brothers that ought to be settled there. That would be a different matter. This is a brother parading his ungodliness in front of everyone. And Paul says, you don't even have the decency to be ashamed of it. In verses three to five, he gives the instructions about the discipline that is to be administered. Verse three, for though absent in body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I've already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. Can you just imagine? the wailing and gnashing of teeth in churches today if we received a letter like this. What a judgmental spirit Paul has. How quick he is to jump to conclusions. Remember that this is an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is writing in the name of Jesus Christ by the authority of God. He's saying again, this is not a situation where you've got to find out what was said or done. Yes, there should be a concern for truth. There should be integrity in the investigation. If there was any doubt whatsoever about what was said or what was done, then that should be found out. But Paul says, there's no question here. This brother's not hiding his sin. He's proud of it, and you're proud of him. Or proud of yourselves about how you're treating him. Paul says, I don't have to be there to know what ought to be done. This is open and shut. Verse 4, when you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus, you are delivered this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Give him to the devil. That's what Paul just said. But notice that he says, do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, you are doing this with the authority of Christ. We need to understand the responsibility of church discipline is a duty. It's not an option for us. It's a responsibility that we have before God. If you turn just a few pages over to 2 Corinthians 2, we have what many believe is kind of the rest of the story. This is a Paul Harvey moment within Paul's letters. Now, there are some questions among New Testament scholars about this. Many New Testament scholars today, at least, believe that there is another letter that is not preserved between 1 and 2 Corinthians. That's really not relevant for our study today. But it appears in 2 Corinthians 2 that Paul may be referring to the very same incident of discipline that we're studying in 1 Corinthians 5. At least I believe that that is in fact the case. And if in fact this is the same brother, we will discover that the discipline was effective. that he repented and that in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul's concern is that the church would restore this brother and reclaim this brother and reaffirm their love for this brother so that they would recognize his repentance as genuine and be quick to love him and receive him once again. But notice what Paul says about this entire episode in verse 9, 2 Corinthians 2 and verse 9. For this is why I wrote that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Think about how discipline does that. Discipline is one of those responsibilities that we have in the Lord that really tests whether we are obedient to Christ or not. You see, I'll tell you quite honestly, I don't know what I would do on a Sunday morning if I didn't go to worship. The handful of times in my adult life that I've been too sick to attend worship on the Lord's day, I have felt completely discombobulated. I don't know what it is to sit at home. I wouldn't know what to do. Get my Bible and I read scripture. I listen to a sermon. I don't know what else to do on the Lord's day. It's not hard for me to assemble with the saints on the Lord's day. That may be a responsibility that I have as a child of God, but it really doesn't say much about my true commitment to being obedient to Christ in everything because it's the only way that I know to live. But discipline is hard. A discipline is one of those commands where we find out, am I really doing Christ's will because it's Christ's will? Or am I doing Christ's will because I agree with it, because I find it convenient, because it's my custom anyway. There are a lot of things that I do in obedience to Christ that I'd be perfectly content to do if I were an unbeliever. But discipline is not one of those things, is it? Discipline is one of those responsibilities that the saints have to the Lord Jesus Christ that tests whether we are really submitting to him in every respect. And I would suggest that if we only obey Christ when we approve of his will or when we find it convenient to do so, that we are not actually obeying him at all. And we need to repent of that hypocrisy. Paul says, when you are gathered together, This discipline is to be administered. Discipline is an act of God that is expressed by the gathered visible church. And this is important because many of us, I'm sure, in this room could tell stories about discipline neglected or discipline performed in an abusive and unbiblical way. It seems like the visible church just can't get this right. Maybe it's because the church is full of people. Discipline is not to be neglected. It is to the shame and indeed to the destruction of the church when it is neglected. But discipline is not something that the individual Christian just kind of decides to administer on their own. This is the act of God working through his church. You and I can't excommunicate someone unilaterally to do so would be unbiblical and unjust. And yet I've seen it performed, perhaps some of you have as well. This is the work of God through his church. Again, corporate solidarity. Either the church is consenting to the sin. Or they are united in condemning the sin. But either way. God will have something to say to us and about us. And when you are gathered together, he says, hand that man over to the devil. I just I love the way that Paul says this because it is so provocative. It had to shake them to their core. Here they are puffed up about this situation and Paul says, you need to hand that man over to Satan so that his flesh will be destroyed. Well, Paul may be saying it in a provocative way, but we don't need to misunderstand what he's saying. He is saying this brother is to be cast out of the kingdom. He has no rights or privileges to the company of the saints. Church discipline is intended to reflect God's decisions about fellowship in this way. This is part of a larger conversation and study that we don't have time to fully unpack today. If it's necessary, the elders are prepared to continue this series of teaching as long as we need to. And perhaps we will unpack some of this. But we need to understand that when Christ entrusts the keys of the kingdom to the church to be exercised through her officers. That we need to recognize that whomever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whomever sins you retain, they are retained. Is itself nevertheless simply a reflection of and response to the work of the Lord Jesus in each case. In other words, the church cannot remit or forgive sins that Christ doesn't forgive. They can say that they do. but it doesn't accomplish anything except enhance their own sinfulness before God. Neither can we retain any sins that Christ has not chosen to retain. Ultimately, the voice of the church is only authoritative in these matters insofar as it is the voice of Christ. And sometimes churches excommunicate people who ought not to be excommunicated because Christ has not rejected them. Perhaps more often, the church fails to discipline those whom they ought to have disciplined, leaving that person with a false assurance of their security in Christ. If you hold your place here, I want you to look at two passages with me. One is in Hebrews chapter 10, a very arresting passage, but one that we dare not neglect in this regard. First Corinthians chapter 10. I want to begin the reading in verse 26. Continuing down through verse 31, Hebrews 10. Did I say something else? I said 1 Corinthians. I'm sorry. Just read the notes. Don't listen to anything I say. No, please do listen to something I say, but not that. Hebrews 10. Thank you. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 26. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, Vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. We don't need to misunderstand this. The Hebrews writer is not saying that someone who is truly saved will ever be lost. What he is clearly and emphatically saying is that there will be those who appeared to be saved, who were within the visible covenant community, who are without the blood of Christ. who are without a sacrifice for their sins, who will fall into the hands of God as their judge, and the end for them will be worse than the beginning. Notice 1 John now, 1 John 3, a passage that again is unsettling when we read it, but we need to give careful heed to it. 1 John 3, beginning at verse 4. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this, it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. It's almost unfair to read these verses out of context because you must see the close connection between that paragraph and what John has already said in chapter one of his letter, that anyone who says he does not presently have sin is a liar and is calling God a liar. That's not what John's talking about. He's not denying in any way, shape or form that we fall short of the glory of God every day in more ways than we know. What he is affirming, though, and is brought out pretty well by the ESV's translation of this, of the underlying verb tenses, is that if you go on in the practice of sin, if you continue impenitently in sin, you are giving evidence to the fact that you do not know God. You are not born of God because no one who is born of God can continue without repentance in the practice of sin. Jesus takes all the fun out of it. You will sin. You may fall into grievous sin. Peter did. David did. But God's spirit will not leave you alone. His seed within you will burn you up from the inside, just as David describes his experience in Psalm 32. Why are we handing this brother over to the devil? Because he belongs to the devil. Until repentance gives evidence otherwise, he belongs to Satan. You are either in the kingdom of Christ or the kingdom of the devil. You are either born of God or you're not and you're dead in Adam. And the decision of the church is supposed to reflect the decision of God in these cases. It's imperfect. In third John, the apostle John, I think, writing there says that diatrophies had put people out of the church that belonged in the church. Diatrophies didn't belong in, but diatrophies had cast out people whom Christ accepted. And similarly here, Corinth has failed to cast out someone that should have been cast out. It's imperfect because people are involved. but to the best of our ability, guided by the Word of God and the work of His Spirit. We are to reject and exclude those who continue in the practice of sin without repentance. And why is that? Well, we see it starting in verse five, but continuing particularly in verses six, seven and eight. Verse five says you hand him over to the devil so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The desire is that discipline would be destructive in a constructive way. Why does the Lord send Jeremiah to the sinful nation of Judah? To pull down and to plant. To uproot and to plant new. To tear down and to rebuild. That's the purpose of discipline. That's the work of preaching. It's to cast down everything which is erected against the knowledge of the Lord God, and it is to rebuild in its place that which is pleasing to Him. The purpose of discipline is restorative, it's redemptive, it's intended to bring the sinner back. You know one of the reasons that discipline often does not work in the churches where it is, in whatever way applied? It's because there was never originally the relationship that should have existed. And that's no excuse for not exercising discipline. But discipline is supposed to hurt. When a brother or sister who continues apart from repentance and the practice of sin, when they are told you cannot come to this table with us, that's supposed to hurt. When they are told you are not a member of this church any longer, that's supposed to hurt. It's supposed to drive them to repent. They're supposed to feel the weight, the void in their life. Unfortunately, we live in a society today where many people do not see the need for the visible church. They're perfectly content to go around the corner somewhere else or to be without the church whatsoever and to comfort themselves saying, but I am nevertheless a Christian. And yet this is not the conception of the church that we find in scripture at all. Discipline is intended to destroy fleshly behavior so that the sinner might repent and be saved. It's not supposed to be angry. It's not supposed to be vengeful. It's supposed to be an act of love seeking that brother's welfare. It's the same reason you discipline your children. It ought to be the same way that you discipline your children. If you're disciplining your children just because you're angry at them, that's the wrong way to do it. That's the wrong time to do it. It's the wrong context in which to do it. Yes, you should be angry at sin. Yes, you should have your spirit provoked by disobedience and impenitence. But the act of discipline is an act of love because we love that brother or sister too much to let them go to hell unwarned. I've sat my boys down before and I've said, guys, I love you too much to let you grow up and become fools. And that's why I keep riding you. That's why I keep fussing at you. That's why I keep telling you, you better straighten up and do something different here is because I love you too much to see you grow up and live the way a lot of people I have to work with. I don't mean you. All of my friends in law enforcement, we joke about the fact that we're always dealing with the same people. We're just dealing with them at different points along the spectrum. I don't want that for my children. I don't have to go minister to them when they're in jail. I don't have to work with them and share the gospel with them once they're in rehab. I don't want them to grow up and be fools. I love them too much for that. That's why I discipline them now. And that's how we should feel about our brothers and sisters in Christ. Say, I love you too much to let you go this way because that way leads to death. But secondly, is to protect the purity of the church. Paul says, verse six, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Now, what's going to happen? Are more incestuous relationships going to appear because this brother's sin is being tolerated? Well, maybe, but it's fairly unlikely. We would hope that that's not going to be a very common manifestation of sin. But let me tell you what does happen. When you see in churches a reluctance to apply discipline when it is needed, there is a general diminishing of a sense of reverence for God's standard and accountability to God's word. And you see laxity in the Christian life that has terrible repercussions. When God administers discipline in the Old Testament, as in the New, He makes an example out of the offender, so that the rest might fear. And that's what all of us are supposed to do. We're supposed to see a brother or sister disciplined, and at the same time that we are grieving over their sin and praying for their soul, we are straightening up and paying attention. Because suddenly we realize, except for the grace of God, there go I. that we are accountable to one another and we are all together accountable to the Lord. And let me say that the world will not share our standards in this regard, and the world will often characterize the administration of church discipline as abusive. And yet the world will never miss an opportunity to point out Christian hypocrisy. And the witness to Christ is contaminated by churches that allow sin to go on unchecked within their fellowship. And it is rampant in our day and time, and it is rampant in this part of the country. It is widely known and acknowledged, and it is to the shame of the church that it is so. Discipline should never be administered carelessly, needlessly, but we dare not neglect to administer it when it is needed. And then third, and perhaps preeminently, discipline is necessary to vindicate the honor of Christ. Notice what he says, verse eight, excuse me, verse seven, 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. We are upholding the honor of Christ in this. We are recognizing that the work of Christ is important. Indeed, it is defining for us. What if the offender does not repent? It's unfortunate that that will sometimes be the case. What if the church does not heed as it should? That is unfortunate that it is sometimes the case. But we should be committed to doing what is right in this regard no matter the outcome. Because Christ's Word is to be honored. What does the Lord tell Ezekiel when He calls him into prophetic ministry? He says, no one is going to listen to you. No one is going to repent. No one is going to be saved through your preaching. I mean, you talk about the most discouraging ordination sermon that any prophet ever heard. That's got to be it. You are going to give your life in service to the word of the Lord. And at the end of your ministry, it's going to appear as if nothing has been accomplished. But over and over and over in the book of Ezekiel, the Lord says some 70 plus times, then they will know. Then they will know that I have been among them. God's work will be done even when sinners remain hard hearted and unheeding. And then the sphere of discipline, verses nine through 13. Paul says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. There's some question here about whether he's referring to an earlier letter that perhaps we don't have, or whether he is using what's called an epistolary heiress form here. I made the mistake of bringing this up at a Chinese restaurant one time with a new Testament scholar and was quickly corrected about the epistolary heiress. It's possible that Paul is just in a figure of speech referring to what he's already said in this very chapter. In either case, He says, I've taught you not to associate with sexually immoral people, but obviously I'm not talking about people in the world. Now, here's an interesting thing. I have friends who are living in immoral circumstances. I have friends who are not walking with the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet I'm able to have a relationship with them. I'm able to do business with them. I'm able to engage socially with them. And yet if a brother or sister within the church is acting in those ways, it is going to inevitably and necessarily damage that relationship. Now, how exactly that's going to look will depend somewhat on the circumstances and the point of the process that we may be at, but it will inevitably and necessarily damage that relationship. Why? Because this is a brother or a sister in Christ who is part of the community that has been cleansed by Christ and consecrated by Christ. And it makes a difference, Paul says. Verse 11, I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother. If he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a person. What do I have to do with judging outsiders, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? You and I are to judge those within the church, not according to appearance. John 7, 24, but with righteous judgment. And by the way, Paul's list here is not exhaustive. Any unrepentant sin could lead to excommunication. And yet there are some pretty obvious indications of a need for discipline here in Paul's list and in others like it elsewhere in the New Testament. In fact, our membership questions are a pretty good guideline for those kind of sins that would be subject to discipline. If somebody comes up and says, I don't believe in the Trinity, I don't believe that the Bible is God's Word. I'm not walking in repentance any longer. I'm going to shack up with somebody and just, I think that's okay. I think Christ accepts me as I am. Those people, if they will not be called to repentance, will have to be disciplined. Hold your place here and turn over one more time to the little book of Jude, right before the book of Revelation. Jude, verses 22 and 23, I'll let you figure out which chapter I'm in. Verses 22 and 23, notice that Jude in writing this says that distinctions have to be made depending on the person and the offense and the point of the process that we may be at. But discipline is always necessary. Verse 22, have mercy on those who doubt. He doesn't say ignore the problems that appear in the. No, he says, have mercy on them. What does that look like? Gentleness. Restore such a one in a spirit of meekness. Paul would say Galatians 6. Have mercy on those who doubt. Save others by snatching them out of the fire. And to others, show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh. That third category, I think, most closely corresponds to excommunication. That second category is a serious one. We don't move immediately to excommunication in these kind of cases. And yet, depending on the nature of the sin, depending on the context in which this becomes apparent to the church, depending on the attitude of the offender, there may need to be very direct action taken very quickly. Mercy with fear. Seeking to snatch this brother or sister from the fire. Suspension from the table. Not even to eat with such a person. Do you realize that all of this is so that the truly regenerate person will come to repentance? This is what we see God doing in Peter's life. So we see God doing in David's life. Prophet Nathan comes to David and just absolutely dresses him down in a very painful way. And what does David say? He says, I've sinned against the Lord. I've sinned against the Lord. You know what happens when a truly regenerate person is disciplined according to God's word, in God's way, by God's people? He repents. Do you know what you're withholding from that erring brother or sister when you fail to discipline them in the way that God's word teaches? You are withholding the very means of grace that God has appointed to bring about their repentance. Because what I want you to see as we close is that discipline is but an extension of an application of the means of grace that God has provided. for the edification and salvation of his people. What are the means of grace? The word of God, the sacraments and prayer. What are we doing when we're preaching the word of God every Lord's Day? We are practicing discipline. Not judicial discipline against sin, but we're practicing what our book of church order would call administrative discipline. We're warning, we're correcting, we're teaching, we're guiding, we're encouraging. What are we doing when we administer the sacrament every Lord's Day? Well, we fence the table. We remind each other that I have to be a believer in Jesus to partake of this bread and this wine. I need to be a member in good standing of a faithful church because whoever has Christ for a savior has the church for his mother, a Cyprian would say. There's no ordinary possibility of salvation apart from the visible church. This is important, folks. American evangelicals may not realize this. They may think that I could just pray a prayer and then hit up my favorite preacher on YouTube and that's all I need. No, no, no. You have no part with Christ apart from his body. We see the centrality of that fellowship, that the importance of that relationship every Lord's Day when we come to this table and we remind each other that we have to be walking penitently before the Lord. And you may be thinking that every week, that same warning over and over. Here we go again. Why do we even repeat these words every Lord's Day? That must be for any visitors that we have. Oh, no. Let's follow in the practice of the second and third century church. Let's just invite all of the visitors to leave and let's just partake ourselves. That's fine. We'll say the same words today. The same words, because that's for you and that's for me. Those words are for his church. Those words are a reminder. that I stand by God's grace, I am preserved by God's grace, but I dare not ever take that grace for granted. And if I come to this table, I have to come contritely, I have to come penitently, I have to come confessing that I am a sinner and Christ is my savior. Otherwise, I dare not come because to come would be to eat and drink judgment to myself. What I want to suggest to you, brethren, as we close, is that if we neglect the practice of discipline when and where it is needed, we probably began neglecting discipline long before that. Because discipline is simply the faithful ministry of the word and sacrament. And if we neglect to exercise it in its more judicial capacity when it is needed, then we are dishonoring Christ. And we are acting in a hateful way to our brother or sister who is an offender. And we are withholding from them the very means that Christ has appointed for their salvation and for ours. And so discipline, as difficult as it is and as much as we might desire to avoid it, is necessary and something for which we ought to give God thanks. Let's bow and pray. Our God and Father, we do indeed thank you that knowing our frailty, knowing that we are prone to wander, you have appointed means to keep us faithful to you. That indeed you have appointed, O Lord, the preaching of your word, that you have appointed your church to gather together for that purpose. And that together you have beckoned us to your table and reminded us of the family privileges that allow us to be gathered there. We pray, oh God, that those gifts would be precious. That we would not misunderstand discipline to be merely a punitive action against someone who has wronged us. Rather, we would see it as indeed it is a loving but judicial act that you perform against those whose position in the family is indeed threatened. We pray, O God, that you would give us grace, wisdom, and strength to be faithful even in this regard, and that you would continue to bless and build up your church. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.