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One of the tactics of evil is that it is darkness. And that means you can't see it very well. A lot of times, evil is covert. And that's how it creeps in amongst us and sneaks up on us. And as we were just singing that last song, I was thinking, you know, one of the hymns we just sang was Charles Wesley's. back in the 1700s, O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing, a great hymn. And if you grew up in the church, in a conservative Bible-believing church, you're familiar with that hymn. And then we just sang a more modern hymn, The Lord is My Salvation, and a couple of those kinds of hymns. And it just struck me. I remembered, you know, some of you are aware of this. a few months back. So we had some visitors here in our church from out of town. And after the service, one of the men came up to me and he thanked me for the sermon. And then he said, but you're never going to grow your church with your music. And it kind of struck me a little bit funny, you know, that's this darkness that sneaks up on you. And he told me that, you know, in his church he was in charge of the music and that they only sang traditional hymns in their church. And they didn't, later on I looked at their website and they made a big deal, a big paragraph about we only sing traditional hymns and we reject contemporary music. Of course, it would be interesting to challenge the guy. You always think of these things afterwards, later on, to challenge the guy and say, well, let's pull these out. Let's pull these two. Here's Wesley's hymn. And then here's this hymn we sang here, a more modern one, The Lord is My Salvation. We'll lay that down. Show me where you see unbiblical content. Where is the unbiblical content? And of course, he would be stymied by that. But when you have somebody creep in like that, and we've had it happen a lot of times in this church, it's hard to discern because it takes you a bit by surprise. Because what kind of a person would visit a church and then say something like that later on? But that's an example of something that, is a red flag, that there's something very, very wrong with a person that does something like that. I hope he comes back. I hope he visits again. And we'll have a little chat that time, then you see. But I just say that because that's an example of us being wise to evil. That's not a small thing that this guy did. And it really evidences an evil heart and a lack of love for Christ's people then. Well, here is Revelation chapter 2, which is the scripture reading for this morning. Starting at verse 12, this is the letter, the Lord's letter to the church at Pergamum. And as we will see, it relates directly to our passage of scripture in 1 Corinthians 5 that we will be looking at in a moment. So here is the Lord's word. Revelation 2, verse 12. And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write, the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name. and you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness who was killed among you where Satan dwells. But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food sacrificed to idols and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Therefore, repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows, except the one who receives it. There is the word of the Lord and we are to receive it then as such. We're going to continue with our hearing of and proclaiming of this portion of God's word. First Corinthians, the Apostle Paul's letter to the the church at Corinth. And so as we begin, let's, as always, ask the Lord's blessing on the ministry of his word. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, the word who came and dwelt among us. And thank you that we can open your book now and read and hear the very words of God. And we know that your word is powerful. In this scripture we just read, the letter to the church at Pergamum, you speak of doing war with the sword of the words of your mouth. And we pray, Father, that that power of your word would be effected now, exposing evil, convicting us of our own sin where that is required, but encouraging us as well and increasing our faith and our love for you. We pray, Father, that your spirit would take your word now and use it to sanctify your people. And if anyone that's listening this morning is still unsaved, unregenerate, dead in their sins, we pray, Father, that you would, as we've been reading in Bunyan's Holy War, Take the battering ram of your word empowered by your spirit to smash through the blindness of eye gate and the deafness of ear gate. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. I guess ear gate is kind of dumb gate. That would be another deaf and dumb. When a person is in bondage to evil, they are blind and deafened and dumb as well. Ephesians 4, starting at verse 17, relates to our passage of 1 Corinthians 5. Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding. alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They've become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that's not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you've heard, and if you've been following our Ephesian study, you know that we put a line through that word about. It's not just the Christian has heard about Christ, but we've heard Christ, okay? 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." So there Paul is telling us, reminding us, that if we are born again through faith alone in Christ alone, we are new creations. We are new creatures. We are creations. of God, we're not the old self that we used to be. Anyone that still is unchanged, that old self, is not a Christian. They don't know the Lord. So Paul says, look now, it's unthinkable. The thing is unthinkable, absolutely illogical and wrong that a Christian should continue to live as they used to live, as Paul says, as the Gentiles live, you see. He says it again. He emphasizes it over and over. He says it again in Romans 6. Listen to him here. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we're not under law but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you're slaves of the one to whom you obey? either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." And so there you have it again. It's unthinkable that a person who's been born again and is a new man, the new man in Christ, should continue to live like the old man. Now, what we call the marks or the badges, we might say, of a true church include the preaching of the word, the faithful observance of the ordinances of the sacraments, and also of what we call church discipline. And the foundation for church discipline is this very truth. The Christian is not who they used to be. We are to put off the old man and put on the new man. And so we must expect that anybody who claims to be a Christian is going to evidence the fruits of the Spirit is going to be that new creation. But what we're seeing with increasing frequency in the churches today is this willful blindness. It is a willful refusal to practice what Christ commands, the mark of a true church, one mark of a true church. Church discipline. Here is Christ's command. This is not a suggestion. It's a command. Verses 11 through 13. But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you're to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you." Now, this was a problem, another problem at Corinth. It was due to their pride, which led them to adopt practices of the old man, the culture, to be conformed to the culture that was around them. There was this gross, open, evil, unrepentant sin in the church. And worse yet, the church was refusing to do anything about it. Quite the contrary. They were proud of it. They were bragging about how gracious they were. Later on here now, the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 6, when we get to that, section, we're going to see that apparently there was kind of a byword going around, a motto going around the church at Corinth. All things are lawful for me. You know, see this abuse of grace. All things are lawful for me. And they would go on and say, you know, hey, Food's for the stomach, and the stomach's for food. So obviously, I am to indulge my body. That's what it's created for. I'm to indulge my body. The Greeks, as I understand it, had this dualism thing, contrast between the body and the spirit. And so it didn't really matter. what you did with your body. So they were conforming to that thinking, then, of their culture. Well, let's listen to the whole chapter here, starting at verse 1. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that's not even tolerated among the 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'm present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. 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. Your boasting is not good. Don't you 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 you in my letter, now you see, apparently, First Corinthians is not First Corinthians, because he's referring here to a previous letter. 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'd need to go out of the world, you know, be a monk in the desert or something. But now I'm writing to you Not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, who claims to be a Christian, in other words, all right? If he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. And it's like he's saying, as for you then, purge the evil person from among you. Now, there's several points here that Paul makes. And I'll list most of them here for us. We aren't going to be able to examine each one in detail in one session. We'll plan to move on to look at some more of those next time. But here's kind of a big picture survey of what Paul has just said. First of all, there was present in the Corinthian church a man, and they all knew who he was when Paul was writing to them, a man who was guilty of open, unrepentant, shocking sexual immorality. So just think about that, the setting When this letter was read to the church, which it was, it was read to the church, here's this guy sitting out here hearing what Paul has to say about him and say, you're delivered over to Satan. I've done this to you. He should be shaking in his boots. It is possible, and we see this later on in 2 Corinthians, It's possible. If 2 Corinthians is talking about the same man, it turns out that the church at Corinth listened to Paul, put this man out of the church, and that he repented, that he came to repent, if that's the same person in 2 Corinthians. All right, then. Well, the church members were boasting about this. They were arrogant. And third, Paul commands the church to remove this man from among their fellowship and to have nothing to do with him. Don't even eat with such a one. Fourth, this expulsion from the church is described as handing the man over to Satan. And this handing over is not only for the protection of the church and the name of Christ, but it's for encouraging repentance on the part of the sinning person themselves. Fifth, Paul says that the practice of removing all leaven from one's house in preparation of the Old Testament Passover celebration is an Old Testament symbol of the church putting sin out from among its fellowship. And then sixth, Paul emphasizes that he's not telling the Corinthians to separate themselves entirely from non-Christians. He says, that would be impossible. You'd have to go out of the world. And by the way, that instruction in itself negates Rome's practice of get thee to a nunnery or a monastery, this separation from the world that only produces corruption anyway. It is the person who claims to be a Christian, yet who lives in unrepentant sin, that we are to separate from. And Paul says it. These are hateful words, it seems like, to so many people today that claim to be Christians. We are to judge one another in the church, he says, in that sense. And finally, eighth, the subject of church discipline, is not limited to those who are formal members on the membership roles. Many times today we hear local churches claiming they have no authority to discipline a person in its ranks because, well, you know, they're not formal members. Paul doesn't mention anything about that. You know, some people refuse to become, now this isn't, I don't speak this of everybody, but some people refuse to become formal members of a local church because they don't want anybody messing with their life, right? They don't want to be accountable and so on. But Paul doesn't say anything about, well, let's check in and see if this guy's a formal member of the church at Corinth and see if we have jurisdiction there. No, the church had jurisdiction over anybody who claims to be a Christian and is within their ranks, then, you see, in their fellowship. So there's at least most of Paul's main points. Now, many, if not most, churches, local churches in our day, refuse to expel such people like this. They are arrogant. You know, we accept everybody. We're all sinners. Everybody is welcome here. How many times you see that on church signs? Church signs are like, there's so much heresy on church signs. You read them. Everybody is welcome. Hi, I'm Satan. Apparently, I'm welcome here. Then in your church, that kind of a thing. Everybody's not welcome in Christ's church. This man here in Corinth was not welcome there. He was to be put out. But it's also, church discipline is not practiced also, not only because of arrogance, but people just, you know, we don't want to get that heavy. I don't want to go there. I just want to kind of stand back, don't want to get involved. And furthermore, if we're going to go there in this business of church discipline, that means accountability. For me, I don't like that, you see. So it's resistant. Well, what's the result? What is the result? If church discipline, biblical church discipline, is one of the marks of a true church, Well, if you don't practice it, increasingly you're going to become a false church. And I don't hesitate to say that is exactly what happened here in this church 30, 35 years ago, that you would have been hard pressed at that time to find a literal handful, five, maybe two handfuls of genuine Christians, you see, but people come in, they're still unsaved and unregenerate, but they're told that they're Christians. They're assured that they're Christians. They're on their way to heaven, and yet they're dead in their sins. And the church becomes more and more just like the world, just like the world. So you've heard me mention this before, but it's just a classic example. Mac said that when he was first saved and he first came to this church, he looked around at the people and said, what are these guys doing here? Because he knew that. He knew what they were out there then, you see, in the world. So I cannot see how it is possible for a local church to faithfully practice church discipline, the marks of the church and the preaching of the word, and grow to huge numbers. All right? And I don't see how that is paused. Something is being neglected. And oftentimes, it's this church discipline. Listen to Gordon Fee comment on this. He says, there are many churches, quote Christians, who adopt the Corinthians' attitude almost totally, usually on the basis that all are sinners after all, right? They live in the world as those who would also be of the world, so that the distinctions between those inside and those outside are razor thin if they even exist at all. In such cases, the church ends up judging neither those inside nor those outside. What is at stake is not simply a low view of sin. What's at stake is the church itself. Will it follow Paul's gospel with its ethical implications, or will it continue in its present, quote, spirituality, one that tolerates such sin and thereby destroys God's temple in Corinth. What does Paul say elsewhere about those who would destroy God's temple? He will destroy them, right? His judgment will be then upon them. Can you imagine, can you imagine, think of this, that say somebody came into this church And they were just walking in sin. It was obvious. They claim to be a Christian, but they're walking in gross sin. Now granted, as I said earlier, the thing can sneak up on you. Because evil and sin is darkness. It's very sneaky and covert. And these kind of people can put on the disguise. But once their sin is known, they I can't imagine that we would just turn a blind eye to it. We've been duped before. I've been duped before by this. But nevertheless, a real church, a fellowship of Christ's true people, you're not going to be able to allow that such hypocrisy and shame the name of Christ. than as a result. Well, what was the nature of this man's sin? He's a professing Christian, claims to be a brother. What was the nature of his sin? Now, Paul is not teaching here some kind of Christian perfectionism, right? Sinlessness. Somehow that's required of every church member. We know that can't be his meaning because We all sin. And in this world, in this flesh, we're going to sin. But a true Christian does not walk in sin. Once in a while, we might get soiled by the world, but we don't, like a pig, stay in the muck, you know, the pig pen of the world. We see it as sin, and we grieve by it, and we repent, and we ask the Lord to forgive us. We're a new creation. It's unthinkable that a Christian is going to stay in that pig pen. The true Christian repents and is sorrowful. But this man's sin that Paul is calling to accounts here was no small thing. It was open. It was gross. Everybody was boasting about it. It was ongoing sin, and it was unrepentant sin. It's 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. So this was sexual immorality, but it is even a gross kind of sexual immorality. It was incestuous. It was of such a shocking nature that Paul says, you guys, not even the pagan world that you live in tolerates something like this. Apparently, it could well have been that in Corinth and in Greece there, the secular courts and the civil law forbade such a thing. A man has his father's wife. Here's Gordon Fee again explaining. The horror here lies in the fact that there is sexual immorality among the Corinthians, but they're taking no action. Paul says that's really the shocking thing. It's bad enough that this evil is among you, but you're not doing anything about it. All of this has been reported to Paul. In case any of you are wondering, Paul's saying, whether I might need to come with a rod in my hand, like he said at the end of chapter 4, Paul's suggesting, listen to what else has been reported to me about you, you see. So it appears then that the man's sin was that he was openly living with his stepmother, and doing so sexually, that Paul uses this term his father's wife, his father's wife, which would lead us to believe that he's talking about the man's stepmother, not his natural mother. And so such a relationship was probably illegal in the laws of Corinth. As evil increases more and more in our own day, is anything illegal anymore? Anything at all? You know, I can remember, it hasn't been that long ago. Let's see, when did I first become a police officer? So that would have been maybe 50, a little over 50 years ago, OK. That's pretty short term really. But I can remember if somebody used the language publicly, obscene language that's being used commonly left and right today, you're under arrest. You're going to jail for disorderly conduct. And that's what would have happened. The Oregon State Police had rules, I can remember, back even those days as well. that if one of their officers, in fact, this was a case, the command found out that the man was living unmarried and fornicating with his girlfriend. And they fired him. They fired him. That was it. That would be laughable in the world then today. And somebody that got fired for that would turn around and sue him for millions of dollars. So evil, it just has increased exponentially then, you see. This is all the more reason why there has to be a difference between the church and the culture of the world in which we live. But what are we seeing? What are we seeing? You don't have to look far to find examples of churches embracing the world and its perversions And it's typical, then, to read about that. You read all the time, you read about people who maybe some preacher or somebody who used to be a faithful, solid expositor of God's word. But now, you know, I've rethought some things and, you know, I'm thinking that a person can be a Christian and be a homosexual. I'm thinking that we should be welcoming these kind of people then into the church, you see. Entire denominations of churches are going in that direction. But that was the nature then of this professing Christian sin. Paul is shocked by it. is the typical local professing Christian church today, would they be shocked by that? If somebody member did this, would they be shocked by that? Seems like there's an arrogance and a pride here then as well. And secondly, what we see here, Paul is saying, Not only should you guys not be proud about this, you should be grieved over it. You should be mourning over it, that this is happening in your church. Now, a little nuance of difference maybe here in what Paul means by that. Here's a couple of takes on it. The first one is like this. In spite of this incest in your midst, you continue to hold your heads high toward me, as you have been doing. What right do you have to pride with this kind of thing going on and no one doing anything about it? So here it's more indirect. It's like maybe not so much directly boasting about this guy, but their general attitude of arrogance and pride toward Paul, elevating themselves above him and and not listening then to him. Or it could be a more direct thing. It could be like, is Paul's rebuke a direct attack on their pride as related to the sin itself? Something like this. In Christ, through whom we've received the Spirit, who has lifted us above the mere earthly, All things are lawful. And so they're boasting about, look at this is going on. Look at what happened here. Well, all things are lawful for us here. Well, whichever nuance of interpretation you take there, we see that the proper response to sin in the church should be grief, not some kind of self-righteousness. Not some kind of pharisaical joy, oh, we got this guy, you know, and that kind of wrong use of church discipline. But there should be a great sadness, sadness that the name of Christ is blasphemed among the Gentiles as a result of this. And sadness that someone who we thought was a brother or a sister in Christ has gotten caught up then in sin. And sadness and mourning that we have to expel that person if they don't repent, you see. You know, it's easy for us. I know it's easy for me to kind of get caught up. You read these common reports, frequent reports, In the news, it seems all the time, right, here's another evangelical pastor caught in sin, you know, and dismissed. And it's easy, you know, for us to slide into arrogance. That's what we've been saying all along, told you so, you know, that kind of a thing. But really, we should respond with grief over that. Because that's what the world is seeing this. Yeah, you Christians, you guys are a joke. Just look at this stuff over here and look at your hypocrisy. Rather, we should be, as Paul says, mourning. There should be a heartfelt grief. That's the godly response here. And remember that Paul is addressing the entire Corinthian church. When he's saying, you guys are arrogant. You should be mourning instead. Well, yeah, Paul, but it's this guy that's committing this sin. Aim your remarks at him. But there's more to it than this. Paul is telling them that, listen, you are the body of Christ. You all are members of Christ. You're joined in the communion of the saints with one another. And as a result, the entire church needs to repent over this and to mourn over this. And they weren't doing that. See, that's another thing that we would mourn over. When something like this happens among us as a church, then We all somehow we recognize that as a church, we need to repent. Let me give you an example. Quite a few years ago, a church that at one time had been large, it still had big buildings and everything, but not all that many people there for one reason or another. But I had met their pastor before and he had since left. And that church was looking for a new pastor. And they ended up calling a new pastor. And one of the primary reasons that they decided upon him was that where he had been previously in a church, he had led a great, there'd been a big increase in attendance, membership. He'd led big big dollar building projects, their Christian school got a new building and the attendance was up in the Christian school and so forth. And so this church that was looking for a pastor called him because they wanted that. We want somebody that's able to come in and do those things for us. Just incidentally, Is that the biblical job description of a pastor? That sounds like a CEO or something of a corporation, but that's not the job of a pastor. The job of a pastor is to preach the word, to preach God's word, you see. But this is what they wanted, lots of new people, big increase in their school, and so forth. Within two years, that guy was gone. How was he gone? Well, he left his wife. And it turned out he'd been having an immoral affair with the church secretary, and he ran off with her and told them, told the church that, well, you know, I was never really called to be a pastor after all. And so, well, subsequent to that, one of the board members came and talked to me. The reason he came is it turns out that he was somebody that I had gone to high school with. And so he knew me. So anyway, he came over and and visited me, and he asked what they should do about this. Now, this guy, he was on the board of that church, okay? And he'd been in church for probably most of his life. So I opened my Bible, and I showed him this passage, 1 Corinthians 5, all right? I showed him that, and I told him, look, this is what God says. You guys need to meet together as a church and formally hand him over to Satan and enact church discipline. And his response was, I'm not kidding you here, his response was, I've never heard of such a thing. That's what he said. I've never heard of such a thing. Well, what does that tell you? He's probably unsaved. Or at best, he's a Christian, but he's been in a church where nobody's preaching God's word. The thing is impossible if you've never heard of it. And he's not the only professing Christian that I've run into over the years who had that response, you see. Why? I've never heard of such a thing. I told another board member who called me the same thing, and I also added, you know, I said, your whole church shares in this sin. Because when you called that pastor, you did it out of pride and arrogance. You wanted big things for yourselves. You say it's for the Lord, but it wasn't for the Lord. It's then, it's for yourself. And you know what his reaction was? He got a hold of the denominational minister, who then called me and was irate. Jeff, you are so judgmental, you see. And we want to be patient and we want to be loving. Now look, you know what equivocation is? Equivocation is using words but attributing different meanings to them. And I knew for once on the spot I knew how to respond because I knew exactly what this guy was saying. I said, let me translate that for you. You're not going to do anything. You're not going to do anything about this. All you're concerned about is damage control. And if you look at churches today, you read some account. Their pastor or some elder is caught in gross immorality and was dismissed. And then you look at the language. Immediately, they start minimizing the sin, even if the person is fired. You know how you see that? Well, it has come to light that our pastor has been involved in an inappropriate relationship. Why don't you call it for what it is, right? That's minimizing, an inappropriate relationship. relationship. Well, then what does that mean? But then they don't want to talk about that too much. Then they announce it to the congregation. Just be assured that First Church here is going to continue right on, unabated by these sad events, and we're just going to move ahead. What is that? That's not repentance. That's damage control. You see, what matters is the institution. The reputation of the corporation has to be maintained so sales don't drop. That's exactly, then, what is going on. Paul says, you should be mourning. You should be in grief that this kind of a thing has happened. And you need to be, if the person is unrepentant, you need to be handing that person, as a church, over to Satan. And by the way, as we'll see in a moment, not only for the glory of the name of Christ and not only for the protection of the church, that his spirit might be saved on that day. So there's a concern for the sinner. So here's the spiritual. Consider this, the spiritual nature of church discipline. These are words we'll have to look at in more detail later. But verses 3 through 5, Paul says, For though absent in body, I'm present in spirit. And as if present, I've already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Now, many, if not most, professing Christians today look at the church as a kind of social club. And how do they look at church membership? They look at it as membership in a social club. That's how they regard it. Let me give you another illustration here. I've probably mentioned this one to you before. Many years ago in our first church, there was a man, he had been on the church board as well, and he stole away another man's wife and was living with her and so on. And when I heard about it, I called him, and the first thing that he said to me is he said, well, I suppose you'll want my membership, right? And that's very telling. The church's authority or the church's ability to discipline a professing Christian in its midst was nothing. This is just a matter of, well, you know, I violated the requirements of the YMCA, so they're going to drop my membership. And that's the end of the matter. Well, this man evidenced himself to be a false Christian. And this was to him. That's all this was, just remove my name from the membership. I was told recently of, and this was a professing reformed church, that the way that they handle church discipline is if they discipline someone for unrepentant sin, their take on it is that you suspend, you remove their name from the membership role, But they're encouraged to continue coming in the fellowship of the Church, right? That's their take on it, you see. There's no room for that here in 1 Corinthians 5. And clearly, then, again, they're regarding this as kind of a record-keeping matter, a non-spiritual matter. But to be excommunicated, ex, put outside of the communion of the saints, is a spiritual matter. It's something that the unrepentant man should fear. That's the purpose. He should fear. I mean, to be handed over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, right? This is how Paul described it. And the apostle, the apostle Paul, think of Peter. There's an apostle telling Ananias, you're dead. And that was it for lying to the Holy Spirit and to his wife as well. These people at Corinth would have known about that. But this man has no fear, you see. So this isn't just some matter of erasing a name out of the membership books, this kind of a thing. in the power of the Lord, in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the church, this man is expelled and he's handed over to Satan. Now the question is, what does that mean? What does it mean to be handed over then to Satan? Now, let's be plain and careful here to note, we are not talking about some more, if there is such a thing, a minor sin, a sin whereby a Christian commits this sin. But they're grieved over it. They repent. This is a gross, open, unrepentant, habitual, high-browed attitude walking in sin. That's what we're talking about here. So when a person like King David, his sin was great, but his repentance was real, then there's mercy extended, even though there might be some temporal consequences then of the sin. But Paul's used this phrase before. When he was writing to Timothy, 1 Timothy 1, this charge, I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme." So again, what does it mean to be handed over, then, to Satan. Well, Jesus said that he's going to build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. This means, then, that the Lord protects his flock. He's the chief shepherd. He protects. No one shall pluck them out of my hand. We've been taken out of Satan's darkness and transferred into Christ's kingdom of light than you see. But if there's a person who claims to be a Christian and they walk in sin, they refuse to repent of it, refuse to heed the warnings of the church, then the church, acting with the Lord's own authority, puts the person out of the church, out there, out there in the world. That's the devil's realm. There you go. You want to live like a worldling? Okay, then we will put you out into the world where you can experience so-called life in that world then, once again, kind of like the prodigal going to the pigpen, and hopefully he will repent. Now, there may be more to it than just putting the person out into Here they've been in the church, like Hebrews 6. They've tasted the good word of God. They've been enlightened and so forth. And now you're removed from that, and you're put out into the world. And there's no guarantee that the Lord's ever going to bring you back. So it's a dangerous place to go. But it might also be included here, because Paul does mention, for the destruction of his flesh, that handing the person over to Satan entails the Lord using Satan in various ways to actually destroy his flesh, to strike the person down. But bottom line is, it's a fearful thing. Church discipline is not just scratching out the person's name from the membership list. It is a spiritual action done under the authority of the Lord himself. And it must be exercised faithfully with fear and humility, not with arrogance. And it must be exercised with justice. Sadly, there's been lots of people, we know lots of numbers of them, who have been unjustly excommunicated from their church. then, you see. And so those kinds of things happen as well, where the innocent are persecuted. Well, what can you say then about a church that refuses to obey God's instruction here in 1 Corinthians 5? We can say several things about it. First of all, such a church does not love Christ's people, because We must always remember a father disciplines the son whom he loves. Church discipline is an act of love. It discipline, but it's an act of love. To just sit back and ignore the sin or to boast about it, don't tell me that that's loving the person, because it's not. Secondly, a church that does not obey Christ's instruction here about church discipline isn't zealous for Christ's name in the world. What kind of a thing is this hypocrisy doing for Christ's name in the world? Oh, I don't know, don't really care. And third, a church like that is sinfully refusing to obey a direct commandment of the Lord. This is not an option. It's a direct commandment. And such a church is not a true church. And increasingly, the fraud will become evident as the membership is filled with unregenerate people. You'd be surprised. Maybe you wouldn't be surprised, but you'd be surprised, I think, if you knew how often you can show someone, a professing Christian, 1 Corinthians 5, and say, look, this is how the church is to operate. This is how we are to deal with somebody that claims that they're a Christian, but is walking in habitual sin. And it's just so common. It's just so common to get the response from a professing Christian that Oh, I don't know about that. I just don't think I can agree with you on that, Pastor. People say that. It's like you want to grab them and shove their face down. Look, read that. Read that. What's it say? Did I write that? I didn't write that. But that's just the excuse, you see. Selfish and that it is arrogant. Well, next time we'll want to look at a couple of more points that Paul makes here. that we dare not skip over. One of them is that this matter of church discipline is the New Testament anti-type of the symbolism in the Old Testament of Passover. And cleaning out the leaven from your house before there is the sacrifice then of the Passover, and we will want to look at that next time. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for saving us. Every one of us was one of these rebellious sinners at one time, and you grabbed hold of us. You broke down our blindness and our deafness and enabled us by your spirit to hear your word. We pray, Father, that we would be a church that's faithful in obeying you. And we ask that you would forgive us of our sins and that you would grant us quick repentance when we do sin. And we pray this all in Christ's name, amen.
21 - Not to Even Eat Together 1 Cor 5
Series First Corinthians
Paul admonishes the Corinthians for their arrogance in failing to grieve over gross sin in their midst and to put such a professing Christian out of the church.
Sermon ID | 92024151239606 |
Duration | 59:58 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday Service |
Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 5 |
Language | English |
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