I feel just a little bit like a one-man band today, hopping back and forth. I hope you will forgive me. Let us pray. Father, I pray that you would feed us today. I pray that you would speak words through me today that would feed all of us. I pray that you would touch my lips and make the words your words. I pray that you would strengthen and convict. I pray you'd encourage. I pray that you would wipe away the blinders from our eyes, the sin that clouds our understanding of what is good. Lord God, speak through me today, and I pray that your Spirit would move in the hearts of all of us. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Well, the last time I spoke before you, I talked and preached about a glass of water. I use that as my red thread through the sermon. Today, I'm going to talk about yeast. You kids know what yeast is? All you kids know, your mom's bake, bake bread. You roll a lump of dough, right? And then they take this magical powder. The powder's in a little packet. If they get it at Costco, it comes in a big bag. But they take a little bit of the powder and they roll it in the dough. And what happens to the dough? It changes, doesn't it? It starts to get bigger and bigger and then she punches it down and it keeps going and getting bigger and bigger and she punches it down again until it gets to the point where she decides it's gone as far as I want it to go. A yeast, what yeast is, is it's a one-celled organism. It's a little animal. And this little animal has one goal in life. Actually, two goals in life. It wants to eat sugar and it wants to make little yeast babies. That's all it wants to do. It knows nothing else. Okay? Now, if you were to take a bowl of sugar water and get one tiny microscopic yeast cell and put it in the sugar water. And if you came back a few hours later, that bowl would be filled with millions of little yeast babies. And they would be going through and eating the sugar. And they wouldn't stop until all the sugar was gone. And those little yeast cells, what they're doing is they're eating the sugar and they're converting some of that sugar to carbon dioxide and the other to alcohol. Now the interesting thing is, is if your mom didn't come and punch the dough down and stop it, and she came back. Now I know there's sourdough bread, so ladies forgive me because I know that this illustration stops at a certain point. But let's assume that she didn't punch it down and you came back weeks later. You know what you would have? A bowl of alcohol. It wouldn't be bread anymore. It wouldn't be dough anymore. It would have changed from what it was into something completely different. And that's what yeast does. Now in the Bible, yeast goes by another name, doesn't it? It's called leaven. If you see the word leaven when you read the Bible, it's yeast. It's the same thing. And kids, those of you who are writing words to check as I say today, if you were to write yeast down, you would hear quite a bit today. Yeast and leaven would be two good words to be hash marking the number that I say today. Now in the Bible, we are given a warning about yeast. We are told a little yeast leavens the whole lump. Okay? In that picture, yeast is a picture of sin, and the lump, which is that lump of dough, is a picture of life. So think about the warning. A little yeast leavens the whole lump. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. So if a little bit of yeast turns dough into something that it wasn't before, a little bit of sin in life continues and grows and grows and it doesn't stop. And so we have a warning about this. Yeast or sin like yeast has one goal. It is to destroy. It is to destroy goodness, righteousness, beauty, destroys peace, wants to destroy love. Just like yeast, it wants to destroy, wants to change. until everything is gone, until the lump's been changed. And for me, as I read this warning, I was reminded again of how sobering the warning is. I was reminded of how casually we take the warning, how casually we think about yeast and sin. Now, there's a commandment we're going to see in verse 7 and 8 of the chapter we read today. We're going to see the warning, a little yeast, a little leaven. Leaven's a whole lump. And then we're going to be given a commandment, and we're going to hear this a lot today. Purge out the leaven. It's a two-sided command over two verses. Purge out the leaven and celebrate the feast. Purge out the leaven, celebrate the feast. In fact, you could even say it like this, unless you purge out the leaven, you cannot celebrate the feast. And so today, what I want to talk to you about is purging leaven and celebrating the feast. We're going to be looking today at a letter that was written to the church in Corinth. And I'd like to tell you just a little bit about this city. Kids, I want you to picture two rocks, a big rock and a little rock. And the big rock is on top and the little rock is on the bottom. And imagine if you just push those rocks together and they just tap each other. The big rock is mainland Greece. The little rock at the bottom is the Peloponnesian Peninsula. You have Athens on the big one. You have Sparta on the little one. And where they meet is this little tiny five-mile isthmus. Remember Isthmus from homeschooling, of course. It's a little piece of land that connects two bigger pieces of land. Or it can actually, yeah, well actually that's an Isthmus. Where those two rocks meet is where Corinth is. Okay? Right there on that little piece of land is where the city of Corinth is. Pinda, who's a Greek poet, he called Corinth the bridge of the sea. There are two harbors, two bays on both sides on this city. It received ships from the east and from the west. Now the interesting thing I found was if you were a country on the east or the west, and here you've got Greece in the middle, there's two ways of getting from east to west to deliver your goods. You either go what they call around the horn, around the Peloponnesian Peninsula and then to the other side, or you head right towards Corinth and you go on one side and then you go, you get across the five miles and you go on the other side. Now because of this, an interesting couple of industries developed. There was this industry of having these transportation vehicles in Corinth and the boats would come in the one side You'd unload the stuff and you'd take it five miles, which is not far, and there'd be boats waiting on the other side, you'd load them up and you'd go, and you'd save 350 miles. And they sometimes would even drag ships the five miles across. So I want you to think about this. You have a city that's so strategically positioned, geographically, that through no talent of its own, it is going to become wealthy. Just because of where it is, because you've got these industries, because you can save money from going around the horn like that, So, in its history, Corinth is destroyed three times. Every single time, it rises back again to become a mighty, wealthy, prosperous city through no talent of its own. It's because of where it is. I want you to imagine the people living in a city like that. The arrogance, the wealth, the pride that went on there. Corinth is a beach town. For me, it has what I, my personal kind of ideal weather, Corinth would have it. Perfect Mediterranean, mitigated temperatures on the beach, families could go down to the beach, you know, imagine them living much like us, families would go down to the beach for the day if you were living in Corinth and enjoy the sand, enjoy the surf, play some kind of ball down there probably. If you picture the bay where it was, I took a look at some pictures online. It's about half the size of Monterey Bay. So if you picture Monterey Bay, Corinth Bay on the west side is about 12 miles. When you look at it, you're seeing this looks just like Monterey Bay. So everything about its location promotes and exudes leisure. As I'm reading this, I'm thinking Corinth is a lot like America. because we have a lot of wealth. We are, in many cities, positioned perfectly to generate wealth. So we're a lot like Corinth, not so different. As I mentioned, it was a prosperous city. Herodotus, in his writings, called Corinth prosperous. Thucydides described it as being a rich city. Strabo described it as always being great and wealthy. And it was large. There were 200,000 residents that lived in Corinth. I always marvel at these things. I don't know why, but when I see things like that, I realize it was a big city just like a modern city today. It's not that different than us, even though it was thousands of years ago. At its peak, it had 200,000 residents and 500,000 slaves. 200,000 residents, 500,000 slaves. So on average, every single Corinthian had two to three slaves serving them. Can you imagine the mindset geared towards leisure, towards being served? That was the mindset of Corinth. Town had many temples and shrines. I read it even had two theaters. One of them would seat 18,000 people. I'm not sure how big the gallow is. I haven't been there yet, but it's pretty big, isn't it? I don't know if it's that big. But it's bigger, okay, it's bigger than the gallow. I mean, and they put on plays and they did music, a lot like we do today. So they had the arts. Now in the middle, the centerpiece for the city of Corinth is a feature called the Acrocorinth. And I looked at pictures of this from all different angles. I looked at it on Google Earth. And if you go about four miles from downtown Corinth, and if you're at the bay, you're looking back, you see this huge rocky feature, and it's about 1,800 feet above the city. And by the way, it's the perfect mountain bike ride. I'm looking at this saying, if I ever go to Corinth, I want to ride to the top of the Acre Corinth. But no matter where you went in town, you could see the Acrocorinth. You could see it from all the different angles. I even took a look at it on Google Earth. I kind of went on top of it and looked out towards the bay. It's beautiful. It's just this commanding view in the perfect place. What was on top of the Acrocorinth? It was the temple to Aphrodite. And this temple becomes, over time, emblematic of the city. When you want to identify Corinth, you'll go, Temple Aphrodite, Acre Corinth. This temple, what it essentially is, guarding my words, it's essentially a place for commercialized love. And it's famous. And people come from all over the empire through Corinth to spend a little time at Aphrodite's temple. Now, like I said, it dominates the landscape, and what it reminded me when I looked at it, it reminded me a little bit of Las Vegas. When the Schroeder family drives through Las Vegas, as you start to get closer to town, and as the Schroeder family starts to see all these huge billboards, We kind of tell the kids, you know, let's read some books, let's kind of direct your eyes in the middle. Because everywhere you go through the city of Las Vegas, these billboards remind you of the purpose of the city, the pleasure of the city, the commitment to leisure and pleasure. there's a marketplace in downtown Corinth, and I was imagining the Christian family at that time going down to the Agora, down to the marketplace, buying some goods. No matter where you are in the Agora, up there on the hill you can see this Acre Corinth, it just dominates. So families would have known what was going on there, families would have been, it would have been everywhere around you, and you would have known that this was what the city was about. Aristophanes, who's an ancient writer, he coins an expression which is Corinthiazomi, and it means to live like a Corinthian, which means to describe a person of loose living. So the city itself became so tied with the style of living that there was a word associated with it. And I thought about it. In our cities today, if I were to say Detroitoazomi, you'd go, oh, okay, if someone lives like a Detroiter, He probably works in a factory and he probably builds cars and is in a union. He complains a lot probably. Or a San Francisco Zomie. You know, there's an idea of what that city is and what it means to be someone who lives there that you instantly picture what it's about. So this was the reputation. So this is a picture of a city, again, committed to entertainment and pleasure like Las Vegas. Imagine it being placed geographically like San Diego and having the wealth and lifestyle of San Francisco. That is Corinth. Now a little bit about the Church of Corinth before we get into the reading today. Paul comes to Corinth in 51 AD. He comes as a tent maker. Let's not forget that he was a tent maker, but he comes to town to spread the gospel. probably sets up in the Agora, that central market area, to sell tents. And he supports himself while he's preaching. And it appears that at some time there, he meets Aquila and Priscilla, who are also tent makers. And they've come to Corinth, probably some of his early converts, probably selling tents together in the Agora. And you can almost picture what it was like growing the Church of Corinth at that time. They're in the marketplace. They're selling tents. but they're preaching the word to all of these Corinthians. And up above, behind them, is the Acrocorinth. I mean, just picture that. Picture what the atmosphere would have been like. So, the church is founded, and we know a little bit about the church there. We know, for example, that the church was made up of Jews and Gentiles, which is always a fairly volatile mixture. You've got those who know the law, and you've got those who know nothing about the law. and you've got them arguing. If you go to Corinth today, I mentioned that theater where there are 18,000, could see 18,000 people. There's a street there, and you can go today, there's a little engraving on the street, and it says this. Erastus, the commissioner of public works, bore the expense of this pavement. Now this Erastus is none other than the Erastus that's mentioned in Romans chapter 16. He's converted by Paul and he's a member of this church in Corinth. So just picture that now. You have a Roman living in Corinth named Erastus who's converted by Paul, prominent, certainly wealthy. He certainly would have bought his position to be the city commissioner. He works for the city. He becomes a member of this church. Now also, you can imagine the local synagogue as Paul and Priscilla and Nicola are preaching. Imagine the local rabbi thinking, wow, this guy, we've heard of the unrest down in Jerusalem. Paul's come to town. That's dangerous. I'm going to talk to him. Imagine conversation between the local rabbi and Paul. Guess what? This rabbi is converted. His name is Crispus, he's the leader of the local synagogue. He's mentioned in, I think he's mentioned in First Corinthians and in Romans 16. But the point is now is you have the leader of the synagogue who's a member of this church. You have Jews and Gentiles, you have a city commissioner, you have the head of the local synagogue. And not only that, interesting thing happens. Crispus' understudy is named Sosthenes, he works Well, he's a part of the synagogue. He would be preaching, just like Crispus would have. And he's converted. And he's a member of this church in Corinth. So you can start to see this mix of people, this mix of rich, this mix of those who know the law, and they're all part of this congregation. Of course, I already mentioned Aquila and Priscilla. One more known name, and there were more, but I've only picked a few, is Chloe. We've heard of Chloe. We don't know if it's a man or a woman. It could be either. We lean towards it being a woman, but you're just not sure. But the church meets I don't know if all the time, but it's mentioned that they meet often in Chloe's home. So picture this mix. I already told you we have the Jews and Gentiles. We have rich, mostly. We have arrogant Corinthians. We have the local commissioner. We have two local rabbis. And they don't meet in a building like this. They're in a house. So just picture how close you are with people in proximity. You're worshiping in a house. Now I want to point something out here. The turmoil I mentioned in the church. You had pride, you would have had dogmatism, because in prosperity, this is part of the point I'm going to make today, is in prosperity, when a nation becomes prosperous, when a home becomes prosperous, become proud, become dogmatic, and we don't want to listen to others. We don't want to be told what to do. And such was the church there, and such is the church in America today. A little bit about our church. We are a church today of people of many different places. Most of us would have been either Baptists, either former Baptists. Some of us are current Baptists. A very few of us would have been born into a Presbyterian background. Most of the next generation of our children, all of our children, my children were born in a Presbyterian background. But most of us came out of some kind of a Baptistic background, and we're here today as this mix of people. Some of us were raised with no religious training at all. And we have some who are at various stages of prosperity. So it sounds an awful lot like the church in Corinth, doesn't it? It's really not that different. And there's a lot that we can learn from this. So, here's the situation before we read our passage today. Situation is, Paul sets up the church, he spends 18 months there building this mix of people that we've been talking about in this prosperous, proud city. Spends 18 months, and then he's gonna head off to Ephesus and start a church there. Certainly he would have put some of those people in charge, might have been Crispus, Might have been Erastus, might have been some of these guys that were prominent, but he would have set up the church. Paul goes to Ephesus and starts building the church there. Then we have Paul writing a letter back to the Corinthian church. It's referred to in 1 Corinthians 5, 9, it's called a previous letter. It appears that Paul wrote a letter prior to 1 Corinthians. It's called the previous letter. And later he hears that the Corinthians have most likely misunderstood this previous letter because he has reports from Chloe's house. Reports of disorder in this church come back to him. And also it looks like there was a delegation, there's at least three men mentioned in 1 Corinthians 16 that are so troubled that they go over to Ephesus to talk to Paul to get clarification on this letter. What did you really mean in this letter? As a result of that, we have the letter of 1 Corinthians today, which we're going to look at. So what I'd like you to do right now is if you wouldn't mind turning to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We will read this chapter together. And again, picture a church with all sorts of different opinions and this letter clarifying what Paul meant, what he expects. And let me give one caveat to this passage, I think, as Mr. Kelgard mentioned today. This is a difficult passage. I actually thought about preaching on another passage, but I felt very compelled, I don't know why the Lord compelled me to stick with this passage, but I did. I'm hoping he feeds us today. Even as I was, as the Greggs, the David Greggs were on their vacation, I mentioned I was going to be preaching on this two weeks ago, and he said, wow, that's an aggressive passage. And this is an aggressive passage. But I know that the Lord has something good for us in going through this. So let's just take a look at this now. Starting in verse one, we'll read the entire chapter. This being Paul's clarification to them of how the church should live. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. For I indeed, as absent in the body but present in spirit, have already judged. as though I were present, him who has so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you're gathered together along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet certainly I did not mean with the sexually immoral people of the world or with the covetous or extortioners or idolaters since then you would have to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous or an idolater or reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? Do ye not judge those who are inside? Those who are outside God judges. Therefore, put away from yourself the evil person." I want to give you just a quick summary of chapter 5. In verse 1 we learn that scandalous sin exists in the church and it's not being rebuked. He says of course it is actually reported among you that there is sexual immorality. In verse 2 he accuses them of being proud. He says they're puffed up. In verse 6 he says you're glorying in your decision. They were glorying in their tolerance of sin. In verse 5 Paul gives them a command. He says, put out the person from the church and deliver him over to Satan. And then verse six through eight, which I believe to be the central point of this chapter, quite possibly the central point of the entire book of 1 Corinthians. He gives that warning that I mentioned. A little leaven leavens a whole lump. And then he gives them a command. keep the feast, or celebrate the feast as some of your translations might say. I'll be using that today to celebrate the feast, to emphasize it. And I'd like to expand a little bit on that idea of celebrating the feast. When I'm talking about that today, I mean it in its fullest possible sense. I do mean the actual communion that we're about to take at the end of the service. I certainly mean celebrate the feast in that. But I mean it in the broader sense as well, because in the broader sense what communion really pictures is redemption and the benefits that we enjoy right now, the benefits of covenant life, peace, hope, God being our God, all of those things we enjoy right now, and in the broad sense of all, the future benefits that the feast and redemption signifies heaven, glorification, freedom from sin. So today when I talk about and admonish you to celebrate the feast, it is in the broadest sense. It is all the way from the table up to everything that redemption and the feast talks about. And then finally, to summarize the passage in verse 9 through 12, he expands the command of putting the unrepentant Christian out of the church, that we are not to keep company with the unrepentant sinful Christian. And he also lists a few additional types of sins that we need to consider in separating from the sinner. So, the reality is this. Sin, leaven, is in our midst. This is not a maybe. In your personal life, you have leaven. In your family life you have leaven. In your church you have leaven. The question is how are we going to deal with it? How do we deal with leaven? I want you to remember the warning. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Remember kids the picture of the sugar water. One yeast cell will change it all and convert it all. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, purge out the leaven and celebrate the feast. So today is going to be an admonishment about being diligent to purge the leaven. So how do we purge leaven? What is the main method of purging leaven in scripture? Through a word that we hate, rebuke. I want that word to sink in. We purge leaven through rebuking. The Hebrew word for rebuke is yakash. I'm looking at Eric Waite because I told him before the service that I was going to have a few Greek and Hebrew words and I was going to see him writing notes and going, no, you don't pronounce it like that. It's basically yakash. And what yakash means is to judge, to correct. The Greek word It means to convict, to shame, to expose something, to find fault with something. Now aren't those very unpopular words and ideas today? You almost bristle when you hear them because they're so neglected. But rebuking is an essential part of the Christian's walk. I would like you to turn in your Bibles please to Psalm 141 which we read this morning. Psalm 141, we'll be looking at verse five. This was what we read at the end of the opening, but just listen to these words. David says, let the righteous strike me. It shall be a kindness. Let him rebuke me. It shall be as excellent oil. Let my head not refuse it." The oil is picturing the oil of anointing, and it's always a good thing. I looked up the word strike in the Hebrew, and it's a word that's pronounced halam. And what it means, literally translated, is to come down like a hammer. Strike, to come down like a hammer. And we learn from this verse that righteous men strike those who need to be struck. Righteous are not boastful or arrogant when they strike. They desire to see the positive change. The psalmist says, the hammer of purity and holiness shall be as excellent oil. When you look at a strike from somebody in our church, how do you take that? You take that as excellent oil. Church in America has a difficult time with this. Let me keep building this case and see if we can move past this. A few more verses I would like to read. You do not have to turn there. You can make note of them. There's just four. I could have chosen many, many. But these four show us that rebuking is not only essential, but in the Christian's life it's always good. Proverbs 17.10 says, rebuke is more effective for a wise man than a hundred blows on a fool. Ecclesiastes 7.5, it is better to hear the rebuke of the wise than for a man to hear the song of fools. Proverbs 27.5, open rebuke is better than love carefully concealed. And then in 1 Timothy 5.20, we have the instructions from Paul to Timothy saying, rebuke in the presence of all that the rest may also fear. See, there is time to rebuke in public. We really, again, this makes all of us bristle a little bit when we think about this. Now, the church in Corinth was not rebuking sin. What does Paul do? He takes the bull by the horns. He goes in and he says, rebuke this person. You should have mourned over him. Rebuke him, put him out of your congregation. But again, as Mr. Kelgard said, it's not in anger. We do not rebuke in anger. We'll get to that in a little bit about how you rebuke. But Paul took the bull by the horns. and asked to deliver this one over to Satan. So the question to all of us is, are we prepared as the scriptures command to rebuke and confront all the sins in ourselves and in others? Because remember the warning, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, purge the leaven and celebrate the feast. So I want to come a little more grips to grips with this passage, and I want to take a look, if you'll take a look again in 1 Corinthians 5. Let's take a look at 1 Corinthians 5.11. This is a painful, painful verse. It's a shocking verse to me, because it's so very different than what we are told is truly to be loving. It goes against this message that we have what it is to love each other. So 1 Corinthians 5.11 says this, but now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous or an idolater or reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. Now, I want to differentiate between one group of sins and these sins. It's really easy to know kind of how to deal with sins where we are party to them. I sin against you, I'm commanded to go to you and make things right. You sin against me, I have Matthew 18. Go to you, you know, if you don't listen, and we have this process. But the sins listed here, there are six sins, and I think they are emblematic. There probably are more that would be added to this. This isn't in totality, but it gives the church an idea. These are all sins that you would simply, you could observe in somebody, but not be personally affected or offended by it. Do you realize that? These are just sins that you could see going on. I'm gonna first start by three of them and not go through them in detail. The sexual immorality, the extortion, or the idolater. I think those to our palate, as modern day Christians, those seem a little more obvious. You know, we're saying an extortioner, sexually immoral, idolater. Okay, God wants us to rebuke that and separate from that. Fair enough. It's the other three sins that really caused me a lot of time and prayer this work at wondering how we really purge the leaven. First one, drunkard. This is simply someone who exercises no self-control with alcohol, is controlled by alcohol. Do you know someone in our church who's controlled, controlled by alcohol? You ever had a discussion with them? Have you rather chosen to tell somebody else about your thoughts? Maybe your spouse, but you've never gone directly to the person? What about other areas of lack of self-control? Do we know anyone in our church that eats too much? Gluttony is one of those sins, one of those Christian sins that nobody talks about. Eating too much. It is the same sin as drunkenness at the heart. It's the same sin of lack of self-control. But because you can't eat too much and drive a car into somebody and kill somebody, it's just one of those sins that we kind of really ignore. But it's the same sin as drunkenness. So again remember the admonition, purge the leaven. Another sin he mentions there, reviler. This Greek word is loidoros and directly translated it's very interesting. It means say spearer, a say spearer, a word spearer, one who takes a word and makes it a spear, a say spearer. It's very descriptive when you picture that is a mouth that spears people. And God says purge the leaven of the say spearer, purge it. Do you know somebody in our church who is always critical of leadership? always critical of how things are done, critical of whatever it is, critical of friends, critical of parents, critical of children, critical of your spouse, someone who speaks gossip, who spreads stories of people's faults and failings. We are called to purge the leaven of say-spearing or not to let it go. We had an interesting situation, I'm sure you guys could all relate to this, but in our old church about 10, 15 years ago, we had a family friend who was a SACE bearer. She was about 10, 12 years older than Jennifer and me. Always critical of leadership. We would go over to their home on a Friday night and she'd be, you know, always, always critical of leadership. critical of what wasn't getting done, critical of how things were being done poorly. And Jennifer and I would just sit there and never said anything. And after a few years, after that family left, we looked at each other and said, how could we sit there all those years with this person? We'd heard gossip, we never corrected her. We heard her being critical, we never corrected her. And we sat there year after year and didn't do anything. I think we're all probably in the same boat. There are things we don't say to each other. The last thing he mentions goes for the jugular. It's covetousness. The Greek word is pleonektes, and it means to be a more-haver. A more-haver. I had this discussion About 10 years ago with a group of self-employed guys like myself, and there's this tension in business, if you're self-employed, to build your business. But as a Christian businessman, you're also challenged with being content, right? All of us who are in business, we know that there's this tension. How do you build a business and be a little discontent with where your business is? Because to be a good businessman, you gotta wanna grow it. But we're also called to be content. And where this goes over the line to those of us who are businessmen, or aspiring young businessmen, is to not be a more-haver. A more-haver. Are you defined as being one who is a more-haver? Do you realize you could be sitting in a seat right now, violating the sin, and be covetous. All of us. It's a kind of a sin that is so private. I might not even know you're covetous. Do you realize that? You could be singing the songs before the service and being covetous about something, being a more haver. What does God say about this? And this is sobering. He says, purge out the leaven. If a Christian brother is unrepentant, over and over again about being confronted with their covetousness, separate from them through the church. And again, we will talk about how that separation takes place. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. But this is sobering. This is sobering when we realize this is not just about the sin of a man who has his stepmother, is married to his stepmother. This is not what this is about. This goes all the way down to convicting us about being covetous. This is a sin we do not ever address. So why don't we rebuke these sins? Is there anything controversial about what I've said? This is basic, basic Christianity, right? I haven't misinterpreted this, right? We are to purge this kind of leaven. So why don't we do it? I want to give you three reasons why we don't do it. And there may be more. If any elder wants to take the mantle after the service and continue, there's a lot of things I'm leaving out, but I will give you three of them. The first one is this. It's because people are completely unteachable today. We are belligerent, proud Christians. We are unteachable. Okay, because we don't like to be corrected, people become timid. If I know what your reaction is gonna be if I try to correct you, I know you're gonna go, well, you're attacking me, you're judging me. I'm gonna go, fine, right? I'm just gonna kind of walk away because we're so unteachable, it prevents us from challenging each other. We've grown up in what I call, you're not the boss of me culture. I wanna read you a verse. In fact, go ahead and turn, if you wouldn't mind, to Amos chapter 5, verse 10. We're just going to look at one verse there. Amos is writing to the covenant community. They're essentially Christians. I know that this goes against how we tend to describe people in the Old Testament and the New Testament, but more and more I'm calling Old Testament believers, I'm calling them Christians, because they're the same as we are. I don't know if I would need to call them Israelites and Jews, they're Christians. Paul is speaking, I'm sorry, Amos is speaking here to the covenant community, and listen to what he says. They hate the one who rebukes in the gate. They abhor the one who speaks uprightly. One more time, they hate the one who rebukes in the gate. They abhor the one who speaks uprightly. And today, it's no different, is it? I want to give you a scenario in this you're not the boss of me culture we've grown up in. Every one of your houses, I know you have house rules. House rules on food, what you can and can't do with the TV. You have house rules. One of the Schroeder house rules is this. You can't treat the bed like it's a trampoline. If you guys do that, whatever. But in our family you're showing disrespect for a bed if a child gets up on the bed and jumps on it because that's not what it's made for. So we have a rule that says you can't jump on a bed. Now imagine if Jennifer and I leave, but for a nice date night, and we leave the three kids at home and half an hour into us being gone, just imagine if, sorry Eva, I know you wouldn't do this, but imagine if Eva climbed up on the bed and just started grinning and jumping and jumping higher and higher. Now imagine if Rachel says to her, Eva, don't jump on the bed, okay? Imagine if Eva's response is, well, you're not the boss of me. You're not my mom. You're not my mom, right? And I think we're incubating this. I think we really have to give more thought to what is really going on. When Eva says that, who's she really rejecting? Is she rejecting Rachel? She's rejecting Jennifer's in my house rule. You're not the boss of me. It doesn't matter who says it, right? If she says the words of mom and dad, house rule, it doesn't matter who says it. You need to be listening to it. And when you and I receive a rebuke or admonishment from a peer, it doesn't matter who they are. It doesn't matter if you think they're not worthy. If they have given you the words of God, do it. Same as in our house, do it. Don't look at the worth of the message bearer. Does Rachel have the authority to say those words, don't jump on the bed? Yes. Yeah. Now, what if Rachel says it wrong? What if she's snotty about how she says it? What if she's even trying to put Eva down? Does it matter? Does she still have to stop jumping on the bed? Yes. It doesn't matter how it's said. And there's another one. What if she's jumping and Rachel says, stop jumping on the bed, and Eva says, say please. That's what kids do. It's what we, again, we incubate in our homes. What is the child really saying when they say, say please? They're saying, I'm gonna give you a password on what to say, otherwise I'll ignore what you're saying. Rachel is worthy of respect in that situation because the words are not hers, they're mom and dad's. Philippians 2.3 says this, in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Now in that situation, in fact, let me go broader. Are we establishing an atmosphere in our home? where everybody is thinking of the other member of the family as better than themself. This is exactly what we're commanded to do. Think of the other member as better than ourself. I don't think so. I mean, I think for years and years we teach them, you don't have to respect your peers, unless mom or dad say it, you don't have to respect peers. And we are raising Christians of the next generation who is going to be as belligerent as we are. We're going to perpetuate the same thing in the midst of all the good things we are doing. All we're going to do is perpetuate the same belligerence that we have of not listening to admonitions. So what is your reputation? This is painful. I want you to think about what your personal reputation is. Would you say that people would say about you, you take advice well? That you take correction well? Are you known for always being defensive? Do you admit your faults? See, I truly believe that many of us have never grown up from those kids that would tell our brothers and sisters, you're not the boss of me. And we're in this church today still thinking, you're not the boss of me. You may even look at elders like that. Go, you're not Jesus Christ. You're not the boss of me. Does it matter whether the elders are sinners? I got news for you. Your elders sin. The fact that we sin and make mistakes does not change what we say from this pulpit in admonishing you. The words are the word of God, and if they are, submit to them. You're not submitting to us as much as you're submitting to the words that God has written. So, I'm asking all of us to repent of our, you're not the boss of me, life. Let's just put it behind us. Remember the admonition? A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Purge out the leaven and celebrate the feast. Now, a second reason why we do not admonish. The first one, again, was that we have this defensive attitude and so we don't listen and so people don't admonish. The other, I think, is a misinterpretation of the most widely quoted verse, probably in all of Scripture. If I say the words, judge not, judge not lest ye be judged. Every unbeliever knows that passage, don't they? They know it probably more than John 3.16. Judge not, lest ye be judged. And what they're really saying is, if you judge someone and tell them that they're wrong, you're being unloving and hateful. Right? And so because of this gross misinterpretation, we go, oh, I don't want to be unloving. I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to do that. But a real proper Paraphrase of that verse would be more like, do not apply a double standard to others that you do not apply to yourself. That's pretty much it. God is saying, when you go to judge someone, judge yourself at the same time. Make sure that you're going to them and whatever you're saying to them, you're saying right back at yourself. That's the only prohibition in that verse. And so because we misunderstand that verse, we don't judge. Listen to a couple of verses that describe rebuke as being loving. These are, again, hugely convicting. Hebrews 12.6 says, Whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges, and every son whom he receives. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? Listen to Revelation 3.19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent. Those are the words of Christ. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." So let us please put this understanding of judge-not behind us. If you have any doubts, please meditate on this verse. Talk to an elder. Let's have a men's study. Let's do a women's study. Let's get this judge-not-lest-he-be-judged nonsense behind us. Rebuke done properly is always an act of love. In fact, when you withhold rebuke, you are failing to love. You're not loving those around you. Now the third reason we don't rebuke is we just don't know each other well enough. Go to church together and we just don't know each other well enough. I want you to think a little bit, I'm gonna talk a little bit about the fellowship luncheon and use it as an example. What was the original purpose of our fellowship luncheon after church? We had two reasons. Reason number one, a lot of you guys drive from a long distance. So we didn't want you to get on the road after church and drive an hour and a half, be hungry all the way, stop at a McDonald's on the way home or whatever. We wanted you to have a place right after church you could grab a bite so your kids just weren't driving up the wall because they were dying of hunger. The other reason was to inspire you to get to know each other. Okay? I want you to think about who do you sit with and how do you pick who you're going to sit with in our fellowship luncheons? Most of the time it's your child coming up and grabbing on the shirt going, can we sit next to the so-and-sos? You go, sure. But most of the time it's with someone that we're comfortable with and that we really know. But does this hour, hour and a half that we spend together, do we really get to know each other better? In fact, do we get to know each other well enough ultimately be able to rebuke one another. I have this vision for what these luncheons ought to be. Let me tell you something. A successful luncheon to me, a luncheon program if you want to call it that, after church, would be this. That the attendance over time decreases. Now that sounds counterproductive, but let me tell you what I wish was going on. It decreases because after church, we're going home to each other's homes, okay? Where over time, you have families who are gathering together and you're slowly getting to know each other in each other's homes. And there are all kinds of ways we can facilitate this. We already bring our own food. You could bring enough food for your family and someone could say, hey, can you guys come over to our house today? Bring food for your family so we don't have to work a lot. Those of you who live a long ways away, Invite us. I mean, invite everybody. We can leave after church and go up to your house. Don't let distance be an issue. Don't ever let distance be an issue for fellowship. So the three reasons I've given that we don't rebuke, it's that we are unteachable, that we've misunderstood the judge not lest ye be judged passage, and also because we just don't know each other well enough. Now, lest you feel that I am encouraging a whole congregation to become sin sheriffs, that's not what I'm here to do. I want to clarify that. It is not your or my job to go up to the Christian in our midst and continually be correcting them. So if for some reason you feel like you need to be the Sabbath sheriff, in our congregation? You believe someone's breaking the Sabbath? And listen to me on this. If you don't know intimately the person that you believe is breaking the Sabbath, if you don't love them, and if your motive is not to draw them back, then do us all a favor and don't say anything to them. Okay? Your job first. is to love them and know them and have a heart for them before you rebuke them. We cannot rebuke until we do these other things first. And by the way, if the Sabbath sheriff does happen to come up to you and convict you of sin, if what they're saying is biblical and accurate, you don't get to reject it because you don't like the way they said it. It's both sides of the coin. We've got to learn to know people. We've got to learn to love people in the church. If you believe someone is over drinking or over eating, if you don't know them and you don't love them and you don't want to bring them back, don't say anything to them. Your job is first to spend time with and get to know people in this church. I'll say something controversial here if I haven't already said enough. Loving your brother is more important than correct doctrine. Now, we in our doctrinally correct church may bristle a little bit about that, but in 1 Corinthians 13.2, on the authority of scripture, I want to read you this. Although I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains but have not love, nothing. I am nothing. Remember, the Pharisees had great doctrine, didn't they? They had great doctrine. But it didn't benefit them, did it? They had not love. And you think about the broken down little Christian churches growing up at the time of Paul. Their doctrine was incomplete and had holes in it and was bad, and yet they loved each other and they loved God and they were working through it. It is better and more important that you first learn to love each other before you rebuke anybody. So, just in wrapping up here, how do we confront sin properly? You need to know somebody. That person, you need to love that person. You need to feel grief over that person's sin. During your rebuke, you need to exercise self-honesty about your own sin. The goal in your rebuke needs to be restoration to the individual. And you need to rebuke in humility without pride and arrogance. If you can do all that, go for it. But we've got a lot of work to do before we get there, don't we? And don't forget the warning. This is not an option. If we don't do this, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. You guys, like me, probably all know churches that have been here and have gone, right? They were formed years ago, and now, poof. What do you think happened in those churches? At some level, almost all of them allowed leaven. bitterness, pride, but they let leaven go, and the leaven changed the lump into something that it wasn't. So does God take this all very seriously? He does. I'm not spending a lot on the issue of excommunication, but I will tell you this. Separation excommunication ultimately needs to come through your elders. You can't excommunicate yourself, or let's say excommunicate somebody in your congregation, and avoid them. If you think someone is sinning, it is your religious duty to find a way to help that person. Period. But does God take it seriously? If the sinner, the Christian sinner, is rebuked and continues in their ways, I'm going to read a couple of verses here for you of how seriously God takes this. One we already read, if you have your finger in 1 Corinthians 5.11, Now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. Of course, earlier in the chapter, we read that that person is to be handed over to Satan. Listen to this, Romans 16, 17. I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you learned and avoid them. Two verses we'll look at in 2 Thessalonians 3, if you can turn there. Listen to these. We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly, not according to the tradition which he received from us. And in verse 14 and 15 of that same chapter, 2 Thessalonians 3, if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. And finally, I'll read one in 1 Timothy 6.3, if anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, from such withdraw yourself. So, congregation of Central Valley Presbyterian Church, before you can rebuke, you need to learn to know people. You need to love them, and you need to have their best interests at heart when you rebuke. It is always meant for their good. It always involves words. You cannot give someone the silent treatment and rebuke them. It's not scriptural. You can't avoid people. It's sin. In fact, that's leaven in your heart, in my heart. As I said, separation, ultimate separation, always involves church leadership. So here's my challenging question to you. What if someone in our church were put out What would your reaction be? Would you feel any sense of loss? Would we email them, call them, or would life just go on like normal? If life would just go on like normal, if one of our families had to be put out, something's desperately wrong with our church. If we don't feel this amputation when a family is let go, is admonished, And I thought about this. I've had this conversation with a business colleague of mine. And you think about when somebody dies, what's your reaction going to be? Am I going to cry? Am I going to, you know? And there's a colleague of mine in LA that I am very close to. He's not a Christian. And we were talking, we mountain biked together. And I told him, we were up on the ride, and I'm like, you know, when you die, he's older than me, when you die, I go, I'm going to cry. I'm going to cry at your funeral. And he was like touched by that. And the point is this, is when my friend dies, I'll have a sense of loss. And if any member family in our congregation could just uproot and go, and your life goes on like normal. something very wrong. And I'm hoping that you with me, I want to encourage you, I want to be loving as I encourage you in this. This is not something we can fix overnight. We've grown up in the you're not the boss of me culture. We don't listen to our peers or to those above us. But it is something we need to do. Or, I tell this to Fletch, my goal with this church is that it survives me. When I die, I want this church to survive me. I want it to go on for generations. But if we aren't serious about purging the leaven, we're gonna be like every other church that comes and goes. So this will take a lot of time, and I'm hoping you will join with me in doing this. If you find yourself today, you're only a leaven purger, you're a Sabbath sheriff, okay? Then you've lost sight of the goal, which is the celebration of the feast. If you're only a feast celebrator, you're rejecting the only way the feast can truly be celebrated, which is through purging leaven. Remember, a little leaven leavens the whole lump. purge out the leaven, and celebrate the feast. Let's pray. Lord God, we are deeply convicted, I guess even more thankful when we look at this, our sinfulness as we contemplate it, even more thankful that we are covered in your son. We are convicted at how much leaven we have allowed to remain in our homes, in our personal lives, in our church. And yet your mercy abounds towards us continually. You cleanse us with the blood of your Son continually. You see us unthinkably as perfect. And yet I confess on behalf of my church this body of families of us that we meet together, I confess how poorly we have sought to know and love each other so that we could rebuke. I confess this. Lord, let us learn to know each other in this church. I pray that homes would open up. I pray that we wouldn't rely on a fellowship lunch as our only means of fellowship. I pray that we would spend time together during the week, that we would love each other and love each other's presence. Help us, Lord God, to purge the leaven from our church and bless us in every possible way. In Jesus' name, amen.