Uh, it is, uh, what a service, man. John and I— John was our worship leader today, one of our deacons— and he and I were joking this week that this is a little bit of an unusual service for us because we began the service with celebrating and rejoicing with baptism, with people being baptized. But then in prayer, we carried a heavy thing in our heart with, with what the Shafitz are going through with their son Bodhi. And now we get to move from that to talking about sexual immorality and church discipline. And John and I were joking, I don't know what songs do you plan for that kind of a service?
There's, you know, there's not an easy hymn to turn to for all of those things. But as I prayed about it, I really felt like, man, this actually is a wonderful illustration of what it means for the church to be the church. What it means for the church to be the church is that we rejoice with those who rejoice. It means when we see kids in the church baptized, it's like they're our kids as a church. We're their aunts and uncles and grandparents in the faith and cousins in the faith, and we cheer for them.
We rejoice as new brothers and sisters in Christ are celebrated, but we also carry heavy things with one another. We carry weighty things with one another. We grieve with those who grieve. We don't shy away as a church family from having difficult conversations or tough conversations as a family. That is what it means for the church to be the church, because the church is precious to God and it should be precious to us.
Amen. So, we're going to be reading in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 today, beginning a new section in 1 Corinthians. If you'll— if you stick with us, you'll see that 1 Corinthians really is a number of different sections, and this next section is about marriage, singleness, sexuality, sexuality, all of that world of stuff that's such a hot topic in our world today and has been for the last 2,000 years is something that the word of God addresses. And I'm so grateful that God's word doesn't shy away from addressing the real things, the things, the places where we actually live life. So 1 Corinthians chapter 5, we're going to begin reading and let's remember as we read, this is God's word.
Word. Verse 1, "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
For though I'm absent in body, I am present in spirit, and if 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 the Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. For though your boasting is not good, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are, unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of the world, of the greedy or swindlers or idolaters, since then you would not then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. You. This is the Lord's word. And, Lord, I pray you give us ears to hear and eyes to see, in Jesus' name, amen.
Well, this is— this may be an uncomfortable passage, but it is an even more uncomfortable situation that's being described. Now, remember that 1 Corinthians is only one side of a conversation. So we're hearing— it's almost like listening to somebody on the phone where you're trying to guess at what the other person on the other line is saying a little bit. That's what's happening here. Paul has gotten a report from his friends who were in Corinth about the church, and then he's gotten a letter from the Corinthians with questions that they have for him.
So Paul is responding to both with this letter. And so we kind of have to use careful text work to reconstruct what he's saying and why. But I think it's clear. It's clear that this is the situation that he's responding to. First, it's clear that there's a man in the church who is in a sexual relationship with his stepmother, and they may or may not still be married to other people.
So, that's the situation. And it's also relatively clear by implication that the man is someone who is in Corinth, somebody who has social or political or financial or cultural influence, right? So this is one of the who's who people. The kind of guy that gets invited to the fancy parties in Corinth is this guy. Then third, it's clear that some are actually celebrating the fact that this man is continuing to go to the church because they're so happy that somebody famous and influential is part of the church, and they believe it illustrates how tolerant and sort of permissive they are that fits in with Corinthian society.
And others may disagree with what's going on, but they've rationalized it saying, "Look, it's not a huge deal. It's not great, but it's not that big of a deal. It's just one guy of, you know, 100 people. It's not like we're all doing this."
And so, here's the situation. Paul's letter is going to be read out loud in the church. This is what would happen. They'd gather the church, they'd read Paul's letter, which is a bit awkward, right? Especially if the guy's there. Well, and Paul is expecting him to be there. Maybe he's the kind of guy that never misses a Sunday.
But even more shocking, Paul uses this sort of metaphorical language to say, listen, as you read this letter publicly, I want you— first of all, it's like I'm there with you, in a sense. I'm with you, in a sense, as you're reading this. He's not saying he's like a weird astral projection or ghost or something. He's just saying, "It is as though I am with you as you read my letter. And right then and there, when you get to this part of the letter, I want you to take the guy and walk him out of the church." So it'd be like in this meeting, if we were like, "Hey, ushers, this person over here," "Let's move him. We got to remove him right now." And so the ushers come over and they're like, "Uh, are we—" you know, and they slow-walk the person out of the church. That's what Paul is describing them to do.
Now, that is crazy. That is as crazy as anything on reality TV. This would get a ton of YouTube views, right? Or TikTok views. Like, man is publicly executed on the spot in local church. Famous, influential man. Like, this is— that's the kind of thing that sells newspapers back in the day. And you might wonder, why in the world would God preserve this situation in the Bible, right? It's not a mistake that this is in the Bible. Why is this in the Bible, you might wonder. And second, you might wonder, okay, how does this have anything to do with my life? Because I think for most of us, we're like, okay, if this is all about an immoral relationship with your stepmother, I think I'm good. I think most of us are like, we're good, I'm fine. We can move on to the next passage because this is odd and uncomfortable.
6 · The pastor establishes the sermon's relevance by arguing that the passage matters not just for what the Corinthians did but why they did it
But here is— here's what's interesting about this passage. It's not just what the Corinthians did, it's why they did it that matters. They rationalized not dealing with this situation, and their rationalization, the lies that they believed that got them into this place, are still lies we believe today. So, we may not fall into the exact same situation, but these lies continue to destroy churches, they continue to destroy families, they continue to destroy individual lives. And so, what we're going to do today is we're going to look at these 4 lies that the Corinthians believed and what the Bible says in response to them, that we might soberly assess our own lives in church.
7 · The pastor identifies the first lie: the Corinthians equated permissiveness and tolerance with spiritual maturity, assuming that their freedom in Christ meant the more they tolerated, the more mature they were
So first lie: permissiveness and freedom always equal maturity. Now, one of the key lies is in verse 2. "You did— all of this is going on and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn?" Paul says. So over and over, this church in Corinth assumed that they were mature. They did. You're going to see this through the whole book. They were like, they had a high opinion of themselves and they assumed in this case that if they tolerated anything, if they permitted anything, the more they tolerated, the more they permitted must be fruit of— I mean, that must be the proof of their maturity in Christ. So meaning like, well, if we're free in Christ, tolerating anything must mean we're even more free in Christ. And this fit in with their culture, a culture of kind of live and let live, you do whatever you want to do.
8 · The pastor highlights the shocking nature of the situation by noting that even Corinthian culture—known for wanton excess—would find this relationship inappropriate
Although, side note, even the Corinthian culture, which to be a Corinthian, to live like a Corinthian, literally meant to give yourself to wanton excess. So Paul is indicating that even the Corinthians are looking at this situation, the church going, "Ew, yikes," right? It's never good, never good, right? When the red light district in Amsterdam is like, "Man, that is crazy. That is not good. It's not good." And yet they rationalize it thinking, well, but it illustrates how tolerant we are, illustrates how permissive we are.
9 · The pastor carefully qualifies his teaching by acknowledging that guarding against legalism and sinful judgment is biblical and important—most people have been hurt by self-righteous judgment that tears down rather than builds up
Now, I want to say something clearly. We should guard against legalism and sinful judgment. Absolutely. There's a lot in the Bible about that. We probably all have a story about how sinful judgment has hurt and impacted us at some point, meaning judgment that, that what Jesus talks about in Matthew 7, the judgment without grace, full of self-righteousness, intended to tear people down. And by the way, judgment given to others and imposed on others when the judger is not willing to judge themselves first, right? So that's what Jesus is saying, do not do that. But in our culture, we often equate tolerance and permissiveness with maturity. So, the most Christian church is whatever is the least "judgy." And the worst thing Christians want to be called is intolerant or judgmental.
10 · The pastor applies the Corinthian error to contemporary Christian life with specific examples: watching immoral content and feeling more mature for it, drinking heavily in the name of freedom, or participating in ungodly conversation while feeling less uptight than those who abstain
And Paul is saying here that sometimes in the name of being free in Christ, Christians pursue sinful and unwise things and consider it a mark of their maturity. For example, some could watch or listen to content on Netflix or HBO or on the internet that is full of nudity and evil and glorification of sin and then consider themselves more mature than people who don't do this or watch that. Or some could be given to drinking regularly and heavily in the name of Christian freedom and then therefore consider themselves more free in Christ than those who choose not to. Or some could participate in ungodly discussions of gossip and coarse joking and lustful comments and consider themselves more forgiven and free and less uptight than the people who don't do this. There's 100 more examples, but when that happens, we can be tempted to think permissiveness and tolerance always equal maturity.
11 · The pastor counters the permissiveness lie with biblical truth: spiritual maturity consists not in blanket tolerance but in biblical responses appropriate to each situation
But here's the truth in the Bible, biblical responses are what actually equal maturity, meaning looking at the situation and saying, "What does the Bible say about this situation? Is there sinful judgment? Well, it should be put away." Is there sin? Well, then it should be mourned and judged.
12 · The pastor tells a personal story about getting lost while hiking because he assumed that if one instruction was "bear right," then at every subsequent fork, more right must be better
Now, I had a vivid illustration of this recently when we were on vacation. We were on— we were hiking by the beach with my two young sons and my niece and nephew and sister and brother-in-law. And I didn't— I was too cheap to pay for the premium AllTrails app. And so if you're a premium subscriber, it is a good choice, and I'll describe why. Basically, once you head out on the trail, you lose cell signal, and you're just going based on like kind of the last map that you looked at. And so here's what I remember from the map. I remember we gotta bear right. Once we get to, you know, the trail splits, we're gonna bear right. And so we did. We got to the trail split, we bore right, and then it was like another one, left or right? I was like, well, it must, more right is more right. So we go further right. And we get to another, I'm like, okay, all I remember is right. So I keep going, we kept going right. We ended up hiking like along a sandy cliffside by the ocean where if you really took a bad fall, you could like tumble down onto rocks in the water. And we're like lifting our kids up so they can grasp like the next thing or climb down. And I remember thinking, I think we may have gone, taken a wrong turn somewhere. I don't know if this is where we're supposed to be, but I assumed, well, that's bad, left is bad, so more right must be more right.
13 · The pastor applies the hiking illustration to the Christian life: just as he kept going right without checking the map at each fork, Christians often assume that since sinful judgment is wrong, total permissiveness must be right
And here's my burden. I think what happens is that Christians, when they see Jesus saying, okay, don't sinfully judge others, they assume that, okay, don't go this way, don't go into sinful judgment, therefore the solution is, We tolerate and permit anything and everything and never say a word about it. Meaning, if that's bad, then this must be where we're going. Instead of going with this, is this the right trail? Which trail are we supposed to take now? Oh, this situation actually calls for appropriate judgment. I'm going to move here. This situation, man, I'm convicted. I haven't even examined my own life before Matthew 7, trying to point out the log in somebody else's eye. I need to move over here, right? You navigate the trail with the Word of God as appropriate. And so rather than assuming this or that is right, we examine every trailhead, every split with the Word of God. Is it legalism? Then we should avoid it. Is it sin? Then we should mourn it.
14 · The pastor identifies the second lie by reconstructing how uncomfortable the Corinthian situation would have been: everyone in the small church knew about the prominent man's sin, but no one wanted to confront someone famous and influential
All right, second lie: avoid what is difficult and uncomfortable now. Wherever you can. Now, imagine how uncomfortable this situation would be even before receiving Paul's letter. This is a relatively small church. It's probably under 100 people by most accounts. And so everybody would kind of know the situation. It would be the kind of situation where, like, we all kind of know, right? Nobody could be like, I had no idea this famous influen— especially because he's a famous, influential Corinthian. Okay? And they'd probably be like, "Did you know the news anchor's going to our church?" It's kind of that kind of thing. "Did you know the mayor's deputy's going to our church?" That's the kind of situation. And so people would know what was going on, but who wants to talk to him about it? Right? Who wants to go, like, to the news anchor guy and who's, like, all over— his face is all over billboards and go, "Hey, man, what you're doing is wrong. You can't do this." Right? Which church leader, if he's in their small group, wants to be like, you know, they're doing a small group discussion about sin and who wants to go like, "Does anyone have anything to share?" Right? It's just, you're trying not to look at him. "Does anyone have anything, I don't know, in the ballpark of maybe an inappropriate relationship or any, just anything like that? I mean, anything." You're trying to look at the guy, right? That's what happens in the church. It just keeps going and going and going. And nobody wants to deal with it because dealing with it would be uncomfortable.
15 · The pastor applies the Corinthian avoidance pattern to contemporary Christian life: we avoid addressing secret sin, reconciling broken relationships, or offering needed correction because these actions would be uncomfortable now, even though we know they're necessary
And that's exactly what happens often in our own personal lives, right? We shy away from what is uncomfortable or difficult or hard now. And so when it comes to dealing with a secret sin, it feels like, man, if I bring this out in the open and I deal with it, oh, it's gonna be so uncomfortable, it's gonna be so hard. Or reconciling with somebody, I know, like, the Cold War is fine. We're not actively shooting at each other, we just hate one another. But we don't shoot at one another across the church. I mean, come on, what's the big— you know, dealing with that's gonna be hard. Giving somebody a needed correction in their life, like, "Hey, you know, Brother So-and-So, whenever you come in and you belligerently talk to people, that's not good." Nobody wants to do that, but here's the truth.
16 · The pastor introduces the biblical truth countering the avoidance lie by quoting Paul's instruction to deliver the man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so his spirit may be saved
We must do what will be better for eternity. Look at what Paul says in verse 5. "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."
17 · The pastor explains Paul's kingdom paradigm from Ephesians: the church is an outpost of God's kingdom, and believers have been transferred from Satan's kingdom to God's
Now, this bears some explanation. Paul's paradigm, as we saw in Ephesians, is actually really helpful here. Paradigm that he's taught to the Corinthians, I'm sure. There is the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. And behind everything going on in life, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan are in conflict behind the scenes. And so the church is an outpost, in a sense, of the kingdom of God on the earth. And Paul says before coming to Christ, you met— whether or not you realize that you were following the prince of the power of the air, you were following Satan happily. But then in Christ, you've been redeemed to a new life, transferred from the domain of darkness, as he says in another letter, to the kingdom of light. So these two things are in conflict. And what Paul is saying is this: this man in the church is in the kingdom of God, in this outpost of the kingdom of God, but his life is such that it matches the kingdom of darkness. So it's not as though Paul is saying, "Listen, he's in the kingdom of God, and therefore you should chunk him back out into the kingdom of darkness with Satan." What Paul is saying is essentially this: he's acting like the kingdom of Satan. And if he remains in the church, he will assume that he's part of the kingdom of God and therefore lose the opportunity to repent. So the only option is you must send him back to where he actually is spiritually, that he might wake up and turn to Christ and therefore actually come to the kingdom of God. But allowing him to remain here is actually damaging to his soul because he does not see the need to repent.
18 · The pastor emphasizes Paul's redemptive intent by explaining that "destruction of the flesh" refers to experiencing sin's natural consequences in this life—broken relationships, hardship, difficulty
Now, that has a particular intent with it. Notice this, "So that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord." Look, Paul is not a vindictive guy. He's not just got a list of enemies. He's like, "And you know what? Walter, I hate that guy. Kick him out while I read this letter." He's not vindictive. That's not why he's doing this. Paul knows this is going to be weird. He knows it's going to be uncomfortable. But Paul's intent is to save this man's eternal soul. Because here's what's going to happen. When he talks about handing him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, what he's talking about is this man will experience the consequences that come with sin in this life. Broken relationships, difficulty, hardship, all of these things that come when we pursue sin.
19 · The pastor articulates the principle underlying Paul's instruction: sin appears easy initially but becomes increasingly hard, while godliness appears hard initially but becomes increasingly easy—a pattern that extends through this life into eternity
I was talking to Brother Mike recently. He talks about how when you choose sin, it seems easy at first, but it gets hard over the long haul. When you choose godliness, it seems hard at first, but it gets way easier over the long haul. It extends into this life and into all eternity. And so this is what Paul is saying: "Let him experience the hard consequences that he might wake up and come to Christ." Like, that's his heart. What is uncomfortable now will be good for this man forever. What's uncomfortable for this church will be good for it forever.
20 · The pastor applies the eternal perspective to Christian decision-making: believers must remember the day of the Lord is coming when all will be exposed and judged, and everything invested in God's kingdom will flourish
Now, this is where thinking eternally is crucial for the Christian. We believe in the day of the Lord. We believe that that final day will come where all sin is exposed and all sin is judged and all goodness becomes glorious and all we've invested rightly into the kingdom of God will flourish. And so often right now it is so easy to avoid what would be uncomfortable in this life, but would be good eternally.
21 · The pastor tells a story about a friend who kept pushing his gas tank to empty, convinced he could keep driving below E, until predictably running out of gas and facing severe consequences
I mean, I knew a friend one time that he— from years ago, he loved to— he's one of those people, maybe you're one of these people, I'm not trying to judge you sinfully, but I am puzzled by you. Their goal in life seemed to be to get their car as empty as humanly possible before filling it with gas. I mean, and I remember him asking one time, "When do you usually fill up your gas?" And I'm like, "I don't know, like a quarter tank." He's like, "Ha!" And I remember him telling me one time, "Did you know that in most cars, you can keep driving even below the E?" Like, there's the E, and then there's a whole reserve. The car companies, they don't want you to know about this. And it's just like below the E. And I just remember thinking, how do you live like this? And at some point it's gonna catch you. Well, at one point it did, because on the way to work, predictably, what do you think happened? He ran out of gas. Therefore, making him like walk to a gas station, buy a thing of gas, walk it back. He was super late. His boss is like, what happened to you? And what do you think he said? I just like to live dangerously. You know, I don't know what he said, but the reality is we're all tempted to live like that, aren't we? To go like, listen, I'm just going to keep riding the line, even though this is going to have devastating consequences down the road. It is fun now. I am in the moment. And this is— listen, I haven't run out of gas before. I probably won't ever, right? No, no, no, no, no. Sometimes what is uncomfortable now, stopping for gas, being 5 minutes late is way better than being hours late.
22 · The pastor applies the gas tank illustration directly to spiritual life: just as avoiding the small discomfort of stopping for gas leads to being stranded, avoiding uncomfortable spiritual actions now leads to devastating consequences later
That's what Paul is saying. And similarly, when it comes to the things of the Lord, we do not what is comfortable now, but what is good eternally.
23 · The pastor identifies the third lie by explaining the Corinthians' dual rationalization: first, that sin isn't serious because Christ's forgiveness covers it, and second, that one person's sin doesn't affect others—it's contained to the individual
Third, third lie: there might be some sin, but it's not that big of a deal. Now, verse 6 says this: "Your boasting is not good." Understatement of the letter, possibly, so far. "Your boasting about this situation is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Now, here's what I wanna back up and explain something. There was probably a predominant attitude in the church that said, look, first of all, sin is not that big of a deal now that we have the freedom of Christ. Now that Christ has died for sins, if you commit a bad sin, just like, boop, just, you know, it'll be forgiven in Christ. Not a big deal, right? He may sin, it's okay, the blood of Jesus, you know. Freedom in Christ, salvation in Christ, that'll save you. So it's not that serious. And here's the other reality: it's not like it's affecting anyone else, right? So this sin, this person may be sinning, but it's not like we're all, you know, taking up with our stepmothers immorally. Like, it's one guy. It's not that serious and it's not that dangerous. In the same way, we often believe those two. Things. We don't think sin is that serious and we don't think that there's that much of a consequence if we allow this to go unchecked. And so, we assume this is not going to affect anyone around me. This is not going to affect anyone, maybe, but me. It's not going to affect anyone but them.
24 · The pastor introduces the biblical truth countering the minimization of sin by explaining Paul's Passover illustration
But this is the truth: sin is more dangerous and more serious than we think. Paul uses this illustration in verses 7 and 8 of the Passover meal. And so, in the Jewish Passover meal, it was very important that there be no leaven in the bread. There are other reasons for that as laid out in Exodus, but the particular thing that Paul is highlighting here is that the bread must be unleavened. And so many of the formerly Jewish people that were— before they were Christians, they were ethnic Jews, and they had made this meal many times. And it was very important that any leaven not get anywhere near the lump of bread that they were making, otherwise it would spread throughout.
25 · The pastor tells a personal story about making matching family vacation shirts with blue tie-dye, then inadvertently washing one shirt that still had dye in it with regular laundry
Maybe this is an extended illustration with baking, which is not my fastball. So I'm going to switch the metaphor just slightly because I think it vividly illustrates Paul's same point. On the same vacation, we were really excited. And so we made— we were one of those families. I'm sorry. We were one of those families. We made vacation shirts, like special family vacation shirts that all matched. We were one of those families. You would see those families like, Look at them in their little matching shirts. That was us, that was us. And the great thing about it is we made blue tie-dye shirts, 'cause we were gonna be near the water, we thought this is gonna be great, blue tie-dye shirts. And so we did all the process, and we dried 'em, and got all the dye out, and then we wore them, and then we threw one of the shirts in the laundry with a bunch of other laundry, only to discover, see, you guys are ahead of me. I now know what is obvious to you now, but it was not obvious at the time. I now know that if you put one shirt, one tie-dye shirt that doesn't have all of its dye kind of washed out in with normal clothes, all of that jumble of laundry means the tie-dye will spread to all the clothes. So we're pulling out shorts and we're like, were these shorts blue before? I mean, Did this shirt have a blue streak on it? And so, and it just little blue streaks were everywhere there, right? And this is what Paul is saying. Paul is saying, you can't have a little bit of sin that then does not spread and affect other people around you, other areas around you.
26 · The pastor applies the spreading principle to relational life: sin doesn't remain isolated because life "jumbles us together" in families, friendships, and churches
And so he says the leaven of malice and evil, those, the leaven of sin, those things tend to spread and they affect not just the individual, but the whole family, the whole person, right? Life jumbles us up together so that the husband's sin affects his wife's, his wife, and vice versa. The mother's sin affects her children and vice versa. The friend's sin affects the other friends. The church member affects the other church. And this happens much faster than we often think.
27 · The pastor cites a business study where researchers embedded an actor displaying negative attitudes (apathetic, depressed, or hostile) into work teams of competent people
I was reading a study recently of a— I don't know why I love these studies, but I do. This is a study where they wanted to measure how one bad person's performance on a business team affected the rest of the team. And so they got very competent, good at their jobs kind of people, and they took them and hired an actor, which just sounds like the most fun job ever. They hired this actor to be embedded in their group with a task. And the actor was instructed to act in one of three ways, either apathetic and bored, folding his hands, sighing a lot, that kind of thing. Depressed or just despairing, "We're never gonna finish on time, it's just, oh, we're never—" Or third, hostile. You know, somebody would have an idea and be like, "Pfft, what an idea. You obviously haven't been to business school like I have," right? And so they wanted to see, okay, is one of those attitudes, will the group tend to take on one of those attitudes or how resilient, you know, if you have 3 good people and 1 bad person in the team, How much does it affect, you know, the rest of the team? And here's what they found. Two things. One, it wasn't that like one of those things spread, all three of them spread to the rest of the team. So meaning by the end of the depressed person's kind of work project, everybody on the team was depressed. Everybody was like, "Oh, we're never gonna— why didn't we— they didn't give us enough time, and why don't we— we're never gonna have a good grade on this, whatever, whatever." The apathetic person is just like, psh, I don't know what the point of this is. Yeah, I don't know what the point of this is either. And the hostile person, predictably, is like, you've never been to business school. And they're like, well, you've never been, you don't have my work experience. And so by the end, they were all yelling at each other. And guess how long, this is my favorite part, guess how long it took for the attitude to spread to the rest of the team? 1 hour. 1 hour. Which is like crazy to me. But this is very— they kept running the study. They're like, "Is this a joke?" And so they kept running it. Yep, kept happening, kept happening, kept happening. And here's the thing I love. The Bible and the Apostle Paul would be like, "Excuse me, excuse me. I told you that 2,000 years ago. I put it in there. We put it in. The Lord put it in there, okay?" One person affects everyone else around them.
28 · The pastor directly applies the spreading principle: Christians cannot assume their sin remains contained to themselves
So here's the thing. We can't as Christians think that our sin is confined to just our life. That person's sin is not going to stay confined to their life. Nobody's sin in a family stays confined to them. We have to be careful and sober-minded as it comes to these things.
29 · The pastor explains the Passover background: God's judgment came to Egypt, but Israelites who put lamb's blood on their doorframes were passed over
And then the other thing that Paul addresses is that sin is not that serious. And he goes perhaps to an unexpected place to make this point. He brings us back to the Passover meal. Now, in Egypt, remember that the Passover meal was was instituted to celebrate or to mark when the judgment of God came to Egypt and judged all the Egyptians, but the Israelites also had sinned, so they would be judged. And so what the Lord said is this: you take a spotless lamb, shed its blood, put its blood over the doorframe, and when the judgment of God comes, it will see blood has already been shed in this house and pass over. Now, it's not as though this is some weird pagan ritual. Paul is saying, listen, that ceremony was pointing forward to Jesus Christ, 'cause the blood of bulls and lambs can't take away our sins. But Jesus Christ was the true and better Passover lamb so that his blood, his innocent blood was shed in the place of sinners so that anyone who claims the blood of Christ, who claims Jesus as their Savior would, in a sense, have the blood of Jesus written over their life and the judgment of God pass over them, right? That's what the Passover was pointing forward to.
30 · The pastor explains Paul's purpose in invoking the Passover: to demonstrate sin's seriousness
So why does Paul bring it up in this context? Because he wants us to remember this is how serious sin is. Sin is so serious that it took the blood of the innocent and sinless Son of God to cover it. That is profoundly serious. That is costly. And so, we should with soberness treat sin as something vile, as something deadly, as something grieving in the sight of God. Sin, Paul would remind us, is more dangerous than you think and it is more serious than you think.
31 · The pastor identifies the fourth lie by explaining Paul's qualification: he's not calling for separation from all sinners (that would require leaving the world), but for not treating professing believers who live in unrepentant sin patterns as brothers and sisters in good standing, particularly in the Lord's Supper
And last, last lie: spend most of your time judging the world outside. Now, Paul uses in verses 9 and 10, he basically qualifies, "Look, by encouraging you to put out this man, I'm not saying you should just cut yourself off from geographic proximity to any sinners, because otherwise you're going to have to go out into the middle of, like, I don't know, West Texas somewhere in the middle of nowhere and live by yourself. That's the only way to be not around sinners. You know, you're supposed to be around sinners. There's other— there's our call to make disciples and preach the gospel. That's not what Paul is saying. But verse 11 tells us what he is saying. 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 a swindler, not even to eat with such a one. Paul is saying, I don't want you to act like people are your brother or sister in Christ if they have a clear, persistent, unrepentant pattern of sin in their life. And the meal here is really likely a reference to the Lord's Supper. So what it means is this, if you know, maybe your best friend is in a clear, unrepentant pattern of sin, And they're just taking communion like, "Yeah, I'm a Christian just like everyone else." Paul is saying, "That's not good. You can't have that."
32 · The pastor clarifies Paul's use of "judge" by distinguishing it from contemporary negative connotations
And he says in verse 12, "What have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?" Now, this language is maybe a little bit complicated for us because in our common vernacular, judgy, to judge or to be judgy are like the same thing. So, like, "That person's so judgy," they're usually not talking, like, positively about the person. Like, "I don't know why you always have to be judging me." Like, when somebody says that, it's not a positive thing. But in its most basic form, it's hard to translate. Its most basic form, to judge, just means to weigh carefully the issues in front of you and render a judgment, right? So you weigh what's going on carefully and render a judgment, make a decision. As it were. And this is, I think, helps us get at what Paul is talking about. Paul is not saying we should sinfully judge, as Jesus talks about in Matthew 7. What he's saying is you are to, when you are called on, you are to rightly weigh what is in front of you and act accordingly.
33 · The pastor applies the misplaced judgment principle to contemporary Christian life: during election cycles, Christians eagerly scrutinize political candidates' every detail, but hesitate to address unrepentant sin in close relationships
Now, here's the problem: we as Christians often are quicker to do that with people outside the church than people close to us in our own relationships. How do I know that? What happens every presidential election cycle, right? We go into the closet, we retrieve our judge's robes, and we roll up our sleeves and we're like, "All right, what kind of car did they drive 10 years ago?" You know, you're like, "Oh, that's too fancy." Where did they go on vacation? How did they vote? What comment did they make 12 years ago, right? We're ready to get in and get all the data and render some kind of verdict for them. But we are hesitant at times. If somebody close to us relationally is living in a clear, unrepentant pattern of sin, it's like, man, the last thing we want to do is weigh in, weigh the things, and act biblically. 'Cause it feels like, oh no, man. And then sometimes, and here's what Paul's getting at, sometimes you can back off thinking, well, I don't want to be judgy. I don't want to get involved in their business.
34 · The pastor articulates the biblical principle countering the fourth lie: Christians should spend their time and energy judging (carefully weighing and acting) where they have actual relational responsibility, not where they don't
But Paul is saying, listen, you have no problem doing this outside. In reality, you have it opposite. This is the truth. Spend your time, this is what he's saying, spend your time judging where you have responsibility.
35 · The pastor explains why Paul addresses the whole church publicly: in their small, interconnected community, everyone knew about the situation and everyone had some level of responsibility to act
Now Paul is saying this publicly because the entire church— remember, this was a known person, everybody in the church knew them. This means spend time judging where you have responsibility. They all had responsibility. They all lived interconnected lives in a relatively small city by our standards. They knew each other. Everyone is aware of this and no one is calling it out. No one is going to this brother and pleading with him and saying, "Nobody's doing Matthew 18. Nobody's—" going and pleading with him to follow Christ and then bringing someone else along. Nobody's doing any of this stuff. So Paul is saying, "What are you doing here? You're judging those outside, but you need to be weighing and acting where you have responsibility."
36 · The pastor carefully guards against misapplication by clarifying what Paul is not calling for—intrusive, inappropriate sin-hunting with no relational basis
Now, very important, Paul is not saying, "Okay, hand out the sheriff badges and everybody, we're going on a sin hunt." you get to break into other church members' homes and review their movie collection and review their budget and be like, "Oh, what is this? What's this in the budget right here? No, no, no, no, no, no, doesn't look good, right? I don't see any money down for the poor, but somebody bought a fancy watch. Is that it? Oh, we're going to need to see this watch." You know, and you're just— that's not what Paul is calling for. He's not saying, "Well, you have no relationship or you have no responsibility, insert yourself inappropriately and start handing out judgments." No, what he's saying is this: first, the church does have a responsibility to make sure that there is a practice of corporate, biblical corporate church discipline happening in the church. So not everybody is going to be equally involved in each one of those processes, given a church of our size, but it does mean this, that we are committed as a local body to practice biblical church discipline, which is to go to people, to bring others if we need to, to bring the matter to the elders, to let the elders administrate a process. And if necessary, if after many appeals there's a clear unrepentant pattern of sin, that person may be removed from membership. Right? That we are to say, like, "Ew, I don't want to do that." We're to say, "Okay, that's what the Bible says."
37 · The pastor identifies specific spheres of responsibility where biblical judgment applies: teams we lead, community groups, close friendships, family, and especially our own lives
But second, each of us have specific responsibilities where we have circles of relationship. We may lead a team. We may lead a community group. We may be in a community group. We may have close friends. We certainly— Certainly always have responsibility in our own family, and certainly even more have responsibility in our own lives. In fact, in Matthew 7, Mike was pointing out to me, Matthew 7, when Jesus says, "Judge not," and talks about judging, he talks about first you're supposed to judge yourself before you then go judge others. So are you even meeting your first responsibility, which is to examine your own life? When's the last time you got your judge's robes out of the closet and said, "Okay, Let's look at Ricky's life here, right? Let's look at Ricky's budget. Let's look how Ricky talks to his wife. Let's look at how he treats others. Let's look at, is there anything that he is convicted of that he hasn't gone to others and sought reconciliation for, right? That is where Paul says that's appropriate, to weigh those things and to act as appropriate.
38 · The pastor directly addresses potential misuse of the teaching with pastoral concern
Now, I wanna be careful here. Again, this is not, If— how do I say this? If you are overly excited about the permission to go judge other people, this is likely not the place of biblical application for you. You likely— if you're overly excited, you need to go back to 1 Corinthians 1 where Paul starts by saying, "I give thanks to my God for you always in every prayer of mine because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus." Right? He first starts— you may need to spend more time in 1 Corinthians if you're overly excited about this. But for the rest of us who are like, "Oh, I don't really want to do this," this is— that's who Paul's talking to. That's who Paul is talking to. This is not a call to sit back in the church with our arms crossed evaluating how every other Christian is failing and how they're not good Christians like us. It's to humbly and soberly first examine our own lives and then examine where we have responsibility to see if we are acting biblically.
39 · The pastor transitions toward conclusion by acknowledging the congregation's likely resistance to this teaching—it feels heavy, awkward, and like something they didn't sign up for when joining the church
Now, let me end with this. I want to end with this because it's easy to read this passage and think, "Oh man, what a tough, heavy, awkward thing to do." And maybe your response is like me, "Why bother? Why bother with any of this? Right? I don't need this. I don't want to— I don't want to have a hard— I did not sign up as a church member to have weird, hard conversations with other people. I signed up because They were handing out coins and I got a free book, right? I'm just kidding. I know you guys didn't sign up for that. But it feels like a bait and switch, like, "Oh, wait, now I have to do this kind of thing? And then other people might talk to me about stuff in my life? I don't like any of this."
40 · The pastor reminds the congregation of 1 Corinthians' overarching theme: despite the Corinthian church's many problems, Paul doesn't write them off but presses in because the church is precious to God and should be precious to us
Remember that the theme in 1 Corinthians is so clear. Paul sees how messed up this church is, and rather than writing them off, he presses in with them because he has the underlying belief that's threaded throughout this letter that the church is precious to God and it should be precious to us. That's the only reason he labors with them through this. He doesn't cut them out of his life. He doesn't cancel them. He presses in with them.
41 · The pastor frames church discipline as a reflection of the gospel itself: the gospel first brings difficult news (you're a sinner, cut off from God, facing judgment) precisely because God loves us enough to tell us hard truths so we can receive the good news (Christ brings us near, the Passover Lamb sacrificed for us, eternal hope available)
And as I was thinking about this morning, I realized, man, what Paul is doing is, in a sense, simply another application and another window into the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because here's the nature of the gospel: the gospel comes to each of us and says some hard things, does it not? For the gospel to be good news, it is first difficult news. The difficult news is you're a sinner, you're cut off from God, your own sins have done that to you, you face an eternity of judgment, right? None of those things are easy conversations to bring up, like, like in line at Starbucks. Like, "How are you doing? Do you know you're going to go to hell if you die?" Right? Like, that's— none of those things are easy. But here's the nature of the gospel: God loved us so much that somebody through God's providential care pressed into our lives with that difficult truth so that then we could receive the good news that, you know what? You may be cut off, but Jesus Christ can bring you near. You may be a sinner, but Christ the Passover Lamb has been sacrificed for you. You may be facing judgment, but you can have an eternity full of hope, right? This is what the gospel does to us. It loves us enough. In Christ, God loves us so much he's willing to say the hard things that we might receive the beautiful, glorious, good things in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
42 · The pastor applies the gospel pattern to the congregation's responsibility: just as Jesus loved them enough to tell hard truths so they could receive good news, they must do the same for others
And that is what Paul wants for this people, for this church, to say, "Listen, this is difficult." I know it's hard, but you're doing this because you want to save this man's soul. And in fact, he talks about celebration. There should be an element of— it says, "Celebrate the festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth," meaning the gospel should be a celebration. How do you talk about celebration in the midst of this? Because what Paul is doing is for the church's good and for its joy, and it's for an eternal— it's eternal. Sanctification and hope in Christ. And so, in this way, Paul then turns to us and says, "Brothers and sisters, what the Lord has done for you in Christ, you're to do for others." Did Jesus love you enough to tell you the hard things so that you could receive and enjoy the good things? Then you do this for others. Because the church is beautiful and precious, because we've experienced the love of Christ ourselves, This is what the Lord has for us, church, so let's stand and pray.
43 · The pastor closes in prayer, thanking God for loving the church enough to tell difficult truths leading to reconciliation in Christ
And, Lord, we, in closing, Lord, we first of all as a church thank you. Thank you for loving us enough to tell us what is difficult in the gospel, to bring a message of how broken we are, of how cut off we are, of how unreconciled we are, about how difficult our eternity is. Will be in dire eternity, will be apart from Christ. Lord, you loved us enough to send somebody into our lives, whether it's the Bible or whether another Christian, with that difficult truth so that we might see Christ and be reconciled and restored and forgiven and justified. And so, Lord, that pattern continues in our life. And I pray that we would first take our responsibility to examine our own selves. To say, "Lord, is there an area that I've not looked at my own life rightly?" I pray that we would examine ourselves, not in this morose way of self-flagellation, God, but in a sober, careful way of putting our lives in front of you and saying, "Lord, is there anything that your word would call me away from here?" And that we might repent and believe in Jesus Christ and be restored in that area of our life. And then I pray, Lord, that we would be a church that would be willing to have uncomfortable conversations for the good of other people. Lord, I pray that we would not in any way turn into— let this passage turn us into a bunch of self-righteous sheriffs that march into one another's lives with self-righteousness and pride, telling them what they're doing wrong. But rather, Lord, that there would be, though, an appropriate appropriate rescuing. Steve's going to read in just a minute from James, a rescuing of those wandering from Christ that they might receive the good of Christ's restoration and grace. And, Lord, I pray we would live up to our name, as we so often pray, Lord, that we would be Cross of Grace Church, that we would be those who recognize how costly the cross was. And through it recognize how beautiful the grace of God is for the sinner. In Jesus' name, amen.