Now, confession is good for us, right?
And I have to confess that I'm the
freight train that Doug Moo talked about the
other day.
So I want to get that off my
chest.
They took me out of that room and
put me in another place, a padded room
with reinforced rafters, for last night.
But at any rate, well, I want to
take you today to the book of 1
Corinthians in Chapter 5, please.
Let's all turn to that passage.
1 Corinthians in Chapter 5.
Some years ago, I read a book, an
Oxford Press book by Greg Wills.
It was his dissertation called Democratic Religion in
the South.
It's a very valuable book, actually.
And in that book, I read the story
of a baptism that took place in Eatonton,
Georgia in 1837.
And in this baptism, there were several people
being baptized, but one girl in particular is
noted by one writer who sort of journaled
the experience.
I'm going to read that paragraph in just
a moment.
But this girl was named Caroline or Carrie
for short.
She had been a very worldly girl, and
she said when she was converted to Jesus
Christ during that period of time that she
desired to even be more devoted to her
Savior than she had ever been to the
world.
She was soundly converted.
And I want to read for you the
paragraph written in a rather eloquent way, I
think, that describes what happened at that baptism.
So listen carefully to this interesting description.
Of course, everybody was there.
The banks of that little stream were lined
with crowds of interested spectators.
Julia of Monticello, her bosom friend and companion
in her worldly course, seemed loathe to leave
her even for a moment and clung to
her till she reached the water's edge.
A hymn was sung.
Minister C.D. Mallory made a few remarks
and offered prayer when Minister John Dawson took
Caroline by the hand and led her down
the shelving bank into the limpid stream.
They had attained about half the desired depth
when she requested him to stop a moment.
And turning to those on the bank, waving
her hand, she said, Farewell, young friends.
Farewell, Julia.
The effect was electrical.
The whole audience convulsed and tears ran from
eyes unused to weeping.
Upon coming out of the water, Julia rushed
forward to meet her friend, embracing her and
crying out in agonizing tones, Oh, Carrie, you
must not leave me.
Mr. Dawson, pray for me.
Mr. Mallory, pray for me.
Now that's a touching story to me.
I always am a little bit emotive when
I read that story.
Here is a church and an individual, at
least, who understood something of the impact of
a public testimony through baptism saying that there
is now a very big difference in my
life.
My old companions have been left behind.
My new companions are those who are the
believers in Jesus Christ.
My closest friends will be those.
And for the rest of her life, probably,
during that period of time, when people didn't
move as often, perhaps for the rest of
her life, she would be living in that
community with an entirely new circle, a sphere
of close relations to those people who were
believers.
Now in the passage that we're going to
look at in 1 Corinthians 5, obviously this
demarcation between the world and the church, that
line had been blurred, and the world has
now not just come under the door, but
as in this case the door has been
flung wide open to the world in the
Corinthian church, and they have a huge problem
on their hands, but amazingly they are not
really aware of the problem on the scale
that they should be.
And I want to read the statement of
the Apostle Paul to these people about this
issue that he heard about by rumor, and
I want to read the entire chapter, actually,
of 1 Corinthians 5.
So you follow along, please, as I read.
We're going to be making some observations in
a moment about how to maintain the integrity
of the church.
And as I read through this, I want
you to note, by the way, the strength
of the terms or the action words that
the Apostle Paul is calling the church to
carry out.
So look at this.
Verse 1, It is actually reported that there
is immorality among you, an immorality of such
a kind as does not exist even among
the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife.
And you have become arrogant and have not
mourned instead, so that the one who has
done this deed would be removed from your
midst.
For I, on my part, though absent in
body but present in spirit, have already judged
him who has so committed this as though
I were present.
In the name of our Lord Jesus, when
you are assembled, and I with you in
spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus,
I have decided to deliver such a one
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh,
so that his spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord Jesus.
Your boasting is not good.
Do you not know that a little leaven
leavens the whole lump of dough?
Clean out the old leaven so that you
may be a new lump, just as you
are in fact unleavened.
For Christ, our Passover, has also been sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast not with
the old leaven nor with the leaven of
malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth.
I wrote you in my letter not to
associate with immoral people.
I did not at all mean with the
immoral people of this world or with the
covetous and swindlers or with idolaters, for then
you would have to go out of the
world.
But actually I wrote you not to associate
with any so-called brother, if he is
an immoral person or covetous or an idolater
or a reviler or a drunkard or a
swindler, not even to eat with such a
one.
For what have I to do with judging
outsiders?
Do you not judge those who are within
the church, but those who are outside God
judges?
Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.
Now obviously this is a key seminal passage
really about the issue of church discipline.
I think you're aware, I hope you're aware,
that there's more than one way to deal
with people who are needing to be disciplined
in a church.
There are varieties of situations demanding varieties of
activities.
Not everything is Matthew chapter 18.
This is a mistake we often make.
In the little book that I gave you,
and if you haven't gotten a copy I
hope you will get a copy, for every
pastor or missionary or vocational leader here in
this room, Our Church on Solid Ground, in
the back of that book there is a
statement of discipline.
And in that statement we look at five
situations that demand attention in the area of
discipline.
First of all, minor faults, which in themselves
need to be overlooked, but may come to
a point through persistence of the individual to
be a disciplinable matter.
And then there's the category of unverifiable sins.
One person sees another person do some illicit
behavior, but you cannot find any actual proof
to bring to the table about that issue.
How do you deal with that kind of
situation?
Then there's the situation of personal offense, which
is where Matthew 18 comes in.
This is a problem between two people, and
how do you handle that kind of situation?
The fourth area is in what we call
public sin.
And then the final area, which is the
one covered by this passage in 1 Corinthians
5, we've called insufferable wickedness.
And the writer, the Apostle Paul here, obviously
deals with this sin in a much quicker,
decisive way, or at least he persuades the
Church, attempts to persuade the Church to act
quickly in the area of insufferable wickedness.
Now what I'd like for us to do
in these next few minutes is to walk
through this passage verse by verse and simply
make some observations, which help us understand how
we can maintain the integrity of our churches.
I think this is absolutely critical information for
us.
And if we are not going to be
the men, those of us who are pastors
and leaders here, if we're not going to
be the people who will practice what the
head of the Church, in this case through
the Apostle Paul, what the head of the
Church has commanded us to do, then who
will?
And we must stand for the purity of
the Church, I'd say.
We must do this.
And of all days, this is a day
in which we need to recover this great
doctrine.
So I hope it will stimulate you.
I'm praying really that in some way, by
looking at this passage, we will push back
the kingdom of darkness in a way in
our churches and something vital will happen with
you as you lead your church.
So let's look at this passage carefully for
a few minutes then and see what we
might be able to discover about the integrity
of the local church.
First of all, let's read then the first
couple of verses again.
It is actually reported that there is immorality
among you, an immorality of such a kind
as does not exist even among the Gentiles,
that someone has his father's wife.
You have become arrogant and have not mourned
instead so that the one who has done
this deed would be removed from your midst.
And the simple observation I want to make
here, which is kind of an overarching observation
as we introduce the passage, is this.
When an individual comes into the church, the
local church, and becomes a member of a
local church, he or she is joining a
society with rules.
There are boundaries in the church.
And the boundary that is mentioned here is
the boundary of no sexual immorality.
It is not permissible for a person to
join a church, and according to the head
of the church and the greatest apostle of
the church, it is not permissible for them
to join the church and to also practice
sexual immorality.
And this, of course, is not the only
sin mentioned here.
If you'll go on down in verse 11,
you will see that he does bring in
some other boundaries in the church.
He says, but actually I wrote you, verse
11, not to associate with any so-called
brother if he is an immoral person.
That's the case being covered here of a
sort even the Gentiles didn't practice, but immorality.
Or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler,
or a drunkard, or a swindler, not even
to eat with such a man.
So there is to be no sexual immorality,
no covetousness.
There is to be no swindling, or drunkenness,
or reviling, or idolatry.
And these are just some of the boundaries
of the church.
Now you can see in the first two
verses that the Apostle Paul is actually shocked
by what's happening.
It's like he's dropping his jaw down, and
his mouth is agape, and he's saying, I
can't believe this.
And it's not just immorality.
It's a type of an immorality that the
Gentiles consider abhorrent.
Even the world considers this abhorrent.
And what you're doing is nothing.
Instead of mourning, as you ought to be
doing, and removing the person from your mess,
you are tolerant of this individual, and arrogant
that you have such tolerance.
Now, of course, we see this as a
current problem, don't we?
We know that the overarching virtue in most
people's minds these days, at least the one
most people think that Christians ought to have,
if anybody should have it, is this idea
of tolerance.
We should tolerate every possible behavior, especially in
the church.
Now, I see this in church after church.
I have been in many, many churches, just
as you, I'm sure, have.
And I'm a bit amazed myself sometimes at
what I see.
One of our prominent churches in our area,
perhaps one of the two largest churches, just
a few years back some prominent men came
to discuss the fact that a man who
was a homosexual was teaching in one of
the classes, but the pastor of that church
was unwilling to deal with it.
It was a secret church, and he wanted
to give the impression that we will receive
anybody in this church, and he would not
deal with the situation.
Now, this happens over and over again, and
there's a kind of a boasting that takes
place, even among otherwise evangelical churches, in saying
that we can tolerate any kind of activity
and behavior that goes on, because, after all,
we're the loving church of God, and for
the sake of evangelism, particularly, we want to
be able to say our doors are open
to every kind of person.
Now, so when we talk about the tolerance
as a virtue being the principal thing that
people expect of us, now, in Christianity, we're
really not talking about a brand-new problem
at all, are we?
We're talking about the old Corinthian problem.
It's been around a long, long time.
Now, one of the reasons that we have
a difficulty sometimes in putting our foot down
and dealing with somebody who is illicit in
their behavior is because of some wrong views,
I think, of grace.
Of course, on the one hand, say that
God will receive any man if he comes
repentantly to Him, and He will take any
man because of His grace and accepts any
man, no matter what his background might be,
if he will put his trust in Christ.
That's, of course, true.
He may come just as He is, as
the song goes, just as I am.
He certainly might come that way.
But He comes, of course.
What we fail to remember is He comes
because of His sin, and though He is
a sinner and in His sin, but He
comes repentantly to the Lord Jesus Christ when
He becomes a believer.
So there is no intentionality on the part
of the individual when he enters into a
relationship with Christ of continuing his sin.
But some people, of course, make wrong transference
about that idea of grace, and they believe
it mitigates against the idea of actually being
decisive about people's behavior.
And it is critical for us, I think,
to explain the difference between those two things.
Now, are you puffed up about that?
Is your church one of those churches that
does not take action on behavior that you
find in your church?
I remember one pastor that I talked to,
an associate pastor of a church who had
a lot to do with the counseling in
the church, and he said concerning this large
church, he said, Jim, if we practiced the
church discipline that you would say the Bible
says we must do, we would destroy our
church.
I know of several immoral people in our
church, and it would literally decimate our church
if we had to do this.
Well, there you have it.
See, there's another reason people do not practice
church discipline.
They are actually afraid that it will be
destructive to the church.
One of the things that churches throughout our
earlier history in the States and, of course,
in Europe where many of our churches' denominations
began, etc., one of the things that they
practiced was the idea that if a person
withheld his attendance from a church, it was
a disciplinable matter.
I actually agree with that.
I think that is true, and I think
every pastor ought to consider that idea who's
here, that failure to contribute your gifts and
life to the body of the church, of
course, is indicative, number one, of a person
who's really not a believer.
He loves the environment of the world rather
than the environment of God.
He's uncomfortable among the people of God, and
he doesn't love the brethren.
So these are, of course, indications that he's
really a nonbeliever if this is a persistent
problem.
So we practice that as people have, and
I suppose some of you practice the same
way.
One church that I read about had a
policy on it, and I'm going to read
this policy.
It's a short paragraph, not because it's my
favorite way of dealing with people who do
not contribute their life to the body, but
I have just a further comment afterward.
Just listen, however, to what was said by
this one church concerning church membership and activity
and failure to do that.
Any member, they said in their bylaws, any
member who does not have registered attendance, identified
financial support, definite service contribution, and or expressed
interest and loyalty within a six-month period
shall be notified by the board of directors
in writing within 30 days prior to any
congregational meeting that he or she has been
placed on an inactive member list and is
not eligible to vote in any meeting of
the church.
Again, I'm not saying this is a good
policy.
Perhaps it's not.
I think there's some deficiencies in it.
But would you like to know what church
this is that has this policy?
This is in the bylaws of the Metropolitan
Community Church of Los Angeles, the famous gay
and lesbian and bisexual, transsexual church, if I
can use that word.
Now, what I'm saying to you is this.
These people are stricter than you are, and
it's a great shame, I think, for us
to not act in this way decisively.
I'm well aware, I'm well aware that in
the final analysis, it is the church as
a whole that must discipline, and sometimes there's
an education process to bring the church where
it needs to be.
But my brothers, you who are pastors and
leaders in your churches, if you are not
leading your church aggressively toward this, then you
are certainly, most certainly disobedient to God.
This is the teaching of God's Word for
every church.
It must be.
You're not just some amorphous group, you see,
with no boundaries at all.
God has given you boundaries, and you must
uphold those boundaries, not in a legalistic spirit,
obviously, but in a loving way you must
deal with people who are disobedient.
By the way, in that list of things
that I mentioned, there is one word that
we have in verse 11, one word particularly
that we have a problem dealing with, and
that's the word covetous.
He says we are not to associate with
any so-called brother if he is an
immoral person or a covetous.
Now, there's a difficult one for us because
this is a pet sin of our age,
isn't it?
And how many covetous or greedy people are
there among us?
Now, one of the most famous non-theologians
said this.
This is Dwight L.
Moody.
But he said this, trying to be descriptive
about the power of covetousness in people's lives.
He said covetousness enticed Lot into Sodom.
It caused the destruction of Achan and all
his house.
It was the iniquity of Balaam.
It was the sin of Samuel's sons.
It left Gehazi a leper.
It sent the rich young ruler away sorrowful.
It led Judas to sell his master and
lord.
It brought about the death of Ananias and
Sapphira.
It was the blot in the character of
Felix.
What victims it has had in all the
ages.
It's a helpful reminder, isn't it, that covetousness
is not just some sort of sin we,
again, just tolerate.
And none of us will be experts at
detecting this all the time.
But I want to say we have to
grapple with this tension here.
We have to grapple with this issue that
we have among us sometimes people who are
covetous.
When we know, when we know, with plenty
of biblical evidence, what God does when he
brings a person into a relationship with Christ
is he decentralizes the self.
And the person really, the old greed, the
old focus on self has actually been dramatically
changed.
Not perfectly.
We're definitely not perfect.
But there's a huge change.
By the way, Moody went on to tell
a story.
He said there was a man who was
very wealthy in New York State who had
been converted.
He had been known as a miser.
He was a very selfish man.
But he had been converted to Christ.
And one day a family came, a man
representing his family came, who had been burned
out of his house and had no provisions
whatsoever.
And he asked for some help.
And the man decided that he would take
him to his smokehouse and he would give
him a ham out of his smokehouse.
And so as he was walking over to
the smokehouse, he said the devil spoke in
his ear and said, give him the smallest
one.
And the man, in order to attack his,
the potential of selfishness in his life now
that he'd become a believer, gave him the
biggest ham in his smokehouse.
And after he'd done that, the tempter said,
you are a fool.
And the man said, if you don't shut
up, I'm going to give him every ham
in the smokehouse.
There is something, isn't there, that happens to
us when we become believers in Jesus Christ.
God really does change us.
And we are constituted in a different way.
This is a sin, apparently, that must in
some ways be recognizable because it is mentioned
in various places in the scripture as one
of those issues that we're to take note
of and to actually discipline.
Now, let's look at a second observation in
verses 3 through 5.
For I on my part, though absent in
body but present in spirit, have already judged
him who has so committed this as though
I were present.
In the name of our Lord Jesus, when
you are assembled, and I with you in
spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus,
I have decided to deliver such a one
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh
so that his spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord Jesus.
And I simply want to say then as
an observation concerning these verses that the church
is a society that judges its members.
It does not only have boundaries, but it's
a society that must judge its members.
This passage where he actually uses the word,
I have already judged him, should forever dispel
the idea that Christians are never to judge.
Of course, we know the difference between the
Matthew passage and the Sermon on the Mount
when Jesus says, Judge not lest you be
judged, and the idea that a spiritual man
judges all things and that, in fact, we
even may at times have to set up
many courts in our church to judge situations.
There is a judgment with love that seeks
the best for the individual, but acts for
the integrity of the church and the final
analysis and the purity of the gospel and
our behavior.
So the church judges its members.
Now, this is a very interesting and colorful
section of the text that we're looking at.
It's as if, as Hendrickson says, it's as
if the Apostle Paul were there in the
meeting with gavel in hand.
I don't know how you make decisions in
your church.
We probably have a variety of ways that
we make decisions.
But at any rate, Paul is inserting himself
into, as an apostle, as one who does
not have, has basically the power of persuasion
over the church.
He cannot act for the church, for the
local church, but he has the power of
persuasion.
And the way he's persuading the people is
this.
He's saying, I'm right there.
Just think of me as right there with
you.
Think of me as right there in the
meeting with you.
In spirit, though not in body, I'm right
there with you.
But then he enforces it even more because
there's another guest in the meeting, and the
other guest is Jesus Christ.
And he says it this way, I'm coming
in the name of Jesus Christ.
My presence with you in spirit is in
the name, that is, as a representative of
Jesus Christ himself.
And then he mentions, secondly, this.
Look at it.
He says in the name, verse 4, in
the name of our Lord Jesus, when you
are assembled, and I with you in spirit,
with the power of the Lord Jesus.
So he's emphasizing here that there is more
than Paul there in spirit.
This is a matter which greatly concerns Jesus
Christ, greatly concerns Christ.
And he is there, of course, with them
in this decision that is being made as
they discipline the church.
What a significant thing that is, isn't it?
Now, when he says here, verse 5, I
have decided to 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.
Here's an interesting passage, of course, because now
some people take that idea, deliver such a
one to Satan, to be something rather spooky,
that there's something almost like sorcery that takes
place when you do that.
But I take a different view myself, and
I suppose many of you would agree with
me, that really all he's saying here is
this.
He's simply talking about excommunicating the individual and
leaving him there in the world where Satan
has his control, and leaving him there in
the world rather than his profession that he's
a Christian, removing him from any of the
meetings of the believers and sending him out
into the world for the destruction of the
flesh.
He is expecting that the sin of this
man will actually bring great corruption to the
man, so that, he says, his day will
be saved in the day of the Lord
Jesus.
Now, I'm of the opinion that when he
says his soul will be saved in the
day of the Lord Jesus, I do not
believe he's considering this man to be a
true believer, but rather a non-believer.
He's not saying we're going to send this
man as a true believer out into the
world so that God will kind of take
care of the part of his nature that
is prone to sin, and he will be
saved, at least his spirit will be saved
in the day of the Lord Jesus, though
his body experiences a great deal of corruption.
I don't think he's saying that, because in
just a few chapters later, well, the next
chapter, in fact, in chapter 6, he makes
it very clear, doesn't he?
Maybe you could glance over there a moment
and see what it says.
He makes it very clear in verses 9
through 11 that those who are immoral are
not part of the kingdom of God at
all.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will
not inherit the kingdom of God?
Do not be deceived.
Apparently there were people who were deceived in
believing that they could become a professed Christian
in Jesus Christ and then live an immoral
life and still go to heaven, still be
part of the kingdom of God.
That's not true, of course, is it?
Do not be deceived.
He wouldn't use those words otherwise.
Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate
nor homosexuals nor thieves nor the covetous nor
drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers will inherit the
kingdom of God.
Such were some of you, but you were
washed.
You were sanctified.
You were justified in the name of the
Lord Jesus and in or by the Spirit
of our God.
So I don't believe this man would be
considered by the Apostle Paul when almost in
the same breath he says, you see, that
immoral people will not inherit the kingdom of
God.
I think that the Apostle Paul sees this
man as a non-believer.
Indeed, when this level of discipline takes place,
that is almost certainly what we're saying.
We're turning a person out into the world
under, without our influences now, we're sending him
out there where he lives his life basically
in his mind.
And we're going to send him out there
under Satan for the destruction of his flesh
in hopes that, I think that's the intent
here, in hopes that he will be saved.
Sort of like the prodigal son, that he
would, by experiencing such the awfulness that sin
brings, there would be at least, I think,
the hope that having had some of the
gospel, having heard some of the truth of
God, he might come to Jesus Christ in
fact, be saved and the spirit would be
saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
So I don't believe that's the way we
ought to view this passage, at least as
I see it.
Now, you remember that this phrase, to be
delivered over to Satan, is used in another
place in the scripture.
And I think it would be good for
us just to take a moment to look
at that as well.
So why don't we go to 1 Timothy
chapter 1 for a moment and just glance
at these ideas and see the Apostle Paul
using the same term with another type of
sin.
1 Timothy in chapter 1 and verse 20.
Actually, we should get the context by going
back to verse 18, if you don't mind.
Chapter 1 of 1 Timothy.
This command I entrust you, Timothy, my son,
in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning
you, that by them you fight the good
fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which
some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard
to their faith.
Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I
have handed over to Satan, so that they
will be taught not to blaspheme.
So, of course, blasphemy means to speak against
God in some way.
And Hymenaeus and Alexander were, similar to the
1 Corinthians 5 men, were then handed over
to Satan.
What is this all about?
Let's go to 2 Timothy chapter 4, and
I think we can find out a bit
more.
2 Timothy chapter 4 and verse 14, where
we see the name Hymenaeus again.
And he says this in verse 16, With
either another man, by the way, Alexander, it's
difficult for me.
I'm not sure who this man Philetus is,
whether it's another name for the man Alexander.
It's one possibility, I guess, or another man
entirely.
But Hymenaeus is there again.
Look at this.
But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it
will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk
will spread like gangrene.
Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who
have gone astray from the truth, saying that
the resurrection has already taken place, and they
upset the faith of some.
We're prone immediately to say, are these the
first hyper-preterists, as we look at this
passage.
That's not actually provable.
I don't think you can demonstrate that fully
from this passage.
We know too little, really, about what they
were saying.
We're not even sure about what they meant
by the resurrection having already taken place.
Did they mean that Christ's resurrection had taken
place, and that was the only resurrection there
would be?
That's one possibility that some people bring forward.
I'm sorry, 2 Timothy.
Did I give it to you, 2 Timothy?
Chapter 2.
There you go.
See, I'm not only a freight train.
I can't get the Scripture right.
I'm sorry, not chapter 4.
Thank you so much.
Chapter 2, then, verse 16.
Now, do you see it?
Do I need to read it again, or
are you okay?
All right, you're okay.
All right, verse 18 says this.
Let me just read that.
Verse 17, Their talk will spread like gangrene.
Among them are Hymenaeus and Philoetus, men who
have gone astray from the truth, saying that
the resurrection has already taken place, and they
upset the faith of some.
So, again, we don't know whether this is
a form of hyper-preterism.
Some would say, then, Christ's resurrection is the
only, what they meant was Christ's resurrection is
the only resurrection.
There's not to be any other resurrection, and
that's taken place.
Some would say, perhaps they mean this, that
there is a spiritual resurrection of the believer.
He's raised, and we know that to be
true, don't we?
But that's all there is.
There won't be any bodily resurrection in the
future.
Some others might say that there's some kind
of bodily, that they were meaning that there's
some kind of bodily resurrection that takes place
in the heavenly realm, not in the way
that we imagine it at a future date
out there.
We're not sure, really, what was meant by
that, so we don't want to make this
a statement about hyper-preterism, necessarily, although it's
very tempting, isn't it?
But we know that the problem here was
that they had a doctrinal aberration on a
very cardinal issue about the resurrection, the bodily
resurrection of believers.
And for that reason, they were dangerous people
in the church, and they were actually upsetting
the faith of some of the people.
It was affecting the people in the church
in a very serious way, and it was
gangrenous, if that's the word.
It was like gangrene creeping up into the
body, turning parts of the body green, and
really affecting deeply the thinking of the people.
So these are the people, then, that Paul
felt necessary to, again, use that same phrase,
to turn over to Satan or to hand
over to Satan.
Basically, he felt like that doctrinal aberrations of
this level were indicative of persons who were
actually nonbelievers, and they needed to be turned
over to Satan, from which that doctrine came.
It was the doctrine of demons.
It was not a doctrine of the Lord
Jesus Christ, as we know and believe.
So the church is a society, then, that
judges its members, and we should never forget
that.
People who enter into our churches should know
this from the outset.
In fact, I believe it's very helpful in
our litigious age for them actually to sign
on the dotted line, in a way, knowing
that they really will be faced with this
if there's aberrant behavior or doctrine that is
indicative of an undergenerate lifestyle.
So this is something you want to make
absolutely clear with people as they come into
the fellowship of your church.
Now, a third observation, verse 6.
Your boasting is not good.
Do you not know that a little leaven
leavens the whole lump of dough?
Clean out the old leaven so that you
may be a new lump, just as you
are in fact unleavened.
For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with
the old leaven nor with the leaven of
malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread
of sincerity and truth.
So we see, thirdly, that the church really
has good reason to expect members to conform
to these rules.
The church has good reason to do it,
and the reason is this, that a little
leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.
We have to act because there is a
permeating effect to evil.
Now, he uses this beautiful picture of the
Passover, and you're well aware that in the
period of time when the Passover was taken
in the Old Testament, of course, God required
that all of the leaven be taken out
of the house, and the leaven, this yeast,
was a symbol of evil.
But the symbol here is shown to us
with a new dimension here, and that is
that it has a permeating effect in the
rest of the body.
A little leaven, actually a little bit of
leaven.
It doesn't take much, does it, to put
in a lump of dough to eventually permeate
the whole.
A little bit of leaven leavens the whole
lump of dough.
Now I bet if I open this session
up here to testimony, some of you could
actually give pretty clear testimonies about what leaven
has done in your own congregations.
Would that be true?
Some of you have seen the effects of
sin in the rest of the body.
So when you have a Sunday school teacher
who's a drinker on the sly, or you
have a deacon who is actually a swindler
in his business, what happens is that eventually
other people are affected.
It lowers the temperature of the body, for
one thing, but it also begins to just
color a lot of things.
There's a permeation that takes place because of
the sin.
Now he says that we are the unleavened.
Look at verse 7.
Clean out the old leaven, that you may
be a new lump, just as you are,
in fact, unleavened.
For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.
So here in the picture that he's giving
us, he's saying that we are like the
unleavened bread, and in fact that's true.
The Lord has dealt with us as believers
in Jesus Christ in such a way that
he's broken the back of sin in our
lives.
We are the people of God who are
no longer under the dominion and the slavery
of sin as we used to be.
But now he's saying you need to live
like you are.
That's all he's saying here.
You need to purge out or take away
this unleavened out of you because, in fact,
you are unleavened.
That's who you are by identity.
You are the unleavened of God.
Christ the Passover has been slain.
Now if this is not an allusion to
the Lord's Supper, it is at least a
reminder, isn't it, because the connection between the
Passover and the Lord's Supper celebration.
Celebrate the feast, he says, not with the
old leaven or the leaven of malice and
wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity
and truth.
Now think about this just a minute.
It reminds us, of course, and it would
be very natural for us to be reminded,
I think, of the Lord's Supper.
Think about the import of this idea that
when you take the Lord's Supper together and
you gather together.
In the early church, I think it's defensible
to say that the early church took the
Lord's Supper on a weekly basis when they
came together.
You may disagree.
Maybe there's a way to get around that,
but it seems to me that the practice
at least, not the command but the precedent
of the early church, was to take the
Lord's Supper on a weekly basis.
At least we see that in one clear
passage.
Now if it is true that the early
church, when they gathered together, took the Lord's
Supper as a regular habit, the Lord's Supper
is not only a symbol, in part, of
our communion with Christ and with each other.
It is that, isn't it?
It's a symbol of our, among other things,
it's a symbol of our communion with Christ
and with each other.
If it is a symbol, we must not
say that it is only a symbol.
It is not only a symbol of our
fellowship or our communion with each other.
It is an act of our fellowship with
each other.
And that's significant.
So the early church always took the Lord's
Supper when they came together, you see.
Then, of course, what we're saying here is
that when you celebrate the feast or when
you come together to take the Lord's Supper
together, this is a true act of fellowship
that needs to be guarded.
And the old leaven needs to be taken
away.
It needs to be purged out from among
you.
So the church has very good reason to
act on this sin that it finds in
the professing church because it has an effect
on other people.
You know, some of you who are ladies
and like to cook, suppose you bought a
chicken one day.
You went to the store and got a
chicken and you intended to fry up that
chicken for your husband.
Since your husband is a preacher, he only
eats fried chicken.
At least down south, that's what we do.
And you intended to do that, but you
had a busy day and you weren't able
to get to it, so the chicken was
just left out on the counter.
You didn't even have time to put it
in the refrigerator.
The next day you were busy also and
you did not think to put the chicken
in the refrigerator.
It just sat there in that plastic sack
on the counter.
The third day went by.
The fourth day, by now, the house was
just reeking with this rotten smell that was
coming from that sack.
And then one day you get up in
the morning and for the first day after
four or five days you don't have as
much to do and you walk in the
kitchen and say, Well, I better take care
of things in the kitchen.
And, of course, the smell is terrible.
And you look in that sack and I
don't know where all those little white things
come from that crawl around on carcasses, but
you've got those maggots all over that carcass
that are just covering that carcass, all around
that carcass.
And you say, My, I've left the chicken
on the counter.
And what am I going to do about
it?
I paid good money for that chicken.
You're on a pastor's salary and you're not
going to give away a good chicken, throw
out a good chicken.
And so you say, Well, here's what I'll
do.
I'll go to the store and I'll buy
a fresh new chicken and I'll bring it
back and I'll put it in the same
sack with that rotten chicken and it's going
to take care of it.
Right?
Well, you ladies tell me, will that work?
It won't work, will it?
Because it's always true, isn't it?
It's always true that the rotten affects the
fresh.
It's always true.
It works that way, always.
Habakkuk reminds us of this.
If you want to look it up later,
or rather Haggai 2, 10 through 14, makes
this point as well.
It's always the rotten that affects the fresh.
It doesn't happen the other way.
That little bit of leaven leavens the whole
thing.
I don't know how many times through the
years I've heard this kind of thing come
out.
I remember just a couple of years ago
somebody saying to me about their daughter who
had become, having been a church member all
of her life and active in the church
that they belonged to, had now become just
sort of incorrigible and difficult and a problem.
And I asked her, Well, how did it
begin to happen?
She said, Well, it happened in the youth
group.
Now this is, that's not unusual at all,
is it, for that sort of thing to
happen.
You're not just battling the world in a
way out there, as we see it outside
of the professing church, but we have so
neglected our responsibilities in the area of church
discipline that we battled even among the professing
church, sometimes in huge ways.
We find that church groups can influence negatively
people's lives.
We're almost afraid sometimes to put a new
Christian in the church.
You ever had that experience?
You ever had that?
I travel a lot and work in a
variety of churches and I've seen that sort
of thing happen where somebody's come to Jesus
Christ and I almost hate to put them
in the church because I feel like it's
going to do something negative to them to
be in that church because a little leaven
leavens the whole lump of dough.
And it's a very, very important consideration, isn't
it?
Let's look at a fourth observation here, verse
9.
I wrote you in my letter not to
associate with immoral people.
I did not at all mean with the
immoral people of this world or with the
covetous and swindlers or with idolaters for then
you would have to go out of the
world.
But actually I wrote you not to associate
with any so-called brother if he is
an immoral person or covetous or an idolater
or a violer or a drunkard or a
swindler, not even to eat with such a
one.
So ultimately when a church judges its members
it withdraws its most precious gift, fellowship.
Now if that is not a precious gift
to you then you probably are of the
category of people who have not dealt with
church discipline.
And this is so often the case.
These words almost seem impotent to people in
many churches, don't they?
Because they've never experienced the richness of fellowship
among true believers walking in harmony.
They'll never know that.
So they've always been in such polluted churches,
so filled with unregenerate people, that the potency
of this is not there in the past.
It doesn't mean as much to them.
If people would withdraw their fellowship, what would
that mean?
It doesn't mean much of anything to them,
you see.
But if you've ever known it, you know
that this is a very powerful thing to
do.
It's the most powerful thing a church can
do to remove its fellowship from an individual.
Now what does that mean?
Look at the terms here.
Look at verse 2.
Look how strong they are.
Verse 2, would be removed, he says, from
your midst.
Or verse 5, deliver such a one to
Satan.
Verse 7, clean out the old.
Verse 9, not to associate with immoral persons.
Verse 11, again, not to associate with any
so-called brother, if he is such and
such.
And then in verse 13, remove or expel
the wicked man from your midst.
Now you can't do any questioning in your
mind what's happening here.
We must absolutely withdraw our fellowship from them.
Remove them from us.
Expel them from us.
Deliver them over to Satan.
It's very clear here.
Now some people make a mistake, I think.
And they say, well, what we'll do is
we'll deal with this person and then we
will consider him.
Usually they're thinking of Matthew 18 terminology.
We'll consider him a heathen, an IRS man.
But that doesn't mean he can't come among
us because he just has to come as
a nonbeliever then among us.
And he's just a, you know, he's not
a member but he's a nonbeliever.
However, I think the language here is absolutely
clear.
He's not to have any relationship with you
in terms when you're meeting for fellowship.
You're not to have any fellowship with him
at all, you see, and especially when you
assemble.
So again, the act of fellowship in the
Lord's Supper, that's probably where I should have
inserted that idea, but the act of fellowship
in communion happening every week would indicate this,
of course, very clearly.
You're not even to eat with such a
one.
You're not to be this fellowship.
So don't make that mistake.
He's not to meet with you.
It's very clear that he should not gather
with you.
The meetings of the church, of course, were
principally believers' meetings, weren't they?
We have an idea today that the meetings
on Sunday are production meetings.
They're evangelistic meetings.
That's why we do it.
That's why we gather on Sunday so we
can increase the church size and reach people
and so forth.
But that's not the intent of the early
church.
The early church, it was a believers' meeting,
and the nonbeliever might wander in, but it
was principally a believers' meeting, and you're not
to allow the person to have fellowship with
you in there.
Now, a last observation.
Look at this.
He says here in verse 12, For what
have I to do with judging outsiders?
Do you not judge those who are within
the church?
There again, clarity about the use of the
word judgment.
But those who are outside God judges.
Expel the wicked man from among yourselves.
Of course, he is quoting here from Deuteronomy,
various places in Deuteronomy where that phrase is
used.
Interestingly, in Deuteronomy, the implied imperative of the
passage in the Old Testament passages in Deuteronomy
is singular, but here it's in the second
person, plural.
You all.
So he's expecting the church as a whole
to take action.
So let me make this observation here.
Failure of the church to purge wicked people
from among them is flagrant disobedience.
It is flagrant disobedience.
This is not really, this is not put
to us in the form of an option.
It is given to us in the form
of a command.
You have to do this.
And if the church who is the one
to act in the final analysis is not
there, then you must do everything within your
own might to get that church to the
place where they can handle this and do
this, preferably before the situation arises.
But you must do it.
You must prepare them for this.
It's vitally important.
And I'm afraid that there are many churches,
many otherwise good churches, that simply will not
act on the imperative of the Lord in
disciplining people in their church when necessary.
Now let me end with this.
I wish I had more time.
There's much more we could say.
But let me just tell you why this
is so important to me, really for a
couple of reasons.
One is we started a new church about
a year and a half ago, and this
very week we are dealing with our first
case of serious discipline.
And I am so thankful, so thankful, not
that that's happening.
It's a grievous thing.
I mean it's brought many tears and concern,
a great deal of concern to us.
But it's an obvious case, and I am
so thankful we prepared ahead of time for
it.
The document that you have there in that
book that I mentioned, that's our document, the
one we worked through and dealt with.
It took us months to really get it
where we felt like we were representing the
Scripture the right way.
But I am so thankful we took action
ahead of time on this, prepared ourselves for
it.
I believe the people will stand all together
in harmony in dealing with this.
And as sad as it is, I believe
in the long run the church will be
much stronger for it.
Though I'm still hopeful of the man's repentance,
even at this last hour.
But there's another reason.
I don't always share this, but many years
ago, some years ago rather, my father, let
me back up, let me say something else.
My father is 89, almost 89, minister of
the gospel for many, many years.
His father was a preacher.
He was a preacher's kid.
And a great, of course, probably the greatest
influence in my life, as you can imagine.
Recently, we took my 89-year-old father
on a trip.
We took him through Arkansas.
And this is where he grew up.
He'd been in some other places in his
ministry.
But we took him to these places in
Arkansas, 12 different towns, little towns you've never
heard of, basically, where he grew up, where
he was converted.
We found the church in Cotter, Arkansas.
You've never even heard of that, have you?
But a little town where he was converted.
We found the steps of the building, though
there was no building, where he preached his
first sermon.
What a moving moment that was.
Where he was ordained, we took pictures of
him and had him tell the story on
the steps of the old building.
It's now Masonic Lodge, of all things.
But we were able to see the old
building there.
And we went through papers in churches and
found minutes and where his dad had preached
and done this and that.
It was a moving time.
It was just last week.
And I strongly, by the way, recommend that
you do this for your parents.
It just was a wonderful thing to do.
And all the siblings were all together.
We just went in one car and we
went around for three days.
We did this until late at night most
nights.
And one of the stops that we had
was at my mother's grave in Warren, Arkansas,
down south in Arkansas, the first time my
father had seen it.
My father, some years ago, as a denominational
worker for the Baptists in Oklahoma City, in
a classic situation, began to counsel his secretary
about her marriage, became the authority that her
husband was not, and it was not long
until he committed adultery.
And in a tragic way, right at the
end of his ministry, he was just coming
to the end of his more public ministry
there as a worker.
He was just coming to retirement.
He committed this awful sin.
And, of course, we were devastated.
All my brothers were preachers.
My sister married a preacher.
So my dad's had a huge influence on
people in that denomination.
So it was an awful thing.
And within a short time after this, he
felt that he must divorce my mother.
He divorced her.
She got Alzheimer's then.
Within two years, she had passed away, and
we had buried her in Warren.
The Alzheimer's probably aggravated, of course, by the
tension of the situation.
And there are many, many things I could
say about that very interesting story of how
my mother was such a forgiver.
And in the process of her Alzheimer's, my
father repented, of course, and that itself was
a very moving experience.
He actually flew to the town where she
died, and though she was unconscious of things,
he stood there and confessed his sin to
her and wept there before her and I
believe was thoroughly repentant.
He said, I've lived all these years.
Every day I get up regretting what a
stupid thing I've done.
Well, he married the woman that he committed
adultery with also in this process.
So he was now seeing the grave of
his wife of 47 years for the first
time.
You can just imagine.
I wish I could describe to you the
catharsis, the tears that we all cried.
He just hung his head and put his
head on my brother's shoulder, the oldest son,
and just wept at this.
I asked him a question related to that,
and we talked freely about this whole thing,
of course, because he is truly repentant about
it.
I asked him, I said, you know, there
was a time, Dad, when we went to
your church in Oklahoma City and we asked
the pastor of your church to practice church
discipline on you, but they wouldn't do it.
He was such a prominent man in that
denomination and he just wouldn't do it.
Made all kinds of excuses, never did a
thing.
Dad, do you think had they enacted church
discipline on your behalf, it would have made
a difference?
He said, yes, I certainly do.
I don't believe I could have gone through
with what I did.
Now, maybe I am capable.
He was a very humble man about all
this, but he said I really think it
would have been more than I could have
handled.
I believe I would have had to stop.
So you can see why I get a
bit burdened about the idea of church discipline.
There may be many people like my father
out there who could be stopped.
It's not true that everybody you discipline is
going to repent.
It's not true.
In fact, I would say most of them
will not repent.
What about that true believer that falls into
sin?
You can turn him away from his sin
and cover a multitude of sins.
Don't you love that person that much to
do what Christ has commanded you to do?
It is an act of love, isn't it,
for us to discipline people?
Please, man, I'm just begging you from personal
experience, many experiences really through the years, I'm
begging you.
Don't let this one go by.
Do what Christ says to do.
Take the measures to get your church where
they need to be and do this when
necessary for the good of the church and
the kingdom of God.
Let's bow our heads and pray.
Father, we are grateful for the clarity of
Scripture, how important these words are, Lord, today.
You included them in the Scriptures for the
very reason for us to talk about them
like we have today.
How significant.
Please, Lord, help us not to be foolish
and forgetful and unattentive to the things that
you have called us to do, but help
us to remember this vital element of church
life and to shore up our thoughts and
our plans in this area.
Give these men grace and power to lead
their churches in that direction.
We pray this now in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Have a break.