It is actually reported that there is sexual
immorality among you and of a kind that
does not occur even among pagans.
A man has his father's wife and you
are proud.
Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief
and have put out of your fellowship the
man who did this?
Even though I am not physically present, I
am with you in spirit and I have
already passed judgment on the one who did
this, just as if I were present.
When you are assembled in the name of
our Lord Jesus and I am with you
in spirit and the power of our Lord
Jesus is present, hand this man over to
Satan so that the sinful nature may be
destroyed and his spirit saved on the day
of the Lord.
Your boasting is not good.
Don't you know that a little yeast works
through the whole batch of dough?
Get rid of the old yeast that you
may be a new batch without yeast as
you really are.
For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed,
therefore let us keep the festival not with
the old yeast, the yeast of malice and
wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread
of sincerity and truth.
I have written you in my letter not
to associate with sexually immoral people, not at
all meaning the people of this world who
are immoral or the greedy and swindlers or
idolaters.
In that case, you would have had to
leave this world, but now I am writing
you that you must not associate with anyone
who calls himself a brother, but is sexually
immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer,
a drunkard or a swindler.
With such a man do not even eat.
What business is it of mine to judge
those outside the church?
Are you not to judge those inside?
God will judge those outside.
Expel the wicked man from among you.
Now I'd be glad if you'd have your
Bible open at 1 Corinthians 5, and that
you really rise to the challenge of disciplining
your concentration, and following the melody from the
pulpit, as much as the melody from outside.
In fact, I think we've got a break
to start with.
Would you like to read through that chapter
again, just for a moment, until this band's
gone by?
Well, let's come to the content of this
particular passage of Scripture.
I want to preach to you on the
twin concepts of purity, the purity that there
should be in the local church, and separation,
that the Bible teaches we should apply in
certain circumstances to specific individuals.
Now, as I mentioned before, this is not
the easiest passage.
One of the benefits of expository preaching and
working our way through passages of Scripture is
that you have to deal with matters which,
at the human level, you would probably duck,
simply because they seem to be so sensitive,
and sometimes, perhaps, because the teaching of the
Word of God does seem to be very
harsh.
But God has prescribed His Word for us
in its entirety, and we are not to
shelve, we're not to vault over any particular
passage, simply because it might our own sensitivities.
Here, we're going to be looking at immorality,
as was exampled in some areas.
One area in particular, in the church at
Corinth, we're going to be thinking about the
whole business of excommunication, and then, as I
intimated a moment or so ago, we have
to look at the teaching of the Bible
as to when and how we should separate
ourselves from certain individuals.
Well, I'm breaking this up into five specific
sections.
I'll give you a little title when we
come to each section, which will help you
to have the whole precede and summarize.
Maybe, if you take notes, that you'd like
just to jot down the headings, which will
be a skeleton for you, if you want
to come back and consider the outline afresh
later on today.
In the first two verses of this chapter,
there is what I would call a concession
to be corrected.
A concession to be corrected.
Here is the Apostle, and he is reviewing
the situation from a distance that has fallen
out amongst Christian people in this Greek city
of Corinth.
And, alas, some of the reports that he
has heard fills him with a sense of
alarm.
It is actually reported, he says in the
opening verse, that there is sexual immorality among
you.
And, as the authorized version of the Bible
indicates, that report was common.
It was held all over Corinth.
The Christians had become, if you please, can
you believe this, the talk of the town.
You remember there were certain servants from the
household of Chloe, to whom references is made
in the earlier chapter.
I referred to them some weeks ago, who
had met up with Paul at Ephesus.
And, doubtless, it was they who had reported,
though they weren't Christian people, just what was
happening, at least in one area of the
Christian assembly at Corinth.
And Paul is very, very alarmed indeed.
The talk of the town.
A particular sin had broken out.
And, if you could credit it, some of
the believers at any rate there had made
concession regarding that sin.
You are proud, says the Apostle in the
second verse.
You are arrogant.
You are puffed up.
You believe that when this sin was evidenced,
when it was seen amongst you, when you
heard report of it, that somehow or another,
because of a liberty that you claim for
yourself, which I never taught, you can overlook
it.
One of the slogans apparently that was going
around Corinth at this time was, everything is
permissible for me.
You get it in the twelfth verse of
the sixth chapter.
It's repeated again in the twenty-third verse
of the tenth chapter.
Here are these Christians at Corinth, and they've
gone beyond the simple ethical statement and standards
of the Apostle, and confronted with a sin,
a pretty awful sin, in arrogance.
They decide not to do anything about it.
Their liberty is such that they can live
alongside such a manifestation of evil.
Why, says the Apostle, this particular malpractice is
of a kind that does not even occur
among pagans.
He doesn't go into any specific detail as
to the nature of the sin.
We're told in the end of the first
verse that a man has his father's wife,
but we don't know whether this refers to
the man's stepmother.
We don't know whether she was as old
as the man concerned who had engaged in
an immoral act.
We don't know whether the father was dead
or not, but what we are aware of,
and it's sufficient to say this, here was
a sin of grievous proportions, and the church
at Corinth had not taken the offending man
to task.
They had made concessions, and that concession, says
the Apostle Paul, must be corrected.
Instead of being proud, verse two, you should
have been filled with grief.
You should be in a state of mourning.
You should have put out of your fellowship
the man who did this.
Well, that's all that I want to really
say about the nature of this sin.
The principle is what is important.
They had made concessions at Corinth.
There had been an erosion of standards, and
they believed that somehow they had a liberty
which gave them greater degree of flexibility in
ethics, as opposed to what the Apostle Paul
had humbly taught them when he'd been present,
bringing that church together from infancy.
Now, when you move on from the third
verse right up to the fifth, having been
confronted with the thought of a concession to
be corrected, here, I say, is a decision
to be applied, a decision to be applied.
Here is the Apostle Paul miles away from
the scene.
He tells us that, doesn't he, in the
third verse, though I am not physically present.
He already knows, however, what he would do,
what his decision is on this particular matter.
He tells us later on in the third
verse, I have already passed judgment on the
one who did this, as though I were
present.
What authority, what right had Paul to make
judgment in such a case?
Well, you remember, he was the founder of
the church.
He was absent from them, but nonetheless he
was president of the church, so to speak,
at Corinth.
He was the Apostle who, under God's authority,
had brought these people into a living relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ.
All right, says the Apostle, though I'm not
with you physically, I'm still with you in
spirit.
But what does he mean by that?
Well, he doesn't mean the same sort of
excuse that's sometimes put up in evangelical circles
today, to excuse absence at a meeting.
You know, I'll not be with you, brother,
but I will be with you in spirit.
No, Paul is not as facile.
He's not as shallow as that.
What he means is that the very testimony
that he maintained at Corinth during the months
that he was in that Greek city, it
lives on.
They know what his own reaction would have
been to this sort of situation.
My presence is still with you.
You know what my convictions are.
And he gives them this particular decision, which
seems to be a very, very strict one
indeed.
He tells them later on in the fifth
verse, hand this man over to Satan.
Hand this man over to Satan.
Here is a brother who'd been involved at
least in some form of an incestuous relationship.
He was unrepentant.
And so the Apostle, having first corrected the
concession that the elders and the people in
authority had had made towards this brother, he
gives them a decision which has to be
applied.
Hand over this man to Satan, so that
the sinful nature may be destroyed, and his
spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
What are we to make of this?
Well, let my first comment about this particular
decision that Paul arrived at be this.
It was not novel.
It was not new.
It was not something that Paul had contrived
himself.
We are told by our Lord Jesus Christ
in the 18th chapter of Matthew's Gospel about
certain acts which do require disciplining in the
kingdom of God.
We're told about men who might harm another's
faith.
And Jesus said, it would be better if
that man had not been born.
Let me read to you from the sixth
verse of the 18th of Matthew's Gospel.
If anyone causes one of these little ones
who believe in me to sin, it would
be better for him to have a large
millstone hung around his neck, and to be
drowned in the depths of the sea.
Woe to the world because of the things
that cause people to sin.
Such things must come through, but woe to
the man through whom they come.
If your hand or your foot causes you
to sin, cut it off and throw it
away.
It is better for you to enter life
maimed or crippled, than to have two hands
or two feet, and be thrown into eternal
fire.
When our Lord continues in this tremendously somber
teaching about sin, and stimulating sin in the
lives of others, he goes on in the
15th verse and says, if your brother sins
against you, go and show him his fault
just between the two of you.
If he listens to you, you've won your
brother.
But if he will not listen, take one
or two others along, so that every matter
may be established by the testimony of two
or three witnesses.
Now listen, verse 17.
If he refuses to listen to them, tell
it to the church.
And if he refuses to listen even to
the church, treat him as you would a
pagan, or a tax collector.
I tell you the truth, whatever you bind
on earth will be bound in heaven, and
so forth.
You see the point?
I read at length from the teaching of
our Lord Jesus, to demonstrate the fact that
when Paul here deals in a very stern
fashion with this situation at Corinth, it is
nothing new, it is nothing novel.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, well that may
be the way that children address our Savior,
and in some respects there is right so
to do.
But don't overemphasize his gentleness and his meekness
to the degree that you feel that Jesus
Christ will never discipline anyone.
And that goes for his body in the
20th century, the Christian church.
It is called upon sometimes to exercise discipline.
This was nothing new.
Well what does it mean, hand this man
over to Satan?
Well if you were to read from Colossians
chapter 1 and 13, you would discover that
the church, and there are many other references
I could give you, the church is referred
to as the kingdom of light.
The world is referred to as the kingdom
of darkness.
A man who is not a Christian, spiritually
speaking, is in darkness.
That's why we sometimes refer to conversion, not
just in terms of being born again, but
seeing the light.
Well here is a brother who has sinned
grievously, he's not dependent, and so Paul says,
hand him back to Satan, withdraw from him
the privileges of the redeemed community, be to
him as though he was still a stranger
outside of the church, handed over to Satan.
But the apostle goes on to tell us
the reason for this particular stern advice, so
that the sinful nature may be destroyed, and
the spirit saved on the day of the
Lord.
What does that mean, the sinful nature being
destroyed?
Well I would have to confess it's not
easy to answer the question, but I can
at least give you two or three pointers
wherein you might find some satisfactory explanation.
You remember though the circumstances were completely contrasting,
completely different.
In the old testament you are confronted with
a man by the name of Job.
Now to vindicate Job's faith in God, that
it is a genuine one, the Lord in
an extraordinary fashion allows Satan to attack the
body of Job.
There isn't time to go into the unpleasantness
of the experience, and to to labour the
point as to why the Lord let this
happen.
Ultimately it was for Job's good, but the
point that I'm emphasizing at this moment is,
Satan had some effect upon the physical body
of Job.
Now I said I'd give you two or
three pointers, if you were to go to
the fifth chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles, you come across two people by the
name of Ananias and Sapphira.
They were guilty, at least Ananias was guilty,
of lying against the Holy Ghost.
That was a very terrible sin, and one
of those colossal outpourings of God's judgment occurred
in the early church.
Ananias and Sapphira died because of their hypocrisy.
They lied against the Spirit, and they suffered
in their body.
That I suggest to you is another pointer,
yielding some information as to what must be
at the back of the Apostle's mind when
he talks about handing an individual over to
Satan, so that his sinful nature may be
destroyed.
The third pointer I would give you would
be later on, as I say, if we
had time in the in this epistle, but
you have memories that will bring this passage
back to your mind, I'm sure.
When Paul lays down instructions about coming around
the Lord's table, he said that you have
to eat and to drink if you're in
a right relationship with the Lord.
In other words, if a hypocrite someone comes
to the Lord's table and they have unconfessed
sin, the penalty for that, says the Apostle
Paul, might well be a sickly disposition.
For this reason, says Paul, many of you
are sickly and not a few sleep.
Why?
Because of their hypocrisy, because they haven't confessed.
They've taken the bread and the wine in
an unforgiven state.
Now, I suggest to you that all this
is at the back of the Apostle's mind
when he says, hand this man over to
Satan.
Let him physically deteriorate.
Let him somehow or other come up against
the pressures of the devil.
Now, and this is the most important factor
which I want you to take home with
you, even if you forgotten those pointers which
I've brought to your attention.
Why does Paul hand a man over to
Satan?
Not because Paul has a punitive nature, not
because he takes great delight in the thought
of someone being punished for their sins.
Completely the difference, completely the opposite, rather, is
the case.
Hand him over to Satan, so that on
the day of the Lord, even though his
body may be destroyed, even though his fleshly
nature may have suffered great pressure, he will
be saved.
Do you remember how earlier on in this
epistle, Paul has referred to those who on
the day of the return of Christ will
have their works tested.
They'll have nothing to offer for the Lord.
They will come through the fires of testing
with absolutely nothing.
Yet, says the Apostle Paul, they themselves, chapter
3 and verse 15, they themselves will be
saved.
It's not that they'd gone back on the
benefits of their salvation.
How could they?
Because they're not responsible for their salvation, only
the Holy God.
And he will not take back what has
been given.
But it is possible to be so sinful,
to be such an unrepentant person, that you
can be handed over to Satan, and suffer
the consequences of backsliding.
Well, here is the Apostle Paul, and as
I say, as he writes to the Corinthians,
as he thinks of their situation, he says
that the concessions they've made, they have to
be corrected.
There is a decision that has to be
applied.
This man is to be handed over to
Satan.
He has let the Lord down.
He has, in one sense, endeavored to destroy
the temple of God, to which reference is
made, you remember, in the fourth chapter.
Now, you can't do that sort of thing,
and get away with it.
God does not play with us.
If you engage in sinfulness as a Christian,
and you are constantly in an unrepentant state,
then I cannot impress upon you the seriousness
of your disposition, of your position before a
Holy God.
Well, let's move on to the sixth, and
through to the eighth verses.
Here is an expulsion, which has to be
effected.
An expulsion, which has to be effected.
If you expel something, you get rid of
it.
Look at the seventh verse.
Get rid of the old yeast, that you
may be a new batch without yeast.
You say, what on earth has that got
to do with the argument that you've just
been bringing to our attention?
Well, Paul is a homely man.
Some reckon he's a bachelor, some reckon that
he's a widower.
But whatever the accuracy of that may or
may not be, he certainly understands a little
bit about cooking, which makes him in advance
of me, not only theologically, but also domestically.
He is in the kitchen, and the idea
is of dough, and yeast, and the baking
of bread.
Now, why does he particularly latch onto this
illustration?
Well, if you put yeast into dough, it
will leaven the whole thing.
It will swell up.
A little bit of yeast affects the whole
mass of the dough.
Now, says Paul, what you have done in
Corrin is this.
You've kept on to the old yeast.
Here is this sinful man.
He's not been reprimanded.
He's not been disciplined at all.
You've conceded the case.
And as a result, the influence of his
life can impregnate the whole of the church
community.
There was an expression by Gamaliel, a proverb
that's traced back to Gamaliel, who was a
professor of theology under whom Paul sat in
Jerusalem.
And the proverb was, don't you know that
a little yeast works through the whole batch
of dough?
Paul will use that proverb again in Galatians
chapter 5 and verse 9, but the point
is this.
Paul has learned the lesson that a man
who continues in a state of sinfulness within
the redeemed community might affect everyone.
To put it in more colloquial, more modern
terms, it's a bad apple that makes the
whole box go rotten.
But there may be another reason why he's
referring to yeast.
You see, the fact of the matter is
that Paul, when he's writing this letter, is
in Ephesus, some distance from these Christians at
Corrin.
And it does seem, again for factors, for
reasons I've no time to go into, that
when Paul was at Ephesus, he was there
preparing for the Passover.
Now you might know from your knowledge of
Old Testament scriptures that before the Passover meal
was celebrated, and indeed is celebrated today by
the Jews, they get rid of any yeast
in the kitchen, because yeast stood for that
which was evil.
If you were to read the relevant chapter
in Exodus, Exodus chapter 12, you would discover
that God's specific injunctions to the imprisoned Hebrews
before they left Egypt was, get rid of
the yeast before you have the Passover meal.
The paschal lamb was about to be sacrificed
in remembrance of that great deliverance from the
bondage of the pharaohs when the Hebrews were
in Egypt.
Paul is going to make reference to this,
isn't he?
Look, drop down to the seventh verse, for
Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for
us, therefore let us keep the festival, not
with the old yeast, the yeast of malice
and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the
bread of sincerity and truth.
Oh, you say you're going too quick, I
don't understand what you mean.
Well, listen to this very carefully.
If before the Jews could take the Passover
meal, they had to get rid of all
the old yeast, how much more should Christians
get rid of the evil that's in their
lives, the evil that's in the community with
which they fellowship before they come around the
Lord's table?
I repeat, before the Old Testament Hebrews could
eat of the Passover lamb, they had to
get rid of the evil, the yeast from
their household.
Now here is a phenomenon, if you please,
here are Christian people, the Passover lamb has
been sacrificed, Jesus has shed his blood, but
there's still the old yeast occurring, there's still
the old yeast in the hearts of Christian
individuals.
This is a nonsense, says the Apostle Paul,
it just cannot continue.
Expel the old yeast and become as a
new batch, as potentially in Jesus you really
are.
He'll express it again in the second letter
that he writes, at least in the second
letter which is still with us today to
refer to, when he says that if any
man is in Christ Jesus, he's a new
creation, old things are passed away, old immoralities,
old habits, they should be dead.
And if we do fall, then we come
back and we repent, but we never maintain
that old sinful attitude, that's the old yeast,
it needs to be rejected.
Rather, says the Apostle, in the Christian festival,
verse 8, which lasts the whole of our
lives while we're down here on this earth,
not just the seven days, the festival of
unleavened bread, which the Jews used to keep,
the Christian festival from the moment you follow
Jesus as Savior, up to the time that
he takes you into his presence, don't produce
the old yeast, the yeast of malice and
wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread
of sincerity and truth, with sincere hearts, with
truthfulness in the way that we relate to
one another, with purity in our lifestyle, let's
serve the living Christ.
So what have we discovered?
Paul has corrected a concession that's been made,
there's a decision that he has arrived at
that needs to be applied, there's an expulsion
that requires to be effected, but there is
a distinction that needs to be observed.
A distinction from verse 9 to 11 is
drawn between the unbeliever and the believer who
has gone back on the profession of faith.
Now look at that ninth verse, Paul is
referring to an earlier letter which is lost,
we don't have reference to it today, it
wasn't collected and put in the New Testament
canon.
I have written to you in my letter
not to associate with sexually immoral people.
Now they read this first letter and they
thought, well, we have to have nothing to
do with anyone else who's not a Christian,
we're to be exclusive, you know, like the
old monastic idea in the third century, just
to relate to one another as Christians.
No, it says, Paul, that's ridiculous, I didn't
mean that.
Of course the butcher or the baker, the
idolater who lives next door to you, you
are to live amongst such people, you are
to evangelize, you're still to maintain a purity
in your own lifestyle.
Before you get to the celestial city, you've
got to go through vanity fare.
John Bunyan got it quite correct.
You're not to withdraw from the world, not
physically, or else how will the world ever
hear the gospel?
If you're the salt of the world, how
will it be savoured?
If you withdraw, if you're the light of
the world, how shall the world be illuminated?
If you're going to a holy huddle on
your own.
No, it says, Paul, I don't mean that.
But there is a distinction to be observed
on the part of the brother who once
confessed Jesus as Lord, but maintains a position
of unrepentance.
Verse 11 makes it so clear I hardly
need to comment on it, but now I
am writing you that you must not associate
with anyone who calls himself a brother.
He's not gone back on his profession of
faith, but his acts, his lifestyle does not
illustrate what he professes.
Anyone who calls himself a brother but is
sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a
slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler with such
a man, do not even eat.
Hard teaching.
But you see, the apostle Paul is concerned
as to the consistency of the Christian testimony,
particularly in a place like Corinth.
So he draws a distinction.
The unbeliever relate to him, even go and
have a meal with him, try and impress
the gospel upon him.
Paul does this, he makes reference to it
in the 10th chapter.
But the believer who has gone back in
the way that he lives upon the faith
that he professes, withdraw from that man.
Here's the distinction to be observed.
And finally, here's an action to be deferred,
verse 12.
What business is it of mine to judge
those who are outside the church?
The unbeliever shall be judged by God on
the day of judgment.
But as for the insider, the committed Christian,
asks Paul, it's for you, you people at
Corinth, to judge those who have fallen by
the wayside and are utterly undependent.
Are you not to judge those inside?
And he repeats the expression, the teaching in
the 13th verse.
God will judge those outside, but you expel
the wicked man from among you.
Why is Paul so stern in his teaching?
Well, you see, we discovered in the third
chapter, didn't we?
He looks on the church as being God's
temple, verse 16.
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's
temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?
If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy
him.
Paul is concerned, you see, about the reputation
of the believer.
He's got to be, because God's reputation is
involved, is intertwined with his church.
The Old Testament temple, I said, was the
wonder of the world.
They marveled at such an edifice that it
could be erected by ordinary Hebrew people.
It was a fantastic building.
Now, we too, the church of Jesus Christ
is to be the wonder of the world.
And if anyone drags down the testimony, then
they're in a very serious situation.
Look again, and with this I conclude, Paul
writing in the first chapter in the second
verse.
Look how he described the church at Corinth,
to the church of God in Corinth, to
those sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to
be holy.
Could you describe the tabernacle as that?
Members sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
holy, along with all those similarly called around
the globe?
Paul's teaching is somber.
Paul's teaching is contemporary.
We need to get rid of the old
leather.
We need to be done with arrogance and
compromise.
Too much of it.
Evangelical church, maybe within our own fellowship here,
maybe within my life, maybe within yours.
Let's take this chapter at face value.
Let's not duck any aspect of this teaching.
And may the Holy Spirit apply it to
our hearts.
And may this have stimulated you to even
further consideration of this mighty, fearful, but necessary
chapter from God's Word.
Amen.
Father, teach us more individually the exceeding sinfulness
of sin.
So often we place in a minor key
what in your estimate is major.
So often we compromise and have some sort
of excuse as we freely dip into the
graciousness of your promises and apply things to
our own lives without fully measuring all that
is involved in your releasing us from sin,
even when we have confessed faith in the
living Christ.
Lord, deliver us also from a critical spirit
and help us to appreciate even more that
the burden of Paul's heart was to bring
those who had fallen back to a new
relationship with yourself.
And in the area of applying discipline here
in the tabernacle, may that be always our
supreme objective.
And this we ask, pleading the benediction of
the triune God to rest upon us, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, now and until Jesus
returns.
Amen.