Pastor Eddie on Church Discipline

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. In April, we had a special business meeting.

And before that meeting, that Sunday, we dealt with the Lord Jesus' encouragement to us in how that the church should handle cases of sin among the members, and how we as brothers and sisters ought to care for one another and love one another enough to confront sin for the sake of the souls of those who would consider themselves

Christian. So we talked about that in Matthew 18. And I said then that the point of that message was that biblical church discipline is the loving action of believers to prevent sin, correct sin, and restore sinning brothers and sisters to fellowship with Christ and His church.

This morning, we come to 1 Corinthians 5, and we're going to deal with where the Apostle Paul basically picks up in that last step of church discipline that Jesus gave us in Matthew 18.

And what does it actually look like in the life of the church? And the Corinthians were dealing with this matter, and so Paul addresses it.

And I want us to consider that this morning. But before we go to the Word of the Lord, let's go to him in prayer.

Father, we are thankful, Lord, that You have given us clear instruction. And we pray, Lord, now that You would give us hearts ready, willing, even eager to obey.

I pray, Father, that You would help us, Lord, to love one another well. And Lord, to really care for the needs of the body, each believer.

Lord, we thank You for the grace and mercy that You have shown us. I pray now, Lord, that You would bring the power of Your Spirit, Lord, upon us,

Lord, that we would hear and understand and grow. Lord, even this morning, I pray that the power of this message,

Lord, would extend the Gospel to unbelieving hearts that might be among us this morning.

Lord, help us as Your people, Lord, to simply desire to observe everything that You have commanded us.

And Lord, we're thankful for Your promise that You are with us even to the end of the age. I do pray for our brothers and sisters at First Baptist Clinton.

Pray for Nathan. And Lord, I just pray that You'd bless their work and ministry there, and that You'd be glorified today in their meeting.

Lord, we ask that You'd bless us in all these in Jesus' name. 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. Are you not rather to mourn?

Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit.

And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with you, with the power of our

Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. Your boasting is not good. 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 this world, or greedy, or swindlers, or idolaters.

Since 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, or swindler.

Not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders?

Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside.

Purge the evil person from among you. I'm going to warn you already that this is a lot, and we're not going to be able to deal with all of it.

I'll probably point out a couple of things as we go through that we're not going to deal with. You can ask me later if you want to.

But I want to get to the main things that Paul is dealing with here. Because if we remember, Jesus walks us through in Matthew 18 a process for how that we ought to go after sinning believers.

If a person, a brother or sister, is in sin, he tells us that we ought to go to them one -on -one and call them to repentance.

If they won't listen to us, they won't hear our appeal, then he says you take two or three others with you so that hopefully the witness of two or three helpful brothers and sisters will help them to see their need to draw near to Christ and to repent of their sin.

Then he says if they will not listen to them, then you bring it before the church. And if they will not listen even to the church,

Jesus says you consider them to be a tax collector or a sinner. Well, a tax collector or a sinner means not a

Christian. That's what that means. You consider them not a Christian. Well, Paul here is skipping over all the former steps.

And here, what's happening with the Corinthians, Paul's going straight to... Now, we don't know.

Paul may have earlier... We know that Paul's already written a letter before 1 Corinthians to the

Corinthians. And so maybe in that letter, they had already discussed and that they had already went through all the other steps.

Maybe not, though. Because it does sound like in this passage, Paul's really saying, you guys are kind of just letting this go on.

And so Paul just jumps straight to the fact that they need to judge this sin.

And so you'll notice in the first two verses, Paul says it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans.

If you know anything about the first century Roman world, it was a tolerant world. Well, not really.

It was actually a vicious world. But all sorts of sin and immorality were rather normal.

And almost anything was acceptable so long as you didn't offend the apple cart of Roman rule and so long as you didn't tear down the kind of idolatrous worship that took place in the different Greek and Roman cities.

If you didn't offend those things, you could do almost anything. And still Paul says that the kind of things that were going on in the

Corinthian church, specifically this relationship he refers to, is not even something that the

Romans would consider okay. But I want you to notice that he picks up and he says in verse 2, and you are arrogant.

The issue is not that there's a sinning person among the people in the church.

Listen, that's every church, right? We are sinners. All of us. Still.

Saved by God's grace. Repentant in our hearts. But none of us are perfect.

None of us make it through an extended period of time without sinning.

None of us have made it there yet. And so we come to this passage, we understand the problem is not that there was a sinning person.

The problem was that the Corinthians were arrogant because they were concerned about everything in the world except for this person.

Except for what needed to happen for their good and the good of the church. So I mentioned before we prayed and read that in Matthew 18,

I said that the purpose, the point was biblical church discipline is the loving action of believers to prevent sin, correct sin, and restore sinning brothers and sisters to fellowship with Christ and His church.

Today's point is going to be that biblical church discipline faithfully pursued to this necessary judgment that Paul's talking about here is the best hope for both the sinner and the church.

Because obedience is always the right thing to do. Listen, I can't tell you that we always know what the outcome is going to be.

At the end, we'll look, we maybe do know what the outcome was here in Corinth. But I'm not telling you we can know what the outcome is going to be.

But I can tell you the right thing to do is always to obey Jesus. Whatever God tells us to do is always the right thing to do.

So there are five things I want us to see here in 1 Corinthians 5. First of all, we need to see that Paul gives us a command to decisive separation.

There comes a point when we cannot just say, well, each person has to obey

Christ or not obey Christ. That's just between them and God. You've all heard that before, right?

Well, it's just between them and God. We don't deal with that. But notice here,

Paul says to them in v. 2, ought you not rather to mourn?

Let him who has done this be removed from among you. Paul makes a judgment.

Notice in v. 3, he says, For though absent in the body, I am present in spirit. And as if present,

I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. Paul said there's a point when you've got to say that person's not a

Christian. One of the big problems we have today, particularly in Western Christianity, maybe even more particularly in American Christianity, is that what's a

Christian? What is a Christian? Well, everybody's a Christian. In Bible Belt America where we live, everybody's a

Christian. Everybody has made some kind of profession of faith, usually. And everybody thinks that they're a

Christian, probably. And everybody's heard about Jesus. Now, none of those things are true, right?

Not everybody has heard about Jesus. And there are a lot of people that don't understand the gospel.

But almost everybody thinks they've heard about Jesus. And they think they understand it.

So we need to come to this passage and understand that Paul is telling us that we have got to be willing to identify immoral action and offenders, immoral people, sinners who will not repent.

And Paul is saying, he's actually commanding the removal of this person from the fellowship.

Today, we would use the word membership. It's what Paul talks about later in this same letter when he writes to them in chapter 12.

And he talks about members of the body. And you know, in chapter 12, Paul's talking about the members of the body and how that we need every member.

And there's two ways that we need to think about this. Listen, when we're not engaged in the life of the church, the church is truly, actually disabled.

You're a part of the body. If you're a member of this church, you're a part of the body. And if you're inactive in some way from what's happening in the life of the church, the church is disabled by that.

Just like if you had a hand that didn't work, or a foot that didn't work, or an eye that didn't work.

That's what we would call disabled. But, think about it now the opposite way. Think about it if your body has a foreign body in it.

Think about if you had a surgery and they left some sort of instrument in you, or some kind of foreign agent, a germ gets into your body.

What happens? Well, you get sick. You get infection, right? Because there's something there that should not be there.

It's not included. It's not actually a part of your body. And your body's going to try to fight it off.

And so here in this passage, Paul is telling us when we see that this person is not a part of the body, they've got to be removed from the membership and fellowship of the church.

Notice Paul says at the end of this chapter, and we'll come back to this in a little bit, but notice in verse 12 he says,

For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church?

And notice what he says here. Whom you are to judge.

What's the favorite verse of all atheists? Judge not, lest you be judged. But here is a place in the

Bible where Paul says, Whom you are to judge.

Listen, we're supposed to be holding one another accountable and lovingly judging one another.

Listen, this is not a club that we go around beating one another with. But it is the idea

I ought to love you enough that I'm not going to let you do what I know is going to hurt you. You ought to love me enough not to let me just keep doing what you know is going to hurt me.

And so that's the case here in this text. So first of all, we see the command to do decisive separation.

Secondly, and this will probably be the longest portion we'll look at this morning, the goal of definitive salvation.

First of all, notice that Paul points out that this is an action for the assembled church.

He says there in verse 4, When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our

Lord Jesus. I just want to state, we don't have time right now to get into what Paul's talking about with I'm absent in body, but my spirit is present and when

I'm present with you. We don't have time to talk about that this morning. But I do want to note one thing.

Note that Paul puts three things here. Notice, he says there in the verse,

The assembly of the church, so the Corinthian church together, Paul's spirit with the power of the

Lord Jesus Christ. Now if you'll remember, back in Matthew 18, you don't have to turn there right now, but back in Matthew 18, the famous verse, the verse that everybody knows, that everybody forgets has got to do with church discipline, is where two or three are gathered in my name, there

I am in their midst. It's interesting that Paul here pulls these three things together when he's putting the emphasis on that they're going to do this action of church discipline.

So regardless of what we end up deciding, it means for Paul's spirit to be there with the

Corinthians while his body is absent. Regardless of what we think that means, what

Paul is pointing at is that church discipline is taking place there. And Paul is referring, in a sense, back to what the

Lord Jesus had instructed in Matthew 18. He points out that, listen, I don't get to show up and do church discipline.

I don't get to go, Evan, don't like the chrome dome, man. You're out of here. I don't get to do that.

The pastor doesn't get to kick people out. Doesn't have that authority. No pastor does. Not even, you guys, everybody knows

I'm all for plurality of elders. Like, that'd be great. But even a plurality of elders doesn't have that authority.

The only body that has the ability to exercise this kind of church discipline that Paul's talking about here is us.

The whole church body. Like, we don't get to just one person decide this is what ought to happen.

The church has to decide that this is what ought to happen. The second thing that we need to notice is then

Paul points out that what needs to happen is that this person who's put out of the body is going to be turned over to Satan.

Notice he says in verse 5, You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

Turn over this person to Satan. Now what is that referring to? Well, I think it's referring to two things.

One thing we have to realize is there is no neutral ground. You know, we grew up, we've grown up in a very unique time in culture.

The last 100, 200 years maybe. Very unique time and place in the world and in culture where kind of the cultural life of America probably made a lot of us or especially a lot of our parents and grandparents kind of have this idea of neutrality.

Like there was a place where you could set your Christianity down or your atheism down and we could meet on this neutral ground that we're all

Americans or we're all Arkansans or whatever. But listen brothers and sisters, that is not true.

There is no neutral ground. There are only two kingdoms. The kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of darkness.

That's it. You're in one or the other always. Nobody stands with a foot in each kingdom.

Nobody stands on neutral ground because Switzerland doesn't exist. I'm not saying Switzerland doesn't exist.

I'm saying there is no neutral place anywhere spiritual. It's either kingdom of light or kingdom of darkness.

So, when Paul is telling the church in Corinth to turn the person over to Satan, he is saying that Satan's role as the accuser, as the enemy of image bearers of God, this person belongs to Satan, so turn them over to Satan.

They're accusing the church. What's Satan accusing the church of? He's not accusing that person.

They're not a believer. That's what Paul's saying. You put them out because you don't think they're a believer.

But what is Satan's accusation? Obviously, the church is not real because look at this person in your church in Corinth.

And so, Satan, who is the accuser and enemy of the image bearers of God, Paul's saying, turn them over.

Turn them over to Satan. The second thing that we need to know, this person is now to be counted as a citizen of the dominion of darkness.

Up until this point, this man, they were considering him a brother. They were using that language.

Brother. But they don't use that anymore because he's not a brother. And they're not going to consider him a brother.

They're going to consider him what he has always been. An unbeliever. And what do we do with an unbeliever?

We preach the Gospel to them. We love them. We don't hate them, but we love them.

And we tell them the Gospel because we want them to be saved. We treat them as a friend, but not as a brother because they're not in the faith.

Notice then that he says, you turn them over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

Now the Bible uses the word flesh in different ways. If you try to read the Bible and read the word flesh as always meaning the same thing, you're going to have problems.

First of all, the Bible uses the word flesh to refer just to the physical body.

So there are plenty of texts in the Bible that talk about the flesh, and it just means any person's physical body, whether they're a believer or an unbeliever.

It's just talking about physical bodies. The second way that the Bible uses the word flesh is sometimes the

Bible uses the word flesh to distinguish it from inanimate objects. So think about a figurative passage such as in Ezekiel where it says that God, when we're regenerated, what does

He do? He takes out a heart of stone. Well now, no human being has a real heart made of stone because they wouldn't be alive, would they?

They have a heart that's made of flesh, but when talking about what happens to us spiritually,

Ezekiel says, no, lost people have a heart of stone, and God takes that out and puts in a heart of flesh.

What does He mean? God takes out the inanimate, the spiritually dead, and puts in an animate, a spiritually alive heart.

So sometimes the Bible is using flesh that way. And there it's a good way, right? A heart of flesh is a good thing when we're thinking about our conversion.

But the way that Paul is using the word here, and the way that it's used a lot, especially in the

New Testament, is that flesh is referring to the remaining residence of sin in a believer's unglorified body.

Listen, we have been redeemed in Christ. Listen, this morning, if you're believing and trusting in Jesus Christ, you have a heart that is alive.

I mean a spiritual heart. And it's perfect. You realize that? Spiritually, you are perfect because you have all the righteousness of Jesus.

That really is who you are. But we still are living in bodies that really are not glorified yet.

I mean, just look at them. It's not hard to conclude that these bodies aren't glorified yet.

That they're breaking down. That we're having hardships with these bodies. And so,

Paul, when he says flesh here, he's talking about the sin that still remains in us.

So when Paul says to turn this person over to Satan for the destruction of the body, he does not necessarily mean the destruction of their physical health, although he might mean that.

Like that might be the way that God uses the work of Satan in this person's life to draw them to Christ.

God might take away their physical health. And you know what? We would say, praise

God, if He takes away their physical health and brings them spiritual life, it would be worth it.

But that's not necessarily what Paul's getting at. What Paul's getting at is you turn them over to Satan for the destruction of the sin so that this person might repent and believe and be brought to salvation.

Which is the way that Paul words it. We need to understand, there can be no truce with sin.

Either we're gonna kill sin or sin is going to kill us. So notice,

Paul ends that sentence with this, he says, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. The salvation of the soul is the goal. Why is it that we would ever judge a person in the church and set them out?

It's not because we hate them. It's because we love them. And they need to be set out so that they know that they need to repent and they need to be saved.

The most dangerous position you could be in is not simply being lost. And I think there are millions of people in this position today.

Listen, you could be here this morning and this could be you. The most dangerous position to be in is to think you're saved and be lost.

Because then you don't think you need to be saved. And the pastor preaches and he says, repent! And you say, done did that.

And the preacher says, you need to believe in Jesus. And oh, I got baptized. Oh, I was a member of a church.

And it's like, yeah. Are you living for Christ though? Was your life transformed?

Do you love Him? And they would have to answer honestly no to all of that. But I did the thing.

I signed the card. I raised my hand. I went forward. Whatever the deal was. People that think they're saved are not thinking they need to respond to a call to the gospel.

And so Paul here is saying, oh, if we really love people, we will do whatever it takes so that they may be saved in the day of the

Lord. Listen, this morning, you may be here and you may have thought you were a believer. But listen,

I would urge you. You know how you know if you're a believer? Is your life ordered around Christ?

Do you love Christ more than anything else? See, if you look at your life, and we use all kinds of tests, don't we?

Sometimes we say things like do your time, talent, and treasure show that you love

Christ? Or we could say something like do your affections and actions show that you love

Christ? But here's the reality. Whatever is your God, you order your life around it.

You order every day. You order every week. You order the rhythm of your life around your

God. Now what's your God? I'm not saying what you say your God is. I'm saying when you look at your life, what do you order things around?

That is your God. So I would urge you this morning. If hearing me say that causes you to go, hmm,

Jesus really isn't mine, then I would urge you this morning. Repent and place your trust in Him.

Notice what Paul's going to go on to say. He's going to go on to say for Christ, our

Passover Lamb. The Passover Lamb was that which was sacrificed to cover, to atone for the sins of the people.

And he says Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed. Listen, there's not a future sacrifice to be made.

It's already been made for you. And I would urge you this morning if you're far from Christ, if you realize that your sins have separated you from God, and that you're not really a believer, whether you've professed to be or not,

I would urge you, repent and trust Him. Trust His promise that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

But Paul goes on to a third thing. Third thing that we need to see in this passage. The danger of arrogant apathy or affirmation.

You notice back up there in v. 2, Paul had said that you are arrogant. And then down here in v.

6, Paul says your boasting is not good. Well, what was it they were boasting?

I think there are two kinds of boasting that were happening in Corinth. One was the arrogance of apathy.

Like they were just letting things happen. Yeah, whoever comes to church, whoever's a part of the church, they weren't actually trying to make sure that the church in Corinth represented the church that was in heaven.

They weren't actually trying to make sure that we are a body of believers reaching out to lost people in Corinth.

They had just kind of let things go. They'd become apathetic about the kingdom of God and about what was happening.

And the arrogance of apathy assumes that the sickness of sin in the church really isn't all that bad.

But listen, the sickness of sin in the church will cause a church to die. People get sick and you know what happens?

They die. And churches get sick and they die too. Now listen, the true church of the

Lord Jesus Christ will never die. But individual local bodies can die.

There are actually a lot of them. There are a lot of them still meeting this morning. There are a lot of zombie churches.

Walking dead churches that there aren't any believers in because they tolerated sin.

They were apathetic to it. Oh, whatever, as long as people keep coming until the point where the only people coming weren't

Christians. Because all the Christians went somewhere where they took sin seriously. They took Christ seriously. The arrogance of apathy will kill a church.

Secondly, we have the arrogance of affirmation. And we see this all around us in our culture.

Churches choosing to affirm the ways of the world rather than the things of God. But even worse in Corinth, and maybe us, even worse in Corinth, the arrogance of affirmation assumes that we know better than God and His Word.

You know what the Corinthians assumed? They assumed that their arguments over whether or not they belong to Paul or Apollos or Cephas or Christ were more important than the sin of this brother that they had been ignoring.

They assumed that their arguments over how they should rightly understand the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection from the dead was more important than the sin of this brother, now not a brother, among them.

They assumed that their theological debates and their manifestations of spiritual gifts were more important than dealing with sin.

And listen, brothers and sisters, all of our talk about wanting to be theologically accurate, and all of our arguments about Calvinists and Armenians, all of our arguments about the different gifts of the

Holy Spirit, whether you ought to speak in tongues or not speak in tongues, if we're tolerating sin, who cares about any of that?

And you guys know I love theology. It's my favorite thing. But if we're going to tolerate sin,

I don't care if you can quote the 1689 Second London Baptist Convention from front to back.

Tolerate sin and you're probably not walking with the Lord yourself. That's the point being made here.

The Corinthian church, they had all these things going on. They were spiritually doing amazing things, they thought, and they had all kinds of theological debates going on, but they weren't dealing with sin in their midst.

And Paul's saying here, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole?

The fourth thing is the necessity of genuine purity. There's essentially two things going on in this chapter.

One is Paul is telling them you've got to judge the sinner for the sake of the sinner.

If you really love them, if you really care about this person at all, if you want them to be in heaven and not in hell, you ought to judge them because that's the only hope they're going to have of being saved.

You've got to let them go so that you can get them back. That's how it works. But the other thing that Paul is dealing with in this passage is do we care anything about the actual church?

About the purity and the life of the local church? If we do, listen, if you've got a cancer, you've got to do something about that.

It's going to kill you. If you've got an infection, you've got to do something about that. If you don't, it will kill you.

And if we care at all about the life of the local church, we've got to care about the purity of it. So then

Paul says, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.

Leaven here, Paul's referring to sin. Notice later he's going to say, let us therefore celebrate the festival.

Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and envy. That's sin, right? But he says there, as you really are unleavened, he's saying you who are actually

Christians, the actual church in Corinth, he's saying there's no leaven in you.

So you've got to get the sinner, the leaven, that which is not really a part of the church, out for the sake of the purity of the body.

So that the body can function the way that it's supposed. And notice what he says there. He says because, why?

For our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Now what's Paul referring back to in the

Old Testament here? He's referring back to the Passover when Israel came out of Egypt, right?

Well what was the state of Israel in Egypt? The state of Israel in Egypt was slavery.

It was oppression. It was bondage. So when we come to this passage, we must realize that the old leaven of sin and slavery must be removed from our loving fellowship so that we may enjoy the feast of Christ's kingdom.

The old leaven of sin and slavery must be removed from our fellowship and from the life of the church so that we may enjoy the feast of Christ's kingdom.

We come to this passage and we realize that our Passover has already been made ready in Christ.

We've got to get rid of the old leaven so that we can enjoy it, so that we can be a part of it.

Secondly, we need to realize that when we continue to affirm a person as a

Christian, when we continue to say, oh, that big old loaf of bread there that's got all that leaven in it is really a part of us.

When you're going, well no, they're not. They're a big old loaf of leavened bread. When we continue to include them, we actually blaspheme the reputation of Jesus and His church.

Jesus loves the church. Listen, husbands, do you love your wives? Jesus loves His wife, and His wife is the church.

And when we say, well, we're not going to purify the church, that's how we're treating

Jesus' wife, His bride, and He's not going to have that. No, we cannot blaspheme the

Lord and His bride, but rather, we must seek the purity of the local church.

We must take out the leaven of sin and bring in the unleavened life of the believers.

Finally, the fifth thing, the responsibility of accountable judgment. Notice Paul goes on.

He says, I wrote to you in my letter. I mentioned he had already written a letter to them. Not to associate with sexually immoral people.

Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy, swindlers, or idolaters.

Notice this isn't just about sexual sin, is it? This could be sexual sin, but it could be greed. It could be idolatry.

It could be any manner of sin could fit into this clause. This is just what they were dealing with.

But notice he says, since then, you would need to go out of the world. Paul's saying, don't be

Amish. Okay, he's not saying that, but what is he saying? He's saying, you don't have to separate from the world.

You would have to do that if he was saying don't ever associate with any people that aren't in Christ.

Well, how would we evangelize then? How could we associate with our family members who don't know

Christ? He's not telling us that. But what he's saying is there has to be a decisive separation from someone who's claiming they're a believer and that we're affirming they're a believer.

And he's saying, you've got to stop affirming them as a believer. As long as you affirm them as a believer, you've got to separate from them because your fellowship with them is actually telling the world that you think that this person's a believer.

So notice he says, but now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.

Not even eat with such a one. Now I think that what Paul means here by eat with such a one is he means the

Lord's Supper. But he doesn't just mean the little sip and a chip. He means, what's the

Lord's Supper supposed to be? It's supposed to be this fellowship meal where you sit around for two or three hours on the

Lord's Day having these great fellowship talks. And Paul's saying, that ought not work with a person in sin.

Because what ought to come up is their sin. And they ought to either repent or not want to be around you.

Like, if the person in sin just doesn't mind hanging out with you, just keep hanging out with you, that's a problem.

And so often people say, well, Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners. Oh yeah, he did. But you know what happened?

He would say something and they would either repent and believe or leave.

He would say something like, you've got to eat my flesh and drink my blood. And they would go away.

Right? They would either believe or they would leave. Because he would say something that they could not tolerate unless they came to faith.

And that's the reality. So Paul closes this chapter by saying, for what have

I, and I think there Paul doesn't just mean himself, he means Christians. What do Christians have to do with judging outsiders?

Listen, we ought not expect the world to act like anything but the world. When we see people who aren't

Christians acting like not Christians, that ought not shock us. 20 years ago

I took a group of kids to, let's see, this is 2024, so it's longer than 20 years, more like 25 years ago.

I think I took my first group of kids to Siloam one year. And I remember the director of the camp back then,

I remember he had all of us counselors in there, and he said something I've never forgotten.

He said, you know, this is not a discipleship thing. Camp's not about discipleship.

It's about evangelism, only about evangelism. That's the only thing we're here to do. I was like, okay, I get that.

And he said, and here's the thing, which means we've encouraged churches to bring lost kids. He said, don't expect lost kids to act like anything but lost kids.

So he's kind of like, the kind of, his point was just to say, you're gonna see these kids do things that you don't think a bunch of good

Christian kids should do. Well, right, because they're not Christian. That's why we've got them here. And I think we need to realize that we ought not look at the world and judge the world for not acting like Christians.

Well, of course they're not. They're not Christian. But we ought to look at the church, and we ought to judge the church for not acting, because we're supposed to be.

Like, the world, they have every right to hold us accountable to the Bible. Right. We ought to believe whatever it says.

We ought not be ashamed of believing what the Bible says. So, Paul says, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

The reality is, God has given us, the church, the responsibility to hold one another accountable and to seek to stir one another up to greater holiness.

The Apostle Peter put it this way. He says in 1 Peter 4, verse 17,

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God. The household of God would be the church, correct?

It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God. For, he says, if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

And if the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?

Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

Peter's point is, that if we want to see transformation in our world, it starts with transformation in our church.

And the only church that we've got anything to do with, us, I was talking to Chris Reed about this last night, that he's in Indianapolis.

It's the Southern Baptist Convention this next week in Indianapolis. And I was trying to encourage him, but I said, after going to Nashville, I gave up on all that.

I don't think there's any value in it. The Lord's got control of the big stuff. Let's just focus on where He's put us.

He's put us in Marshall. He's put us here in this church. This is more than we can handle right here in our old church, without worrying about what's happening in everybody else's church.

And so what we ought to do is let judgment begin at the household of God. Do we want transformation in our nation?

Start with our church. The Lord will handle the president's stuff and the national stuff and the wars and all that.

Let's just start with where we're at. What we can actually do. So I mentioned at the beginning, so what happened to this guy?

The guy. The actual guy that the Corinthians kicked out of the church. What happened there?

In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul tells us something, and we don't know for sure if what he's talking about in 2

Corinthians 2 is the same thing as 1 Corinthians 5, but I think so.

I don't know. I ain't going to fight over it with anybody, but I think it's probably the same.

And listen to what Paul says. Now if anyone has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, but to all of you.

For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. Punishment by the majority would be putting out of the church, right?

And hear what he says. So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow.

So I beg you, reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote that I might test you and know whether you're obedient in everything.

Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Remember in chapter 5, Paul had said,

I've already judged him. Well, now Paul's basically saying if you forgive him, I've already forgiven him.

So he says, Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan.

For we are not ignorant of his design. Seems to me like this sinful brother who was committing something even the pagans would consider bad.

Seems like he was restored. Seems like he was saved. And the Corinthians brought him back in. That sounds like what's happening here.

It should cause us to have hope. God really does purify and rescue people.

We believe that, right? We believe God still saves lost people. So that's what this is all about.

God saving lost people for the good of his kingdom and for their good as well. I'd ask you to stand.

We sing. If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poemos, the masterpiece of God.