Sunday School: Purge the Evil Person from Among You (1 Corinthians 5:9-13)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. All right, open your word with me to 1

Corinthians chapter 5. We have half this chapter yet to go and then over the next two weeks we'll be in 1

Corinthians chapter 6. We'll finish what we've been studying in 1 Corinthians in about the first half of the letter at the end of November.

Then in December my plan is to do something a little bit more Christmas oriented. We've got three Sundays in December that we're going to be meeting.

Then we won't meet for December 25th and January 1st. There's no Sunday school either one of those days and then when we come back together again in January we'll be in the next portion of 1

Corinthians starting in chapter 7. So for today we finish up chapter 5 and then we'll have two weeks in chapter 6.

I'm going to begin reading in verse 6. So this is 1 Corinthians 5 starting in verse 6.

I'm going to recap the analogy that Paul gives us here and then the main section we're going to be looking at today will be verses 9 through 13.

So let's look at this together as I read from the English Standard Version. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 starting in verse 6.

This is the word 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 so 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 the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since 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 who are inside the church whom you are to judge?

God judges those who are outside. Purge the evil person from among you.

Let's pray again. Heavenly Father, as we consider this passage today,

I pray that we would come to understand the call to holiness, to live righteously before you.

And if we see a brother or sister in the Lord go astray from the path of holiness, that we would have love and affection and care for them to rebuke them, to call them to repentance, to admonish them that they may return back to the path of righteousness.

May we as a church be obedient to the things that the church is responsible for even here as Paul calls the entire church to holiness, to purity.

And it's in the desire to be holy as God is holy that we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So once again, let me give you a brief outline of chapter 5. I gave this to you last week, but we get into a new section this week with verses 9 through 13.

So first of all, Paul acknowledges this appalling report. That's what we have in verses 1 and 2.

It is the word that has come to him while he is in Ephesus. He's writing this letter in the time that he is planning the church and preaching the gospel from Ephesus.

The word has come to him from Chloe's people that there is sexual immorality among them and sexual immorality of a kind that not even the pagans put up with this.

Even the pagans think this is ridiculous and they're shaking their heads at you. And Paul says specifically, a man has his father's wife.

A man is sleeping with his stepmother, in other words. And then in verse 2, he says what should be the response among them.

There's been nothing done. You're arrogant. You should mourn and let him who has done this be removed from among you.

So you should be mourning over this. And the one who is guilty of this sin should be removed.

So Paul rebukes them and says, this is what your reaction should be to this, but it hasn't been.

So then he gives an apostolic response as an apostle of Jesus Christ, as one who planted this church.

He had said in the previous chapter, in chapter 4, he is a spiritual father to the

Corinthians. So as a loving father, he rebukes them and tells them this is what they need to be doing instead.

So we have the apostolic response in verses 3 through 8. Sin must be dealt with immediately.

That's verse 3. Sin must be dealt with authoritatively. That's verses 4 through 5.

And then sin must be dealt with in the interest of purity. That's verses 6 through 8.

And then the section that we look at today, this is the appropriate reaction. So in light of the report and in light of the response, what then should be the reaction.

So Paul gives that here in verses 9 through 13. In the first part, he clarifies a previous instruction.

That's verses 9 through 11. And then in the second part, he talks about cleansing the church of sin, putting into effect the analogy that he just gave with the analogy of the leaven.

Cleanse out the old leaven. So now put that into practice. Cleanse out the sin, purge the evil person from among you.

And in talking about cleansing the church of sin, he presents two questions. That's what we have in verse 12.

And then two responses to those questions, which we have in verse 13.

So let's come back to the analogy and kind of summarize the analogy.

I moved through that pretty quick last week because we were running out of time. But this is in verses 6 through 8, where we have the analogy of the leaven.

He first says, you're boasting is not good. Second time he has said that. In verse 2, he said, you're arrogant.

Then he says, you're boasting and it's not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

And remember what we were talking about with leaven last week. Typically we think of leaven as being yeast, but specifically what this was for the people in this time, it was a fermented dough or fermented bread.

So the fermented dough, if you just take even a little bit of fermented dough and you combine it with dough that hasn't been fermented, well that fermentation is then going to move through the rest of the dough.

And so the instruction that was given to Israel whenever they were supposed to be observing the

Passover is that at the time of the slaughtering of the Passover lamb, when the lamb is sacrificed, that's the beginning of Passover.

That starts Passover week. And so all of the leaven in the house is to be removed.

There's not to be any leaven at all. Don't be holding onto any of that bread because if any of your unleavened dough comes in contact with the leavened dough, then it's going to leaven the whole lump.

It's going to be no good and you're supposed to throw it out. Part of the instruction that God had for Israel is that they were to eat unleavened bread.

And this was symbolic for them for holiness. The leaven was supposed to be a sign of unholiness and this is just as it pertains to Passover.

It's not that there's anything inherently unholy about leavened bread, but just as it pertained to the

Passover instructions, leaven for you is sin. And so put away all of the leaven, get it out of your house.

So the unleavened bread becomes a sign of holiness. And so without any leaven, you have unleavened bread and that's what they were to eat during Passover because as we talked about last week with the instructions that came with Passover, they were supposed to have their sandal strap and their staff in hand because the moment that Pharaoh said, get out of my sight,

God says, go, and we're taking up our possessions and getting out of there. They did not have time to wait for their dough to rise, for the bread to be ready for them to go.

So they had to take the dough unleavened, hence why the practice during Passover week was to eat unleavened bread.

And again, this became a sign of holiness for them. With this analogy,

Paul is saying to the church in Corinth, you need to recognize what this meant for Israel needs to apply to you as well.

The leaven represents sin. And right now there is leaven in your midst.

And he says to them, you are really unleavened. This is verse seven, cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you are really unleavened.

Now he's talking about as the church should be. The church is to be unleavened bread.

We're to be holy. There's not to be any leaven among us. For Christ, our

Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Christ has died.

His blood has been shed. And the work of atonement was accomplished.

Jesus said from the cross, it is finished. That work was done. There is no other sacrifice we are waiting for.

Even the practice of Passover, even the sacrifice of that lamb was pointing to something greater that was to come.

And that was Jesus Christ. The book of Hebrews talks about these things in the Old Testament as being types and shadows.

And so even that Passover lamb that was sacrificed, that first Passover lamb was a type or a shadow of what was to come, those things that have been fulfilled in Christ.

Christ is our Passover lamb. And he has been sacrificed to appease the wrath of God that was burning against us for our unrighteousness.

We who have put our faith in Jesus Christ have been forgiven our sins and we have been made righteous.

And so we are to live as unleavened bread. Without any sin, without any stain or spot or wrinkle.

Now, of course, none of us who are sitting in here are sinless. There were probably even things that you did this morning that perhaps you had to repent of if you were in first service before we got to the

Lord's table. We have that moment of silence. And you had probably taken that moment to confess something before God that maybe you did just today.

I got pretty short with my kids this morning. They were not ready when I told them to, but instead of reacting to that reasonably,

I got a little, I lost my cool a little bit. So I'm not a perfect person.

And even those things I must confess before the Lord as he continues to work on me and sanctify me.

So we are not perfect people. What does it mean then that we are to be unleavened? But if any time there is that sin, that stumble, that we confess those things before God, we are constantly in pursuit of holiness.

We are not in pursuit of sin. The people who are not of God, who are not of Christ, the way they live in this world, they're constantly going after the passions of their flesh.

But we as believers are not to be, that's not our orientation anymore. True freedom does not mean that we go after whatever we want.

Whatever our flesh and our heart desires, that's not true freedom. That's actually slavery.

When you're constantly going after what you desire in your flesh, you're enslaved to your flesh.

Jesus said, whoever sins is a slave to sin. True freedom is being set free from those desires.

We argue so much in our theology about free will. It's kind of an empty term.

You won't even find that term free will in the Bible except in one place in the book of Leviticus where it talks about giving a free will offering unto

God. Going above and beyond even the offerings that God requires of you. It's the only place you find the term free will.

So free will is kind of an empty term. But what we have in Christ is a freed will.

What was our will before Christ? It was enslaved to sin. That's what we wanted to do.

We wanted to rebel against God. We wanted our sin. But now in Christ Jesus, our will has been set free.

We have a freed will that now we leave the passions of our flesh and we don't even entertain those things anymore and when tempted by those things we submit it unto

Christ instead of giving in to the passion and we pursue God. The thing that we hated before when we were in our sin, who is

God, that's the thing we now desire. With our will having been freed from the enslavement that we were in to worship and rejoice in God and pursue

Him. We have a freed will. So we are to put off all leaven, put off all sin.

As it says in Hebrews 12, put off all sin and those things that easily entangle and run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the author and the perfecter of our faith.

So here put off sin, put out sin. Now as Paul calls the church to this, there's an individual responsibility to this as well as the corporate responsibility.

This of course is in the context of the corporate responsibility. What the church should be doing together, looking out for one another, encouraging and admonishing one another as needed.

So put out the old leaven as Christ our sacrificial lamb has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore, verse 8, celebrate the festival. Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I love the way he puts that, let us celebrate the festival. Remember back to in chapter 4 where Paul said,

I'm going to come to you soon, which Paul do you want? Do you want the one who's got to discipline you or do you want the one that we can rejoice in fellowship together?

And right after he asked that question, he comes right into rebuking them in chapter 5 because of the sin that's in their midst that they've not taken care of.

What he would rather be able to do is rejoice in them. Let's fellowship together.

Let's feast. Let's have fun. Let's celebrate God for his goodness. But instead there's this matter that needs to be taken care of.

I think also of the introduction of the book of Jude, where Jude says, I would love to write to you and rejoice in our common salvation, but I've found it necessary to write to you about this instead.

And he's addressing the false teaching that has come into their midst. So as long as there's sin that remains unchecked or false teaching that hasn't been dealt with, we've got to take care of those things and we can't rejoice in the goodness of God that we know that has been given to us in Christ.

And so Paul says this should be our demeanor. We should be celebrating together the festival, not mourning together over sin that hasn't been dealt with, that hasn't been taken care of.

There is certainly an individual call there. You must be holy as God is holy, as it says in 1 Peter 1.

Same thing that's given in the Old Testament is said to the church as well. Be holy as God is holy.

So there's an individual responsibility there. But here as it pertains to the corporate fellowship, get rid of the leaven.

Do not celebrate with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

And that was where we ended last week. So the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, the, the sincerity that we should have for one another.

If you say that you love your brother or your sister in the Lord, sincerity will be demonstrated in that you truly care for them, caring for their needs or where you have a brother or sister that comes into sin, you rebuke them and call them to repentance.

That's sincere love. I've seen many, many friends not want to confront another friend because they're worried that friend won't like me.

Well, that's selfish. That's not considerate of the other person at all.

I don't want to confront this friend and doing something bad because I'm afraid that they won't like me. That's, that's about you.

That's not about them. If you sincerely care for the other person, you will confront them even if it means that they might reject you.

In which case they wouldn't be rejecting you, would they? They would be rejecting what

God says. They would be rejecting the Lord and not you. So those things certainly feel very personal.

I understand. I mean, Hey, I've been there many times whenever you have to confront somebody in something and they respond to you with rejection.

But we should not take that personally in the sense that we understand that they're rejecting Christ and not us.

But our sincerity for that other person will be demonstrated in this way, that we actually show love to one another.

So we celebrate with the unleavened bread of sincerity. We sincerely believe what we say we believe and we demonstrate it by our actions and truth.

What we believe is true and it is true for every single person. This isn't relative truth or where you hear people in our culture today talk about, well, what's your truth?

My truth is your truth. If it's true, it's true for everybody. It doesn't matter if it's your truth or not.

It applies to everyone. And so Paul is even bringing the Corinthians understanding to that.

This man has sinned. If you've recognized that sin is there, then you must act according to what

God has said in his word. And we have this apostolic response then that Paul has given.

So then what is the appropriate reaction to this? That's our next section in verses 9 through 13.

The appropriate response where Paul says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people and then goes on to explain that.

Before getting into this section though, is there any questions about the first half of this chapter, verses 1 through 8 before I continue on?

Okay. So once again, where Paul says here, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

Now we, this is where we have a suggestion of a previous letter. Remember that I had mentioned at the very beginning of first Corinthians that this is the second letter in sequence.

What we might refer to as letter B. If we called it the second letter to the

Corinthians, that would be confusing because we have a second Corinthians. That's the next letter after this one.

So in Canon, we have first Corinthians and second Corinthians. But in order of letters that Paul has written to the

Corinthians, we have letter A, which we don't have record of, and letter B, which is first Corinthians.

Now why the Lord did not choose to preserve that first letter for us, that's a mystery.

Maybe we'll get to know that in glory. God, what became of letter A? I'd sure like to know what was in that letter.

Whatever it was, was certainly apostolic. It was from the authority of an apostle.

Just because we don't have it in Canon doesn't mean, well, it couldn't have truly been the word of God because we don't have it today and we have the word of God.

No, it was the word of God from an apostle to that church. Apparently God intended that to be just for the

Corinthians. It's not for us today. So whatever was in it, we can only speculate and it's not going to be added to scripture.

This is the word of God that has been completed for us. So Paul says that in that previous letter, he wrote to them not to associate with sexually immoral people, okay?

Verse 10, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of the world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since then you would have to go out of the world.

So this leads me to wonder if maybe the reaction of the Corinthians was something like this.

Well, I'm not associating with sexually immoral people. I'm in the church. I only hang out with my

Christian friends. I'm not around any of those other people, so I'm not associating with any sexually immoral people.

Now if there's any sexual immorality in the church, it may be the kind of an attitude, the

Corinthians may be taking this kind of attitude where it's like, well, but they're forgiven, right? The grace of God is on them.

So yeah, they've done this thing, incest, boy, that's weird.

But hey, they're forgiven. They believe in Jesus. So they're not sexually immoral.

They've been forgiven by God. Maybe that was their attitude. And Paul has to clarify then what he said in the previous letter so that they would truly understand.

Verse 11, but now I am writing to you. So since he is clarifying the statement here in verse 11, that leads us to recognize that it wasn't clarified in this way in the previous letter.

So now he's specifically going to say, this is what that means. And it wasn't that way.

It wasn't in that context in letter A, 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.

So go back up again to verse 10 where Paul says, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy or swindlers or idolaters.

Notice that he just repeats that list of sins again. That list of vices comes up again in the very next verse.

We're going to see that list of vices again in chapter 6 verses 9 through 11.

It's there as well. I won't jump ahead on that, but just to say, we're going to see that come up again.

So he says, I didn't mean the sexually immoral of the world, the greedy or the swindlers or idolaters, since then you would have to go out of the world.

If you weren't to associate with any of the sexually immoral people of this world, you couldn't go down and shop at Brookshire's because I guarantee you some of those clerks down there probably are practicing in some immoral things.

Some of the people that are stocking shelves, probably idolaters, probably swindlers, people that are serving you your food at the restaurant are not

Christian people. So I can't associate with any of those people.

People you work with, can I not go to my secular job anymore because the people that I work with at my job are sexually immoral and idolaters and otherwise?

Now I certainly have the blessing of being a person in ministry that I get to come to a place where I'm working with Christians every day.

But I understand that most of the people that I address, whether it's in my Sunday school class or from the pulpit in a sermon, most of you are working secular jobs, meaning that you work in a job that is not primarily focused on ministry or sharing the gospel.

So if we're not to associate with any sexually immoral people or idol worshipers or things like that, can we not work at our jobs?

And Paul clarifies, that's not what I'm talking about. If that's what I was talking about in my previous letter, you'd have to go out of the world.

You couldn't associate with anybody because they're all over the place. And as I had talked about in the introduction to 1

Corinthians, this was a very sordid city with all kinds of sexual immorality going on.

So Paul says, that's not what I'm referring to. I'm writing to you instead this way. You do not associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister in the

Lord. If they are guilty of any of these sins, sexual immorality or greed, coveting would be the other word that would be synonymous with that.

Or is an idolater, an idol worshiper, places something in place of God.

Whatever you worship or whatever has your passion and your desire above God, that's an idol.

Now some of us have idols in our pockets. Lest you think that idol worshipping is, that's the primitive people.

Primitive people who make carved statues and things like that and have them in their homes and bow down and worship them.

That was a primitive civilization a long time ago. We're not that people anymore. You ever been down to Five Below?

Ever gone into that store? You know what they have there for five bucks? Idols. Little Buddha statues and Ganesh statues inside that store.

Yeah, you can find this stuff all over the place. You find little symbols with yin -yangs on it. You ever seen somebody walking around with a yin -yang necklace on?

That's idolatry. It's the idea that there are light forces and dark forces all around us and I'm going to try to be more light today than I am going to be darkness.

That's Taoism. It's a completely false teaching. There's all kinds of idol worship going on.

People who are committed to their sexual immorality are worshipping an idol. Those who are atheists and claim there is no

God. You know, those atheists are some of the most spiritual people I've ever encountered. As much as they want to tell you that they are not spiritual or don't believe in God, I encounter atheists that,

I mean, their philosophy sounds word for word like Buddhism or Hinduism. So yeah, even atheists are very spiritual people.

Wiccans, witches, those who practice witchcraft, so on and so forth. I mean, it's very prevalent in our world.

Idolatry is very prevalent in our world. It is not something that was relegated to some primitive people a long time ago.

In fact, even if you have in your heart this feeling of like there is something in my life that I need and I feel incomplete in my life without this, then you're probably making that an idol.

Even if you were to say something as ridiculous as, God, I give you 99 % of myself.

I mean, at least I'm giving you the vast majority of myself to God. But just that 1%, I just need this one other thing.

And it might be something that is contrary to God or something that you are placing higher value on than God.

Doesn't matter whether you think you're giving your whole life unto the Lord and just a tiny little portion of this other thing, if that one little thing is the thing that you need in order to be complete, that's actually the thing you worship.

And the percentages are really ridiculous. How do you even factor that anyway? The one thing that you think that you need, and my life is not complete without that, that's the idol that you worship.

It might even be something in your own walk of faith. You might even try to justify that as something

Christian. I believe that I'm saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but I also have to do this other thing.

And when I do that other thing and I complete that other thing, then I know that I am saved. That's idolatry.

You have now added works to faith. So you're not saved by faith in Jesus Christ, you're saved by faith in your works by your own declaration.

It's really, really easy for us to fall into that kind of a thing, even as Christians, to fall into valuing something over Christ.

Whatever we place over Christ becomes an idol. And where we recognize that, if we see that happen among our brothers and sisters in the

Lord, we should confront them and tell them to repent. Sexual immorality is what is in view here in chapter 5, and we come back to it again in chapter 6 as well.

But Paul doesn't limit it to just sexually immoral sins, right? I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, is a reviler, hates other people, holds grudges.

I grew up in a church like that. When I was a kid, a small

Midwest church that I was a part of where I could observe every single

Sunday factions that existed between families because of bitter grudges from a long time ago.

Might not have even happened between the married couples that are sitting there in church.

It could have been their parents, but they're still holding on to those grudges from a long time ago. And I always wondered, even as a kid, looking at those things, why didn't somebody do something about that?

Y 'all like each other. Quit sitting over there and over there. How do we fellowship together as a church when there's people in the church that are holding grudges with one another?

This kind of bitterness, this desire to hold onto a grudge, to not be forgiving and compassionate as our

Lord God has been forgiving and compassionate to us. That's a sin that needs to be called out. They revile their drunkards.

Pastor Tom gave a great sermon a couple of weeks ago on being filled with the spirit instead of filled with wine and drunkenness.

Or just this past Sunday, I believe it was, wasn't it? Just one week ago. A lot has happened this past week.

I don't know if you feel that way too. But anyway, yeah, last week's sermon, if you didn't hear it, please go back and listen to it online.

And where the scriptures prohibit drunkenness, it's not just strictly limited to some sort of consumption of alcohol.

It's anything that would rule our minds and our bodies in that way. Any kind of intoxication.

And in fact, the scripture equates like drug use and intoxication with sorcery and witchcraft.

Because generally in that period of time when somebody was doing some sort of what we might term today an illicit drug, when somebody was doing that back then, it was to put their mind in an altered state so that they could have these wonderful spiritual experiences.

So it becomes likened with sorcery. But any kind of thing that we would give our minds or our bodies over to, that would dull our thinking or our senses, any of that qualifies as drunkenness, that intoxication.

And we are not to be that way. We're not to give our minds over to things where we lose control of ourselves, of our own thinking and our own faculties.

We're to be filled with the spirit. That's the contrast in Ephesians 5. Do not be filled with drunkenness, for that is dissipation, but instead be filled with the spirit.

And nor should we as brothers or sisters in the Lord be deviling in, in swindling one another, cheating one another out of money or property or anything like that.

It's lying. It's lying to one another, promising them one thing, bait and switch, for something else to get money out of them.

I remember being a part of a church where there were various people in the congregation that were involved in some of those pyramid schemes.

We might call them the multi -level marketing. There was a lot of that that was going on in the church.

And somebody would be involved in this marketing level thing, and they would try, hey, give me some money so that you can buy into it and you can become part of this yourself.

But then no product is ever exchanged, nothing ever is done on behalf of the person who ended up paying money into it.

As a church, we had to put a stop to it. And I had to say, if you want to participate in multi -level marketing with you and your multi -level marketing friends, that's between you and the

Lord. But you're not going to be drawing other people in the church into that to be giving you money to receive no product in return.

That's not going to be happening here. That's swindling. It's promising one thing and then doing a bait and switch, and they don't get anything from it.

So we need to be careful. We need to be mindful of those things, of ourselves and even of one another.

And if there are people in the Lord who are doing these things and they won't repent of it, Paul says, don't have anything to do with them.

Not even to eat with such a one. Verse 11. Now, that's a difficult passage.

That's complicated. We have a lot of questions about it. Not even to eat with such a one. So I can't even invite them over to my house anymore?

Understand that breaking bread together and eating together, that's a sign of close fellowship, isn't it? When you have friends over, some of you sitting in this room,

I've been over to your house and broken bread together. And when we go home, when my wife and I go home, man, we just have nothing but great things to say.

What a wonderful time. Great conversation, good food. That's some good fellowship.

You invite people over to eat with you that you like, right? Or that you want to grow in a relationship with.

We draw closer and closer together, breaking bread with one another and eating over a good meal. Most of the great conversations that my family has, my wife and I and my kids together, most of the deepest conversations that we have are when we're around the dining room table.

There's some good fellowship that happens there. And so when you're talking about a sin that results in a person having to be removed from the church, but then you continue to fellowship with them even in your home, what does that communicate?

That they really haven't done anything all that bad. Why do I have to break fellowship with you?

You know what that also ends up looking like to the person who is needing to repent of that sin is that, you know what, this was really just the elders and the pastors and all of them.

They just had some sort of beef with me apparently, but I still get along great with everybody else in that church. That will end up communicating that to the sinner as well.

Now in the time that this was going on in Corinth, whenever somebody sinned in this way and they had to be put out of the church, there was no else for them to go.

There was the first church of Corinth. There wasn't like eight other Baptist churches that you could go to within a two block radius.

Or maybe I'll even switch denominations and become Methodist or Presbyterian. There was one church.

So if you were put out of that church, you were separated from the body of Christ so that you might recognize your sin and mourn over it and repent.

Repent. As Paul had said previously, that was a desire for this person. Deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. May he mourn over his sin and put that to death and be restored to the body of Christ.

That's what we would hope would happen with this guy. But when a person has to be put out of the church like that and yet we continue to fellowship together like there's nothing wrong, how does that person understand the gravity of their sin and what it's done?

Sin separates us from God. So for that person to be removed from the church is to communicate to that person, you've been separated from the body of Christ.

Repent so that you can be restored again. Very sadly,

I've been in situations where a person had to be put out of the church. And I've witnessed how even though that person has been put out of the church, they go and eat at everybody else's houses.

And then what happens in those conversations is that, oh, well, the elders did this.

And gossip starts happening. And then that person who's been put out of the church because of sin starts to sow division and discord when the church as the body together is not thinking with the same mind on some of these things.

My poor friend Sonia over here was the victim of that once when there was a very disgruntled family that ended up leaving the church because they felt like the elders needed to discipline me over something that they didn't agree with.

The elders, being the elders, being responsible elders, they took the claim seriously.

They tested me according to it. They went back to the person and said, sorry, we don't see what you're seeing. And so what that family did, they left the church, but then they started inviting people from the church over to their house to eat and then trying to fill them up with all of this false knowledge.

And like I said, Sonia got subject to that one time and she had to sit there and listen to all this graceless pouring out of like, here's the problems that we have with Gabe.

And she tested me on it too. And she saw what the elders saw, not what this family saw. But you see how if the church is not like minded in these things, how it can be sowing discord and how you can see how sin will end up splitting the church.

I was in communication with a pastor just earlier this week. One of the elders of a church, of a church that's looking for a pastor, in fact.

And they recently had sin that ended up dividing the body. And in fact, it was a sin that the pastor, when he was there, was not even guilty of.

It was just sin that he wouldn't deal with, sin that was going on in the congregation. So instead of dealing with it, he left the church and a third of the church went with him.

And so now the two thirds of the church that's left, now they're looking for a replacement. They're looking for another pastor.

When the church is not together on this, when we're not like minded in these things, sin causes splits.

Sin is always breaking up the church. Sin always spreads and infects, which is why

Paul says, get the leaven out. You must be unleavened bread for Christ.

Our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let's look at the remainder of this and finish up.

So Paul says in verses 12 and 13, what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

Now, it'd be really easy for a person to read that particular verse and go, ha, see, you Christians are not supposed to be judging us.

We've been right all this time, Matthew 7, 1, judge not. That's every unbeliever's favorite

Bible verse and some believers too, unfortunately. What have

I to do with judging outsiders? God judges those, God judges those outside the church. Verse 13, is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

What's Paul talking about here? Are we not supposed to be making judgments of anybody who's outside the church? In fact, we are required to make those judgments because the instruction for us is to tell unbelievers their sin so that they will see it according to God's law, that they may be convicted and recognize they need a savior so that their heart is open to understand

Christ is that savior and then we can share the gospel with them. So yeah, absolutely, there is a place where we must make certain judgments in which we would say of a person that they are in sin and they need to repent and turn to Jesus Christ and be saved.

That's not the kind of judgment that Paul is talking about here. What kind of judgment is he talking about? Say again?

Yeah, discernment. Discernment is a good word. This is certainly not about like condemnation.

We cannot stand before the world and condemn the world. As it says in John 3 .18,

Christ didn't even come to condemn the world. Why didn't he come to condemn the world? Because the world was already condemned.

We're already self -condemned because of our sins. So Christ came as savior, not to destroy the world, but to save those who would believe in him.

So we don't have anything to do with judging outsiders. You can't put an outsider outside of the church.

They're already outside of the church. So you can't make some sort of a judgment or determination that they are not saved when they're already not saved.

We'd be running around ragged, accomplishing absolutely nothing making those kinds of condemnations.

We show a person their sins so that we might show them the savior who is Jesus Christ. But that's not making a kind of condemnation.

Paul says, what have I to do with judging outsiders? We're to judge those inside the church. God judges those who are outside.

Purge the evil person from among you. So we have these two questions that are asked in verse 12, and the two questions are answered in verse 13.

What have I to do with judging outsiders? God judges those who are outside. Is it not those who are inside the church whom you are to judge?

Purge the evil person from among you. And that statement comes from Deuteronomy. That comes from the

Old Testament. Those were the same instructions that were given to Israel when it came to purging the evil person from among them.

Now when it says in the Old Testament, purge the evil person from among you, what did that mean?

Stone them to death. Usually. I mean, there's other instances where a person might be put out of the nation of Israel.

For example, in the book of Leviticus, it says if you witness somebody sacrificing their son or daughter to Moloch, and you don't do anything about it, and then it's found out you saw it, but you didn't say anything, you will be cut off from the nation of Israel.

So in that particular circumstance, the person who observed it may not be put to death, but they will be cut off from Israel and not allowed to come back in.

That would be purging the evil person from among you in that sense as well. But generally, especially in the book of Deuteronomy where we see that statement come up again and again, purge the evil person from among you, it means put them to death.

Now remember, Paul equates this back over to verse 5 for delivering such a person over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. So purge the evil person from among you doesn't mean we take them out of the church over to the parking lot and stone them to death.

Although as I've heard Steve Lawson say, there would be a whole lot less false teachers in the church if we were still judging them the way that we saw in Deuteronomy 13 and 18.

But what this means for us is that exactly as we've seen in weeks previous where we were looking at church discipline, we confront a brother or sister in the

Lord in their sin. If they won't repent, we take two or three others along. If they won't listen to them, we bring it to the church.

And if they don't listen to the church, then they're removed. And the desire even there would still be that they would turn from their sin to the

Lord Jesus Christ, turn from their sin to Christ and be saved. Let us continue with one another in sincerity and truth in this way.

Let me close with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the instructions that you have given to us in your word and may they be things that we obey.

We recognize, we examine ourselves to see if there is any sin or unrighteous way in us and we turn from that and we ask for forgiveness.

And as it says in 1 John 1, 9, if we ask forgiveness for our sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we see a brother or sister in the Lord going astray in sincerity and truth, we confront them in a desire and a love for this brother or sister to walk in holiness and in righteousness.

And may we as a church together be as unleavened bread for Christ our

Passover lamb has been sacrificed. And so we thank you and we praise you for the forgiveness of our sins and may we walk in holiness before you.

As said in Psalm 23, lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.