Tolerating Sin in the Church | Sermon 2/02/2025

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Alright, church, if you would please turn with me and your Bibles to the first letter to the

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Corinthians. We've been in an expository series in 1

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Corinthians, going verse by verse, learning what the

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Scriptures say in this letter. And we've been in a pretty intense topic lately.

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And he's going to finish that out today. And so, if you missed last week, this will shed light on it.

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Just not in as much detail as the sexual immorality as we saw last week with the man of incest.

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But we're going to be in verses 9 -13 of 1 Corinthians 5. 1

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Corinthians 5. 9 -13. We're going to finish the chapter out. And the title of the sermon today is

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Tolerating Sin in the Church. Tolerating sin in the church.

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So last week, we heard quite a bit about sexual immorality and how it not only affected the church at Corinth, but how it plagues the

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American church even now. All tolerance of sin is arrogance to Paul.

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It is puffed up. Arrogance tells us, hey, sin isn't heinous.

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Sin doesn't taint the church. Sin doesn't jeopardize its moral witness. Sin is not that bad.

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That's what sin tells us. Hey, and as long as the so -called brother or sister isn't, quote, hurting others, and maybe even gives money to the church, maybe is a big donor in the church, then it's fine.

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It's not hurting anyone. Just let them do what they're doing. Today, the world or worldly Christians even quote

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Matthew 7 to us. They say what? What's the Matthew 7 verse?

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Judge not, lest ye be judged. Right? They don't understand the context of that judgmental hypocrisy of the

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Pharisees and Sadducees. The Pharisees and Sadducees were saying, hey, do this.

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This is righteous. And then they weren't living that way. And Jesus is saying, be careful, religious people, when you say live like this, but you refuse to live like that.

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So it's more about hypocrisy than an inability to make judgments. It's not about making judgments.

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In fact, Christ said, in John 7, verse 24, judge with righteous judgment.

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Judge with righteous judgment, He says. We are told to make judgments. In fact, the entire population of this earth is kidding themselves if they think they don't make formal and informal judgments on other people every single day of their lives.

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You could be walking down the street as a young lady and you could see a man and you're in a dark place of Salt Lake City and it looks like he's grabbing something in his coat, and you might make a judgment as he grabs that out and make a decision to go the other way.

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Whether you see something or not. You can make right judgments. You can make wrong judgments. Whether good or bad, we are told in the

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Bible to make judgments. This is different than a specific type of judging that God can do, okay?

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We are to adjudicate or judge in the church, but that judge is a different way the world uses it.

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We'll go over the definition of what Paul uses today for judge. And that's what today's verses will lightly touch on.

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Next week's section of Scripture in chapter 6 will be a full discourse on lawsuits.

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Yes, lawsuits were starting to happen in the Corinthian church. They were suing each other.

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It gets really bad, okay? And he'll talk about what are we able to do in the church?

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Suing each other, judging outsiders, adjudicating things.

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We're going to talk a lot about that next week, but today it'll lightly touch on it, okay?

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So go to 1 Corinthians 5, verse 9. Let's read it and see what the

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Scripture says on what we're going over today, okay? Hear now the words of the living and true

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God. Verse 9, I wrote you in My letter not to associate with immoral people.

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I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world or with the covetous and swindlers or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.

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But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so -called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

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For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

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But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.

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Thus ends the reading of God's holy word. Let's pray as we approach the Scriptures today as a church body, okay?

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Lord, as we approach Your Word, we want to be led only by Your Spirit and not by any interpretation of man.

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We want to know, Lord, what You mean in these texts and how they apply to our lives and what it meant for the

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Corinthian church. God, it's a very serious thing to You from the Old to the

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New Testament that those who claim they are an Israelite, those who claim they are a brother or sister in Christ, but act contrary to that,

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You have very strict commandments on how we're to handle that,

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Lord. And these are hard things. These are difficult things, Lord. Not everything seems black and white.

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Not everything seems easy or clear -cut. But we know, Lord, that in the

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American church, the American Christian church has let sin persist.

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And the church here in America has not removed evildoers. And people have lived in fornication and adultery and active homosexuality and all these things,

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Lord, in churches and no one ever approaches them. And so,

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Lord, we want to be balanced as we approach Your Word. We want to know what it says, because we want to love people the right way.

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And I know, Lord, that this is an expression of love. Hebrews 12 tells us that You discipline those whom

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You love. That if we don't receive discipline in our sanctification sometimes, we're an illegitimate son.

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Our parents disciplined us, and if they didn't, they don't love us. And so, Lord, help us to see what we need to see here.

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Lord, let me diminish here this day and let Your Word and Your glory shine forward.

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Pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So in verse three, the

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Apostle Paul said that he has already judged the man of incest. This man has committed incest with his stepmother, and he reminded them in the power of the name and presence of Jesus Christ, they have authority too.

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When they are assembled, they must declare the charges that this man has done, and they must, as Paul said, hand him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh.

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That's what it said. We talked about how in that time, when that man is led over, he's removed from the church, that he would be out in the world again.

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But in that way, he's burned bridges with the world. He's no longer ultimately welcome in the world because he's told people he turned to Jesus.

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And it may sound trivial to you that today, someone could turn to Jesus, and then the next day, they could turn back to the world.

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That's easier in our modern context. But if you turned to Christ in the first century and got baptized in front of people and said,

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Jesus is my Lord, and I go to worship services, and then you told your family, and they ostracized you, and they persecuted you, and be like, fine, you take your

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Jesus and your Christians who are part of the way. If that happened, it would be hard to assimilate back into the world.

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Here, you could turn away from Christ, and you could probably go to your social media and announce it with a trumpet.

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And you'll have friends on your friends list going, good for you. They're not good enough for you. You're better than them, right?

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It was different then. And so this man was handed over. He's not in the church anymore, but he's not really part of the world either.

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And so, stuck between two worlds, this man of incest who won't repent from his incest, stuck between two worlds.

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He is in his own sin. And may he, where he doesn't belong in either, may he turn and in his own wretchedness go, this isn't worth it.

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This sin isn't worth it. And may he turn back and come back to the church.

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And Paul says, so that in the day of Jesus Christ, his spirit may be saved.

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May he find such a low point that he can only look up. That he would desire the destruction of his flesh, which means to say the carnal parts of him, the parts of you and me that want to do sin, he says may that be destroyed.

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May he no longer want to do incest and may he come back. And that's what Paul is saying.

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And so, the goal of expulsion is not simply the expulsion itself.

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It's so that they return. Hand them over to Satan in hopes that he will return.

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And finally, the Apostle Paul reminded us that the leaven from last week's dough can spoil in a jar.

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I told you, they would make bread with wild yeast. And so they would mix flour and water.

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And they would take some of it and they would reserve some of that raw dough and they would put it in a clay jar.

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And then they would make their bread loaf. And that fermenting piece of dough in that clay jar would be for next week's bread.

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But Paul says that bread of yours, which is the man of incest, it's gone bad.

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It's spoiled. And for those of you who make sourdough bread, you've seen it. You open the fridge. You open the jar.

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You see there's mold everywhere, right? And so Paul says, clean that out. Clean out that old leaven.

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Remove it. Because it's going throughout the whole loaf of bread and it's defiling it.

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In fact, I told you, God would not even accept bread offerings with leaven because of the fact that it potentially could go bad.

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So God only accepted unleavened bread. They could eat it. They could eat leavened bread, but He was offered unleavened.

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And so, remove this sinful man. Remove the sin from yourself. Because if you let a little bit of leaven that is bad or spoiled go, if there's a little bit of bacteria on it, it's going to spread through all the dough.

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And it's going to go bad. And so he says that if there's a man or woman like that in our church, and also individually, if there's a little bit of sin in your life, okay,

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I'll just let a little bit of this, a little bit of pornography, a little bit of drug addiction, a little bit of this, if I just let a little bit of this, it's no big deal.

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No one needs to know. And Paul says, no, it's going to eventually defile all of you.

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It's going to take over everything. And he says, clean it out. Christ is our

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Passover Lamb. Christ died for us. And so that has made way for the possibility of a substantial change.

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Jesus is your Passover Lamb. He says, because Christ died for you, you should be different.

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You should be different than what you were before. And so in that transformation that Christ gives us, there can be a gradual, steady increase in holiness, only by God's grace, not by your works, only by God's grace, a steady increase in holiness.

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He says, you're new. You're a new lump of dough. You're new. You don't have to be the leavened bread.

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You can be the lump of new dough that's unleavened. You're not taintable, he says.

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You are in a position now, God has saved you and the Holy Spirit indwells you and you could be in a position where you don't have to sin.

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Hebrews, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians 10 says, God has provided always a way of escape. We can avoid sin only by God's grace.

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And so, anyways, Paul comes back to this point, to the

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Corinthians and says, look, don't tolerate immoral people in the church.

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Verse nine, I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people.

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And so, Paul references a previous letter. If you notice, we're in what, 1

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Corinthians? So he says that there's another letter, a previous letter. And he says the same thing in 2

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Corinthians. There's these additional letters to these Corinthians. And there is an understanding in the theological world that there are at least three letters to the

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Corinthians, but there are possibly even four. God, in His infinite wisdom and sovereignty, decided to only give us two of the letters to the

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Corinthians in Scripture, okay? And when Paul wrote these letters, it's possible in this initial letter that we don't have access to, he wrote a list of things that they should or should not do as a new church.

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It's like, okay, hey, Apostle Paul, we're all from Corinth, we're all from Greece, or some of us have come here from Rome.

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We were sent here after we fought in the wars. We were given a plot of land to stay here in Corinth.

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And so there's a mixture of Greeks and Romans, and they're like, we're all here, and what do we do now?

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We used to go to idol temples and sacrifice to idols and little images. We used to go to parties where there were orgies and debaucheries, what do we do now?

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And so Paul, as he is leaving the first time, it's possible he wrote a letter as soon as he left and said, oh, well, this is what you need to do.

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This is what it looks like now. And so he's referencing possibly this letter because they're in a place in Corinth that is surrounded by porneia.

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And I told you that word means immorality, sexual immorality, porneia, okay? They need to know what it looks like to be a

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Christian. So he says, do not associate with immoral people. Associate here is the word sunanamignustai, to associate with someone else with spatial proximity and or joint activity.

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Doing something together and usually implying some sort of reciprocal involvement or relation, okay?

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Sun in the Greek means with. Ana means up.

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Mignumi is mixed. So the word is mixed up with.

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Mixed up with. The Bible is essentially saying, don't come together with immoral people and get mixed up with them.

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It's like, you know, my daughter makes smoothies in the morning. You know, she puts the different ingredients in, mixes it up, it becomes one new thing.

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Don't become one thing associated with immoral people.

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And that's nothing new in the Bible, right? The Old Testament, God said to the

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Israelites, be separate, be set apart. The New Testament is no different.

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Don't be mixed. Meaning, you can be surrounded by people of the nations, but one cannot claim to be a

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Christian yet be like the people of the nations at the same time. Those who claim that they are a brother or sister in Christ but act no differently than the unbelievers of the surrounding cultures have mixed.

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They have mixed. Someone who says, I'm a brother, I'm a sister in Christ, but they are in immorality, they have mixed with the pagan nations around them, okay?

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They have neglected the moral boundaries that Christ set for us in the

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Gospels and the Epistles. Be set apart. And the Apostle John agrees.

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He says in 1 John 2, verses 15 through 16, this is in your printout, by the way, 1

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John 2 .15. John says, do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the

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Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the

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Father, but is from the world. Associating with immoral people who have mixed with the world compromises the church, just like in the

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Old Testament when they let Amorites or Canaanites or Jebusites or Philistines or Moabites or whoever mix with the community of Israel.

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God said, the land is yours. It's your inheritance. Go in there and remove everyone.

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And He warned them, if you don't remove the pagans, they will influence you. And what becomes the repeated problem in the

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Old Testament? Idolatry from the influence of pagan nations. Their gods,

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Chemosh, Molech, Ashteroth, Baal.

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These false gods made out of wood and stone and metals. The Israelites worshipped them.

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Their heart was divided from Yahweh, the one true God. And so Paul says don't be influenced by the neighboring nations around you.

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Do not be mixed up. Do not associate with pornos. Pornos means immoral people.

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People of immorality. So Paul talks about what ought to be the case. And now in v.

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10, he talks about the reality of believers still being in the world, though not of the world.

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Because even Jesus said to His Father in the High Priestly Prayer in John 17, what did

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He say? Father, I do not ask that You remove the disciples from the world or take them out of the world, but I pray that You would keep them from the evil one.

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For they are not of the world, the disciples, just as I am not of the world.

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And so Jesus was not of this world, but He had to come and be in this world. And He says once you're saved, you're not of the world anymore.

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You're heavenly. You're otherworldly. And so when you think about it, the whole mission of the

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Gospel is that the otherworldly heavenly Savior who's not of the world came to save people who were of the world, you and me.

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He took us out of the world, meaning we were no longer worldly, but He kept us here so that we, otherworldly people, would impact the people around us of the world.

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A lot of world there, right? But they come out of the world. They come out of it.

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And that's His plan. Therefore, in their daily lives, the Corinthian believers are still going to have to rub shoulders with the immoral people of this world.

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We will too. We will have to rub shoulders with the people of this world.

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There's no way about it. You have to bring the Gospel to them.

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You can't create a bubble. We were not meant to. He says, I do not pray that they be taken out of the world, but kept from the evil one.

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That means you've got to be here. But that also means that we're tired of it, right?

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Paul says in Romans 8 that the creation groans for the redemption of the sons of men, meaning the creation cries out and says, when will

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Jesus return? And sin will be over. And suffering will be gone. And that's what we long for, right?

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We long for as many people to be saved as possible, but we also long to no longer sin anymore.

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And so, we have to be in the world, but not of the world. Look at v. 10.

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I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world.

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And so, listen, it literally says this. Do not associate with immoral people, not at all meaning the immoral people of this world or the covetous and swindlers or with idolaters, since indeed to avoid them, you'd have to leave the world completely.

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And so, Paul's essentially saying, you're going to have to be around immoral people, but they better not be immoral people in the church.

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And I want to make it clear that this isn't a license to mix with the immoral people of this world.

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In fact, he's not saying that at all. He's saying you cannot mix with immoral people of this world.

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And you have to imagine this means two things. One, in this previous letter that he sent, he's demonstrating his intent was to keep what was happening in v.

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1 -8 from happening. Paul saying do not associate with immoral people in his first letter was to say, you cannot let a man of fornication, a man of incest, stay in your midst and act like a brother of good standing before God in the church.

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And number two, it also means that they will not have a common bond with the immoral people of this world, even though they're still of the world.

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They will be forced to interact with immoral people, especially when it comes to Gospel conversations.

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But it's different in the church. Now the question is though, if he had already said this, and he's quoting himself again, why did they not understand this previously?

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It's possible the Corinthians were playing dumb, and that's why they kept this man who was sleeping with his father's wife in the church.

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Maybe they were genuinely confused by some of what Paul said in his previous letter.

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But I look at the fact that he kept calling them arrogant. He kept calling them prideful.

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And that's hard to believe. That they were just like, well, you told us not to associate with immoral people.

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We just thought you meant with people outside of the church. Immoral people in the church, they're fine, right?

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He says he's a believer. Maybe they thought in their arrogance and their pride that, hey, if this man who's sleeping with his father's wife does enough good works, if he gives enough to the church, if he's generous enough, then it's no big deal.

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Keep him in. His good will outweigh his bad. Whatever the case,

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Paul says it looks like I'm going to have to spell it out for you now. You've let this man of incest stay in your church, so here,

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I'm going to have to tell you what to do again. Listen up. He will be very precise. In fact, he now even narrows the type of people.

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He goes beyond the men and women of porneia, immorality, and he addresses the covetous, swindlers, and idolaters too.

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If anyone is like this in the church, this is a big deal, but he says you're going to see this outside the church.

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The covetous are those who have an insatiable longing for the possessions of others.

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You look at their houses. You look at their cars. You look at their wife. You look at their husband.

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You look at their kids. You look at their stuff that God blessed them with, and you go, I want it.

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I want what they have. It even comes from greed.

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Okay? They're never content. They always want more. What they have is not good enough, and therefore, they're also swindlers.

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Swindlers, the root word in the Greek for swindler is to snatch something away. So a swindler is literally a robber.

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A thief. So the covetous see other people's belongings, and they take something that's not theirs.

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They're swindlers. They're robbers. They're thieves. They're so covetous that in their self -love, they steal from other people, and they even leave the impoverished destitute.

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You know who it's easy to steal from? It's hard to steal from the rich.

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They have little castles, little mansions with gates and security systems.

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You know who it's easy to steal from? Poor people. And you take them.

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These type of men and women took everything that the poor had, leaving them even more destitute than they were before in the ancient world.

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It's a desire to please self at all costs. And when you think about it, the place where coveting and stealing and idolatry come from is the same place where sexual sin comes from.

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These are all sins that say, I'm God. I want to be pleased. I deserve the pleasure.

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So I'll take yours. I'll take your wife. And I'll take your possessions. And I matter most.

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I am my own God. It's all from the same place. And when you think about it, even from the

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Jewish perspective, idolatry was often called what? Adultery. Idolatry in the

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Old Testament, especially in Ezekiel, in Hosea. God says,

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I'm like your husband. You were My bride. And He uses harsh words.

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He says, you've become a whore and a prostitute, Israel. You've turned against Me. You've gone after other gods.

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You've given yourself to other gods. And so idolatry is very close to sexual immorality.

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Now these people, swindlers, the covetous, idolaters, the immoral, they make up the residents of Corinth.

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These are the people that make up the residents of Corinth in the unbelieving world.

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Not in the church. Outside of the church. And so the only way to never associate with these type of people is to honestly leave the world completely.

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You never want to have to rub shoulders with immoral people like this. You're going to have to leave this world.

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This is how distinct Christians are to be from those of the world. We are otherworldly. We are heavenly.

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We are to be so clearly different of a different moral standard completely.

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We are to be so clearly belonging to God rather than to Satan in everything we do and say and think.

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We are to be different from unbelievers. What does Christ say in the Sermon on the

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Mount? Matthew 4 .14 -16

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You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp, but put it under a basket, but on a lampstand.

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And it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your

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Father Who is in Heaven. We are to be lights in the dark land that we live in.

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We ought to be shining out there. What happens when it's the middle of the night and you've got to go to the bathroom, especially you guys who are getting older, right?

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And you go and you fumble around for the light switch? The light pierces the darkness.

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You and I are to be light out there in this unbelieving world. Such a stark difference.

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We ought to be shining among dark people. And look at this, we're not called to consolidate the lights either.

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What would that look like? All the millions of Christians on the earth.

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We buy an island and we come and we live on an island. And when you turn to Christ, you get to go to the island.

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Sounds like a cult, right? That would be consolidating all the lights.

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The rest of the world would be dark. And so if you think about it, if you were up in the space station, if it wasn't merely just spiritual in a physical analogy, the rest of the world is dark, but one island is light.

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We can't consolidate. We've got to be out in the world.

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We are to go to the nations with the Gospel of light. We are to be salt.

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Salt of the earth. Salt does nothing when it sits there alone. You look at salt on a shelf, it's like there's salt, right?

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For something to be salty, you add salt to it. To meat, to vegetables, whatever.

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You must add salt to something. We're salt. Are you being added to people and things in this world?

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Are you impacting the flavor of things? Are you changing things? Salt is also a preservative.

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It preserves what is good. What is right. Are you salt out there?

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Paul knows that there's a multitude of immoral people out there. They're surrounding them.

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The church at Corinth is being surrounded by immorality, by immoral people. And it's surrounding us even here in Salt Lake County in northern

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Utah. But there is not to be a single immoral person, unrepentantly immoral, within the bounds of the church.

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Not one. Not one. Not one immoral person is supposed to be in unrepentance in the church.

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One commentator says, Paul's grievance is that they cannot witness to an unbelieving world when one of their own members is guilty of a sin that causes even the heathens to blush at.

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I told you that last week. Even the pagan Corinthians would have looked at incest and gone, that's horrific.

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And so since they have not died, and because God fiercely detests suicide, and because Christ has not returned yet the idea of currently at this moment leaving the world is impossible.

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You and I cannot leave this world right now. We just can't. Only when

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God takes us or He returns. That's it. We have to be here. When you one day open your eyes and said,

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I think I've died and gone to heaven, and you see Jesus and angels and that statement would be true, number one, but that would be when you're no longer around immoral people.

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When you die and go to heaven, or when Christ returns, you will no longer be around immorality then.

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And only then, okay? That's when you can avoid the immoral people of the world.

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So it's like saying, you're going to have to be in the world among immoral people, but people like this cannot be in your assembly among you unless they repent from these ways and turn to Christ.

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They cannot be both of Christ and porneia. Immorality, sexual immorality.

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It can't be Christian and immoral person.

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They don't go together. That's why it's an oxymoron when people say out there in the evangelical world,

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I'm a gay Christian. That's an oxymoron. That's impossible. You cannot be both at the same time.

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You cannot be a porneia and Christ. Nor can you be of greed or thievery or idolatry as well.

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You can't say those things if you're with Christ, okay?

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In fact, he states in verse 11, but actually I wrote to you, not to associate with any so -called brother if he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler.

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Not even to eat with such a one as this. You see, in this previous letter that Paul wrote to them that we don't have access to, it was probably not unlike the list of vices that we see in places like Romans 1,

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Ephesians 4, Colossians 3, Titus 3, Galatians 5, or even in our next chapter, we're going to see a list of sins and sinful people in 1

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Corinthians 6. You know what I'm talking about, right? Those, it says, immorality.

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It says these type of long lists of sins. Those types of lists are throughout the

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New Testament. Things that we ought not to be. And these lists are common to the apostolic teaching.

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They're common to what Christ taught. These were things that were commandments in the law that Christ and the apostles saw as timeless.

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That is to say, right morality, correct morality is Christianity 101 to them.

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These guys, Christ came, He taught them for three years, He ascended into heaven, they went and they spread the

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Gospel, and these men are going, this is Christianity basics. Don't live immorally.

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That's part of it. Of course, again, that's not how you earn salvation.

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It's that God saves the individual. He gives you a new heart. And now you have the capacity by His power and Spirit and renewal and cleansing to obey

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Him. You could not obey Him before. We read in our catechism, we were by nature children of wrath, but Christ took you,

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He saved you. He took that heart of stone. Ezekiel says He put a heart of flesh in you, something that's moldable.

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He put His Spirit within you. He cleansed you with fresh water, new water, purified you.

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He said now, now you can obey Me. You couldn't do it before. You would have fallen in nature, but now you can.

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And so, only then, and by that way, can we obey

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Him. And that's a basic element of Christianity. Christians are identified not just by their doctrines or professions or peculiarities to the world.

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We are identified by what we do. Not by what we do alone though, okay?

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Obviously, there's false religions who build houses for people and do great things.

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The Bible says that if they do these good things for the poor and for the destitute, but they don't have the truth and they're doing it for a false god, right?

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So you have to have the doctrine and you have to do what's right after He saves you.

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You see it here, right? In the church, there are those who only profess and they only speak.

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Titus 1 .16 This is this type of person.

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For they profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny

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Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed. James 1 .22

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But prove yourselves doers of the Word and not merely hearers, only deluding yourself.

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Okay, in the early church, people were getting saved left and right. They were turning to Christ. They were doing the right thing.

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They were living this way, but then there were people who acted like they turned to Christ.

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And they were coming into the church. And you'll only know them by their fruits because some of the trees look the same.

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So you got to wait for the fruit to come out. And if the fruit's rotten, then you finally know. That's the analogy that Jesus uses, right?

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And so, eventually, these people got found out. John even says they went out from us to show that they were never really of us.

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There are people who call themselves Christians all over the globe, but many of them may not know

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Christ truthfully. If anyone in the church labels themselves Christian, but is guilty of being actually one of these things on these lists, one who is just a professor and not also a doer, then they need to be removed from our midst.

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That's what he says. And you know, it's even more personal than the label

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Christian. He says, truly, I wrote to you not to associate with a man who is called an

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Adelphos, a brother. This is familial, right? This is the term brother is the term used for the one who has professed faith in Christ as Lord.

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They've been baptized. They've been admitted into the assembly of the church and the saints.

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They've participated in meals and the covenant communities, activities, and sacraments.

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They've gotten it all. And a man or woman like that, who's gotten all those treasures that we get to have, but yet still choose to be an immoral person, a pornos, or they're a greedy person, or someone who still worships idols or a reviler.

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A reviler is one who slanders others or hurls verbal abuse. Drunkard, if you're still a drunkard, one who habitually drinks alcohol and becomes drunk, a swindler, one who robs people or tries to rob the church.

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These types of people who say they've turned to Jesus and eat of the supper and stand up and sing the songs, but are still these things, they are living double lives.

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Double lives. And all these prohibitions are nothing new.

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They're in Deuteronomy. No sexual immorality, no sexually immoral peoples in Deuteronomy 22.

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No idolaters, Deuteronomy 17. No revilers and false witnesses,

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Deuteronomy 19. No drunkards, Deuteronomy 21. No thieves, Deuteronomy 24.

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Do not associate with these so -called brothers or sisters who are truly not, and then he even takes it further and he says, do not even eat with such a person like this.

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Don't eat with them. Don't eat with them. What does that mean?

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Does that just mean this? The supper? Well, eating with someone in the

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Bible times is not just eating a meal in proximity to someone, right? You're sharing the same lunch table.

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It's a break at work. And you're sitting near someone. So you could take this the wrong way and go,

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I'm a Christian at my job, so I'm only going to eat in the closet. Right? You don't want to do that. That's not what this is saying.

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It wasn't even just about general friendliness. Eating with someone was an expression of being bonded together.

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Sharing a meal meant something even more back then than it does now. And in this case, it means being bonded in Christ.

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Therefore, if someone calls themselves brother or sister, and they're actually a swindler or reviler, a person of immorality, he says don't koinonia with them.

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Don't eat with them. And this would mean especially don't take the

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Lord's Supper with them. They are precluded from the worship service.

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And this is not seeking to be harsh, but seeking to be holy. This is not simply we wish to be separatists, but we want to obey

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God, and he says to be set apart by Him. See, Christians must maintain their witness before the unbelieving world, otherwise the light mixes with the dark.

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It looks like there's no difference. We need to be unblemished by these things.

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But I'll tell you what, and here's the genuine temptation for real believers.

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We must be careful. You see, we can get in this position where we're always on the defense.

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You see, there's the one gutter where in American Christian churches they go, hey, come as you are, stay as you are,

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God will never change you, right? Here's a gift too. So there's no accountability for sin.

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Then on the other side, it's like hyper -policing. Hyper -policing. Always being on the defense to remove people.

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Okay, you're not exactly like our convictions. Sounds like you just lied there.

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You're out of here, right? Like an umpire or something. You know, that's the other thing, and that becomes cult -like, okay?

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We are to long suffer with each other. We bear burdens. We disciple.

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We correct. We rebuke if necessary. We teach. We preach.

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We encourage and we point each other to the Word of God. Because we're all sinners turned saints being slowly redeemed and sanctified.

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And we're all starting at different areas with different sins and proclivities and propensities.

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We do this all because of love. Genuine love. You see, a spirit of suspicion can come over us.

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We don't give the benefit of the doubt. We become such strong gatekeepers that there's only an exit door, but there's not an entrance.

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We've got to be careful. Don't forget how you first came to Christ.

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This removal is very specific. This is very specific. It's very serious.

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It's not a simple sin. It's not something that they did, you know what, someone may have sinned against you today before this service started.

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It's not like, man, they're out of here. They're one of those people that the

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Scripture's talking about, right? That's not what we're saying. This removal of these type of people is after we've thoroughly tried and exhausted all the biblical remedies that we can.

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This is for the person who won't relent from their sin. Okay? Now some would say, well,

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Jesus ate with sinners. Jesus ate with immoral people. Totally different category.

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When He ate with tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners, He did it in mind to give them the

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Gospel. Those were people of the world, right? And those meals had different objectives, different contexts.

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This prohibition here is on being bonded by specific meal sharing with people who are hypocrites.

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They're pretenders who act like they are one thing, but they are another.

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They're not truly Christian. In other words, it would have been profane to eat with the self -righteous

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Pharisees and Sadducees because they were hypocrites.

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They were liars. But it was redemptive to eat with sinners seeking repentance and salvation.

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So really, this man of incest is more like a Pharisee than those who were deemed to eat with Jesus.

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He is a hearer only and not a doer. And Paul says this cannot be tolerated in the new covenant community.

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Cannot. And he says believers can say that because they have the right to.

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Go to our final verses for today. Verses 12 and 13. He says we have the right to do this.

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For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

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But those who are outside God judges, remove the wicked man from among yourselves.

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He's saying we don't expel or kick out those who are already outside of us.

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You can't do that. We've been given authority in the name of Christ to adjudicate and discipline in the church.

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This is ecclesiastical authority. And so, what he means by judge, here's the definition, what he means by judge in this context is formally charging someone who calls themselves brother or sister and then taking necessary disciplinary action.

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What this does not mean is that the church cannot speak to the sins of the culture, okay?

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We must be a prophetic witness to the world around us. We must call people to repentance and renewal.

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John the Baptist, right? Case in point. He looked to Herod and said, you can't have your brother's wife.

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Oh, that's the church trying to speak to the state.

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No, we're allowed to do that. But what we can't do is implement punishment from the church into the state or into those outside of the church, okay?

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We must be a prophetic witness, but by God's power, those outside the church, we are to win to Christ and bring into the church.

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Yet, we cannot expect the church to exact discipline and judgments on those in the world.

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They would laugh, right? It doesn't work. Hey, you! You, person of the world.

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You're an adulterer. We're going to kick you out of the church. It's like, bro, I've never been in the church.

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They would go, what? That's ridiculous. We don't have that authority. We don't have that capacity. Now, as Christians, do we want other

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Christians to occupy the civil government that does have the authority to punish those who do evil?

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Yes. I want Christians in our government. Yes, you should too. Do we think that God has the best civil laws?

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Absolutely. Do we believe the church can and should inform the state on what

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God says in His Word? Absolutely. Romans 13 says so. We should.

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We should tell the state what is right and what is wrong. Christ wants the state to be

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His deacon, He says. His servant, Romans 13, while the church is the bride. We're the bride, and the state gets to be a servant of God who should punish those who do evil, reward those who do good, and that's the bounds that they have in Scripture.

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But essentially what he's saying is we can have a disciplinary say in people's moral behavior only within the church.

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Like an authority of being able to take action. We are allowed to keep our house in order.

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We can't expect unbelievers to act morally. Unbelievers are going to unbelieve, right?

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They're going to act immorally. Those outside the church, he says, are accountable to God even if they don't believe it.

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They will be judged by Him for what they have done. And again, I'm just going to restate some things.

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I have to make it so very clear because people get confused on this text. The type of judgment spoken of here is necessary disciplinary action.

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Necessary disciplinary action. That's the judging that's being talked of here.

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We can do that in the church. I can do that in the church. And God, though, will be the one to give discipline to unbelievers in the world every day.

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He handles that. Because oftentimes, the

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Bible shows, and this is radical to say for some reason even though it's all in the Bible, unbelievers outside in the world will do wicked things and then they will incur discipline.

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Bad things will happen to them. It's not karma. It's often consequences of their own sin.

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You become a drunkard, you'll probably ruin your marriage, your family, lose your job, and lose your life potentially.

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But then, even things happen to unbelievers in the world. And basically, if this context is necessary disciplinary action, then

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God does that. So you're wondering out there like, man, what's God doing with people who are acting sinfully out there?

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Well, when the state doesn't do what it's supposed to do and punish evil, Paul's saying don't worry,

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God will give discipline to people outside. But you, what we're allowed to do is exact discipline here in this church.

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I know for some of you, this is probably the first time you've ever heard something like this. It's right here in Scripture, right?

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It's undeniable. You see, I once was street preaching and a professing believer walked by and I was calling out and people in the abortion clinic lovingly, mothers, fathers, please, don't kill your baby today.

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We can help you. We can give you adoption services, places to live. We have doctors who are willing to deliver your babies.

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We can help with the costs. What's the biggest reason you feel you can't keep your baby right now? God commands you not to murder.

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You will not leave here unscathed. You will remember this day forever. Turn from this murderous act of abortion and I'll have a professing believer walk by and go, you know what

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Paul says? Don't judge people outside the church. You can't say what you just said.

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They are categorically wrong. That is erroneous. That is false.

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I can absolutely do that, okay? We can make judgments on outsiders and we can judge with righteous judgment as Jesus said, but what we cannot do is expect in that moment to have the authority to formally discipline people outside the church.

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So when that person walks by and they charge me with going, you're judging someone outside the church,

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I say, no, what Paul's talking about is I can't go right now, physically into that abortion clinic, pull that woman out, keep her from killing her baby, and then discipline her as if she's one of my parishioners.

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I can't do that. We're trying to get legislation in so that the state would do that.

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And if she does that without the church telling her not to or without the state telling her not to,

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Paul says, rest assured, God will handle her. But we hope that she repents.

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We hope that she turns, right? And so that's the context. There's a big difference here.

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Do you get what I'm saying? We can't exact discipline on people outside the church. We can in the church, but we're still supposed to make judgments, declarations of righteous judgment in both spheres, okay?

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Don't ever let anyone tell you because you didn't go to your cousin's gay wedding that you judged them.

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No, you didn't exact disciplinary action on your cousin who is gay and had a gay marriage ceremony.

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You made a judgment and you love them and you want to see them be freed from their sin and enjoy all the things that the

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Gospel has to give. But you did not judge. You made a judgment. Just like they just made a judgment by calling you and said, you judged, right?

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They just made a judgment on you. You see the fallacies that come from that?

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And so at the end of it all, a final call for expulsion is made of the man of incest.

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Paul essentially referenced, I told you, Deuteronomy 17, 19, 21, 22, and 24.

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And do you know where this quote in verse 13 comes from in the Old Testament? You see it in all caps there?

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Deuteronomy again. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. This is a recurring formula in the book of the law, okay?

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What happens over and over again in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, is a specific prohibition against some sort of sin is made.

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Incest, fornication, idolatry, false witness. And the Lord ends His statement commanding the

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Israelites saying, and if anyone does this, purge the evildoer from your midst.

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Deuteronomy 21, 21, So you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all

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Israel will hear of it and fear the Lord. Removing any man or woman who chooses immorality will keep sin from spreading from individual to individual in the church.

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It will remove the moral stain on the church in front of the unbelieving world, and it will remove

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God's hand of discipline on a church that otherwise would be shut down again.

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Recently, I've had some people who are very fearful, and when

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Ananias and Sapphira died in Acts, it put fear on the whole church for righteousness.

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It worked to good. When God had them remove people from their midst, and it says, and all

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Israel feared, that's a good, revering sort of fear. But what I've heard in the church, and I don't want you to start having an unhealthy fear, is that if you do one thing, you're out of here, okay?

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That's the hypersensitive thing that I'm talking about. These are people, do you see that? It doesn't say, and the person who one time did this, or the one time got drunk, or the one time did this, and they're calling themselves a

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Christian, that they're out. That's not what it says. It's that they've taken on a new identity.

01:00:06

They're not Christian. They're idolater. They're not Christian. They're adulterer.

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They've made it an unrepentant, continual sin, and it's their very identity.

01:00:18

Do you understand what I'm saying? So I don't want you to sit here and go, gosh, this church is hardcore.

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I do one thing, I'm out. I heard even a kid say that recently, that possibly little kids have said, are they going to do discipline on me?

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Don't tell Pastor Wade. Things like that. And that's not the case, okay? So as we conclude this morning, you might be thinking,

01:00:45

I get it. These two sermons in 1 Corinthians 5 articulate we cannot tolerate sin in the church.

01:00:53

We have to remove individuals who choose their sin over Christ. I'm on board.

01:00:59

But is there anything else I need to know? Here's a few final exhortations as we close this morning.

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Number one, if someone in the church is in habitual, unrepentant sin, correct them with respect and gentleness and love if you witness it.

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If you must, follow the steps of Matthew 18. It's what we're called to do.

01:01:25

Number two, if there is someone who is less mature than you in their walk in Christ, they're a newer believer, maybe newer to the faith, and they're stumbling a few times, this isn't a license to disassociate from them.

01:01:42

Well, if my pastor won't remove this person who's stumbling every once in a while, I'm going to stay away from them.

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I don't want them to taint me. That's wrong. That's the wrong thing. Well, they still sin in ways that I used to, and it kind of brings me down.

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No, you used to do those things too. The question is, are they repentant? Are they willing to be corrected?

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Are they willing to change? Then lovingly help them. That is literally what discipleship is.

01:02:13

Discipleship is to know the good things of God from His Word. And discipleship is, hey,

01:02:19

I'm struggling with sin. Will you help me get over it? That's what we're called to do. And it's not just the pastors who do that in the church.

01:02:27

We all do it. So you see someone stumbling, help them. Help them. It's not,

01:02:34

I'm going to get away from them. No, you help them, right? Just like you were helped by God as well.

01:02:40

Disciple the one who needs it. Number three, none of this has built the case to allow you or me to continually associate with unbelievers without the purpose to evangelize them, ok?

01:02:55

You see, if your closest friends to you, if your best friends to you, the people who you spend the most time with are of the world, and you intend to never give them the life -saving

01:03:09

Gospel of Christ, then it is sin. And it will become a matter of time,

01:03:15

Paul says, when keeping bad company will corrupt good morals. I'm a

01:03:20

Christian. I go to church. I even go to Bible study once a month. But all my friends and who

01:03:26

I'm with every day are unbelievers and I speak like them and I act like them. It's because you've been changed by them.

01:03:35

Give the Gospel to them. And one of two things is going to happen.

01:03:40

If you continually give the Gospel to a friend, and I don't mean to be an incessant, annoying person.

01:03:47

You give the Gospel. You put a pebble in their shoe. And one of two things is going to happen.

01:03:53

Eventually, they're going to turn to Christ. And you will have won your friend to Christ by God's grace and Spirit to His glory.

01:04:00

Or, you give the Gospel to unbelieving people, they get uncomfortable. They don't want to hear it anymore.

01:04:08

But if one of those two things isn't happening, and you're with unbelieving people all the time who are immoral, the pornos, as Paul said, the greedy, the covetous, the people who steal.

01:04:22

And if you're with them all the time and you don't intend to give them the Gospel, you won't change them. They'll change you.

01:04:28

That's the promise of Scripture. And therefore, number four, we don't pull out of the world.

01:04:36

Paul said that was impossible while we still live. We seek to change the world and those of it.

01:04:42

The sinners that Jesus ate with didn't corrupt Him. He changed them. If you have the same objective as Christ did, you will be okay.

01:04:52

And finally, number five, don't ever become these things.

01:05:00

All these things from this list here in chapter 5 and chapter 6 or Romans 1,

01:05:06

Galatians 5, Titus 3, those who make a habit of these sins, these sins, as I told you, become their very identity.

01:05:16

And as we will find out next week, those who change their identity from Christ to some wicked vice will find that they don't inherit the

01:05:26

Kingdom of God. These are some harsh but truthful texts. 1

01:05:31

Corinthians 6 These fill in the blank. He says do not inherit the Kingdom of God.

01:05:38

Heavy, heavy stuff. And He will remind us though,

01:05:44

He says, you were that way. Such were some of you. And we can repent.

01:05:50

We can repent today. We can experience God's grace. We were washed. We were made new. We were forgiven.

01:05:56

And those who truly are forgiven hate the sins that they commit.

01:06:03

So let me ask you that. Do you hate the sins that you commit? Do you hate them enough to run away from them than back to them?

01:06:14

That's the question, right? What do you run to? What do you run to in the time of trial?

01:06:21

Is it Christ or is it the vice? Christ or the vice? What do you run to, right?

01:06:29

The famous quote from John Owen from the mortification of sin reads, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

01:06:37

And so with that tune, with the authority of God's Word, I say to you, remove the sin from you so that sin never removes you, right?

01:06:52

Those are the words of the Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank

01:07:02

You for the message that went out today. Lord, these are indeed very, very deep and heavy things.

01:07:09

Necessary things though, Lord. God, make us more sensitive to our sin.

01:07:16

Holy Spirit, convict us of righteousness and sin. Lord, we confess as it says in Romans 7 that we don't do the things that we want to do and we do the things that we don't want to do.

01:07:34

We don't want to sin, but we sin and we don't want it, Lord. Help us,

01:07:41

God, by Your Spirit. We can't do this in and of ourselves. If it were left to us after You saved us, we would go back to the world.

01:07:51

We were idolaters. We were adulterers. We were these things. We can never go back.

01:07:58

There's nothing to go back to. The only way is up. The only way is into Your arms.

01:08:06

And so God, keep us from these things. Help us to never change our identities.

01:08:13

God, it makes me grieve for the people that we've lost recently to these things, who took on a new identity, a new name.

01:08:25

It grieves me, Lord. God, only

01:08:31

You can hold us back from such a thing. Preserve us and persevere us. Let no one snatch us out of Your hands.