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Reading 1 Corinthians 5:12-13 where Paul urges the church to remove the wicked man from among them who had committed sexually immorality. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
1 Corinthians 5 .13 says, purge the evil person from among you, that he may recognize his sin and repent, and the bride of Christ remain pure when we understand the text.
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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. We're back to our study in 1 Corinthians 5. We'll finish up the chapter today. I'll begin by reading verses 8 -13 in the Legacy Standard Bible, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote you in my letter, not to associate with sexually immoral people.
I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you, not to associate with any so-called brother, if he is a sexually immoral person, or greedy, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one.
For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Are you not to judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God will judge. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves. And that statement, which you've also read in the English Standard Version as purge the evil person from among you, this is a reference back to Deuteronomy 13, in the law, where a person in Israel who was guilty of the sins that Paul has talked about here in verse 11, they were to be purged from Israel.
How were they purged? They were stoned to death. By the grace of God, we're not stoning anybody to death in our churches, but nonetheless, those who do evil do not have a place with the people of God.
They do not belong to the body of Christ. In fact, as Paul says with Timothy, in 2 Timothy chapter two, that if somebody is doing such evil, if they're allowed to remain there, then they spread like gangrene.
It affects the entire body. So Paul says to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord, that he would learn what he has done is so evil that he cannot be part of the body of Christ so that he may repent.
But then he goes on to the church to say, clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump. Let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Now, I said to you yesterday that what we're reading about here in first Corinthians five, we're reading about church discipline. The chapter that is often cited regarding church discipline is Matthew chapter 18.
And it's there that we have a four step process of discipline. I kind of went through this with you last week, but let me kind of briefly go over it again. So in Matthew 18, beginning in verse 15, Jesus says, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.
If he listens to you, you have won your brother. That's step one. Verse 16 is step two. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.
Then we have step three. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Now, step four. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the Gentile and the tax collector.
In other words, purge the evil person from among you. There's the four step process that we have. Now, that process begins with sin that has been committed between two people. So you identify somebody who is in sin, you confront that person, he won't repent.
And so then going through the process of church discipline from there. We have a different matter of church discipline addressed in Titus chapter three. Listen to what Paul says to Titus in Titus three, beginning in verse 10.
Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted in sinning, being self-condemned. That's a three-step process. So step one is reject a factious man, correct him once after a first and second warning.
So you correct him once, you correct him a second time. And then after that, you remove him. That's the third step. So there's a three-step process. Now, what is a factious man? Well, in context, this is with regards to a teacher who is teaching falsely.
So with a teacher, you're going to warn him once, you're going to warn him a second time. And if he continues to teach falsely, spreading division, because that's what false teaching does, then he's to be removed and his removal is on his own head.
He is self-condemned. So we have two different processes of church discipline, Matthew chapter 18, a four-step process, Titus chapter three, a two-step process. This one that we're reading here, in first Corinthians chapter five, this is a two-step process.
So a lot of times we'll read first Corinthians five and we'll take the pattern of church discipline that Jesus gives in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 17, and we'll impose it onto first Corinthians five.
But that's not to be our understanding of this. This is a very public sin that this man has committed. And it's to be a two-step process. It's to be brought before the church and he's to be removed, two steps.
It's not even a matter of judging whether or not he's done this sin. It's confirmed that he's done it. Paul knows he's done it. The church knows that he's done it. And this isn't a thing of, you just confront him and ask him to repent.
And he goes, okay, I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry that I slept with my father's wife. And then the whole church goes, okay, well, he's apologized, he's repentant, and so now we're done with it. This is a serious sin.
So that's the way we're gonna treat this? Just confront him one-on-one, and if he repents, then you've won your brother, and that's it. The whole matter is over, right? No, because this sin is known, and even the Gentiles know about it, the pagans, and even they know this is really bad.
So we're talking about a public sin here. What needs to happen is this man needs to be removed. Paul is saying, where I'm at, I've already judged this man is removed. Two-step process. It comes before the church, and he's removed.
And hopefully he's going to repent. That's gonna be between him and the Lord. The church needs to be faithful to do what God has instructed according to his word. Now, I believe by the grace of God, this man did repent, based on what we read in 2 Corinthians 2, beginning in verse five.
Let me read this for you. Paul says, if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow, not to me, but in some degree, in order not to say too much, to all of you. Sufficient for such a one is this punishment, which was inflicted by the majority.
So the majority of the church had voted and removed him from their midst, as Paul had instructed them to do. Verse seven, so that on the contrary, you should rather graciously forgive and comfort him, lest such a one be swallowed up by excessive sorrow.
Therefore, I encourage you to reaffirm your love for him. For to this end also I wrote, so that I might know your proven character, whether you are obedient to all things. And the church indeed was obedient to the instruction that Paul had given them to purge the evil person from among them.
So now Paul knows the genuineness of this church to follow God's instruction. And he knows that this man has repented and is telling the church to forgive him and welcome him back. But one whom you graciously forgive anything, I graciously forgive also.
This is verse 10. For indeed what I have graciously forgiven, if I have graciously forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ, so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
So remember that in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says, I've judged this man from afar. And now in 2 Corinthians 2, he says, I've forgiven this man from afar. You must purge him from your midst, which they've done.
And so now he says, that man is repentant. He is full of sorrow. He is grieved over what he has done. So forgive him and welcome him back. And we see the grace of God over this situation. That's what we hope to happen.
If ever we have to go through church discipline, if ever we have to do that to somebody, one of our members, we hope they would repent and they would come back and the grace of God is shown. And once again, we are a body growing together into the head who is Christ.
But of course, that's gonna be a rare thing. More often than not, a person who has to be put out from the church won't come back. Now I share this with you. I talk about the four-step process of discipline, the three-step process, the two-step process that you may learn from this, you may obey God's word and that you not make the same mistake that I once made.
A few years ago, this was at a different church that I was serving at. One of our elders was caught in adultery. I found out on a Sunday, it was the first Sunday of the year and this elder had served the Lord's supper that morning.
We had an interview with a family for membership that afternoon and then it was about 11 o 'clock that night when his wife had called me and told me that he was furious and left home and she found letters from his mistress.
I looked at the evidence and it was irrefutable. Not only had this man been committing adultery, but it looked like he was planning on running away with this woman as well. I tried texting him, he did not reply, it was late at night.
I had a pastor friend that I knew was up that late and I called him, we both shared tears over the situation, we prayed together, we talked about the next course of action that needed to happen. Of course, this man standing as an elder was over.
If you've listened to this podcast for the years that I've been doing it, then you know what I've taught about this. A man who has committed adultery as a pastor or an elder is no longer above reproach.
He's no longer a one woman man, according to the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, one through seven. He's made a shipwreck of his ministry and is permanently disqualified from ever holding that office again.
I was so messed up over this. This was a man I had ministered with and he had ministered to me. I had told him that I would sit under his preaching and attend a church where he was a pastor. And he said it was one of the greatest compliments that he ever received.
And he threw it all away for this other woman. So thoroughly lied about it and covered it up. There was no way of knowing just how far back all this went. If he told me, how could I believe him? He had served the Lord's supper that morning while he was committing adultery.
Was there no fear of God before his eyes? As we're gonna read coming up here in 1 Corinthians 11, there are people who have died whom the Lord judged with death because they partook of the Lord's table in an unworthy manner.
This man's soul was at stake and I feared for him. My heart, of course, broke for his wife, for his kids. I was just wrecked. I was in tears. I prayed all night. I did not sleep. The sun comes up that next morning and a pastor friend of mine and another member of the church, we went over to this man's office and we confronted him.
And he would not repent. He acknowledged that all of it was true. He had been committing adultery. In fact, I found out later that the woman he was sleeping with was there in the office that day when I confronted him.
I probably even passed right by her, but he said he would not go home. We said, do you want to honor Christ? And he said, yes, I do. And we said, then honor Christ and go home. And he said, not gonna do it.
This was a man who knew he'd done something that was worthy of eternal judgment in hell if he did not repent. And he sat there and refused. And in that moment, he would rather go to hell than be reconciled to his wife.
His wife asked me what was gonna happen and I told her that the congregation needed to know what he had done and that he was no longer an elder. And she was quite angry about that. I really didn't think anything of it at the time.
I knew she was angry at her husband and she was expressing that toward me and I just let her do it. I didn't try to argue with her. Whatever this man had done to me, he had done far worse to her and to his children.
I told her that my first priority was to get him home, but it wasn't the only thing that I had to think about. I talked it over with the other elders. We agreed that the best course of action was to draft a statement that would be read before the congregation.
I told the wife that I would let her see it too. And she begged me, absolutely begged me, not to make public that he had committed adultery. She did not want her children finding out that way. They knew that mom and dad were fighting, but they did not know about the adultery.
So of course my heart broke for the family. I could not imagine how embarrassing this was for all of them. Of course the wife didn't want anybody to know what he had done. I can totally sympathize with that.
But based on what I saw in scripture, I could not see how I could address the congregation and not tell the church exactly what this man had done. I think scripture is clear that I needed to be clear.
1 Timothy 5, 19 to 20 says, do not admit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. We had that. As for those who persist in sin, and it was quite evident that he did not want to repent.
He's persisting in sin. It says, rebuke them in the presence of all so that the rest may stand in fear. So we've talked about three other processes of church discipline. Here's a fourth one where Paul is talking about how an elder is to be disciplined.
And I needed to tell the church exactly what he did. He was an elder. You handle disciplinary matters with elders and pastors differently than you would handle discipline with any other member. James 3, 1 says, not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
I know that as much for myself. Now at this point in this whole thing, I think he's gone. All the evidence seemed to indicate that he was running away with this other woman. He had been confronted. He said he was not gonna repent.
He was not going to go home. However, later that week, this is all still in the same week. He calls me up and says he's ready to go home and work things out. And I was stunned again, twice in the same week, this guy's knocked me off my feet.
Becky and I took their kids while he went home and talked things out with his wife. And then when they were ready, I took the kids home to them. And I was hopeful. It seemed like an answer to prayer, but there was still the matter of addressing the church with this.
The man told me that he would be in church that Sunday and he would accept whatever it was that I had to say. So I wrote the statement and I sent it to some friends of mine to get their input. We as elders had never been through anything like this before, disciplining one of our own.
So I consulted some more seasoned men, guys who had been through things like this, just to look things over and confirm that we were doing everything right. The statement said, as I had written it, it said that he was being removed from Elder because he had committed adultery.
But in one of the edits that I received back, that part about him committing adultery was cut out. Now, my heart was already broken over this. The wife didn't want me to announce it anyway. So I really thought nothing of it.
I agreed with the edits and I sent it on to the elders and we signed the statement. On Sunday, that coming Sunday after church, all of this has just transpired over a week. We held a special meeting at which I was going to address the membership and read the statement.
And right away, something did not feel right. Something in my conscience just wasn't clicking. I'm looking at the statement and I know what's missing. Furthermore, this man who just a week ago served the Lord's supper to this body while in adultery was in attendance at this special meeting.
The whole thing was very awkward. I did not think that this was right. I read the statement. It was very difficult for me to get through it. The man apologized to the body in tears and everyone went over to him to hug him.
And I'm watching this going, no one knows what he's done. He's not sorry. Sorry for what? This is not a confession. He hasn't confessed to anything. And I'm standing there looking at this and I knew we did not do this right.
And it was my fault. I was the pastor. This fell on me. I listened to bad advice. I knew what the scripture said, but I took unwise counsel instead of the counsel of the scriptures, instead of being obedient to the scriptures.
What should have happened, despite the fact that he said that he wanted to go home and work things out with his wife, despite the fact that his wife did not want the adultery to be made public, what should have happened is that the evil person should have been purged from our midst until he could demonstrate that he was truly grieved over his sin and be reconciled with his wife and later to be reconciled with his church.
We needed to cleanse out the old leaven. I'm saying this to you, knowing that this was all on me. I'm telling this to you so that you don't make the same mistake that I did. Guys, church discipline is hard.
It's supposed to be. Obedience is hard because we're naturally sinful people. We are not holy. Christ makes us holy, sanctifies us with the washing of water through the word, Ephesians 5, 26. But instead of obeying God's word, I took bad advice and things just got messier.
For a few months, it seemed like things were going okay. It wasn't great. The couple fought all the time. They said they wanted to reconcile, but I could not get either one of them to show grace to each other.
To make a long story short, everything came to a head. He left home again. And this time it was in front of the children. And it was evident that nothing had changed. And when he left home the second time, then I made public to the church what he had done.
See, I was still treating this whole thing, the whole disciplinary process that he was under, I was treating him as a man who had been an elder and was caught in adultery as an elder because that's what happened.
I told him that as part of his sanctification, as part of bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, as it says in Matthew 3, 8, he needed to tell his children what he had done. Otherwise they would believe it's okay to hide your sin.
I also told him that he needed to be the one to tell the church what he had done before the process of his discipline and his reconciliation with the church was complete. He needed to tell the church that he committed adultery.
He needed to confess that he served the Lord's supper while in adultery. I should have been the one to tell the church that. I should have told them in the first place, but because I agreed not to make it public, I left that on him to work that out as evidence of his repentance.
And there were times he acted very flippantly about it and I doubted that he was genuinely sorry. And then he left home again and confirmed that he was not sorry. Since I was still treating this as discipline upon an elder, I told the church that he left home and that he was unfaithful to his wife and his kids and that he turned his back on his church.
I saw this as disciplining a man who had been an elder because that's what it was. But he and his wife did not see it that way. See, he was no longer an elder. So in their eyes, he was like every other church member.
And what I had done by telling everybody about what he had done was sinister and malicious. And they believed I needed to lose my job over it. And they tried, they tried to get me fired. It was like the one thing this couple could agree upon.
The one thing they worked together on was getting Gabe fired. It was devastating. They were contacting people in church. They were calling former members who had moved away. They were making up stuff and accusing me and other people in the church of things that were not true.
Now, I'm grateful to God that the church did not stand for that. The elders and the deacons were unanimous that there was no wrongdoing on my part. The couple was removed from the church and they were excommunicated.
The membership voted to remove them. And I haven't seen them since. And every once in a while, they come into my mind and I will pray for them. I still hope the Lord does work on their hearts and they will be reconciled to God and to one another.
I pray for those kids. When the whole thing was done, after the couple had been removed, I confessed to the church that I did not do this process exactly right. There were things that if I could go back, I would have done differently.
Now, it wouldn't have changed the outcome. The husband and the wife were unwilling to reconcile. That's between them and the Lord. But nonetheless, I had not done what I should have done in the first place.
I told the church that, but I don't know that I ever said, I don't know that I ever made clear what I would have done differently. And I'm telling you now so that you would not repeat the same mistake that I made.
When we don't follow what God says in his word, that's pride. You may think your heart is in the right place, but if your heart is not oriented according to what God's word says, it's actually in the wrong place.
The bride of Christ is to be pure, purge the evil person from among you, cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb also was sacrificed.
Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Heavenly Father, we ask for your forgiveness for those times when we knew the right way to go and we did not go, we went the other way instead.
We pridefully went our own way. As we read in Isaiah 53, all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. The Passover lamb has been sacrificed that our sins would be forgiven, that we may stand before you righteous, blameless on the day of judgment.
And so Father, we ask for your continued mercy that the old leaven may be cleansed and that we would be a new lump, that we would walk in uprightness and holiness before you, being sanctified until that great day when the glory of our Lord Christ appears.
Keep us in your affections, in your love, and may we show the grace of God to others. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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