about discipline in our families. You know, God has a family too. And God wants his kids to behave. When our kids don't behave, what do we do? No, what do we do for them? We discipline them, right? Right? What do you think God does when his kids don't behave? I was reminded of that this week when my granddaughter came out with another one of her famous statements. Her little brother, Connor, has been ill with a cold.
And so when given the opportunity to pray at the table, Natalie said yes, and here's how she prayed. Lord, we just wanna thank you for this day. Does that sound Christian or not? Yeah. Right, okay. And then she says, and Lord, please help Connor get better from his cold. And please Lord, please tell us what he did bad so he got the cold. He's not the way kids sing. God does discipline us though, doesn't he? He disciplines his family when we misbehave. We've all experienced that.
God's kids in Corinth have been misbehaving. And so God sends a message to them through Paul the apostle, and we're going to read it this morning in 1 Corinthians chapter five. Please open your Bible there, pull out your outline, and let's dig into God's word together. 1 Corinthians chapter five. This is what God says through Paul to his kids who are misbehaving. It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans.
A man has his father's wife, that is his stepmother. And you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of the fellowship the man who had done this? Even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. And I've already passed judgment on the one who did this, as if I were present.
When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan so that the sinful nature, I think better it literally says, so that the flesh may be destroyed. I think the NIV does not translate this well. So that the flesh may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough?
Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. God is a loving father who disciplines his children so that we can experience, what does it say there on the outline? All his favor. I hope that you'll let God write that in your heart this morning.
When God disciplines us, it is never to get even. When he disciplines us, it is never to pay back. When we are disciplined by our loving father, it is always so that he can pour into our lives the favor he so much yearns to show to us. Hebrews 12, six says, the Lord disciplines those he, what? He loves. Not those he's mad at, those he loves. And he punishes everyone he accepts as a son. God wants to teach the Corinthians some important lessons about discipline.
And so, through the apostle Paul, he first brings to their attention what the accusation is. This is not something that's a secret. It's well known in Corinth, and the word is spreading beyond Corinth. And so, the accusation is explained to them that there is a man in their church who is living in a pattern of sexual immorality. Now, the word that Paul uses here is the word pornea. That's the Greek word. You can see that we get our English from it, porn or pornography.
It's a very broad word, and it's meaning in the Greek language. It means any kind of sexual intimacy, sexual relationship that is outside of marriage. Any kind. But Paul makes it more clear here what's involved. It's not just a general thing. He says there's a man living with his stepmother. We don't know where his father was. Maybe he died. But he's a Christian, and he's living with his stepmother. Paul says even the pagans despise this kind of thing.
It's not an acceptable kind of incest, even to the Romans. The result, Paul is saying, is that the church had lost its positive witness in the community. Instead of being a beacon of hope in Corinth, a city that was given to immorality, famous for its immorality, instead of being a beacon of purity and holiness to the pagans of Corinth, the church had actually become a scandal, a scandal in the city. God is upset. Now he's not just upset because there's a man in the church who's living this way.
He's upset because of the attitude that the Corinthians had about it. He exposes the attitude in verse two. They were proud of their tolerance. Here are people who say they know God, people who've trusted in Jesus Christ, people who believe the scriptures to be the word of God, and that they were tolerant of sin, even sin right in their midst.
It reminds me of some of the kinds of language that we hear, the statements that we hear from Christians or so-called Christians today in our culture, who are willing to tolerate any kind of sin for the sake of being broad-minded and accepting. That's the very attitude that God condemns here. They were proud of the fact that they were tolerant of their sin. Paul says instead, you should be filled with grief about this. You should be weeping as though you had lost someone that you love.
Your heart should be filled with sorrow that this man is choosing to live like he is, but instead, you're boasting about it. Their hearts had become calloused and insensitive to what sin really does, what it is. And so instead of being ashamed or even sorrowing and grieving over this man who had fallen into this pattern, they were proud that they accepted him into the fellowship.
The result of their attitude was that they felt no need to deal with sin, and they were blissfully ignorant of the stench of their testimony in the nostrils of God. And so God writes to his children who are misbehaving here, more than just the man, in immorality, by the way. The church was misbehaving. And so Paul writes to tell them the action that he expected from them, and that takes up the rest of our text. Now before I get into this, I want to say some things regarding judging.
Paul expected the Corinthians to be discerning and judging regarding this member of the church. Before we deal with that, I want to say that we need to be cautious about judging. For example, Jesus in Matthew chapter seven says that we should be very careful about judging the motives of other people. We can't see people's motives. Motives are hidden. Now God knows what motives are, but we don't.
And so Jesus says be cautious about judging motives, because the kind of judgment that you give out to others is the kind of judgment you're going to get back. Be careful about that. Here in Corinthians even, he says, be careful about judging the ministries of other people. He says, in fact, I don't even judge my own ministry. He says, I leave that to the Lord to judge. Sometimes we get very critical in judging of the way other people do things. We need to be very careful about that.
But Paul does expect, and God does expect, that his children will discern when the family or when we ourselves are misbehaving. Now what Paul is going to tell the church here to do is sort of on a scale or continuum. It's the extreme end of it. Church discipline or family discipline actually begins long before this. For example, first of all, I am to examine my own heart.
One of the benefits of the Lord's Supper is that every time we take the Lord's Supper, we examine ourselves to be sure that we don't have unconfessed sin. If we have unconfessed sin in our hearts, then we will partake of the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, it says in 1 Corinthians 11. And in doing so, we bring judgment on ourselves. So we should first judge ourselves, we should examine ourselves, says God. But then we're also to look out for one another in the family.
In Galatians, Paul says, if you see a member of the family, a brother, a sister, who has fallen into sin, seek to restore that person. We're to make a judgment about it. Oh, what she's doing, what he's doing, is going to harm them. I need to do something about it. Paul says, seek to restore them and be careful yourself as you fall into temptation. But go after them. We have a responsibility for one another in the family. That's part of God's plan of discipline for his children too.
And as one of God's children, I not only need to be looking out for others, but I need to accept it when they're looking out for me. And come to me and say, I'm perceiving something, is this true and can I help you? I need to listen to what they're saying. Now if my brother offends me, I'm to go to my brother. Is that right? That's what Jesus said, I'm to go to my brother and then I'm to bring my offering to the Lord. I'm just trying to get it straightened out.
If I offend my brother, I'm to take the initiative. I'm to go to him and get it straightened out. Now if my brother won't listen to me, Jesus says I'm to get another member of the family and I'm to go to my brother, my sister. And I am to appeal with his help, his mediation that we might get reconciled, that things might get right between us. And Jesus says that if that doesn't work, take another step down the scale. Take it to the leaders of the church.
Ask them to get involved in this to try to help you. Sometimes they can help and sometimes it doesn't help. But leaders of the church have a responsibility to try to intervene, to see if something can be done to bring reconciliation. All of these are early steps in God's discipline of his children. But there's one that's left for the end down here. The very extreme one and that's the action that Paul is telling the Corinthians they need to take. What were they to do?
Well verse five puts it this way. They were to put the offender outside the fellowship of the church. It says hand the man over to Satan. Now do you find that almost shocking language? Hand the man over to Satan. First of all, there is an implication here that by being a part of a church, within the fellowship of a church, there is a hedge of protection around me that is in place and prevents Satan from attacking me in certain ways.
That's one of the reasons I think every believer ought to belong to a local church. Because it puts a hedge around us that prevents Satan from attacking us in certain ways. But here, God's plan for discipline in the most extreme is that that hedge of protection be taken away and that Satan, Satan be allowed to attack that person's flesh, meaning his body. And as a result of that, the person will begin to feel the pain of what he's doing.
Because Satan has an entrance into his life that he wouldn't have otherwise. You see, this is a very serious step for a church to take. And so we have to assume that there were earlier steps that had failed in Corinth. This is the most extreme action a church can take against a member. Paul puts it later in verse 13, expel the wicked man from among you. The church is to be discerning, it's to make a judgment. This is wrong. There's no repentance.
Therefore, you may no longer be a part of this fellowship. That's what they were to do. Now, how were they to do it? Paul goes to some length here to explain. He says, first of all, they're to do it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is, with the authority of Jesus himself. They were to see this as a delegated authority from Jesus to take the action with the authority of Jesus. They're to do it with unity.
He says, when you're assembled together, when you're gathered together, take this action. It's not to be done in secret. It's not to be done by part of the church. It's to be done by the entire church. All must participate in the exclusion. This is part of God's discipline for his family. Say, does this work? Well, it did in Corinth. The good news, the wonderful good news is that this man who was excluded from the fellowship repented.
And because he repented, Paul tells them in 2 Corinthians, receive him back. Now look, he's sorrowing. He's sorrowing for what he did. It's a genuine sorrow. You see the fruit of the repentance in his life. Now take him back. They were sort of holding him off, apparently. Now why did it work? Because we assume they all did it. I've seen this kind of discipline hampered in the life of a person before, when the church takes the action and he has supporters in the church who stick with him.
And say, well, we support you. That's what they chose. We're not on that side. When there's sin involved. Friends, we never do another person a favor when we support them in their sin. Paul says thirdly, you're to do this with haste. I'm not with you yet. I will be soon, but I'm not there. But I am with you in spirit. He says get it done now. Don't wait till I come. Take this action now. And finally he says do it with power. You're to do this with the power of Jesus himself.
With the ability, the moral ability of Christ, his might, take this action. Do what Jesus would do if he were there. And by the way, he is. Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there what? I will be in the midst of them. And that statement that Jesus made in Matthew 18, if you look at it, is in the context of discipline. What do you do when a brother sins? And Jesus says where two or three are gathered together in my name, I'm there. He's here spiritually.
Now why were they to do this? To be mean? No, they were to do it first of all, for the salvation of the wrongdoer, verse five. Paul puts it this way. So that the flesh may be destroyed. So that his body will be attacked, so he will face physical deterioration. Satan will be able to get at him in ways that he could not before. That's part of it. By the way, this is similar to what John says in 1 John chapter five when he talks about the sin unto death.
The sin unto death is the sin of a believer, not an unbeliever. The sin unto death is not a particular sin that a person might commit. It is a pattern of sinful action that is not repented of in a believer's life. John says that that pattern, if it remains, there's no repentance, all the steps of discipline are gone through. It may be God's choice to say, my child, I love you so much, I can't stand to see you living this way. I'm calling you home early.
Right here in 1 Corinthians in chapter 11, Paul is going to say to them, because some of you partake of the Lord's Supper, not discerning, not examining your hearts first. He says some of you are sick, and some of you have already died. God wants his children to behave. He takes it very seriously. Now part of the reason was so that the body would be destroyed, but then he says that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
So Paul is not saying that this man is put outside the church and he loses his salvation. In fact, he says just the opposite. He's put outside the church, and the devil is able to attack him in ways that hopefully will bring him to a senses. But nonetheless, he will be saved when Jesus comes, says Paul, because he belongs to Christ. Now Paul says for his sake, for his sake, take this action. But secondly, he says for the sake of the church, take this action.
For the sake of you, the body, take this action. The destructive, divisive effects of sinful attitudes and behaviors will take a toll on you. He then goes into this explanation of leaven or yeast, and we all know how yeast works. It spreads through the body of dough, right? Makes good bread. But Paul says, sin is like yeast, and a little bit of it will affect the whole church. Therefore, none of you dares to be indifferent about a pattern of sin in the church.
God wants you to be free of the yeast of sin at work in your midst. He goes back to this Old Testament picture. He says, Christ the Passover lamb has been sacrificed for you. The spotless lamb has been slain, his blood has been shed, and you've been forgiven. Does anybody know what came after the feast of Passover in the Old Testament? That was one day, then there was a seven day period following that called the feast of unleavened bread.
After they had observed the Passover, the Jews were then not to eat bread with leaven for the next seven days. It had to be unleavened bread. Now Paul uses that as an analogy, and he's saying to the church, look, you've been forgiven by God. Christ the Passover lamb has been sacrificed for you, but now you are eating from the bread in the Christian life. You're eating, you're feeding on Christ. Do not bring leaven into this feast. Do not bring sin into this feast.
For the sake of the church, deal with it. Do not incorporate the yeast of a vicious character or being wicked, but rather live with the bread of sincerity, being open, authentic, truthful, be a person of integrity. God has a family, and God loves his family so much he can't stand to see us living in patterns that will destroy us. Therefore, he brings discipline to us. And part of his discipline is that the family needs to look after ourselves too. It's something like parents.
We parents discipline our children, and when they're young, they obey because of parental discipline. But as they grow up, we parents understand that we can't always be around. And so we teach them not only to obey because of parental discipline, because of self-discipline. They learn to discipline themselves. But we also know that there are things in our own lives, patterns in our lives, that we can't deal with ourselves by self-discipline. And so there's a whole other step.
It's called spirit discipline. It's trusting the Holy Spirit to give me the power to change the patterns in my life. I can't do it myself. God wants us as his family to learn self-discipline. But he also wants us to enjoy the discipline of the Holy Spirit, so that we're being changed as his people from the inside out. And we have new patterns developing in our lives. Well, what are the lessons our heavenly father wants us to learn from this text today? Just wanna mention three of them.
The first one is this, that God takes my sin seriously. That's because sin is terribly destructive to me. It offends God, yes, but it also destroys me. And God loves me so much, he cannot stand to see my life go up in flames. God loves you so much. He's so crazy about you, he just can't stand to see sin eating away at who you are in Christ. And so he brings discipline into your life. And sometimes that's discipline because of your own self-judgment.
And sometimes it's because a brother or a sister comes to you and says, you know, gotta tell you what I'm observing. And if I'm wrong, forgive me, but here's what I see. And you listen to him, and you ponder. And sometimes it's because a leader in the church comes. Hopefully it never comes to the point where we have to be excluded from the fellowship and we miss all of those earlier opportunities. God takes my sin very seriously.
The second lesson I need to see is this, that my sin affects others around me. Not only must I not play with sin because I will get burned, but my sin affects those around me, my family, my spouse, my coworkers, my church. I never sin alone. The effects of my sin ripple out in my relationships. Therefore there can be no compromise with it because it's like leaven, it's like yeast. It permeates, it ferments, and brings decay.
And folks, it not only happens in my life, it not only happens in my family, in our church, but when our society tolerates sin, it will destroy our society, and that's where we are. And that's the importance that we as the people of God get this petition signed and get this on the ballot, to do what we can to preserve our society. Our society does not understand this principle. It's so sold out to tolerance and broad-mindedness. Why does God put these standards out there?
Not because he wants to see if we will cross the line, not because he's trying to be mean to us or to be a killjoy. It's because he sets the standards because he knows what's beyond those standards destroys us personally and as a people. That's why he does it. That's why the standards are important. My sin affects others around me. But thirdly, delay in dealing with my sin only worsens it. Delay in dealing with my sin only makes it worse than it was.
How wise a person is then to deal with sin early on. It's as though I went to a doctor and a doctor said, Gale, I've got bad news for you. You've got cancer, there's this tumor, there's malignancy, and it's right in there. You know what I'm gonna say to him? I'm gonna say, well, let me think about it for six months and I'll get back to you is what we ought to do. You think so? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. What I'm gonna say to him is, where's the table, where's the knife?
Let's get going on this right now. Because I know that cancer will continue to eat away at me as long as it's there and sin is the same way. When I have an attitude or behavior that is destroying me, God wants something done about it. So how do you deal with sin? What do you do with sin? It's very simple. You openly confess it to God. Do you remember David, after he had sinned with Bathsheba, he tried to cover that whole mess up for a year.
He had sinned with her, he had killed her husband, it was a stench. He tried to cover it up and ignore, pretend it didn't happen. But all that time, he began to waste away. In Psalm 32, he tells us even how it affected him physically. And finally, he did something about it. Listen to his words. Then I acknowledged my sin to you, Lord, and did not cover up my iniquity. Aren't we masters at wanting to cover it up? He said, I didn't cover up my iniquity.
I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Oh, my friend, will you see how much God loves you today? And the reason he wants you to own up, he wants you to confess your sin is so that it won't continue to destroy you and destroy those around you. God delights to forgive us. And the reason he brings discipline into our lives is so that we can know the full measure of his favor.
He so wants to bless you and bless your family that he calls you away from that pattern, away from the attitudes that are destroying you. He calls you to confess it to him openly so that he might forgive you and put you back in the place of blessing. Will you let him do that for you today?
He is like that father of the prodigal son, and he stands out there in the road, and he's looking down that road waiting for you to pop up over that hill so that he can run and embrace you and love on you as you come back home to him. Will you come? Let's pray together. Father, I don't know where this message finds us this morning. I know that all of us deal with sin every day of our lives.
We still have patterns, thought, and action that not only displease you, but they destroy us, and we know that. And Father, there are some of us here today who have kind of hung on to that. And instead of confessing it, we have covered it over. We've excused it. We've explained why your standard doesn't apply to us, but it does. Forgive us for that. Oh God, I pray that today my brother, my sister, who's under your discipline, will respond today, right now, and not let it go any further.
Help them to come. As we're praying, the team is going to sing a verse and a chorus of a hymn. If you'd like to come for prayer, I invite you to slip out and do that. Would you stand, please, with our heads bowed? I'm going to be here in the front. Pastor Dave will be here. Others will be here who can pray with you. I want to invite you to come this morning. Just openly confess to the Lord. I want to get back to that place. Come today, will you?