>> Jen: Good morning, faith listeners. Today we're going to discuss first Corinthians five on the bible explained podcast, so stay tuned. I had a really nice weekend. I went to go visit my sister, and we had a lot of fun. I, uh, got to see my niece. She's growing up way too fast, and I am trying to take every moment I can to spend some more time with her and also more time with my sister. You know, I'm getting a little bit older. I'm now in my thirties.
And, you know, when you're in your twenties, you don't think about spending, uh, time with family as much. But I'm starting to really think about that because, you know, my parents are getting older, and my sister and my brother in law are getting older, and I'm getting older, and my niece is getting older, and everybody's just getting older. And so I just want to spend more time with my family. So let me know. When you turned 30, did you ever start thinking more about mortality
and, uh, just wanted to spend more time with your family? I'd like to hear about that. But today we're going to be talking about first corinthians five and discussing this man who was in a really gross relationship with somebody in his family and how the church, the corinthian church, was allowing this incestuous relationship to fester, and we're doing nothing about it. In fact,
they were boasting about it. So let's get into that. Let's get into why the church might boast over something like that. This and what scripture's response is to how the Corinthians were acting in this situation. So I'll be reading from the web version,
as always. But feel free to grab your version of the Bible and also your cup of coffee or tea this morning as we discuss first Corinthians five one eight, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one has his father's wife. You are arrogant and didnt mourn instead that he who had done this deed might be removed from
among you. For I most certainly, as being absent in body, but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has done this thing. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You being gathered together and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump, purge out the old yeast, that you may be a new lump even as you are unleavened. For indeed, Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore, let's keep the feast not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So the first few chapters so far, Paul has been addressing various issues within the corinthian
church. The first being that the corinthian church was very divided because they were following one preacher over another preacher. And Paul was like, well, you know, the preachers that you're all listening to all preach the same gospel. So why are you being divided against which preacher you like better? So that's stupid. Don't be divided over silly things. And the second thing Paul talked about was that the
corinthian church was very arrogant. They believed that they were fully spiritually mature, that they didn't have to work on anything, that they were basically reigning as kings and queens of Christ. And Paul was like, well, actually you're not very spiritually mature, and here's why. Then he goes into it in this chapter, he said, it's reported that there is sexual immorality among you. And such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one has his
father's wife. So Paul just gets straight to the point in verse one. He's like, you know, there's a report going around that there is a guy in your congregation who is living in terrible sexual immorality. And it's so terrible that even the gentiles of Corinth don't do this particular sexual immorality. Don't forget the, the area of Corinth, where the corinthian church was, was notorious for being very debaucherous because it was located right on the sea. And so
sailors would come and go. And I believe there were twelve temples in Corinth alone where one could go to get a temple prostitute and do idol worship and all sorts of other crazy sexual things. So the city of Corinth was known for having a very sexualized culture.
In fact, there was an old fashioned saying in the days of Paul, and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but if somebody said, that person over there is acting like a Corinthian, there was a, ah, huge insult saying that that person was acting like a pervert. So the city of Corinth was very well known in the ancient world, ancient roman world, as being the city of just sexual immorality. However, the corinthian church was supposed to be different.
They were not supposed to be partaking in sexual immorality, and they certainly weren't supposed to be allowing sexual immorality inside of the church. And so Paul's like, you guys have become so arrogant that you're actually allowing sexual immorality in your church. And this particular sexual immorality that you're allowing is so bad that even the corinthians around you don't do it. He's like the Corinthians who are known for their debauchery, don't even partake in this particular
sin. And that sin was that one of the members of the corinthian church had his father's wife. And this was an old fashioned saying to mean that he was either living with this woman or had become married to her. So this man was sleeping with his stepmother. And that is really weird. We don't hear about that even in today's society. You know, I would argue that America today is probably on a similar level to where the city of Corinth was back in Paul's day, where we allow all sorts of
different sexual behaviors. But we don't often hear about people marrying their stepmothers or stepfathers, because that's just weird. Who wants to marry their stepmother or their stepfather? That's disgusting. So even here in America, non Christians don't even partake in that. But yet that was what the Corinthian church was allowing. They had this guy who was living in sin with his stepmother. So some people wonder, was the man married to the stepmother?
And, um, you know, we aren't really sure. If you look at the greek word for sexual immorality that Paul uses, which is pornea, which is where we get the word porn in, um, our english language, the word porneia typically meant somebody doing a sexual behavior outside of marriage. So with that meaning in mind, it could be that this man was just living with his
stepmother and wasn't actually married to her. But some people argue that this man did, in fact, marry his stepmother, and the church even allowed that and was okay with that. And Paul is like, no, how can you be okay with this? He says, you are arrogant and didn't mourn. Instead that he who had done this deed might be removed from among you. So Paul is talking about
church discipline in this sense. He's saying, you should have been mourning and very upset that one of your members of your church was engaging in this sexual sin, but instead, you've become arrogant and have allowed this sin to be a part of your church, and you're either okay with it or you're turning a blind eye to it. He says, you need to make sure that this man is removed from
among you. But I'll get more into that in a second. Then in verse three, he says, for I most certainly, as being absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him who has done this thing. So there. Paul says that he judged this
man. Last week, we talked about judging because in the chapter right before this, Paul says, in first Corinthians four, five, judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of the darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each man will get his praise from God bless. So somebody might look at first Corinthians four and be like, oh, Paul says not to judge anybody.
So I can't judge anybody at any point in time. But then if you turn to first Corinthians five, Paul is like, I am not even with you guys, but I have judged, uh, this man from afar. So is Paul contradicting himself? Is he saying, well, don't judge anything, but actually, I can judge stuff because I'm special? No, there are times to judge, and there are times not to
judge. In one Corinthians four, Paul was talking about the arrogance of the corinthian church and how they are judging each other and judging each other's motives. So Paul says, why are you judging each other so drastically and thinking that you all are so great and so wonderful and condemning your fellow believers. Why are you doing that? So don't judge people, because God bless is going to judge them on the last day, and then everybody will get the
reward that they deserve. So that right there is an example of the type of judging that christians just should not do. We shouldn't be just harshly judging our fellow believers because they do something slightly different than we would do it, or because we don't understand their motives, or we don't understand why they don't want to eat meat or something like that for religious purposes. Paul's like, don't judge that stuff because that does nothing except cause division. It is not
unifying. It is divisive. But then there are times when a Christian should, in fact, judge. And one Corinthians five is a great example of a time when a Christian should be judging this man in the corinthian church. Was doing something very weird that the normal person, christian or non Christian, just does not do. That is the kind of stuff that we should be judging. And by the way, the word judging means to condemn.
So we should not be condemning our fellow christians over things that just don't matter in the long run, but we should be judging our fellow christians over things that truly do matter. And things like sexual immorality coming into our churches or very blatant sins need to be addressed and need to be judged. So yes, we should be judging what is happening in our churches, because look at the world today. Look at America right now. Look at how much trouble the churches are in.
Look at how many people don't wanna go to church because they were hurt as a child, because somebody did something to them in church and it was never addressed. Look at how bad our churches are nowadays because nobody is keeping an eye on our churches. We're just letting people do whatever they want to do and sometimes even protecting those people. Like the Corinthians were with this particular man. It says, not only were they protecting this man, but they were actually even bragging
about this. It says in verse six that they were actually even boasting about it. Why m would they be boasting about this? Well, maybe they were boasting because they're like, look at how open our church is. Look at how accepting our church is. Look at how tolerant our church is. Does that sound familiar? It should, because that is like 90% of churches in America nowadays, accepting,
loving, tolerant. These are all words that churches like to throw around, to say that they are so welcoming, that this is a safe space that anybody can attend that church and they won't be questioned or made to feel uncomfortable or anything like that. Well, the fact of the matter is, is that the church is supposed to be kind of uncomfortable because that is the whole gospel message. If a church isn't making you feel a little bit uncomfortable, then that church
is probably not a very good church. The gospel message itself is uncomfortable because it says first and foremost that we are sinners and that we need somebody to save us from our sins. And that person was Jesus, who was God bless in human flesh. So the church is supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable. Now, granted, of course, everything, there's a
thin line for everything. Um, I'm realizing that as I get older is that it's very hard to maintain that thin line, because if you step over too much in one direction, it turns into something bad. And if you step over into the other direction, it turns into something bad. So, of course, there are churches out there that beat people over the head and guilt and shame people for things that they shouldn't be guilted and shamed for. And so
they're going in the opposite direction. But at the same time, there are other churches that don't do any of those things. They preach tolerance and love, and they never preach about hell. They never make anybody feel bad at all about any particular thing in their lives. But that's also not healthy, because you're not truly preaching the gospel message at
that point. So there has to be a balance. And Paul's trying to get at that balance in first Corinthians four and five, because he says, don't judge and condemn your fellow believers over things that just don't matter. Don't be cruel, don't be divisive. Be unified, be loving, be generous towards each other. Be forgiving of each other. But then first Corinthians five says, make sure that your church
is following the gospel message. Make sure that your members are not engaging in sexual sin that the Bible condemns. Make sure your members are acting the way that Jesus tells them to act. And that is not what the corinthian church was doing. They were doing very much of the first thing, condemning their fellow christians for very silly and stupid things. But then they were tolerating the most heinous of sins that
God bless condemns. In the Old Testament scriptures, which in the law, God bless did say that a man must never sleep with his father's wife. So that is clearly laid out, that, uh, it's a sin from the very beginning of time, basically. But yet that was what the corinthian church was allowing. So Paul sets the record straight. He says, here is what you must do in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. You being gathered together in my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, are to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now, throughout history, actually, this verse has been misused and, uh, twisted to say that a sinner needs to be killed. But that is not what Paul is saying here at all. When he's talking about the flesh, he's not talking about the physical
flesh. He's talking about it in a spiritual sense. In the Book of Romans, Paul talks a lot about the difference between the fleshly man and the spiritual mandehead. He actually tells christians that they need to crucify their old self, their fleshly self, on the cross with Jesus and become a new creation, become a new man. That is what Paul is talking
about here. Not that the corinthian church needed to kill this guy or torture him or do something terrible to his physical body, but that they needed to enact church discipline and let this man go. And what would this do? Well, this would cause the man to leave that church and no longer have a community around him. This would make this man think differently about his actions and maybe stop what he was doing if he was living with his stepmother
and cause him to turn away from that particular sin. Now, of course, if that man actually did do that, Paul says that his spirit would be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. So church discipline is never supposed to be, like, just a weird, power hungry move that a pastor does for the sake of maintaining control over his church or something weird like that. Instead, Paul says that the church is supposed to gather together to talk to this mandev and to kick him out
of their congregation. There is two reasons why all of this would be done. The first reason is to save the man himself, because eventually he might turn away from his sin when he no longer has his church community. And God bless might work on his heart and make him realize that what he is doing is wrong, and eventually, at that point, be let back into the church. Ultimately. So that's the first reason. But the second reason is because sin corrupts the church. Verse
six. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole lump? So purge out the old yeast that you might be a new lump even as you are unleavened. The analogy of yeast in the Old and New Testament signified sin. I don't know if you guys bake bread, but I do. I actually bake bread quite often. And you do not need a lot of yeast to make that dough rise. You need very little, actually. That's kind
of like sin. Even just a little bit of sin when it gets into the church, corrupts the whole church. And why is that? Well, uh, because that sin, if it goes unpunished and people just tolerate it, well, then other people will be like, oh, well, I guess I can do that sin, too. And, you know, there's nothing really wrong with that. And it starts to spread among the church the same way that yeast would spread in the
dough. So Paul says to purge out the old yeast and become a new lump, a new lump of dough, even as you are unleavened. So Christians are supposed to be in this analogy, like the unleavened lump of dough, which was what the Israelites used to eat. And during the Passover celebration, which was the week long feast that would take place. And to this day, the jewish people do not eat any yeast during the Passover feast. And all of that signifies becoming new, being
purged of those old sins. So Paul uses this analogy that many people would understand, and he says, indeed, Christ, who is our Passover, has been sacrificed in our place. Therefore, let's keep that feast, the Passover feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So Christians are supposed to be sincere and
truthful. That's another reason why we judge our churches and make sure that garbage doesn't come in is because we are supposed to live in the truth. And if we are allowing sin to come into our churches and not correcting it or calling it out, we're just allowing it to fester, then our church is not living in the truth. That is the scriptures. So we have to be living in sincerity and in truth. So that being said,
what can we do nowadays? Because we see the same exact problem that the scriptures talk about in first Corinthians five in our churches here in the west. Well, firstly, we need to make sure that we're not being overly critical, which is a problem I struggle with. I'm sure if, uh, for those of you who watch my discussions episodes, I can be
overly critical. And thankfully, my sister, who is a lot more neutral about everything, kind of like, reins me in and she's like, Jen, I think that was a little bit overly critical. She'll tell me that sometimes, like, afterward. So I struggle with being overly critical sometimes. So we have to be very careful of that and not be too quick to criticize one of our fellow christians and instead be kind and caring and generous and loving and forgiving towards our fellow
christians. So, yes, we certainly need to work on being more loving. That's the first thing. But secondly, we need to work on being loving by having difficult conversations, which is something the Corinthians lacked. They didn't want to have this difficult conversation. Instead they wanted to say, you know, look how open we are, look how loving our church is, because we allow this weird stuff in our churches and we're not going to say anything
about it. So all of you guys are so welcome. This is a safe place. It's very possible that that's what the Corinthians were doing, which is exactly what our churches here in America are doing. But notice how Paul was talking about how having this hard conversation and kicking that man out of that church was ultimately for that
man's good. In fact, he kept going back to the fact that this man might actually repent from his sin and come back to Christ if the church has that hard conversation with him and excommunicates him for a while. So having difficult conversations in that way is actually very loving as well, because we are doing our best to save that person from a lifestyle of sin and a lifestyle that is not going to be conducive to their flourishing.
So in general, basically, we need to just work on being more loving, less critical of things that don't matter, but more willing to engage in uncomfortable conversations with somebody because we know it will be for the good of them and for the good of our church. Faithful listeners, I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and I hope that it was kind of convicting for you. I know for me it was. I'm somebody that certainly does not like to rock the boat. I'm a doormat in every sense of the word.
So I don't like to rock the boat. But sometimes we have to, and sometimes it's because we actually love the person that we are confronting and we are doing it for their own good. So I hope that this was an encouraging and also convicting episode for you guys. But faithful listeners, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day. I will see you tomorrow. 06:00 a.m. or whenever you choose to wake up for an episode from one kings. Happy listening and God bless.