Okay, just about there. Perfect. Well, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee and devotions. As for every day, we get into God's word. And we grow in our love for the Lord together in this year 2020. We'll make it all the way from the book of Acts to the book of Philemon. I'm so glad to be with you this morning. Let's have some coffee. We'll pray and we'll get into the Lord's word.
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for this day. What a blessing it is to sit at your feet to learn from you. God we pray that this morning you would teach us watch over us. Maybe follow in your ways. In Jesus's name, Amen. All right, we are at first Corinthians chapter 513 verses in that chapter. So we're going to do the whole chapter first Corinthians chapter five. And just to let you know, Paul is moving here now from the idea of divisiveness to the to the practical applications of holiness. And so in chapter five and six, he's gonna deal with a few different topics and here, we're dealing with what do you do with Oprah open fragrance and it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. And such sexual immorality, as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife. Are you puffed up and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this thing might be taken away from among you? For i Indeed, as absent in the body, but present in the spirit have already judged as though I were present. Him who has done this deed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ delivers such a one to Satan for destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, therefore, purge out the old lovin that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened? For indeed Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast. Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my epistle, not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet, I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous or extortion errs or idolaters. Since then, you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolatry or a revealer, or a drunkard or an extortioner. Not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside but those who are outside God? Judges, therefore put away from yourselves the evil person? Well, we need to ask ourselves a, what is this about? Be? What's the best verse to summarize this and see, what are we called to do in response to these words, so I want to get to just address the elephant in the room. This is not a popular passage. This is not what people like to hear in our culture, where we are very sensitive to emotions, very sensitive to feelings and church. Discipline has both been abused while neglected. And so let's go ahead and work through this passage together. Let's just get up. What is this about? Paul is writing to the Corinthian church. He was the pastor of this church for a number of, of years and at least 18 months, and as he is the pastor, he's gone now and other people have come in or pastoring he's, they know about their freedom in Christ. They know the gospel, they, they understand these things. But now there is someone in their congregation who has done something that is so sinful, that not even pagan people would allow this. There's there's a word, sanguine annuity laws of close relationship.
And in the Roman era, this isn't this man's biological mother. This is most likely this man's step mother. And it was really common in the Roman era, that a man if he became widowed, he would marry a new wife and the new wife would be significantly younger than him, which would make make this step mother and son really close in age possibly. But the point is, he's not allowed to have his father's wife. This is incestual. This is not right. This is against the laws of saying we're new at this traces all the way back to Leviticus chapter 18. Right? This has been long standing right even even pagans know that you shouldn't be sleeping with your father's wife. So how are you so? Are you saying how have you guys become so arrogant? Think like this. This is going directly against God to say, hey, look, we know this is sinful. It's alright. No worries, like what's happened? Something terrible has gone wrong here. Right? God's people are about holiness, about purity, about what is good and right and perfect. And so he says, This can't keep going on. And I'm with you in spirit and and I've really judged this right. If this is true, this is going on. If what's being reported as true. You got to you got to do something about it. The question is, what are they going to do? When it tells them they need to? Just like in the Passover feasts, you had to go through all the housing and he had to take out the leaven. You couldn't have anything, any 11 in the house and here he says, You got to treat this person the same way. Put them outside the camp. Why? Because the sins of one person affect the whole church. You and I, we live in a very, very individualistic society. I mean, the the community isn't what we think about we think about me, we think about myself, we think about AI. But you're saying no, no. No, right? We are joined together. We are the body of Christ. This is why we can't have divisions and stuff. But what's going to happen is that this man's sin, being allowed in the church being passed over by the people in church. It's going to make us think that this is okay. And I say to you that this I think goes on in the church right now. The failure to discipline people now means that the sun just keep on escalating. People wonder how did we end up in this place where we see all sorts of rainbow stuff on church buildings I started by not disciplining for other sins, served by not holding one another accountable. Matthew chapter 18. Right. If your brother sins are you to go and confront your brother if he doesn't repent or to take two or three witnesses? With you, and then go confront him? But if he still doesn't send you need to bring it to the church? And so he says, Christ is our Passover lamb. And Christ is the one who forgives us of our sin washes us of our iniquity makes us as white as snow. Makes the Angel of Death Pass over us and go on. But he's saying but the problem is, we got to act in our lives in accordance with that reality. So he says, I wrote to you in a previous letter now whether this is Second Corinthians, or maybe there's a proto Corinthian letter, maybe someday we're going to dig up, you know, somewhere in ancient Corinth and we're going to find this letter, I don't know. It's probably not going to change much and so the Holy Spirit decided not to preserve this letter for us. But he previously wrote to them and he said, to abstain from sexual immorality, right. That's what he had said in verse nine. But he wants to make clear, right? That doesn't mean that they are to are to go away from everybody who does this. He's not talking about the world. He wants to be clear here right? When he says do not associate with those who are sexually immoral. He's saying he's not saying you those outside the world because if you were to stay away from everybody and everything sinful in the world, guess what you'd have to do? You have to leave the world. We're talking about inside Jesus's family, inside Jesus's church. What do you do? How do we conduct ourselves? Alright, so guess what? You're gonna walk into your workplaces and there's going to be non Christians.
I don't expect non Christians to act like Christians. It doesn't surprise me it doesn't surprise me when some of my neighbors do things that don't look like what a Christian should do or believe or say, Why? Because they're not Christians. But when it comes to someone in the church, who then starts behaving and acting and talking like that, I'm alright might have to go talk with them. And so in the church, we take this seriously no, I'm gonna say to you, this has been abused. church discipline has been abused before. No surprise. We're sinful people. But I'd like to suggest to you that every time I've seen church discipline happen it has reminded me of my need to check my own life. questions I've received about church discipline. You know, one person said, you know, Brian, well, everybody's sins and so at what point does it become this thing that somebody is excommunicated for? And what I normally tell people is open, unrepentant sin. This man here isn't a gross sin. It's known to the whole community. It's not being hidden and is not being repented of. Right? So if, if I have struggle with my finances, I'm not I might not be managing things well, but it's not open. And I might be learning how to be better with my finances. So it's could be repentant. But yet, if somebody is writing checks, and they're bad checks, he doesn't have the money to fill those checks. And it's being done all over town. Everybody knows, man, you can't take a check from Bob because you know, that guy never pays his bills. By the way, Bob is a made up name. I have no clue that's not real person. Right. It's open it's known in the community. It is somebody who is going to the bar every single week and they're getting drunk and they're passing out every single week is known in the community. And they don't care about it. But they call themselves a brother. She calls herself a sister, but she's constantly drinking wine all the time and she's drunk. Everybody's able to smell it on your breath. People have confronted her about it, she won't do anything. It's open and it's unrepentant. Well the next question I'll get is you Yeah, but does this work? Well, this is where we need to be careful. Right one, there's always an eye towards restoration. Too many people come to church discipline and they hear church discipline. And they think, only punitive. Now, there's a reality there because Paul here says, you know, deliver them over to Satan. Why, though, that they might be restored, that they might go into the world and at some point in their life, praying that they would see the hopelessness of this world, the end being death and that they would come back. So does it work? Well, it's supposed to be restorative. But also we want to be careful about pragmatics. We're really good in America in the western culture about only doing stuff that works, rather than stuff that God commands. When we wrestle in our own hearts, with Well, I saw this person disciplined, but they didn't come back. It's hard. Why is that hard? We should recognize why is that hard? Well, I think there's a few different reasons. One is some people it's because they truly do love this person, and they want to see them each week. And this is hard because these are relational bonds that are being ripped apart, but we need to recognize it. That's what sin does. That's what immorality does. That's what unrighteousness does it. It pulls apart. friendships. It destroys families. And so we ought to be able to recognize that this is going to be painful. It's not going to be easy. If it's easy, some of the wrong here but also we need to recognize as well, that this is what's the most loving thing for that person. We don't want them to continue in sin. We don't want them to continue going on if they're given over to lying to think that they could just keep on lying.
We want them to repent. We want them to know that God is holy and his children ought to be holy. And so church discipline has that eye towards loving our neighbor. You know the day I became a member and the denomination I'm in was a day a man was excommunicated. I mean that talk about a sobering moment. The day I took my vows to become a member in the congregation was a Sunday, same day a man was being pulled out of the congregation. And you know what it taught me that this was a church that took sin seriously. This is a church that loved me and loved my holiness. And this was a church that loved this man so much that they were going to encourage him and continue to to drive him toward holiness. And they had made a public statement and a public testimony to the church. And so when I took my membership vows that I would heed the correction of the elders when I needed it and doctrine and in life that's a serious so let's go ahead and ask what the best verse is. Right? The best verse to summarize this. Well, I really like verse seven, therefore a purge out the old lovin that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. might even go ahead and underline verse eight, but let me know down in the comments what what would you underline would you underline something else? Oh, let me ask you. First calling. Let me let me first say, if you're one of those who have seen church discipline, work well and I know I've seen it. I've been involved in it. When a man wasn't loving his life wife well, and it went through the first steps where we another friend had gone and confronted him about this. And then the two of us went, and both of us had seen him not treating his wife well and confronted him. He still wasn't responding well. So our pastor in the two of us went and confronted him. And the man eventually was restored. I didn't get to the point of him being pulled out of the church. But let me know down the comments. Have you seen this happen? Well, when somebody was put out I can, I can think of another time. But I there's there's lots of stories I could tell about this. But what are we called to do? I think at the heart of this is an instruction for discipline, right? So we need to be a process of that your discipline. Right? I'm begging you to be an active part of the first two steps of church discipline. Go confront people. I'm not saying be nitpicky, don't do that. Right. But when you see somebody engaging in open sin, go and talk to that person. Now, I'm not talking about micromanaging. I'm not talking about being a busy body. But when you see a brother Christ, and it seems like they're walking down this road of, of sinfulness and they're not caring about it. Go and love them. Go and confront them. It's going to be uncomfortable, be bold, be bold, in your love, care about the eternal well being, that they might be restored. When somebody is disciplined, and they're put out of the church and that should be rare. And when it does, it's for an open and unrepentant sin for grave sin. We ought to take that seriously in our own hearts. But also, let me encourage you to pray for that person, plead with them that they would come back to Christ. That they will repent of their sin and be restored to the full fellowship of the saints. But also, heed God's word here do the other hard thing in our society. to shame someone is one of the worst things you could do right? Psychologists today would say it's psychologically damaging. It's not meant to be comfortable. It's meant to love it's meant to show this person something has gone desperately wrong comeback and one of the most painful ways to do this is to say hey, thanks for inviting me over to your Fourth of July party but I can't come.
Thanks for inviting me over to eat but rather, you need to repent I'd love to see you come back to church. I'd love to see you take the Lord's Supper again, and turn back to Christ. This is hard to do because these are people we love but the most loving thing to do is to point them to Christ so are you praying for the people who are under discipline in your church? Are you loving them? Well? Are you praying for your elders in this? Man this is not easy
to do with an eye towards love. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that You love us. And we pray for your Holy Spirit, that you would build up your church
that we will be faithful to your commandments, especially in regard to discipline. Or this is not a comfortable topic. But father, you are the one who tells us to be bold and our holiness. Lord, please please continue to work in your church. In Jesus's name. Amen. May Lord bless you today. May you walk in the peace of Jesus Christ. Heating or brotherly counsel. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai