"The Purity of Passover" 1 Corinthians 5 Sunday Evening Worship Service

That is our prayer that there's a day is coming where the church of God will be saved to sin no more.

And that's the desire of your heart.

Then you long for holiness here and now.

And that's what we'll look at tonight.

First Corinthians chapter five.

You can open your Bibles there.

First Corinthians chapter five.

We'll make our way through this passage tonight to prepare ourselves for the Lord's table in a few minutes.

I'll read it in its entirety for us.

Chapter 5.

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans, for a man has his father's wife.

And you're arrogant.

Aught ye not rather to mourn, let him who has done this be removed from among you.

For though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who's done such a thing.

When you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.

Your boasting's not good.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and the swindlers, idolaters, since then you would have to go out of the world.

But I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reveler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a person.

For what have I to do with judging outsiders?

Is it not those inside the church whom you were to judge?

God judges those outside.

Purge the evil person from among you.

This is the word of the Lord.

We just sang that song, there was a fountain filled with blood, and I remember in a college ministry I used to lead.

That was one of our favorite songs.

However, the worship leader had a typo in the song.

And instead of saying, We will be saved to sin no more, the word no is missing.

And the word saved had become safe.

So everybody knew the words because we sang the song at communion at that church all the time.

Some people knew the words, but on the screen while we were singing it was we'll be safe safe to sin more.

And this was pointed out to Paul, was his name, who I hope is listening.

Many times.

And he never fixed it.

And he would say that he did fix it, but just didn't save the right way, or he was uploading.

You know how computers are.

I mean, they're, you know, 80% hardware, 20% demons, and it's always a anybody's guess who's gonna win.

And so for the longest time, up on the screen was safe to sin more while we're singing.

And it should dawn on you that that would be the kind of hymn the Corinthians would love.

They would love to sing about being safe to sin as much as they wanted.

As much as they wanted.

And this is what Paul's dealing with in the book of 1 Corinthians.

And we've you know looked at 1 Corinthians in different sections here and there.

We've touched on chapter 14 about tongues and chapter 13 about love, and we've tackled different passages from this book every now and then.

I've never preached the whole thing.

But a common theme in 1 Corinthians that you need to remember whenever you're encountering anything in the book of Corinthians is that it's not the example of go and do like the Corinthians.

And that's an important theological point to remember, especially when you get to later parts of the book about spiritual gifts and such, where people say we should practice spiritual gifts that way because that's how the Corinthians are practicing it.

And if your logic is ever that's what the Corinthians are doing, you're off to a bad start.

You don't want your church to be like the Corinthian church.

And so Paul had written a letter to them earlier, correcting them that they misunderstood because they were immature people.

And this forces him to write 1 Corinthians, which is corrective in nature, to tell them to basically get their church in order.

Their church is not in order, and that's what much of the New Testament epistles are, by the way.

And you don't want to be too harsh on them because remember, they didn't have the rest of the New Testament.

It's not like they were reading 1 Timothy and trying to figure out how to appoint elders in the church.

1 Timothy hadn't been written yet.

And so while their lives were filled with sin and compromise, at the same time, you do want to give them a little bit of sympathy and that they are still trying to figure things out.

And so Paul begins with this just basic declaration.

It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you.

And notice the way that he says it.

It's actually reported as if Paul cannot believe what he's hearing.

He really is astonished.

He thought it had been made clear to them.

Later on this fall, Lord willing, we'll look at the book of Ezra.

And the book of Ezra is a captivating book because you see what hope they had coming back to the Promised Land.

What radical prophecies were fulfilled to get Israel back into the Promised Land.

And the book ends with such sadness because you know how the book ends.

They're back in the land and they're intermarrying again with the pagans.

They're following after Solomon, not David.

And it breaks Ezra's heart.

Ezra's out there weeping.

I mean, the book ends in such a sad, pathetic place.

They're out in the rain, it's pouring rain, they're crying, they're divorcing their wives.

I mean, it's it is a hot mess out there.

And you watch it and you're just like, oh.

And the point of the book of Ezra is that the new covenant will be different.

The new covenant is not going to be prone to that kind of just failure because the new covenant believer has the spirit who dwells within him, who provokes him to holiness.

It's going to be fundamentally different.

And you can ask yourself, you can remind yourself of that basic truth this way: is there any Old Testament hero that would be elder qualified in a New Testament church?

I mean, that makes the point pretty clearly, doesn't it?

And here you are in the middle of the New Covenant, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and the Corinthians are living like they were under Ezra's Israel.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

They were living in sexual immorality.

They weren't pursuing holiness.

And so this is what produces the rebuke from Paul.

It's actually reported to you, to me, that there is sexual immorality.

And that word sexual immorality, it's the Greek word pornea.

It's a kind of a broad term.

It means all kinds of sexual immorality.

We get our phrase and pornography from it.

All kinds of sexual immorality are covered by this term.

And so he uses a broad phrase to say, I can't believe that you're tolerating this.

But then he narrows it down.

The kind that is not tolerated even among pagans.

So this is a particular category of sexual sin, the kind that a pagan hears about and would say, Whoa, that's bad.

And even our culture has those kinds of sins in it.

As libertine as our culture is sexually, there are still the kinds of sins that would make non-believers blush, that would make those in the world say, Whoa.

You're tolerating that?

That's too far.

And the great irony is that the non-believing world loves covering those kinds of sins when they're uncovered in churches.

But the point still stands that there are a category of sins in our very modern, postmodern, post-truth worlds that are offensive to the people in the world.

They cannot believe that there are people that are that sexually deviant out there.

Now the Roman Empire was not prudish.

They were also very libertine.

They had different sexual ethics than we did.

They did all kinds of things that would be sinful.

Their normal sexual practices were very much deviant from the biblical pattern and the biblical mandate.

Their culture was seeped in sin.

Their culture was more debauched than ours is, honestly.

And even in that world, there were the kinds of sins that the pagans couldn't believe.

And now you come across the first Baptist Church of Corinth, and they are doing those kinds of sins.

And this is not supposed to be an exhaustive list.

Paul chooses, in his mind, the most egregious example, but it's an argument from the greater to the lesser.

You shouldn't be tolerating that, you shouldn't be tolerating all the other ones underneath it.

But to make the point, let me choose the extreme example.

There's a person in the church that is with his father's wife.

Now, this in the Old Testament would be incest.

This would be a stepmother kind of thing if you're having a hard time tracking this down here.

If it was his own mother, he certainly would have ordered it differently.

So it seems to be a stepmother kind of thing.

In the Old Testament, this is punishable by death.

This is called incest in the Old Testament.

This is exact sin.

In the Roman world, this would be punishable.

Not by death, but by imprisonment.

This was illegal in Rome.

This is one of the very few sexual sins the Roman Empire had laws against.

Because it would mess up all kinds of property transactions.

And, you know, if your dad dies and you're in a relationship with your stepmom, what happens to the property?

Does she get to give it to her other children?

I mean, it would be a mess.

And so the Romans, they didn't have the purity of the sexual relationship in mind when they made laws against this.

They just had the practical way the culture was supposed to work.

And so this was illegal.

But it's tolerated in the church.

Now, what would be the logic that would tolerate that?

And I mean, you know this.

We talked a little bit about it this morning, but it's the it's the lie that you can be a Christian and because you're saved by grace, that grace will cover all of your sin and you can live however you want to live, and nobody can tell you otherwise, you know?

Hashtag only God can judge.

And that's the way they justify their sinful actions.

Don't judge me.

I mean, if you take every other New Testament verse about, you know, not judging, and every other New Testament verse about getting the log out of your own eye, then you can see how you can make a plausible excuse.

You're skipping all of the verses about examine your fruit.

You're skipping all the verses about church discipline, you're skipping half of the New Testament.

But you can make a holy, not holy like H-O-L-Y, but holy with holes in it, kind of systematic theology that gives you an excuse to sin if you want to.

Well, the Corinthians wanted to, and they did.

As I said, you have to change a few words to some of the hymns, but you can make it happen.

And so Paul rebukes them.

Now, why would church leaders tolerate that kind of sin?

And in order to understand verse 2 before you look at it, you have to think, what would be going on in their minds?

Do the elders of the church know about that kind of sin?

Well, certainly.

So, what's going on in an elder's mind when he's letting that kind of sexual immorality take place in the church?

Well, there's lots of excuses.

Sometimes elders will say, it's just too much work.

It's too much work.

To go find the person and confront the person, I mean, that is a lot of work.

What if, especially in the Roman world, they didn't have cell phones, there's no Facebook messaging back then.

It is a lot of work to go track the person down and actually confront him because of his sin.

Matthew 18 is the command to go find the person and confront them.

Matthew 18 was written by the time of 1 Corinthians.

Matthew had been written.

Obviously Jesus taught it, but Matthew itself had been written.

So the Corinthians would have known that process, but that takes work.

And so sometimes elders just don't want to do the work.

I'm not even saying it's laziness, it's just their life is busy.

That's part of it.

I think more often, more often, the excuse is that, you know, it sounds judgmental to confront somebody because of their sin.

It sounds judgmental.

After all, we've all kind of sinned.

And now you're falling down to that grace hole there, the sinkhole.

You know, where Paul expressly says, this is the fence around the pit of grace is fenced with this big sign that says, do not use your grace as a license to sin.

If you say that grace gives you a license to sin, you don't understand grace.

The truth is that grace is powerful, grace is effective.

Grace changes your heart.

When you have an encounter with grace, you are changed by it.

You don't leave an encounter with grace and keep on living a life of unrepentant sin.

If you think you've had an encounter with God's grace and you keep living the way you were before, you are deceived.

You didn't have an encounter with God's grace.

Somebody who is an encounter with God's grace is changed by it.

Amen?

But then you get sometimes elders of the church will say, I experience God's grace.

It changed me.

So I'm just hoping that God's grace will eventually change them.

If they keep coming, if they keep coming to church, eventually they'll hear enough sermons and sing enough songs and make enough friends that they'll encounter God's grace and they'll change their life.

That's a common excuse for not dealing with these kinds of people.

But I think that excuse leads to the big heart issue that was going on in Corinth anyway, which is just simply one of arrogance.

You know what?

Our church is good.

Our church is strong, our church is solid.

We can handle the adulterer in here.

He's not going to affect people.

We've got a long legacy of faithfulness.

You can picture the Corinthians saying this in their arrogant ways, can't you?

Oh, we were, we had the Apostle Paul ministering to us.

We've got all kinds of good preachers to us.

We've got, we're we're on fire.

Look at all of our spiritual gifts.

We're speaking in tongues.

Of course we could handle an adulterer in the congregation.

That's not a big deal.

It's not going to hurt us.

And that is always, that attitude is always what is behind, I think, the other excuses as well.

It is an excuse of arrogance.

If a wolf came into the congregation, the shepherds would fight off the wolf.

Unless the shepherd says, you know what, honestly, my sheep are strong enough, they can fight off the wolf themselves.

It's a lot of work to go after a wolf.

But I love my sheep and they're strong, buff, burly sheep.

So I'll let them handle the wolf themselves.

Do you see how that is an attitude of arrogance?

And that's what the Corinthians are doing.

Look at verse 2.

Oh, you are arrogant, Paul tells them.

What should their attitude be about that kind of sin in the church?

Ought you not rather mourn, he says.

It should break you.

Ephesians 5, verse 11 says, Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness.

Ephesians 5:11

Instead, Paul says, Expose them, shine the light on them.

Where the light shines, the darkness flees.

So that's Ephesians 5.11.

Where there's unfruitful works of darkness in the church, shine a bright light on them.

Teach about them, preach about them, talk to people about them, expose them for their evil ways, and they will leave.

2 Thessalonians 3, verse 6 says, if somebody is in the church living in this kind of way, do not associate with that person.

2 Thessalonians 3:6

Keep away from them, Paul says.

So notice that encountering this kind of person at the sheep level, it's a one-two punch.

It's exposing their sins and avoiding them.

Expose, avoid.

Shine the light and flee the darkness.

And that's what Paul says, you ought to do.

This person should be removed from among you.

Now you remove somebody from the church and you follow the Matthew 18 pattern, you confront them, and if they don't repent, you bring a witness, and the witness, of course, is not to the original sin.

That doesn't make a lot of sense, especially in the nature of sexual sin.

The witness is to the confrontation, to testify that yes, the person was confronted.

They still don't repent, then you bring it to the elders of the church, and the elders of the church confront them, and if they don't repent, they're removed.

That's the way it should work.

Obviously, in Corinth, they're not following that.

They're making up excuses to not deal with it.

If Paul knows about it, certainly the leadership in Corinth knows about it, but they just don't want to deal with it.

They want to remove the person from the congregation.

And Paul points that out in verse 3.

He points out just this the elder's abdication of duty here in verse 3.

Though I'm absent in body, I am present in spirit.

And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

Paul says, I'm not even there and I can handle this.

This is not a complicated scenario.

The person is living in sexual sin.

I'm not even there and I'm telling you he should be out of the church.

So go do that.

I've already given you the judgment.

And so here is this category of sin.

It should have been addressed by Matthew 18.

It should have been, but it was not.

And because it's the kind of sin that is so brings so much shame on the name of Christ and so much harm to the gospel testimony that even the pagans hear about it and they're astonished, Paul says, you're kind of skipping to the end of the process here.

I want him out of the church.

He's not proposing that they go back and go through Matthew 18 here.

He says, I'm not even there and I've already given my verdict.

Get him out.

That's what he says.

In fact, he tells him particularly in verse 4, When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Now there is a lot in here.

When you're assembled, this happens when the church is together, he says.

He does not say put out a restraining order on him.

I used to work at a church that had no trespass orders in the, you know, the carbon copy forms behind the receptionist desk, and that's how we dealt with all kinds of sin in the church.

Everybody on staff knew where they were.

It was the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department had their no trespass orders.

We can pull that thing out, write it up.

We need no trespass people all the time.

High school kids, ditching youth group, to go skate in the arroyo.

No trespass orders.

See you later, man.

Seriously.

Our youth group attendance went up when they knew that.

Here, Paul says, it's not something you do with a no-trespass order.

It's not something you do with a firmly worded email.

You don't text him and say, hey, you're not welcome back here.

He says, you do this when the church is gathered together.

When everybody is in the room, you're assembled together for your Lord's Day worship.

You announce to the congregation that this person is no longer welcome in the congregation.

That's how he says to handle it.

When you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus.

And my spirit is present.

What does he mean by that?

Well, he's within the brotherhood of believers here.

When the church is gathered for corporate worship, Paul's not there, but you understand when the church is gathered, we have fellowship, brotherhood.

We have a spiritual connection with all believers everywhere.

Particularly those that are from our congregation, our missionaries around the world.

We're gathered together, and they, though they're absent in their body, are with us here anyway.

Because we're their church.

That's the example Paul's using.

I may not be there with you, but my spirit is there when you guys are gathered together.

Deliver him to the devil.

The devil is the ruler of the prince of the ruler of this world, the powers of the flesh and sin, the domain of darkness that belongs to him.

And Paul says, put him out into that world.

It's harsh in that world.

It's harsh out there.

It's harsh to live a sin-filled life without the protection of the church, without the fellowship of believers, without people who know you and love you and care for you.

I mean, there's not a body like there is in a church out in the world.

You could join like a classic car club or something like that.

Take up a hobby.

Go play softball or something and make new friends with your teammates.

It's not going to replace the church, but then you might have people that remember your names.

Absent something like that.

You're put out in the world.

I mean, who do you even know out there?

Your coworkers?

You don't have much in common with them.

And that's what Paul says to do to this person.

These kind of people are extracting fellowship from the church to give license to their sin.

They're leading a sexually immoral life.

And they act, by the way, proud and arrogant, these sexually immoral people.

They act like they are, you know, they are self confident about their life and their sin, and they're appropriating the gospel to cover their sin.

And Paul says they need a dose of.

The real worlds.

Throw them out into the world and see what happens to them.

Remove the fellowship of the church from them.

Remove their friends at church.

Don't let them come in anymore.

Let them go a few weeks or a few months or a few years without people knowing their name.

Without people caring about them.

They get fired from their job or their kid gets sick.

Who are they going to call?

They don't have anyone anymore.

They get a hard dose of reality.

And Paul says, I hope that that crushes them.

Look at the middle of verse 5.

I hope that they are destroyed by it.

It's very easy to see how sexual sin would do this to you.

Throw the person in the world.

Let him kill himself.

Let him lead a life of sexual sin.

Let him be murdered by somebody who is betrayed.

Commit adultery with someone.

Wait until the husband comes home and kills you.

I mean, that's what will happen.

How do you think the story will go?

You lead a life of sexual sin, you're likely to get killed.

Or a life of drug abuse.

You know what?

Go out in the world and try it.

How will the story end?

Probably with you dead.

Your flesh will be destroyed.

And the hope here is that as the person is being murdered for his sexual sin, that in that last moment of life he'll call out to the Lord Jesus for salvation.

That's the hope.

Do you see that here?

The end of verse 5.

That his soul might be saved in the day of the Lord.

Let him go be killed for his sin.

He's more likely to call out for salvation and that last breath than he is if he keeps leading his life in the fellowship of the church.

Because that's not working.

It's like the cancer patient, and the doctor says, you know, the normal dose of radiation isn't working.

We need something more powerful and more effective.

This kind of person has developed an immunity to the gospel.

They've become inoculated against it because they've taken the power out of it.

They've taken the concept of grace.

They're using it to justify their sin.

So now when they encounter real life-changing grace, they wouldn't know what to do with it.

They think it's just more of the same thing justifying their sin.

So Paul says, listen, them coming to church and to fellowship group and to the college Bible study and to the early morning prayer meeting, that's not doing the trick.

It's not going to lead to their salvation.

Better throw them out in the world.

See what happens then.

Paul's not saying they will be saved.

This is very hypothetical in the Greek.

He's saying, deliver the man of Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit, and that word may in English, it's hard to understand what it means, but in Greek it's very subjective.

It's like there's a chance it'll happen.

It might happen that way, and maybe they'll get saved.

This is what Paul did in 1 Timothy 1.20 to Hymenaeus and Alexander.

He says, I delivered them to the devil so they would learn not to blaspheme.

Sexual sin is not the only sin that gets this for.

Some people are just so obstinate and so cantankerous and complaining and gossiping and divisive that they do more harm to the church than good.

And so Paul says, put them out.

But here he's focused on sexual sin.

Why aren't the Corinthians doing this?

Well, honestly, they're not doing this because they don't think it's that big of a deal.

That's the bottom line.

In their mind, it's not, who's it hurting?

It's hurting this guy who's in his sin, but that's it.

It's not that big of a deal.

And Paul says in verse 6, your boasting isn't good.

Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

That's the idea.

That their sin will infect the whole church.

I mentioned this morning the high school that I was, was that, and the pastor said, look, okay, it was simple as one person went away to Bible college, that person came back with the teaching that because grace covers your sin, you can lead a life of sin.

That one person starts teaching it to high school students, and before the school year is up, in that country they're towards the end of their school year, it's over halfway done.

Before the school year is up, that's the normal belief in the high school kids in that school.

That grace covers sin and so lead a life of sin.

Why not?

And the pastor said, look, we didn't see that coming a year ago.

We wouldn't have seen that as a threat a year ago.

We would have thought certainly we're discerning enough to see that far off, but then it happened.

This is the way leaven works.

It comes in and it leavens the whole piece of bread.

It works its way through.

And so Paul says, cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump.

Remove the leaven.

As you really are unleavened.

You know, with the feast of the Passover, for seven days the Jews were not allowed to eat anything with leaven.

It takes a while to knead the dough, for the leaven to work its way through the dough.

And the point back in Exodus was that the Jews didn't have a while.

They didn't have that kind of time to make the kind of bread recipe that takes four or five days to make.

They don't have that kind of time.

You're going to be running for your lives.

Running for your lives in a few days.

So ditch the leavened bread, okay?

Beyond that, the idea of bread was bread was connected to life.

The feast of the Passover was about deliverance from death.

Leaven speaks of influence.

Paul's saying, I mean, Moses is saying that you don't want to be influenced by the Egyptians.

You're leaving them.

You know, the first nine plagues were designed to influence the Egyptians.

The first nine plagues were supposed to get them to repent.

And they didn't work.

So the tenth plague, Paul says, we're done influencing them.

Moses says, we're done influencing them.

The tenth plague, the point of it was not to influence the Egyptians, but to separate from them and to get out of Egypt fast.

And that's, I think, why Paul is taking that analogy here in 1 Corinthians 5.

With the sexually immoral person who's polluting the church, separate from him because he's going to pollute other people.

The chance to influence him is done.

It's over.

So now you separate from him.

Because you really are supposed to be unleavened.

You're not supposed to tolerate that kind of sin.

And I hope you see a distinction between somebody who doesn't call himself a believer and somebody who does.

That's the huge distinction here, and we'll get to that again in a second.

But somebody who's leading a sexually immoral life comes off the street, of course they're welcome in church.

Of course they should come.

And I hope they come back week after week after week.

Keep coming back.

Come to all of the events, come to everything.

Right up until the point where you call yourself a believer, and that's where it all changes.

Do you call yourself a believer?

Then you need to repent from your sin.

That's the difference.

If you are clear you're not a Christian, then you're not going to influence Christians.

But if you're calling yourself a Christian and using grace to cover your sin, that's the danger.

And so Paul says that's the kind of leaven that gets removed.

We'll look at the rest of verse 7 later, but down to verse 8.

Therefore, celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and of evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

For a new covenant believer, for a Christian believer, you should not have the leaven of the world influencing you.

You should have the leaven of Christ influencing you.

You should have holiness working through the whole body.

Not just your individual body, but through the church.

Holiness should be contagious and other people should catch it.

That's not a once-a-year festival.

It's all the time, Paul says.

Your whole life should be marked by this ongoing festival.

This ongoing celebration of sincerity and truth.

Leaving Egypt, the Jews celebrated Passover.

Then again, once they got into the promised land, it changed.

In the promised land, they stopped celebrating in their individual houses and it became more of a corporate event.

But it was still occasional, annual.

Not so in the New Covenant.

And the New Covenant, you are always celebrating the deliverance of the Lord in your life.

As you pursue holiness, you're proclaiming Passover.

As you pursue holiness, you're declaring the Lord separated you from the world.

Verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter, speaking of the earlier one, not to associate with sexually immoral people.

So Paul had apparently communicated that to them.

But they took from that the idea they should separate from the sexually immoral people of the world, not thinking he was talking about the church.

There's all kinds of comments in there about the difference between an inspired letter and an uninspired letter.

Clearly, that other letter wasn't inspired.

It left that kind of confusion.

And so Paul clears that up now.

Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world.

Paul's saying, I'm not telling you not to associate with the sexually immoral pagans, the sexually immoral people in the world.

Of course you associate with them.

Of course you do.

Otherwise, you'd have to leave the whole planet.

Where would you go if you were told not to associate with sexually immoral people?

Don't be neighbors with sexually immoral people.

Don't work with them.

Don't, you know, be in the, don't go shopping at the same stores as they do or eat in the same restaurants.

Where would you go?

Nowhere.

You'd have to leave the globe, Paul says.

So clearly that's not what he's saying.

And it is a little bit humorous here, but I mean it should jar you.

I hope it jars you a little bit.

Do you see how we laugh at this, but it is the same thing that many Christians today do?

Many Christians today have no toleration for the sexually immoral of the world.

Especially when you let your politics bleed over into your world engagement.

You know, where your mission field is about politics and not about the gospel.

It's so easy to view the sexually immoral people of the world destroying God's covenant of marriage and going after Chick-fil-A and all that.

You see the people staging a die-in at Chick-fil-A in Toronto?

Canadians protesting something.

It's incredible.

What a Canadian protester lying down on the ground being still.

Nothing is more Canadian than that.

It's so easy to get aggravated and angry with the sexually immoral of the world while tolerating it in the church.

And Paul says, you've got it backwards.

The people in the world aren't the enemy.

The unbelievers who are calling themselves believers, who are leading sexually immoral lives, that's where the harm is going to come in.

And it's worth repeating over and over and over again.

More harm comes to the church from inside the church than has ever come to the church from outside of the church.

Governments can pass laws and they can ban worship and they can regulate all kinds of things and kick missionaries out of countries, they can do all that.

That's ultimately not going to affect the church.

Oh, what if they revoke our tax exempt status?

Whoa, what if?

That's not going to affect the worship of the church that much.

But you know what will kill worship in the church?

Is calling sexually immoral people believers.

That's what will do it.

Verse 11.

Little side note, I love when I travel in other countries for gospel, they always ask what's your purpose of your visit.

And in different countries, you have to say, I'm a tourist or I'm a I'm here for education.

I'm on a tour.

But I love coming back to the United States because the customs agent says, Where were you?

And you say, and then they say, What was the purpose of your visit there?

And I always say, preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And they always say, Welcome to America.

It's one of my favorite conversations ever.

Love it.

I'm obviously thankful for that kind of freedom.

But don't be confused about persecution in the church, is not the danger for the church.

The danger from the church comes from sexually immoral people that are called believers that are inside the church.

In fact, Paul verse 11 says, I'm writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother.

And that word bears literally means they receive the name of a brother.

So somebody calls them a Christian.

This is how it happens.

Somebody eventually sees them around the church long enough and calls them a Christian and they receive it.

They say, Okay, I am one, I guess.

And so now they're labeling themselves as a Christian.

Somebody else called them one, they received it, and so now they're walking around as if they're saved.

Maybe they were even baptized, maybe they gave a compelling testimony to the elders.

Who knows?

I'm sure every situation is different.

But the bottom line is they are called believers by themselves.

But they're not, and that's why some translations say the so-called brother.

I love that turn of phrase right there.

Well, who calls them a brother?

They do.

They do.

Verse 11, I'm telling you not to associate with any one of these so-called brothers.

If they're guilty of sexual immorality or greed, and that word greed, it's the word for extortion.

There's a common practice in governments, and less so in the United States, but more in other countries where government workers extort money.

You want a building project approved, give me$10,000.

You want the road to not take over your front yard, give me$10,000.

I mean, it's a normal practice in most of the world.

And it's against God's holiness.

It defiles.

It's sinful to take bribes like that.

That's the way most of the world works.

And so Paul says, fine, the world works like that, that's great, but a believer better not be on the giving end of that.

A believer better not be extorting people, or they should be put out of the church.

Or is an idolater.

Yeah, I'm a Christian.

I just have a few idols at home.

What's the big deal?

A reveler or a partier, a drunkard, a swindler, someone who's cheating people in business deals.

And this is so common in churches too.

Even more so in the chain email era that we're in now.

Where somebody comes to church and I've got a business proposition.

All it takes is$10,000, and all these other Christians are doing it, and Christians partner with them, and the person takes your money.

And you believe that they're not going to take your money because they're a Christian, they're a church, and they steal your money from you.

So Paul's giving you a list of sins here.

He's not only highlighting sexual immorality.

He's highlighting all of these sins.

They all expose the hypocrisy.

These are all pretty obvious sins.

He's not talking about the person who says, I'm dealing with pride, I'm dealing with lust in my life, I'm dealing with laziness, I'm dealing with.

I mean, we're all sinners, of course.

That's clear.

He's not talking about the fact that Christians are sinners.

He's talking about the fact that there are some people who call themselves believers that are having adulterous affairs.

There's some people that call themselves believers that are stealing tens of thousands of dollars from others.

They're swindling people that are stealing money by bribes.

They're in church Sunday morning and they're drunk on Friday night.

And Paul says, this shouldn't be, that person should have nothing to do with the church.

Instead, in fact, at the end of verse 11, don't even eat with such a person.

I think that's a reference to communion.

Don't even let them in the communion service.

They should not be around the Lord's table.

Jesus sent out Judas before he broke bread at communion.

That's for believers.

Judas has to leave.

And then Paul's making the same point.

Non-believers who call themselves Christians and are leading immoral life should have nothing to do with the Lord's people gathered together.

It's probably even more, commentary say it's probably even more than just communion.

It's probably any kind of social acceptance.

You know, you get together with a believer at work every once a month for lunch.

Then he divorces his wife because he's having an affair and he wants to keep getting together for lunch with you.

What are you supposed to do?

I mean, I'd probably go one more time with him and tell him he's leading a sinful life and the Lord's gonna judge him, and then you're done with it.

You're not gonna keep meeting with him for lunch the first Tuesday of every month when he's divorcing his wife because he found God is a better wife for him.

Don't feed that.

Don't endorse that.

The person who's calling themselves a believer but who's in a homosexual marriage, don't tolerate that as if it's acceptable.

I mean, I would make it clear to that kind of person.

Listen, you can say you're married to that person or you can say you're a Christian, but you can't do both, and I'm not gonna tolerate both.

I'm not gonna play along with some kind of fellowship as if both are true.

Choose one.

I think that's the example that Paul's using here.

Don't fellowship with that kind of person in a way that endorses their life and pretends you're okay with it.

No.

You shouldn't be the kind of person it's easy to be a hypocrite around.

Verse 12.

What do I have to do with judging outsiders, Paul says?

Say, I'm not talking about the idol worshippers down the street.

I'm not talking about the homosexual activists storming and lobbying on Capitol Hill.

I'm not talking about those people.

The Lord is gonna judge those people.

You don't need to judge them, the Lord will take care of them.

But you, keep an eye out in your church, purge the evil person from among you.

That quote, by the way.

Do you know where that's from?

Deuteronomy 17, verse 7, which is the instructions for capital punishment.

Deuteronomy 17:7

To throw rocks at somebody until they're dead.

And Moses says, Don't be afraid of doing that, purge the evil person from among you.

So it is a fascinating view of Old Testament hermeneutics here that Paul does not say, so the person is an adulterer in your church, go kill them.

He doesn't say that.

We don't have the death penalty in church.

Other than that, one time.

Ananias and Sapphira, that counts.

That was the Lord who did it.

They didn't even get a trial.

The Lord just took care of it.

But Paul takes not the death penalty part, but the motivation behind it.

Get rid of the evil person.

And applies that right here in the middle of the new covenant.

So take away from this.

The church should be concerned about purity.

The church should be a group of people that want to lead holy lives.

The church should be forgiving to one another because we do fall into sin.

We do stumble.

It should be a place where we are easy to confess sin to each other.

You should have friends that you confess sins to.

You should have people that know the sins you're dealing with in your life.

You confess that to one another and you bear each other's burdens in a loving fashion.

You find another believer who's caught in a sin and trespass and you help them up and you help carry their load with them.

That's the normal Christian living.

Paul's not saying anything in here that undoes all that.

He's not talking about that normal Christian living.

I mean, Peter says, I don't want a bath from you, Lord.

I don't want you to wash my feet.

And Jesus says, unless I do, you have no part in me.

And he says, give me a bath.

And Jesus says, No, if you're bathed, you just need your feet washed.

That's the principle here.

Leading a normal Christian life, your feet get dirty with sin.

Other believers help you out.

Normal Christian living.

You're having a hard time with your marriage, share that with somebody.

If you're having a hard time with sin in your life, share that with somebody.

And they bear each other's burdens.

That's normal Christian living.

Very different from somebody who says, I'm a believer, but I'm living in an adulterous relationship.

If somebody tells you that, you say, Well, you got two choices.

Quit calling yourself a believer or repent.

That's it.

It's not much more complicated than that.

Certainly no room for, yeah, I'm going to be a believer and keep doing this because after all, God loves me.

Purge the evil person from among you.

Drag your eyes back up to verse 8.

The end of verse 7, sorry.

Christ is our Passover Lamb, and he has been sacrificed.

This is one of the most clear New Testament teachings about the imagery of the death of Jesus Christ.

And it is so often overlooked.

Even in your own devotionals, when you're reading 1 Corinthians 5, you probably skip this chapter, right?

Sexual immorality in the church.

Somebody's sleeping with their mother-in-law, and you're like, hmm.

Chapter 6, verse 1.

I won't see what they're believers.

Let's keep going.

So you miss this verse right in the middle of it.

Jesus Christ is our Passover lamb.

The leaven is removed from the Israelite household for a week before Passover to demonstrate that they're not taking Egypt with them.

But the Passover lamb is separated as well.

From the flock, he's brought into the house.

He's named, of course, he's cared for by the family.

The kids love him and all that, and then his throat is cut.

This is the image of Jesus Christ.

Given to us, brought into our world, cared for in the world, only to lead up to the point where he would be killed.

The Passover lamb had to be perfect.

There'd be no spot in him, and of course, Christ is perfect.

He had to be sinless.

The Passover lamb had to be slaughtered.

His blood would be spilled out into a basin, was the way you had to kill him.

You couldn't kill him just by decapitating him or anything like that, or by strangling him, which is the common way the Romans would kill their animals.

You slit the throat and lift the head back in the Hispanic culture, the way like matanza, you call it in New Mexico, where you kill a pig that way.

The idea is that you bleed it out.

That's how you would kill the Passover lamb.

None of the bones could be broken.

That was one of the requirements.

You had to be so careful not to break his bones.

Very difficult to bleed a lamb out without breaking one of his bones.

That was one of the requirements.

Exodus 12, verse 46.

Exodus 12:46

Repeated in Numbers 9, by the way.

The blood would then be put on the door, and the lamb would be roasted.

That's from Exodus 12, verse 8.

Exodus 12:8

It had to be time under the sun, time of affliction.

Do you see how all of that meets together in the person of Christ?

These sinless, spotless, holy, undefiled.

None of his bones are broken.

He was slaughtered.

His blood was poured out for sin.

His blood was available for us.

Time under the crowd, time under the wrath of God, leading up for him to say it is finished.

This is what Paul means when he says Christ is our Passover lamb and he has been sacrificed.

Therefore, our lives should be different.

Do you believe in the grace of God?

The grace of God gives you Jesus Christ.

And when you encounter Jesus Christ as your Passover lamb, it should change your life.

It should give you a desire for holiness, a desire to pursue Jesus Christ.

Lord, we're thankful that you are a holy God and you have given your holiness to us through Jesus Christ.

We know that when we come to faith in Christ, we are declared holy immediately, instantly, completely before you.

And we hate it.

We want to put to death the deeds of the flesh.

We want to grow in godliness.

We want that, we want that, we want that.

But it is hard.

And so we're thankful for your grace and your mercy.

Your grace which saves us, your grace which changes us, your grace which forgives us day in and day out.

You are gracious to us today in forgiving us of our sins.

You're gracious to us today in giving your word and the fellowship of the saints.

So we trust you'll be gracious to us this week.

In fact, we trust that you'll be gracious with us to carry us all the way to glory.

But you will not lose any of us.

Like the Israelites celebrating the Passover before they ran into the wilderness.

You've given us a feast as well, the Lord's table.

And so tonight, Lord, we turn our hearts towards it.

We celebrate this as a way to make haste into the world, to know that we're changed, and yet we're leaving this church and going back to the world from which we came to live our life this week.

Help these elements bind our hearts together.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.