1 Corinthians 5:1-8
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Scripture Reading
(1 Corinthians 5:1-8) It is
actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and
of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living
with his father's wife. {2} And you are arrogant! Should you not
rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been
removed from among you? {3} For though absent in body, I am
present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced
judgment {4} in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done
such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present
with the power of our Lord Jesus, {5} you are to hand this man
over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord. {6} Your boasting is not a
good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole
batch of dough? {7} Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a
new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb,
Christ, has been sacrificed. {8} Therefore, let us celebrate the
festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
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SERMON
Pastor Alan warned us that there would be difficult, hard-to-take
passages in I Corinthians. So here is a real doozie and Alan is on
vacation. It reminds me of the old saying- "when the going gets
tough, the tough go on vacation." Just kidding.
My sister-in-law once gave us some sourdough starter. In a jar was a
little lump of not the best smelling dough. Just a little bit from that
jar was enough to make loaves and loaves of sourdough bread, not to
mention pancakes and such. We gave some away and probably those we gave
the starter to others and who knows how far that sourdough starter has
gotten. It has likely leavened loaves all over the West Coast and
perhaps beyond. When just a little of that sourdough leavening gets into
a big bowl of flour and water- whisssht! It puffs up the whole thing.
The Scriptures, from Jesus to Paul, tell us that evil is like that. The
leaven of evil has widespread effects. From the saying in Ecclesiastes-
"Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment stink and a little evil
undoes much good" to the modern saying that "one bad apple
spoils the barrel" show us the double badness of bad. Not only is
the person who commits the evil harmed but people all around are
affected and infected. Evil is insidious and very social.
That being said, let's take a look at today's piece of Scripture. In the
church in Corinth a man was having sex with his stepmother. It was
common knowledge that there was quite a bit of sex outside of marriage (porneia-
extramarital sex- from "twisted") going on in the Corinthian
church, news had gotten around, but this was over the top. This is an
evil so bad that it would shock respectable pagans. This shocked Paul.
Yet the people of the church in Corinth ignored the whole thing and kept
on with their arguments about who was the best teachers and who had the
best wisdom. This shocked Paul. They were filled with a complacent
pride. The church had taken a casual view toward sexual morality so when
this worse-than-usual case came up they were either blinded to the
problem. In our world of shock media it is important that we not become
so jaded we cannot be shocked. Shock is part of our spiritual defense
system.
Eugene Peterson in The Message writes Paul's words like
this: " I received a report of scandalous sex within your church
family, a kind that wouldn't be tolerated even outside the church: One
of your men is sleeping with his stepmother. And you're so above it all
that it doesn't even faze you! Shouldn't this break your hearts?
Shouldn't it bring you to your knees in tears? Shouldn't this person and
his conduct be confronted and dealt with?"
Well, should this be confronted and dealt with? Then? And now? We are
talking about inviting people to leave. We speak much of tolerance and
inclusivity, what of discipline and holiness? What about this hard edge?
Jesus said, "Be ye perfect". The OT tells us several times to
"be holy". Paul tells us that no immoral person will enter the
Kingdom of Heaven. If you are anything like me you would rather skip on
down a few chapters to chapter 12 and talk about how great it is that
everyone gets special gifts from God or on to chapter 13, the "Love
Chapter". It is a great temptation to skip this, but listen to C.S.
Lewis from The Weight of Glory.
"If our [faith] is something objective, then we must never
avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or
repellent; for it is precisely the puzzling and the repellent which
conceals what we do not yet know and need to know."
Let's see what we can do with this and not duck it. I'll probably
have something to offend just about everyone today. It's my spiritual
gift.
The context of this passage is the establishment of the Church in
Corinth. Placing a mini-kingdom of goodness, holiness, purity, love and
selflessness in the middle of one of a perverse, self-righteous,
pseudo-intellectual, self-serving, and flesh gratifying city. Alan has
already told you of the great temple of Aphrodite and the thousand
sacred prostitutes who descended on the city at night. Well, the Greek
language had a word, korinthianize, to live like a Corinthian, meaning
to live in immorality and drunkenness. Anytime a Corinthian was
portrayed on the Greek stage he was drunk. God's holy Church was placed
in the middle of this world. So the question for the Corinthian church
is the same one we have. How do we resist the pressure of becoming the
unholy world around us? Is the world around us so different from then?
My wife Sue has been reading an older paraphrase of the Bible by an
author named Hurlbut. Unfortunate name. Great book. Written with a great
deal of historical detail and tries to capture the times and situations
of Scripture. Sue has been reading the OT and recently about the
Canaanites. After reading the descriptions of the Canaanites Sue's
observation was that we are surrounded by an increasingly Canaanite
world- a world that glorifies violence, a world that sacrifices its
children on the altar of the god of success and having the good life, a
world that treats sex as no more than an appetite to be satisfied.
Canaanites are Canaanites and they act like Canaanites. Corinthians are
Corinthians and they act like Corinthians. Pagans are pagans and they
act like pagans. No surprise there. And Americans are becoming
increasingly pagan.
What is our responsibility to the Corinthians, the Canaanites, the
pagans in our midst?// To love them. To listen to them. To show them
Christ. To live and love in such a way that our witness makes sense. Our
job is not to hide from them nor to attack them. Love is a much more
difficult way of dealing with them but it is our job, our privilege, our
responsibility. It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict the world of sin
and judgment. John 16:8. If you look down in chapter 5 to verses 12 and
13 Paul says "What business is it of mine to judge those outside
the church? That is God's job."
Let me be clear here. This is not to say we do not fight mightily
against societal injustice and evil. Evil is evil and must be opposed.
Our intolerance is for sin, not for sinners in the world. Jesus Christ
died for each pagan person and, if we were honest, most of us were
pagans once. Most of us could point to a Christian and say this person
loved me into the Kingdom.
All this being said, it is a very different story inside the Church. A
quick story. A man came upon two boys fighting in a park. He grabbed one
of the boys and disciplined him severely. Another woman watching asked
indignantly why he didn't discipline the other boy. The man said, he is
not my son. The Lord says in Revelation 3:19 "Those whom I love I
rebuke and discipline." In God's economy discipline is not God's
way of saying "I am through with you", a mark of abandonment.
Discipline is the loving act of God to bring us back, to save us.
We are "new creations" in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:17
"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." We
are to walk on a new way. We choose that way. No one is making us be
Christians. No one is forcing us to follow His Way. If you are a member
of WPC you once stood up and voluntarily vowed to follow Christ and
accept His discipline.
When I was a freshman in high school I went to Clear Creek High in
League City, Texas, near Houston. I was a bit of an athlete back then
and joined the basketball team. Clear Creek was a proud basketball
powerhouse. Joining the team we agreed to a discipline, to act and
behave in certain ways. No late nights out. No alcohol. No cutting
practice. No saying the Lord's name in vain. If you were to be a
basketball player representing Clear Creek High you agreed to the
discipline. The purpose of the discipline was to have a great team. If
you cut practice you missed a game- star or no star. If you used the
Lord's name in vain you took a mighty swat from coach. If it was
discovered you were out late you missed a game. This was the discipline
for ordinary human slips. But there was a guy on the team, I can't
remember his name, one day told the coach that the rules (which he had
earlier agreed to) were stupid and he didn't have to take it. This was
serious. This was willful rejection. This was placing himself outside
before what followed. Which was… His person and his gear were out of
the locker room in a New York minute. It was not because coach was angry
and vindictive. He was not. He was just unwilling to compromise the
team. And he was unwilling to let the boy fool himself about what it
took to be a basketball player at Clear Creek High.
How does it stand at WPC? How do we do discipline here? I see the
Corinthian case as an extreme case. The procedure for normal discipline
cases, I believe, comes from Matthew 18:15-17 which goes about
discipline in the following way: first go one on one. If that doesn't
work, take a couple of trusted people with you. If that doesn't work
then to the church or representatives of the church. The reason you
rarely see public discipline among us is because it rarely gets past the
first two steps. Your pastors and elders have asked people to resign
from leadership positions. We have refused to allow certain people to
teach who were living lifestyles inconsistent with being examples for
children. In premarital counseling sessions people who call themselves
Christians and are living together are admonished. When we freely preach
the Word sometimes people get mad and leave. These are all forms of
exclusion and they all hurt. But they are at times necessary. Enough
said.
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