Proud of All the Wrong Things

When we read Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, we see a church whose attitudes and actions are sometimes indistinguishable from the Roman culture around them. The church in Corinth is messy and divided, but it belongs to God. The letter of 1 Corinthians shows us a beautiful picture of how the gospel can bring transformation and renewal to every area of life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Good morning and Happy New Year. Today's sermon text is from First Corinthians chapter five, verses one through thirteen. And you can find this passage in the Pew Bible in front of you on page 1736. Or you can follow along in your device or in your own Bible. Please listen as we read God's word together. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate. A man is sleeping with his father's wife, and you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out your fellowship, the man who has been doing this? For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus, on the one who has been doing this. So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of the Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival not with old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Do not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters. In that case, you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or a sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you. Here ends the reading.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

Hope you're doing well this morning. If I have not yet had a chance to meet you, my name is John, and I serve as the lead pastor here at Elmwood. Especially if you are newer with us this morning, we once again want to just uh express our gratitude that you are joining us here today. Uh before we get into the message this morning, I want to share uh one thing with you. Coming up on Sunday, January 25th, so just three weeks from today is our next uh church meal and our annual meeting. And one of the things the things we do each year at the annual meeting on that Sunday is we take time to celebrate God's work over the past year and then also look ahead to the year to come. And what I want to do right now is take just a moment and share about one additional item that is on our agenda for that meeting. Over the past few years, in particular, Elmwood has changed a lot. And uh one of the reasons for that is because God has been bringing new people into our church family, and because our ministry is a reflection of the people that are here, uh, our ministry has changed because uh we have new people who are coming and getting connected. Uh in the last year in particular, our leadership team has also been looking at uh some different ways, talking about and implementing changes that we can make as a team to better to allow us to better serve the needs of our church both today and into the future. So change is a thing that's just like always happening around here and is always happening in all of our lives, whether we want it to or not, and uh we view those changes uh not necessarily as bad things always, uh, but we view those uh changes as both necessary and good. Our administrative assistant Linda has been with us since 2010, and uh let's just say that a lot has changed in the administrative world since 2010. Okay, uh if you're over 40, you can't answer this question. Who knows what this is? You're over 40, Christine, you can't answer. Henry, you know what this is? It is not a card catalog from a library. This is a Rolodex. Uh this is a Rolodex, and uh this is uh when Linda was hired at our church, this was like one of the major tools that people use to like keep things, keep information and contact information and all that. And some of you may still use something similar to this, so I'm not knocking having a system like this at all. Uh, but this is just a representation of how much everything now is digital. Everything is digital, everything is digitized, so much has changed in the administrative world over uh these past 15 years. And in addition to that, our our ministry has changed over these last years, and our administrative needs have also changed over these last years. And because of that, the annual meeting is going to be Linda's last day uh on staff with us at Elmwood. She has she served Elmwood so well over these last 15 years, and uh we want to take time at the annual meeting to honor her and to celebrate what she has uh contributed to the life of our church, and this is why I bring this up to you is because I have an assignment for you. The assignment is before the annual meeting on the 25th, number one, mark your calendars, plan to be there. And number two, the assignment is would you please write a thank you note or a card of some kind uh expressing your gratitude? There's so many ways in which uh Linda has invested in and cared for Elmwood, um, and so we want to uh take time to express our gratitude, to overwhelm her with that as we send her off into the next season of her life and ministry. So uh that's the assignment that you have is write a thank you card, write a thank you note to Linda, and be there at the annual meeting so we can uh give those to her at that time. Uh with that, let me invite you to join me in a word of prayer as we come to these uh verses you heard read. God, this morning we asked for your help. Or there is parts of your word that are uh confusing and that are difficult to understand and that bring up subjects that sometimes we would rather not deal with at all. And so, Lord, we ask that you would uh be near to us right now by your spirit in this time. We ask God that you would uh be teaching us and that you would help us to uh see what's in this passage and to just live with some of the brokenness that exists in our world and and that exists in uh our own lives. And also that you would uh please help us to see uh your loving kindness for us and your grace and your mercy and your forgiveness in the face of our sin. So, God, be with us now, we pray, and we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Last summer we started a series of messages in the book of First Corinthians, and we made it through the first four chapters before taking a break for fall and uh the season of Advent. And this morning we are picking up where we left off in uh the most fun part of the book of First Corinthians, which is this section in the middle that talks about all of these things that are not exactly rated G. Okay. Uh we let you know about this in the Elmwood Weekly coming up. Uh the Bible talks about things that are uh can be uncomfortable. And uh we want you to know that as we talk about these things that are in the passage today and look at these next few chapters, and we see subjects like sex and sexuality and lawsuits and prostitution and marriage and singleness and relationships, we just want you to know that we are going to handle those subjects with thoughtfulness and with nuance. Uh like I recognize that the younger generation is in the room, and so we want to handle these things. We need to we need to face them head on because they're in the Bible, and we should also do so in a way that is really careful. And so you have uh my commitment that we're going to handle that in a uh careful way. But I thought it was important to let you know that these are the waters that we are going to be wading into. So, as we look at these verses today, uh we are going to see a two-part problem that exists in this church in Corinth. We're going to see the grace-fueled solution that Paul offers, and then we're going to think about what are the takeaways in this passage for us. So, first let's think about this two-part problem that we see here in the opening verses of chapter five, where Paul says, This it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. And you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? So, in just these two short verses, we see both sides of uh both parts of this problem. The first part is you can see is that a church member is engaged in a shocking kind of sin. This is a member of the church in the city of Corinth, and he is engaged in a shocking kind of sin. Now, the the category, sort of the brand of sin that this guy is engaged in, falls into the category of sexual immorality. That's the uh translation that we have in our NIV, English Bibles, and uh that word or that phrase sexual immorality is the translation of a Greek word uh that is the word porneia, which is of course where we get our English word pornography. And in the in the first century Roman world, the word pornea was used up pretty narrowly, uh pretty specifically to refer to the payment of prostitutes. But the Jewish community had taken that word and begun to use it in a much broader sense, and the the Jewish community used this word pornea to refer to any sexual activity outside the bounds of covenant marriage. So in the Hebrew Bible, in the Torah, the Bible says that covenant marriage is the environment for which God designed sex to be used and enjoyed, and any sexual activity outside of that falls into this category of sexual immorality. So the word pornea can refer to in the Bible, can refer to lots of different kinds of activities and behaviors. I won't describe those all to you now, but it's obvious that here it's being used to refer to a kind of incest. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. Now, in all likelihood, he's not sleeping with his biological mother. He's sleeping with a woman that his father married. In either case, whatever the case, this kind of relationship is very clearly and very strongly prohibited in the Torah, in God's instruction in the Old Testament. And the shock of what this man is doing is made even stronger by the fact, Paul says, that even pagans know this is messed up. So he says, it's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate. Now, the word pagan here is just it's the word for Gentile, meaning anyone who's not Jewish. So obviously, the Jewish people thought this was wrong. But Paul's point is so do the Gentiles. The Gentile people that the Jewish people so often looked down upon for their sexual immorality, they even had laws saying that this kind of stuff was wrong and not prohibited either. Now, Greco-Roman culture was very lax on things like prostitution and adultery and other forms of sexual immorality. So in the Roman world, that stuff was just commonplace. It was uh it was not really uh a big deal. And Paul is saying, even people who are part of this Greco-Roman society who are very lax on all kinds of other sexual immorality, even they understand this is wrong. Even they get this is messed up. And this is what Paul finds so shocking about this. Even the Gentiles that they look down upon for being sexually immoral know that this is unacceptable. So this is the first part of the problem that is existing in this church community. But as shocking as this was, it's even equally shocking that the church community is doing nothing about it. So this is the second side of the second part of the problem. The first is that there's a church member who's engaged in shocking levels of sexual sin. And the other part of the problem is the church community is doing absolutely nothing about it. So you can hear it throughout this passage, where he said Paul says that seeing this kind of behavior in this man's life, and uh just as sort of a side note, uh, the language used here to describe this man uh sleeping with his father's wife is present tense language, which is meant to indicate to us this was not a like one-time fling. This is an ongoing relationship this man has with this woman that his father is, or at least at some point was married to. And Paul says that seeing this kind of behavior should have led them to mourning, but it didn't. It should have led them to put this man out of their fellowship, but it didn't. So he's engaged in the kind of sin that not even pagans think is acceptable, and no one is doing anything about it. The problem that Paul sees here is not just, as you can tell, not just with the man who's doing these things. His problem is with the church community. Because the church community is letting this stuff happen and not addressing it, not doing anything about it. So that's the two-part problem here is that a church member is engaged in shocking kinds of sexual sin. And the second part of the problem is the church community is doing nothing about it. Paul then here offers a grace-fueled and grace-filled solution. And the solution he offers here is to hand this man over to Satan. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, What? How is that a grace-filled solution to this whole thing? Uh, that's a great question. We should untangle what we see here in verse 5, where Paul says this he says, Hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. So basically, all the commentators uh say that to understand what's happening here when he's talking about handing this man over to Satan, we have to understand uh that Paul is thinking in the category of there's two realms. There's the realm of the church, and there's the realm of the world. And so one of those realms, the church, is governed by God, and the other realm is influenced by Satan. And so what he's telling this church to do is to put this man out of the church, which puts him into the realm that is governed by, at least in part, governed by the evil one. Another part of this passage uh also helps us uh fill in what it means to hand him over to Satan. Just uh just after this in verse six, Paul starts talking about the Passover. And you're like, what in the world does the Passover and unleavened and unleavened bread have to do with any of this? Here's what he's getting at. He says, starting in verse six, he talks about the Passover and says that Jesus is our Passover lamb. Jesus has been sacrificed for us. He's our Passover lamb. And so he's taking the Passover and applying that to this situation in the first century church. And so just remember for a moment what the pass what happened in the Passover. There was uh the blood of a lamb, a lamb was killed, and the blood of that lamb was smeared all over the doorpost, and everyone who is inside the house was under God's protection. Everyone who is outside of the house, who is not covered by the blood of that lamb, was subject to the destroyer who was going to come through and kill all the firstborn uh sons who are not in a house with the blood that was smeared on the doorpost. And so Paul's taking what happened in that first Passover and he's applying it to this situation. And essentially what he's saying is, guys, Christ is our Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us, and all those who are a part of God's house are under the protection of the blood of the Lamb. Jesus has been sacrificed for us. We are under the protection of his blood, just like those uh people were in the first Passover. So putting this man out or uh handing him over to Satan uh means this. It means removing him from the protection of being in God's house. That's what it means for him to be handed over to Satan. He's removed from the protection of being in God's house, and he's cast out into the realm of Satan. Now, how is this an act of grace? Well, there's I think two reasons why this is an act of grace. Paul says here, hand this man over to Satan, and then he tells us what the result of that is going to be. For the destruction of the flesh. So, in other words, Paul thinks that handing this man over to Satan is going to result in the destruction of his flesh. He's not talking about his physical body. There's a different word that he could have used to make that very clear. But the word that Paul uses here is the word he uses very often that's translated in our English Bibles as flesh. And when he uses this word, very often he's referring to our sinful nature. He's referring to the part of us that lives in rebellion against God. And so that's what he means by flesh, and he seems convinced that by casting this man out into the realm that's governed by the evil one, the ways of the flesh in him, that fleshly sinful part of him, is going to be destroyed. Now, we could do lots of speculating about how excommunication would actually accomplish this. Because you might think, well, wouldn't it be better for him to be a part of a church? Wouldn't it be better for him to be in relationship with other Jesus followers? Wouldn't it be better if he were in a community where he was hearing the word of God talked about and taught? Wouldn't that be better for him than being cast out? We could do lots of speculating, but because we don't have time to track down those rabbit trails today, I think it's just really important that we don't miss what Paul hopes to be accomplished here. He says that by excommunicating this man, the result of it is going to be that the ways of the flesh in him are going to be destroyed. That's what he wants. And that's why this is an act of grace. But the second reason it's an act of grace is he says the goal of excommunication is this man's salvation. Hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that. So that he can come once again into the household of God. And that's why this is a grace-fueled solution to the problem. It's motivated by a desire to see this man experience restoration, not just within the church community and those relationships, but also ultimately with God. So that's why it is a grace-fueled solution. Okay, so that's the two-part problem that's existing here is this shocking kind of sexual sin and the church doing nothing about it. Paul's solution is remove this guy from the protection of God's house, cast him out, so that his soul in the end may be saved. The question for us is what do we do with this? What do we take away from this? How do we respond to this? Let me just suggest one what I think is a pretty obvious action step, and it's this take sin seriously. Take sin very, very seriously. We should take it seriously first in our own lives. It is so easy, isn't it, to look at this man who is doing all these things and to be like, ew. And it's so easy to look at this man with a mixture of disgust and contempt. And to be clear, we should be disgusted by this, okay? No question about that. But it's easy for us to possess the kind of contempt and arrogance that says, I'm not capable of something like that. Man, how messed up must that guy be for him to ever do something like that? And we we arrogantly look down on him thinking, I could never do anything like that. But having that kind of an attitude towards this man, uh it reveals a lack of spiritual self-awareness inside of us. Our attitude instead should not be to look down upon this man. Our attitude ought to be one of seriousness and one of sobriety that says, apart from the grace of God, I'm capable of egregious sin too. Apart from God's restraining grace in my life, I'm capable of doing things that I at this moment think I might never be capable of doing. We should take sin in our own lives very seriously. And the reason we should take it very seriously, one of the reasons, is because people don't just wake up one day and find themselves deep into sin. That's not how this works, typically. Typically what happens is that it starts with one small compromise. And then there's one more small compromise. And then there's one more small compromise, and then there's one more small compromise. This is how this works, you know. There are things that you today may not be capable of doing. Okay, just picture over here on this side, there's this like really bad, awful sin. And here you are today, and you're like, today I'm not capable of doing that thing. And that may be true. But after one small compromise, and one small compromise, and one small compromise, and one small compromise, five years later you find yourself one decision away from doing this thing that years ago you were not capable of doing. And that's how this works. Is all those little things add up and and and you eventually find yourself in a place where it takes one decision to do what five years ago would be unthinkable. And that's how sin works. Is it accumulates and accumulates, and all those little, oh, this isn't that big of a deal, it's just no one's being hurt by this. This is just something that's, you know, in the private of my own life. What's the worst that can happen? And those things accumulate, and one day you may find yourself being able to make a decision that you never thought you'd be able to make. Because all those small compromises over time add up. And the people who are in the greatest danger are the ones who downplay all those small little sins along the way and say, That could never be me. I'm never capable of doing something like that. We should take our sin very seriously, which means we need to confess it to God and to others. We need to repent from it, turn from it. We should set up systems and guardrails in our lives to protect us from being even in situations that we know will lead to temptation. We should take even the smallest sins in our life very, very seriously. We should also take sin seriously in our church community. We should love each other too much to remain silent about sin when we see it in each other's lives. Now, some of you, some of you might be here today and you're weirded out by the thought of like um addressing sin in the church, and how do we do that? And um I I get it. Part of the reason why this feels so weird to us is we live in a hyper-individualistic culture. And so the thought of like interjecting yourself into someone's life to be like, hey, here's a thing I I see that like you should change, is like that's just totally socially unacceptable. So that's part of it. And also, you you may also be sitting here thinking, like, uh, what you envision is a group of like nosy people who are constantly confronting each other. And you're like, I want nothing to do with that. Uh if that's what you envision, please know that I want nothing to be no part of a church like that either. That's not what this has to or should look like. I think that a healthy way for us to approach this as sort of a as a church community is to uh practice using a phrase that we have found especially helpful over the years here at Elmwood, and that phrase is here's what I see, help me understand. Here's a thing I see, help me understand this. Now, obviously, there are times when a sin is so clear and obvious that it requires a direct kind of confrontation or a direct kind of intervention in a person's life, absolutely. And yes, there are times when it's necessary, depending on the kind of sin, to put someone out of our church community and say, because you have done this, because you've sinned in this way or have sinned against people in this way, you can't be here. Certainly there are times where that kind of thing is appropriate, but I think the majority of the time, the majority of the time we take sin seriously by having those here's what I see help me understand conversations. Where we go to another person and say, you know, I saw that you did that thing. I heard you say that thing, or I heard from someone else that this that you did this thing or said this thing. Can you help me understand? Because what that looks like to me is, but I want to understand, am I missing something? Am I totally off on this? Help me understand what's going on. And we have those conversations with grace and with concern for that person's well-being. And as we have those conversations, we make certain that that person knows that we're having this conversation in the first place because I love you and because I want what's best for you. And because I, if this, if I think I see what I see in your life, I know that it is not for your good and flourishing, and so I want to help you root that thing out of your life. We do so from a place of love and concern. And that's what it could look like for us to take sin seriously in our church community. But we have to take it seriously both in our own personal lives and in the community of the church as well. There's uh there's a lot more that we could say about this, uh, but for the sake of time today, um, let me just again say this main takeaway for us is that we have to take sin very, very seriously. And the reason we need to take it seriously is because we know that God does. The message of the cross shows us how seriously God takes our sin. The solution to our sin was not God giving us good advice, saying, here's some things you can do to improve your life. The message is not here's some things you can do to better yourself or to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. No, our sin is so serious that the only solution was for God's own son to come and suffer unimaginable agony, to step into all the brokenness of our world and to experience the worst that humans have to offer. He experienced, he was the recipient of the most egregious sin. He suffered and he died in order to absorb the sting of sin into himself so that we could be forgiven, and so that we could be brought once again into God's house. And the cross shows us just how seriously God takes sin, and it also shows us the the magnitude of his love and his grace for us. And so the correct response on our part is uh is to take sin very seriously in our own lives, in our own church community, and to do so in a way that reflects the loving and forgiving heart of God. Each week we come to the communion table here at Elmwood, and we do so and we're reminded each week of the seriousness of our sin, and that the solution to our sin had to be Jesus suffering and dying for us. And so as we come to the communion table today, I want to invite you to take just a few moments of silence and confession, and then we'll come and receive Christ together at the table.