A Holy Community

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

The sermon text for today is from 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 1 through 13. You can find this passage in the Blue Pew Bible on page 1736. Please listen as I read God's word. 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? 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 our 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 the 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, not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers or 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 sister, but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or 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 2:35

Last week, there I felt like there was too much in here to uh just rush past this. So we're gonna spend another week sort of diving into and meditating on what is in these uh very delightful verses that we find in the book of 1 Corinthians. Uh before we get into that, uh if you are newer to Elmwood, whether today is your first Sunday here with us or whether you have been at Elmwood even for a couple months here, I want to invite you to something that's happening just in a few minutes after the service is over today. We're hosting what's called the welcome party, and that is uh it's gonna be right back in that room, right back there through those big glass doors. And the welcome party is uh really a time for you to connect with other people who are newer to Elmwood. It's a chance for you to uh get to meet some of our ministry leaders and to learn about next steps towards getting connected uh to what God is doing in and through our church community. And uh so again, right after the service, it's gonna be right back there. There's if if you had no idea that was happening today, you didn't RSVP, that's totally okay. Uh we'd love for you to join us for that. It's only gonna be about 20-ish, 25 minutes after the service. Uh so we'll get you out in a good time, and uh, we have cupcakes and other snacks uh that'll be back there as well. So if nothing else, just come for the snacks. Just come for the cupcakes at the very least. So uh if you were newer to Elmwood any time in the last six months, uh, or if you just want some food, uh come hang out with us in the welcome party right after uh the service today. Uh with that, let me ask you to join me in a word of prayer as we come to these verses. God, there are times where we are confronted by things in your word that are uncomfortable for us to think about. And God, we confess that that can be hard for us. But we also want to sit under the good authority of your word, and so we ask God that you would help us to do that this morning. We ask that you would be present among us by your spirit in a unique way to help us see and understand and internalize what we find in these verses. And God, we ask that as we uh look at this passage and what it shows us about the beauty of a holy community, we pray that you would form us as people of holiness, a people of purity, and that you would form us into a community of holiness. God help us this morning as we look at these verses. Give us your grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Philip Yancey is a Christian author and speaker. Some of you might be familiar with him. He has written many books, and uh, his books have sold over 15 million copies, and he has also translated those books into over 40 different languages. So, this is a person who has a pretty significant influence in the Christian world. He's well known for his books on the subject of grace, uh, the most popular of which is What's So Amazing About Grace? Some of you may have read this book. Just earlier this week, he confessed to an affair with a married woman that lasted almost a decade, which means that for a very, very long stretch of time, this man was preaching and teaching and traveling and writing and all of this stuff while living a double life. And as you can imagine, people have been shocked and really hurt by this news that has come out. But this kind of thing happens fairly regularly. I always uh find it interesting that there's there's this book called Dangerous Calling, written by uh Paul David Tripp. And the subtitle is Confronting the Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry. And in this first edition of the book, if you look on the back, you see all these people that have endorsed the book and say all this nice these nice things about it. Of the five men who have endorsed this book, four of them have lost their ministries due to moral failure or due to some sort of uh other situation or have left the faith altogether. So I guess it is a pretty dangerous calling, as uh as the book says. These are just uh two examples of what I think we all know to be true, and that is that the church is not immune to surprising levels of sin. The church is not immune from surprising levels and from surprising kinds of sin. It's not just a thing we you know see sort of out there in culture or in the world or hear things that are distant from us. Our own experience tells us this as well. In these verses you heard read this morning, uh Paul is addressing sexual sin that existed in this church community. And some of us, as we read or hear passages that talk about sexual sin, uh our hearts are heavy. And we feel a kind of guardedness because some of us have personally experienced the fact that sexual sin does not live on the pages of an ancient document like in this letter of 1 Corinthians. Some of us here today bear the scars of being sinned against sexually. Some of us here today may have sinned sexually against other people and carry the guilt and the regrets and the shame of things that can never be taken back. And as I mentioned a moment ago, aside from the sexual sin that we read about in this passage, there are so many other ways that we see surprising levels of sin in the church. Stuff comes out all the time about churches that manipulate people or take advantage of people, or there's cover-up of sexual immorality and sexual abuse. There's all kinds of ways in which we see surprising levels of sin in the church. And what Paul tells us in these verses today is that that's not how it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be that way. And in fact, in these verses, I think one of the things that Paul does is he gives us a vision for something better. He gives us a vision for what it looks like to be a community of holiness. And that's what we're going to be thinking about this morning. So as we look at these verses once again, the first thing I want to draw our attention to is the priority of our holiness. So we see in these verses is the priority that Paul puts on us being people of and a community that's characterized by holiness and integrity. Since we're looking at the same passage two weeks in a row, and since not all of you were here last week, I want to do just a very brief flyover so that we are making sure that we're seeing what's here in context. So the situation that Paul is writing to address is there's a twofold problem. On the first part of the problem is that there is a man in this church community who is engaged in a shocking kind of sin. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. And this is the kind of thing that not even the Greco-Roman culture around them, that was very sexually tolerable, by the way, very sexually uh promiscuous, not even they thought this was okay. Even Greco-Roman culture around them thought this kind of thing was grotesque and wrong, and they created laws against it in their own Greco-Roman culture. So this man is engaged in this kind of sin, and the second part of the problem is that the church community is doing absolutely nothing about it. The church community doesn't seem to have tried to get this man to turn from that sin. Doesn't seem that anyone has uh has confronted him or talked to him about this. He's just allowed to go on living in this public and unrepentant sin, and that's the second part of the problem. So that's the problem that exists. And then Paul offers this solution to them. He offers a solution that is a grace-fueled and grace-filled solution, and that solution is to put this man out of the community. It's to tell this man, we love you, and you are uh you don't belong here anymore. You can't come around here anymore. The the sort of the fancy or the scary term for this is excommunication. And that's what Paul is instructing this church to do, but he's doing so in hopes that this man will be restored. He's doing so in hopes that the sin in his life will be dealt with and he will put that away, and that in the end he will be saved, and he'll be restored back into the church in Corinth, and he'll be restored back into relationship with God. That's the hope. So casting this man out and excommunicating him is not an act that is punitive, it's an act that is restorative, it's an act that is redemptive. This passage as a whole that you heard read this morning shows us the priority that Paul places on holiness. He cares not only about the sin of this one guy, he also cares about the holiness of the entire community. And so that's why he says, you need to put this man out, you need to cast this man out. That's what he says later in this text. He says, Don't even associate with someone who claims to be an apprentice of Jesus and who lives in this kind of defiance in public and unrepentant sin. Don't associate with them. And then he ends this passage in your English Bibles. This will be in a quotation as it is in mine. This is a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy that comes up numerous times. And the command in the book of Deuteronomy is expel the wicked person from among you. And again, all of this shows us the priority that Paul places on holiness, that he cares so much about the holiness of the community that he's telling them to cast this person out who's living in this unrepentant, really extreme kind of sin. So when he quotes from Deuteronomy, what this uh lets us as readers know is that he's picking up on a pattern that begins back in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. And that pattern, as you might guess, has to do with preserving the holiness of the community. See, what happened was in the Old Testament, God established a covenant relationship with the nation of Israel. So a covenant is not just relationship and it's not just contract. It's it's sort of both. It's not just relationship and it's not just legal. It's actually the deepest form of relationship accompanied by a legal aspect that makes it so that there are consequences for breaking that covenant relationship. And so it actually heightens the relational nature of the covenant by adding these sort of legal things as a part of it as well. And so God made this covenant with his people, and holiness was one of the things that was supposed to define the community of God's people. So, as his covenant people, they are to be holy because he is holy. He is holy, and so therefore, they are to reflect his holiness in their lives and in their relationships. That's what's supposed to be true of them. That's the expectation. But there were things that threatened the holiness of God's people. Of course, there were external threats, and we could talk uh at length about those, but for the sake of our time and the focus this morning, I want to focus on the internal threat to holiness. Because that's what Paul really hones in on here, is the internal threat to the holiness of the community of God's people. The internal threat, you might not be surprised by this, is the people. And there were people who were a part of the community who said, Nah, I'm gonna live this way instead. And so their lives did not reflect the holiness that God was expecting of his people. And those people's lives threatened the integrity and the holiness of the entire community. It's a different way of thinking. We we live in such an individualistic world where people would say, if it, you know, if it feels good, do it, loosen up. It's just you, you're not affecting anyone else. That's just so far from the way that people thought in the ancient world and even in most uh lots of places in the modern world today. So it was the people who were living in sin in the Old Testament community that were threatening the integrity of the entire community. And so God gave instructions to his people. And one of those pieces of instruction may come across as really harsh to us, and I get that. But the the the instruction God gave his people is when someone lives in unrepentant sin, you are to cast them out of the community, you are to expel the wicked person from among you. And it's so important we see that God did this because he cares about the holiness of his people. God did this because he loves his people, and his people were in a way threatened by that sin. And of course, the same pattern that was that existed in the ancient world, in the in the Old Testament, existed in the church in Corinth as well, where God had given his instruction to the people, and some of them were living in unrepentant sin. And so Paul writes to say, Cast this person out from among you. And the reason is he tells us here, he says, Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? So he uses this sort of baking metaphor, which they would have been far more familiar with than many of us are today. But when you take a small amount of yeast and put it inside of a batch of dough, it permeates the entire thing. And that yeast actually organically and chemically changes what that lump of dough is in the first place. That's why unleavened bread doesn't do the same thing that leavened bread does. And so Paul is saying that sin is like yeast in a community. A very small amount, it permeates and it changes, it has a it has a formative effect on the community. So sin poses a threat to the community, not just the person who's sinning, not just the person who might be uh hurt by the sin of that person who sins. The entire community is at risk when there is sin that is allowed to grow and to and to multiply in the community. So it was true in all the way back in ancient Israel, it was true in Paul's day in the first century world, and the same internal threat exists in our modern context as well. I'll put it like this when a church allows sin to go on unaddressed, it compromises the holiness of the whole community. When a church allows sin to go on and there's there's no trying to get that person to turn from that and to embrace a better way, when the church allows sin to go on unaddressed, it compromises the holiness of the whole community. And certainly one of the reasons for this is uh it comes down to just like a proverbial uh saying, a proverbial wisdom that I'm sure you've heard of. Uh, what you tolerate is what you get. That's just good like life wisdom right there. What you tolerate, what you allow is what you're gonna continue to get. So for example, imagine a classroom where one student is allowed to, I see Missy looking at me like she knows exactly what I'm gonna say. If that this isn't how she would teach, of course, uh, but if you have a classroom where there's one student who's allowed to continually, over and over and over again, be disruptive in the classroom, and no one steps in and stops it, it's only a matter of time before all the other students recognize, oh, I can get away with this? This I can do that too. And all of a sudden you start seeing that that there's a permission structure that has been established because of that. Or, some of you might uh this might hit too close to home for some of you. Imagine there's an employee who shows up late to every meeting, 10 minutes late, and the meeting every single time is delayed by 10 minutes, and if that continues to be allowed to take place, everyone starts to realize, oh, the meeting doesn't actually start until 10 minutes after the meeting is scheduled to start. So why am I gonna waste 10 minutes of my life sitting here waiting for someone to show up and just being angry at them? I'll just show up late too. And all of a sudden, you get there's a permission structure created for people to show up late. Or think of a child who is allowed to speak disrespectfully to his or her parents in front of other people or in front of other siblings. It's only a matter of time, and a very short amount of time at that, before those children recognize oh, this is this is what's allowed. This is how I can talk to mom and dad. This is how I can talk to authority figures in my life. And it's only a matter of time before other people begin to join in and press into that. And what Paul is saying here is that the same exact thing is true spiritually speaking within a church community. When we allow sin to go on in a community, it's only a matter of time before people realize oh this this is what's this is what's allowed around here. This is this is what I can do, and no one's gonna say anything about it. No one's gonna challenge me, no one's gonna correct me or confront me on this. I can get away with this. And that and part of that is just like human nature. Maybe it's just me. Where like you want to get as close to the line as you can, or maybe just like a little bit over the line. And so when this is allowed, people begin to realize oh, this is what I can get away with. So that's one reason why allowing sin to remain unchecked in the community leads to or presents a threat to the entire community. But there's more to it than just this. It's not just that if sin is tolerated, people begin to sin more, although that's certainly true. See, I don't think Paul is concerned that when if this church lets this man continue to have this relationship, he's not concerned that, like, well, people see that, well, if this man can do it, that other people will be tempted to have an incestuous relationship. I don't think he's concerned that that's what's going to take place, but something much deeper is going to take place. See, when we become the kind of people, when we let sin to just uh continue to go on and leave it unaddressed in our community, we become the kind of people and the kind of church that is desensitized to sin and to unholiness. It actually changes who we are. In other words, even those people in the community who maybe don't sin more when they see other people getting away with it, even those people who don't sin more become the kinds of people who care just a little bit less about sin. And who care just a little bit less about holiness. And so in that way, Paul is so concerned with the holiness and the good of the community as a whole. That's why he's so insistent that someone who is caught in this kind of sin be put out of the community. It's for that man's good and it's to protect the holiness of the community. And this is why we also should take sin very seriously. Because it matters, it has a shaping and forming effect on us and our community if we allow these things to happen. Now, I do think it's uh it's it's worth noticing here, you know, because there's the internal threats of like the people here. There's also the external threat, and we could spend time talking about that, but Paul doesn't seem too concerned about the external threat. Paul seems far more concerned about the threat that comes from the church than he does the threat that comes from the culture. So listen to what he says. Verse 9, he says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all, meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy or swindlers, or idolaters, in that case, you would have to leave this world. But now I'm writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister, but is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or slanderer or drunkard or 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. So apparently he'd written them a previous letter, and there was some confusion about something he said in that letter. They thought, when he said you should stop associating with sexually immoral people, they thought he was talking about sexually immoral people outside the church. And he's like, guys, you realize that you'd have to like literally leave the world if that was the case. They're doing the exact opposite of what he meant. They stopped associating with the people they should be associating with, sexually immoral people who need to know Jesus, and they continued to relate and associate with people in the church community who should have been put out of it because of their sexual sin. And so they're doing the exact opposite of what he intended for them. And what he clarifies here in this letter is that associating with sinful people in the church poses a far greater threat than associating with sinful people in the world. It's worth considering whether our attitudes are like that of Paul, or whether we have adopted the same mindset as a lot of Christians, whether we've adopted the same mindset as a lot of Christians that says the problem is out there. The real threat is out there in the world. It's the fill in the blank of whatever kind of person you think is a threat to you. And Paul's like, you should be very concerned when you think the threat is outside your walls. I think the enemy loves for us to think this way. That the problem is out there, that the real threat is out there, because it keeps our focus off of the sin that exists in our own lives and in our own community. I think the evil one wants nothing more than for us to become so consumed with the sin of people out there in the world that we stop caring about the sin in here. We should take sin very seriously. And we should not underestimate the impact of letting sin take root inside of our own church community. So, how do we become a holy community? How do we actually functionally become the kind of church that Paul seems to be advocating for? One of holiness and purity, where we love people who are in the world, who don't know Jesus, whose lives are wrecked by all kinds of sin? How do we love them well and be people of integrity? How do we do that? Let me suggest a few different ways we can pursue holiness. Number one, we fix our gaze on the one who makes us holy. This is number one. We pursue holiness by fixing our gaze on the one who makes us holy. The subject matter of this passage in particular shines a very bright light on just how messed up the church in Corinth is, that this kind of thing is happening. But remember what Paul said about this church in his greeting. He introduces himself or says who it's from, and then in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 2, he says, To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We talked about this when we first started the series, but it's worth mentioning and repeating again that Paul uses a past tense word to talk about their having been sanctified, which is a word that means to be made holy. He says, You have already been made holy, you have already been sanctified, you have already been purified. And as you read this letter, you're like, how in the world can you say that these people whose lives are so messed up have been sanctified? How can he talk about them this way when their lives look the way they look? And the answer to that question is that their holiness is not of their own doing. Their holiness is not of their own doing. In other words, they are not holy because of their behavior. They've not made themselves holy because of good things that they've done, because they go to church and because they read their Bible and because they give and serve. That's not what makes them holy. They are holy because they have received the holiness of another. They have received holiness from somewhere and from someone else. And this is really what's at the heart of the message of the gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect holiness. He perfectly delighted in God the Father with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He perfectly lived in obedience to the Father. He lived a life of perfect holiness. And then he suffered and he died and he was raised again from the dead on the third day, so that through faith in him we could be made holy. So that his status as holy and righteous and pure could be given to us. We are not holy because of anything we do. We are holy because someone else has given holiness to us. Someone else has made us holiness, and that happens through faith in Jesus. And so when we see his holiness, and when we see what Jesus has done for us, we will desire our lives now to reflect the holiness we've been given. This is one of the main themes throughout the whole book of 1 Corinthians, as Paul says, you are holy. You have been made holy. Now knock it off and live like it, is essentially what he says. That's the whole thing is this is who you are. Now live like who you actually are. So we pursue a life of holiness by fixing our eyes on the one who makes us holy. Secondly, we choose to be involved in each other's lives. Let me ask you a question. Who has access to the deepest parts of your life? Do you have a person or a small group of people who know the things that you struggle with? The ways that you are tempted? Do you have people that know those things about you and have been given access to at any time ask how it's going and receive a truthful and honest response? Let people so close that it's hard to hide your sin. That's one of the ways that we pursue a life of holiness as a community, is we get involved in each other's lives. And of course, it should go without saying that this is not the only way to be involved in each other's lives. Maybe I should have put this part first. It's weird and unnatural for your relationships to be just deep all the time. We become a holy community by showing up for small group, for being here on Sundays and saying, Yeah, maybe I'll stay for 15 minutes late instead of rushing out the door. Maybe I'll come 15 minutes early and hang out with some people. We pursue holiness together by going out for coffee, inviting people into our homes, and numerous other ways that we invite people into just the everyday stuff of life. And as we do so, it's out of those ordinary relationships that deeper relationships are going to emerge. And not every relationship you have with someone in the church can or should be at the deepest level. But do you have any of those? Sometimes we call it your 2 a.m. friend. Do you have a person who you know would answer the phone if they saw your number come up at two in the morning? Do you have those people in your life? Do you have those people that know you that deeply, who you've given access, who you've given permission to speak into your life when they see things that they may say, you know, that doesn't seem like it's in alignment with how you ought to be living. And so in love and in grace, I want to I want to uh have a conversation with you about that and and and push you to live in line with the way of Jesus. Do we have people like that in our lives? Because that's how we pursue community, uh, pursue holiness as a community, is we fix our gaze on the one who makes us holy and we choose to be involved in each other's lives. As we come to the communion table today, we practice fixing our eyes on the one who makes us holy. I want to invite you to take uh a few moments for silence and confession, and then we will come to the communion table and celebrate Christ together.