For the Church’s Sake

0:57Bath time is a word, a sacred word, in many of our homes. It's a very difficult word. You know, I hear from the world that our children are too sedentary and that they just sit around and do nothing and they just play video games. But if you say bath time to a bunch of children under the age of 10, you can watch them move really fast. Everywhere but the bath, running hither and yon, to and fro, scattered to the four corners of the world.

1:27You have to go and catch them and round them. Up and then go throw them in. I only just a little bit on that. I have four boys, and so bath time is very necessary and very difficult to complete with these boys. But it's extremely necessary because without it, my house would be, let's see, uninhabitable over not a long period of time. Bath time is hard, but bath time is necessary. I only bring that up to sort of give us a picture, not of people scattering hither and yon, but of the idea of something that is really, really necessary, really, really important, but also really, really difficult. And that is the work of church discipline. I say the work because that's what it is. It is action and it is hard.

2:27It is not easy. It is also extremely rare in our day and age. Now, it's rare in a sense here at New Life because we don't go through official church discipline when disciplining a member of the church that often, but we have, and we do, and we will when it's necessary. I'm afraid that it's even more rare outside of this church and other churches where people may have never experienced loving, biblical church discipline. When I was with Alan and we were planning out how we were going to preach for this coming year and we saw who was going to be gone where and all this kind of stuff, and I saw that 1 Corinthians 5 was going to be my week to be able to come and preach. I thought at first I'd have to put out a little PG-13 disclaimer because in the very beginning of this chapter, we see that Paul is using the example, he's speaking about a very specific incident that's happening in the church, and it is an incestuous relationship between a man and his father's wife.

3:36But the truth of the matter is that this text is really not about sexual immorality. That's next week. So, Alan, take your vacation now as you're listening to this, and you can speak on it next week. This week, though, we are talking really about church discipline. We're talking about the purity of the church. We're talking about the protection of the name of Jesus and of the reputation of the gospel. That is what we're doing today. When we talk about church discipline, we often speak of it and we just sort of shudder and say, Oh, this just sounds just so mean and so tough, and that's because we think of it in a worldly way and not in a biblical way.

4:19I would point us to the words of our very recently departed brother in Christ, Warren Wearsby, one of my heroes and expotters. Expositors of the word, when he wrote that discipline in the church is not like a policeman arresting a culprit. Rather, it is like a father chastening his son. When you think about a father chastening his son, my hope and prayer would be two things would come to mind. One is would be a rigid consistency, a rigid consistency, but also that there would be a tenderness and a love that goes along with that.

4:58Because that's what real church discipline is supposed to be. It's supposed to be done in spirit and in truth. It's supposed to be done with gentleness and with straightforward firmness. Let's look at the text. The text is going to attempt to answer the question of why we exercise discipline within the church. And the long answer to that is very simple: it's for the sanctification of the church member, it's for the purity of the church body, and it's for the witness of the church's message.

5:33The short answer: we do church discipline for the sake of the bride and for the glory of the bridegroom. For the sake of the bride, the church, and for the glory of the bridegroom, Jesus. Long answer. We do it for the sanctification of the church member. Let's look at these first few verses here. The first five verses here in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. The first thing that Paul calls us to is he says, You should mourn over sin.

6:06That when unrepentant sin is happening within the church, our reaction should be sadness. We should be torn up. We should mourn over sin. He says in verse 1 that it's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father's wife. Paul uses the word reported. The first thing he says, he says, it's been reported. It's been heard. I know about this. Now, listen, Paul is writing this letter to this church in Corinth, but he is far east of Corinth. He's about 350 miles as the crow flies across the Aegean Sea. Paul is in Ephesus, modern-day Turkey, southwestern Turkey. Greece is in, or excuse me, Corinth is in the southern part of Greece. It's on an isthmus that connects the mainland of Greece with an archipelago and a bunch of islands that are there together and another strip of land, another body of land. It's 350 miles away. Communication travels across, has to travel across the sea. But in all likelihood, it travels more likely. And, well, just more times through the land, over land, because, well, people don't have that much access to boats and ships. Nobody's tweeting anything out. Nobody's on Facebook or Instagram, or I like to bother my kids' Facegram and Instabook and all this other kind of stuff. They don't have these things. The world is much actually larger than it is today when we think about how technology has made our world small. It takes longer for communication to be disseminated, for it to travel from one place to another. And if you're talking about traveling, you would have to take this circuit from Ephesus all the way around to Corinth. That's almost 1,500 miles.

8:18It would take a long time. If you were going to drive that, it would take a long time, much less go on foot. And yet, from so far away, from such a seeming distance, this incident, this scandal is being talked about and gossiped. People outside of the region of Corinth have heard and they have talked about this incident. What does that tell us? Sin never stays hidden or even stationary. It will be exposed, and its damage will reach places that are never imagined.

8:58We always think. That our sin is personal, and our sin is never simply personal. We always think that our sin, or sometimes we think that our sin is private. No sin can ever truly, eternally be private. Think of Adam and Eve in the garden in Genesis 3. When they sinned, what was their first reaction? We're going to go hide from God. Can you imagine that? We're going to hide from God. We're going to hide from the omnipotent, omniscient being of all the universe. We're going to hide from him behind trees, behind bushes, right? That sounds absurd, doesn't it? Church, any kind of hiding of sin is absurd.

9:47We can't do it. God knows it, and he will uncover it. What is this scandal that is being reported to Paul? It's sexual immorality. The word is porneia, which means any sexual activity outside of covenant marriage. No exceptions. It's in the predicate nominative case, also, and that doesn't mean a whole lot to most of us English speakers. But here's what it means: it means that this, he's not talking about something that may have happened, he's not talking about something that could happen, he's talking about something that has happened. This is a fact. We are not dealing, we are not dealing. With ethereal white tower ideas. We're not contemplating what could happen. He is dealing with the here and now. That is what church discipline is for. It's for the here and now. It's for the real life. It is for the stuff. It is for the sin that we entangle ourselves in.

10:52This is a man who is known to be a member of the Corinthian church. And he has engaged in sexual immorality with his stepmother. And what about that? I don't want to go too far into the weeds on that for a lot of reasons. But we need to establish a couple things here. First of all, we know clearly from God's word that this is not okay, right? Leviticus 18, 8 says that you shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife. It is your father's nakedness. You see how Moses, when he's laying out this law to the Israelites, he says that if you were to look at your father's wife in this sort of disrespectful and dishonoring way, you're also dishonoring your father. It's total. It's complete. He's saying something about marriage, by the way. Amen, right? That we are joined together spiritually in marriage. And when this comes in, when this enters in, when sin enters in, it rips apart that which God has joined together. Or at least it has the ability to. Isn't that terrible? That's what sin does. Sin is destroyed. Destructive, and it doesn't just stay where we think it's going to stay. We know from God's word that this sort of incestuous relationship is forbidden. It's sinful. But he goes on to say there in verse 1, he says that this is a kind, an immorality of the kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans. What is Paul saying there? Well, he's saying that this is something that non-believers don't even do. Christians who have been bought and purchased by the blood of Jesus, or at least profess that they are, they are partaking in something that even the outside world won't do. How do we know this?

12:49The ancient Roman law expert Gaius in 161 A.D., I'm giving you a quote from 161 A.D., that's about 100 years after Paul writes this letter. I want you to think about that. Keep that in mind. This is how progressive it's gotten, right? 100 years after this, he says, it is illegal to marry a father's or a mother's sister. Neither can I marry her who has been ever my mother-in-law or stepmother. This is not acceptable behavior amongst even the pagan Gentiles there in Corinth.

13:30In the first century B.C., that's about a century before Paul writes this letter, the famous Roman orator and philosopher Cicero, he says this. He says, mother-in-law marries son-in-law. Oh, to think of the woman's sin. Unbelievable, unheard of, to think that she did not quail. Now, I don't know exactly what to think that she did not quail means, but I like to bird hunt, and I know what a quail looks like, and it is not the most elegant of all birds in flight. Not at all. As a matter of fact, you have to get a dog to get it up in the air, right? Just so that you can take one down. Listen, 100 years before, 100 years afterwards, this church was not only allowing a man to engage in this type of sinful behavior without apparent consequences, behavior that even those outside of the church, in different time periods, no less, they would have found abhorrent. This church was apparently proud of their open, their tolerant, their more licentiously liberal attitude towards the lifestyle choices of its members. They allowed for sin within the church.

14:53So, what is Paul's grievance against them? Look at the first part of verse 2. He says, are you, he says, and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? He says, you're arrogant. Physuo, it means to puff up. The word picture in the Greek is the idea of an animal who's trying to establish his domination. I'm the alpha male. So it's like a dog or a cat, right? When they come into contact with another dog or cat, they are the alpha, and they're going to let you know. And the hair is going to stand up on the back of their hand. They look so ridiculous, right? Especially like little kitty cats like that big. And I'm like, I could just punch you right now over the fence, but I wouldn't do that because I love animals.

15:36You're just trying to be so big and bad. This is what Paul is saying to that church. You're trying, you're so arrogant. You're so puffed up. You think you're something that you're not. They believe themselves to be great. They believe themselves to be power, powerful, to be chic, to be attractive to the world, to be on the right side of history. How far have we come, by the way, in the modern church, even in the American church?

16:14How far have we come in our own sanctification since Paul pinned this letter? We don't have to go very far into church history to find churches celebrating what Scripture forbids: idolatry, heresy, racism. Abuse, sexual immorality, fornication, homosexuality. And listen to this. It's not even just about what the church tolerates. Because what sin that is tolerated in the church is not first tolerated in the hearts of God's individual people. It starts here, right? John Calvin said that the human heart is an incessant idol factory.

17:02It means that we have no end to the amount of idolatry that we can engage ourselves in. We can make an idol out of anything, right? It starts here. I would only add to Brother John that what we produce in our hearts never stays there. Eventually, our sin is manifest in what we think, what we say, what we do, and what we tolerate. He says you're arrogant because you tolerate this within the church. He says you should mourn. You ought rather to mourn. Mourn, literally, pantheo, means to mourn over the dead. They should be in mourning. They should be in grave clothes. They should be looking like and acting like they're going to a funeral. These Christians are celebrating in their own strength when they should have been mourning. Over the loss of a brother and of the disrepute coming to the reputation of Christ in his body. They should have been grieving over their own sin. They should have been distraught over wickedness in the house of the Lord, but they're partying in their pride.

18:21No, Paul says, You should judge this sin, Corinth. You should judge this sin, church. Look at the second part of chapter verse 2. He says, Let him who has done this be removed from among you. That word remove, Iroh, it's the same word that's used in Luke 23 when the crowds were asked by Pilate if they wanted him to release Jesus or to release the murderer Barabbas. And they all cried together in verse 18, Away with this man. That's the word. Remove. Away with this man, talking about Jesus and release to us Barabbas. They wanted nothing to do with Jesus. Paul uses that same word, and that sounds harsh, doesn't it? But it's truth. He says, you are to be removed from the presence of this man in your congregation. Paul is not interested in entertaining sin. He is not interested in placating sin, in excusing sin, or in any way tolerating unrepentant sin among God's people. People. He wants this man utterly taken out of the midst of the congregation. He wants the world to no longer be able to identify the church with the unrepenting, sinful man.

19:46That sounds rough, doesn't it? It gets rougher. Look at verses 3 and 4. He says, For though absent in the body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. These Corinthian believers thought that, well, as long as Paul's not here, right? Something about when the cat is away and mice playing, something like that, right? He says something about, like, if Paul's not here physically in Corinth, as long as he's away on vacation in Ephesus, that's where you go on vacation, Turkey, right? Amen? I don't mean to offend anybody from Turkey.

20:44As long as he's away, they wouldn't have to do the hard work of placing this unrepentant brother under church discipline. Paul says that if what has been reported to him is true, then it doesn't matter if he's there physically. He's there in spirit. In other words, the spirit of what he has already taught them, the very word of God, is effective, whether Paul's physical presence is there or not. Paul helped plant that church in Corinth. Many of the people that he's writing to, these Corinthian elders and others that are within this church, are the very people that Paul himself led to Jesus. And through the power and the authority of the Holy Spirit, planted there as elders shepherding over this church.

21:40You don't have to wait for me, says Paul. I'm with you in spirit. You know what I taught you. I gave you, I delivered to you the word of God. Notice what Paul does there. He doesn't even appeal to the elders. He appeals to the word. He appeals to the spirit of Paul, the spirit of that which he has delivered to them, which he has given to them, the word of God. Listen, our church, praise the Lord, New Life Baptist Church, we are elder-led and shepherded. We are congregationally ruled and governed. In other words, ultimately, as elders, we try to shepherd you through. But there are instances when you have to vote and you have to tell us. Amen?

22:27We're good congregationalists in that way. Because we believe the Word of God says that to us. But ultimately, our authority is the same authority as the church in Corinth. It is the word of God. And the Word of God doesn't need to wait for some high-ranking official to show up and be true. Amen? It's true. And he tells them: if what I've heard, if what has been reported to me is indeed true, you don't need to wait for me to remove him because the word of God says so. Amen.

23:06Your authority is God's word. Your authority is God's word. Our church covenant is taken from God's word. Our statement of faith is taken from God's word. The Baptist faith and message of the Southern Baptist Convention is taken from God's word. These things individually are not in of themselves God's Word, but they are explaining what God's Word says to us. Amen. This is important. We have to agree on something. We have to agree to hold ourselves to a standard. And the standard is not my idea of what is right or wrong. And the standard is not what you think is right or wrong. The standard is what God's Word says. Paul says, you don't have to. To wait for me.

24:05The Bible is our ultimate authority. Notice in this text also that there's nothing present in the text about the church taking extra-biblical, punitive measures against the offending brother. In other words, the goal is not just to make him feel really bad. The goal is not just to ostracize him. The goal is not to pick on this one brother. It's not personal like that. It is personal, but it's not personal like that. They're not to judge his motives because that's prohibited by Jesus in Matthew chapter 7. Remember, Matthew chapter 7, we won't have time to go to it right now, but Matthew chapter 7, a lot of times these are the only verses that people who are non-Christians or skeptics know. Judge not lest you be judged. Amen, right? Which to many non-believers means that's license to do whatever the heck I want, and you can't tell me otherwise, right? But actually, if you go back and read, and I encourage you to, Matthew chapter 7, Jesus is giving instructions to his disciples on how to judge. And he says, you judge non-judgmentally. He says, don't go looking for the speck in your brother's eye until you remove the log that is in your own eye. And he says, don't be a hypocrite. In other words, Words, don't hold other people to a standard that you're not willing to hold yourself to.

25:36Right, church? Don't hold other people to a standard that we're not willing to hold ourselves to. But, he says, when you've removed, there's an expectation, when you've removed the log in your own eye, go remove the speck in the brother's eye. In other words, you are to act. Jesus is not saying don't judge, he's saying, don't judge hypocritically. Don't be a hypocrite. We use the same standard, and it's God's word. This is not personal. This is not picking on anyone.

26:11This is about being consistent with Scripture. In 1 Corinthians 4, just last week, we saw that the Lord will bring to light whatever is hidden in the hearts of men. He's not talking about judging motives. Paul is clearly saying that if what has been reported to him is true, this brother is in unrepentant sin, and he needs that sin to be judged in front of the church by the standard of God's word. And the church must take action to remove him from their fellowship. Well, what would this removal mean for this brother? That's the next logical question here. And he explains that. Look at verse 5. You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

27:00That his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. What does this mean to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? Does Paul want this man to be harmed or even destroyed? No. Two passages will help us to understand this, understand what Paul's saying. The first passage is 1 Timothy chapter 1. Paul writes to his younger brother in the faith, Timothy, This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith in a good conscience.

27:43Timothy is a pastor. He was called to be a pastor, and he had elders lay hands on him, prayed over him, and he was vested with authority as an elder in the church in Ephesus. And he says, you're an elder, and you're an elder not because I said you're an elder. You're an elder because the Holy Spirit has called you, and these men have come and laid hands on you. You have been empowered by the Holy Spirit, and you hold to faith in a good conscience. You trust the word that has been delivered. Some have rejected this, he says. And by rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith. Some have rejected the authority. Authority of the word, and they have rejected the authority of the word by rejecting the authority of the elders that have been placed over them. And by rejecting this, they've made shipwreck of their faith. Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme. Do you see that there? They've been handed over to Satan, which is the same sort of phrase that he uses here in 1 Corinthians 5. But he goes a little bit deeper into what that means. The first thing that we see is that Paul intends by putting these two brothers out of the church is to be instructive, not destructive. You see that? It's instructive. It's positive. It doesn't sound positive, because who wants to deal with Satan? Amen, right? But Satan, according to Ephesians 2:2, is the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Satan is working in the world to build his own kingdom. He wants to keep the non-believer deceived, and he wants to make believers unfaithful and miserable. If these brothers are truly saved, Hymenaeus and Alexander, then they will desire to cease blaspheming the Word of God, and they will willingly submit to the leadership of the Ephesian church elders and to God's word. And if they're not true believers in Jesus, there's no Christian life to be destroyed, is there? Why? Because they're not Christians. If they're not yet actual believers, then the Ephesian church will know to approach these men as all those who do not yet believe upon the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see that? It affects our witness to them. If I know that they are not a believer, if it's become apparent that they're not a Christian, then I'm going to engage with that person differently than I would a brother. Why? I don't expect, and the Bible doesn't expect, non-believers to act like believers. Amen? But the whole reason why we are in this mess is that the Bible does not expect believers to act like non-believers.

30:43This has real, eternal implications that we'll get to in just a second. There's another text that helps us with this. 1 Corinthians 3:14 through 15, just two chapters before. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Here, just two chapters back, Paul tells us that anything which has its foundation in Christ, anything that is built and possessed by the work of Jesus on the cross, it will survive his coming judgment into eternity. Because of this great truth, the Corinthians should not fear for the offending. Brothers harm to his flesh by living according to this dark world. That world and everything it values and trusts in will be destroyed. Instead, they should pray that his time out from under their care would reveal to him what his life's foundation truly is. Is it the world or is it Christ?

31:52If it's Christ, he'll be drawn back by the common union of the Holy Spirit living within all true Christians. And if his foundation is the world, then they must pray for God's grace to prevail upon him, to prevail upon his heart, and for him to come to faith in the finished work of Jesus upon the cross. This can only be done by the power of the Holy Spirit. They must pray for his power. They must be diligent in witnessing to this brother and telling him the good news. They must pray for the sanctification of this church member. That's why we have church discipline. But not only for the sanctification of the church member, but it's also for the purity of the church body. Look at verses 6 through 8. Beginning in the first part of verse 6, he says, your boasting is not good. I love the bluntness of Paul. Your boasting, your arrogance is not good. What do you think about that, Paul? It's not good. Paul, tell me about their boast. It's not good. It's not good. We're to deal humbly with their sin, and yet. They're not doing that. They're dealing arrogantly, and it's not good. That word not good, by the way, that phrase not good, ooh kalun, it literally means not beautiful. The church is supposed to be beautiful.

33:14The church is supposed to reflect our Savior. The bride is supposed to reflect the bridegroom. The sheep is supposed to reflect the shepherd. It's beautiful. And ultimately, the church is beautiful in Christ because of the work of Christ. But this situation causes the church to not look beautiful to the world. And let me tell you something: it's not the sin in and of itself that is causing the church to not look beautiful to the world because everybody knows that no one's perfect, that everybody sins. What is ugly is the fact that the church won't deal with this sin.

33:56What's ugly is that this church wants, desires to look like the world, and the world is ugly. That's the problem. This sinful scandal is not something to be proud of. This cavalier attitude towards sin is ugly. The church should have been humbled by the scandal of such abhorrent sin by a professing member. But they instead were boastful. Their first step should be to walk in humility. And how should they do that? So glad you asked. That's for the rest of verse 6 through verse 8. They are to completely purge the sin.

34:49Do 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. Their first step should have been to humbly remove the sinning brother. Why? Paul uses the example of Passover meal preparation. So according to Exodus, the Jews were to prepare for the Passover, the commemoration of God's delivering his people out of Egypt by preparing and eating a hastily prepared meal of a spotless lamb, unleavened bread, wine, and bitter herb. All of these elements, by the way, have their own meaning. Obviously, the spotless lamb represents the Messiah. Amen? Looking forward, looking future to the spotless lamb who knew no sin, who would be sacrificed on our behalf. And the bitter herbs.

36:01They have a symbol, they're symbolic also. We're not to turn back and think of our bondage as something that was good. We're not supposed to like our sin that we've been rescued from. It's supposed to be bitter. That old life, that old place was bitter. That bondage was supposed to be bitter. They're supposed to be reminded of that. An unleavened bread. The bread was to be unleavened, similar to what we're about to use here as we share the Lord's Supper together. Meaning that it was unleavened, meant that it could not contain yeast or leaven. Leaven would have caused the bread to rise. It would have added time for it to bake, and therefore it would have caused the Jews to delay their journey out of bondage. The Jews were commanded to continue annually celebrating the Passover in this way until the Messiah, who we know is Jesus, the true spotless Lamb, comes to essentially deliver them to the promised land. Every Jewish preparer of this holy meal knew that even if a little tiny bit of leaven were to get into the batch, it would quickly spread throughout the dough and it would ruin the meal. Paul is telling the Corinthians that to allow for this sin or any unrepentant sin will be to allow for the poisonous spread of sin and wickedness throughout the church. Paul was saying that Christ's body Cannot celebrate the eternal Passover Lamb Jesus while allowing for unrepentant sin. It's why we fence the Lord's Supper. If one sin is allowed, some sin is allowed. And if some sin is allowed, there is no reason to say that in some way any sin is not allowed. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. We cannot mix worldliness with godliness. They are opposed. Okay. Well, how do we walk through this kind of process of discipline? Well, Jesus gives us the answer in Matthew chapter 18. And he's going to mention something that had never been mentioned before, by the way. And it's called the church. This is before his crucifixion, his death, and his resurrection. This is before Pentecost, when we sort of recognize the ushering in of the church age. He mentions the church. What does that tell us? This is his idea, not ours. Amen? This should reassure you, church. You're not being overly harsh. You're only being faithful to what God has commanded us to do, what Jesus explicitly expects from us. He tells us in Matthew 18: if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. You see, the doctrine of subsidiarity. See, it's subsidiarity.

39:00That discipline begins in the smallest place first. Really begins in my own heart, amen. I need to be disciplining myself. I need to be submitting to the Holy Spirit. But also, subsidiarity means that I'm to take care of my brother in Christ, right? This is why we're in life groups. Because we can do life better together in smaller groups than just here on Sunday mornings. Amen? And then it goes out. See this, this pattern with Jesus. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. But if he does not listen, but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If you refuse to listen to them, tell it to the church. First time you see that word, the ecclesia, the gathered ones. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

40:08Now, if you work in a tax office, God bless you. I don't think that Jesus is specifically calling you out right now, although I have my own opinions of the IRS. But to know someone as a tax collector or a Gentile means to know them to be outside of God's family. He says we're to treat them as one. Who are not within God's family as a non-believer. And there's a totally different way to approach a believer and a non-believer.

40:42This process, by the way, is super simple, but it is not easy. We can't allow for sin to go unrepentant in the church. But it's not only for the holiness of the bride of Christ. Lastly, we go through church discipline for the witness of the church message. For the witness of the church message. Look at verses 9 through 13. 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 swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler. Not even to eat with such a one. For what do I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you.

41:54That's a tough word, isn't it? It's a tough word. It seems to sort of go against. Our natural inclination for inclusion and fellowship, doesn't it? We want people to be here with us. We want a fellowship with people. We want people to be identified with us. But here's the thing, church: this is not a new word to the Corinthians. According to the text, according to verse 9, Paul wrote in a previous letter, a letter that did not survive and therefore is not included in the New Testament canon. He wrote not to associate with specifically sexually immoral people. Now, he's going to add to that list about five other additional sinful behaviors, and he tells them not even to share a meal together. Why? It's all about that word, associate.

42:50Synomignami. There, I said it one time, not saying it again. That's the word associate. Synemignami. Okay, I did it again. The beginning of that word is S-Y-N, sin. Not sin, like separation from God in doing, committing sin, but it's sin is in the same root as the word synonym or synonymous. Webster defines synonym as one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses. In other words, If you have someone who is synonymous with sin, and he is synonymous at the same time as being a member of a church, these things cannot mix.

43:42Why? Because the church is not for unrepentant sinners, it's made up of repentant sinners. Notice I didn't say perfect people because nobody would be in this room. Amen? None of us. But we cannot call that which God calls evil good and continue in it and then expect to be named as one, a Christian. To have a public relationship where I affirm someone who claims to be a believer, a believing member of my church, is to become synonymous with that person. Again, we're not talking about perfection. We're talking about calling behavior good and beautiful when God has called it sinful and ugly. I am not only giving tacit approval of sin, but I'm communicating to the world that in some way my church, the body of Christ, is giving approval to this unrepentant sin. And that is, listen to me, if you don't hear anything else, that is eternally, spiritually dead. Dangerous. Why? Glance over to chapter 6, verses 9 through 11. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And listen to this.

45:34And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. In what? The name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. He's not under any sort of false impression that the believers that are within the Corinthian church are perfect people, not at all. But they are a repentant people who are placing their trust and faith in the work of Jesus. And they are believing the word of God that when God calls something sin, it is not to be a part of our life. If they were to mix this up and to continue to allow this unrepentant brother. Brother, in this church, then they are saying to the whole world, that incestuous relationship that he has with his stepmother is okay. And God says it's not okay. God says you can't go to heaven in that kind of unrepentant sin. Do you see the eternal ramifications here? We cannot, it is dangerous to call sin good.

47:01Do you hear me, church? Because there will be people otherwise who are sitting in the church who will believe themselves to be saved, who have not looked really at their own life, not closely enough, at least, to say, eh. They'll not look at their own hearts and see really and truly what they're believing on. They will believe themselves to be inheritors of the kingdom of God when in truth they have not been justified or sanctified. Something, by the way, they cannot do apart from the work of Jesus. Christ does it. But when Christ does it, he puts his spirit within you and within me, and he won't let us continue to live the way we used to live.

47:53And if we do, we need to examine our life. Paul says no. It would be dangerous to the eternity of this sinning brother or sister and dangerous to the gospel witness of the church. The unrepentant sinner within the church must be isolated from identification with the Christ church for the sake of his or her soul and for the sake of the church's gospel mandate. Though that sounds harsh. Again, I'm not talking about those who don't claim Christ as Lord and Savior. I'm only talking about those who have all agreed to live under the standard and authority of the Word of God.

48:40Those that don't know Jesus yet, well, the only way to avoid engaging non-believers is to leave the earth. And none of you are astronauts. Amen? We're here, man. This is where we are. This is where God has placed us. And I'm going to tell you another thing. This is not new, this idea of being completely out of the world as a Christian. You can't do it. But we've been trying to do it for centuries. Whether it's the ascetic monks of the Middle Ages, the Amish and the strict Mennonites of the last three centuries, or just the bubble of the Christian subculture that has just hyper-insulated itself from any type of relationships outside the church, Christians have been attempting to spiritually leave the world since the churches insisted. But the reality is, to believe that you can completely leave the world is to leave reality. It's just not true. Not only is it not true, it's not good. You are Christ's ambassadors. Amen. We are here to live and to love and to be a witness for Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus says to his own disciples in the high priestly prayer of John 17. He says, I've given them your word.

50:00And the world has hated them because they're not of the world. He's praying to God for his disciples. Just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They're not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in your truth, your word in the truth. Your word is truth. And you sent me into the world, so have I. As you have sent me in the world, so I have sent them into the world. And then after his resurrection, when he comes and meets with his disciples again, he gives them the same mandate. It's so awesome. Before the resurrection and after the resurrection, it's the same mandate. Jesus said to them again, Peace be with you, as the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. The weather's getting a little bit cooler until this week when it gets back up to almost 90. The weather's getting a little cooler, which tells us that Christmas is around the corner. Amen. What is Christmas? We celebrate God sending Jesus into the world. And just as God sent Jesus into the world to live and love among us, God has sent us through Jesus to live and love among the world. This is where we are.

51:15We're in the world. We're not of it, but we're in it. God has called his people to go into the world to build relationships with those who do not yet know his son Jesus as Savior. Listen, we cannot expect non-believers to act like believers. But church discipline is not for non-believers. Church discipline is for us. And church discipline is good. I was a long snapper for Aggie Football for three years. Let me say this again. I was a backup long snapper for A ⁇ M football for three years. That way, I will take the impressive nature of myself down several notches in your eyes. I was a backup long snapper, which meant I spent a lot of time on the sidelines. But I can teach all of you in 90 seconds how to deep snap a football. Let me do this real quick. If I had a football, it'd be a lot easier, but I don't, so you have to imagine it. So imagine that you're about to throw a football. So if you're going to throw a football, you would take the laces and you have it on your finger of your dominant hand, the hand, whatever it is that you throw with. You'd have it about the top third of the football, okay? So you don't want it in the middle. You definitely don't want it at the bottom. You want it at the top third. And you take your off hand, right? Your non-dominant hand, and you take that hand, and you would take your middle finger and put it on the crease that is opposite of the laces. That's how you're going to grip the football. Before you do that, you have to address the football, which means that you have to come up to the football in a football, in an athletic stance, which is your feet are a little bit more than shoulder-width apart. Does it make sense? You're just like this. This is an athletic stance. No matter what sports you play, basketball, baseball, football, soccer, whatever, everybody gets in this stance at some point. But now you're going to address the ball. So you're going to sink your hips. You're going to take your bottom low. Bottom has to be low. Can't be too low, or you'll roll it back there. But it can't be too high, or you'll snap it over his head, right? So we address the ball. I take the ball, and here's what I do. This is so simple. I am just going to throw my thumbs right here between my knees. That's all I'm going to do. Throw them. Remember how my hands are? Remember? Y'all remember that? And now I'm going to throw my thumbs like this. When I do that, it is going to naturally allow the ball to rotate and spiral with velocity, depending on how hard I do it, right? When you do that, it will right between the legs and bam, get to the punter or to the holder. There, you all know how to deep snap. I honestly couldn't teach you anything more. That's all it is. So now all of you should go and ask Jimbo if you can go and snap for the team. We need help, right? Amen. Saw that yesterday. We don't need help in deep snapping, that's for sure. We got a really good deep snapper.

53:59Here's the thing. Deep snapping is really simple. It is really hard to do, especially in front of 106,000 people. It's just really hard to do. And the reason why it's hard to do, it's simple. It's really hard to do is because it takes a lot of practice. I used to lay on my bed when I was in high school and in college when I was on a team, and I would lay on my bed in my dorm room or in my room at home. I would take a ball and I would snap it. And I would lay on my bed and it was purposeful on my bed, and I would have to do 100 perfect snaps. It had to be a perfect spiral. It could not wobble. Could not wobble. I did it so much to where I could give laces to the holders where they didn't have to spin laces. Like just a lot of practice. And it couldn't touch the ceiling. And if it ever did those things, if it ever wobbled or ever touched the ceiling, then I'd start over. Even if I was at 99, I'd do it 100 times perfect every night. I snapped the ball hundreds of thousands of times. Snapping is simple, but it is not easy.

54:59Church discipline is not complex. Matthew 18. It's not complex. It's very simple, actually. But it is amongst the hardest things that God ever calls his church to do. It is hard. It's hard. But if we love Jesus and we love his word and we love our brothers and sisters, Sisters in Christ. And if we love the world and the witness that we're giving to the world, we will engage in loving church discipline. We will. It's not easy.

55:47It's simple, but it's hard. But it's worth it. They pray for us. Father, thank you so much for this day. Thank you for your word. Pray, God, that you would bless our time together. God, help us to take to heart what it means to be in church discipline, what it means to engage in the real hard work of loving our brothers and sisters in Christ enough to tell one another when we're wrong and to hold one another accountable, even to the point of treating a brother or sister like they're not a Christian because they're not acting like one.

56:27Help us to always keep the gospel at the center, to love people well, to be faithful. And Father, finally, we need your grace in this. We love you in Christ's name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.