I wrote to you

Good morning. Yes, it's true. Nancy and I are homeless. As a matter of fact, I was telling somebody this morning that yes, yesterday, I spent a portion of the day pushing my earthly goods around in a shopping cart. And I've seen Nancy walking around holding bags. So anyway, yeah, it's all true. Hopefully that will be resolved here within a matter of a few hours. So we hope to be in our new place before the afternoon is out here. And we just want to thank all those in the body who've helped and supported us in so many ways.

And that brings me to my next point, and that is Phil and Sue Ellen have been serving as host and hostess to some special guests here. we have from Uganda. And so if I could embarrass you please by having you stand up. This is Ida and Winnie from Mbale. And they are here for a visit of a couple of weeks and a little bit more in order for Winnie to get some assessment and treatment at National Jewish.

So we're glad to have them with us. And afterwards, please mob them and welcome them warmly. Thank you. Okay, as we look at this passage here, go ahead and turn with me. We're going to be looking at one chapter, the entire chapter, 13 verses this morning.

So, now it's going to be turning a corner because for several chapters now from The first chapter, now to the fourth chapter, Paul has been talking about the divisions that are present among the believers in Corinth and about the reasons why those divisions are there.

And while he's been talking about that theme, he introduced the fact in chapter 4 particularly that one of the underlying attitudes and problems that's feeding this division is arrogance. And what he's going to do as this kind of new issue is going to continue on, however, with the theme of arrogance. He's going to turn from their building this personal empires, climbing social ladders within the church, and he's explained all the problems with that. Now he's going to turn to a moral scandal within the church, but continue on with this theme of arrogance as he does so.

And there's good reason. It's because there's lots of arrogance in this church in Corinth here. Both their deep divisions that they've had and their tolerance of immorality display flagrant ignorance. It was not something that he had to beat around the bush about. He could speak of this arrogance that they had multiple times here in this passage and in the previous one.

So this flagrant arrogance, it shows up in this way in this chapter. Whereas previously the arrogance had to do with, I'm going to build up my own social empire within the church, now they actually boast about tolerating immorality. We are so great. Look how tolerant we are. Look what we tolerate. That was the problem. That was how the arrogance was showing itself up.

So he talks to them twice in this passage saying, I wrote to you. In verses 9 and 11, he talks about, I wrote to you, and it makes reference to that. He had given them some prior direction in a previous letter, as we'll look at shortly. He had given them this prior direction, but they didn't seem to know how to put it together when it came to a specific situation. So he's going to help them with that. As you may recall, we included this slide in last week's slide set and handout. He had a former letter. In other words, it was a letter that he had written before. We don't have possession of it.

But we do know, especially from this chapter, at least some of the things he included in that, and particularly how to deal with those who were in the church and were sinning. So he's making this clear to them by giving them specific instructions. Look, I gave you a general principle, but you didn't seem to know how to apply it. Here is how you need to apply it in this situation. That's what he's going to spell out.

They had apparently no clue how do we apply what Paul wrote. They got to a situation here where they really needed to take some action, biblically, and they just weren't getting it. Instead, they're going around, instead of listening to what he said, they went around boasting. Look how tolerant we are. We tolerate this and we tolerate that. Why, we'll allow all sorts of things.

So Paul has words in this letter, in this chapter, to help them apply that general principle that he'd given to them in the prior letter to the specific situation they got. And it actually boils down to one man, who had a serious moral problem, and he's going to dig into the details here. One of the issues that they had was something he'd written to them about in the prior chapter. He had written to them, and he mentions twice, I wrote to you in chapter 5, but one of the problems they had was he would write to them biblical truth and they didn't seem to know what to do with it. They didn't seem to have any sense of How do I apply that?

They also, however, had not really recognized, I am a steward, Paul is telling them, of the mysteries of God. We are servants of Christ. When we write to you something, it isn't just our opinion or here's an idea, think about it. You need to understand we're writing to you about God's truth. And they needed to recognize that as well.

So Paul writes there in the first verse of this chapter, and we would put it in modern vernacular, I can hardly believe my ears. I can't believe what you guys are boasting about. I cannot believe what I'm hearing. And the best thing I could do is thinking of quoting here, When he gets into this, it is actually reported in verse two that there is immorality among you and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles.

And of course, you've got to remember the Gentiles were grossly immoral. But even the grossly immoral Gentiles would have thought this is terrible. They would have thought there's no way we would do this. And yet the believers in the church were allowing it. So he's saying even the immoral Gentiles who have no sense of morality whatsoever don't even do this.

And yet you, you, the arrogant among you are actually boasting of your tolerance of this. This ought to be raising some eyebrows. This ought to be getting your attention. And yet it's not. Paul is almost incredulous. He just, what? Wow! What were you thinking? He is almost incredulous about what he is hearing is happening. How can this be going on in the church? what the believers are boldly tolerating. See, they're not just tolerating and keeping it quiet. They're not just tolerating it and keeping silent. No, what they are boldly tolerating is something that was completely unheard of, certainly among the Jews, but even among the immoral Gentiles. Now, let me explain when I say immoral Gentiles. The Gentiles, their sexual morality was not.

There were four categories of prostitutes, and men were expected, even married or not, to participate among those four categories of prostitutes. In addition to that, it was very common to rent a young boy in that culture. In our own culture, it would be time to call the police. But it was very common and completely legal to rent a young boy. to use. So in this culture, where all sorts of immorality is tolerated, even the Gentiles will say, we wouldn't do this. We just wouldn't even do this. But you, believers, are embracing this and saying, see how tolerant we are. So what's going on here? What's happening? In New Testament times, Paul just has, in what we have in English, has.

That's a euphemism, as we would call it. It meant to have continuing physical intimacy with another. We might use terms living together, having an ongoing affair, shacking up. That's the meaning of this term here. And that's what he's making reference to. So Paul doesn't explicitly say it, but he says so very clearly in his choice of words that he's not using, as well as his euphemism. He was referring to a man having ongoing physical intimacy with his stepmother. They're saying even the Gentiles wouldn't do that. This stepmother either is married to this man's father or was. Let's say the father died. But he says that kind of relationship is really bad. So what he addresses here in verse 2, how ought the body of Christ to respond? What should be the attitude?

What they have chosen is arrogance. What they have chosen is to boast. What they've decided to do in this instance is to be accepting and tolerant of this. Not just simply a quiet, well, we won't say anything. but an outward boasting. Oh, look how tolerant we are. We tolerate all sorts of things.

Instead, he says, no, there ought to be some mourning that goes on. Rather than respond with this gross arrogance, this flagrant arrogance that they've had, they should be mourning that this gross sin is among them and remaining there and that this fellow Nobody seems to be approaching him with the problem, but instead they're just saying, hey, isn't this great? Along with that attitude about the singularly gross sin that's among them, they ought also to respond by putting this man out of fellowship. So the church ought to respond, one, amongst themselves to mourn over the issue and recognize it as a problem.

One of the ways that we express this in our own vernacular is we talk about the elephant in the living room. This is a really serious, big problem. Just like Nancy and I, as we move in today, we hope we're not moving into a place with an elephant in the living room. We don't want that. And they shouldn't want that either in the church. They shouldn't want this elephant in the living room, so to speak, in this church situation here.

They need to also respond by putting this man out of their fellowship, since apparently he is consistently doing this and insistent upon doing it. This is part of the larger New Testament teaching on dealing with sin in the church. We have a supplement, and I just hope you'll take your supplements. But there's a supplement on the cabinet to the right as you exit here. And this supplement has some information on the larger issue of dealing with sin in the church. And so really there's all sorts of questions.

You know, when should we boot somebody out? When should we not? What should be the first approach to this person? How should that take place? So this supplemental handout addresses those kinds of questions and I'd invite you to take advantage of that.

But Paul comes out in verses 3-5 and he says, look, you there in the church have not taken action. So I as the apostle, because of the authority the Lord has given me, need to take action myself and here's how I've judged this. So in verses 3-5, he tells how he, having the authority of an apostle, has already judged in the matter of this man who is being physically intimate with his own stepmother. And so he comes out and tells them, you aren't judging. I will. This is how I'm going to judge. And that's what he explains there.

He does here, as well as in 1 Timothy 1.20, something that appears to be uniquely an apostolic authority and power, and that is to turn someone over to Satan.

In 1 Corinthians 5.5, he said, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan in order To ruin him? No. In order that that person may, in the end, turn around and be drawn out of this. It's actually for a good end result, even though that certainly doesn't sound like a good thing.

By the way, I don't have anybody volunteering to want to have that happen to them, right? Probably not. And there's something else. He doesn't explain in either of those passages entirely what that involves and means. Personally, I wouldn't want to find out. If an apostle were to say, I'm turning you over to Satan, that would not be a good thing. Okay? Whatever that involves.

In the 1 Timothy 1.20 passage, these are to be handed over to Satan in order to be taught not to blaspheme. There are lessons to be learned from this. This turning one over to Satan is not so that that person ends up just being completely ruined and punished. That turning over to Satan is in order to end up with a good result. that comes to repentance. But one of the things we'll notice, I say it seems to be a uniquely apostolic power and authority. Why would I say that? He didn't tell them, you should have done this or you should do this. He doesn't say that. He himself does that in these two passages, but he never tells somebody else they ought to do it or ought to have done that.

Now, then he steps into, in verses six through eight, he steps over into a Passover analogy. The Passover, of course, was begun when the Jews were exiting from Egypt. This is in the night of their exodus. And as you remember how that went, they were to put the blood markings at the top and at the sides of the doorposts, which mark the the indication of the cross and that Passover lamb then is the lamb that gives them exemption from the angel of death coming among them. They were to eat the lamb at that Passover feast and matter of fact to eat it all.

So if you need to invite people over but eat it all. They were also to have along with that They had unleavened bread, bread that did not have the yeast to make it rise. And he draws particularly from that second half here, the unleavened bread part in this passage. He talks about leaven and leavening and keeping it. So let's talk about that.

So the question is, as he's introducing this, is he wanting these believers in Corinth to start coming under the Law of Moses? You guys need to start doing everything that's in the Law of Moses. Is that what he's saying? Likely not, because he wrote numerous times, you're not under the law of Moses.

So what it does seem that he's doing here, he was moving here from the mindset about that sinner, that one man who's doing this awful thing, to the attitude of the church and preserving the church from this man's sin. So one is to deal with the man, The second part in what his Passover and unleavened bread discussion is about is to say, not only do you need to deal with this man, but we need to preserve the church. We need to keep the church from this sin getting into the rest of them. Now, here we have, and I've got the title, and this is on page two of your handout, Allowing a Little Leaven is Less Loving. Now say that ten times quickly, please. Maybe not. Okay. That's a tongue twister, no doubt. Alright.

This present vile sin among the believers ought not to be tolerated, is what he's pointing out, as if it would be of minor consequence to the body of Christ. We'll just let this guy do this and kind of let him work it out and, you know, we won't mention it and we'll just kind of let it exist there among the church body, and other than that, just not pay it too much attention. Well, it is a problem. It is going to infect the church, and that's what he's bringing it out as in this passage here.

He's telling them about the Passover principle, dealing with the unleavened bread. I've got this picture of a bad apple among others. Remember we have this sort of little piece of wisdom about one bad apple spoiling the rest of the bunch? And that's a similar principle to what he's applying here.

If this sin is allowed to remain in the church, it will spread among the entire church body in Corinth. Maybe not this specific sin, but it allows a lackadaisical attitude towards sin. It allows an attitude of, well, we'll let that go. And then in each person's life, well, it didn't matter much what he did, and what he did was pretty bad, so I guess it doesn't matter if I do this and this and the other thing. He brings up here the Passover because Christ the Lamb was sacrificed for us in order that we be altogether new. The old is not to be a part of this new life in Christ.

Among the Jews, they have a tradition that goes like this. They have the search in the household for hametz, okay? And during the Passover, the way it works is little pieces of leavened bread, that's bread that has the yeast in it, are hidden at different places around the house. Little pieces. I think some traditional number is 10, okay? Little pieces of that Leavened bread or raised bread the bread with the yeast are hidden around the house. Okay, and So Exodus 12 and 13 talks about getting rid of this leaven getting rid of this bread. That's been raised and So the Jews and their tradition will will go around with the father taking the lead to go around looking for these little pieces of leavened bread and And so as the game sort of goes, the rest of the family will go along in this search for the pieces of leavening, little pieces of leavened bread.

Ah, we found one. And so they take a little feathers, the typical thing, and then scoop it, okay? And put it into a little scoop, brush it into a scoop to get these little pieces of hametz, okay? And then they burn them, okay, to get rid of them. You must get rid of them. That's the tradition. So, this is the tradition that Paul is thinking of, obviously not with the black hats and all that, but similar. That's the unleavened bread tradition. You've got to get rid of this. That's why he's bringing this up in here.

So, allowing a little leaven is less loving. The analogy is, if there is sin, it will spread to the rest of the church. Okay? Sin is one of those things that doesn't just sit there. The church must respond to it. It must respond to it. The church cannot allow it to simply be there.

The church must respond to it by dealing with the person who is sinning and by protecting the church body, especially if this is an instance of consistent and insistent and persistent sin. So then in the last verses of the chapter, verses 9 through 13, Paul clarifies the principles they had written in his prior letter. Remember, he says, I wrote to you, and in the verses just before. So in line with the detailed principles in many places in God's Word, they were to separate from those who were persistent in being immoral and continuing in known sin. among those, and he makes this important point, among those who are in the body of Christ.

This is what's not approved. This is not consistent with the new life that you have in Christ. This is not consistent with what God has made you. This is not consistent with the eternal position that you have seated in the heavenlies, in a heavenly citizenship. It's not approved.

Ultimately, what is intended for this man who is sinning? What is intended is that this man who is sinning be put back on a path of fellowship with the rest of those who are in the church. That the believers walk together along the path of fellowship with the Lord. That's the intent.

The unleavened bread, or excuse me, the leavened bread was to be gotten rid of. Why? It is to avoid that leavening contaminating the rest of the bread. The rest of the bread would arise from this yeast because the yeast spreads and grows. And so no, it must be gotten rid of.

In the same way, in order to preserve the church body, the sin must be dealt with. So this man who is sinning is dealt with, one, for his own sake, that he might be restored ultimately, and then, two, to preserve the church body in order to deal with the bad apple issue. Get that bad apple out of there so the rest of the bunch of apples doesn't end up getting rotten.

Now, I want to tell a little account of an instance that Nancy and I were aware of. And I'll go ahead and mention his name. His name is Lambert Dolphin. You will find his name if you're interested in looking it up on the internet. He has an internet site. But the story goes like this. Lambert was and still is a single fellow.

And I remember I used to go over to his house. He'd make his house available for various kinds of meetings and that sort of thing, and go over to his house. We had Christian concerts at his house, various gatherings. And Lambert Dolphin wrote Christian books of different kinds. And so I I knew him fairly well. As a matter of fact, one evening I was over there.

I was meeting with a group of other guys and during that night he interrupted our meeting to introduce us three times to people he had talked to about the Lord who had become believers. That's really amazing. People would just contact him and he'd talk to them and they would become believers that night. So he interrupted our meeting three times to introduce us to these new believers in that one evening. Well, at one time at church, in the main service like this, the pastor got up and he said, I have to tell you something, and he started to break up.

I have to tell you something, but Lambert has been drawn away by homosexuality. And I have to tell you that because we've been through all the biblical steps, and he insists on following this path. Well, so I didn't see Lambert. I didn't go to his house, anything of that sort. And then about two years later, they had a welcoming back party for him. When Lambert was at the party, he said, because everything was handled biblically, because of the way things were done, because everything was handled according to God's word. That's what drew me back.

And so Lambert today, it's been a number of years since I've seen him personally, but I have seen him since he came back into fellowship. And Lambert today, he writes, he's retired. He used to work at Stanford Research Institute. He's retired, but he spends his time writing and introducing people to the Lord all the time. But he's an instance of how this was carried out.

And anyway, we'll continue to see how that gets carried out here. Paul addresses something else. He says, you've got to understand that when we talk about separating yourself from this man who is sinning and preserving the church, That's not to apply to those who are unbelievers. That is, we're not to go around trying to separate ourselves from people who are out in the world. And I have a picture of a Rockies game here. Can you imagine going to a Rockies game and trying to keep yourself separate from people who sin? No chance. No way. Not going to happen.

Paul's making clear here, it is not a matter of us going around to people out in the world and trying to keep separate from everybody in the world that's sinning. This has to do with people in the church, and that's his point of distinction here. He's not telling us to become some kind of an isolated Christian commune or to live as a hermit for Christ. That is not his point here in this passage.

He is talking about the tokens of fellowship among believers, a recognition that the person who is sinning is one you ought not to just pretend like he isn't sinning. You ought not to just treat him as if he's still a brother in fellowship when he's not.

Just like it was announced to the whole church, Lambert has sinned. Lambert insists on sinning in spite of all of our pleading with him not to do this and not to continue down this path. He insists on it. But that also brought him back. And when he had realized that he was wrong, he was brought back into fellowship with the Lord, into fellowship with the body. But we ought not to pretend. We ought not to go about as if the sin is not happening and covering our eyes and ears.

We're coming back to this judging topic again, one that we've talked about before and we're not done talking about it. In verses 12 and 13, Paul says that the believers are not in a place to judge outsiders in this regard. We don't go to the Rockies game and stand up and start denouncing all the people around us who are sinning. That's not our job. But rather to deal with those within the body of Christ on these issues. as we have here with this guy playing ping pong on his bed.

The world is going to be weird. There's just no question about it. The world is going to be off on their own, you know, bizarre morality, and they will invent new ways of being immoral and new ways of being evil. Count on it, okay? That's what's going to happen, but it's not our job to go judging the world and declaring to the world the way things are.

But the judging is for the sake of that believer, or at least the one who claims to be a believer, that that person might be restored to fellowship with the Lord and with others in the body. And the judging is for the sake of preserving the body of Christ. That's what it's for. It's for a gracious, restorative purpose, a preserving purpose. So what are we to do? What are we going to do here?

There are those within Christendom who will press for us Christians to go about judging the world and publicly condemning this or that sin. You may have seen it. You'll probably still see more of it. People, and I notice I said Christendom, because who knows, some of these people may not even be Christians, but they at least claim to be, going around condemning the world for the things the world does is not God's intent, and it's not Paul's point here. He says God's going to judge them and deal with them. That's not your job, but you do need to deal with things inside the church. There are even those who say that Christians ought to take over the government and make this into a Christian nation by rule of law.

And scripture does not lay that out either. Paul doesn't say you need to get a hold of the Corinthian city council and make some laws and straighten things out. He does not say that. He doesn't even hint at it. Those are not the points that Paul's making here.

We're not to go out and try to correct the world and fix it. This world will not be fixed until Jesus Christ comes back. It isn't going to happen. I'm not saying we shouldn't vote or participate in things and speak our mind, but we should not go about in some illusion that we're going to fix the world or that it is our place to go around denouncing the world's sin. They haven't come to recognize the issue yet. They first need to come to a place of understanding where they stand with Jesus Christ. That's the world's issue. That's the issue before the unbelievers. We as believers are in a different place.

The ultimate hope for that one who is sinning is the restoration of the sinning believer to fellowship with the Lord and with the rest of the believers, just as I told you in the case of Lambert Dolphin. The immediate hope here is for keeping the saints pure from this infectious sin.

Now, 2 Corinthians, and we'll get here, I think. 2 Corinthians 2, 5-11 reveals that the believers in Corinth did actually listen to Paul on this issue. And they did cast the man out. And so, Paul writes this in 2 Corinthians 2, and I'll just read verses 7 and 8.

You should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Now that he is seen the light and understood that he has a sin problem and needs to walk away from it, you need to now forgive him. Just like they did with Lambert where they had a welcoming home party. They need to bring this guy back into the fold. Otherwise, he's going to end up being overwhelmed with sorrow.

Where I once urged you, put this man out so that he might one day be restored, and we see that here in this verse, and preserve the church Here he says, now that this man has repented, now that this man has seen the light and understood that he needs to walk away from that, that that's not consistent with who he is in Christ, now you need to forgive him, now you need to welcome him back into the fold, into the body of Christ. Reaffirm your love for this believer who once sinned horribly, but as the Lord has forgiven you, forgive him. So what's the Lord looking for? Let's start by defining what the Lord is not looking for. As Paul says these things, he is not saying that believers ought to be on some sort of a witch hunt, where the pastor gets up here and points out, you are sinning!

No, not that. We don't have a sin squad going around Holly Hills investigating people all the time. That's not the point. So he doesn't have that in mind. He's not looking for believers who are trigger happy. We use that term trigger happy. I think what a lot of Christians do is they pull out their sword of God's Word and slice people up with it. He's not looking for that either.

Ultimately, he's looking for restoration. What is restoration? Restoration isn't just stopping doing the sin. It's fellowship with the Lord. Restoration is fellowship with one another. That's what he's talking about here. We ought to be personally, individually, about beholding the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore being transformed, 2 Corinthians 3.18. We ought to be about that. We ought to be encouraging others also to behold the Lord and to walk in fellowship with Him.

It's ultimately about relationship, not sin lists. It's fellowship with Him that counts. The main problem with sin is not that it's sin. The main problem is that it's a huge, massive distraction from our fellowship with the Lord. That's why God even cares about sin. I don't want you to be offended by this. But in one sense, God's not terribly concerned about sin. No stones, no hymn books. What God is really concerned with is He wants to have fellowship and relationship with you. That's what Christ died on the cross for. He wants fellowship and relationship with you from this day on into eternity. That's what He's concerned with.

And the only problem with sin is it just gets in the way. That's the reason sin matters. It just gets in the way. So he says, let's get it out of the way because I want fellowship with you. I want to have that rich and deep relationship with you. That's what matters. That's the only reason that sin matters at all. It just gets in the way.

In Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, I have extracted, I think, a key part of those two verses here. Let me read it for you. Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us. Isn't that interesting? Entangles us. Ever get all entangled in something?

At my folks' place, they have berries called Himalaya berries. And the berries just get in this great big tangle. You can't sort it out because they grow wild. But boy, let me tell you, if you try to get in, I mean, pick the berries carefully, you know, Don't get hung up because, boy, those thorns get on you and pretty soon it's all hooked up in your clothes and you try to really get into the bush and, boy, I'll tell you, the bush will get into you in lots of places.

And that's the problem with sin. It entangles us. It gets us all wrapped up. We would kind of put it in our own vernacular, all wrapped around the axle. That's the problem with sin. So he says it easily entangles us, like that set of berry bushes on the folks' place there.

And let us run with endurance. He goes into a different picture here. And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. Are there lots of things to distract us? Yeah. Plenty of things. He says just let that fall by the wayside.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Focus on Him. That's what it's all about. That's why all this passage matters. The one person who isn't focusing upon the Lord will distract the rest if they're not careful. Let's put our eyes on Jesus. Matter of fact, let's do that now. Let's talk to him.

Lord, as we look at this passage, you've laid out here through the Apostle Paul, clearly what must be dealt with, with this sinning brother. And yet in the end, as is revealed by 2 Corinthians, in the end what you want is restoration when a believer wanders off the path. What you are seeking is restoration to fellowship, restoration to fellowship with you, restoration to fellowship with one another. Thank you for what you've laid out clearly in this passage and thank you for the truths you revealed in your word because you love us so dearly. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.