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00:08 Good morning everyone once again. It's my joy and privilege to be standing here sharing with you from the word of God.
00:14 We are now in the midst of our series on the first Corinthians. And today uh we
00:20 are at chapter 5 with this uh super long title how the gospel brings uh grace and
00:26 justice into church discipline. And this chapter talks about church
00:32 discipline uh which is not an all and easy subject. I would much prefer to speak on a less
00:39 demanding chapter from 1 Corinthians. Sometimes I do wonder how Peter uh
00:46 assigns this uh sermon topics to the various preachers. I think he's trying to make my life difficult
00:55 and maybe because uh he thinks that maybe a bit of challenge might be good for my life.
01:00 Yes, I did struggle with the with this with the with the passage and not so much in trying to understand the these
01:07 13 verses but more in trying to find a way to make it relevant to us because we
01:13 are going to talk about uh a grievous sin in the Corinthian church. We're
01:18 going to touch on the excommunication of a member in their community who was caught in that sin. And in order to make
01:25 this uh text relevant and practical to us, I shall later examine um the sort of
01:31 the backdrop behind these verses and which you'll see paint a paints a
01:36 picture of our sinful condition and also a picture of our holy God. So we shall
01:42 learn more about holiness and sin. And additionally, we will also address the need to protect our community against
01:50 internal threats so that this church will remain upright and sanctified so
01:55 that FBC will be one a community of FBC will be one uh that is approved and commanded by God. Shall we first uh
02:02 commit this time to God in prayer? Our father in heaven, we are a community
02:09 of your people. through the verses of this text. Help us understand who you are and what it is
02:17 that you require of us so that this church will reflect more and more your
02:22 beauty and holiness. For we ask this in the name of your son.
02:27 Amen. Two weeks ago uh after the uh jazz
02:33 concert the following day I had to go to uh Tranganu where I spent a couple of
02:38 days as had some work to do there and my work required me to uh visit a few
02:44 sawmills uh in this small town of Ajil uh in the middle of uh Trangano. If you
02:50 are not from Trangano you wouldn't know this town called Ajil. Um
02:55 and as you know Malaysia is a major exporter of uh tropical wood and many of
03:01 you are familiar with the names of uh tropical or local hardwood species such
03:07 as uh uh nyato or or balao or moranti and they are priced for their hardness
03:14 as opposed to the uh those temperate soft wood such as pine or spruce or
03:20 cedar. And in the sawmills I visited those huge logs you know from the forest
03:27 are sorn into into long wooden planks about 25% of the log ends up as waste
03:34 when you when you saw a circular a round circular log you know the the the into
03:39 into long planks the sides of the log uh cannot be used uh they they are known as
03:45 in the industry they're known as slaps and this leftover part of the log uh after the sewing pro sewing process and
03:53 the sawmills would then sell these slabs, you know, uh to other factories to be burned uh as charcoal to make
04:00 charcoal. And in one corner of one of the uh sawmills, I saw a pile of those huge
04:07 locks ready to be sawn. And what is interesting is that some of these giant logs are hollow inside as you can see.
04:15 and their internal holes not visible from the outside uh before the trees are
04:21 cut down. And obviously to the mill owner these locks are not as valuable as
04:26 the solid ones because you don't get as much uh sawn timber from such locks.
04:32 Some of you know I have this uh overactive mind and when I saw this holo locks I say hey you know this looks like
04:39 the uh Corinthian church you know it looks it looks strong and sturdy on the
04:44 outside but really it was quite empty inside. And this Corinthian church uh
04:50 instead of being hallowed it is it was hollow hollow in the sense that there were serious problems plaguing the
04:57 community of believers in that church. As highlighted in previous sermons, the
05:02 church in Corinth was a church in chaos. Uh it had plenty of holes in it like
05:08 these uh uh these flocks. And because earlier in chapter one, we already seen
05:13 how they were torn by divisions and members of the uh congregations. They they were uh belong to various factions
05:20 and they were following uh various human leaders, pledging allegiance to human
05:25 leaders rather than to God. And later in chapter six, we have not come to chapter six yet, but later in chapter six,
05:31 members of the congregation uh were uh bringing lawsuits against each other. They were going to court suing each
05:37 other. And later in chapter 11, they they were they are making they were making a mockery of the Lord's supper.
05:43 And further down in uh in chapter 12, there was there was much argument and infighting uh over the issue of
05:49 spiritual gifts. And the and the list goes on. Now, Corinth was located about 60km west
05:57 of Aans in uh in Greece. And these are the ruins of of the city that attract uh
06:04 many Christian tourists today. And here's another uh picture of the the
06:11 ruins of ancient uh Corinth. Now, the church in Corinth was
06:16 established by Paul about 20 years after the end of uh Jesus' earthly ministry.
06:22 And during uh Paul's second missionary journey, he spent 18 months in the city
06:27 and the congregation grew rapidly as a result of his faithful ministry. And all
06:32 this is recorded in Acts chapter 18. And this is what uh Corinth might have
06:38 looked like uh when Paul was there. Now a few years later during his third
06:44 missionary journey, Paul was in the city of Ephesus uh to the to the east for a
06:50 period of three years. And it was it was then when uh and Paul received reports
06:56 about about the many problems besetting the Corinthian church. And so it was in
07:02 Ephesus uh the city of Ephesus that Paul wrote first Corinthians a letter to the
07:08 Corinthian Christians to address one by one the upheavalss in their church as I
07:14 briefly outlined just now. Chapter 5 in our text today describes
07:19 what was likely the most serious problem faced by the uh Corinthian church. It
07:24 was an issue of sexual immorality, specifically the grievious sin of incest
07:30 by a member of the congregation. And later on we shall uh discuss this further. But interestingly uh from verse
07:38 9 um uh in our text it appears that Paul had earlier written them a letter
07:44 warning them against associating with the uh with these uh sexually immoral people. But this earlier letter alluded
07:52 in in verse 9 has been lost. Unfortunately it has not been preserved. And so actually first Corinthians should
07:59 rightfully be 2 Corinthians. I'm just pointing out to you uh something of interest and so much for the
08:05 introduction with a bit of history thrown in and also to briefly place chapter 5 in the context of the whole
08:11 book and let's now let's now look into our text for today. What I propose to do
08:16 is that we first go through these 13 verses to see what was happening uh in the Corinthian church and then later in
08:23 the sermon I shall offer you some insights and and perspectives as a kind of practical takeaways uh from the text.
08:31 But just before that uh let me address a thought that might be brewing in your mind and that is the sin of incest is
08:40 unheard of in FBC. And so how is 1 Corinthians 5 relevant to us members of
08:47 this church and also many churches around here. We are we are largely Chinese and to the Chinese incest is not
08:55 only a taboo but something utterly unthinkable. True. Sometimes in the news we we we
09:02 hear people uh charge for incest in the court uh in Malaysia especially between
09:09 uh father and daughter. But these are largely confined to just one ethnic
09:14 group. To the Chinese uh sexual uh relations between family members is a
09:20 big no no. In Chinese culture, not only are marriages between cousins prohibited, marriages, even marriages
09:28 between a couple with the same surname uh is frowned upon. From verse one in our text, it's clear
09:35 that incest was also a taboo in the societies in which Paul and the Corinthians lived. In fact, incest was
09:42 such a morally repugnant sin that Paul was very strong and harsh in his language when he spoke against it. And
09:50 this was this was part of my struggle preparing the sermon. If incest never happened in FBC and will never happen in
09:57 FBC, how do I deliver one Corinthians 5 uh in a manner that is relevant and
10:03 applicable to us? And here I would like to draw your attention to verse 11 where
10:10 we can see Paul broadening his warnings not only against the sexually immoral
10:16 but also greedy people and those who are slanderers, drunkards and swindlers. In
10:22 other words, Paul was really talking about a variety, not just one, but a variety of grievous sins that could tear
10:29 a church apart. He was trying to teach a what a church ought to do uh with a when
10:34 when dealing with a with a serious internal sin that threatens the church.
10:40 The sin of incest in the Corinthian church was a was just a specific case that Paul was using.
10:47 Now this leads us to a follow-up question. Do we have or will will we ever have a
10:54 member of our congregation who is a habitual, a slanderer, a drunkard or a
10:60 swindler for example? And the answer is
11:05 possible but unlikely because all of us are such wonderful people.
11:12 But let me share with you a a story that might make you change your mind and this is something that actually happened.
11:19 There is this church I know very well. In fact, some of you sitting here also know very well. Some 25 years ago, this
11:27 church faced a serious crisis. Someone in this someone in that church who was
11:32 tasked with handling the tithes and offerings was found to be siphoning money uh from the collection before the
11:40 money was banged into the bank. And this embezzlement went on for quite a while
11:46 for many many months before that person was caught. Now the embezzlement is one
11:51 thing but the reaction of the leaders that's another thing after the discovery
11:57 of the theft it's how the leaders react that makes this a very good case study.
12:03 You see the leadership was split into two camps. On one side, some leaders
12:08 were saying, "Oh, this is a clear case of CBT, criminal breach of trust." And
12:13 so, this person must be handed over to the police and to let the law take its course. On the other side, other leaders
12:20 were insisting, "Oh, we need to be forgiving. We need to show grace to give this person another chance." And so,
12:28 they were torn between two possible causes of action. Earlier I talked about hardwood such as
12:34 nyato and the soft wood such as pine and hence they were torn between the nato way or the the soft the hard way or the
12:42 and the pine way the soft way and of course at that time the equation wasn't
12:47 as simple as uh just a matter between grace and and and justice between the soft way and the hard way. There were
12:54 many many other factors to be considered such as the ex such as the extent of uh
12:60 remorse and and and and repentance, the need for restitution and so on and so
13:05 forth. I'm not really sure what happened at the end of the saga. One of the leaders to related all this to me living
13:12 out the names and a lot of details. Now what I'm trying to drive at is that such a thing can happen to a church to any
13:19 church. As a matter of fact, and this may surprise you, this church I'm talking about is none other than FBC.
13:28 It happened to this church in the early 1990s. And so we shouldn't assume that
13:35 we are immune to the kind of problems uh similar to what we read in our text. My
13:40 point is this that 1 Corinthians 5 is a passage that is very relevant very
13:46 useful to us to answer this earlier question about the relevance of the text. Now let us go through the text
13:53 leaving enough time to draw out uh some practical lessons to aid us in the conduct of our faith. I have divided the
14:00 uh 13 verses into four parts. One the problem in the church verses 1 and two.
14:07 Two, the prescription for the church from Paul verses 2 to 5. Three, the need
14:14 to protect the church where Paul was using the metaphor of yeast and bread
14:19 verses 6 to8. And lastly, the need to maintain purity within the church,
14:24 verses 9 to13. And let's start with part one.
14:31 And right from the onset in verse one, Peter jumped right in to highlight this
14:36 grievous sin of incest. A man is sleeping with his father's
14:42 wife. And since the word mother is not used here, the woman in question must be the
14:49 man's stepmother. And also, she wasn't a member of the church because Paul didn't prescribe any
14:57 disciplinary action on her. is just on the man. Now, as far as the father is concerned, it is likely that he has he
15:04 had either uh already passed away or already had uh legally divorced the
15:10 wife. Otherwise, it would be unthinkable uh for him to to tolerate this illicit
15:15 relationship. Now, even if the woman was a widow or a divorcee, it doesn't lessen
15:21 the severity of the sin as she was still the stepmother to the man.
15:27 It is nothing less. is still nothing less than incest. The apostles was was
15:32 horrified that such an outrageous conduct was going on in their community
15:37 and he described it as uh something that even uh the even the those outside the
15:44 church wouldn't think of doing and to quote it was of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate from verse one.
15:51 Apparently throughout the Roman world at that time uh parent child incest was
15:56 also universally considered to be vile evil including between a stepmother and
16:03 a stepson. Now it's natural for members of a church to be disgusted by the sins
16:09 of those outside the church as sin is something that we take seriously. But for those outside the church to be
16:15 disgusted by the sins inside the church there is something very wrong with the church.
16:21 While Paul was so shocked by the reports he received from Corinth while he was in Ephesus, he was even more more disturbed
16:27 by the reaction of the congregation and his leaders. He was very angry that no action was taken by the leaders. They
16:35 reacted with indifference. He wrote in verse two, "And you are proud." And some
16:41 translation says, "And you are puffed up." And here a question arise, what
16:47 were they proud of? Now, it doesn't make sense if they were proud that such a grievous sin was going on in their
16:53 midst. No, they were actually proud of their willingness to forgive the sinful
16:59 member. They were boasting, oh, you know, we are such such forgiving people.
17:05 We so full of grace and love for this brother. Look, we are such tolerant and
17:10 nice people. And this is what they were proud of. But they failed to understand
17:16 that grace must be applied hand inhand with justice. If they truly love the brother, they
17:22 would have taken corrective disciplinary action on him so that he would turn from his evil ways. Instead, they tolerated
17:30 his sinful lifestyle and made a travesty of grace. This is what got Paul so riled
17:36 up. Later, we shall come back uh to discuss this tension between grace and
17:41 uh and justice. Now when I say justice, I don't mean it in terms of fairness, but I'm referring to righteousness and
17:48 the adherence to God's laws. And so after highlighting this grievous
17:53 sin of incest in their midst, Paul proceeded to in part two to prescribe
17:59 three things for the Corinthian church to do. Firstly, they should be in mourning from
18:07 chap from verse two. They should be ashamed that they had allowed this evil to continue in their community. And even
18:14 more, they should be in grief that they didn't do anything about it. Paul wanted
18:19 them to to be remorseful, to be sorrowful over the s the sad state of
18:24 spiritual degradation in their church. That that's number one. The second thing
18:30 they needed to do was to assemble as a church to reflect upon this from verse
18:35 four. They ought to come together as a body of Christ to consider the right thing to do. And Jesus will be in their
18:42 midst to grant them power to do what they needed to do. And Paul will be with them in spirit conferring them his
18:49 apostolic authority. And this was not something that they should just leave it to the leaders because the action in the
18:56 next step will require the participation of everyone in the congregation. And so
19:01 in the next step, the third step, they must hand this man over to Satan for the
19:06 destruction of the flesh from verse five. And this is the hardest part of the of of the text. Does it mean to let
19:13 him burn in hell like how you know those slaps from the locks are burned by the sawmills?
19:20 What does it mean to hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? Now, this needs a bit of explanation. It
19:27 certainly sounds scary. hand him over to Satan. Actually, what this means is
19:33 already uh highlighted by Paul in verse two and that is to put him out of fellowship. That's what it means to cast
19:40 him out of the congregation. But why say hand him over to Satan? Why the
19:46 destruction of the flesh? Now, first of all, the destruction of the flesh is not
19:51 referring to physical death. hand him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh doesn't mean to to let him die at
19:58 the hand of Satan. The word flesh here refers to our sinful nature. And so the
20:04 destruction of the flesh means the defeat of our sinful nature. So that this person would realize his mistake
20:11 and turn around. And hence this third step, harsh as it may sound, is actually
20:17 remedial and corrective in nature. It's designed to compel the sinner to repent
20:23 and to turn away from his sin. And this squares with the with the rest of verse five so that his spirit may be saved on
20:30 the day of the Lord. No, this is referring to his salvation because Paul was concerned uh about his salvation.
20:38 And hence the purpose of excommunication is really to restore the sinner to the right path to bring him to repentance.
20:46 And hence church discipline is not like a policeman going to arrest a culprit.
20:51 Rather it's like an earthly father chastening his weward son.
20:56 But some of you may ask what if what if after the church has taken the step of
21:01 excommunication but the sinner still refuses to repent and continues to live in sin. Is he still safe? It is so is
21:10 salvation still intact? Now this is a far harder question. far far harder
21:15 question and I wish I have the time to address this but I don't have the time. Uh I'm sorry but you can ask me after
21:20 the the sermon if you're curious but I still have to explain please what does it mean to to hand him over to Satan?
21:28 Hand him over to Satan. Now the question is how can handing him over to Satan
21:34 lead to the destruction of his flesh or his sinful nature? If anything Satan would fan or fuel his uh sinful nature.
21:41 his furniture would increase. The answer is in part four, later in part four, we shall we shall come to shortly. But
21:47 let's jump to part four where you see Paul talking about those inside the
21:52 church and those outside uh from verse 12. You see, Paul had in mind two
21:58 separate realms. One, the spiritual realm inside the church and two, the
22:04 sinful realm outside the church, which he called uh this world in verse 10.
22:10 Now on at least two occasions uh Jesus describes Satan as the ruler or prince
22:17 of this world from uh John uh 12 and 14. In this so in this sense to hand him
22:23 over to Satan would mean to expel him to the outside sinful domain controlled by
22:28 Satan and hence the phrase is synonymous with putting him out of fellowship.
22:34 Now this is surely a severe measure by banning him from the congregation. The
22:40 intent is to administer a kind of shock treatment to try to resuscitate this uh
22:46 this renegade member from his spiritual coma. Denying him membership is a
22:52 drastic way to force him to choose whether he wanted to remain inside God's
22:57 kingdom or he wanted to be out of God's kingdom. But there is another more important
23:02 reason why Paul prescribed excommunication as a necessary cause of
23:07 action and we shall come to that now in part three. Part three from verses 6 to8
23:13 is vitally important. Here Paul used a baking metaphor to explain why they
23:20 needed to cast that person out of their assembly. In short, the reason is to protect the
23:27 church or elaborate uh why it is to protect the church. And so we see in
23:32 this part three a bunch of similar familiar words uh related words such as yeast and and dough and bread. And we
23:40 also see less familiar words uh such as uh leven and unleven. Karine says
23:47 leaven. Is it leaven or leven? It doesn't matter.
23:53 Leven or leaven is is a substance that causes the dough to rise you know during
23:60 baking and in leven in includes uh yeast and other many other microorganisms
24:07 and hence um a leven bread refers to bread baked with
24:13 the levening agent you know the fluffy kind that we like to eat gardinia and so
24:18 on. Unleven bread is uh the other one bread baked without leaving and it is
24:26 hard and not so palatable. Now what I'm going to touch on is a
24:31 subject that I hardly know anything about which is baking. I knew I know how to eat. Now the little I know still is
24:40 that we use baking powder when we bake bread, right? And baking powder uh
24:46 contains a sodium bicarbonate which when when it reacts with acid will produce
24:51 the gas carbon dioxide which will cause the dough to rise. Hey, I scored a
24:57 distinction in chemistry. Okay, I still remember all this.
25:03 But in olden times they didn't have baking powder which is a really a chemical leven. So they used natural
25:10 leven such as yeast which is a kind of microscopic fungus. And what they did in
25:16 those days is that before the dough was baked a small lump of it will be removed
25:22 and kept aside and this lump of of dough would be allowed to ferment so that the
25:28 yeast and other uh microorganisms you know the they they have wild they found wild wild yeast in the in the grain. So
25:34 inside they would have wild yeast. And if you keep this small piece of dough aside and allow it to ferment the the
25:40 yeast and the microorganisms would multiply and multiply and grow. And
25:45 that's why it's called a a preferment or simply the the the leven. It's a piece
25:51 of the old dough in the high state of fermentation. So they keep this piece aside while they
25:57 bake the the dough. When it it was time to bake another loaf, the pre-ferment
26:03 that piece of uh fermented dough from the previous batch will be then added to the fresh dough and kneaded and again
26:10 before baking uh uh they would again take a remove a small piece a small lump from this dough and to be kept aside for
26:17 fermenting and the cycle will be repeated and this is how I believe sourdough is made if you have tried one.
26:26 So if you understand this this way of baking uh then this parable of Jesus
26:31 will become much clearer. It's the parable of the leven one of Jesus shortest parables from Matthew 13. The
26:39 kingdom of heaven is like yeast that the woman took and mixed into about 60 lbs
26:44 of flour until it worked all through the dough. Why so much flour? 60 60 pounds.
26:51 Looks like she was baking bread for a for a big feast. But the yeast mentioned
26:56 here is actually that small piece of highly fermented dough from the previous
27:01 batch. Now in this parable leven that that piece uh carries a positive connotation
27:08 as a metaphor for God's kingdom. But elsewhere in the Bible, every other cases where leven is mentioned, leven is
27:16 commonly used as a metaphor for sin because fermentation in that piece of
27:22 leven uh implies a process of corruption. You can imagine a piece of
27:28 bread if you leave it for a few days, you can see turning moldy and smelly. And so leven in the old testament is
27:35 always mostly associated with sin, a symbol of sin. And also because Leven
27:42 puffs up the dough, it is also a symbol of pride and boastfulness.
27:48 And now you can understand why uh Paul wrote in verse 8 not to eat bread leven
27:54 with malice and wickedness because leven is a symbol of sin. And you can see here
27:59 Paul uh associating leavenven with malice and wickedness.
28:04 And in this verse he was talking about eating unleven bread during the Passover.
28:10 Uh the festival mentioned in verse 8 here refers to the Passover feast uh which is uh by the way next month I
28:16 think end of next month. As you know the Israelites were commanded to eat unleven
28:21 bread during the seven days of the Passover feast. And you can read all about this in Exodus 12. And when it
28:27 comes to the Exodus account many of us learn that the Israelites ate unleven bread because they left Egypt in a
28:33 hurry. There was no time to wait for the for the leven to to act on the dough,
28:39 which is true. But now you realize that eating unleven bread has a deeper meaning because God wanted them to be a
28:47 people free from sin and corruption. Not only were they instructed to eat
28:53 unleven bread during the Passover, but what is less known is that there is a commandment that they should remove any
29:00 trace of leavenven from the house from Exodus 12. uh 15. They had to get rid of
29:06 all the old fermented pieces of dough. And they even do it today before the
29:11 Passover. They'll go through the house any traces of liver, baking powder, you know, uh uh uh old pieces of dough has
29:18 to be removed. And that's why they wrote Paul wrote in verse 7, get rid of the
29:24 old yeast so that you can you may be a new unleven batch. Get rid of the holies
29:30 is the commandment in Exodus 12:15. Why? Again, because leven is a symbol of sin
29:37 and God cannot tolerate sin in his people. Not a trace of leven must be
29:42 found in the house. And by now you can appreciate why Paul used the metaphor of leven and bread in our text. It was to
29:49 teach the Corinthians what they needed to do with regard to the case of incest in their church. Verse six, don't you
29:57 know that a little yeast levens the whole batch of dough? In other words, the sin of one single member can corrupt
30:05 the whole community of believers. Just like how that small piece of of
30:10 preferment, that small piece of dough can affect the whole uh piece of dough as we saw in the parable in Matthew 13.
30:19 And hence the instruction to get rid of the old least to cut off that person was primarily to protect the church. Now
30:26 earlier we discussed how casting him out of the congregation was intended to shock him into repentance. But a more
30:32 important reason is to guard the church against sin and corruption and decay.
30:38 The community will be in danger if this sinner was allowed to participate in fellowship. is akin to a cancer if left
30:47 unchecked would later destroy the body. And coming to the final part uh from
30:54 verses 8 to13, this is not as hard as part two or part three. And here Paul
30:59 repeatedly warned against mixing with people whose values are vastly different from ours. In verse 9, he implored the
31:06 Corinthians not to associate with sexually immoral people. And again in in verse 11, you must not associate with
31:13 anyone who is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolator or slanderer or drunkard or swindler.
31:20 And also in verse 11, do not even eat with such people. And at the end of our text in verse 13,
31:27 expel the wicked people, a wicked person from your from among you. Referring to that man mentioned in uh verse one, he
31:36 wanted to be doubly sure that they fully understood his directive in part two to remove from the assembly this person
31:42 mentioned in the single out in verse one. In fact, not just that one person, but
31:49 anyone, anyone who claims to be a brother or sister, but who is actually immoral and corrupt from verse 11.
31:58 But in verse 10, Paul also clarified that while we shun
32:04 the sinner whom we have cast out, we cannot distance ourselves from non-believers. We cannot cut ourselves
32:10 off from all context with a sinful world. For otherwise we would have to leave this world as he explained at the
32:17 end of verse 10 because Paul recognized that that while we are while we are not
32:22 of this world but we are still in this world while we insulate ourselves uh
32:28 from the sinful ways of the world. We are not to isolate ourselves from the
32:34 world and live like hermits. Rather, as Jesus commanded in uh Matthew 5, we are
32:40 to be the salt of the earth and light of the world to influence those outside and point them to Jesus.
32:47 And so to wrap up uh this last part as me, as I mentioned earlier, I showed you this part four
32:53 just now. Paul had in mind two separate realms inside the church and outside the
32:58 church. He was in a way comparing the two. Outside in the world, we find
33:03 people who are immoral and greedy. We find swindlers and idolators from verse 10. Inside the church, people are
33:09 supposed to be completely opposite. So it follows that if we find someone in the church who is immoral or greedy, a
33:16 swindler or idolator, he should belong to the outside. In short, although not explicitly
33:23 mentioned here, Paul is alluding to the need to maintain spiritual purity within
33:28 the church. We are not to behave like those outside the church. And hence the
33:33 directive to expel the person is not only to protect the community but also
33:38 to preserve the purity within uh the church of God.
33:43 Now we have gone through um the text in four parts from the problem to Paul's
33:50 prescription from the need uh to protect the church to maintaining uh purity
33:56 within the church. Now as mentioned in the in the beginning now to make all this uh relevant and
34:03 applicable I think you are getting a headache because you know so much in this text. So let me now offer you some
34:09 thoughts or perspectives as a kind of backdrop so that these uh verses can be
34:14 made uh practical. I shall offer you four perspectives and they all related.
34:21 The first is this.
34:26 We must recognize that we are all sinners. We must recognize that we are all
34:33 sinners. Is there anyone here who hasn't committed a sin? No one. Not one.
34:42 Including the leaders, the pastors, the elders. And I will be the first to admit
34:49 that occasionally I do sin. If there's a confession box in this church, I'll be
34:54 the first in line to get in. I'm far from perfect and I have my many flaws
34:60 and weaknesses. And besides God, the one person who knows all my faults and imperfections,
35:07 guess who? My wife. Of course.
35:12 If you ask her nicely, maybe she will tell you a few of my faults. Take my driving for example. I will be
35:18 lying to you if I if I tell you that I've never committed any traffic offense. But I thank God that half the
35:24 time I when I drive, I have this guardian angel, my wife, sitting beside
35:30 me, watching over me. Every so often when I see that the traffic light is about to turn red, my
35:37 first instinct is to step on the accelerator and my wife knows exactly what I'm about
35:43 to do and she will say, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, elder, elder."
35:51 very effective and perhaps here is a is a good idea
35:58 next time be before you're about to do something you shouldn't do just tell yourself Christian
36:04 uh it's it's it's it's something we struggle with indeed we are all wretched
36:12 sinners save only by the grace of God if not for the grace of God we are all doomed there is nothing good nothing
36:20 good in us that qualifies us before God and hence when we have to deal with a with a sin in the church. A good place
36:27 to start is to realize that we too have sinned and so that we will not assume a
36:33 holier than thou attitude so that we can empathize with the brother who might be
36:39 struggling with a sin so that we can respond with empathy
36:45 rather than being harsh. And sometimes when a brother comes to me to request a prayer to ask God for
36:52 strength to deal uh with a sin, should I say to him, "Oh, you wretched
36:59 sinner. Repent or face God's wrath?" No, I
37:04 wouldn't say such a thing because I myself have struggled with sin before and I understand how hard it is for him
37:12 as he battles with the sin because I've been there before.
37:17 To illustrate this, during my previous sermon, I told you I I lived in this uh
37:22 foreign foreign students do in Osaka for for a few years uh while pursuing my
37:27 tertiary education in Japan. If you remember in February, I also described the cafet cafeteria downstairs where I
37:34 where I had my dinner. One day I got so fed up with the food.
37:41 It was the same old thing they serve every night. and the kitchen crew, they hardly changed the menu.
37:48 I got so fed up that I decided to organize a protest. So I wrote a long and critical letter of
37:55 complaint to the management oldest the things I did when I was young. You never imagine.
38:02 And so I came to this guy Daniel who was a good friend of mine and I asked him to sign a letter. And Daniel was originally
38:08 from Cambodia, but he managed to escape to France uh before the evil Pawpot took
38:14 over. So he read a letter. He was in Japan for a PhD course. He read a letter
38:20 and he told me, "Sorry, I can't sign this." I was shocked. Why, Daniel, of
38:27 all people, you should be the one supporting me. Then he explained, "You see, I used to work in the kitchen
38:36 and I know how hard it is." He had empathy for the kitchen staff because he
38:43 used to work as one in Paris. And I really learned a big lesson of
38:48 life that day. The message of the gospel begins with the fact that we are all sinners and that Jesus came to die for
38:54 our sins. But that's how that's so that's how the gospel brings grace into
38:59 church discipline. It compels us to prefer the pine way, the soft way over the nato way, the hard way. Now our
39:07 spiritual journey is a long and difficult one. And some of us are further down the road. Others have just
39:13 started yet others are stuck halfway. We want to help everyone in this journey to
39:19 overcome the bends and potholes of sin. Not by pointing fingers, but through
39:24 teaching and preaching, through counseling and disciplehip. Now, it
39:30 doesn't mean that we condone sin. Heaven forbid. It's just that we realize that we we all in it together.
39:38 This is the first perspective I want to share with you. Now, at this point, some of you may ask, why then didn't Paul
39:45 tell the Corinthians to do the same? To help the sinner mentioned in verse one instead of cutting him off.
39:51 Now this is really a very important question and I grant you that the measure that Paul insisted upon was
39:58 severe and this brings me to to the second perspective where I'll explain this.
40:05 Point number two, we must continually be transformed by
40:10 the spirit. We must continually be transformed by the spirit. And the trouble with some Christians is that
40:16 they think salvation is only about Jesus dying on the cross for their sins and they can now go to heaven. Now this is a
40:22 very shallow understanding of the gospel and no wonder many do not live the victorious Christian life. The gospel is
40:29 not just about conversion from uh being lost to being saved. Conversion must be
40:35 followed by a lifelong transforming work of the Holy Spirit to help us deal with our sins. I know many of you know this.
40:43 But what is less known is that as the spirit works in our lives to transform us, he also works to convict us of our
40:50 sins. And the result of this is that we come we become more and more aware of our sins. We find sin more and more
40:59 detestable and we begin to hate sin with greater and greater in intensity.
41:05 Thomas uh Watson, a a 17th century English preacher once said, "Till sin be
41:11 bitter, Christ will not be sweet." Till sin Until sin is bitter, Christ
41:19 will not be sweet. And so the question is, do you find sin to be bitter?
41:24 Does sin taste bitter to you? If you find Christ sweet, you will find sin to
41:31 be bitter. you would have an increasing tendency to stay away from it.
41:38 And earlier we discussed how we are all sinners, we do sin. We still have our sinful nature.
41:44 But it's also true that whenever we sin, there is an inner voice, the Holy Spirit
41:49 telling us that we have done wrong. And so we respond with regret and remorse.
41:55 We ask God for forgiveness and we vow not to do it again. And we also pray for
41:60 God's strength to overcome uh this weakness. This is repentance.
42:06 This is the result of the work of the spirit. If this is your experience each time you sin, there is evidence that the
42:14 spirit is working in your life. Now on the other hand, if you sin and you think
42:20 nothing of it, if there is no sense of guilt nor a shred of sorrow whatsoever,
42:27 if you think your sin is not such a bad thing, then you are standing on shaky ground. John Ri, a 19th century English
42:37 bishop once said, "If you and sin are friends, you and God are not yet
42:43 reconciled." Think about it. And back to the man in verse one of our text, it is likely that
42:50 he was an unrepentant sinner who persisted in his incestuous relationship
42:56 with his stepmother. He didn't even bother to hide this grievous sin. And to
43:02 him, it's okay. What's your problem? And that's why to Paul, he posed a grave danger to the church, an internal threat
43:09 that needed to be cut off. And hence if you understand the gospel in its entirety, this is how the gospel brings
43:16 justice into church discipline because there are times when we need it when we need to apply the nato way over the pine
43:23 way. It's very important to understand that the gospel is more about salvation
43:29 from sin more than salvation from hell. Charles
43:34 Spurgeon, the famous 19th century English preacher, once said, "The unsaved sinner loves a salvation from
43:42 hell, but the true Christian loves a salvation from sin." Everyone desires to
43:50 be saved from the pit, from hell. Who doesn't want to be saved from the hell? But it is only a child of God who pens
43:57 to be saved from every false way.
44:02 And moving forward, the third point is that we must always
44:08 be uh be aed by God's sanctity or holiness. We must always be aed by God's
44:15 sanctity or holiness. As a matter of fact, the holiness of God is really the main theme behind 1
44:22 Corinthians 5. It is like a big brush stroke across the page, although it's
44:27 not mentioned explicitly here. Now there's no need for me to elaborate on how holiness is the foremost attribute
44:33 of our God. We all know this. But the problem is that we don't internalize this. Later after the sermon, we are
44:40 going to sing uh holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty. The question is what is
44:46 your perception of God? The problem is that we often have a diminished a low
44:52 view of God. Steven Lawson, an American preacher once said, "A high view of God
45:00 leads to holy living." A high view of God leads to holy living. The more you
45:06 appreciate God in his holiness and affection and perfection, the more you are propelled and compelled to lead a
45:13 holy life. Three times in the book of Leviticus,
45:18 God told the Israelites, "Be holy, for I'm holy. Be holy for I am holy.
45:27 Three times. Be holy for I'm holy. And this is quoted in 1 Peter 1:16. The tri
45:34 holy God wants his people to be holy too. Always remember this. It's God's desire
45:41 that we be holy more than we be happy. Many people pursues happiness but not
45:48 holiness. It is God's desire that we be holy more than we be happy.
45:53 And this Christ holy God finds sin utterly detestable. He cannot stand even
45:59 the slightest iota of sin. Early in our text, we saw how Paul told the Corinthian Christians to get rid of the
46:05 holies to meaning to to to let go, you know, to cast out that that man
46:12 because we cannot let sin contaminate this community. You can't lead a holy
46:18 life if you continue to tolerate sin. As we saw earlier, as the spirit of God
46:25 works in us, we will find sin increasingly intolerable. And that's why Paul used such strong
46:32 language in 1 Corinthians 5. His words were harsh and severe. Because he had a
46:38 high view of God. And because he had a high view of God, he took a serious position against sin.
46:45 We in FBC, we really need to do more to preach and teach against sin.
46:51 John Wesley. Uh, it's not moving.
46:58 Oh, sorry. It's only moving on that screen.
47:06 Maybe you move it for me.
47:13 Never mind. Oh, I see. Hey, strange. On that back screen is okay. Register is
47:19 not. It's okay. Okay, let me continue. John Wesley, I was saying that uh we in FBC we need to
47:27 uh it's still not working. As I was saying, we need uh in FBC to we
47:32 need to preach uh more uh against sin.
47:38 Uh something is wrong. Never mind. John Wesley, the famous 18th century English
47:44 theologian once said, "Before I preach love, Before I preach love, mercy, and grace,
47:51 I must preach sin, law, and judgment." Before I preach love, mercy, and grace,
47:57 I must preach sin, law, and judgment. And when we preach sin, law, and
48:03 judgment, we must stress and emphasize the holiness of God.
48:08 And coming to the last point that I want to share with you, we must strive to be
48:13 a church that shines for God. We must strive to be a church that shines for
48:19 God. Now, I was I was about to show you uh this slide of what we have discussed so
48:26 far. Uh struggling to get the thing out. This
48:32 is the wrong slide. Oh, got it. Got it. Got it. Okay, good. Uh this slide shows
48:38 uh what we have discussed so far. You can see that they all related and to help you remember all the key words all
48:44 start with S. Now to conclude the sermon, we must strive to be a church that shines for God. Having seen how we
48:51 should be conscious of our sins, how the spirit continues to mold us to be more and more sanctified, and how we should
48:58 have a higher and higher view of God, we must now endeavor to be a community of believers that reflects his holiness.
49:06 If we want to be such a community, we must be willing to confront and not
49:12 accommodate sin. We must be bold to deal with sin in our midst and not to close an eye or two eyes. Francis Francis
49:19 Shaver, an American preach pastor once said, this is tough. This is hard to understand, but let's read this. Truth
49:27 always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation.
49:33 Loving confrontation. Nevertheless, if our reflex action is always accommodation, regardless of the
49:39 centrality of the truth involved, there is something wrong. And what we find in the Corinthian
49:46 church is careless accommodation. And all through the Old Testament, we see
49:53 how God desired the Israelites, his chosen people, to be an island of purity
49:58 and god and godliness in a sea of nations characterized by immorality and corruption. Today, we must
50:07 take heed that God also God also wants his church, his people to be lights
50:12 shining for him in a darkened and sinful world. through our text today talks
50:18 mostly about a church discipline but it is really a call for us to lead holy lives collectively as members of FBC and
50:26 to borrow and to borrow Paul's words from uh 2 Corinthians 2:15 may FBC be to
50:32 God a pleasing aroma of Christ may FBC be to God a pleasing aroma of Christ
50:39 shall we close in prayer our father in heaven may your holiness
50:45 permit this church and may our lives as a community of believers be
50:51 characterized by holy living. We want to be overwhelmed by your holiness as the
50:56 prophet Isaiah was when he came face to face with you so that we may respond to
51:03 you accordingly in a manner approved by you. For we ask this in Jesus name.
51:09 Amen.
