If you'd open up your Bibles this evening to Paul's letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 5, we'll be considering, as you see from the title, the church, a new lump. And as I formulated this title, I actually got it from the ESV's translation of some words in the chapter that we're going to be reading this evening, and it was actually to my disadvantage because now in my 7th grade catechism class, I'm known as Lump. That's my new nickname. But we'll be reading from the NIV this evening. The Bible's in your pew, but before we do so, let's go to God in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your word, Lord. We thank you that every word of it is inspired by you. And we ask, Lord, that you would now bless the reading and the preaching of your word, Father, that this word that is profitable to us, that we might read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest what you would have us to know for our lives and for the church. Father, we pray that we would see Jesus Christ in its pages. Lord, now we ask that you would be with us, guide us by your Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans. a man has his father's wife and you are proud shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this even though I am not physically present I am with you in spirit and I have already passed judgment on the one who did this just as if I were present when you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus is present hand this man over to Satan so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness but with the bread without yeast the bread of sincerity and truth i have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters in that case you would have to leave this world but now i am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked man from among you. Here ends the reading of God's Word. Isn't it interesting, people of God, that throughout Scripture we find many different metaphors for the church? For what the church is to be, for what the church is to look like, for what the church is to be, not only for a watching world, but also for what the church is to be for Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior. Think of several examples from Scripture. Several of them come to my mind. Think of John's description as the bride of the bridegroom in Revelation 19, or Peter's description of the church as a spiritual house, a royal priesthood. Well, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians that we have before us this evening, he has several metaphors for the church that he uses throughout the book. One metaphor we find in chapter 3 is the church is a plant. Paul planted the seed and Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Paul also describes the church as the temple of the living God. He also describes the church later on. I'm sure you're familiar with this description. The church is the body of Christ. Some of us are the eyes. Some of us are the ears. Some of us are the hands or the feet. But in our passage before us this evening, we have a very interesting description of the church, another metaphor for the church that Paul uses, and he describes it in verse 7. as a new batch, or as the ESV translates, a new lump, a new lump of dough. And perhaps that's slightly amusing, that Paul would describe the church as a new lump. Children, perhaps when your mom has made cookies, she's put all the ingredients together into a big lump of cookie dough, And perhaps, maybe while her back was turned, you tried to sneak some of that cookie dough away. And that's what Paul is using. That's the metaphor he's describing, the image that he uses to describe the church, a big lump of dough. And so we want to look at what Paul means by that, because the church isn't just any old lump. It's a specific kind of lump, as you see here. It's a lump without yeast. It's an unleavened lump, an unleavened batch of dough. So what does that mean for the church? What does that mean for church officers? What does that mean for the body of Christ gathered together? What does that mean for you and me as individuals of the church? What does it mean to be the new lump? So tonight we want to look at Paul's command to the new lump, to the church, to purge evil from its midst. You see that in verse 13, expel the wicked man from among you. Paul gives a command to the church to expel the wicked man from among them. And we want to look at this, first of all, and what the problem at Corinth was, and then why Paul gives the command. And he gives it for primarily three reasons. He gives it because of Jesus' command to the church. He gives it also because Jesus has died, because he's the Passover lamb. and also for the sake of Christ's church. Those are the reasons why Paul gives this command to expel the immoral brother. When we come to a passage like this, perhaps one of the first questions we want to ask is, how could something like this happen? This chapter opens with a very startling, shocking claim on behalf of Paul. He says, it's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that not even the pagans are tolerating. And we ask ourselves, how could something like this happen? Especially in a church that Paul has planted. And to do that, we've got to understand what life in Corinth was like. Because oftentimes, where the people of God are living affects who they are, affects how they come to church, affects how they live their lives. And to understand the problem in Corinth, we have to understand what the problem is in the church and also the problem in Corinth. Perhaps the best description to describe Corinth is really it's the spring break capital of the Roman world. Demosthenes, who was a Greek statesman and orator in Athens, which was very close to Corinth, once said that mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children. Corinth was a very wicked city. It had a temple to the goddess Aphrodite that boasted over a thousand cult prostitutes who were to engage in sexually illicit activity to the praise and honor of a false god. In the Greco-Roman world, really to be sexually promiscuous gave you the title a Corinthian. You'd be known as a Corinthian lady or a Corinthian man. And it was very much the case that what happens in Corinth stays in Corinth. And perhaps you're familiar with some cities even in our own country that that reputation is the same. It's the same as it was in Corinth and it's the same in cities that exist throughout the world today. And what's shocking is somehow this immorality that was in the city of Corinth had been brought into the church. And notice what Paul says of it. It's gross even to pagans. Now we might ask ourselves, well, what exactly was this sin? It's not quite clear. But Paul says that the man has his father's wife. It's not incest. It's not his mother who the man is having these illicit affairs with. But it's probably his stepmother. And see, what had happened was this church whom Paul had planted who was living in Corinth who was called to be a light in the dark world had instead brought so much of Corinth into the church that now Paul has to address it. And isn't that always the temptation that instead of being a church in the world but not of the world we're a church in the world that brings Corinth into the church. Isn't that a temptation for all of us? It certainly was for Corinth. But if you'll notice something very remarkable about this passage, Paul doesn't address the sinner individually. He doesn't rebuke this man who's guilty of this sin. He doesn't rebuke him directly, but instead he rebukes the church. Notice that. Several times in this passage he calls them out on their arrogance, on their pride. Why are you boastful? Why are you proud? And it's really an arrogance in spite of the sin that's taking place among them. And what I mean to say by that is it's an arrogance because the Corinthian church had, throughout the letter of Corinth, Paul is addressing this, the Corinthian church is boasting of a false spirituality. They thought they had attained a level of spirituality. They were so filled with the Spirit that sin was no longer a problem for them. And instead, Paul comes here and he humiliates them. He says, if you're so spiritual, why is this happening among you? How is this happening among you? Paul points out that really, not only is this man guilty of sin, but the church is guilty of sin. He's guilty of immorality, but they're guilty of indifference to immorality. They're tolerating sin, and Paul won't stand for it. And doesn't that characterize the church as well today? That those who are tolerant of sin, those who have an open mind, especially in regards to abnormal sexual relations, people in the church who tolerate those things, who are open-minded about those things, those are the people in the church that oftentimes the church is most proud of. Well, that person's so tolerant. They're so open-minded. But Paul doesn't see that as a quality. He sees that as a sin. He sees indifference to immorality as a sin within the church. So what are some of the reasons that the Corinthian church would be tolerating this man, this man guilty of this heinous sin? Well, one is cultural reasons. Perhaps you've seen the movie, the film The Godfather. And in The Godfather, you know, you have the Godfather. And he has many different clients and people underneath him. And they do favors for him. And in return, he gives them favors. He does things for them. And they pay him honor and prestige and sometimes money for services rendered. Well, the same was true in Corinth. The Godfather was in Corinth. and you had many people who were known as patrons who had clients and these clients would give services to their patrons. And perhaps this man in this passage who's guilty of this sin was one of these patrons. Maybe even some of the people in the church were his clients. People that owed him respect. And it would have been out of character it would have been out of character in the culture to call this man out on his sin to rebuke him publicly. See, it was very much a culture of schmoozing, of scratching each other's back, of rubbing shoulders with a guy who can get you places in the world. Well, perhaps a cultural reason was why they wouldn't rebuke the sin in the church, why they were tolerating it. But maybe another reason was religious reasons. You know, in chapter 6, Paul will go on to say to the Corinthians that some of them were once sexually immoral. They were once practicers of homosexuality. They were once idolaters. They were once drunkards. But now they've been washed. They've been sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus. And perhaps those people who had once held former lives in sin and depravity saw themselves as people who were incapable of rebuking someone else. I'm not perfect, how can I confront a brother or a sister in the Lord? Perhaps they had that verse memorized that so often you hear today, Judge not, lest ye be judged. Or who am I to cast the first stone? Well, I think the application is significant for every congregation, especially ours. Before we're too quick to justify ourselves saying, well, none of us among this congregation has a father's wife. We're not living in that kind of a sin. But perhaps we're indifferent to immorality. Perhaps we're indifferent or tolerant to sin in our own lives. Perhaps we're indifferent or intolerant to sin in the lives of others. We overlook it. Are we indifferent or intolerant to sin in the church? see to be tolerant of sin to be indifferent towards it means we haven't exactly grasped what the nature of sin is how powerful it really is and once you recognize that every little sin requires the death of Christ then you realize as Paul understood that we can't be indifferent to sin but we must grieve over sin notice he says that in verse 3 in verse 2 I'm sorry you should have been filled with grief you should have mourned how many of us have mourned over our sin recently how many of us mourn and grieve over the sin that we find in the church not only this church but churches throughout the world does this indifference stem from cultural social habits what I mean by that is we can't bring that person under church discipline because that person's my grandpa or that person's my best friend. I can't possibly rebuke their sin. I can't confront their sin. That's my aunt or that's my uncle. This is a person I go to school with. I have to see them every day. This is a person I work with. Well, Paul says that indifference to immorality can't be in the church. It's a sin of the church. or maybe this indifference stems from religious reasons as it might have in the Corinthian church. I can't confront my brother and sister because I'm not perfect. Well, Paul will say, you've been washed, you've been sanctified and justified in the name of Jesus. And what that means is that we have to call sin, sin, and we have to confront it wherever it is. See, will we follow Jesus' command or will we continue to be indifferent towards it? Well, what is Jesus' command? Remember that it is Jesus' command. Paul gives the command here, but as an apostle of Jesus Christ, he is Jesus' ambassador to the church. And what he says is what Jesus commands of his church. See, oftentimes we have that picture of Jesus as someone who's meek and mild and someone who only wants love for people. But Jesus is a serious figure and he takes the church seriously because he died for the church. So remember, it's Jesus' command here through Paul. Notice also that Jesus commands church discipline elsewhere. In Matthew 16, he gives the keys of the kingdom of heaven to the church. In Matthew 18, he gives us principles for confronting a brother who sins against us. And think about the letters to the churches in the book of the Revelation. Jesus confronts the church at Thyatira saying, you tolerate that woman Jezebel. She's led you to practice sexual immorality. See, toleration of sin, indifference towards sin, is not something that God will have in His church. We'll notice that what Jesus commands is a clear command. We see it four times in the passage we have before us this evening. Notice verse 2. Put out of your fellowship the man who did this. Hand this man over to Satan. Expel the wicked man from your midst. It's a clear command. There's no getting around it. Notice also that it's a startling command. Hand this man over to Satan. We see that in verse 5. What can Paul possibly mean by this? Hand this man over to Satan. Perhaps some of you are troubled by that verse. I know that I was troubled by it. How can Paul possibly say to the church, hand someone who is among them over to Satan? Well, remember who Satan is. Satan is the ruler outside of the church. He's the ruler. He's the king of the dominion of darkness, of a world that's passing away. And Jesus is the king of the church. He's the king inside the church. In Old Testament language, we might put it something like this. Hand this man over to Satan is like handing this man back into slavery in Egypt. Give this man back to bondage underneath Pharaoh. have him make bricks without straw, have him be beat and whipped by the taskmaster of this world, and then he might come to his senses. Then he might realize what freedom and liberty he had in the church with Jesus Christ. See, what Paul wants to happen is for this man to come to his senses like the prodigal son. He wants this man to, after he squandered everything, be found in the pigsty and realize that the great things, the great privileges he had in his father's house were much better than what he has now. That's what Paul means by handing this man over to Satan for the destruction of his sinful nature, for the destruction of his flesh. And in the Greco-Roman world, in Corinth, this would have been especially powerful for the man who was removed from the church Because, as you know, the church in the Greco-Roman world wasn't a powerful entity. It was something that people despised. The Church of Jesus Christ was the lowest rung on the totem pole. So to be removed from that fellowship meant that you had no fellowship at all. You had no community. You had no one to speak to. No one to be friends with. No one to commune with. So we've noted that it's a clear command, it's a startling command, but Jesus' command is also a command with a merciful purpose. Hand this man over to Satan so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. See, that's what church discipline is ultimately all about. It's about restoration. It's about reconciliation. It's about renewal in the covenant community. that's always the aim. That's always the purpose and the motivation for church discipline. See, we're not legalists. We're not the Lord's bounty hunters that go searching into people's lives for sin. But when it becomes apparent that someone is struggling with a sin and is unrepentant, then we must go to that person. We must confront them. And whether it's formal church discipline or informal church discipline that takes place brother to brother and sister to sister, we must always keep in mind that speaking the truth in love, seeking to win that brother over, gaining him to repentance and faith. So it's a command with a merciful purpose. Well, Paul also gives us a surprising method to church discipline. In our second point this evening, he says, Why must you expel the evil person from among you? Well, one, because of Christ's command, but secondly, because of Christ's death. And notice what Paul doesn't do. He isn't shy at all. He isn't embarrassed. He's not a prude. There's sexual immorality happening in this church, and he confronts it. There's a problem in Corinth of sexual immorality, and he addresses this throughout the rest of the book in several chapters. And he establishes a very robust and a very vigorous theology of sex because the church in Corinth has problems with it. But he isn't shy, he isn't embarrassed about it. See, that's often the case when we find out sins in people's lives, we're often a little bit grossed out, we're judgmental, especially with sins of sexual immorality. And the church too often takes those things and instead of developing a theology on them, developing a biblical perspective on them, we surrender them to the culture. We say, well, we're not going to talk about that because that's a little bit embarrassing. But Paul doesn't do that here. He's not shy and he's not embarrassed. Notice also that he doesn't bring them the law. He doesn't say, cleanse out the old leaven from among you in order that you will be a good church, in order that you will be a pure church, in order that you'll be a church at all. No, he says, get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast, as you really are. He says, you're already that new lump. You're already that new batch of dough. And this is so counterintuitive to the way we think because we would expect that Paul would say, if there's sexual immorality going on in the church, here are some things you can do to stop that. But no, he says he reminds them of who they are, who they are as a church, who they are as that new lump, that new batch of dough. And how does he do that? Well, the imagery he brings up is the imagery of Christ as the Passover lamb. You remember in Exodus 12, at the institution of the Passover, the blood that was shed from the lamb that was slain was shed in order to protect the people from the destroyer. And after that blood was shed, after that lamb was eaten, seven days after that, the people were to eat unleavened bread as a festival to the Lord. See, but Paul is saying, now Jesus, who is the real Passover lamb, who is the Passover lamb, he's been sacrificed. And his blood now protects you from every accusation that Satan can throw at you. It protects you from the destroyer. And so when we think about church discipline, we need to remember that really what church discipline entails is a God's perspective of what church discipline is like. Because if you remember, Jesus doesn't come just as a Passover lamb by himself. He comes because he's sent. He's sent by God because God is not tolerant of sin. He's not indifferent to immorality. He won't put up with it. And so he deals with it. God deals with it through His Son and He deals with it completely. See, God doesn't ignore sin. He's not tolerant of it, but He sends His Son to be a sacrifice for our sins, to take on His judgment that was to fall on us and He lays it on His Son, on that Passover lamb. So what does Paul say? Now keep the festival. Now keep the festival of unleavened bread. The ESV translates this, now celebrate the festival. We don't often think of church discipline as a celebration, but that's what Paul calls us to. And how can Paul tell us to celebrate church discipline? How can he tell us to celebrate keeping the festival of unleavened bread? Well, it's a celebration because now Jesus' blood, Jesus' death as the sacrifice of the Passover lamb has made true disciples. Notice that Paul says here, we celebrate not with the bread of malice and wickedness, but with the bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. See, that's what's to characterize the Christian life. It's not a life that's polished nice on the outside, like those people of the world. They're good on the outside, but dead inside. True disciples of Jesus Christ live lives without yeast. Live lives that are based and rooted in sincerity and truth. Our final point this evening is Paul commands the church to purge evil from its midst for the sake of the church, for the sake of Christ's church. And notice the illustration that he uses. We've been drawing on it throughout this sermon. He says that the church is an unleavened batch of dough. He says you're a new lump, an unleavened new lump. Now probably not many of you bake. I certainly don't bake often. But this is still an easy illustration to follow. Throughout the Old Testament, leaven is seen as something that's sin. So purging the sin, purging the leaven from out of the batch of dough is purging that sin that will pollute and corrupt and infect and destroy the church. It will ultimately sour the church if it's left tolerated, if it's not dealt with. And think of a family. You know, the family is really just the church in a miniature form. Think of an undisciplined family. Perhaps you've been invited over to someone's house or had a family over and while the mother's talking to you with a screaming child on her lap and her kids are running around the house tearing things off the wall, acting rambunctious. It's an undisciplined family and it's characterized by chaos. It's characterized by disorder. But the church of Jesus Christ is not a disordered people of God. It's an ordered people of God. If there was no church discipline, What Paul is saying is the church would be out of control. It would be chaos. And why would that be? Because if one person was allowed to get away with sin, then the rest of us would say, well, that person got away with it. Wouldn't it be okay if I did this? Couldn't you tolerate my sin? It also sets an example. Think about children being disciplined. If one child was to be left undisciplined, the other brothers and sisters would think that their disobedient attitude towards their parents would be acceptable. But Paul says, no, you've got to discipline the people in the church because if there was no discipline, there'd be no order. Everyone would get away with everything. And that's not what's to characterize the people of God. That's not what's to characterize the house of God, the family of God. Well, Paul also says that church discipline is to take place, but he doesn't want them to misunderstand what he's talking about. Notice, starting in verse 9, he says that he's written to them before about not associating with sexually immoral people, but here he's not calling them to monasticism. He wants them to realize that they're to engage people of the outside world. They're to engage all those people outside the walls of the church whose lives are characterized by these sins. Because if you weren't to associate with them, you'd have to leave the world completely, Paul says. Isn't it interesting in what ways we often reverse what Paul says? We'll tolerate sin among us, but as soon as we get in the outside world, we're quick to criticize and to harp on the sins of a godless culture. Think of this young man who's now in the news, accused of these very heinous and grievous sins against not only God, but his neighbor as well. How quick we are to judge this person, to be so critical of him, but we tolerate sin in our own lives. this person who really needs the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ, but how many Christians would approach him and talk to him about his need for a Savior? Instead, we just stand back and say, this man deserves to die. Well, Paul wants to emphasize that cleansing the old leaven, Cleansing this yeast from the batch of dough ultimately will protect the church's witness to the world. And doesn't that make sense? How often do you see in the media when a grievous public sin is brought out from inside the church? How quick the news and everyone else is to blame the church, to criticize the church. And that brings reproach and shame on the name of Jesus Christ. And Paul's saying, we can't tolerate sin among us, otherwise our witness to the world would be for nothing. People would just call us hypocrites. While we might wonder at the effectiveness of church discipline, what Paul is calling the church to in this passage, does it really work? Is this something that the church can even practice today? Many churches are completely surrendering this important and vital element in church life. But we must rest confidently in those first two points. See, it's Jesus who commands the church to practice church discipline and Jesus is the king of the church. He's the king of the church and he knows what's best for the church. That's why we practice it. The king knows what's best and he's ultimately sacrificed himself in order to make the church that new lump. That new lump that already is unleavened. I'd like to close tonight with Paul's second letter to the Corinthians. You can turn there if you'd like or just listen to chapter 2 of 2 Corinthians. Starting at verse 5, If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has grieved all of you, to some extent, not to put it too severely. The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. Now, instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. Now, we don't know exactly who Paul is speaking about in this passage. I'd like to think that it was the man who was guilty of sexual immorality in the passage we have before us, 1 Corinthians 5. But notice how the church goes from tolerating sin to when someone is found repentant and seeking to come back into the community of God, now the church is unwilling to have him, unwilling to forgive him. So we must not be found on either side. We must be intolerant of sin, but ready to forgive the repentant sinner. Over a hundred years ago, Abraham Kuyper said that the practice of excommunication in the Reformed churches in the Netherlands was as rare as seeing a white crow. May that not be said of this church. May we as a body of Christ gathered in His name seek the purity of the church because we are the new lump, the new batch of dough. And may we do so not only because Jesus Christ commands us in His Word, but also because He has been sacrificed as that Passover lamb and He now reigns as King over His church. Amen. Let's pray. O Lord our God, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for giving us church discipline, Father. We thank You for preserving Your church even in spite of her faithlessness. God, You are a faithful God and we ask that this church will be found faithful, Lord. That we would not only seek to rebuke sin when it is found, but we may be eager to forgive the sinner who is repentant. Father, please bless us as we go from your house this evening. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.