I invite you to turn tonight in the Bible to the book of 1 Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel, chapter 2. We'll be looking at two passages. We'll have an Old and a New Testament reading. 1 Samuel, chapter 2, and then we'll turn over to 1 Corinthians 5. This is found tonight. If you're looking for that in your pew Bibles, On page 289, this is beginning at verse 12. We're looking at the account of Eli and his sons with going to the positive display of church discipline in the New Testament where we have the purpose and understanding explained. Where here in this particular passage, all discipline was avoided and neglected and the situation had spiraled so far out of control and the goal of discipline being to prevent this from what you're about to consider in 1 Samuel from happening and then looking at how the Lord used discipline in Corinth to bring about repentance. This is beginning at verse 12. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. The custom of the priests with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servants would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand and he would thrust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself. This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Moreover, before the fat was burned, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give meat for the priest to roast for he will not accept boiled meat from you would only raw and if the man said to him let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish he would say no but you must give it now and if not i will take it by force thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the lord but the men treated the offering of the lord with contempt now skip down to verse 22 now eli was very old and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting and he said to them why do you do such things for i hear of your evil dealings from all these people no my sons it's not a good report that i hear the people of the lord spreading abroad if someone sins against a man god will mediate for him but if someone sins against the lord who can intercede for him but they would not listen to the voice of their father it was the will of the lord to put them to death now now if you continue to follow down actually verse 27 and there came a man of god to eli and said to him thus says the lord did i intend did i indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in egypt subject to the house of pharaoh did i not choose him out of all the tribes of israel to be my priest to go up to my altar to burn incense to wear an ephod before me i gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel? Therefore, the Lord God, the God of Israel declares, I promise that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever. But now the Lord declares, far be it from me For those who honor me, I will honor. And those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, their days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. Then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever. The only one of you whom I shall cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out, to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this, that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you. Both of them shall die the same day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, please put me in one of those priest places that I may eat a morsel of bread. And now turning over to 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 5. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not even tolerated among pagans. For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant. Ought you not to rather mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. for though absent in body i am present in spirit and as if present i have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing when you are assembled in the name of the lord jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our lord jesus you are to deliver this man to satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the lord your boasting is not good you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you are really, as really are unleavened. For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world but now i am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater reveler drunkard or swindler not even to eat with such a one for what have i to do with judging outsiders is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge god judges those outside purge the evil person from among you may the lord bless the hearing of his word well the practice of church discipline i know is extremely difficult uh what just happened here tonight uh it is painful it makes us feel uncomfortable and uh we wonder probably to some degree does it really need to be done maybe we have questions about this how many do this today who does such a thing and what does this mean for the person when this happens what what do we do in our history maybe there's been the sense of we just completely reject them now and have nothing at all to do with them what do we do with such a person how do we view that person how do we treat that person is this really beneficial what we do and do we really think this is going to work? I mean seriously, do we really think this is going to work? Anyone who does this will to some degree get branded and accused of being unloving and judgmental. I fully understand the struggle of this tonight. I was asked by the elders in light of this to revisit again the subject of church discipline, explaining to you why the Lord wants this done, helping you with the goal of church discipline and letting you think a little bit about how we treat somebody who is disciplined. Maybe that's the great struggle with this. Tonight, we're going to look at this with the goal of appreciating church discipline, why it should be exercised in the body of Christ, and so we'll look at the reason, the purpose, and then the person who is disciplined. This morning, we looked at God's gift of leadership. We looked that God gives leadership as a gift to us, that He put in place in Israel elders who were to shepherd the flock, who were to care for the flock. And we tend to look at this in certain ways and in certain things that they do. But tonight, we really do get to one of the most challenging and difficult tasks that God has given to the elders in the life of the church, that he's requiring elders to exercise discipline. One of the best places to understand the necessity of this is in the account of Eli and his sons. And then looking at connecting this with the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 5 is very helpful. It's a sad story in 1 Samuel 2. It's a disturbing story as we read it. We should have felt disturbed reading that story. The section begins with saying, that his sons acted and they were worthless in their behavior before the Lord. They didn't even know the Lord. And they're priests in Israel. What a heartbreaking thing to read that these sons of the priests who are even in this priestly office, they didn't even regard the Lord. They didn't even think about the Lord. They didn't even know the Lord. And the text goes on to outline for us very serious sins that were going on in the life of Israel. known sins, painful sins in the life of these men and in the life of the kingdom and their rebellious attitude toward their father and to the Lord. It was painful what they were causing, but it was being covered up. In verses 13 through 16, we have these sins that are outlined there. And if you kept the Scriptures open, you can look there at verse 13 at the nature of the sins that the Lord exposes here where it says the custom of the priest was that when any man offered the sacrifice, the priest's servants would come while the meat was boiling and with a three-pronged fork in his hand, he would thrust it in the pan and take out whatever came out there. So they did, it says, in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came up there. And you might think, well, that doesn't sound that bad. It doesn't sound that bad. The priests in the law had been commanded what was to be their own portion of the offerings of the people. Leviticus chapter 10 outlines it was the right thigh and the breast and these were the offerings of the people that they were bringing up to the house of the Lord to worship the Lord with. And the priests here, Hophni and Phinehas, Eli's sons, were essentially stealing the offerings of the people. They would take with their servants, they used their servants to do this, they would thrust the fork, into the pot and and they would take whatever they wanted anyone gave them any back talk they would scream out this is ours they would state their claim to it and the point of the whole thing is emphasized in verse 17 that the sin of the young men was very great in the eyes of the lord it was very great in the eyes of the lord but the consequence was that people ended up despising worshiping the lord the leadership had wrecked the worship of the lord they were stealing they were despising and causing everyone to hate coming into the house of the lord everyone to come and worship when they came but the text isn't done you'll notice in verse 22 there that Eli was very old and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting what a tragedy women would come and assemble and sheer defilement and sexual immorality was happening there priestly abuse leadership abuse right at the door of the tabernacle just astonishing astonishing moment in israel's history and the place which was to symbolize forgiveness and offer forgiveness of sins this was going on and the text goes on to emphasize that the known and accepted authority structure in Israel did not deal with the problem. This is the point of the text. They did not deal with the problem. And so the passage is presenting to us, looking at Eli as the high priest, but also as the father of these men. You'll notice what happens in verse 23. That he says to them, Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings among the people. No, my sons, it's not a good report that I hear the people of God spreading abroad. This is a tragic section because he goes on to say, if someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? These are priests. What I want to show you tonight, I'm not going into all the details of this, what I want to show you tonight this evening is that the text presented to us that the leadership, the authority structures in place had abandoned, and the Lord is clearly holding Eli responsible here, neglected the responsibility to discipline Hophni and Phinehas. Eli's an old man at this point. In fact, the text says that he's very old. And what seems to come across here, what seems to be the implication here, is that this sins, the pattern of sins that had developed in Israel, had been going on for years. Obviously, Eli knew what his sons were doing. You might ask, well, did this rebellious behavior begin when they entered the priesthood? You can be sure that this had been going on for some time. This is how the Lord treats it. We see this in how Eli deals with his sons. For I hear of your evil dealings among the people. No, sons, it's not a good report that I hear. So, you stop for a moment and you say, wait a minute. You get that kind of report. This is the report, the known report. The facts have been established. And he's willing to point out the sin, but he's unwilling to do anything about the sin. I mean, listen to what he says. Why do you do these things? For I hear of all your evil doings among the people. Out of touch. I hear from the people, says Eli. Why didn't Eli bring the charges? The assumption here, and you'll see this in a moment, when the Lord convicts Eli and comes after Eli, He says, you were eating the portions. You were party to this. What had happened? Well, it's no surprise that this comes on the heels of the judges, doesn't it? Remember that theme in the book of Judges? Everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. surely they should have put a stop to this. And isn't this just the case that oftentimes we will see people sinning and if they're close to us, we may say, well, we observe that you're doing something wrong, but nothing is done when we have the ability and we have some kind of authority that the Lord has put us in in these kind of situations with people that we know. Think of spiritual leadership here that we may point out the sin, but do nothing about it to stop it. Eli should have stopped this. Eli should have pulled him. Especially since the mockery is coming from his own sons. Here's what I want you to think about. All of us are in some kind of position of authority as parents, but we're looking tonight at spiritual authority. But when we see something wrong, we have a choice, don't we? This is the issue that Paul is going to raise here in a moment in 1 Corinthians. We have a choice. As a father, I have a choice when something is brought to my attention and there's a known willful pattern happening. I have a choice. I can act on it or I can avoid it. I can act on it and address it and implement consequences for actions as I'm called to do or I can let it go. You tell me what's easier. You all know what's easier. no parent ever wants to discipline their son. No parent ever wants to discipline their daughter. You go through this on a practical level. And if you're honest, in the course of your shepherding of your own children, you've been neglectful. I've been neglectful. What about the church? Something is brought to the elders. It's confirmed. It's a known public sin. The elders have a choice. The elders have a choice. Pray for them. Work with them. Call them to repentance. Admonish them. Tell them that if you continue down this path, you're going to suffer the consequences for your action. We don't want to have to do that, but we love you enough to want to stop you in this pattern of sin before it gets too far down the road here or we can leave it alone. What do you want the elders to do? You see how hard this can get in a family-oriented church? Eli's the high priest, but these are his sons. That's a very disturbing passage to me. What would I do? Well, I suppose the sort of de facto thing we all fall back in doing is to avoid it. That's the pressure today. The pressure today almost across the board is don't rock the boat. listen, they've got to make their decision. The Lord is challenging us here tonight with the question of what's leadership? And you know commonly when somebody is in sin and they're pursuing a path of sin and you confront it, it's all built in now because of our culture that tells us we can make no judgments. It's all just sort of built in. Now the response is anger, the response is rage, the response is don't judge me. i mean you know now your sense is if i say anything i'm going to lose them all together that that's where we are today in the culture how do you deal with that jesus told you that problem anyone who is in darkness hates the light and will not come to the light lest what his deed should be exposed that's why the first thing people do when they're running in a path of sin is stay away from the light stay away from church i want nothing to do with it it's light it exposes the darkness of the heart jesus dealt with this and this is why jesus was hated is because he was constantly exposing the darkness of the heart it's a fight you know that so do we say something do we not what do we do i think we get some help here with the lord's perspective on the matter in verse 27 we read that the lord sent a man of god to eli thus says the lord did i indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in egypt subject to the house of pharaoh did i choose him out of all the tribes of israel to be my priest to go up to my altar to burn incense to wear an ephod before me i gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn? Now listen to this. Why do you scorn, verse 29, my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling and honor your sons above me by fattening, notice it includes Eli, yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel. Therefore, the Lord God of Israel declares there's the issue. You chose your sons over me. You chose them. Didn't Eli scold them? Sons, what are you doing? Surely he didn't approve of their actions. But God is saying when you did nothing, by not putting a stop to it, you're sharing in it. So what we see is that a terrible fallout happened in Eli's own house. There should have been discipline and there was shame brought on the name of the Lord in Israel. There was no discipline. And the point here is Eli was willing to say something was wrong about it, but he was unwilling to do anything about it. There is tough love. There is tough love. If a son or daughter is living in my house and is committing things against the rules of the house, there is tough love. They don't have a free reign. And the point is here, the situation so spiraled out of control for so long because nothing was done. And it had to finally be resolved by God himself stepping into the situation. I want you to notice that here. It had to finally be resolved. Things got so bad, there was direct intervention, and the intervention was, I have to take them out. Myself. I have to kill them. Did you catch that? Because the situation was such a mess, the damage was so far done, it had spiraled so bad, it took that kind of intervention by God Himself. And so you stop and you say, that's why we have to discipline. You don't want that. I don't want that. And so we're starting to get some principles here for discipline. It is for the glory of God. It honors Him. It protects His name. It protects the people of God because sin is a mess in the body of Christ and it shields the damage that one person does to the whole body and it's a way that God gave us to stop and check sin so that things don't spiral out of control. Now this is hard because society tells us that such actions are unloving. But that tells me tonight, is it loving to say and do nothing when you see open, blatant rejection of the Lord's will. What is love? Listen to Proverbs 13. He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. You want to hate your son? Don't ever discipline. Don't spank. There's a principle here. Parents are called. their protective shields over their children you don't you want to hate your son don't do anything but if you want to love your children discipline them promptly so it doesn't spiral and the heart doesn't calcify into this kind of situation in short as one pastor said discipline is life saving a child may fight for a while and despise the correction but at the end of the day the Lord says it could save his soul from hell now transfer this to Corinth Paul says to the church in Corinth it's been reported that there is this sin going on in the church it's not even named among the Gentiles a man has his father's wife and you're puffed up and you you have not rather mourned there has been no mourning in the whole course of the sin you didn't mourn you didn't feel the weight of it you let it go you did nothing and you are puffed up and have not mourned that this deed might have been taken away from you the one who did this deed everyone knew about this the sin had spread in the life of the church and paul here was horrified that the church did nothing and says in verse 2 you're puffed up you're you're puffed up you've not mourned it was the the sort of careless let it just look let's all love and get along kind of attitude to the whole thing and they weren't mourning and even worse the sin was so repulsive that even the pagans wouldn't have accepted this but it's getting they're tolerating it in the church and so the issue again is the same issue uh do we honor the lord more than these people contamination is raised in first corinthians your glorying is not good you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump you have to purge out the leaven that that you may be a new lump uh since you are truly unleavened, Paul was broken over the fact that the Corinthians were not loving the sheep by letting them do whatever they wanted to do. And I don't believe the people in Corinth said, well, it's okay what this man is doing. Of course they didn't say that. They didn't say it was okay. They just did nothing about it. The Bible constantly calls us as Christians to make judgment the bible calls us as christians to render judgment i understand how hard that is today i understand that everyone says don't judge me we have a standard by which we make judgments and first corinthians 5 says there there are standards if anyone is says they're a christian they're living in these patterns of sin you've got to say that's not christian behavior and i suppose it it it sort of challenges us a little bit pragmatically in terms of we all kind of fear being known as the strict church. We all kind of fear being known as the church that we don't really want to be looked at like that in the community, right? We don't want people to know that goes on in the community, do we? Remember Ananias and Sapphira? In the early church? The Holy Spirit exercised church discipline Himself. And when the Holy Spirit exercised church discipline in the early church, it said that great fear came on all the people so that no one dared to join them. That was His way of showing and preserving honor and integrity of the church and who it is the body of. No elder wants to do this, brothers and sisters. It is so hard to do. No one wants to see this happen. You know that when you have to do these things, there's an awful tug of war that goes on behind the scenes. Most of you never see. It's hard because we're called to say what sin is and people don't agree with that today. A lot of people don't agree with that today. I'm not sure the exact reason Corinth avoided it. Maybe it was social. I don't know. But Paul gives the way forward here. In verse 3, he says, For I indeed as absent in body but present in spirit have already judged as though I were present Him who has done this deed. I'm making a judgment. Paul says, I'm absent in body but let me tell you, I have made a judgment in my spirit about that situation and about that man. The church and its elders have to be able to discern today what is Christian behavior and what is not. And though we're never called to judge whether somebody is going to heaven or hell, that is not our call. We are called to say that there is a lifestyle that is Christian and there is a lifestyle that is not Christian. And if somebody says, I refuse to honor the law of God, I refuse to lead a life that is expressly Christian according to the will of God, the church has to recognize and the church has to affirm the path that they have chosen. That's what the Lord's telling us to do. And that provides the basis of church discipline. Think of Eli. What if Eli had dealt promptly with that sin? So Paul says, listen, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you invoke Jesus. He's on your side on this. When two or three are gathered together, and that's probably because everyone in sin says, my God will never judge me. When two or three are gathered together in my name, you know this, this is from Matthew, I'm there, so render the judgment. Paul is expressing what we've always believed about. You heard tonight about the keys of the kingdom, that they open and shut the door of heaven. They have been entrusted to His church. This is where the authority lies. When the church faithfully exercises that, the keys, the Lord is saying it's something that He is affirming. So when you're gathered together, He says, along with my spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. So when the elders learn the facts, They determine somebody's living in a pattern of sin. It's known. We explain it to the congregation and then we execute it. Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, says Paul. Paul said that elsewhere. Some have rejected concerning the faith, have suffered shipwreck of whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I delivered to Satan that they may not learn to blaspheme. What is Paul saying to do? What just happened? He said, you cast them outside of the communion. It's a biblical term, excommunication. Why do we do that? Well, that's where principalities and power still hold sway over people's lives. 1 John said, the whole world lies under the sway of the evil one. So they're put back into that. They're suspended from the shelter and the care and the love and the nurture and the feeding of the body of Christ. And what he's saying there is to be outside again, is to be put in that realm, outside into the realm, the world. And he says, the mystery of this is the person may wake up at some point and realize what they've lost. In other words, that may be the very means God uses to save them. This is the prodigal who went and he found himself in the pigsty and he didn't know. He went, he wanted the inheritance and he went and he ran and he's all mucked up with all the pig stuff and then what does he say? It says he came to himself. What am I doing? Well, that's it. That's what the Lord is saying may happen. That he may bless this decision and that this may happen. That's the mystery of it. that when a person is cast back out into that realm, God may be merciful. Satan wants to attack. God may be merciful. And mercy is written all over this. That what it does is the member continues. And you see, if you don't do anything, the person can come and go as they please. They may never show up. They may never care. They may continue the lifestyle and everyone treats them as the same. What good has that done for them? You've done the most loving thing as the church. And this is the call that God gave through Ezekiel to office bearers when He said, listen, when I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked from his way, assuming that that wicked man dies and is iniquity, He says, His blood all require your hand. So we have a solemn responsibility in this. And He's saying by doing this, By saying we can't support certain things. We can't condone certain actions. We're recognizing that the path they chose, we're recognizing they chose that path and we're affirming. They chose a path contrary. Therefore, we're affirming what they want. They're outside again. That's what they chose. And Paul is saying here that there's this real possibility that they'll be saved before the final judgment. Safe from hell. And I have to believe, and you have to believe, that if the Lord said that, then what we did tonight was the most loving thing we could do for her. We have to believe that. If everyone ignores it and everyone acts like it's fine, you're providing a situation for further spiral and further calcifying of the heart. Do you know what happened in Corinth? He repented. Did you know that? this is 2 Corinthians who I believe is talking of this man the punishment which was inflicted by the majority is sufficient for such a man so that on the contrary you ought rather to forgive and comfort him lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow therefore I urge you reaffirm your love to him he came back and paul then had to make really clear you now embrace him in love you welcome him back you reaffirm that love and that's always the goal that's always the goal that that what does this mean then for the person what does this mean when we do this for the person well maybe you've heard those words of jesus let them be unto you as a heathen and a tax collector what jesus was simply saying is you have to affirm that they have broken that communion that that broken communion has been declared and you can no longer treat that person as a brother or as a sister. So what do you do with them? You show compassion. Just like you would anyone else out there who doesn't believe. You show love to them. Sure, we can't sit and act like they're Christians anymore. Sin has hardened the heart. But we want them to. to enjoy forgiveness and enjoy love. So we call them to faith. We pray for them. We don't hate them. We don't refuse and keep them way over here. It means that we can't be like Eli and give them the same honor that is appropriate to being a member of the body of Christ. I hope that's clear. They've chosen a path that broke that. We've recognized that and loving them and prayerfully asking the Lord to use our discipline to bring them back. That's why we did it. I can say in all integrity of heart tonight, that's why we did it. We believed with all of our heart in honoring the Lord first and that this was the best course to try to go after somebody who's turned from the faith. We should remember her. We should love her. Pray for her. That the Lord would bring her to faith. It's His rescue plan. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, be merciful to Lauren and help us to value what You put in place and to have confidence in Your means. You told parables about going after wandering sheep. that you would leave the 99 and go get the one who wandered? Would you do that? And may we all fear the kind of godly fear that leads to repentance in our own lives. Realizing, as you said, to him who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall, we have no ability to stand in and of ourself. Without you, Lord Jesus Christ, we can do nothing. But what a place to stand in your power, in your grace, and in your strength. Hear us tonight, O Lord. And encourage us as we go out of your presence and that we sought tonight to honor you and to put your name first. And in that, would you hear our cries tonight? In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.