Summary:
Sin is a voracious, bloodthirsty, corroding force – never satisfied until it has parasitically sucked the life out of a person, family, community, or even a church. Therefore, the most hateful thing we can do is turn a blind eye to sin, in our own lives and in the lives our loved ones. In the church, we are called by God to humbly, lovingly, and graciously confront our brothers and sisters about their sin (and invite correction from them about our own), for we are our brother's and sister's keepers.

Transcript:
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Good morning. Welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, I'm one of the pastors her at Mosaic and if you're new or if you're visiting, and you'd like to connect with us, we'd love to connect with you. We do that officially through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly and then afterwards you can either toss it into the offering basket, or you can redeem it at the welcome center for a little gift that we've prepared for you to say thanks for coming out. With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word.

Heavenly father, we thank you that though we were rebels, insubordinate, wayward, running from you, pursuing our own sin and folly. Lord, we thank you that you didn't leave us in our ways, but you sent your son Jesus Christ, who died an excruciating death on a cross to pay the penalty for our sin. And I pray today, Lord, that you remind us that you sent your son, Jesus Christ, not to die so that we can continue sinning, but to die so that we can be empowered by your grace, and your love, and your holy spirit to live lives in submission to your will, lives of righteousness, lives of holiness.

And Lord, so we take some time now as Christians to repent of any known sin in our own lives. We repent, Lord, in brokenness and contrition, humility. We come before you asking for more grace, and we pray that grace empowers us to live lives worthy of the gospel. And Lord, show us that your grace is never cheap, it's costly, and that we are never to use it as an excuse to continue in sin. And Lord, show us today if anyone here's not yet a Christian, what it means to truly be a Christian, truly be saved.

It means to be part of your household and in your household there are rules. Rules not to keep us from fun, not to kill our joy, but rules that keep us from things that will kill our joy, which always sin. And I pray Lord, that you draw many to yourself even today. And I pray for those Christians who are on the outskirts, on the fringes of the church. I pray that you show them just how dangerous of a place that is to be, that we all need mutual accountability. We all need one another. Lord, I pray that you bless our time in the holy word, and pray this in the beautiful name Jesus Christ. Amen.

So at the foundation of our society is this idea of moral relativism, meaning there is no good, there is no right, there is no evil, there is no righteousness, and therefore, that the chief virtue in our society is not truth. It's tolerance, and there are two pillars to this moral relativism in our culture. One is moral individualism that I personally get to decide what I do with my life. I get to decide what's good, what's evil, what's right and what's wrong. I don't have to look outside. No one else can tell me it's me if I'm not hurting anyone, live and let live, and there's no such thing as categorical sin, or categorical evil. The only sin that's left in our culture is to call something sin. The only evil that's left in our culture is to call something evil, that's moral individualism.

And then the second pillar of moral relativism is expressive individualism. No one has a right to tell me how to love my life, and therefore, I have no right to tell anyone how to live their life. Therefore, we have a deep-seated prejudice against passing judgment, especially when it comes to moral decisions, decisions that have to do with our private life, or sexuality, our finances. Therefore, in this context, in the society that we live in, any talk of rebuke, or correction, or reproof seems viscerally unloving. It's unloving to tell someone else that they are making a mistake. And this idea, this world, it has crept into our churches to such an extent, that to talk of church discipline, even the idea is a faux pas.

It sounds like we're trying to revive the Salem Witch Trials or the Inquisition. It seems like a throwback to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with the Puritans, make Hester Prynne wear a red A on her chest for committing adultery. It seems to antiquated, so rigid, so counter to the idea of love. And we throw out Matthew 7:1, probably the most famous verse in our culture. "Judge not, that you be not judged." And it's this idea that we shouldn't judge anybody, but as soon as you say, "Don't judge anybody. Hey, don't judge me." "I've got a Bible verse." "Oh, you're being judgmental," so it can't mean you can't discern, you can't distinguish between right and wrong. What does it mean?

You got to read in context, Matthew 7:6. Jesus goes on and he talks about the sermon, "Do not give dogs what is holy, do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you." How do you know that someone's spiritually a dog, or spiritually a pig? And he's talking about someone who's so materialistic, so focused on the physical world that they have no sense of the spiritual. Jesus said, "You got to be discerning."

Matthew 7:15, "Beware of false profits, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves." You got to be discerning, and in that context, what Jesus means when he says do not judge, he's saying do not be hypocritical when making discernment. Don't be condescending. Don't be self-righteous. Take the log out of your own eye before doing the sensitive spiritual work of taking a speck out of your brother or sister's eye. It's personal repentance that then helps another brother or sister repent of sin. It's not heartless passivity, it's humble proactivity.

Well, what about casting the first stone? It's a story of the woman who was caught in adultery, that was brought to Jesus by the pharisees and then Jesus said, "Whoever is without sin cast the first stone." But then what did Jesus say? He said, "Woman, where are they? They all left? Has no one condemned you?" She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you. I've paid for your sins on the cross for the penalty of your sins on the cross. But," he says, "From now on, sin no more."

And what Jesus is doing, is he's discerning that there is such a thing as sin in your life, you are on a path to sin. Now turn from that, that's what repentance means. Repentance does not mean I come to God and I say, "God, forgive me. Now I'm going to go continue living in sin." Forgiveness in the Greek, metanoia. I means I turn around, it's a 180-degree turn. Now you turn. Say Lord, I was living for myself, I was living in sin. I repent of that sin. I turn to you.

If sin is just a description of someone's mistake, some character flaw, some foibles, indiscretions, then our emotional recoil against this idea of correction, it makes sense. If sin is neutral, if it's stagnant, leave the person alone. Let them make their own decisions, let them learn from their mistakes, but sin is not neutral.

As soon as a voracious, blood-thirsty, corroding force, and it's never satisfied unless it's parasitically sucked the life out of a person, out of a family, out a community, even of a church. Scripture says that sin produces death in us by separating us from God, who is the source of life. Therefore, the most hateful thing that we can do is turn a blind eye to sin in our own lives, and sin in the lives of those whom we loved, brothers and sisters. In church, we are called by God to humbly, lovingly, graciously confront our brothers and sisters of their sin and invite them to confront us of our sin, when we don't see it because sin has a blinding effect, a hardening effect, a deadening effect. We are our brothers and sisters keepers.

This text that we're about to read makes no sense outside of the church, outside of the church community, outside of the household of God. So if you are not a Christian, if you are just exploring Christianity, I need to set this up for you, it won't make no sense at all. This is how Christianity talks about becoming a Christian. We are guilty before the judge of the universe.

Imagine yourself in a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit, we're guilty. The sentence comes down, we deserve eternal separation from the eternal God because of an eternal debt that we owe. And we say, "Is there any other way?" He brings in Jesus Christ, his son. He said, "My son has died on the cross for your sin, to pay the penalty for your debt. If you trust in him, believe in him, repent of your sin, his righteousness is counted to you, his record is counted to your record, is counted to him.

But, this is the truth, but now you belong to this judge. Now this judge says, "You are my son. You are my daughter. You are adopted into my family. It's not receive this forgiveness, receive this forgiveness of your debt so you can go and accrue more debt. No, you've been living as a spiritual orphan and if you receive this forgiveness, I'm adopting you into my family. I'm taking you home, I'm giving you my last name. Therefore, I have a claim on you. And the claim is, you are to live according to my household rules, and these rules I've given not to keep you from fun, but to keep you from things that hurt you, to keep you from the corroding effect of sin."

So as we read the text today, we need to understand that these are rules for the household of God. Would you look at I Corinthians 5, one through 13 with me. I Corinthians 5, one through 13. "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among Pagans, for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to 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. Do you now know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother is he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges the house outside. Purge the evil person from among you."

This is the reading of God's holy, inherit, and fallible word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts. We'll frame up our time with four points. First, we'll look at the prompting of this letter, what's the goal of church discipline? Then we'll look at the purpose, why is church discipline an idea in scripture? Then we'll look at the problems, when is church discipline to be implemented? And then the procedure, how is it to be done?

The prompting. What has caused St. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to write this letter to Corinth? Well, he planted this church about 20 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in this debaucherous, this Pagan, this sinful city of Corinth. And he spent 18 months there, about 50 people had been gathered to form a core group for a church. He then goes onto Eposes to plant a church there. While in Eposes, he hears from this lady named Chloe who's part of the church, that there's all kinds of problems within the church in Corinth. And the whole idea, like none of this text makes sense apart from the context of church membership. These are all people who have covenant together for mutual accountability, to help one another grow in the Lord.

So St. Paul says in verse one, "It's actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you." It's the Greek word porne, it's a vast word, a broad word, which includes all kinds of stuff. But here he's talking about an incestuous relationship. "A man has his father's wife." So this is a guy in the church, who's a member of the church, who's a professing believer, who is sleeping with his stepmother. Not a one night stand, followed by broken hearted repentance, has his father's wife, not had. It's an ongoing present tense. And then he says, "It's the kind that's not even tolerated among the Pagans."

And the Pagans tolerated a lot of sexual immorality, tolerated fornication, prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, even pedophilia. Demosthenes was an order of the day says, "Mistresses we keep for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children." But even they would draw the line here. This is an exploitative relationship, this is a relationship that is so counter to the natural order. The Pagan Roman Order Cicero says, "Incest was virtually unheard of in Roman society."

And this brings us to a question, where should the line be drawn when it comes to sex? In culture, it's getting pushed further, and further, and further. They're two consulting adults, not hurting anyone. No harm, no foul. Love is love. Personal fulfillment. Self-expression. Where do we draw the line? Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote a book recently called Shameless and she considered herself a Lutheran pastor and she wrote this book to self-professed Christians. And she says, "I'm here to tell you, unless your sexual desires are for minors, or animals, or your sexual choices are hurting you, or those you love, those desires are not something you need to struggle with. They are something to listen to, make decisions about, explore, perhaps have caution about. But struggle with, fight against, make enemies of? No.

Scripture would say she is a false prophet, preaching an anti-gospel. She's going contrary to God's will. Why isn't this arbitrary? You're drawing the line at minors and animals. Why? When is that boundary then pushed? Where does God draw the line? God says, "Sex is such a powerful force, for good or for evil, that only within the confines of a marriage, a covenant lifelong relationship between a husband and a wife, a man and a woman, one covenant, one lifetime, only then is it safe. Only then is it a blessing and not a curse."

And this gentleman in the church could say, "Well, Jesus Christ never said anything about me not sleeping with my stepmom." Well, Jesus Christ also didn't say anything about pedophilia, but Jesus Christ was an Old Testament rabbi, and he assumed a lot of the Old Testament case law, specifically when it came to morality. So Leviticus 18:8, "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father's nakedness."

What's St. Paul doing here? He takes it as a matter of course, that there are parts of the case law in Leviticus that are still enforced, still binding. This isn't part of the 10 Commandments, this isn't commandment 7A or 7B, but it's part of the case law. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:17, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them." He fulfilled all of the law in himself, but he didn't abolish it.

He fulfilled the ceremonial law, and he fulfilled the temple laws, and the laws of the priesthood, but when it comes to morality, he still calls us to submit to God's word. As gut-wrenching as this sin is of sexual immorality, that's not what the point of the sermon is. The sex sermon is coming in two weeks. The second part of I Corinthians six so come back for that. But this sermon is about church discipline. It's gut-wrenching, but their reaction is why St. Paul writes this chapter.

I Corinthians 5:2, "And you are arrogant." I Corinthians 5:6, "Your boasting is not good." They're taking pride in their perversion. They've got flags, and they've got bumper stickers, and parades, and they've got the Facebook profile picture frames. They're taking pride in their tolerance, and their diversity, freedom, open-mindedness. They're presenting themselves to be more loving than God. They're saying things like, "Who am I to judge?" Because as soon as you begin to discern and call a sin a sin, call a spade a spade, then you got to do something in your own life. And that's inconvenience.

What theory would give rise to boasting in this kind of immorality? I'll give you the theology, and this is rampant theology in our day and age. God is love, God doesn't judge. God is absolutely tolerant. If God gets glory by forgiving us, let's sin some more so that grace may abound, and it turns grace into license. Freedom and opportunity for the flesh, all things are lawful for me.

Why did Jesus Christ die? Why did God, the father, put his son Jesus Christ to death? Jesus took our sin upon himself. Our sin killed Jesus so that we would kill our sin. That's the point. God doesn't just want to save you from the penalty of your sin. He wants to save you from the power of sin over your life, and he releases you, and we no longer have to submit to the power of sin. We can submit to the power of righteousness, which is the only true freedom. And then by the power of the holy spirit, we are to mortify the presence of sin in our life.

Therefore, love is not opposed to discipline. What is true love? True love is you want the best for the beloved. Well, what is the best for us? The best for us is to be in perfect fellowship and communion with God. And sin is that which pulls us away from fellowship from God. Sin is that which kills our joy, it kills our satisfaction, so God despises our sin, and he wants that sin removed. So he sometimes has to discipline us in order for us to be drawn near to him. Because God loves us, he disciplines us so that we may share in his holiness and be conformed to the image of Christ.

Look at Hebrews 12:5, "And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, for be weary, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives." And then he goes on in that chapter to say, hey, when parents discipline, when parents parent, when parents try to discipline their children because the children don't have their own self-discipline, is that because they're unloving? No, the most unloving thing to say is, "Do whatever you want." Revelation 3:19, "Those whom I love," says Jesus, "I reprove and I discipline so be zealous and repent."

Second point is the purpose, why is church discipline a thing? Why does Jesus teach us to implement this? In I Corinthians 5:12, "For what I have 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." So he's saying in terms of outside, those are non-Christians. We love them and we show them the love of God, they need to meet Jesus Christ, and we're not expecting them to live under the household rules of God. They're not in the household, so we tell them, "Hey, believe in Jesus. Come to him for forgiveness. Submit your life to yield yourself."

I was thinking about this last night, as I was awakened at two a.m. by drunk BU graduates. And I was like, "I could go out and tell them right now, submit to the Lord. You're all sinners, stop drinking and waking me up at night." I didn't do that. They're not Christians yet and my wife would have gotten really ... They're not in the household of God. So we tell them about grace, and we tell them about the gospel, we tell them that they can be forgiven, they can meet Christ, but this discipline language, it's for believers to hold one another accountable. And it's all because of love, love for Christ, love for the watching world, love for the church, and love for the individual who is under this church discipline.

So church discipline shows love for Christ, this is a subpoint number one under point number two. God's holiness is a dominant theme in the Bible. The Bible is saying, "Love, love, love." The angels saying, "Holy, holy, holy." God is literally holy, utterly opposed to sin, you can no mixture with sin. In the Old Testament God said, "You are my people and you shall be holy for I the Lord am holy." It's repeated in the New Testament that the church is a holy priesthood in a holy nation. That's the verse right there, "A kingdom of priests in a holy nation."

God is saying you are distinct people, I've saved you for myself. You're in the world, but you're not of it. A people within a people and we are to represent God, we carry God's name. God's name is bound up with this church, his reputation is at stake. And when his people sin, when the church is infiltrated with sin, God does disassociate himself from the church.

How do I know this? Revelations two and three, Jesus writes letters to churches and he repeatedly warns, "If sin is not dealt with in their midst, he will remove the church's lamp stand." And that's what he did with Thyatira, and because of moral compromise. God would rather not have a testimony to his name in a city than to have his name maligned. When discipline leaves the church, Christ goes with it. The transformative power of the gospel goes with it.

Why did God punish King David so severely after David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then killed her husband? He said, "By doing this," the words of God, "You have made the enemies of the Lord show utter contempt. You've blasphemed the name of God." Church discipline shows our love for Christ. Christ is holy, and the way that we honor Christ isn't just with empty words, but with heartfelt obedience.

Church discipline also shows love to a watching world, that there is a difference between Christians and non-Christians, that Christ's power does make a difference, that Christ's power does transform, that he satisfied, that he is the source of joy. If people see our lives, the lives of the church and they're exactly the same as those outside of the church, then they begin to think that this is nothing but religion. "Oh, you're just very observant. Grace does nothing. It's just an excuse to sin more."

Because ultimately, you love sin as much as the unbelievers. You're just using Christ as an excuse to sin more. So the Pagans mocked and they jeered the church in Corinth. Brennan Manning said this, some of the most powerful words that capture this idea. "The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny him by their lifestyle. This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

Many churches today, and even in the city, in an attempt to be attractive to non-Christians, they begin to preach things like, "We're normal. We're as sinful as you. We don't have a problem with sin. We don't judge sin. We're tolerant, so join us to feel safe about your sin." And people say, "What's the point? It's a waste of my Sunday morning." Can we keep the visible church absolutely pure? Of course not, just like we can't keep ourselves absolutely pure. That doesn't mean we don't fight our sin and fight the good fight of faith. And in the church, we are to do the same.

Church discipline shows love for God for the world, but also for the church, in particular the weaker sheep, the younger Christians, that they might be protected. So St. Paul says in verse six, "Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" And what he's talking about is the Passover feast that Israel was saved from captivity in Egypt through the Passover, and before the angel of death came over all of Egypt, they were take a lamb and to sacrifice it.

And take the blood and paint it over their doorway, and then they would take unleavened bread, before they made that bread, they were to sweep their whole house for leaven. Leaven was used instead of yeast because yeast was hard to come by, it was scarce. And what leaven is, it's just a piece of old dough that had been fermented. And if you are to make bread, you take that piece of leaven, you put it in the new batch of dough, and you let it ferment.

The problem is, if you leave it in there too long, it become poisonous, and then you lose the bread, and this is what he's saying. He's saying you got to get rid of the leaven in your house, just like the people of Israel would do, they would sweep the house from top to bottom, every drawer, every cupboard. It had to be cleaned out because if your unleavened bread was leaven, then you would lose Passover joy. And here, the leaven represents sin. Sin in the same way as leaven, leaven's the whole lump. Sin has an effect of infecting the whole lump, infecting the person, infecting the people close to the person and the whole church.

And sin, when tolerated, when excused, when ignored, indulged in, it's like an infection. Once it's excused, and then what? You got to excuse another sin. Compromise leads to more compromise, and this weird dynamic develops in a church community, where the preaching says one thing, but people in the pew says, "Yeah, we don't really mean that, we don't really believe that." And then the preaching has to change, the preaching begins to pull punches, and stops talking about real life, things that every single one of us struggle with. You stop talking about lust, and greed, and pride. You stop talking about anger, and sloth, and envy.

And that our consciousness are seared and the church seizes to be the church, now we're just a vaguely religious club where people get together for some community and live their lives anyway they want. And then the pastor or the clergy do, they just hold onto their job for dear life from the endowment, and prepare sermons where they studiously avoid saying anything that might be possibly offend anybody.

It's like in a family, if parents do not discipline their children, do not parent their children, when one child rebels, the younger children see and they start to do the same thing. When a government doesn't enforce laws, there's anarchy. When a church doesn't wield spiritual authority, after a while, the church is no longer useful by Christ, and it actually becomes useful by Satan. It becomes demonic in many ways, actually pushes people away from God. You see this in churches. You see the sex abuse scandals with the Catholic Church, you see that with the Southern Baptist Convention, go denomination by denomination, when sin is not dealt with, it does leaven the whole lump.

Therefore, St. Paul says, "It needs to be dealt with." I Timothy 5:20, why? "As for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear." Sin is serious. Sin is as serious as cancer. Sin is death. Therefore, we are to deal with it as radically as we possibly can through repentance and obedience. Christ was put to death by our sins so that we might put our sin to death.

And finally, church discipline shows love for the individual, the person that warrants the church discipline so that the person is brought to repentance. And here we say, "Oh, it sounds so invasive. It's an overreach. I don't want to cause a problem." And by the way, vast sentiment sounds really humble and noble, but it's anything but. If you go to your dentist and your in pain and he does the x-ray, and he knows that you need a root canal. He says, "Oh, you're good. Pay for the bill at the front." You go to a doctor and he sees a tumor, but he said, "Oh, you're good. We don't have to deal with this now."

If a firetruck drives by your house and your house is on fire, the most cruel thing they can do is to drive by. And what church discipline is, it's a wake-up call. The goal is to have the person wake up from the spiritual ... This past week for example, we had a situation. My four-year-old decided to bring her bicycle up from the basement, and she's got the training wheels, and she's riding around the house. And then something happened, where my daughter's running to my room, and I open the door, and it smells like gas. Gas is just wafting in. Apparently, through her handle, she had turned one of the knobs on the gas stove. Gas is wafting into our whole place.

Now we're all outside, we turn around. We're all outside freaking out because we could have died. And but it's a great illustration for this part of the sermon, thank you, God. Why did this happen? It's because we took our fire alarms off, which also have a carbon monoxide. We took them off because they're annoying. Sometimes in the middle of the night, they just go off. It's so annoying, it's inconvenient. We took them off in the whole house and we almost died. That's the point. And this is what church discipline is. It's a wake-up call.

This sermon is supposed, I'm supposed to have zero comedy, so I apologize for that. Sin is dangerous. Sin does destroy, it destroys people, it destroys the relationship, and indifference to sin is actually hate, not love. Overlooking the sin of someone that you love, it's not loving, it's sinful. It's not gracious, it's cowardice. It's not merciful, it's dangerous. It's not kind, it's actually hateful. And then we say, "It's none of my business," and we live in a hyper-individualistic society and we're accustomed to passing by the plights of other people.

But church is not a restaurant full of strangers sitting together, ordering messages from the menu that seem really palatable, with a side of grape juice and some communion wafers. That's not what church is. Church is a family and we are each other's keeper. I try to teach my kids, and my 10-year-old loves her relationship with mom and dad, does not love the responsibilities that come with that relationship to help her siblings grow, to protect her siblings. I tell her, "Can you feed your younger sisters, too? Can you make sure that she doesn't hurt? Can you just watch?" We are each other's keeper. We are to bear each other's burdens.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together he says, "Nothing could be more cruel that leniency which abandons others to sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than that severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin." Church discipline is only perceived as unloving if we have an unbiblical definition of love.

This is how scripture defines love. "For God so loved the world that he, he gave his one and only son Jesus Christ to be crucified on the cross," that's love. Love is defined as a cross, as God's wrath pouring out in full, as judgment of sin. True love judges sin, it hates evil, calls to repentance and obedience because that's the best thing for us. I Corinthians 13:6, "Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth."

It brings us to point three, when is church discipline to be implemented? What are the problems? And I'll give you a few phrases that I'll go one-by-one, but here's just a sentence. We should deal with any professing Christian who is a member of a church, who is knowingly and rebelliously disobeying clear commandments of scripture and unrepentant. So I Corinthians five, here he talks about in verse 11, "Look, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother." That's the point, this is a person who's calling himself a Christian, but is living in a way that is inconsistent with being a Christian.

Because what does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean I go to church? Does it mean I read the Bible? What makes me fundamentally a Christian? What makes me fundamentally a Christian is that I am on a path of repentance. I repent of my sin. I did it once, and I do it, I did it this morning. We do it on a daily basis, we progress in our faith. Faith, repentance. Faith, repentance. Church doesn't, this isn't implemented for sin per se, it's for the sin of unrepetence. That's the goal so that you repent, you get forgiveness, you get grace that empowers you to change.

And he says in verse 12, "Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? The person is also a member of the church." What right do I have to go and tell another Christian in another church with whom I am not in mutual covenant of mutual accountability? I can say something, my words don't really mean anything. This is why church membership is so crucial. This is why we practice church membership, it's in the Bible. A lot of churches don't, that's why it's such a foreign idea, and we got to talk about it all the time.

God gives us this idea of church members, this chapter doesn't make sense apart from church members from getting together with a body of believers and saying, "Look, I need your help. When there's sin in my life, I welcome you to call me out. Please, I welcome you to rise to that level of love, where you are inconvenienced, it's uncomfortable, you're willing to do it because you love me. That's what I want, that's what church members should be." That's why there's no mention of this woman, he says brings this man to church discipline not her because most likely she's not a Christian and she's not a member.

And then the person must be knowingly and defiantly disobedient. Sometimes Christians sin because of just immaturity. They don't know better. This is I Thessalonians 5:14, "We urge you brothers, admonish the idle," these are people who are slothful, and that's a sin. "Encourage the fainthearted." It doesn't say admonish the fainthearted. "Help the weak," it doesn't say admonish or rebuke the weak, we help them. And it says, "Be patient with them all." And then the person must be disobeying clear commands of scripture, and there are clear commands of scripture.

Drinking alcohol is not grounds for discipline, drunkenness is. Watching movies isn't grounds for discipline, watching pornographic movies is. And scripture has many a lists of clear moral commandments. Romans, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Galicians, Ephesians, Colossians, and I'll just give you a summary. Violations of God's moral commandments, that's what's happening here. I Corinthians 5:11, "Those who are guilty of sexual immorality or greed."

By the way, that should give us pause in the United States that greed is a moral sin. "An idolater, someone worshiping something or someone other than God." A reviler, this is a person who is verbally abusive. A drunkard or a swindler, this is a person who is sinning in illegal business practices. Another sin for which church discipline is to be practiced is unresolved relational sins, gossip, slander, anger, abuse of speech, divisiveness in the church, false teaching on major doctrines, and disorderly conduct and refusal to work.

Now point four, procedure how, how are we to do this? Jesus gives us the pattern, the procedure in Matthew 18:15, "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his faults, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother." One-on-one in a private meeting. Show them in scripture, "This is where you're violating God's word, God's will." Our opinion doesn't matter, God's word is the authority and it begins with you, Christian. Not a pastor, not a leader in the church, not in elder. It begins with the Christian. All members of the church are finally responsible for what the church becomes, not the pastors, not the leaders. We are to continually to seek conforming the church in our lives to God's word. We're responsible for the church's health.

"Against you only," and a lot of people use that phrase to say, "Well, the person hasn't sinned against me, so why should I go and correct them?" Well, James 5:19, 20, Jude 22 and 23 says, "That Christians, when they see any Christian, in sin are to try to bring that person back from that sin because any sin if persisted in is a sin against Christ and also against the church, the body of Christ, with whom we are so interconnected, so independent on that when a person is in pain, we feel that pain. When a person bears a burden, we feel that burden, so we are to go to that person.

So if Christians, but this is the first step in church discipline. It's just Christians going to one another, holding each other accountable, speaking truth in each other's life, and calling one another to repentance and leaving sin. If we would conscientiously apply admonition and rebuke, there would be no need for excommunication. But before we do that, we got to check our own heart. Before pointing out a speck in your brother or sister's eye is their log in your own. We repent ourselves, we humble ourselves, we check our motives, we get the facts, but we are still to do it.

St. Paul gives us an example of how he practiced this first step in Galicians chapter two, he talks about going to Peter. Peter had been dining, he had been having meals with gentile believers. When Jewish believers came, he then pulled back from his relationships with the gentile believers, and started saying, "Oh, they're not on the same level as you guys are relationship." And Paul sees this and he calls him out for hypocrisy.

This is Galicians 2:11, "But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned." This is one apostle calling out another apostle, correcting, rebuking. Why? To show him that he's on the wrong path, to draw him to repentance. And Peter did repent and later on, by the way, how'd that feel? How does being corrected feel? How does being rebuked feel? It always hurts. Our dainty egos are always bruised.

But Peter afterwards, do you know what he calls Paul? II Peter 3:15, "Our beloved brother Paul." You did that because you love me. Reprove is always a fork in the road for any sinful soul. Either we cringe at correction like it's a curse or we embrace it as a blessing. First step, personal. Second step is a private conference with witnesses.

Matthew 18:16, "If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." Now you bring in other believers, so they together hopefully awaken this person from spiritual stupor. If the person still doesn't repent, the next step is a public announcement to the church.

Matthew 18:17, "If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church when the members are gathered, gathered together." The person still does not repent. Next step is a public exclusion from the church. This is Matthew 18:17, "If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector."

I Corinthians 5:13, "Purge the evil person from among you." This is where you're saying, "You are no longer walking in a manner worthy of the name of Jesus Christ because if you were, you would have repented. You would have turned from your sin, and pertinence is always inconsistent with the Christian profession of faith. We ourselves condemn nobody, but we are doing is pronouncing God's judgment on a person who does not repent.

And then Saint Paul gives a description of what this means, I Corinthians 5:4 and 5, "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 in his spirit, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord."

What does that mean? What he's saying is, that the church is like a bomb shelter and there's a nuclear fallout of Satan's sin and the world outside of the church. And when you are no longer in the confines of a church in relationship to the church, you are being exposed to the forces of Satan's sin and the world. For the purpose, why he says, "So that to bring about the destruction of the flesh." It doesn't mean destruction of the body, he's not talking about bodily harm. The world flesh here is sarx in the Greek, not to be confused with soma which means body. Sarx is the sinful part of our nature.

And what he's saying is, this person is to be given up to Satan so that his sinful, his sin might be ... Sin might be hurt, not him so that his heart is softened. And Saint Paul uses similar language in I Timothy 1, 18 through 20, "This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscious. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme."

And the goal of that, what's the goal of that? To inflict pain on the person? No, of course not, the saved person's soul in the day of Jesus Christ, huge application for us is that to not be a committed member of a fellowship of believers is to expose ourselves to harm. This is how serious this language is.

Job, God uses the same language in the Book of Job, where he gives Job up to Satan. And he says, "Behold I hand him over to you only spare his life." And God used everything that Satan did, sovereignly used Satan's work in Job's life to refine him, purify him, rid him of self-righteousness, and draw him to himself, and draw him to repentance. Job 42:5 and six, "Now my eyes sees you, O Lord, and I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
Saint Paul actually about himself used similar language, II Corinthians 12:7, "So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited." Sometimes God uses Satan's influence sovereignly to purify us, so that's the idea where Saint Paul says, "Give him up to Satan if he no longer wants to walk in repentance, there's no other way."

But the goal of all of this, the goal of this whole process is never vindictive. The goal is not punishment for a sin. The goal is restoration. The goal is to draw the person to repentance to accept forgiveness from the Lord and to transform to life.

I Corinthians 5:2, This is the sentiment, this is the heart with which this process is done. "Ought you not rather to mourn?" Ought you not rather to mourn over the sin in your midst? There's no joy, there's no pleasure, it's grief. Saint Paul is wounded as he is writing this letter. I have no joy in writing this sermon. I have no joy in preaching this sermon, three times today in Boston, Massachusetts, 2019. But why do we do it? Because it's God's word and we as Mosaic Boston want to be a church that does God's work God's way.

How do we then relate to this person after this process is gone through? Well, Galatians 6:1 says, before we do that, how are we to help this person come to their senses, "Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore them in a spirit of gentleness. Gentleness. Keep a watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted."

I'm a sinner. We're all sinners. We need Christ. There's no self-righteousness, there's no condescension, but when we repent there is forgiveness. And if this person is a true Christian, they will repent. And if not, their self-deceit is exposed, and then that person can finally realize what the gospel is and have a true relationship with the Lord. How are you to relate to the person? We're no longer to fellowship with person as if there is no problem.

II Thessalonian 3:14, 15, "If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with them, that he may be ashamed. Do not regard them as an enemy, but warn them as a brother." And then Paul clarifies in I Corinthians 5:11, "I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother and if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an isolator, reviler, drunkard, swindler. Not even to eat with such a person."

So is he saying that we can't have any contact with this person? No, of course not. But he's saying we are no longer to relate to them on a buddy-buddy level as if everything's okay. He says don't even eat with them. Table fellowship in that culture meant a deep friendship. We are not to mix indiscriminately. We're not the same in our relationship as we were before. Any contact must communicate I'm heartbroken over your impendent sin. Please repent, please come back to Christ, please come back to the fellowship of believers. Won't you come back? Won't you be restored? That's the heart.

In conclusion, all of us with to be healthy. We take care of ourselves, try to eat right, try to diet and exercise, but for each one of us there will come a point where there's a breakdown in our health. And at that point, what we need is some serious medical intervention. Sometimes it takes someone cutting us up to remove a tumor and we're subjected to powerful poisons. That's what church discipline is like. Why? To restore us, to make us healthy.

What happened to this gentleman that's mentioned in I Corinthians five? Well, they went through this process and it was painful. But it says in II Corinthians chapter two that he repented and that his sorrow led him to repentance. He saw the gravity of his sin. Conscious was awakened. The church did its job to help this person be restored in the relationship with the Lord. The church is not a fellowship of sinless people. The church is a fellowship of holy people, who are pursuing holiness, pursuing sanctification, and we're a fellowship of forgiven sinners by God's grace, pursuing a life of holiness and obedience together. May God give us strength in this.

Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you for this word. It's a hard word, but hard words make for soft hearts. Some of us, Lord, are in habitual sin. We can't get out of the quagmire of sin in our lives. I pray by the power of the holy spirit, show them that there is hope, that we can be pulled out and that you long for us to be in deep communion with other believers in transparency, confessing sin to one another, repenting of sin, and walking together.

I pray today, pull them out. I pray if there's anyone who is on the fringes of the church, Lord, I pray that you show them how important it is to mutually covenant with other believers to hold each other accountable. And we pray all this is Christ name, amen.