THE BOOK OF 1 CORINTHIANS: Protecting the Flock

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

Well, for those of you that’s maybe new, we are working through the book of 1 Corinthians. And what I appreciate, when we work through a book, is that it forces us to talk through hard topics. There’s maybe some things in these chapters that I would go like, “Ah, I don’t know that I really want to preach about these things,” right? It’s not always a feel-good, exciting message, but it is so good. And I’m so grateful for how these chapters are really leading me. It’s really helping me to reflect about, again, what it means to be the Church, what is God expecting from us. And there’s a lot of good meat in this passage this morning, and I want to encourage you—even if you maybe don’t agree with me completely this morning—I want to encourage you to go back home, read through this chapter again, and just chew on it, and allow the Holy Spirit to minister to you and speak to you.

And I hope you have your Bible with you. If you don’t have your Bible with you this morning, feel free to grab a Bible that’s maybe in front of you. If you don’t have one at home, feel free to take that one as well. But I want to encourage you in our time together on Sundays to bring a Bible, bring a pen, and, you know, mark some of those things and information that I will share with you.

The Early Church

I want to go back right to the early Church, to the beginning of the Church in Acts chapter 2. So if you have your Bible, if you turn with me to Acts chapter 2, and look at verse 42, because this is such a beautiful picture of the early church. It says,

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship…

So they devoted themselves. They submitted, right? They were committed to what the apostles were teaching.

… and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread…

So that was Communion.

… and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Now when we look at this passage—you know, I love that passage. It’s one of my favorite passages when I think about church. It is easy for me to be discouraged when I read that passage, because sometimes when we look at the state of the church, it feels so far removed from what we actually read here. It’s like, “Lord, this sounds like the perfect church to be a pastor of.” Like, “Sign me up!” They just need to be in Hawaii, and that’d be perfect, right? And I’ll even take this church in Minnesota, right? I’ll suffer through. But it’s like, it sounds amazing. It sounds wonderful. It doesn’t sound like there’s any issues when we just read this passage here.

But as we study through Acts, and especially when we read Acts 18, we see that Paul starts a brand new church in Corinth, right, and he spends about a year and a half with them, and then he travels to another city, and he hears about some of the complaints and some of the things that’s happening in this church. And suddenly, it is not this perfect church anymore, right? Suddenly it’s real. Suddenly they’re dealing with some challenges and sin in their lives.

This week, in our small groups, some of you have been working through sanctification and positional sanctification. This is actually a good reminder, when we look at this early church, that they were saved, that they experienced that sanctification. God is working in their lives, right? But they’re not perfect. They’re still dealing with issues. And so Paul, in Ephesus, receives some complaints, or we receive a letter, and to say, “Paul, you got to do something. The church is struggling.”

First of all, there’s some division, right? And so some of the people are following Paul, and some are following Peter, and they’re saying, “Paul is our man.” And so they’re kind of picking groups, and they are actually ripping each other apart. And so, it is not healthy.

We also see within this context of chapter 1 to 4, and what we’ve seen so far, is that they’re dealing with pride, that there’s a lot of pride in their lives, and we’re gonna read more about this in chapter 5. But they were prideful, in a sense, about their spiritual gifts, right? They were prideful, again, kind of in the context of where they were, about their human wisdom and the philosophy that was happening in their culture. And so, kind of, they thought, “Well, we have arrived.”

And last week, we’ve seen in chapter 4 that Paul was pretty sarcastic with them. And he says, “Guys, you have not arrived.” Right? “You still have some work to do in your faith journey.” And we actually see in that chapter 1 and chapter 3, he talks about their spiritual immaturity in their life. And he’s calling them out. He says, “It is time for you to grow up. I want you to be in a place where you can actually eat meat and not just baby food.”

And so, you will have to hold on over the next two/three weeks, because we’re gonna receive some meat. Is that okay? Are you okay to be challenged? There’s… nobody? All right, well that was a good sermon. Christo? Go in peace!

Are you okay to be challenged a little bit this morning? Okay. Thank you for that open door. I was gonna challenge you in any case, even if you said no.

Sexual Sin in Relationships

So let’s go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. So just to give you an overview here, again, when we think about Corinthians, it deals with relationships. Chapter 1 to 4, about division in the church. And now, chapter 5 to 7, it’s gonna deal with sexual sin in some of these relationships. So starting in verse 1:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: …

So, just a reminder here, Paul is speaking to the church, right? He’s writing to them. He’s speaking to the church, not non-believers. And kind of shocking news here. And I don’t think he’s far off. I think his letter is actually very relevant for our time today as well on some of the things that we are experiencing in our culture, some of the things that we’re even addressing within the political climate that we’re hearing about all the time.

And so, Paul is starting off. He says, “You guys are actually doing stuff in the church that even the secular world isn’t doing.”

How bad is it that the world, that the pagans are actually looking at the church, and they’re like, “Whoa, that’s bad. We don’t even tolerate that in the secular world.” That’s not good, amen? That’s not great. It’s like, wow, I think they can be glad that Paul wasn’t there. I think he would have slapped some people upside down a little bit. It’s like, what are you guys doing?

So now, what is that sin? Well, he gives us some details. He says,

… A man is sleeping with his father’s wife.

So the way that they’re stating here, how Paul is addressing this, this is actually (whoever this person is) his stepmom. And then he continues to say,

And you are proud!

Now, what’s he saying with all of this? So he’s saying, within this church, we know that this man is probably a believer. He’s part of this early church. The crazy thing is that he’s sleeping (it’s probably not the sleeping that is the issue here) sleeping with his stepmom, and now the church at that point is saying—they’re actually proud of it. Now, what he’s saying with this is probably what we see in the church today as well, is to say, “Look at how far we have come. Look at how progressive we are in our views on this community and what is happening in the church. We are okay to accept anything.” And so they’re proud of their views.

And so what we’re seeing now is that this church is in an amazing area where they can actually make a profound difference in their community. We know that this is an important city, the impact that they can have. We know that there is all this drunkenness that’s going on, that they’re dealing with all kinds of sins. We know that there is a temple that is full of about a thousand prostitutes and the impact that that has in the community. And so this city is not known for its moral values. And so Paul is very intentional then in a way that he plants this church so that the church can actually make an impact in this community.

Instead, what is happening at this point is that the community is influencing the church, and they’re actually worse off than the community. And that is never good. And I think we can immediately, as we just kind of reflect on that, we think about the church today in our world. How often don’t we see that same thing happening in our nation and around the world? Not in every church, but it seems to me like that is kind of the norm lately.

Sin in the Church Should Break Our Hearts

Let’s continue. Now he says,

And you are proud!

“You’re proud of this sin!”

Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh…

So let’s just kind of go back a little bit here and just look at several things here on what he’s sharing.

So first of all, he says, “Why are you boastful about what you are allowing in the church?” He says, “Instead, the correct attitude would have been for you to actually been crying. You should have been on your knees, crying about what is happening in this church.” How painful, how convicting is that in our own lives and in the church today? I’m just not talking about Salem, I’m talking about the universal church.

This is so good. I mean, the Holy Spirit is really calling us this morning again to just look at what does he expect from the church. And he doesn’t want us to mess around with sin. He doesn’t want us to be involved in sexual sin. And so Paul is calling them out. He says, “This needs to break your heart.”

I wonder, when we think about our own lives and we think about the church, why isn’t this stuff not breaking our hearts anymore? I got to believe it’s because we are so used to seeing some of these crazy things on TV; we’re just used to being blasted and the things that we’re reading and listening to that our hearts are hardened. And for some reason, the things that breaks God’s heart is not breaking our hearts anymore. And maybe we just really need to go on our knees, even as a church, and just repent and just ask the Holy Spirit to give us again that softness and for him to break our hearts and to look at sin in the same way that God is looking at sin. And so that when we see people in sin, that it’s not a judgmental spirit, right, but it breaks our hearts for the things that they’re involved in because we know that the impact it will have in their lives. And how it will impact the church as well. And so I can’t do that for us this morning. I just know that I’m experiencing that conviction in my own life to say, “Lord, I want to be more sensitive to this. I really want your Holy Spirit to work in my life, that I will be passionate about the things that you’re passionate about, that I want to be sad about things that breaks your heart, and that I won’t just look like the world and act like the world and just blow things off and say, ‘Oh, it’s okay,’ and actually be prideful about it.”

Church Discipline

And then he says, “Well, I’m not actually there with you, but I want you to know that in spirit I am with you.” And so now he’s actually kind of really laying down the law. And what he’s saying is, “I am letting you know that when you gather—because I want you to call a church meeting, and I want you to address the situation. So you’ve been just kind of been closing your eyes around the situation. You have not been addressing it. You’ve been boastful about it, and you’ve been saying, ‘Oh, it’s okay.’” But now Paul is saying, “No, no, no. You have to stop. You have to call a meeting. And then if this person is not repenting, you have my blessings.” Paul is saying, “I’ve made a judgment on this, and give this person over to Satan.”

Now, what does that all mean? That sounds pretty harsh, right, and pretty hard. And so really what it means here is to take somebody that is in fellowship of the church and to say, “We’re removing you from the protection of the church and fellowship of God, and that you are not allowed because you’re not willing to repent to be in the world. And so somehow, in a sense, you’re losing that fellowship and the protection and community of the church.” And so that is what it means to give somebody over to Satan.

And so that hopefully in that moment or when they do that, when they’re outside of the protection and the fellowship of the church, that there will be a conviction in their lives, and then for them to say, “Oh, I got to repent. That this was actually a good thing. I want to be part of this church family. I got to address my heart.” And so it is not a harsh thing. It’s not we’re trying to be mean or judgmental. It is actually to save a person’s soul, and to say that hopefully when you are out here, not in fellowship, that the Holy Spirit will actually bring conviction to your heart so that you will come to your senses and say, “I’m repenting. This is wrong.”

Now, I think you will agree with me that this is not the norm anymore in our culture. This is actually pretty hard for the Church to do this. But I got to believe that that is why the Church (again, the universal Church) is so unhealthy. And so it means to be a healthy church—and something that we’ve been talking about a lot is if we want to be a healthy church, it will mean that we come back to some of these basics and to stand on God’s Word, to believe God’s Word, to allow and act on these principles. And yes, it is hard. You know what? I don’t know if that’s gonna mean there’s only twenty of us, but it’s gonna be a healthy twenty. It’s gonna be a holy twenty. Because this world and everything we hear won’t agree with God’s Word. But if you want to experience this holiness and if we want to experience the beauty of the Church—because the Church is beautiful, amen? It is an amazing place to be. It’s a place where I want my daughter to be part of. It’s a place that I want your kids to be part of. It’s a place that I want you to be proud of. It is amazing. I just saw it again this weekend, and different things: When we gather, and when we fellowship, when we worship, and we get to break bread together, and just the beauty and the things that can happen when the Church comes together. It is an amazing place. There’s no other place like it. But then we got to follow God’s instructions and his Word.

You guys are very quiet so far.

Verse 6:

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

And so the picture that he’s giving us here is to go back to some of the festivals that Jewish people were very accustomed to (and still are). And so he’s talking about Passover, and he’s talking about the Festival of Unleavened Bread. And today still they kind of celebrate those festivals together. And traditionally the mom would clean the house for about, I think about six or seven days, would clean the house, and would go through all of the closets and to try and remove anything that has yeast in it. Right? So think about that task. That’s just a full-time job to kind of clean the house. Now you have to go through everything and try and remove—go through your food closet, right, and say, “Oh I’m gonna remove all of that.” And so just the symbolism to say it is so important to remove that yeast because we see that how it can ruin the whole bread.

And what he’s trying to communicate to the church here is to say, in the same way we want to go and we want to look for areas, we got to go and look for sin that we have to remove in our lives, because first of all, it will ruin your spiritual life. And secondly, when you allow that in your life, guess what? It impacts the church. It is easy to think, “Oh I can just go and sin and be involved in all kinds of things that is not biblical, and nobody will know, and it will not impact anybody.” It doesn’t work that way. When we allow sin and when we get involved in things that breaks God’s heart, guess what? It will impact you, and it will impact the body of Christ. And so therefore we need to be accountable for one another. You have a role to play. This is not just an isolated experience that is just about you. This is about us really caring for each other, speaking into each other’s lives, without getting offended.

I wonder what that church will look like again when we are actually speaking to each other’s lives and keeping each other accountable, and to know this is not about a judgmental attitude, but it is because you love me and you care for me.

And it’s maybe the way that we have done that in the past, right? We’ve tried to do some of these things, but a lot of times it has not been out of love and with grace. And when we actually get to speak to each other in those things, when we do it, when we keep each other accountable, it needs to be out of love and with a lot of grace to do it. And if I realize that you are speaking into my life because you love me, that changes things, because you care about my soul. You care about my spirit. You care about my relationship with God. You care about my family. You know that if I’m gonna mess up, how that might impact my family. And you say, “Steven, you know what? Make sure, you got to keep certain things accountable in your life. And you got to make sure you stay close to God, because you and your family matters to me.”

But not easy. We need a lot of humbleness to actually walk through that. The problem today is that we have so many churches. Right? We don’t do church discipline anymore because we are so worried about losing people, and that there is not really a commitment to church discipline. I don’t hear of any churches that are doing church discipline anymore. And Paul is saying, “It is time. It is time to remove this person from your fellowship because it’s gonna impact the whole church.”

Judge the Church, Not the World

Verse 9:

I wrote to 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.

And so what Paul is saying is like, “Don’t worry about the world. Right? I am not saying that you cannot interact with the world. If I am saying that,” (Paul is saying this) then he says, “You might as well go and live on Mars, because where are you gonna interact where it is all just godly people?” And so Paul is saying, “I don’t want you to think, oh you cannot go and interact with just normal people that don’t know Jesus Christ.” He says, “By all means, go and do it. Be the light. That is not the issue. We are actually called to live as people of the light in this dark world.”

But, verse 12, he says,

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 person from among you.”

Now two things—and this will really help us again as we just think about all of the things that is happening in our world right now and with politics, because I think we have been getting it a little bit wrong. We have been judging the world, and it is easy for us to look at the world and to see all of the things that they are doing wrong. And so what Paul is telling us to say, “Don’t worry about judging the world. God will take care of it. God will judge the world. We are only supposed to judge within us. Within the family.” A little bit different, right? It’s not something that we hear all the time. We have been hearing different twisted scriptures on that, but I said, don’t judge the world. We are not there to judge the world. How are we gonna judge the world if they don’t know Jesus Christ, if they don’t know God’s Word, right? We are gonna try and hold them to a standard that they don’t understand. They haven’t experienced the salvation and the grace of God in their lives, and so we cannot judge them.

Reasons for Church Discipline

But we get to, in a sense, keep each other accountable within the church body. So, and how do we do that? Part of that is we do that through church discipline. Now again, this is not a topic that we talk about, and sometimes we think, “Oh, this is mean and not fair” and different aspects. But why do we have church discipline? Why is that an important piece?

First of all, for restoration. To restore a person. It’s always about restoring a person. Right? Even—because we all sin; we all make mistakes. And we see this in the Corinthians’ church. There’s all kinds of challenges in them, and it’s now not about just judging them, but it’s restoring them.

It’s about correction.

It’s about preventive, to say, when you look at church discipline, that should get our attention, to say, “This is wrong. There is a higher standard.”

It should be a deterrent.

And it’s educational.

And so in the big scope of things, when we think about church discipline, it’s a good thing. It won’t make sense to the world, and that’s okay, as long as it makes sense to us, if we understand why we have church discipline.

Applying Church Discipline

And so with that, for us to actually apply church discipline—and now everyone is freaked out, you know? All of you are gonna behave. I’m gonna behave this week. Right? Which is good.

We get to judge. Look at John chapter 7:24. It says,

“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

To judge with wisdom and with grace. To say, “Hey, something is off here. We can’t just allow anything within this church. We have to address it.”

Galatians 6:1, and I think this is really important.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.

And so again, the whole heart behind all of this—and Paul’s heart as a pastor, as the founder of this church—is to say, “Man, You guys are allowing—you’re missing the mark. You’re allowing stuff, and I’m coming in. These are hard words, but I want to restore you, because God’s got something better for you.” And so even if you have things and sin and unhealthy addictions in your life right now, I don’t want you to just sit here and feel guilty but I want you to experience the Holy Spirit, that it will bring repentance to your heart, because the longer you hide in your sin and not deal with it, guess what? It impacts your relationship with God, and today we find out that it will impact the church of God as well.

I want you to be here. And again, I’m not standing here and to say, “Oh I have arrived, and I’m perfect.” I am not. I’m accountable to you. And what if we can actually be on that place to say, “Let’s be accountable to one another.” What will that church look like to say, “I’m gonna be humble enough. I’m gonna allow the church to speak into my life because they care for me.” And not just to run to another church.

It is so easy—and I think this is the thing when it comes to church discipline. When the church is actually trying to correct, then you’re gonna say, “Well, I’m not gonna deal with that. I’m just gonna go to the next door church. And I will have communion there. They will accept me.” And when we do that, nobody’s learning, nobody’s growing, and you’re just impacting the next church.

Restoration, Not Condemnation

So be encouraged this morning.

Let’s see. Man, how is it so late already? I was gonna…

Do me a favor. Just write down “Matthew 7, verse 1 to 5.” You can go and read that at home as well.

Just know this this morning: Paul’s message is not a message of condemnation but of restoration.

And he calls us to action this morning. In the same way that Paul called the first Corinthian church into action, I believe God’s Word is calling us this morning to action as well.

And it’s so important for us to do self-evaluation and to say, “How is my soul?” Are we dealing with sin? Are you dealing with sin in your life? And maybe make that commitment. Find some people, find a handful of people that will actually keep you accountable, that will speak truth into your life. Give them permission. Call them today and say, “Susie/Johnny,” whoever that might be, “I’m calling you. I’m giving you permission. I know you love me. I know you care for me. Will you speak God’s truth in my life? I need it. I need it.” Let’s do that today. We’re in this together. Amen? And may you experience the freedom and the love of God today.

Just this morning as you’re maybe sitting here and you may be experiencing some conviction—the conviction is good. I just want to let you know this morning that Jesus Christ died on that cross specifically for that sin and the things that you’re dealing in your heart right now. And none of us are good enough or strong enough to deal with some of those hidden sins on our own. You and I cannot fix it. We have some amazing counselors in this church, Godly counselors, but guess what? They can’t even forgive your sins. The Pope can’t forgive you your sins. But Jesus Christ did on the cross. And you can experience that this morning in your own life. And so don’t allow Satan to bring condemnation. Let this message and the Holy Spirit lead you to repentance, and so that you can be in that right standing, in that relationship with Jesus Christ, and so that you can experience his love for you this morning.