Jesus welcomed into his family people with all kinds of problems, from all kinds of tragic and broken backgrounds. Paul himself had formerly been a murderer. Mary Magdalene, she had been a prostitute with seven demons. There's nobody within the sound of my voice that is too messed up for him to receive, but you got to be willing to come and have him do it his way. Welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with Pastor J.D.
Greer. I have a resource to offer you today completely free of charge. You know, conflict is a part of every relationship, but how we handle it makes all the difference. This month, we are offering a simple, practical resource called Fight Like a Christian, a quick, printable guide to help you navigate conflict with grace, wisdom, and a gospel-centered perspective. It's built around biblical truth from Ephesians 4 and gives you a clear path for what to do before, during, and after hard conversations, whether that's in your marriage or your friendships or even at work.
And the best part, it's completely free. Just visit jdgreer.com and we'll send the Fight Like a Christian quick guide straight to your inbox. If you've ever walked away from a conversation wishing you'd handled it differently, this resource is for you. Don't miss it. Today, Pastor JD teaches about the messy but necessary process of church discipline.
A quick note for parents who may be listening with their young children. The confusion happening in Corinth included some topics you might not want your kids to hear about just yet, and if that's the case, I encourage you to pop in your earbuds or listen to this message on your own.
Now let's join Pastor JD in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Please open up your Bible if you have not already to 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse number 1, where the Apostle Paul says, It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles. Read that as the pagans. A man is sleeping with his father's. Wife, welcome to church this morning.
If you are a first-time guest, I apologize. You could not have come on a weirder Sunday. By the way, I should probably also acknowledge that the subject matter this morning, as you can see from that very first verse, is has some, shall we call them, adult themes.
Now, I'm not going to be explicit. The adult nature of this will mostly be in the background because the focus of this passage is not on what this guy is doing, but on how the church was responding to it. My own 11-year-old son will remain in here if that helps you. But for you, parents, if you feel like this might raise some questions that you're not ready to answer, or you feel like, you know, what kind of parent are you that your 11-year-old would sit in here for this?
Now would be a great moment for you to acquaint yourself with our excellent kids' ministries. You just get up at any campus and walk out to the lobby. They will see the look on your face and they will know exactly why you're there and we will get you where you need to be.
Okay. If you remember from the very first week, we saw that there are five major sections. In Paul's letter to the Corinthians. The first section, chapters one through four, was about the problem of divisions in the church, and we spent three weeks looking at that.
Now, in chapter five, Paul begins to address some confusion, shall we say, that the church has about sex. Corinth, you might recall, was a notoriously immoral city. It was situated. On this isthmus, that's how you pronounce that word, between two major ports, one on either side, which turned the city into both an economic powerhouse as well as making it a very popular vacation destination. And so, young, upwardly mobile people from all over the empire poured into Corinth, and these young, upwardly mobile people brought young, upwardly mobile issues.
And so, sexual immorality was a problem. Plus, the city boasted scores and scores of temples to the Greek and Roman gods. And so, the worship rituals in many of these temples often included some type of sacred prostitution, so to speak. The point is that sexual immorality was all around them. And so, on one level, it's not surprising that the church in Corinth was dealing with that in its midst.
But this sexual immorality that you're dealing with, Paul said, it goes beyond even what the pagans are doing. Again, verse one: it's the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the pagans. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. His father's wife means it's either his mom or his. Stepmom, I don't know and honestly don't want to know.
Most scholars say that it is his mom, stepmom, excuse me, since Paul calls her his father's wife and not his mom. But either way, Either way, if there's a woman that you call mom and then ask her to the prom. That's over the line, right? Can we agree with that? By the way, the is sleeping with is written in the present continual tense, which means that this is an ongoing thing.
It's an ongoing accepted thing. You know, some of you glamorize the early church, oh, the apostles, and all-night prayer. Don't, okay? We got a lot of problems, but to my knowledge, we've never had this one.
Okay, this kind of debauchery, Paul says, is not even tolerated among the pagans. I mean, you know it's bad when your pagan neighbors are going nasty. No, that's just wrong. Right, but rather than mourning over this, Paul said, you're arrogant. You're arrogant.
Why weren't they dealing with it? I mean, it seems like they knew it was wrong. There might have been a few that thought, well, hey, I mean, this is Corinth and each his own. You know, back then, the ancient philosophers always said, what happens in Corinth stays in Corinth.
So who are we to judge? There might have been some who were like that. There might have even been some who were like, you know, Christ has freed us from the curse of the law.
So that means he's freed us to love in whatever way that we, you know, seem fit, whatever seems best to us. And so to each his own, and let's just, you know, let's be free in Christ. Paul does seem to have both of those groups in mind and the comments he makes in the next few verses, but it seems to me. Seems to me that the way Paul is speaking to them assumes that most people in the church knew that what this guy was doing was wrong. And Paul knew that they knew it was wrong, and they knew that Paul knew that they knew it was wrong.
The reason they were not dealing with it is because doing so would create a scandal, it would give the church a black eye in the community, and they're arrogant, and they don't want to have to go through that. Because y'all, these kinds of situations always end up messy, don't they? Usually, when you confront somebody in something like this, they're not like, oh, was that wrong? I mean, hey, mom, did you know? I mean, that's not how they respond.
No, likely this guy would be offended and he would have made a scene. Maybe he was a prominent figure. Maybe he gave lots of money to the church. And this is just going to get messy.
So, you know what? Let's just not poke the hornet's nest. All right. Isn't it easier just to leave well enough alone and let God deal with him? Let me just ask, so we're on the same page here.
Have you ever felt like that about some situation? You know what somebody is doing is wrong, but you know how they'll probably react, and it is easier just to leave well enough alone. But Paul says, Paul listens, he says, listen, a brother of yours is being destroyed by sin. And you're concerned about your reputation. You're concerned about not rocking the boat.
Verse 2, shouldn't you mourn? That word for mourn, by the way, in Greek means mourning like at a funeral. like weeping over someone like they died. Paul's like, sin is destroying this guy at your church. You ought to mourn, it ought to tear your heart apart.
So Paul says, verse 3, let him who has done this be. removed from you. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. Kick someone out, like out of church. Yes.
You say, what about unconditional love and acceptance? It is true. We are called to unconditional love, but our fellowship is conditional. You say, I thought we were supposed to be an open and embracing community. Yes, we are.
But our primary calling is to be representatives of the family of Jesus. And yes, Jesus welcomed into his family people with all kinds of problems from all kinds of tragic and broken backgrounds. Paul himself had formerly been a murderer. Mary Magdalene, who was one of the church's female leaders. She had been a prostitute with seven demons.
But each of these people from all these different backgrounds that came into the church, they all had one thing in common. And that is no matter how messed up their past or even their presence. They had come to a point of what we call repentance. And that doesn't mean that your life suddenly becomes awesome and it's fixed and it's squeaky clean. It just means they came to a point where they recognized that Jesus was Lord and that his way was right.
Listen, I will tell you this morning, Jesus can take you with all kinds of problems. There's nobody within the sound of my voice that is too messed up for him to receive, but you've got to be willing to come and have him do it his way. And I know that raises some questions for some of you. Hang on, okay? I will get to your questions.
I promise. I promise. But for now, let's just keep reading. Paul says, you're to deliver this man. Over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord.
You're like. Can you imagine a more strongly worded sentence than that one? Not only do you remove them from membership in the church, you deliver them to Satan. Like, what does that even mean?
Okay, listen, all right? It's like this. This is the deep end of the pool.
Okay, so hang with me. The church provides local church fam being a fan being a member in a local church provides an umbrella of protection. From a lot of the curses and judgments on sin. It shields us from a lot of sin's effects.
Some of that is practical, I'll show you that in a minute, and some of it is supernatural. Paul says that removing someone from that umbrella of protection allows them to experience some of the pain of their sin in the hope that by God's grace, it will wake them up to the seriousness of that sin. Paul draws here from the imagery of the Passover. You'll notice in the next few verses that he brings up the Passover over and over. You remember the Passover?
And basically it was like this, God had told Egypt that because of their persistent rebellion, on this one designated night, my death angel, who was likely Satan, by the way, is going to go through Egypt and kill the firstborn in every household in Egypt.
Well, of course, all the Jewish people, they're living there among Egypt. And you know what? They're sinners just like the Egyptians are. right and so god says to them he's like hey that's gonna that's gonna include you too but But I will spare your firstborn sons, Israel, if you will kill a lamb and then put the blood of that lamb on the doorpost of your house. And he said, when the death angel, again, most likely Satan, when the death angel sees the blood on the doorpost, he will pass over your house and not enter it and not bring that curse into your house.
So we had the name Passover.
Now I want you to think about that image for a minute inside of the house. Under the blood with Jesus, you're safe. Outside of the house, you are exposed to death and the death angel, Satan. Paul is saying in the same way, you are to put this person outside of the house so that they are exposed to the death angel and the curses of sin. And maybe, maybe by God's grace, when they start to experience the pain of that devastation, maybe they'll wake up to the seriousness of sin and they'll come back.
That is what you are to do, he says, with somebody in the church who names the name of Christ but persists in stubborn, willful, rebellious sin.
Now, let's be very clear. This kind of thing that I'm talking about only happens after every other attempt at reconciliation has been tried and they have rejected it. Jesus actually lays out what that process is supposed to look like in Matthew 18. There's two chapters in the Bible that describe to you what this looks like. One is 1 Corinthians 5, the other is Matthew 18.
I want you to hold your finger in 1 Corinthians 5 and flip back over to Matthew 18. Jesus is going to describe the process. Here's how it goes: verse 15. He says, if your brother sins against you.
Some translations, by the way, leave off against you, because the focus here is just sin. If your brother sins, go and tell your brother his fault. Between you and him, what's that word? Alone, okay, alone. If he listens to you.
Then you will have gained back your brother.
So, step one, we'll call this private correction. Y'all, this is really simple, okay? All right, on one hand you go. You go to them and then secondly, you talk to them. And then tell him or her.
His or her fault between you and him. Alone.
Now, word in alone is a special word in Greek that means How long? Don't bring 10 other people together to team up on him, just you and him alone. Verse 16: But 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. Step two: let's call this small group clarification.
If they didn't listen to you and you went one-on-one, take two or three people from their immediate circle, their small group, their serving team, and you go and talk to them. Taking two or three people will not only help ensure that they understand the seriousness of what they're doing, it'll also help ensure that you are seeing things clearly. That's why Jesus said, the mouth of two or three witnesses. Got to make sure you're seeing it the right way. And taking two or three people from their circle will help ensure that.
Verse 17: if he refuses then to listen to them, then tell it to the church. Step three, we will call church admonition. This is where the church elders get involved. If they don't listen to you or to their small group, then the elders come in and, in a more official capacity, they warn them about the seriousness of what they're doing. Verse 17, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile.
Again, that's like a pagan and a tax collector, which in their minds was the worst kind of sinner. Step four, we'll call that church exclusion. That is where you remove them from church membership and you put them outside of the house of the church to be exposed to the activity of Satan.
Now, they are still welcome to come and sit in church, of course. Lots of unbelievers do that every single week. They're just not to do so in the capacity of family member. It's one of the reasons when we take communion. We're like, hey, if you're not a believer, don't touch his bread and the cup.
It's not for you. Not that we're being mean, it's just that that's a family thing. And if you're not part of the family, we want you to be part of the family. I mean, you could join today the part of the family of God, but that bread in that cup, that's a family thing. And so, yes, you are welcome to come to church.
Nobody's saying you can't come. They're saying you should not come in in the capacity of family with the benefits of family. Back in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is going to describe what that stage looks like.
So now back over to 1 Corinthians 5 and let's look at verse 10 of that chapter because Paul is going to describe that fourth stage this way. He says, verse 10, anybody you see who bears the name of brother, if he is guilty of sexual immorality, Or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, you are not even to eat with such a person.
Now, eating there means eating a meal of fellowship. It doesn't mean if you're ever somewhere in a restaurant and that person's there, you're like, oh, get away. You know, you're in a neighborhood potluck and you're like, no, we can't eat. What he's talking about is an eating, back then, eating was one of the most intimate forms of fellowship. To have somebody in your home and to eat with them was a sure way of saying, hey, we're united as family.
And Paul is saying to avoid doing things that imply that your family like that kind of eating.
Some scholars even think, by the way, that Paul here is referring to communion. Where we eat the bread and drink the cup together. And he's like, don't do that because you don't want to imply that God is okay with their sin. by implying that you're okay with their sin by eating with them as if you're family together. Paul then gives you four reasons that you need to do this, four reasons that we have to do this.
Before I get into those, though. Let me just take a quick, real quick timeout because there are a couple of things I want to be clear on, okay? First, when we're talking about a public action by the church. We are talking about in the case of somebody who blatantly and defiantly persists in something that is clearly and blatantly unbiblical. We're not talking about things like, you know, I'm concerned you're watching too much TV or I think you're buying too many shoes or you seem a little cranky this in the mornings.
Of course, we should always be speaking into one another's lives. That's part of iron sharpening iron. But the later stages of this discipline process that we're looking at, that's when we're dealing with somebody who is overtly defying, defying something that Jesus says clearly. That's my first clarification. Second clarification in a large church.
Like this one, this kind of public exclusion happens more appropriately on a localized level. With a person's small group or their service team or their immediate circle, because they're the ones who know about the sin. Based on what Paul is saying here, we don't need to announce somebody's sin to thousands of people who don't even know them. And so, when we're talking about that kind of thing, we're thinking more on the localized level of those who know them and are a part of their lives.
Okay? All right. With those clarifications, here's the four reasons why Paul says that we need to do this. Four reasons the church must remove a willfully sinning member from its midst. Number one, he says, is for the sake of the sinning brother.
For the sake of the sinning brother, he says, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The hope, the goal is always that they wake up from their sin, that the pain of being removed from the blessings of the church wakes them up and brings them back to their senses. The goal is never punishment or exclusion. The goal is always healing and restoration. That's number one.
Number two, he says, you do it for the sake of other believers. That's verse six. Do you not know? Do 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 really are unleavened.
Now, leaven is not a common word for us. In fact, many of you are like, I have no idea what leaven is. The word that we use for leaven in our culture is yeast. You may not know this, and this might ruin your bread eating experience, but yeast is a type of fungus that makes bread rise. It grows and multiplies really quickly, which is why you've ever had a little bread maker.
You know, you gotta start with a little yeast thing. And sometimes if you don't have it, you can borrow some from somebody else, just put a little bit of it in it, and soon it spreads to the whole batch of dough so that the whole loaf is gonna be filled with yeast. The Bible uses that as a picture of sin. Just like a little yeast quickly spreads through the whole lump of dough, a little sin in the community, a little willful sin of the community is quickly going to infect everybody. And so at the Passover, God had them that night take out all the yeast from their houses and put it outside the house and eat only unleavened bread.
That was a symbol that they were leaving the sin of Egypt behind, that they should not keep any of it in their houses. Another analogy that might relate even better to us would be cancer cells. Just a few cancer cells, if left unchecked, will soon multiply and destroy the whole body. That's where it's going. It might be localized for a time.
And if you can get it when it's localized and cut it out, things will probably be okay. But you let that thing go unchecked, it's going to multiply and it's going to destroy the entire body and kill the whole thing. In the same way, Paul says, open, rebellious sin by those who with their mouths say they belong to Jesus will soon affect and corrupt and destroy the whole church for the sake of the church, he said. You got to get it outside the house.
Now, maybe you're still sitting there and you're thinking of this. I just like, I'm having trouble thinking of this as consistent with love. Let me switch the analogy. Maybe this will help. I know of families, and you probably do too.
I know of a family where an older sibling. returns home from college. And they start to live at home again post-college. and they start to make some really bad choices. Dabbling with drugs.
And that means that makes them start to bring around the house all kinds of really questionable people. even stealing things from the house. The parents, of course, are brokenhearted. This is their son, but they're not just worried about him. They're also worried about the safety of the younger siblings.
And they're worried about what the younger siblings are seeing. And so they have loving conversation after conversation through tears. Asking their son to change, asking their son to just abide by things that are safe and healthy in the family, but the son persists in doing things that keep putting the family in danger. And so finally the mom and dad in love, brokenhearted. Asked their adult son to leave and live somewhere else.
It's not because they hate their son or have given up on their son. They just know that they need to protect their other kids. Plus, they know that life on the street is hard. And maybe, maybe if they remove that protective covering. Maybe if they quit always giving him such a soft place to land so that he never experiences the painful results of the decisions he is making, maybe then he'll wake up to the foolishness of his choices.
Now, parents, you get that right. That's not unloving. In fact, sometimes. Continuing to house and protect this person would literally be the most unloving thing that you could do for them. You are enabling them.
In love, you unhouse them so that they can experience some of the consequences of their sin. That's what Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 5.
So, Paul says, First, you do it for the sake of a sinning brother, you also do it for the sake of other believers. Third, he says. You do it for the sake of Christ himself. For Christ, you see, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed for sin. Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, which he was crucified for, the leaven of malice and evil, but we get to celebrate it with the unleavened bread.
Of sincerity and truth. Christ died, Paul says. He was tortured. He had his body ripped apart to get rid of sin.
So, why? Would his bribe Why would his church? Why would his family? Tolerate in their midst. People who say they love him, but whose lives are filled willfully with things that put him on the cross.
Oh. Think about how much of life revolves around relationships. Family, friendships, dating, marriage, even the way we handle conflict with people we care about. Relationships shape so much of our daily lives. But if we're honest, they're also one of the areas where people feel the most uncertainty.
What does healthy dating even look like? Is marriage the ultimate goal? How should Christians think about sex? And how do you handle disagreement without damaging the relationship? Those are the kinds of questions Pastor JD addresses in our new resource called From the Beginning: God's Design for Relationships.
It's a collection of practical, gospel-centered articles covering topics like the myths of singleness, the purpose of friendship, preparing for marriage, redeeming dating, and even 10 ways to fight like a Christian. Each chapter also includes reflection questions to help you apply these truths in your own life. We'd love to send you from the beginning as our thank you when you give to support Summit Life this month. Visit jdgreer.com to give and we'll email it to you immediately.
Now, let's get back to Pastor Jamie. Paul says it when believers, when they come together to worship, They should rid themselves of the leaven of sin. And another place, the way he says it is this: 1 Timothy, you should lift up holy hands in worship. That means you are seeking as much as you are able to offer worship to Jesus that is not mixed and polluted with the leaven of sin.
Now, two things that do not mean. This is the message of a thousand qualifications, okay? But here's the first one: that doesn't mean, again, that unbelievers cannot come to worship. Again, they can't. And they should, we should invite them in.
They should just not be counted as family. An honored guest in the house is honored. But it's not the same thing as a member of the household. Second. It doesn't mean that if your life has a lot of problems, that you shouldn't worship Jesus.
Oh no, by all means. Jesus welcomes people with all kinds of problems and brokenness into his house. He's invited the sick and the lame to come to him. He said, that's who's around my table. He said that's the healthy don't even need a doctor.
It's those that are broken, those that are sick. They're the ones that need a physician. The only question for you is not how bad your life is messed up. The only question is. It's if you come in in a posture of repentance and brokenness towards your sin, or if you're in a spirit of defiance about it.
Jesus told a story one time about a guy. Whom God was most pleased with in a worship service. And scandalously, Jesus identified it as a tax collector. Again, the worst of all the sinners. whose life was riddled with problems and mistakes, but But the man was in a posture of repentance, brokenness over his sin, admitting that he needed help.
And Jesus said, I'd much rather have that than somebody whose life is all together and doesn't realize how much he needs the help of God.
So by all men's friends, listen, bring him your problems. Come in sick, come in broken and wounded, but you should not lift up your hands in worship to him. If your life is willfully raising its fist in defiance of him, right? I mean, that just makes sense. That would be inauthentic, it would be hypocritical.
Come in with your brokenness, but you have to come in with a posture of, I know that you are Lord and you are right.
So he says, do it for the sake of Christ. Number four, he said, you got to do it for the sake of the outside world. You got to do it for the sake of the outside world. Paul says these steps are important. Because we need to give the outside world an accurate picture of Jesus.
Most of our world, most of our community will never read the Bible. But they will read the lives of Christians. And so we have to present Christ to them accurately because you've probably heard this. You and I are the only Bible they'll ever read. My favorite superhero growing up.
Was the invisible man. I know, I know it's surprising. Superman was cool and everything with the ability to fly. Spider-Man, walk on walls, that was awesome. Batman with the car, of course.
But I thought that the invisible man was way underrated as a superhero. He's the Nicholas Cage of superheroes. I mean, right? I mean, just imagine as a kid how awesome your life would be if you could just disappear, be invisible anytime you wanted. If you've ever watched those old cartoons of the invisible man, the only way that you could catch the invisible man was to throw something on him.
And so, if you dumped like a bucket of paint on the invisible man, for example, then you could see his shape. The church, Paul is saying, is to be like the paint. That is poured over the invisible to Christ to show. his shape to show the world what he actually looks like. That means that they are, watch this, they are to learn how glorious Jesus is by how passionately we worship him.
Y'all, I think about that when I'm worshiping. I don't worship as a performance for anybody, but I also know that the passion with which I worship Jesus is supposed to put his value on display. And no offense to you, but I don't really feel like you put much of his value on display when you've got your hands in your pocket and a bored look on your face. Because I'm wondering, what if people look at me and what do they think about the worth of the Savior that I'm worshiping when my worship is so tired and lethargic? They are to learn how loving he is by how we love each other.
They are to learn how seriously he takes sin by how seriously we take it.
So Paul says, for the sake of the outside world. For the sake of the outside world, we take sin seriously.
So that they get the right and the actual picture of Jesus.
So y'all, that's four reasons. four motivations to go through all the pain and all the hassle of this process. And by the way, here's a little special bonus promise. Jesus promises to be with us in a special way. If we do this.
One last time. Keep your $100 bill in 1 Corinthians 5. Go back to Matthew 18, real quick. All right, let's go there. I'm going to end that day, and then we'll come back to 1 Corinthians and end there.
Matthew 18, right? Jesus ends his instructions. On how to call out a sinning brother or sister with these words. He says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, To do this. There I am among them.
Now, y'all, I always hear Christians quote this verse. whenever small group is poorly attended. And they were trying to encourage each other. Right? Like, well, there's only two of us tonight, but you know, two or three are gathered.
Jesus was here. And yes, I get it, Jesus was there, right? But the context of Jesus' statement. Is he is saying when you choose to go through that really messy process. A really hard process.
Lovingly trying to restore somebody caught up in sin, he wants you to know that he's with you. When you're actually doing the hard work of being family, he's like, I'm there for that. And I'm there for that in an unusually powerful way. Because you're doing the work of being family and you're representing me.
Some of it, we want to be a church where Jesus is. Amen. Jesus will be with us if we take sin seriously. And if we don't, he's not going to be here. It's one of my favorite summit stories.
Those couple who came to our church. A few years ago, neither of them were Christians. But they both you know wanted to get God back into their lives but they were engaged in a lifestyle that the Bible clearly called sin. But they didn't want to stop. God was really doing a work in their lives at our church, but they just could not get over that we called their chosen lifestyle sin.
And we told him like, hey, you're welcome to come, but you can't be a member. You can't serve. because those are family things we can't take communion with us So they left and tried another church in downtown Raleigh where that church tolerated, even celebrated their lifestyle. I learned this story later because they told it to me after three weeks at this church. They're in downtown Raleigh.
One of them looked at the other one and said, The presence of God just ain't in this church. And she said, we got a choice. We can go to the summit church where the presence of God is. They don't accept our lifestyle, and we're going to have to change. Or we can go to this church where they accept our lifestyle, but the presence of God is not.
And then she said, I don't know about you, but I'm going to go where God is. Both of them came, one at first and then the other.
Okay. Both of them professed faith in Christ. Both of them turned away from their sin.
Somebody, I want to be a place where God is. Amen. And if that means that we sometimes got to do the uncomfortable work of talking about sin. If I got to stand up here and say things sometimes that are unpopular, if it means we're going to have conversations, I'll take it. That is a billion times worth it to me if it means that we get to be a partaker in the presence of God.
Amen. Now, listen, before I close. Because I know this is a difficult subject. Let me deal with some common objections. I'm solely doing this for my sake so that between here and the car, I don't get like a thousand questions.
Okay, so let me just give you the big question people ask. Number one. But aren't we supposed to be the friends of sinners? You're talking about, you know, this feels like, wouldn't Jesus himself known as the friend of sinners? Yes, yes, for sure.
Paul makes clear, he makes clear that he's not talking about separating yourself from unbelievers. Again, did you see verse 10? I do not mean at all. Separating yourself from the sexually immoral of this world. Or the greedy and the swindlers, or the idolaters, because you need to get raptured out of the world to do that.
And God left you in the world. No, I'm writing to you not to associate with anyone. who bears the name of brother or sister. If he is willfully guilty of these things. We are not supposed to separate ourselves from people in the world.
You work among these people. You live among these people. Lost people act like lost people. Who else are they going to act like? He's talking about people inside the church, those who bear the name brother.
That's the limitation of the focus of this.
Now, let's just be honest. We usually do the opposite, don't we? We separate ourselves from those outside the church. But then we tolerate the sin of. Powerful people in our midst.
Paul says, look, cancer outside the body is no threat to you. It's no threat to you. It's only when it gets inside the body that it destroys.
So, by all means, Some of it we need to reach out to and befriend sinful people. To lay our lives down for them, because otherwise there was no reason for God to leave us in the world.
So number one, that's your first question. Here's number two.
Well, shouldn't our church be a hospital for the spiritually sick? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. We're not talking about excluding people who struggle. Even people who struggle a lot. Even people who struggle and fail on a daily basis, that is all of us, pastor included.
Pastor especially. What Paul has in view here is defiant, unrepentant postures by people who name the name of Christ. Those who proclaim him with their lips, but intentionally crucify him with their lives. Number three. People say, well, you only pick on certain sins.
Things that you just don't like because you're a conservative conservative Christian. And unfortunately. That has been true in a lot of church history. A lot of times Christians make a big deal out of sins that are common in the world. while they wink at the sins of rich or powerful people in their midst.
Conservative Christians, of which I am one. Have a list that we make a big deal out of, and then we ignore the rest. Progressive Christians have their own lists. But look at the breadth of Paul's list in verse 11. He's like, I'm telling you not to associate with a brother who is guilty intentionally of sexual morality or greed.
There, you got conservatives and liberals there in the same sentence he's offended, or an idolater. A reviler, a drunkard, a swindler. That's not supposed to be an exhaustive list either. The point is not the kind of sin that is committed. The point is the posture of defiance toward that sin.
The point is the posture toward the lordship of Jesus. It just doesn't make sense to proclaim his lordship with your mouth and then. intentionally crucify him with your life. Number four, here's the fourth question I get. What about the command not to judge?
That's a big one.
Okay, so let me spend a minute on it. Maybe you saw in verse three. Where Paul says, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. And you were like, wait, wait, just a hot second, Paul. Didn't Jesus tell us not to judge, judge, not let you be not judged?
That's like the most famous verse in the Bible now. Used to be John 3:16.
Now, if you ask the average guy on the street to name you two verses, that's going to be one of them. In fact, I'll just prove it. I asked, you know, the infinite mind of the human race, Google. I typed in the Bible says not to. Here's what Google auto-suggested from.
I just took a screenshot of it. Bible says Not to eat pork.
Well, what's going on there, okay? The Bible says not to judge. That's the big one. Number two, right? That's like the most common thing that people think of.
Bible says not to get tattoos. The Bible says not to worry. That's actually a good one. The Bible says, my favorite. The Bible says not to eat.
I don't know what Bible you're reading. Certainly not the Baptist Bible that I grew up with. Potlucks were like the third church ordinance for us. You know, it's like baptism, Lord's Supper, and potlucks. That's how you get close to Jesus, right?
So, but so everybody knows this verse. Everybody knows, like, it's like Google knows it. Like, oh, the Bible says not to judge, don't judge. Is that really what Jesus meant? Did Jesus mean you never tell somebody that they're in error?
How could it mean that? I mean First of all, Jesus spent his whole ministry telling people they were wrong. John the Baptist, his cousin, looks at Herod and says, hey, You think it's fine that you can sleep with your brother's wife. That's wrong. Took Herod off so bad that he cut off John the Baptist's head.
And Jesus said, That's the greatest prophet ever to live. And he tells those of us who are his followers, he says, I'm sending you into the world to rebuke. but works of darkness.
So we can't mean that.
So what is Jesus talking about when he says judge not? What he's talking about, if you read it in context, I don't have time to unpack it fully, but what he's talking about is he's saying: A, don't be a hypocrite and think that you're not a sinner, too, but B, Don't ever do it from the seat of the judge's chair and pass sentence on them. He's not talking about not telling somebody the truth. He's talking about writing that person off as beyond hope, as if you are the judge. Paul is saying, I'm not saying cut this person off and declare them rejected by God.
In fact, the whole point of what you're doing. is to do something that wakes them up and brings them back. You're not doing it as a judge. You're doing it as an act of love. When we do something like this, we're not doing it from the posture of a judge passing sentence.
They were doing it with arms open wide. ready to receive them back. Telling somebody the truth is not judging them. Telling somebody the truth is part of loving them. We have got to get rid of this crazy idea in our culture that speaking the truth to somebody is judging them.
By the way, nobody really actually thinks that. Who says we should not speak out about injustice? That we should look at things like take female subjugation, discrimination, institutionalized racism in a society and say, well, you know, we shouldn't judge. No, love requires you to speak out. Telling somebody the truth is not judging them.
It's what you do after you tell them the truth that determines whether or not you are judging them in the way that Jesus forbid. The question is, after speaking the truth to them, do you write them off or do you keep praying for them and inviting them back in? Here's number five, our last question.
Sort of you're like But does this actually work? I feel like this would just drive a lot of people farther away. Yes, it does work. And I will tell you that we have seen it happen here at the Summit Church a number of times. I've talked to a Lady in between our services in the last service that came up and said, Yeah, remember when we were in this process, remember how God used it in my life?
I have example after example. Of where we've seen God use this in our church, but the one that comes the clearest in my mind. actually occurred when I was a teenager. As a teenager, in a church that I grew up in in Winston-Salem, there's a woman in our church. who left her husband.
and engaged in a very promiscuous lifestyle.
Now, we were a pretty small church comparatively, and I remember how painful and embarrassing of a situation this was. And I remember our church very carefully, very tearfully followed this Matthew 18 process. Members of a care team, men and women, went to meet with her and plead with her. And I remember when our pastor stood up, and our chairman of deacons, and a couple of members from this care team. Stood up and very prayerfully and very tearfully told us that she was refusing to turn away from her sin and that.
That we'd done everything that we knew that we could do, and that Jesus had clearly told us in Matthew 18 that we needed to remove. move her from the family of the church and and hand her over to Satan to let him work out the pain of her sin in her life. I can remember with a lot of tears in that auditorium. We prayed for her in this. went on just praying for her for several months.
And I can remember that day. at the end of one of our services. And she very tearfully. Unexpectedly came walking down the aisle during the invitation. I was at a church where you gave an invitation every service.
And she came. Maybe tearfully down the aisle and she told the prayer counselor, the pastor up front that her life had become unbearable. And that began a process of healing and restoration. When we removed her from the church. All the blessings of being a part of God's family went away, and that brought her to repentance.
So I would ask you: which would have been more loving? For us to turn a blind eye. And just let her go on about her destruction, or ask to warn her about the seriousness of her sin. I'll tell you what, here we are, some, you know, 25, 30 years later. I got a husband, I got some kids, and I got some grandkids that would say, thank God you did that.
Because you gave back to us our mom and our grandmother.
So yes, it works. And yes, it's done in love, but I want you to understand we don't obey scripture because it works. We obey because God said it and we trust him. But we shouldn't be shocked when it does work. Right?
I don't know if this has been clear or not. Probably not, but thank God it's over. Amen. I'm just doing what 1 Corinthians 5 tells us to do. But listen, if you are here, listen to me.
And you're not a believer. I want you to know we're glad that you're here. We don't pass judgment on you. We're just like you. We do want you to know.
We do want you to know that we take sin. Seriously. Not because we feel righteous, but because Jesus takes us seriously. Sin destroys people's lives. Sin condemns people to hell.
Sin was so bad. That Jesus had to die a bloody, tortured, gruesome death where his body was ripped apart on a cross to release us from it. We want you to see that your sin puts you in grave, eternal danger. Yes, we want you to see that. The good news of the gospel, though, that we also want you to see, John 3:17, is that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn you.
He sent his son into the world so that the world through him might be saved. That means that Jesus stands before you now, not to condemn you, not to judge you. He stands before you as a savior to save you. He extends salvation to all who will receive him. He said, whosoever will, let him come.
And that means you, you're part of the whosoever. It doesn't matter what you bring in, no matter how messed your life is, the past, the present, he's ready to receive you because he can wash away your sin and make you new. But see, here's the truth. If you won't receive him as Savior, Then one day you will face him as judge. Every human being on planet Earth will encounter Jesus as one of two things: either Savior or Judge.
That's because there's only two ways to pay for sin. Either Jesus pays for it for you on the cross and you receive that as a gift, or you reap the consequences of your sin yourself for all of eternity. Sin is serious. It is deadly serious. But Jesus saves.
Summit, we got to do whatever it takes to make that message clear. As I was working on the end of this message, I was reminded of that story I've told you before about some teenagers that were just playing a prank. They didn't mean for it to become what it did, but they thought it'd be funny if they painted over the lines on a highway. Painted over the light, they'll, you know. borderlines and they painted over with black paint.
What they didn't realize though was that very night uh this terrible fog was going to come and Later that night, there was a bus that was coming along that highway. And the bus driver, because of the fog, was looking at the lines, just trying to use it to keep on the road. He had a bus full of other teenagers in the back, and when he. Hit that spot with the black paint. He lost the road and he veered off and he broke through.
And it was on the side of a little ravine, and the bus tumbled down the ravine and killed everybody in the. Everybody in the bus. When I think about that story, I think about the role of the summit church in the triangle. I have to keep the lines clear. I have to keep the lines clear that sin is serious.
And that Jesus saves, and that He's the only Savior. And so, yeah, that means that we got to say things sometimes that are unpopular and things that get a reaction. It's okay because we got to keep the lines of salvation clear. People have to see. That affects everything we do here at this church.
We hope you've been encouraged and challenged to think deeply about this topic both in your own life as well as in the church. We'll pick up right here in the next podcast as we move through 1 Corinthians together. A quick reminder before we go that our featured resource for June will expire tomorrow. That's the e-book titled From the Beginning, God's Design for Relationships. It's meant to help you think about relationships through the lens of the gospel.
When you give to Support Summit Life this month at jdgreer.com, we'll send you this digital resource immediately as our thank you. Until next time, thanks for listening. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Yeah.
