Church Discipline 101

and we need to ask ourselves are are we living that way are we faithful to God's word are we lovingly holding one another to that standard CU here's the thing Paul doesn't say don't judge anyone instead he says judge other Christians and don't judge lost people If we're honest I think often we have It reversed we judge lost people but we don't judge one another so if you have your Bible go and pull it out we'll be in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and as we're going to 1 Corinthians chapter 5 we've been in this series studying through the book of Corinthians and and Paul is the apostle that has wrote this and I just want to give you a little bit of a warning as we get into this is chapter 5 starts a three chapter spree where you're going to get into some heavy material and and I want to give a little warning because we're going to get some topics that are a little uncomfortable some topics that are are real and in kind of Deep and deal with some things that are not fun to talk about so this is your like PG warning today in the next 3 weeks if depending on how uncomfortable a conversations if you have kids in the room or they're listening around you you get to have more in-depth to those but Paul is not going to pull punches here and as he gets into this in chapter five he's really going to talk about kind of some topics that are uncomfortable more in that he's going to get into a response of how we deal with it inside the church and and here's what we're going to see and this is kind of our key thought for today as we we kind of come into this and and that kind of summarizes chapter 5 a little bit is that church discipline is vital to community evangelism here that church discipline is vital to community evangelism this is kind of a weird statement if we think about it a little U more because church discipline a lot of times is about people inside of the church and and in the radical degree of church discipline if it goes so far it's maybe kicking someone out of church now I've pastored for 10 years I've luckily not had to kick someone out from church discipline um I have had to kick people out from a service uh and being in Phoenix and we were about 10 miles north of Downtown Phoenix at our Phoenix campus we had a lot of people who weren't always in the best of mood they pregamed a little bit too hard before church if you know what I mean okay uh so there's a couple times we were like hey bro we love you uh you might have to leave and step out of service right now um but we've never like church discipline in its worst extent is literally asking someone to leave the church okay we'll talk a little bit more about how you get to that point and so if it's about pushing people away Community evangelism is without bringing people in so it's almost like these things are Polar Opposites but today Paul's going to kind of work this into our head is how do these things go hand in hand how do we discipline within the church while also evangelizing to our world how discipline evangelism kind of walk together in sync and we see this idea come up in starting in chapter 5 starting in verse one let's dive into this today Paul writes this he says it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you in the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles okay that sounds serious and then he tells it I love Paul doesn't pull punches he says exactly what is so terrible that is happening here he says a man is sleeping with his father's wife he says verse two and you are arrogant shouldn't you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this here's as we start to dive in and we're going to explore this idea of how do these two things dis discipline and evangelism go hand in hand the first thing we see in this is that a lack of discipline hurts our external reputation a lack of discipline hurts our external reputation we have inside the church you see Paul starts with a situation that would be even shocking to the Pagan Corinthians in a little background if if maybe if you've been with us through this series of Corinth was like an ancient Day Las Vegas so they were one of the craziest most sexually immoral cities in the entire Roman Empire and even this they saw as absolutely terrible now you can break this down and as you kind of go into contextually there's two things that could have been meant by the sin cuz he says the man is sleeping right with his father's wife there's two options there one it's his stepmom okay still weird and still creepy and this would be bad to the Corinthians okay because they saw if maybe his if the father did marry a multiple wives or a different wife in order for the son to sleep with his stepmom that was a horrible dishonor to his father so that was even against Roman and Corinthian practice but the other one is actual mom which are we all grossed out right now okay we're grossed out first time now we're extra grossed out and is so far that this is incest in a way that is just like unfathomable and terrible and Paul as he's breaking this apart and he said hey this is happening in the church he's like there is sexual morality that is so bad that even the pagans even the non-christians in your city look at you and see you as Despicable but here's what really made Paul mad and we see this in verse two he said they were arrogant about it meaning they were arrogant in tolerating it my kids um they they like to play around the house and the weather is nice outside right now so it's fantastic our our backyard is the suburb backyard okay it's pavers with fake grass I love it all right uh I sold my lawnmower when we moved and said I'm never buying another one again we'll see if that keeps up but grass is what's up right all right you know how much I mow it not at all you know how much I maintain it not at all okay um if it deteriorates in 10 years I'm going to be really mad but it's still worth it but we they play outside and we have a little bounce house that they kind of we blow up and they play on and I'll tell them all right all right okay we're going to dinner's almost ready like go clean up the backyard and they're like done I'm like I just asked you how are you done all right like it's all cleaned up and I go out there I'm like there's like 10 pairs of socks hanging outside the bounce house and there's three of you so I don't know how that works right I'm like there's toys everywhere and they're like it looks fine I'm like I'm not even mad that it's a mess I'm mad that you don't see the mess okay and Paul is almost talking to the church the same way he's like it's not just that this is Despicable in it it's that you're putting up with it and here's the thing is it's not like this was a new believer because Paul's not instant messaging them he's not on a phone call he's on a zoom call with them he's writing letters back and forth in letters in that time took time to write my hand and then you gave it to a c Courier and then a courier got on a camel and then they took time to get to that place and then come back so this person has been in the church for a long time and the church just keeps putting up with it keeps putting up with it they're like what mess there's no mess and Paul is like no no no there's a problem right here and and you see this church in Corinth they had developed this attitude of almost like we're so loving we're so accepting we welcome everyone and and and on the surface that's great right here at Cross Church we welcome everyone I want to be us a Friendly Church a welcoming Church a hospitable church right where we're going out we're sharing meals with people we're loving people and we're bringing them in but here's where they crossed a line is they accepted all sorts of sins in their acceptance of that sin was actually damaging the witness to their Community around them think about this for a second if you're a non-Christian in Corinth at this time and you looked at their church and they're celebrating behavior that even you find problematic why would you think they have anything meaningful to offer they're like come here and be transformed by this great Jesus this great truth that will change your life and they're like bro you're more messed up than me me and like why would I want to go to that place and sadly we have seen this in more modern times too we look and not to bash because we're going to bash ourselves in a second right but you first look at the Catholic church and the past I don't know 50 60 years or whatever the Catholic church has a reputation because they protected priests who were abusing children and instead of exposing that they covered it up and when they covered that up what they were saying is they were condoning or covering that sin and not being honest to the world around them and the world look at them be like why would I want to be a part of that church bringing a little closer to home if you didn't know we're Southern Baptists all right show of hands how many actually knew that's all right um but recently in southern baptist churches there's been an exposing where we actually got an audit and we got an investigation went through and found southern baptist churches that were accusing abuses and not sharing those as staff members went from church to church to church and things weren't disclosed and people were hurt and people were abused and when the world sees that here's how the world reacts is one there are enemies of the church and when they see that they're like I knew those people were all Hypocrites I knew those people were messed up and they're just waiting for us to fail and laugh and point the finger but then there are those who look at us who are interested who are intrigued who are ready to make the step but then when we fall on our face and we tolerate sin and we don't expose it and we don't speak against it they're like okay that wasn't the thing I thought it was and I don't want to be a part of that and you see Paul is calling out this attitude inside the church and he's saying you are literally killing your reputation among your community as a beacon of light cuz you are tolerating Darkness but he keeps going in verse three and he says even though I am absent in in the body I am present in spirit as one who is present with you in this way I've already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing this is the guy he's talking about in verse one verse four when you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I with you in spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Oh verse five here's how Paul says to handle this issue hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord we come back to that he says your boasting is not good don't you know that a little leave leavens the whole batch of dough cut out the old leaven so that you may be a new UNL batch as indeed you are for Christ Our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed therefore let us observe the feast not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil but with unleavened bread of s sincerity and Truth here's the second thing we see of how evangelism and church discipline go hand in hand is that a lack of discipline hurts our internal righteousness you see Paul uses this analogy of Leaven or some translations will say yeast and if you've ever baked bread you know that just a tiny bit of yeast can amazingly change a recipe in baking really really quick now I personally I'm not a baker okay I I it's funny I I say I have a math brain I have a science brain and baking is like science but when it comes to baking I just cannot do it all right the meticulous like you need like an eighth of a teaspoon of this and a fourth of a teaspoon of that and I'm like then you put more and you bake and you're like wow you actually need to follow this recipe okay I personally like to cook I cook my wife bakes okay and and when I cook my wife's like how much do you put in that I'm like I don't know just dump some in there right and she's like how much garlic I'm like garlic like you don't she's like how much is like two cloves I'm like just scoop and scoop and scoop she's like isn't that more I'm like it's garlic it makes it taste better all right you can't have too much of that stuff like people are scared to season their food all right just throw stuff in there and it will be better that way but that's how I cook where my wife she's in her sourdough era okay yes some of you know all right um and she's it's great it's fantastic sourdough she made a heart on like the top of one of them recently I didn't even know you could do that but who knows you can do amazing things with sourdough right now okay and then I'm like pouring oil and you know like being fancy like I'm at a not Olive Garden kabas does that right where they do it and you pour the oil and you can dip it it's amazing um but when she like shows me how to do that I'm like yeah I can't do that that's too many directions to follow that's too many exact measurements I'm not doing any of that but you see here Paul like as we kind of take that representation and put it into our heads Paul is saying this is true in the church as well that when we are careless about how much stuff that just gets thrown in in careless about what gets thrown in he's like it can mess up the recipe of the church really quick and he's saying when there is unaddressed sin in the church he said it's not just about the individual who themselves are hurting he says but it affect effects and it impacts the entire community and here's the deal is when we refuse to address serious sin inside the church we're not being loving we're actually allowing the corruption to spread among our body but here is what is so crazy about this as well that really removing the evil one is actually better for their spiritual lives too look at verse five again he says hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that sounds harsh that sounds unloving that sounds terrible but here's what he's saying he says why he says so that his Spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Paul says that this person needs to be handed over to Satan to understand the consequences of their flesh so that there is a chance they might become broken enough to become saved you see sometimes the best thing you can do for someone is to let them fail I shared a story last week and uh I didn't get to follow up on this the previous week but just a little more into a little more background into it is I'm trying to teach my six-year-old how to ride a bike and my 8-year-old she's like riding like crazy going around in circles and but my six-year-old son he is just so hesitant like after I've taken those training wheels off I'm just like pushing him and he's like don't let go don't let go don't let go I'm like why he's like because I'll fall and I'll get hurt I'm like that's the point right and he's so scared to get hurt so I was like all right man let me like speak in your language he he really loves like Super Smash Brothers right now and like he wants to play every single day so I'm letting him play like once every two weeks and I'm trying to like push that off and I'm like hey the first time you played Super Smash Brothers you remember how you died a lot he's like yeah like remember how I dominate you every single time he's like yeah I was like remember that just always remember that um now they don't let me play with them anymore they're just terrible and play together but they can beat each other anyway so I was like remember that and then he said this revealing statement he says yeah but when I died in the video game it didn't hurt we have adults who have grown up in a digital age and we have more adults coming who have only ever known digital things that when they hurt in a digital realm it doesn't hurt the same way it does in real life and here's what I mean by that is we have adults growing up who have not experienced real world consequences of falling on our face and being hurt and not taking risks that when we fall it hurts so bad cuz we have shielded them from that but Paul is like no no no no when we do stupid actions we need to understand the stupid consequences we need to understand they hurt really really bad and Paul is trying to see this guy's sin we we can't we can't remove from him the consequences of this is he needs to know how hard that sin is he needs to know how much it hurts when he loses that Community he needs to know what destruction he's causing his family that he needs to understand and feel the real hurt of that but notice verse 7 he not only says like Hey we're doing this so that might be this guy breaks to his lowest degree and then realizes his greater need for Jesus but in verse 7 he also says here's why this is so important for the church he says the goal isn't to just remove the bad but it's about becoming the good because here's when you removed the leaven he's like then you become the unleavened batch what he's saying is when we remove the sin we become what we are in Christ that we live authentically as God as who God has made us to be and what Paul is painting the picture of is that when all the sin is removed from our lives it turns us into a new creation in Jesus Christ and in our original creation God never wanted us to be broken he never wanted us to be sinful and as we strive to live in this new creation one day we will fully experience that in a new Heaven and new earth but the goal is not to just remove the sin so that we can just keep going the goal is to remove it so we can be more like Christ but he continues in verse 9 and he says I wrote you in a letter to not associate associate with sexually immoral people I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters otherwise you would have to leave the world did you hear that we're going to break that apart a little bit more but he's like here's what I'm not talking about he's saying I'm not saying get away from Lost people I'm not saying get away from non-Christian people he said if we were to do that we'd have to go find a new planet elon's taking people to Mars pretty soon if you want to sign up for that okay but he's like that's not what we're saying he's saying I'm talking about inside the church verse 11 but actually I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister who claims to be a Christian who claims to say I follow Jesus and is sexually immoral or greedy and idolater or verbally abusive a drunkard a swindler do not even eat with such a person here's the third thing we see of how this discipline of church discipline and this evangelism go hand in hand is that active discipline requires severing relationships this is the really hard part Paul says there are times when things get so bad when sin is so unrepentant when we have gone to people and they refuse to not change their lifestyle to not change the way they act and they still Proclaim that they are good with God and they claim that they believe this there are times when we need to stop associating with those people notice the distinction though again now we pointed out this is not about non-christians Paul is crystal clear here this is about those who claim to be followers of Jesus but are living in ways that contradict that claim you know all my stories are about my kids right it's all I got I'm sorry people like what are your hobbies four kids okay um that's my hobby uh yesterday my wife went to a galentine's day don't even know what that is I didn't ask okay just said yeah good good for it I think it's a Valentine's party with gals right that makes sense okay and and so she left me with the kids and I'm like let's go to the park so I loaded them all up we're going to the park and and as we're like in there and and I'm letting my daughter I packed up her bike so she could just drive she could ride around and I'm just following my 10-month-old and making sure my toddler's not dying and and there's a few times s you know like we're like oh everything's good and then my six-year-old he got mad about something and I told him no and then he got more mad and then I gave him the look The Look of like you knock this stuff out or the consequences of the world are going to rain down on your head okay and I give that look in public more than at home and here's why cuz my philosophy is in public you do not embarrass the family by screaming by Crying by whining and by throwing a fit cuz when we are in public you represent our family and when you embarrass yourself you don't just embarrass yourself you embarrass all of us and you bear our family name and we want to act in a civilized way in a civilized society and if you're judging my parenting that's okay I'm probably judging yours on the other side all right but I'm like you bear our name so you need to act a certain way and what Paul is saying is that as Christian Christians we bear the name of Jesus Christ meaning we are supposed to act in a certain way and as we become mature Believers when we claim that we know him when we claim we have followed him for a long time but we still act like immature children in unrepentant sin then Paul this is the people he's talking to us in that situation when we fit that molds he's saying stop embarrassing the name of Jesus because you are too infatuated with your sin now let's define this sin a little bit we're going to get into this more in the next couple weeks but he talks about this idea of sexual immorality uh that's a loaded phrase there right what do that encapsulate what does he mean there here's like the quick and we'll probably talk about this again over the next couple weeks more and more because he keeps on going with this but we've defined it this way that biblically this is what sex sexual immorality looks like is sex if you use this illustration as like fire and it's something good it's something great God gave it as a gift to us but God gave us parameters of how to use that fire and and fire is great when you put it in a fireplace but when you take it out of the fireplace and you start touching everything to it you quickly burn things down but the fireplace God gave us to contain the fire and to use the fire the same way is a covenant marriage between a one man and one woman and a covenant marriage means a a a contract an agreement a lifestyle to commit to one another until one of you dies for the rest of your life and inside of that fireplace sex is a great thing but as soon as you take it outside of that fireplace that's sexual immorality so when we talk about homosexuality when we talk about pornography when we talk about premarital sex when we talk about extramarital sex out side of your spouse any of those is sexual immorality Paul is very clear what happens inside this fireplace is good but as soon as you go outside of that then you are outside of God's Will and here's the thing is we're going to get deeper into this topic more because Paul is really using this as an introduction to this church discipline which is more of what this chapter talks about but we need to understand if we are in sin or we are out of sin now you may hear that and you're like man I'm screwing up I'm messing up don't leave and come back the next two weeks because God has a lot to say about how we Foster this where we go from this what are next steps of how do we correct this Behavior because here's the thing Jesus loves you and Jesus does forgive your sins and and that is good news but as the mature believer here's what we need to ask is if my sin is not stopping if I know better and I continually go down this route even though I know it's a sin and I know Jesus condemns it what we are doing is we're not accepting the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ for turning our back on it and that's what Paul is addressing in the situation and this all leads to verse 12 as he kind of talks about this and and wraps up this chapter in this section he says for what business is it of mine to judge judge Outsiders I love that he says I I don't judge the world for acting like the world but he says it's said don't judge those who are don't you instead judge those who are inside he's talking about inside the church he said God judges Outsiders instead for us remove the evil person from among you here's the last part we see of this if that active discipline requires hard conversations you see Paul wraps us wraps up this section by emphasizing that church discipline is not about judging the world it's about maintaining the Integrity of our witness to the world it's about making sure that we are doing the right things inside the church in order to proclaim the right message outside of here you know sometimes my kids will come up to me and they'll say like hey why don't I get to do this because my friend does that like my friend watches this movie or they play this game like why can't I do that and I'm like because they're not my kid so I can't control what they do but you are my kid and I can control what you do okay and these are the boundaries we have in our family and these are what we live by so I don't care what they're doing out there this is why and I explain this is why we don't watch that play that do this speak like that and inside the church it's the same thing another religion may allow something another worldview May condone something a different lifestyle but we have to have a hard conversations of what does a Jesus lifestyle look like and as we ask that question we then ship away the parts of our lives that don't meet and line up with that lifestyle and and we need to ask ourselves are are we living that way are we faithful to God's word are we lovingly holding one another to that standard cuz here's the thing Paul doesn't say don't judge anyone instead he says judge other Christians and don't judge lost people If we're honest I think often we have It reversed we judge lost people but we don't judge one another well I mean hey you confess that you believe Jesus as Lord we're good bro we're fine we're on the same level we're both super messed up Sinners stuck in our sin but we have a Jesus get a hell free car so we're good but hey let's judge the world outside of us and Paul's like no no no no we have it backwards as the Bible says iron sharpens iron meaning we need to sharpen and we need to destroy the sin that is in our lives and we can only do that through real conversations with real people inside God's body but we don't extend that judgment outside our walls instead we love everyone who's outside of our walls and then when we bring them in here and they confess Jesus Lord then we get to lovingly judge the sin out of them but but here's what Paul is going and kind of all this is moving to because you hear this and like man this this doesn't sound easy like this isn't Fun and you're like what does this look like does this mean practically we're going to start compiling sins and starting next Sunday we're going to start proclaiming these from this stage and calling people out absolutely not right we're going to do that in your Bible groups instead I'm just kidding did you get that email Bible group leaders I don't know if that one went out okay uh wa this happens more personally this happens in discipleship relationships this happens through Community but really it comes back to today is less about how to do this but again why do we do this why do we have church discipline in the first place and here's where this leads back to is we cannot make Jesus known if we do not know Jesus you see when there is unrepentant sin in our church what we are practically showing is we don't know that Jesus is of the universe if Jesus truly saved you from your sins if he truly wiped away all that you had if he truly changed your life and made you a new creation then why do we keep sinning in the same things over and over and over again with no remorse there's there's a thing in there that shows there's a lack of maturity there's a lack of moving forward and is there Grace will you mess up absolutely but when there's no progress being made when there's no challenge when there's no conviction that follows that then there is a red flag there is a problem in our life that we need to address and here's the deal this isn't about being judgmental this isn't about being legalistic or holier than thou cuz remember our cultural pillars we've talked about we're called to be spiritually hungry we're called to be radically humble we're called to be uncomfortably hospitable but sometimes the most loving the most hospitable thing we can do is care enough about one another to have hard conversations to say something in my life or something in your life needs to change if we're going to really make Jesus known in our community around us and if we truly want to show our world the transformative power of our God then something in our lives might need change something in our church might need to be addressed and are we willing to love each other enough to have those really hard and uncomfortable conversations are we willing to care more about actual transformation rather than what the Corinthians had here which was just this artificial acceptance because here's the truth the world doesn't need another social club that affirms everything the world doesn't need uh just another kind of place out there where they feel like they can belong to but not see any change in their life the world needs to see a community that has been genuinely transformed by Jesus and loves people enough to invite them into that transformation that is hard that is not easy but is worth it and church here's what I somly believe is when we get this right this idea of discipline within the church where we discipline ourselves and we work hand inand to discipline our Brothers and Sisters in Christ when we do that well what naturally flows out of it is a witness to our community of showing them this is what the real Jesus looks like do you want to know him do you want to be a part of what he's doing and do you want to experience his transformation firsthand that's the type of church that we are that's the type of church we want to continue to be strive to be like so we don't fall into the past of the church at Corinth but we can see how discipline and evangelism go hand in hand to reach surprise in the world Beyond [Music]