What Does the Bible Say About Church Discipline and Sin?

Hello and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. And we certainly don't try to promote ourselves, but all we want to do is help people to understand the Bible. It's the greatest book on earth, but so many folk won't even attempt to read it because they say, well, I can't understand it anyway. Yes, you can. The whole secret, of course, is to always remember to whom is a particular portion writing or speaking. And don't try to get confused with what God said to Israel and bring it in necessarily as apropos today. Now, I always have to make a point on that when I make that explanation. That does not mean that the things that God hated in the land of Israel back in the Old Testament, he doesn't still hate today, of course. God has not changed. The God of Israel and Genesis is still the same God that we deal with today. But we deal with him, or he deals with us rather, on such far different circumstances. We are now on resurrection ground. We are now being dealt with as people who are to believe that Christ died and was buried and rose from the dead and not merely a Shekinah glory back there in the temple in Jerusalem. And we're not under a mandate to keep the law and so forth. But nevertheless, always remember that God has not changed in his attitude towards sin and righteousness and what have you. Again, we like to always remind our television viewers, those that are new, and of course, we're reaching more stations all the time. So for those of you who have missed our earlier programs, we have a tape and books all the way back to Genesis. And that means that since we're in Corinthians, that is 27 of these tapes now will be available in short order. So if you're interested, you give us a call on the 800 number or drop us a note and we'll help you get those things as they become available. All right, now then I think we're ready for 1 Corinthians chapter 5. And as I just told the folks here in the studio, this is not a very pretty chapter. Another one of those chapters I'd just as soon found and not have to comment. But if we're taking this more or less chapter by chapter, we have to deal with it. All right, now Paul writes to this same congregation that we've been dealing with now for several months. It is reported commonly. In other words, this wasn't something that was being done in a corner. This was something that was open. And the whole Corinthian congregation, whether they were large or small, I don't know, but they all knew about him. Now imagine, he said, it's reported commonly that there is fornication among you, such fornication or immoral activity as is not so much as named among the Gentiles. In other words, even those pagan Gentiles wouldn't do what this couple is doing. And what is it? That one has his father's wife. In other words, a stepson more than likely is what the commentators are pretty much agreed on, that a stepson and his stepmother were actually living together as husband and wife. And it was a gross immoral situation, even for Corinth, as immoral as that city was. And then he says, and here is the real point of condemnation from the apostle to these Corinthians who have been puffed up by first one thing, then another. And that he says, you're so puffed up and have not rather mourned that he that has done this deed might be taken away from among you, that is from the church congregation, not to put him to death, but to remove him from fellowship. All right, now analyze these two verses. Here we have this instant of gross immorality within the confines of the local Corinthian church. They all knew about it, and yet did it bother any of them? Evidently not. And Paul says, you're puffed up. Now, I think the Schofield Bible has a very apt footnote at the bottom. What does this do to these who were followers of Peter? And others who said, oh, Paul, we're not going to follow you, we follow Apollos. And others who said to the other two groups, we're not going to follow those two guys, we are adherents of the apostle Paul. All of them, all of them were taking in this situation and not being bothered by it. Unbelievable, isn't it? Now, you would have thought at least one segment of the congregation would have been up in arms and say, hey, we've got to do something about this. This is bringing reproach upon the name of Christ throughout the city of Corinth because even the pagans knew what was going on. It was something that wasn't being hidden. And he says, you're not doing anything about it? All right, verse 3. He's going to do something about it. He's not going to let it slide. For he says, I verily as absent in body, but present in spirit. He knew whether supernaturally or whether he got by the grapevine, that's beside the point. But he said, even though I'm not there in body, I am present in spirit. And he says, I have judged. He said, I have come to a conclusion already as though I were present concerning him who has so done this deed. And Paul says, there's no room for argument. You have to deal with it. And see, this is what we have to realize that even in our own society, we fast are becoming not much better than Corinth. Our whole moral climate is just simply falling away. I should say the moral fiber is just rotting away from under us. And these very same acts can take place in local churches and nobody thinks anything of it. I've had people call from various other states that, well, what are we supposed to do? This couple are living in sin. They are open about it. They walk in church as though nothing is amiss. Hey, that's not the way it's supposed to be. And this is what Paul is dealing with. If there is gross immorality or a gross act of covetousness and so forth, the church has to make a point of it. And you don't just turn your eyes and say, oh, well, let them live. It's a free country, not in the realms of the church it isn't supposed to be. And so here's what Paul says is the remedy. You have to take this couple, confront them with it as a body of believers, and then verse 4, in the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are gathered together. You see, this is a corporate thing now. It's the church, the body of Christ located in Corinth, that when you are gathered together, and Paul's spirit is going to be in the midst of it, as of course naturally the Holy Spirit would be, and with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Now remember, the flesh and the soul and spirit are not the same. So Paul is not crying or demanding the destruction of this man's soul and spirit as a believer. Now he's a believer, or they wouldn't be addressing him as such in the Corinthian letter. But they could turn such a one over to the power of Satan to destroy his physical life or his flesh. And of course we know that that is within Satan's power when God grants it to him. Go back to the book of Job. How far could Satan go when it came to dealing with Job? Only as far as God permitted it. All right, now same way here. Paul is saying in so many words, if this couple will not clean up their act and come away from their open sin, then turn them over to the power of Satan to destroy the flesh, to take their lives physically, lest they keep on bringing reproach to the name of Christ. Now that does not mean that they're going to be annihilated spiritually. And so it will read on, that for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit of this individual, the man I think is what he's dealing with first and foremost, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now I know this is hard for a lot of people to comprehend, that people living in this kind of sinful condition are still saved, yes that's what the book says, but they're not going to get away with it. It has to be dealt with by the church, and God's going to deal with it. Now when it comes to this whole thing, maybe it's a little bit too early to bring this out, but when it comes to this whole thing, yeah it's going to be again in chapter 11. I guess that's where I thought I'd deal with it when we came to it. But the Scripture says that even though God is going to take these kind of believers out of their physical existence, they're not going to lose their salvation. And then He admonishes the believing community that we are never even to pray for the death of someone like that. Now that I've started that far, I guess I better follow it on through. All the way back to the little letters of John. I wasn't really intending to do this until we got to chapter 11, but since I've opened the gate, I guess I'll have to finish it and carry it through. First John chapter 5. Let's drop in at verse 16, and he's dealing with pretty much the same kind of a situation. Probably not as gross, but sin in the church. First John 5 verse 16, If any man see his brother sin a sin, and it's not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. In other words, their sin isn't as gross as this one here in Corinthians. There is, John says, a sin unto death. In other words, in the life of a believer who goes into deep sin, open sin, that folk in general know about, God has mandated first and foremost a disciplinary action on the part of the church to restore such a one to fellowship. That's Galatians chapter 6 verse 1, that if a man be taken in a fall, you who are spiritual were to do what? Restore such a one. In the spirit of meekness, lest even the church leaders be taken in just as great a sin. See, we're all human. Every human being is just as prone to fall into sin as the next one, but hopefully if we're spiritually taught and we are spiritually kept, these things won't happen, but it can. It can happen to anybody. So now then, John is delineating that there were some sins that would not cause God to take them out of their physical life, but some He will, and I've seen it. I'm sure you have. We're a believer who will refuse to come away from his sinful lifestyle, and you can deal with them and deal with them, and then all of a sudden bingo, just a sudden heart attack or a sudden car accident, and they're gone. Well, God takes them home lest they keep on bringing reproach to His name, and that's exactly what John is dealing with, and so he says there is, verse 16 again, there is a sin unto death. A believer can come to that place where God will take his life. Now then, look at this one, the last part of that verse. John says, I do not say that you shall pray for it. In other words, no believer, no church body ever has the right to pray for the death of an erring believer. That is never permissible. The Scripture says we cannot pray for the death of an erring believer. That's in God's hands. All right, now then, verse 17, all unrighteousness is sin, whether it be a little sin or a great one, it's still sin, and there is a sin not unto death. Now what's implied? That some sin is gross enough that it will cause God to take that believer out ahead of time. All right, now then, come back to 1 Corinthians chapter 5, and here's where we have it. This man is evidently committing a sin unto death. It's worthy of death if he does not repent of it and turn around. If he's going to continue on living with his stepmother in a marital relationship, God's going to take him out of Corinth. Now that's all there is to it. All right, verse 5, deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit, that is the soul of the man, may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Now he comes back to the Corinthians as a congregation. You're glorying. See, remember the word puffed up? You're being puffed up. Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? All right, what has happened to the church of today? Just exactly that. I remember years and years ago we were visiting some people, I think up in Stillwater if I remember, and I'll never forget the man's, whether it was a Sunday school lesson that morning or the sermon, I don't remember, but I do remember this. He says, you know, the church has gotten into dire straits because as these various social sins came along, we just said, well, we can accommodate that. You know, we can live with that. And then he says, here comes something a little more drastic, and well, we're not going to cause a ruckus. We can accommodate. We can live with that. And so over the years, what has happened? All the gross sin of the world has now come into the church, and the church thinks nothing of it. Well, I'm not going to stand here and say that we can reverse that. I can understand that church discipline today is almost an impossible thing, but I have to say what the book says, and the book says we have to deal with born-again church members who are bringing reproach to the name of Christ. We have to do whatever needs to be done to bring them back or bring them to the place where the Lord will take them home. And the reason is that if you're going to leave a little leaven, it isn't very long until it takes over the whole lump. You women who bake bread, you know that. You put in a little bit of yeast, you can't keep part of the dough unleavened. It's all going to come under the effect of the yeast. Well, he's using that analogy for the church. If we allow sin, open sin, gross sin, then it won't be long until the congregation will lose their testimony. And you know what the world will say as they drive by? Shoot, I don't live any worse than they do. I don't need Christianity. They're no better than I am, and then we wonder why we've lost our testimony. Well, that's the reason. All right, now then, verse 7, how are they to deal with it? Purge it. Purge out there for the old leaven, that which is causing the whole lump to be leavened. Purge it out. In fact, I think we've referred to it before. What do our Orthodox Jewish people do before Passover? Oh, why, they go through that house. If they're in a basement area, they'll go from the basement to the attic, and they just thoroughly clean house, looking for any semblance of what? Leaven or yeast. Well, what was the picture? Well, it went all the way back, of course, to the Passover in Egypt, and that the very next day after Passover was the seven days of unleavened bread. They were now to be pictured as a nation whose sins had been atoned for or cleansed, and they were to picture that with the unleavened bread. All right, now Paul is bringing that same analogy into our teaching today. We have to look at sin in our individual lives. We have to look at sin in the life of the church, just like the leaven in the bread of Egypt. All right, what does it say? That you may be a new lump as you are unleavened. Now, what does it mean that we're unleavened? Well, we've been forgiven. We've been cleansed, and we are, so far as God is concerned, without sin. But if we leave a little bit of leaven in our life, then what? It isn't too long until it begins to expand and expand, and it's going to consume us again. So even as Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Now I don't have to take you in the Scriptures, you all know enough, but oh, what a good mental exercise. What happened on the doorposts, on the two side posts and one on the top? And in your mind's eye, you can picture the outline of the cross. I'm sure that's what God had on His mind. All right, but here was the beauty of it. These Jews who have been slaves now in Egypt, had been told that if they would kill that sacrificial lamb, place the blood on the two doorposts and the lintel, and as they would sit in those little huts and those little houses in Egypt, at the stroke of midnight the death angel was going to go over Egypt and kill every first born of the male. Now as Israel huddled in their little huts, and I'm sure they were living in rather small abodes, were they in fear of the death angel? No, not if they were people of faith, because the blood was on the door, and they had absolutely nothing to fear of the death angel. They didn't stand in those little huts quivering in their boots. They were secure, knowing that the blood was on the door, and they were covered. All right, now Paul is bringing that all the way up to the church age, that even as our Passover, when Christ died on that Roman cross, and anymore today, too often the very crucial point of that is being left out, and that was the blood. As He hung on that cross, His blood was shed, and when we come under that blood, we are passed over from any judgment. Let me take you back to the little letter of 1 John, again, 1 John, this time chapter 2, 1 John chapter 2, verse 1, 1 John chapter 2, verse 1. I've got to wait till you all find it, because if you find it, then I know the folk out there in their living rooms are finding it. All right, my little children, who's John writing to? Believers. See, he's not writing to the unsaved world, he's writing to the believers, and he says, my little children, these things I write unto you that you sin not. Now God never encourages the believer to sin, does He? No, but God being omniscient, God being the Creator, God knows what? That we're going to. Some of us may be a little quicker than others, but we're going to sin. That old Adam is so powerful that even though we reckon him as dead, according to Romans, yet he pops up, and he gets his licks in, and we sin. Okay, but now God, if, and that implies that we will, if any man sin, we have an, what's the next word? Advocate with the Father. Who? Jesus Christ, the righteous One. Oh, and now can you imagine what happens up there in heaven when a believer sins? Oh, immediately our Advocate comes right to the Father, and He says, but Father, He's under the blood. He's a believer. He's under the blood. She's under the blood, and He picks it up on our behalf. Now that's a glorious, glorious, what shall I say, assurance, see, that even when we sin, we're under the blood, just like Israel was back there in Egypt, and nothing could touch them. The death angel couldn't touch them. They were under the blood, and see, this is where believers have to find themselves. Now, that's not licensed. How many times have I said that over the years? God's grace is not licensed. Just because we know we have this promise and assurance that if we sin, we are still forgiven. We are still cleansed, but we now have to have that cleansing. Now, when we get a little further in Corinthians, we're going to come to the word, you are washed, and then I'm going to, of course, take you to John's Gospel, but for now in John, a little letter of 1 John chapter 2, then read on into verse 2. You're still back there, I hope. 1 John chapter 2, verse 2, and not only is He our advocate, He's our what? Propitiation. Now, it's been a long time since we dealt with that word in Romans chapter 8, I think it was, and for those of you who've been with us ever since we started, you remember how I explained the word propitiation? Everything that you can possibly put together back there in the tabernacle, back there in the wilderness, the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant, the veil, the Ark of the Showbread, the candlestick holder, and the altar of incense, then the brazen laver where they held the water that the priests washed in on their way in, the brazen altar, the sacrificial lamb, the fence around it. You remember when I went through all that? Every single aspect of that tabernacle in its composition, the gold and the silver and the stones and all the rest of it, every one of them were a picture of the work of salvation that Christ accomplished at the cross, and I call that whole work propitiation. Everything that you see in that tabernacle is the work of propitiation, and that included His work as high priest, it included the shed blood of the sacrifice, it included His interceding force back there in the Holy of Holies. It's still appropriate, all this tremendous work of propitiation, and not for ours only, but God has done it for the sins of the whole world. Now I had someone write me an article the other day where this gentleman was promoting that Christ only died for the believer. Well, he probably got his Scripture for it, but I can't go along with that because my Bible says that Christ died for everyone, but not everyone will be saved because not everyone will appropriate it. But the potential is there. Now then, let's come back to 1 Corinthians 5. Our time is just about gone. So therefore, he says, let us keep the feast, even as Israel did in a symbolic way back there in the wilderness, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now what's Paul alluding to here? Well, remember we're still dealing with sin of believers in that local congregation, but they weren't the only people who were falling far short, because what else is evidently evident in the congregation? Malice, other forms of wickedness, and it was a leaven that was permeating that little...it's a wonder it survived, isn't it? It's a wonder Corinth, as a con...of course they didn't for long, but nevertheless, here was this little group of believers that was plagued with almost every sin that you could think of, and yet God didn't give up on them, God just kept them in a place of growing and growing, and we know that Paul came to the place that one day I'm sure he was proud of the Corinthians. Right to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Tour the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer -supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Tour the Bible with Les Feldick.