That's Disgusting!

As we study 1 Corinthians 5:1-13, I discussed the big picture first: How we as a community are supposed to respond to blatant unrepentant sin among us. We discussed that God desires our holiness, so we as a community should mourn, judge and purge the sin among us.

That is the forest. Today, we are going to talk about the trees. Instead of discussing the community, we are going to discuss individuals.

We in America are big on individual responsibility. That is a result of freedom and a result of the pioneering spirit.

How are we to react to the sin among us?

Let’s read our passage again.

1 Corinthians 5:1–13 NIV

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate: A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? For my part, even though I am not physically present, I am with you in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way, I have already passed judgment in the name of our Lord Jesus on the one who has been doing this. So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”

Pray

We are going to dive into the middle verses, the ones that talk about leaven.

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 NIV

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

Paul is bringing in an illustration from his Jewish heritage. Every year, they would celebrate the feast of the Passover, commemorating when God saved them from the Egyptians, specifically the 10th plague. The death angel would go throughout the land and kill all first borns of humans and animals. The Israelites were to kill a lamb and smear the blood on their doorposts. Anyone who was inside that marked house would be saved from death.

Day of Passover and the following Feast of Unleavened Bread celebrated that time. Two important things happened, which Paul mentions in these verses.

During the Feast of Unleavened Bread, everyone removed all the old leaven from their homes. This was practical, because the old leaven was a smelly, moldy mess that would probably start killing them. They would eat unleavened bread for the week, and create new starter that they would use throughout the next year.

As we talked about last week, leaven is used to symbolize sin. We are to remove it so it doesn’t take over.

Paul also mentions the Passover lamb that was killed every year. Jesus is our Passover Lamb, killed so that we would not have to die. His blood is smeared over us.

Now, every Israelite had a choice on the fateful night in Israel to kill the lamb and smear the blood. Those that did not do it, were not saved from the death that was promised.

In the same way, we all have a choice whether to accept Christ’s death for us. Those that make a choice to believe on him will be saved, his death is on our account. We are saved. We must each make the choice for ourselves.

In the Spirit of the Passover festival and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Paul says that we are to celebrate it everyday by how we live.

We are to get rid of the sin in our midst and live with sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:8 NIV

Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

What does that look like. Well, our individual response to sin is to be disgusted at our old leaven and at his old leaven.

First, we are to be disgusted at our old leaven

Be disgusted at our old leaven

Paul says that we are to keep the Festival with the unleavened bread of sincerity.

In other words, we are to live in a way that is free from hypocrisy and deceit.

Sincerity is when we live the way we say that we are.

I am not going to assume that everyone who attends church is a follower of Jesus Christ. We all attend for different reasons and there are some who come because there is a stirring in their heart or their spouse’s heart, and they are not quite there yet to jump on board.

Everyone must come to a point in their life, where they make a decision to trust Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls.

When we make that decision, as Paul says:

Romans 10:9 NIV

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

And as John says:

John 1:12 NIV

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—

When we do that, believing and receiving, our life has changed and we are called to live according to that change, to follow Jesus with our life.

When we say that we are a follower of Jesus Christ, yet are living sinfully, we are being a hypocrite. We are not being sincere.

We need to wake up, be disgusted with our old leaven and seize that sincerity.

There are three steps to take:

We confess

First, we confess.

Two weeks ago, on Father’s Day, we talked about the blameless man.

The blameless man is not sinless, because there is no one who is sinless. The blameless man cannot have anything held against him. There is no gotcha moment.

I just recently cleaned out my garage after way too long of things piling up. I had parts that I had saved for things that I haven’t owned for years. So, I finally decided to get rid of them.

The blameless person doesn’t store up sins in the garage of his life. He is regularly cleaning it out. He throws open the door to his life and lets the light in. This is the process of confession.

We don’t like confession. We don’t like people seeing that we are messed up broken, desperately in need of Jesus’ grace.

But, we are followers of Jesus Christ. John calls him the light, and writes:

John 3:19 NIV

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

No one wants to bring their evil deeds to light. But, Jesus is the light. He knows everything. He saw our sin. Every single part of it.

Romans 5:8 NIV

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

So, if he knows our sin and he died for our sin, earning forgiveness and justification, promising an eternity with him. And we have an assurance of all this.

Why are we so concerned about what other people think?

Well, it’s because, even though their actions are temporary, they can still hurt us right now. And people can do some really hurtful things.

Also, our actions could be pretty nasty. And they could bring some serious consequences. We might be afraid of those consequences.

However, if we are a follower of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, we will not walk in darkness. We will not be a hypocrite, but in sincerity, we will state who we really are.

And God promises to bless those who follow him in this truth.

So, let’s get it over with. Turn to your neighbor and say “I’m a sinner.” Were they shocked? No. We all know that we are sinners. The hangup is inside us. Normally, when we confess, we are met with grace and love, though most definitely with consequences. We need those consequences. But that comes later in this sermon.

Who do we confess to? We confess to those we have hurt and we confess to those who we need to hold us accountable. We don’t have to stand in front of the whole church and bring out the laundry list of our sins, unless the Holy Spirit is convicting you to do that. We are a family, and we want to pray for each other. So know that any confession will be met with a promise of prayer and a big hug.

We are disgusted by our old leaven so we confess it.

We repent

While we confess it, we repent.

Paul says something very interesting.

1 Corinthians 5:7 NIV

Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

He calls the Corinthians to get rid of the sin so that they can be people of sincerity. Then he says: as you really are.

If we have placed our faith in Jesus Christ, we are new creatures.

2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

Paul is calling the Corinthians and us to live in line with who we really are.

So, when we find ourselves living in line with someone or something else, we are supposed to change and come back.

That is the process of repentance.

I need a volunteer. You are going down this path. You see a sign that says: Severe dropoff 100 ft. You will die if you keep driving down this path. What do you do?

Repentance is a 180 degree shift. You are going down one path and you realize you shouldn’t be and you come back to the correct path.

Confession is saying: I did wrong.

Repentance is changing your ways.

I love the letter Paul wrote to the Ephesians. After he talks about our amazing salvation, he calls us to live like we are saved.

In chapter four he dives into that.

Ephesians 4:20–24 NIV

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

He then gives a list of sins to put off and things to put on instead.

Repentance: you stop doing what you were doing and you do something different, specifically something that is in line with Christ.

We are disgusted by our old leaven, so we confess and we repent.

We delimit

Finally, we delimit.

That is a word that we normally don’t use. Delimit means to keep within certain limits. I could have said: set up boundaries, but that didn’t fit into my one word outline. Confess, repent, delimit.

Paul sets up a boundary for the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 5:8 NIV

Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

He knows the pet sins of the Corinthians and tells them to stop doing it, instead to keep within a well-defined space. This is Christ-likeness. This isn’t.

We all have pet sins that we need to throw outside our well-defined space.

The author of Hebrews says it this way:

Hebrews 12:1–2 NIV

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Sometimes throwing off sin is easy. We say: I’m not going to do that anymore, and we don’t.

Most of the time, throwing off sin is hard.

Have you ever been convicted of words that you use. You don’t want to use them, but they keep going around and around your head. When you are not consciously watching what you say, they blurt out.

Perhaps you are addicted to something, that desire grows and grows to the point of explosion.

Throwing off sin is hard. It takes delimitation. A boundary must be set-up.

We look at our lives. We have confessed our sin. We have decided that we are not going to do that sin, we are going to live this way instead. Now, we have to set up road blocks so that we do not go back.

Too often we are like a stubborn, old horse who only wants to go back to the barn, no matter what someone does.

So, we see what makes us want to go back and we throw up boundaries to keep us from those triggers. This might take completely changing friends. Perhaps it means driving a different way, which could add 25 miles miles in this area. Perhaps it is locking down devices. Perhaps it is getting a different job.

Because we do not want to go back to our sin, we create as many boundaries as necessary to stop ourselves from getting back to that sin.

We are disgusted by our old leaven. So we confess, we repent, and we delimit.

Well, we are not done yet.

We are disgusted by his old leaven

Not only are we disgusted by our old leaven, but we are disgusted by his old leaven.

Turn to someone near you and say “You disgust me.” I should have been a little more careful, because someone might have actually meant that.

At the beginning of June, I taught seven sessions for Camp Assurance staff training. After the last session, I allowed the teens and college students to ask me anything. And, then I got really scared.

They asked some great questions. One person asked how they should respond to Christian friends who want to accept as normal homosexuality in others because it doesn’t hurt anyone.

We as humans very easily write sins off. It used to be that Gossip was the pet sins of Christians. Everyone did it and no pastor preached against it.

Culture progressed. Other sins became accepted. Premarital sex. Cohabitation. Now, Homosexuality.

We stop looking at actions the way God does. We look at them based upon what culture tells us. What harm is there in doing this or that. We don’t see any harm.

We forget that God has given us his manual for life and he has clearly told us what will bring harm. We can guarantee that when we indulge in those things, harm will come to us. And when a community exults these things, or at least turns a blind eye to them, harm will come to that community.

When we see sin lived out among us, blatantly, we should we disgusted by that sin.

No matter what the sin is. No matter who is doing it.

If we are disgusted by the sin, we will do three things in response.

We exhort

First, we exhort.

Some people love exhorting. Some people detest it.

Some people have the gift of exhortation. Other’s don’t.

Some people have the gift of exhortation but detest doing it. They are constantly in emotional turmoil.

Paul told the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 5:1–2 NIV

The Corinthians were supposed to tell this man the truth that what he was doing was wrong.

So many people continue in their sin because no one has gotten the guts to explain to them what is wrong about their actions.

Paul wrote:

Romans 7:7 NIV

What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.”

We naturally sin, and we will continue to sin unless someone tells us that it is wrong.

So, we exhort. We approach people humbly and lovingly, showing them from Scripture how their actions are against God. When conviction comes, we explain Jesus’ grace, how his death on the cross was for that sin. Then, we repeat the words of Jesus:

John 8:11 NIV

“No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

We are disgusted by his old leaven, so we exhort.

We strengthen

But, not only do we exhort, but we strengthen.

No one can break the tangles of sin by themselves. We need each other.

Paul asked the Corinthians to do such a drastic thing as to put the man out of church so that the man would repent and turn back to Christ. If the church hadn’t come together, the man would not have changed.

We are here as the church of Jesus Christ to give each other strength to fight against sin. Hopefully, we do not get to the point where we have to do drastic church discipline. Hopefully, we can live

Galatians 6:1–2 NIV

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

This carrying of burdens directly applies to helping someone who is caught in sin. We pick up their burden of struggling against that sin, and help them carry the load.

We are disgusted by his old leaven, so we exhort, we strengthen.

We hold accountable

Finally, we hold accountable.

I couldn’t find a one word synonym for that phrase.

Technically, accountability is part of strengthening. But, I needed to talk about it separately.

When we think about accountability, many people think of a twelve-step group, where everyone is sitting around in a circle. “Hi, my name is Peter. I am addicted to ice cream. It has been 14 hours since I have last eaten it.”

During those sessions, people are forced to be honest about what they have done. That is a form of accountability.

Other people think of an accountability partner who asks hard questions every so often, and the last question is always: were you honest with me. Again, a form of accountability.

Biblical accountability is when someone commits to asking those questions, but who also commits to being available at any time of the day or night for his or her brother or sister in Christ who is hurting and struggling in the moment.

Biblical accountability is when someone can reach out and say: I really want to indulge in my sin right now. I need your help so that I don’t.

It is amazing what happens, when we are able to confess our inner sin, how God gives us the strength through our brother or sister in Christ to get through that sin.

Running from sin doesn’t work if we don’t have the strength to move our leg.

God desires our holiness, so let us be disgusted at our sin and at his sin, and let us push each other to Christ, as we confess, repent, delimit, exhort, strengthen and hold accountable.

It all comes back to Christ. He is the one who has saved us from our sin and who is sanctifying us from our sin. We are nothing apart from him.