First Corinthians 5:6-8

Welcome, everybody. It's nice to see more and more faces here. It's really pretty exciting. So we're in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. And I thought we'd start out maybe today, we'd put it in context. I'm going to read the first eight verses. Today I want to concentrate on 6, 7, and 8, but I thought I'd put them together.

Verse 1, it actually is reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality such as a kind that does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. For I on my part, though absent in the body, but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as though I were present, as though I were present. In the name of the Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened, for Christ our Passover has also been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So Paul is expanding the idea of dealing with sin. There's two big issues here. The first issue we talked about last week was the sin itself of immorality. The second issue had to do with pride, and pride had afforded these people the opportunity to tolerate the sin.

So as we look today in verse 6, he says, your boasting is not good. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? So bragging or boasting about evil with someone in this circumstance It doesn't even shock their conscience to the point that they just are not so much affected by it because of their pride. Your natural mind, like my natural mind, might view evil doctrine, this evil doctrine, but we would think it's just a difference of opinion. It's not that evil. And if you're one of those who has a really generous heart that you give leeway to anybody, You might shrink from banning such a man, no matter how true it is, just because you have a big heart.

However, it's humbling that their consciences were not yet awakened, except perhaps certain individuals who had communicated the facts of this situation to Paul, and others who were sympathizers with this uneasiness. They didn't like it. They were sensitive to it. And this week I was in the Hungry Heart. I read a couple of things and it seems like every week what we're talking about on Sunday, somewhere in the Hungry Heart there's a comment.

This one says, we are naturally suspicious of any offer to make us happy in God. I'm suspicious of that all the time. Because our moral sense Our natural conscience tells us of our having lost all right even to his ordinary blessings. But in the word of the Father, the word of our Father, faith reads our abundant title to be near to him and happy with him. Though natural conscience and our sense of fitness of things would have it otherwise. Faith feeds where moral sensibilities of the natural mind would count it presumption even to tread."

And that's a quote from an old brethren guy, Bellet. It's interesting that our conscience normally would condemn us, the word of God would cause us to approach Christ because we're fine. Or if we were involved like the Corinthians, where our conscience may allow sin because we're so used to it, especially if you were growing up in Corinth. So Paul says this is not good. Your boasting or your bragging is not good. This word good has to do with things that were noble, they were honorable. Vines Dictionary says they were right or ethically good. It's interesting in this church at Corinth, if they knew about the man, they acted as though they didn't know. because of pride. They were puffed up instead of being humiliated in sorrow and in prayer.

And we talked about that last week. So the notion had crept in with these people that the sin in the church belongs only to those who are directly guilty. And it doesn't involve anybody else in the church. That the Lord himself actually forbids us to judge sinners commanding tares and wheats to grow up together so that they can be harvested together. Well, that's total fallacy. Nothing is more clearly condemned than the false principle that known sin in the church concerns only the ones directly guilty and doesn't involve everybody else, because it does.

It's not therefore enough just to put away the wicked person. The whole lump leavened does not imply that the whole company become incestuous, like in this case, like the evildoer, but everybody got defiled by what this person was doing. And they must judge themselves, like we would in that circumstance, we would judge ourselves of the low condition that they had, offering complicity and tolerating this evil. Should such an unholy and ignorant dishonesty be exposed?

Answer, yeah. This is a really serious principle within a body of believer. It needs to be practical and publicly. Our walk needs to be practical and it needs to be public. We had a long conversation this morning in Sunday school about not causing your brother to stumble, and your rights are modified by the rights of your brother. And how you live your life speaks louder than what you ever say. So this principle of living the life and dealing with sin in the way that it should be dealt with is a really important principle that Paul brings up.

He says no interpretation can be more contrary to the spirit of Paul's warning than that which supposes that the whole is only leavened when every part is saturated with the leaven. What they didn't realize is that their tolerance meant that they were buying into the leaven. They were being affected by it. If one of them was a fornicator, of a fearfully depraved kind tolerated and harbored by this fact the character of the whole was tainted.

So here's moral evil in this church and last year we went through the book of Galatians and in that church there was doctrinal evil, legalism. Which one do you think is more deceptive? Which one is more dangerous? Which one is more misleading. It's the doctrinal evil. It's definitely a bigger problem than moral evil.

But William Kelly says, no church can guarantee itself against the entrance of evil, but every church of the Lord Jesus is bound not to tolerate it. When evil is known, the church is bound to put it away. The tolerance of evil The tolerance of evil, in any part, corrupts morally the whole. And so you have a situation where we exercise compassion, maybe, for an individual, and tolerate the evil. If the evil persisted in it, it would, again, begin to leaven. Maybe I'll talk a little bit, well, I will in a minute, about how leaven really works.

When a church knows evil, and either refrains to judge the indifference or still worse refuses it when it appealed according to the word of God. It's being false to the name of Christ. Can no longer be regarded, and this is a really strong statement by William Kelly, he says, it is being false to the name of the Lord and can no longer be regarded as God's assembly. That's how serious he thought this kind of thing was. Adequate means to arouse, to arouse have failed. The problem is, is that tolerance of evil on any part corrupts morally the whole. It virtually commits the Holy Spirit to support what God hates, which is sin. And Paul says you can't ever tolerate that kind of a thing.

The body of Christ stands on wholly different ground, wholly different ground. And that's one of the things that One of the focuses of our body of believers, we concentrate on what that ground is. What is our position? We stand in Christ on high. And each one of us has, and corporately, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. That's who we are. And because of that, we can't tolerate sin.

It's really meant that a little leaven will give character to the whole lump. Evil is here presented under the symbol of leaven, and it's always presented under the symbol. Evil is always presented as leaven. It may not only exist among the saints, but its nature is to work, to spread, to assimilate the mass into itself.

We've been studying Exodus on Wednesday night, and we've just gone through the part where the Jews were instructed to leave Egypt and they were to prepare as though they were going to go right away. They had to be dressed They had to have the lamb, they had to sacrifice him, they had to eat the meal, they had to have their clothes on, and they had to have unleavened bread. Because the very night that they ate the Passover was the night that the death angel visited. And that same night, Pharaoh calls up Moses and says, get out of here. So they left that same night. So there's an issue here where you're prepared to go, to leave.

And so the leaven in that sense, the leaven is a fermenter and it causes dough to expand, which anybody who knows that knows anything about cooking or as a foodie knows about that. But whenever you see in the Bible that there's urgency or something is to happen in short notice and you're going to take food with you, it's going to be unleavened because it'll last longer and you can eat it on the way. The Israelites were forbidden to use leaven for seven days at the time of the Passover, that they might be reminded that the Lord brought them out of Egypt in haste. He brought them out really fast.

The unleavened bread is really boring in taste, but it reminded them too of their afflictions and the need of self-judgment. And so it's called sometimes the bread of affliction. Leaven was forbidden in all offerings to the Lord by fire in Leviticus 2 and 6 being bread of corruption and spreading through the mass of that in which it is mixed and therefore symbolizing the pervasive character of evil. Leaven was utterly inconsistent with offerings which typified the pacifying sacrifice of Christ.

Now, in the New Testament, it's a little different. In the New Testament, metaphorically, it just speaks of corrupted doctrine, Matthew 13, Luke 13, and of error or as mixed truth in Matthew and Mark. The history of Christendom confirms the fact that the pure meal of doctrine of Christ has been adulterated with error. The other way it's mentioned in the New Testament is corrupt practice and the reference to the Corinthians here being especially applied to the irreligious in 5 or 7 and 8 which we're studying today. Literally in Matthew 16 and in the general statements of 1st Corinthians where the implied applications are to corrupt practice and corrupt doctrine respectfully, and that comes from the Vines Dictionary.

Now, having put all that together, now comes the warning, and I think I'm on track. Awesome. Verse 7 says, clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are, in fact unleavened. Christ our Passover has also been sacrificed. So Paul tells them, purge out the old leaven. Get rid of it. I've told you the story about a rabbi that lived across the street from me and in the Passover he came to me and he wanted me to buy all the leaven in his synagogue.

Because they don't get rid of it, they just sell it to Gentiles. You have an arm's length transaction where I actually was going to own all the leaven. And then 10 days later they were going to come and buy it back. But I had to understand that he was under no obligation to buy it back. I said, how much is this leaven going to cost me? He said, well, you can put a deposit down for $20. I said, OK. I said, well, what if you don't buy the leaven back? What's that going to cost me? He said, oh, 30 grand. I said, I don't think I'm interested. So he got the mayor of Greenwood Village to go for this. So the mayor of Greenwood Village buys all this leaven. And the day before Passover, he comes to me and says, I got one family that didn't get included. Would you buy their leaven? I said, OK. So I bought it. It was great. We had a whole ceremony where we signed a contract. He gave me the $20 to give to him. We shook.

We held a handkerchief, said a Jewish prayer. I owned the leaven. He said, now if you want to go take the leaven out of their house, it's yours. Help yourself. I'm thinking, oh yeah, I want to do that. And then ten days later they came and bought it back. But he tried to give me money for it. I said, well you gave me the money to give you in the first place. He said, well that's okay, I can't take it back. And he had his little daughter with him. And I said, honey, how would you like $20? He said, yeah. Boom.

Anyway, it's a really principle that God instituted with the nation of Israel, because at that time they were about to become a nation. They had grown in 400 years from 70 people to over 2 million. And now they were going to be God's people. And so the command to purge out the old leaven is based on the fact that positionally, They were in fact unleavened. It's like you and I. We can hear the command, purge out the old leaven, but notice what Paul says here. He said that you may be one lump, one new lump. And then he says, just as you are in fact unleavened.

So what are we talking about? We're talking about the principle that we talk about a lot around here, position and condition. Positionally, every believer has nothing to do with leaven. We are unleavened people. So why are we told to perch it out? Because conditionally walking around every day there might be some leaven hanging around. Sin. It's like leaven is totally inconsistent with our position in Christ. When he says that, we have to understand the elevated importance that we have as a body of believers before the Lord.

Every single thing is unleavened. And because of our position, we ought to be conditionally unleavened. The practical conduct of a Jew is to be grounded on their position. They were unleavened. You know why? Because they had been redeemed. If you think about it, if you're under any kind of a legal system, you're expending a lot of effort to try to put into place something that's already true of you.

The efforts to deny the purity of the church are from our enemy. The apostle is writing to the Corinthians, he reminds them of this, and he insists that this is who you are. He recalls to them what God's grace had done for them and to them. He's trying to awaken their conscience to act consistently with who they are in Christ.

And that does not include allowing sin, because saints have, because we have an old man, we're familiar with sin. The Jews weren't really cognizant of what God had already done for them. Do you realize that from the time that the Jews left Egypt to the time they got to Mount Sinai, God met every one of their needs. They didn't have to do anything but walk. Go here, go there, go here, go there. I'm going to give you water. I'm going to feed you. I'm going to protect you. You're going to be in a fight with the Amalekites. You're going to win that. Don't worry about it. And you're going to camp out. And so three months And they went through the Red Sea and still they complained.

Well, how different are we? The Word of God tells us our position in Christ, who we are in Christ, all of the blessings that we had, how God has already dealt with the issues that we think are so big. And we try so hard to incorporate something into our lives, which God has already done. So that's why we are to live by faith. We're just to rest in the fact that he has done what he said, says he has done. So how do I say this? To form the church in purity for Christ and according to Christ in this world and the responsibility of the saints to walk individually and corporately according to him His Word makes that really plain, but you can't do that through your own effort.

You have to do it by depending on the Spirit of God to do what He clearly tells us He's done and going to do. We may get some understanding of the light in the Old Testament, a couple of verses from Exodus. The Lord Jehovah or Yahweh tells Moses this month, shall be the beginning of months for you. It's to be the first month of the year to you." What has God just done? He starts the calendar over by the day that the Jews leave. Starts a brand new calendar.

I don't know what calendar they were living by up until then, but the first month was Abib, which was in the spring, and Abib means the month of the ear. And the ear is the ear of the corn. It's the month that the crop is just beginning to grow. and they called it that until they went into the Babylonian captivity and then they changed it to Nisan. You'll see Nisan in everything you read now. But originally it was Abib.

Verse 6 says, you shall keep it until the fourth, I'm sorry back to verse 3, speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the tenth of this month They are each one to take a lamb for themselves according to their father's household, a lamb for each household. So each family was to go get a lamb on the first day. And then on Nisan 14, you shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month. And then while the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill the lamb at twilight. all together.

Now this is the same night the death angel is going to show up. So verse 18, in the first month and the fourteenth day of the month and the evening you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. Seven days you shall be, there should be no leaven found in your houses for whoever eats what is leavened, listen to the consequence. The person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land. You shall not eat anything leavened in all your dwellings. You shall eat unleavened bread." When the lamb is slain, the leaven went out of the house.

And this will play into the rest of the verse. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your house. For whoever eats anything leavened on the first day until the seventh day, the person shall be cut off. On the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day, and no work at all will be done except what must be eaten by every person that alone may be prepared for you. You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread. For on this very day, I brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout the generations as a permanent ordinance.

Why is that so important? It's so important because God delivered them. In other words, they were redeemed. And that'll play a big role. in who they are. Now let's apply that to who we are. First of all, we are already unleavened, which would be a reference to our position in Christ. We are already redeemed. And secondly, Christ our Lamb has been slain. Emphasis on the past tense, that it's already happened. But conditionally, the Corinthian church was still filled with leaven.

The sense in these verses are now beginning to count a new year, everything's brand new, and the new year will bring total changes in your destiny. When a person is saved, you can say, that started a new year, and boy did that change your whole destiny. Everything changes that day. The Passover was a commanded celebration. The Israelites were to observe it With their redeemed brethren, they were to celebrate it together, corporately, as a nation. Since the lamb was a substitute sacrifice, it required characteristics that were significant of the lamb.

You probably remember in John 1.29, John the Baptist sees Jesus coming down the street. And what does he say to him about him? He says, saw Jesus coming down. He said, behold, the Lamb of God. What does he do? He takes away the sin of the world. That's new. The Jews always had their sins covered, but never taken away.

First Corinthians 5.7, very verse, clean out the old leaven. so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened for Christ. Our Passover also has been sacrificed.

First Peter 1.19 says, but we are redeemed by the precious blood of a lamb unblemished, spotless the blood of Christ. So freedom from blemish and injury not only befitted the sacredness of the purpose, and we're talking about the Lamb now, to which they were devoted, but it was also the symbol of moral integrity, of the person represented by the sacrifice. It had to be a male, and it had to be the firstborn, and it had to be a year old. because a lamb at a year old was almost full grown. But the key idea here is that the lamb has already been slain, yet there's still leaven in the house.

Let's talk about redemption. Redemption always involves paying a price. There's always a cost. So what was the price of Israel's redemption? It was the life of the Lamb. That was the price that God provided as a substitute for Israel's firstborn sons who would have otherwise died that night. They put the blood on the mantle and the death angel passed them by. What saved them? The blood of the Lamb. Jesus Christ is our Lamb, the only begotten of the Father. The firstborn sons remained God's special portion.

In Numbers 8.17 he talks about the firstborn, which we all are, as his special ones. The Egyptian firstborn sons really died as a punishment because what they had been doing, they had enslaved the Jewish people and they wouldn't let them go and they executed the firstborn males of Israel. And they did that for probably 80 years. They were doing it. Moses was one of the rare ones that escaped it. There mustn't have been too many guys around that were Moses' age. God paid the price for Israel's redemption to himself. He purchased the nation to be a special treasure to himself and for a special purpose. So God's call to Israel to live a holy life rose from what God had already done for them. He's not calling them to do something that wasn't consistent with what he had already done for them. No, he was calling them to live on the basis of what he'd already done.

Consecration always follows redemption. We're always trying to get consecrated, hoping that through that process we might get redeemed. No, redemption comes first. prerequisite. Similarly, God calls us to be holy in view that he has done for us what he's done for us and to us. In Romans 12, 1 and 2, I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to do what? Present your body a living sacrifice. Well, Romans 12, 1 comes after Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Then you're asked to do that.

Up until that time, you're learning about what he had already done. And as a consequence, that's what that great word, the first word in that 12-1 is, therefore. What does therefore mean? It refers to everything that went before. You wouldn't do it without that information. He does not say we can experience redemption if we become holy first. We already are holy.

The people were instructed that only the way that they could avert the destroyer was to put the blood of the lamb on the doorpost. Hebrews 11, 28 says, by faith, by faith, they kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood so that he who destroyed the firstborn wouldn't touch them. But the figure of an unleavened lump at once recalls Christ as the true Passover lamb and the consequent putting away of sin by his sacrifice. I find that in talking to non-believers, one of those hurdles that a few of them can get over is the fact that when Christ died on the cross, he took care of every sin. not just yours, not just the Christians, every single sin was paid for. Why? Because the cross was a transaction between the Father and the Son.

And they were dealing with the sin issue, and they dealt with it. And when they were finished, they came to humanity and said, okay, we've resolved the sin issue, and if you will just believe that we did, we will give you all the benefits of what we did, we will make you sons.

And people think, oh, you know, maybe I can give him half, but there's some really bad things I've done that Christ couldn't have. Or like this, well, maybe he got most of them, but he left a few for me to kind of clean up. No, he got every single sin, every one of them, including the guy that lives across the street that isn't a believer, got his too. So, what this does is it kind of, Paul's deepening the foundation on which he demands that sin should be judged by all believers.

And we should be watchful if any sin just crept in and we didn't repent of it. So, as it turned to practical account here, therefore let us keep the feast. Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice or wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Interesting. Keeping the Feast. Keeping the Feast is present tense.

It means we're to do it from now on, all the time. Every minute, every second of every day. And it doesn't just refer to the Lord's table. It refers to the whole period of the believer's life, from the time he's saved to the time we get to go home. Hamilton Smith said exactly that. It's rather to the whole period of the believer's life on earth, of which the unleavened feast is a type. The seven days of the Jewish institution represent the whole term of the stay on earth.

And the celebration of the feast covers Therefore the full time of each one of us here below Therefore they should judge out the old leaven and in practice they should focus on their position before God in Christ and Unleavened lump as a result of the work of Christ is who we are no leaven these words interesting malice and wickedness malice just means a badness and quality, or it can say the vicious character generally. Wickedness is exactly the same word in the first verse that talked about fornication or what that man was doing with his stepmother. But the celebration is to be done with sincerity, which means pure, perfect, no alloys in the metal, pure. It's unmixed substance, maybe you put it that way. So it just means purity. And we are pure, by the way, positionally.

So that they may have, so that in Philippians 1.10 it says, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of the Lord. And truth just denotes the real genuine thing.

It's used of God all the time. So we might have new forms of evil show up in our life, or maybe habits creep in. But as all leaven had to be shut out by the Jews, so the believer is called to deal unsparingly with evil in every shape and form in our life. Nothing inconsistent with Christ is morally tolerable in the Christian. It is not now and then, but continuously all the time.

So, redemption, far from allowing of sins in the redeemed, is the basis of holiness. All evil was only then fully judged when Christ our Passover was crucified. Notice how he says Our lamb has been crucified, so we have been purified because of what Christ has done. What's happening in Corinth was that they tolerated with sin.

Why? Because they were arrogant and they had hardened hearts, conditionally. Now that it has been condemned in the cross of Christ and consequently in grace to the believer, we're told to yield our members as servants to righteousness and to holiness.

Very interesting. Yielding is one of those really cool terms that I find that believers say, oh, I've got to yield. If I yield, I will get. No, you yield because you already have. It's a really important point. You don't yield to get, you yield because you have. I yield to circumstances because I know they're mine. I'm not trying to be better by yielding, I already am. Freed from sin and having become servants of God, we have our fruit in holiness and the end is eternal life.

Kelly says that anything short of that is not Christianity. Boy, that's a bold statement. Chester McCauley sums it up. Let us therefore celebrate the feast. Present tense pointing to continuous activity. The Passover is celebrated yearly, but the celebration of a significance is a continual responsibility of us as believers in the church.

So 11 is never appropriate for us, never. The command is much like saying, let us live our Christian life. Let us just live the life we have. Let's close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you for your word. We thank you how careful you are to teach us that you have made every provision for us to live and to walk in your dear son, the Lord Jesus, in whom you are totally pleased because of his work on the cross. We pray in his precious name. Amen.