Confronting Sin: A Call to Church Holiness

1. "Open your Bibles up to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We have been in this series that we have called Firing on All Cylinders. The goal of that, like an engine that operates best when it's firing on all cylinders, at times you have to address some of the dysfunctions, some of the areas where maybe that engine is struggling. And Paul is doing that with the church in Corinth. He's saying, hey, listen, we've got an engine, the church, that's not functioning properly. It's not firing on all cylinders. And we need to address those issues so that we can get that church firing on all cylinders again, operating to its potential, being who that church is meant to be." [00:00:00] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "Social scientists would say that a building like this, the building that you're thinking of that you're picturing in your head has fallen victim to what they call the broken window theory anyone ever heard of that before the broken window theory which basically it states that if you see a building that's got some sign of of crime or decay or something like that it becomes kind of an encouragement for more of that kind of activity to begin to take place so one broken window turns into two into three and then the graffiti comes like when you don't address the small problems they can turn into bigger problems and what Paul's doing here with the church in Corinth is he's addressing their own broken window." [00:02:51] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Paul's like, oh, speaking of the rod, right, apparently you guys don't know how to use one, right, because here's the issue that's going on in the church, and what's happening is this gasping, this gross immorality that we look at, and we'd be like, man, what's going on is there's a man in the church who seems as though he is having sexual relations with his stepmom. That's kind of our understanding of where we're at right now, and in our small group this week, we went around the room, and we said, okay, is this something that any of you have struggled with, and nobody said, yeah, that's me, all right, and so we may come to a topic like this and be like, wow, I can't believe that something like that would be going on in the church, and Paul's saying the same thing." [00:08:33] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "And now, for us, we look at something like chapter 5, and the strong language jumps off the page at us. Right? We are taken back by verse 1. And we think, wow, this man is sleeping with his stepmom. That alarms us. Right? But then we are drawn to what Paul says should happen with this man. Man, we are drawn to dealing with the what and the how the church is supposed to deal with this. And we see Paul saying, let him who's done this be removed from among you. Wow. That's strong language. And he takes it up a notch down to verse 5. And he says, you're to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. And we're like, holy smokes. This is big time." [00:11:28] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "The reality is what Paul's going to get into here is that there is deep trouble that's brewing in the Corinthian church. And it's brewing because they've allowed this sin to go unchecked and their attitude towards it has become totally unbecoming of a believer. So he's like, we need to deal with this. And John MacArthur, when he talks about sin in the church, he says that the greatest harm done to the church is always done by those inside the church. Agree or disagree as you may, what he's drawing the attention to is saying what we easily focus our attention on as a church are threats that come from out there." [00:15:38] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Sin is dangerous in the church. Okay, and Paul paints us a picture here in this passage of three different ways that sin is dangerous in the church. And the first one is that it conflicts with our calling in Christ. Our sin and sin continuing in the church conflicts with our calling in Christ. These people, these Christians, have become arrogant and boasting about their tolerance of what's going on. They're boastful about the sexual immorality that's taking place. And in a sense, they're feeling that it's consistent with who they are in Jesus. And Paul's saying the opposite is true. You guys couldn't be more wrong." [00:18:58] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Paul couches this whole thing, the sexual immorality of the church and their attitude towards it within the context of these Jewish festivals and holidays. Are you starting to see a little bit of the connection here? Where he's like, listen, when you get into this, the, you are, the absence of sin is symbolic that when the Passover lamb has been sacrificed, now God's people go into this festival where they don't eat leaven. The leaven is removed. Well, the Bible speaks of leaven as an analogy for sin. And so he's saying, listen, our Passover lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed." [00:22:09] (40 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Sin's dangerous because when we begin to let it sit and fester when we let begin to celebrate it or tolerate it paul is saying listen we are walking in direct opposition to who we were supposed to be in christ that's why it's dangerous in the church number one number two he says it comes with consequences or there are consequences to letting the sin persist in the church now it doesn't take much for us to think of some of the consequences for sin on a personal level on a personal level we might think we're learning a little bit about the truth but we're not at the level of being an think of the spiritual consequences." [00:25:52] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "The church's ability to speak into its culture is just diminished when we choose to continue to live in sin. And so for a while, you may find a church that, like Corinth, boasts of these things. It says, yeah, look at us. But in time, that church is gonna be no different from the culture. There is no church. There is no being set apart. There is no holiness. There is no sacredness of the community. Paul's saying, we gotta nip this in the butt because it's going to destroy the message." [00:27:17] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "We have a tendency at times to think of this corporate church discipline that Paul's talking about here like it's just beating each other up. It's unfair. It's harsh. And Paul's saying, man, I don't want to get to this place. Heaven forbid. We would need to get here. Accountability is involved. Secondly, there's agreement. In verse 4, he says, when you are assembled, there's a picture of unity in this, that we agree and can speak with one voice to the issue that's going on. That this is not just a pastor is upset with somebody and so they're going to discipline them in the church." [00:46:08] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)