This past Sunday I preached a message from 1 Corinthians 5&6 on Sexual Immorality in the Church. Unfortunately due to a computer glitch the recording of that sermon was lost, but since some of you have asked to hear it I've decided to post the manuscript on the blog.
Standard manuscript caveat applies here: I do not promise that what I said on Sunday was exactly the same as what is printed on this page. Some points get elaborated on and some points get cut based on how things are going. This manuscript represents the foundation of my message - and one to which I generally stick quite closely.
Also, don't look too closely at grammar and spelling. I write these messages to be spoken, not read so things slip through the cracks! I hope you are blessed by the fifth installment of our series on 1 Corinthians.
- Chris
Cleaning under the rug
The
Corinthian Condition
May
12, 2013
Key
Text: 1 Corinthians 5-6
So back before we redecorated our living room over the
Christmas holidays we used to have a throw rug in the centre of the room that
helped define the space and give what is essentially a very long and awkward
space a little bit of shape and order. I was a fan of what it did for our
decor, but it did have a decided downside: It was a magnet for all things
dirty. You would clean up the room, put away the toys, dust, tidy and vacuum
and things would look just about right and then you’d step onto the throw rug
and hear the unmistakable crunch of something like a cheerio, or a goldfish
cracker crumbling beneath your feet – UNDER the rug. It was like the rug itself
was a gravity well that attracted things the kids would drop towards it and
then when no one was looking swallowed them whole just waiting for the
unsuspecting moment when you would step too close to the perimeter and have the
illusion of a clean room would be ruined.
In much the same way, in the church can sometimes seem
like that freshly cleaned room. Shiny, smelling nice, pleasant to behold until
you step in the wrong place and realize that beneath the rug there has been
shovelled grime and dirt and sin and shame. And just like at home, when you
feel that sickening crunch beneath your feet you have a choice: You can either
ignore it, or you can lift up the rug and do the cleaning that is required to really get the dirt out.
The Corinthians were a church that was unwilling to do
that and it caused Paul no end of consternation – so today as we journey together
through this section of the text we are going to ask the question: “What does
their propensity to sweep things under the rug teach us about how we should
function as a local body of Christ?”
Now before you whip out your smartphones to confirm the
date; I am aware in fact that today is Mother’s Day. But we didn’t come here
this morning to celebrate mothers. We came here to celebrate Jesus. The Word of
God makes it clear that you are supposed to honour YOUR mother and father – so
today all I’m going to say on that front is that as a pastor I’m not going to
rob you of the joy of doing that on your own. That’s something you need to take
care of – I, for my part and going to preach the word of God and today’s text
takes us about as far from a mother’s day sermon as I could possibly get. It
starts with a man and his step-mother and goes downhill from there. So my
mother’s day promise to you as a pastor is that I’ll work hard to get you out
of here on time today for whatever lunch plans you have and that I’ll leave
everything else unsaid so as not to steal any of your thunder as you honour
your mother today. So with that being said: Let’s pray.
Today we’re going to look at an awkward topic to discuss.
One that doesn’t really fit with hallmark’s overarching vision for Mother’s day
– but as we journey through this challenging text of 1 Corinthians, that was
given as a gift to us, the Church, I believe that it is one that by the grace
of the Holy Spirit, we need to heed.
What we’re looking at today is the issue of sin in the
church – specifically
sexual sin – and how we need to deal with it when it arises.
Guidelines for dealing with
sexual sin in the Church
1.
Don’t Make Light of It
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?
1 Corinthians 5:1-2 (NIV)
Paul here is more is more vexed with the congregation
than the culprit –for it is the sin of the congregation that he exclusively
addresses in this passage. So today we are going to focus less on the specific
issues of sexual sin – Paul is assuming that they, like us, fully understand
the difference between what is wrong and right in these issues (see his
exasperation that this man is committing a sin that even the pagans find
abhorrent) and is coming hard at the church for their ‘tolerance’ of the sin
more than at the individual for their sinful activities.
So he says to them –
Don’t make light of the sin!
One of the things that I have noticed in life is that the
hardest place to be righteous is among a close knit community of Christians.
Perhaps I’m just an odd duck – but the truth of the matter is that I have
always found it easier to live out my faith with integrity when I am around non-believers
than when I am with Christians. Call me crazy, but I think the watching and
unbelieving world has higher expectations of us as children of God than we have
of ourselves.
I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret that won’t
surprise any of you – there are guys who watch porn in bible college dorms. The
internet has brought what used to be the risky, reputation-imperiling activity
of walking into a store and purchasing an adult magazine in hopes that no one
is watching you, down to an easy few clicks of the mouse with little risk of
getting caught if you are even moderately careful. I have sat with guys who
have confessed sexual sin, begging for help, pleading for someone to help them
overcome their struggles or addictions. I’ve even felt the guilt and shame back
in those days that came from needing to confess to a brother that I’ve spent
time on websites that no person should access. Modern technology has made this
sin disturbingly common – so common that we have in many ways stopped taking it
seriously. All of us are cognizant of the fact that we are in no place to cast
the first stone so we instead offer half-hearted platitudes about not being
defined by our sin, and about victory in Jesus and hope it takes care of
itself. We may talk about accountability but rare is the time when I’ve seen
accountability that has teeth and instead I witnessed many guys continue to
struggle in these areas without victory for years afterward. Some of them even
losing their ministries, or their marriages because for years they were taught
implicitly that it’s not that big of a deal.
Too often in the church we are just like those guys in my
dorm. We don’t want to take people’s sin very seriously because we don’t want
them to feel bad and because we know deep down that the sword cuts both ways –
the standard to which we hold each other will be the standard to which we are
also held – and that scares the crap out of us.
When someone in the church comes to you confessing sexual
sin, or when someone in the church is caught in the midst of sexual sin and it
is brought to your attention – do not make light of it. Do not turn a blind
eye, and simply misquote passages like Romans chapter 8, or John chapter 8 that
talk about the lack of Condemnation that there is in Christ. Certainly there is
forgiveness (and even restoration!) for those who earnestly repent and turn
from their sin – but too often we extend that grace without requiring anything
from the sinner. We offer cheap grace that comes at no cost of life
transformation; we offer cheap forgiveness that is not won through suffering
and angst. We make a mockery of the standards of God because we’re supposed to
be “nice” people.
Part of raising our expectations which we talked about
last week is to raise our expectations for righteousness. To (as Paul says in
Romans) no longer conform to the pattern of this world, but instead be
transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Certainly my opening statement about finding it easier to be righteous
amongst non-believers than the church has been tempered by my role and
expectations as a Pastor over the past 9 years – but that is the problem. We
don’t have high enough expectations of righteousness in the church – we’re more
interested in being nice, but the world DOES hold us to our convictions in a
better way. They may not hold each other to the righteousness of Christ, but if
you come out as a Christian, believe me – your secular friends will notice when
your lifestyle doesn’t comport to what you preach. I have always found that
significant exposure to unbelievers has sharpened my personal holiness, whereas
being immersed in a Christian community of peers has dulled it; friends, that
shouldn’t be so, and that’s exactly why Paul is so hard on the Corinthians
here. He bemoans the fact that even the Pagans don’t tolerate such behavior so
why it is the people of God have such low standards? Why can we be so cavalier
about overlooking fornication, adultery, pornography, sexual exploitation and
many other types of sexual sin by people in the church? Especially when we’re
so hard on the exact same behaviour from people in the world? Which brings us
to the second guideline for dealing with sexual sin in the church:
2.
Don’t Deflect
In their landmark 2007 work Un Christian
based on research from the Barna group, David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons identify
with sobering bluntness the what the emerging generations of young adults
believe about the church and Christianity. In the book they outline six broad
themes that the unbelieving world ascribe to the Christian church in North
America. Three of those six themes have direct connections to the how the
church has handled matters of sexuality.
Kinnaman and Lyons rightly identify that
the emerging generations of the unbelieving world see the church as overtly
judgemental, hypocritical and anti-homosexual. In other words, the church today
is still dealing with the same problems that Paul was addressing in first
century Corinth. Paul continues a little later on:
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.”
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 (NIV)
Too often we, like the Corinthians with a great deal of
arrogance focus all of our time and attention on the ills of society. We focus
on the breakdown of marriages, the moral laxity of the media, and the growing
acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. We make signs, we call into radio
shows, we allow these things to define our politics and we keep people who
desperately need Jesus at arm’s length because we don’t want to associate with
people such as them. All the while we learn that there is no statistical
significance in the difference in divorce rates between Christians and non
Christians. That there is no statistical difference in the stats on usage of
pornography between Christians and non Christians, the media content that we
are deriding as moral filth finds its way on to the TV screens of plenty of
families in the church and real sin of homosexuality (which is simply sex
outside of the context of a biblically defined marriage relationship) happens
just as much in the church through fornication, adultery and other deviant
behaviours as it does in the world. Is it any wonder that the watching world calls
us judgmental, antihomosexual, hypocrites?
Paul takes the Corinthians to task for the way they are
prone to deflect attention from their own sinful behaviours by pointing out the
sordid activities of the pagan world around them. He knows that what they are
really doing is evading the question of their own righteousness or lack
thereof. It’s not about the way the world operates, is about the way the church
operates – and as long as the church continues to be obsessed with the
wickedness of society it will continue to ignore the very same sins occurring
within its own congregation. We need to get past the taboo fake plastic facades
that we all build and maintain in the church with exhausting precision. We are
broken, messed up, sinful people and we need help. Unless we are courageous
enough to confess and bold enough to confront we will continue to sweep sin
under the rug like the Corinthians did and poison the church from the inside
out. More than that we will continue to live up to the labels the world places
upon us by being nothing but a bunch of judgmental hypocrites who fail utterly
to practice what we preach. We need to start taking this stuff seriously in our
own congregation because if we don’t the world won’t take us seriously either
when we call them to a higher standard.
Lastly this morning we need so desperately to hear the
exhortation of Paul:
3.
Don’t believe that it’s only
personal sin
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.
1 Corinthians 5:6-8 (NIV)
The imagery that Paul uses is
designed to make the Corinthian Christians think about the Jewish Passover.
According to the traditions of Passover the bread was made without leaven
because the Israelites were to eat and run before Pharaoh would change his mind
and pursue them as they left. And to this day, Orthodox Jews re-enact that
aspect of the Passover celebration by purging their house of leaven. And I’m
not just talking about only serving unleavened bread at the meal – I mean that
the house is free of it. Orthodox Jewish women will spend the entire week
leading up to the Passover celebrations cleaning their house so not a grain of
yeast or leavened bread products (called Chametz) remain in the home. As Rachel Evans in her book “A Year of Biblical
Womanhood” describes:
Chametz refers to leavened bread, any food made of grain
and water that has been allowed to ferment and rise. This includes bread,
cereal, cookies, pizza, pasta, beer, and just about every processed food on the
market. The Bible instructs Jewish people to eliminate chametz from their diets
during Passover to commemorate the haste with which their ancestors fled Egypt
(Exodus 13: 3; 12: 20; Deuteronomy 16: 3). As the story goes, the Israelites
left in such a hurry, their bread didn’t have time to rise, so it was brought
with them as flat, unleavened cakes called matzah. The penalty for
intentionally eating a piece of chametz the size of an olive or bigger during
Passover was to be “cut off from Israel” (Exodus 12: 15).
Paul is talking about this sort
of radical purity that is practiced around the time of Passover because even a
little bit of yeast can work its way through the dough and ruin the whole
loaf. He’s telling the Corinthians that
there is no such thing as personal sexual sin – it is always something that
affects the community. He picks this up again in chapter six with even more
force:
Do you not know that your bodies are
members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them
with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a
prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one
flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
Flee from sexual immorality. All other
sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins
against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the
Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your
own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.
1 Corinthians 6:15-20 (NIV)
There is something about Paul’s words here that while
hard to adequately convey in English are crystal clear in the original Greek.
Half way through this lecture about the dangers of becoming one flesh with a
prostitute Paul switches his pronouns here in a way that changes the focus from
the personal to the corporate. Paul begins by talking about the dangers of
participating in temple prostitution but then brings the whole thing back to
this original argument about the sin of the church. He points out that as we
are all united with Christ through the Holy Spirit, to become one flesh with a
prostitute is to bring the sinfulness of that union into the shared unity of
the body of Christ. There is no such thing as personal sin therefore, all sin,
especially sexual sin, is by its very nature corporate. Even sins that no one
else knows about will have spiritual implications (if not physical, relational
or legal implications) on the whole church. The yeast will work its way through
the whole batch of dough and the purity and usefulness of the church will be
compromised. This is why Paul is so concerned with the way the church is
dealing with this man caught in an incestuous relationship. His concern is not
primarily for the man himself, but for the church.
Biblical Scholar B.S. Rosner says it this way: “To state the purpose of church discipline
only in terms of motivating the repentance and restoration of the sinner... is
to miss much of Paul’s (and his Bible’s) teaching and seriously to truncate his
ecclesiology.”
Rosner, B.S. Paul Scripture and Ethics: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5-7.
1994. P 132
Make no mistake – your sin does not only affect you or even
those closest to you. Because you are united by the Spirit in the Body of
Christ your sin affects and infects the whole body. This is why Paul was so
angry with the Corinthians sweeping this man’s sin under the rug.
So
how do we deal with sexual sin in the church? How do we avoid the pitfalls of
the Corinthians and make the righteousness of God’s family a high priority
without turning every church gathering into a witch hunt for the elusive sinner
that we haven’t yet dealt with?
Instead Paul entreats the
Corinthians to deal with Sin with sober seriousness
First, I need to make clear right here before I go any
further that I am not preaching this message at anyone. I don’t know
specifically of any situation that this applies to and so if you feel like I’m
preaching at you this morning – I’m not, but be careful that you don’t dismiss
that feeling because perhaps the Holy Spirit is. All I’m doing is coming at
this text as it is plainly presented to us in the Scripture and trying to be
faithful to it.
Secondly we need to realize that the sin Paul is so vexed
about was willful, ongoing and unrepentant behaviour. This was not the person
who in a moment of weakness did something that was uncharacteristic and
regretful. In most cases what people need when they fall into sexual sin is
grace and accountability. And if they are genuinely repentant the church can be
a place of great healing as forgiveness is extended and freedom is granted
through the people of God holding the sinner to a higher standard of righteousness.
This is what Paul teaches the church in Galatia:
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.
Galatians 6:1 (NIV)
But there does come a time when
behaviour becomes habitual or compulsive and the conscience becomes deadened to
the wrongdoing and the sinfulness of the individual becomes a damning
indictment of the entire fellowship. It’s the unmarried couple in the church
that everyone knows is sleeping together because they share a one bedroom
apartment; It’s the man who’s car is parked out front of the peeler bar twice a
week; it’s the woman who is engaged to be married to her fifth husband after
four quickie divorces. These are the types of sins that a close knit church
community know about but too often turn a blind eye to. The ones who show up
every Sunday morning with shiny-happy faces who fit right into the community –
sometimes fitting so well that no one wants to disrupt the happy illusion we
are all living under, so we sweep their indiscretions under the rug and pretend
they are not there. Paul has scathing words for the church that acts this way:
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.
1 Corinthians 5:11 (NIV)
Paul even expands the list beyond sexual immorality to
other types of sinfulness. He makes it clear that the church is no place for
people who do not take their own personal righteousness seriously. So I turn it
back to you, and me and the man in the mirror and ask – what are we going to do
with this word from the Lord? Are we – like the Corinthians going to continue
to turn a blind eye to the things that are going on in our midst? Are we going
to keep sweeping the uncomfortable realities under the rug, or are we going to
grab a corner lift it up and get cleaning. You don’t need to stand in front of
the church like some people did a month or so back and confess your deepest
darkest sins to the whole congregation, but you have to come to a point where
you decide that the health and the vitality of the church is too important to keep
on walking in your sinfulness and that you’re going to do whatever it takes to
make things right. At the same time if you know of someone who is sinning –
especially with sexual sin because it is so destructive, that you will care
enough about them, and about the church to go to them with love and grace and
confront them. It also means that should, heaven forbid, the Elders of this
church come to a point where they are forced to enact church discipline on
someone who is unrepentant in their sinfulness – that you, valuing the holiness
of the church, will stand behind them and encourage and support them as they do
one of the hardest things a Christian leader has to do – cleaning under the
rug.
May the lord give us grace, wisdom and courage as we face
this call together.
I feel like the foolish spies who were dispatched into the promised land to survey the place God had prepared for his people. Spies that had witnessed the plagues in Egypt, who had seen God crush the armies of Pharaoh in the Red Sea while the children of Israel walked on dry land. Spies that had seen the presence of God come upon Moses, who had followed the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire, who had eaten manna in the wilderness and drank water from the rock. And yet, when they were on the cusp of reaching their destination, the very promise that all of these signs and wonders had been pointing to, they saw giants and lost their nerve.
