Continuing to look here in 1
Corinthians, we looked at chapter 4 last week. And Paul had admonished
them to be followers of him, not as those who or followers
in a blind sense or following him because he thought himself
to be cut above others or that he wanted a following per se,
but he admonished them to follow him because he had demonstrated
to them that he didn't want to follow him. Now, you know, it's
been said that the man who is most fit to lead is the one who
doesn't want to lead. And the man that wants to lead
is usually the one that's not fit to lead because he's usually
driven by things other than a desire for the benefit of those whom
he would lead. So, Paul was in a measure in
that way. Now, he was not in any wise Did he draw back from doing what
the Lord said? But he didn't ever want to give
the impression that he was something when he was nothing. When he
told everyone else the various things, he said, let not a man
think of himself as being something when he is nothing. And we all
know that in reality, we don't know much. We think we know a
lot more than we do, but down deep in the recesses of our heart,
if we've been taught by the Spirit of God, we know how little we
actually do know. You know, we've become acquainted
with what we are by nature. And so, he says to them in the
closing verses of chapter 4, he said, For the kingdom of God
is not in word, but in power. And he said, What will ye? Do
ye want me to come to you? Shall I come to you with a rod,
that is, with a chastening hand in wrath? Or shall I come to you in the
spirit of meekness? Now he is saying this because
he is fixing to approach a subject with them that is very I suppose
you would say a very delicate matter in some ways, but yet
it is nonetheless one that was a problem among them, and there
are several lessons we can learn from this as he begins to point
this problem out to them. And so may the Lord give us a
grace that we might recognize what it is that the Lord would
teach us as He set this forth. Now, I've said this before, but
this is a good example of the fact that the Scriptures, as
the Lord has given them, are an evidence of the fact that
the Scriptures are not the product of men in their way of thinking
as men would think religiously is the fact that there is so
much of the corruption of those people whom the Lord has owned
as His own that is manifested in its pages. Now, most of the
time when somebody is a hero in a book or whatever, you only
hear the good stuff that they do. But the Lord just puts out
there on display what men are by nature, even those whom He
says, I love you, and He draws them unto Himself, even as He
did with David. I mean, David probably is one
of the most heroic figures in the Scriptures, wouldn't you
say? I mean, if you had to pick somebody out of the Old Testament
that was just typical of a man of faith, I mean a man of devotion
to the Lord and whatever, but the Lord put David's wickedness
on display for all to see. And He didn't hide it at all.
He put it out there just like it was. And so therefore, we
can be certain that These things did not arise from the workings
of men as far as the writing of the Scripture is concerned,
or they would have left that part out. Because who would have
wanted us to consider David in that light? In the same way,
Paul comes up here and he is speaking to these Corinthians
about a very delicate issue. He says, It is reported commonly
that there is fornication among you. And such fornication as
is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should
have his father's wife." Now, as we pause and consider that
word fornication, now that is a word you don't hear spoken
very often nowadays, because that's a thing that by and large
people don't even give two thoughts to. Now what is that? Well, of
course, the word that is used here is really a word that is
used throughout the Scriptures in several places, and it really
relates to any form of sexual impurity. Now, in this particular
case, it is speaking about a sexual relationship that is not acceptable
in any way. Now there is a sexual relationship
among men and women that is very acceptable before the Lord, but
it is only one. There is only one sexual relationship
between men and women that is acceptable in the sight of the
Lord, and that is in the bonds and commitment of marriage. That's the only place in the
Scripture where the Lord ever approves of a sexual relationship
between a man and a woman. It's not what men think about
it. It's not what society accepts. Now, today our society, that's
about a joke. I mean, there's nothing that's
farther from the consideration of our society than what I just
said right there. I mean, that's old-fashioned.
Oh, you know, that's the way it used to be. Well, the reality
is that there's never been a time or a place among men on the earth
when men regarded that as a whole as the Lord has set it forth.
Now there have been times when our society has at least paid
lip service to saying that that was proper. Now we do not even
pay lip service to it. I mean, you know, it is not even
thought about much anymore. But the reality is that man has
been in rebellion against God from the beginning. And this
is one of the places and one of the ways that his rebellion
against God is most readily and often violated and disregarded. Now, because man violates and
disregards what God has said about these things does not in
any way change what God said about it or what is acceptable
in the sight of the Lord or what God's people ought to consider
as being acceptable unto the Lord. And so what Paul is speaking
about here, he says, it is reported commonly there is fornication
among you. Now, he is saying that in this
sense, and keep in mind that these Corinthians were primarily
Gentiles. They were not raised up under
the law. of Moses, they were not raised
up with the customs of the Jews. Now among the Jews, that was
sexual relations outside of marriage was a thing that was a taboo. Now that does not mean that they
all abided by that, but it just means that they understood that
the Lord taught that that was not to be done. So there was
not just open sexuality, just so that men and women came together
in any form they wanted to or at any time they wanted to. That
wasn't received or accepted among the Jews. But among the Gentiles,
they didn't really have any restrictions about that at all. And so what
we see today It is basically the attitude and thought process
that Gentiles had about this matter. Now, so Paul says it
is reported commonly there is fornication among them. Now,
he is not approving it, he is saying it is commonly reported. Some people have spoken about
it. But he said, what I'm fixing
to talk to you about, he said, that's bad enough. He said it's
bad enough that there would ever be the mention of fornication
among the people of God, those that claim to be the followers
of Christ. But he said, what I'm talking
about here is fornication not just from the Jewish perspective,
But he says, I'm talking to you about an improper sexual relationship
that is not even acceptable among the Gentiles. In other words,
this one I'm talking about here, he said, is not something that
even they would approve of, let alone the Jews. But he said,
and this is what it is. He says that a man should have
his father's wife. That is, he married his own stepmother. Now that's, or I say he married
her, I don't know that he married her in the strictest sense of
the word, but he was at least having an improper relationship
with his own stepmother. And so he points that out, he
said this is the thing that He says, this ought to cause somebody
to gasp just to think about it. And then he says, but you're
puffed up. He says, you're not brokenhearted
about this. He says, and you're puffed up
and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might
be taken away from among you. He said, you've thought about
this just like You would think about it as just a Gentile without
any regard to the Word of God. He said, you haven't done anything
about this. You've just approved of it. And
you've known that it's going along. You've known it. See,
what he's pointing out here to them is not something that was
done in secret, but something that was done openly. It's something
that they knew about. It's something that they saw
daily. And they didn't say anything about it or whatever. And so
he says, you're puffed up. Rather than mourning about this
and being sad about it, he said that the one that had done this
deed might be called out from your midst and shamed about this
situation. He said you didn't say anything
about it. He said, for verily it is absent in the body, but
present in the spirit have judged already. as though I were present
concerning him that done this deed." He says, I don't need
to be there to know that what I'm telling you here is the truth. He says, you know, if you stop
and think about the things that God has taught us in His Word,
you know that this is not to be acceptable. And so he says,
I don't have to be there to see and say that it is so. In the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together,
and my Spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to
deliver such in one unto Satan, for the destruction of the flesh,
that the Spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glory is not good, know
ye not, that a little leaven liveneth the old lump? Purge
out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as
ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover
is sacrificed for us." Now, he said you need to do something
about this. He says your glory is not good. He said what you need to do And
what you should have done is delivered this brother. Now,
he's not talking about somebody out here in the world. He's not
saying, now, you need to mount up a citizen's committee and
go down here to old Joe and say something to him about what he's
doing. We've not been sent into the world to take care of other
people's problems that are outside of the community of believers. But among the church, one another,
we are our brother's keepers and we are, when we know about
a situation that is like this or of that type of a nature,
we are to say something about it. We are not supposed to just
turn a blind eye to it. But we are to speak of it. Now
again, like I say, this is something they knew about. Now we're not
supposed to sit out here to go spying on one another. In other
words, I don't need to tap your phone or I need to go and look
and see what you're doing to find out what you're doing wrong
because I've got enough problems of my own. I don't need to be
worrying about what you're doing. But you see, something that's
open and in people's face, that you know about, you cannot turn
a blind eye to it. You have to deal with it, he
said. And he says, to deliver such
a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit
might be saved. Now, we can stop, and I'm going
to stop right there. Not I'm going to completely stop,
but I'm going to rest here in that verse for a moment. That's kind of a strange thing,
isn't it? I mean, I've heard all kinds of things that people
have said about this, to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction
of the flesh that the Spirit might be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus. Now, what does that mean? Well,
it's simply one thing that we have to understand. As we study the Scriptures, and
we've talked about this on numerous occasions, And that is that when
the Lord saves a man, when the Lord awakens a man, one of His
children, one of His elect that He has loved from before the
foundation of the world, that He has subjected unto vanity
and all of us have come into the world as sinners and we have
walked in the darkness of our sin, and the Lord comes along
and He awakens one of His children and causes him to be born from
above or born again, then there is a change that takes place
in that man, but there is not a change that takes place in
his flesh, because he is still the same old man that he was.
He still has the same old thoughts that he did. All of that stuff
is still there. He has been awakened by the Spirit
of God so that He has been made a new creature in Jesus Christ. He is a new man. He is not the
same old man that He was. But that same flesh in which
He has dwelt from the time He was born into this world is still
just like it always has been. And it will be that way until
it is put into the grave. But we as the children of God
and awakened by the Spirit of God and stirred by the Spirit
of God are engaged in a conflict between the Spirit and the flesh. And it's going to remain such.
Now a man that's without that struggle, then he's dead. Because men that are dead, they
don't struggle with anything, do they? I mean, have you ever
walked by the cemetery and seen the ground moving around out
there? No. It's just as still as it can
be. You can sit out there and listen. You'll never hear anything,
except maybe a bird tweeting or something. But you're not
going to hear anything from the dead, and you're not going to
find a dead man who's dead in his trespasses and sins struggling
with righteousness and desiring righteousness. and hating his
sin and hating the corruption that's in him by nature. You're
not going to find that. He's not going to be that way.
So he says here, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to
deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
Now what's he saying? Now he's obviously speaking about
a brother in Christ. He's not speaking about someone
who is outside of Christ, but he's talking about a brother
in Christ. He says, I want you to deliver him up to Satan. That
is, I want you to shame him. I want you to turn him over to
Satan. Well, just go on and do that.
Now, if you take one of God's children and you say, all right,
well, we're just going to give you back over to Satan, wasn't
that the last thing on earth that he would want, isn't it?
To be under the power of Satan? To be out from under the love
and care of the church and to be cast out of its midst? I mean,
I wouldn't want the church to come to me and say, well, brother,
we've done with you. We're just turning you over to
the devil. He can have you. That would cause me great fear,
would it not? Of course it would if I loved
the things of God. Now, if I don't care about the
things of God, what do I do? I say, well, just go on and do
whatever you want to do. Y'all think y'all something?
No, you see, somebody that loves the people of God and loves the
Word of God, when the people of God come together and recognize
that something that's in my life is detrimental not only to the
cause of Christ but to me, and they love me enough to say, well,
we're casting you out of our midst, that's going to cause
a Destruction of the flesh, is it not? I mean, that's going
to cause me to say, oh man, look at what I am. Now that's if I'm
alive. If I'm dead, it's not going to
do anything but make me mad, maybe. And I'll just go find
me another church somewhere where they're not so judgmental. You know, we'll just go somewhere
else so we can keep on doing what we're doing. The purpose
of what Paul's speaking about here is not so that the man might
keep on doing what he's doing, but so that he might come face
to face with it and he can't escape from what he's doing and
he might see it for what it is. Because you know sometimes when
you just sweep stuff under the rug, you don't know about it,
do you? I mean, you can kind of fool
yourself. I mean, if everybody else seems to think it's all
right, you get to thinking it's all right. But when God's people
recognize something as being opposed to the things of God
and they point that out, then that's for the purpose of the
benefit of the brother. Now, the whole purpose of what
Paul is writing about here is not to destroy the man or to
send him off into despair. But it says that he might be
saved, that he might be brought to repentance as we are going
to see later on and we see does occur later on as Paul recounts
in the next epistle to the Corinthians. This was the case because that
is the whole purpose of church discipline if you want to call
it that. That is what people have termed
it is, if you want to call it that. That's the whole purpose
of it is for God's people to be brought to repentance. It's
not just so we can go, you shouldn't have done that, you know. That's
not the thing that we're seeking to do. What we want to do is
see somebody recovered. We want somebody to recognize
what it is that they have done and repent of it. And that's the whole purpose.
You know, that's the whole purpose of the discipline of the church. That's the whole purpose of what
Paul said here. He said that the flesh might be destroyed,
that we might see, that the man might see his flesh to be exactly
what it is, corrupt, sinful flesh, and they might turn from it,
that the Spirit might be saved in the day of Jesus Christ. Because
he might be made to be aware of what that is. May the Lord
help us. And we just really got going
on that. But you know, to think about
that, I mean, think about the whole concept really today of
how we view sexual relationships between
men and women. It's amazing how much the mindset
of God's people has been swayed by the world. I mean, we accept
things in our own mind. Now, I'm not talking about going
out here and trying to disrupt people's lives, but I'm talking
about how we consider it. What did God say about it? Do
I have the right them to change that because it doesn't suit
me or it doesn't suit society, not at all. And of course, you
know, there's a multitude of issues that fall into that.