MORAL SINS HINDER CHURCH GROWTH

37-3650

TEXT – I CORINTHIANS 5:1-8

INTRODUCTION;

  1. What is the world is a church to do when there is a huge scandal-taking place involving one of the members? Such scandalous behavior can come in many different forms, from some business deal involving a church member that turns sour and is all over the news for everyone to see.
  2. Think of what it does to a church when the word gets out that someone who is a leader in the church has sexually assaulted a child in the congregation. Think of what happens when the person goes to prison for the crime and ten years later is released and returns to the church with his family.
  3. Most everyone has at least heard of those times when some well known and respected preacher gets involved with one of the women in the church and has an affair. Word spreads like a forest fire in the dry season on a windy day.
  4. Part of what makes the Bible so realistic is that it goes right to the heart of such issues and lays them out in front of us. Here was a church of God, with people called to be saints and sanctified in Christ Jesus. They were God’s field and God’s building. They were the very temple of God that is holy in which the Spirit of God dwells. But they had a man who was an active member of the congregation and probably one of their leaders who was having a sexual affair with his own stepmother.

DISCUSSION:

  1. INSTEAD OF DROPPING THEIR HEADS IN SHAME, THEY WERE PROUD.
  2. There are a lot of details we aren’t given. How long had this been going on? Was the father still alive or had he passed on and left behind a young widow the same age as his son who had a crush on her from the start? Had the word come to the church about the whole sordid affair and the man denied it or had he accepted the charge as real but declared that since they weren’t to judge and that they accepted each other out of grace they should accept this man and show him their love as one of their family.
  3. What we know is that the sin was ongoing and that the church had learned about the problem but instead of reacting to what they learned by horror they had taken it in their stride and were even proud of their leniency.
  4. Paul laid out some very practical lessons in this chapter that we usually don’t want to hear but need to be kept in view in all generations.
  5. Influence matters. When our witness for Christ doesn’t match with the life we are living, no one will believe our witness. Besides that “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.”
  6. An Embrace isn’t always the proper response. He didn’t need comforting in his sin or told how much he mattered to the church. It was time for confrontation and action.
  7. See Galatians 2 when Paul confronted Peter.
  8. Titus 3:9-10
  9. Acts 5
  10. Here Paul told them they needed to put the man out from among them, so that his soul might be saved. Turn him over to Satan. Allow him to see how far down his sin has carried him.
  11. What happens in the Day of Judgment is more important that saving someone’s feeling or keeping things tranquil at church.
  12. MIXED UNDERSTANDING OF PAUL’S MESSAGE HURTS.
  13. He had written to them on an earlier occasion to not fellowship with immoral people. They thought he meant not to fellowship with the people in the world who were being immoral.
  14. They were putting on some kind of campaign against immoral living in the world.
  15. Maybe they were marching against abortion or the mistreatment of women in the Roman Empire.
  16. There were definitely things in the government that needed to be confronted and corrected. Their disregard for human life was horrible.
  17. But Paul makes a powerful point that Christians in our time need to get as much as they needed it then.
  18. Our job isn’t to correct the morals of the people in the world. When people reject God and His will they definitely will reject the moral standards he lays down for Christians.
  19. Instead of marches, campaigns, letter writing or trying to get legislation passed to correct all the problems in the world, God tells us we need to focus our attention on how people are living who are in the church.
  20. If we avoid all immoral and ungodly behavior in the world we will have to get out of the world, become a hermit or live in isolation. Verse 9-10
  21. Notice that he tied together with immoral behavior several other sins that we don’t tend to see as quite so serious. He put covetousness, swindlers, and idolaters all in the same boat.
  22. ACTUALLY, I’M WRITING ABOUT SO-CALLED BROTHERS AND SISTERS. VS. 11-13
  23. Don’t associate with a brother who is Immoral!
  24. Or covetous
  25. Or idolaters
  26. Or revilers
  27. Or a drunkard
  28. Or a swindler
  29. Don’t even eat with folks who are in the church living in these sins.
  30. For What Have I to do with judging outsiders.
  31. Do you not judge those who are within the church?
  32. But those on the outside, God judge them.
  33. But as a church when there are ungodly sinners in the middle of us we are to “REMOVE THAT WICKED PERSON FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.”
  34. It protects the church.
  35. It puts the salvation of the sinner ahead of all activities in their life. We should be ready to risk all to follow Jesus.
  36. CONCLUSION:
  37. Not all sin is treated the same in Scripture.
  38. Some sins are of such a heinous nature that they deserve special attention form us.
  39. Immoral behavior is running rampant in our society and around the world. We need the courage to take the stand God calls his church to take against sin of all kinds.