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I notice in the latest Aldi catalogue they're bringing in a whole bunch of those yellow
and black books in the series called "For Dummies".
They've got "Guitar for Dummies", they've got "Piano for Dummies", they've got "Accounting
for Dummies".
They've got "Dog Training for Dummies", there's "Currency Trading for Dummies", and one I
like the look of, "Digital Photography for Dummies".
If you haven't seen them, they're great books for beginners.
Or not quite beginners.
Although I guess to pick one up you've got to have a certain level of humility and be
ready to say, yep, when it comes to this topic, I'm ready for some help.
I'm maybe not as good at currency trading as I thought.
I'm a dummy.
So back to basics.
Here in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6, Paul's doing a similar thing.
A back to basics course in cross shaped living for dummies.
A remedial course for Christians in Corinth who maybe should have known better, though
at this point might not admit it.
It's a bit like the time when he was in first class we took our Nathan out of school for
a week to go on a family holiday.
And got back, he'd missed something fairly fundamental in the maths class.
He'd missed subtraction.
Which at that point they were calling take aways, which sounds so obvious.
So at the test at the end of the next week a quite confident Nathan got every question
wrong.
Ten take away seven.
So he just crossed out the seven and he took it away altogether.
Leaving the ten.
That's the answer.
Five take away two.
Okay, get rid of the two, that leaves five.
Absolutely confident.
But confidently wrong.
Now the church in Corinth, as we've seen the last couple of weeks, though they claimed
to be wise...
weren't quite as wise as they thought.
And in fact, are fundamentally just arrogant.
Pick up where we left off last week at the end of chapter 4.
Verse 18. "Some of you have become arrogant, as if I'm not coming to you."
But I am.
And into chapter 5, "You are proud," verse 2 in chapter 5.
When you should be in tears.
"Your boasting is not good."
Chapter 5 verse 6.
And so Paul sends them back to school with what we're going to see is a set of seven
basic lessons on the stuff they should have known.
If you look at the screen again, you'll see the overall structure of the passage highlighted
And the repeating phrase from Paul, do you not know.
This is back to basics stuff for such wise sounding Christians as the Corinthians, for
such proud and arrogant Christians, here's some stuff they just should have known by
now.
And you obviously don't.
So over and over again he's going to say to them, do you not know?
Don't you know this already?
It's cross-shaped living.
For dummies.
Let's start with the first one.
In chapter 5 verse 6.
Do you not know?
Do you not know, says Paul, that you're meant to be unmixed with the old stuff?
Here's how he puts it.
"Do you not know that a little bit of leaven works its way through a whole batch of dough?"
Which only starts making sense when you realise the leaven he's talking about that's working
its way through the Corinthian church, is that there's a bloke there in the church who's
having an affair with his stepmother.
And the rest of the church is saying, it's okay.
Nobody's taking a stand.
Nobody's saying to the guy, look, this just isn't right for a Christian.
Now our NIV Bibles have translated the word as yeast which I think works slightly differently,
because I gather the thing with leaven, having done my "Masterchef" homework, the thing with
leaven is that it's actually a lump of sour dough that's been taken from yesterday's dough.
Which was taken from the day before.
Which was taken from the day before that.
It's a little bit of the sour old stuff.
Mixed in with the new.
Lou's dad was a stockman.
And it was his job to do the camp cooking.
He's often talked about the blue stew, which was a bit the same, only with meat.
Today's dinner was yesterday's leftovers with a bit of extra meat thrown in the pot and
recooked.
So in Israel, you're making the bread.
How do you make it rise?
You grab the leaven...
the bit of fermenting dough that you've kept from yesterday's batch.
And you throw it in.
Which as it ferments and gives off its gasses is what rises your bread.
Now I've got no problems with sourdough bread.
It's delicious.
But the interesting thing with Israel was, every year at the passover, every year when
the passover lamb was sacrificed and its blood sprinkled on the Israelite doors,
ever year when they celebrated the way God had spared them from judgment because of the
blood of the lamb...
every year, that marked for them a whole new start.
In their breadmaking.
As well as everything else.
And so they'd throw out their lump of leaven.
And they'd get rid of all the leaven from their houses.
And they'd start again fresh.
Unleavened bread.
The sacrifice has been made.
So we're making a fresh start.
Do you not know that?
Isn't that on its own, says Paul, enough for you to know what you should do about a guy
in your church who's having it off with his stepmother?
See if you can figure it out.
Read from verse 6.
And this is lesson number 1.
"Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough?
Get rid of the old leaven that you may be a new batch without leaven - as you really
are.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and wickedness,
but with bread without leaven, the bread of sincerity [which literally means, judging
in sunlight] and truth."
This is basic.
You know what church is?
You know what you really are?
You're part of the new batch.
Unleavened by malice.
Unleavened by wickedness.
Unleavened by *** immorality.
Or you're meant to be, in the light of the cross.
Jesus didn't die for sin so we could do more of it.
He died for sin so we could be free from it and make a fresh start.
And we're the people who are meant to be showing that.
So Paul says, how can you be boasting...
about rank *** immorality?
Not just tolerating it: boasting.
Go back and look at verses 1 and 2.
So much for being different!
It is actually reported that there is *** immorality among you, and of a kind that does
not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife.
And you are proud!
Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship
the man who did this?
If you're wondering what he means in verse 5 when he says they should hand this man over
to satan, that's what he means.
Friends, you might not realise this.
You might not appreciate what you've got when you're part of the fellowship of God's people.
You might take it for granted.
Take it or leave it.
You might consider yourself part of the fellowship of God's people whenever you get around to
it or there isn't sport on for the kids and there's no Olympics on TV.
But for the apostle Paul there's no higher privilege than to be part of the fellowship
of God's saints: to be part of the church.
And there's no greater penalty...
than to be shut out.
To be told, as he's telling them to tell this guy, that he's no longer welcome.
And he's handed back over to the domain of Satan.
Back into the world.
In the hope, somehow, that he'll be brought back to his senses.
"With such a man don't even eat."
Now you might be thinking that's pretty harsh.
You might be thinking that for a church to do that it would have to be full of self righteous
types who think they're somehow better than everyone else.
But you'd be wrong.
As we'll see in a minute, Corinth is a church full of ex-es.
Full of people who used to be sexually immoral, who used to be idolater, who used to be adulterers,
who used to live a homosexual lifestyle, who used to be thieves and greedy and drunkards.
Before they were washed and sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and
by the Spirit.
Which is all there a few verses on in 6 verse 11.
So the point is not what your past is.
I was thinking the other day that story Jesus tells about the runaway son who comes home,
his dad doesn't say to him, gee you smell of pig manure.
He says, put on these new clothes and let's celebrate.
Paul says to them, that's what some of you were.
But now's the time, in the light of the cross, in the light of God's mercy, now's the time
not to celebrate the guy who's been having it off with his step mum.
Now's the time to say, we're meant to be different.
And we mean it.
Instead of letting the old leaven creep back through the dough.
Don't mix.
The thing we're not meant to mix with is hypocrisy.
With people who claim to be Christian, who present themselves as part of the church,
who pretend to be forgiven sinners making a new start...
when really they're just making excuses to do what they like.
It's hypocrisy Paul's eliminating.
And most especially, he's not telling them to make a Christian ghetto and act all shocked
about how bad the world is.
It's always been that way.
We're meant to be in it like salt and light.
Follow in verse 9 and 10.
"I have written 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."
He says, "In that case you would have to leave this world."
I'm not saying that.
But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself
a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or
a swindler.
With such a man do not even eat.
See that?
Call yourself a brother.
Or a sister.
Claim the name Christian.
And it's a commitment you're making to Jesus and to one another to walk away from that
stuff.
Not just *** immorality.
Greed.
Slander.
Shady business deals.
If you're here today and you're calling yourself a brother or a sister and there's no commitment
to get rid of that stuff in your life, you're here under false pretences.
If you're using the name Christian as a cover for your own corruption, you've got to know,
you're not welcome here.
The irony is, you're more than welcome...
if you're not a Christian yet.
It's just that you're not welcome to pretend.
We love having people at church who are thinking through what the Christian faith is all about.
And you'll be coming from all kinds of backgrounds.
It's just that when the line gets drawn, and it'll be up to you to draw it...
when you commit to Jesus, then it's a commitment to cross-shaped living.
And there's no more pretending.
Paul says, verse 12, "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 man from among you.""
In other words, the church needs to stop telling the world what to do and start showing them
what it looks like to be different.
Being what God's church is meant to be.
Do you not know you're meant to be the new batch?
Now we need to move on.
That was do you not know number 1.
Six to go.
But the good news is they come it batches.
And so at the start of chapter 6, two in a row...
that are all about judging.
Which is what the Corinthians keep getting wrong.
Cross-shaped living for dummies.
Do you not know, number 2 and 3.
6 v 2 "Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases?
Do you not know that we will judge angels?
How much more the things of this life!"
Daniel Chapter 7 verse 22.
We looked at it with Gary a month or so back.
The vision of the Son of Man coming to rule at the right hand of God in glory.
And then it says in verse 22, "And judgement was given to the saints of the most high God."
That's the promise.
Don't you know that the people of God, that the saints of the most high God...
will ultimately - in the new creation - rule with him?
Judge beside him.
Don't you know that, you Corinthians?
If you're so smart?
Don't you know you'll judge the world?
Don't you know you'll even judge angels?
So here's their next dumb problem.
Where they're not putting the basics into practice...
How come then, you're taking one another to judgment...
in front of pagans?
The story is, one Christian has ripped off another Christian.
And so the ripped off guy is taking him to the civil court.
Brother against brother.
I heard about one situation like that where there was a land deal that went wrong.
Two Christians.
One of them an elder in his church.
And he just wouldn't let it go.
He'd been wronged.
And he was going to do whatever it took in the legal system to get even.
More to the point, the other guy...
just wouldn't let it go either.
Insisted he was totally within his rights.
And so it went to court.
In a small Queensland town where everybody knew...
these guys say they're the Christians.
You know what Paul says?
In cases like that, in cases of trivia like that, he says, surely...
you Corinthians can sort things out among yourselves without dragging it in front of
outsiders.
Don't you know that one day you're going to judge the world?
Don't you know that one day you're going to judge the angels?
Surely you could get in a bit of practice and sort out whether Barry did the right thing
by Eric or not when Eric says Barry over-charged for the kitchen tiling.
And surely, Barry, surely you didn't?
You wouldn't?
In the Corinthian church, you can't be sure about anything.
And so Barry and Eric are off to court, tooth and nail.
We're off to ask some unjust unbelievers to do justice for us.
And do the judging for us.
Paul says, this is shameful.
Surely, verse 5, there's someone among you...
wise enough...
you wise Corinthians...
surely there's someone wise enough to judge a dispute between believers?
But instead, verse 6, one brother goes for judgement against another - and this in front
of unbelievers!
Why not be cross-shaped instead?
See, although he was perfectly innocent...
the Lord Jesus raised no objection.
As he went to the cross.
Although he had no debt to pay...
he paid our debt.
In full.
Took our sin on himself.
Let me tell you, from his point of view, it wasn't fair.
It was our benefit.
At his expense.
And he didn't complain.
Now wouldn't you expect, if you say you're a brother, if you say you're living for Jesus,
that some of that attitude might rub off a little in daily life?
Wouldn't it occur to you, for example, that you might actually be able to show people
something of the gospel...
by the way you respond to injustice.
That you might actually graciously bear it...
if someone takes advantage of you.
Benefits at your expense?
Not the Corinthians though.
"The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated
already.
Why not rather be wronged?
[That's cross-shaped!
] Why not rather be cheated?
Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers."
Which brings us to number 4 in "Cross-Shaped Living for Dummies," the next do you not know,
and it's in chapter 6 verse 9.
And we've touched on it already.
Verse 9 in chapter 6, do you not know, in the list of obvious things they've missed
out on, do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God.
So don't be fooled, says Paul.
Into thinking you can stay sexually immoral.
Or stay a swindler.
Or stay in your homosexual lifestyle.
Because what Jesus has done is all about putting that stuff in the past.
And the key verse is...
"And that's what some of you were..."
But you were washed.
You were sanctified.
Made part of God's holy people.
You were, you have been, justified, counted righteous in God's eyes.
Jesus died for you, the Spirit's renewing you.
Why stay where you were?
And finally, three on the same theme.
Do you not know that what you do with your body actually matters.
Said in three different ways.
The Corinthians are thinking Jesus died for them so they can do anything they like with
their bodies.
That Jesus died for them so their spirits are safe on the last day, and that from now
until then, what they do with their bodies doesn't matter.
Feed them, sex them, alcohol them, drug them as much as you like.
Because bodies don't matter.
Here's what they're saying.
Verse 12.
Everything is permissible for me.
I can do what I like.
Here's what they're saying...
Verse 13.
"Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, God will destroy them both."
To which Paul says, do you not know?
Because you should!
Verse 15.
Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?
Shall I take the members of Christ and unite them with a ***?
Never!
Do you not know that if you unite yourself with a *** you're one with her in body?
(For it is said, The two will become one flesh?)
There's something about a *** connection, that it's never casual, is it?
So you've got this bizarre scenario of the guy who's one in spirit with the Lord Jesus...
becoming one in flesh with a ***...
and saying that somehow it just doesn't matter.
Guys, I'm not sure you'd do it at Fortitude Valley, would you, if you had Jesus in the
car with you.
Well, Paul says it's more than that.
If you've put your faith in Jesus then you're one with him in spirit.
So flee from *** immorality.
It matters.
Guys.
Flee it.
Ladies.
Flee it.
Don't even think about it.
Don't even start reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" just because all the other school mums
are loving it.
The final do you not know.
Don't you know, verse 19, "Do you not know that your body is a temple 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 body."
See, here's the secret to the cross-shaped life.
You keep thinking you belong to you.
You think you'll do what's fun for you, what advantages you, what's enjoyable in the moment.
Whether it's an affair with your attractive looking young step mother when your dad's
out of town, whether it's ripping off your Christian brother in a shonky business deal,
whether it's borrowing and not paying back, whether it's spending a night with a ***
or with Pornstars Online, if it feels good, you'll do it.
And the wise Corinthian church says, yep, that's the way it is.
Whereas for Paul it's exactly the opposite.
And he says, it's not about you and gratifying your body.
You were bought at a price, and that price was the cross where the body of Jesus was
broken for you.
So the very least you can do...
is honour God with your body.
Live your life aware that God's spirit is there with you doing all that you can to bring
honour to the gospel with your body and your gracious actions and your gracious words rather
than disgrace.
Taking seriously God's church.
Not a club for the proud and self righteous;
but serious about walking away from sin and not towards it.
You may not know much about Christianity.
You may not think of yourselves as wise.
But at least if you know that much...
then you're living a cross-shaped life.
And you're seven steps ahead of the Christians in Corinth.
Let's encourage one another to keep it that way.