right through 1 Corinthians. So if we come to 5.9, I'm gonna read as far as the beginning of 6.9. Please give your attention to the word of God. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters. Since then, you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pretending to this life? So if you have such cases, why do you lay them before those who have no standing in the church? I say this to your shame. Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers? But brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers? To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? But do yourselves wrong and defraud, even your own brothers? Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Now, what we see here is what a high view of the church we are to have. Sort of undergirding the entire section. There's a very high view of the church. It tells us, first of all, that Christians are not to stay away from the church. It's what Jesus is building in the world. That's his project, to build his church, against which the gates of hell will not stand. If that, then, is Christ's project, it's where Christ expects Christians to be. So he says, do you have a grievance with another Christian? Well, go to church to find a judge. That's where you should find a good one. And the church, it's so important that it be kept pure, that just as the Jew was to remove leaven from his house before Passover, so the church is to remove the sinner who will repent from its midst. And so we see here a way in which we live out the kingdom. We're to protect the purity of the church, and we're to exalt the glory of our King. He says, because the church is so important, Christians are not to associate with a false brother who's guilty of gross sin. We begin at verse nine in chapter five. He says, in my letter. He's obviously talking about some prior letter. All right, so he wrote some prior letter that's not been preserved for us. God has preserved what is sufficient for us. And in that letter, he says, don't associate with the sexually immoral. It seems that some had misunderstood him. And they're like, well, where are we supposed to go? Where are we going to talk to these fewer people? I've got to go buy some food in a marketplace. I've got to go to work. How am I going to get away from all the sexually immoral people? He says, I didn't mean in the world. That's not possible. You'd have to go out of the world. And she says, you're not to go out of the world. We're to be salt and light in the world. So certainly, we have to talk to all kinds of people. He says, what I mean, what I meant and mean is, you don't have to associate with any so-called brother if he's sexually immoral or guilty of several other evils. Of course, you need to get your facts straight. Should someone be accused to you, you don't instantly cut them off. There's a whole procedure for that. You need to find out what the facts are. There can be misunderstandings. There can be lies. There can be repentance. In fact, if the facts are there, the person is guilty of the sin, then you do appeal to the person to repent. Luke 17, if your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. And if it happens seven times in a day, forgive him every time. The urge is not to throw people out. It's to keep the church pure. And so in Matthew 18, describes, imagines three rounds of appealing to a person to repent, the gradually widening circle of those brought in to appeal for repentance. But should there be gross sin, duly checked out and true, should he be appealed to but not repent? Then he says, remove the evil person from among you. And he gives a list of immoral persons. There it is in verse 11, sexual immorality, or greed, or idolatry, or reviling, or drunkard, or a swindler. Probably not a complete list, but a weighty enough list to get our attention. You notice he's talking about things that are habitual, things that characterize a person. It's not just a one-off or a two-off, but this is what you see when you look at this person. So we're spending a little bit of time on each one to make sure we understand it. Sexual immorality. Sex is the gift that makes babies. And therefore it is to be enjoyed by those who are prepared to take care of any babies who might result. So therefore it is reserved to those who are married, husband and wife getting married. Once that commitment is made, you have signed up to take care of babies should they come along. And so we're not to engage in sex outside of that relationship. And so I remind you tonight that you're not to live with your boyfriend or girlfriend before you are married. We don't believe that you're not sinning. You certainly give the appearance of evil. You are not to live together, you're to get married. And of course you say, well, that's not possible. Well, you don't need to wait three years for a destination wedding. You don't need to wait three years to have that expensive photo package. You can have your buddy with a camera phone there taking pictures. You don't need to wait. You know you're going to get married? Great! When are you going to get married? Let's get on with it. Among the sins forbidden in the seventh commandment, according to the larger catechism, is undue delay of marriage. Sexual immorality is not to characterize us. Then he goes on to the word greedy. You might better understand what he means by greed. Some of you might be nervous. You can't eat just one chip. Is this what we're talking about? Well, no. In context, when we go on to talk about lawsuits, we're probably talking about money. Greed for money. Lawsuits are a way to get money. Oh, you stepped on my foot, broke my foot. I'm going to sue you for $50,000 for my broken foot. That kind of greed. Those who are characterized by a shading chasing after money. And so, since we're in America in 2023, let me point out a way in which greed is urged upon you. I refer to gambling. You know, gambling used to be this, like, faraway thing that you had to go to Atlantic City to do. And now you can't watch a sporting event without being urged to gamble. You can't listen to a sports talk show without, like, all the ads are gamble, gamble, gamble. We'll give you money up front to get started. You want to reflect on a business that is so profitable that they can give you money to start. They're very confident that if they can get you gambling that they're going to make money on you. Aren't they? Real confident. That should make you say, I don't need to be part of this business. If you're that confident, you're going to make money off of me. But never mind that part of it. I'm going to talk about the sin part of it. What are you trying to achieve when you gamble? It's an appeal to your greed. Instead of simply watching the game for the love of the eagles, you're sitting there trying to make money. It's an appeal to your greed. Remind you that gambling is a sin. Stay clear of it. Not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's guilty of immorality or greed or is an idolater. Remember not to play around with statues and pictures and icons of those who are of religious matters. It doesn't matter if it's Christian stuff, that might make it worse. It doesn't matter if it's Mary. You have to stay clear of idolatry. It's the kind of thing that kind of sneaks up on you, I think. You probably don't set out to say, let me set up this statue and bow down to it. You probably just say, well, you know, that picture, that icon on the wall, it's a religious theme. I feel religious when I see it. Stay away from idolatry. And stay away from reviling. A reviler is someone who goes around tearing people down. And that can kind of sneak up on you. You can just be giving helpful criticism and warning people. And the next thing you know, it's, well, somebody's saying to your brother, you tear down a lot of people. There's a lot of reviling going on. Reviling destroys unity. As it says in Titus 3.10, a man who causes divisions, warn him once or twice, then have nothing more to do with him. It's the same instruction here. or a drunkard. Well, that made the list. We should, of course, generalize. If you're not to be addicted to wine, well, then you're not to be addicted to marijuana or cocaine or meth or anything else. Now, we can be very sympathetic to people trapped by this. We should offer all kinds of help and great sympathy, but at the end of the day, the person needs to be delivered from it. And if they will not be delivered from it, as it says, we're in that area where we're not to Treat that person as a brother. The sin is characterizing the person. The purity of the kingdom is not being shown. It ends with Swindler. Swindler, there's a lot of ways to cheat people. You can cheat people with sexual immorality, that's a way of cheating people. There's all kinds of business schemes. He says if somebody's running a Ponzi scheme, that's a very evil thing to do. Not to be members in good standing in a church. those who would scheme their way to swindle other people out of their money. And so what are we to do? He says not to associate, not even to eat. You say that seems harsh, but he's just following Jesus. Jesus in Matthew 18, 17 says, if you will not repent when you go to him, if you will not repent when you and your common friend go to him, then tell it to the church. If he won't listen even to the church, Notice Jesus assumes that his people are in church. If you won't listen even to the church, then let them be to you like a Gentile and a tax collector. And if you say, okay, what does that mean? You put yourself back into who he's talking to and what that means, the religiously observant Jews he's talking to at that moment would not eat with a Gentile or a tax collector, not willingly. So that's, Paul's just drawing it out for you. This is what that means. And so at a formal level, not to eat with such a one as do not receive to the Lord's table, excommunicate or suspend. Then on a personal level, he's saying, and Christians are too, in their own conduct, gonna follow up on what the church decided. Not say, yeah, well, the church excommunicated you, but you and me are still brothers. It's like, well, you substituted your own judgment for the church's careful judgment. Since the goal is repentance, you can certainly talk to the person. We want you to talk to the person. You fix the person's tire. You do all kinds of help, but not imply that the brotherhood is still there and in good standing. You have to say, no, brother. I'm not sure I can call you brother. No, friend. You need to repent. Let me call you to repentance. If you won't repent, I can't call you or treat you as a brother. Hunter, last week, preaching in the first half of chapter five, he said, a sacrifice has occurred, Jesus, that removes guilt and gives us freedom. What does that freedom mean? To live as free men, the Bible says. What does that mean? Just as the Israelites escaped from Pharaoh, and we're not to go back to Pharaoh. So we are to view our sins as our Pharaohs. We are to escape from them. Because any sin that you let really take roots in your heart will begin to dominate you. It will begin to take over. It will tend to be the master. And that's the kind of mastery that we are to flee, that we've been set free from, and we're not to be living in it. And then to Clinch's argument, he doesn't quote Matthew. He could at this point. He could say, let me quote Matthew 18, 17, and you know what Jesus said, let him be. But instead, he quotes Deuteronomy. That purge the evil person from among you, That's a bit of a refrain in Deuteronomy. You get it at least six times. Purge the evil from your midst. That's an interesting thing to quote Deuteronomy. What he's saying is, what Israel was to do, that's what the church is to do. And that's a very high view of the church, because Israel was their country. That was their people. That was their nation. They had to have laws and figure out how to function as a nation. God gave them those laws. And then he's saying, yeah, and what Israel was to do, purge the evil person from among you, that's what the church is to do. So the church is, in a sense, to be our people. Church is key and important. As Israel was a covenant community and had to remove covenant breakers, so the church is a covenant community. You must remove covenant breakers. And as in Israel, you had to be concerned to deter other people from the sins, so in the church, we're concerned to deter other people from sins. Now, the church is gentler. Sometimes in Israel, the penalty was execution. We don't execute. That's not our role. But we excommunicate, and that is the other way of purging the sin from among you. So you notice this high view of the church. Ancient Israel was obviously important to ancient Israelites. And he takes those verses and applies it to us. Deuteronomy, purge the evil person from among you. He assumes it's so familiar to you, he doesn't even say, as it is written. He just says it, and you're supposed to know that that's written and said over and over again. You'll notice also, as he talks about God judges those outside, Your concern is not to have God's judgment fall on the church, so you put out those who are on the inside. There's a reason for church membership. There is to be an outside and an inside. You're supposed to know and be able to say, this is inside and this is outside. And membership is a way in which that is done. I'm not sure, I mean, if you don't have membership, you gotta invent it with another name, because how else are you gonna have an inside and an outside? So there's a reason, an argument here for church membership. What we're talking about is the topic called church discipline. And so important is that topic in the long run, that many of the reformers made church discipline one of the three marks of a true church. As I say, they were asking, how do you know you have a true church? Well, is the word of God preached? Number one. Do you have baptism in the Lord's Supper? Number two. And to have the Lord's Supper rightly, you need to have some church discipline, number three. So at least on some versions of the marks of the church, church discipline is one of those, just three essential marks. So in the chapter five, he says, do not associate with a false brother, a so-called brother, should he be guilty of and refuse to repent of some gross sin. And then in chapter six, he says, if you have a grievance with a brother, find a judge at church. Now he's not talking about criminal cases. He's not talking about the things that the state deals with. There are certain crimes where it's, of course, appropriate to call the cops. And it is perfectly fine to press charges. We get that in Romans 13. That's what the state is there for. So there's a time for that. He's talking here seemingly more about what's often called civil cases, as in you hire the contractor across the aisle to do your roof. And then he wants to get paid, and you say, I'm not paying you because it's still leaking. And he says, I worked hard on that roof. You're going to pay me. And that's a civil case. That's a civil case where somebody takes the other guy to court. So you've got to pay me. You didn't finish the roof. When I was on one of the chairs at the local Civic Association, McKinley Civic Association actually listed among its purposes to hear grievance. Very interesting. The insight is, hey, it's good if you can solve things locally. It's good if you can solve things in a neighborly way. It's good if you can solve problems without shelling out $250 an hour to a lawyer. It's cheaper. And if you can handle things in-house, great. And if that was the instinct of a local civic association, Paul here says, if you've got two Christians in the church and you've got a problem, pick a saint out to judge you. And he's reflecting the Old Testament, where if Moses or one of the kings appointed judges, he would also charge the judges, you are to judge righteously. You are to judge for God and not for men. You are not to take a bribe because a bribe will blind your eyes. You're to judge in the fear of God, not in the fear of people. In other words, the character of the judge was the key ingredient. And so Paul says, well, where should you expect to find judges of good character? Among the saints or not among the saints? Now he's not saying saints are better at everything. He's talking about cases of right and wrong, cases of between a man and man. He says what you need is good character and good sense. Expect to find that at church. Because Jesus said that his apostles would sit on thrones judging Israel. Jesus in the book of Revelation says, to the one who conquers, I will have him sit on my throne with me. Daniel chapter 7, it says, and the kingdom was to be given to the saints, and they reigned forever and ever. And so he draws a conclusion from that. If the saints are to judge the world, how is it that none of you can handle a local grievance? And it's an ironic thing he says to them. They've been very proud as a church, proud of their gifts, proud of their wisdom, judging Paul, judging Apollos, and so on. And he said, you know, that's not what you're supposed to judge. But this is what you're supposed to judge. If there's gross sin among you, you're to judge that and remove it. If there's some grievance between Mike and Duran, there's somebody else ought to step in and help them work it out. Don't degrade the kingdom of God by running outside of the kingdom to find some just judgment. He says, why would you prefer those who have no standing in the church? Why do you think that's a better judge than any of you? He's saying the church makes God's kingdom visible to the world. And we gotta make sure to keep that kingdom honorable. Let us solve its disputes. Again, this is not rule out calling the cops or criminal matters. That's another ballgame. I'm talking about the grievance between one or another. But you know what would be even better? Even better to show the world why they want to be part of the kingdom. Even better to show the world the character of the king. So he turns in chapter 6 and verse 7 to another line of argument. He says, why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded? He said, it'd be best if you didn't press your grievance. It'd be better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. And that's not just a counter-cultural statement, that's like a counter-intuitive statement. You say, I hate suffering, and I really hate suffering wrong. Boy, if there's one thing I hate the most, it's suffering wrong. That's the worst thing. And he says, no, it's not the worst thing. Doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong. Because when you do wrong, you come under the wrath of God. And if you are not forgiven for that wrong, you are liable to hell. And hell is the worst thing. not suffering wrong. And so doing wrong is worse than suffering wrong because it makes you liable to something much, much worse. Better to suffer wrong. It's not only safer for you. It's the path of our Lord Jesus Christ. He suffered wrong. He suffered wrong willingly for our sake. So he says it's better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. And when you sue somebody, oh, it's really, really hard. almost impossible to go to court, is simply wanting justice, and not wanting revenge, not wanting victory, not wanting vindication. If you apply the question, what would Jesus do, to most civil lawsuits, in most cases you'd have to come down with, He wouldn't be suing. He would turn the other cheek. He would walk another mile. It wouldn't be better to show the world the character of the king and suffer wrong rather than go to court. So we have these two ways to live out the kingdom, to keep it pure, purging the evil person from among you and solving disputes peaceably within. We have this way of showing the world the king when we patiently suffer wrong rather than do it. And the Apostle Peter put it this way. If when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin. Neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten. but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls." That's great. Heavenly Father, we can get caught up in the moment and caught up in our grievances, caught up in our anger, and not walk as your saints. Heavenly Father, help us to be quick to remember our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to be quick to remember his character and his example. Help us, Lord, to live in light of this kingdom. Help us to hold our citizenship in your kingdom more dear than our citizenship in anything else. Lord, we pray, we follow your word. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.