My name is Jacob Rodriguez. I used to be a pastor here at
Church of the Resurrection from 2021 to 2023.
For the past two years I have been teaching New Testament at
Trinity Anglican Seminary in the Pittsburgh area and my 5 year
old, whom the Feinbergs gave a Pittsburgh Steelers hat to, has
decided she's going to be all things Pittsburgh.
She saw this Black Hat with a yellow pea on it and she said
daddy I want one of those and I said if you want to learn the
problem of evil at an early age then be a Pirates fan.
It is a joy to be here with you this morning.
My family and I will be here for the next 5 Sundays and I get to
serve alongside the wonderful staff and pastors that we have
here at Rez and fellowship with you all.
Please pray with me before we dive into our text for today.
Heavenly Father, let your word be our guide, your Spirit our
teacher, and your greater glory our supreme concern through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Now here at Church of the Resurrection, we've been going
through First Corinthians and today we've arrived at chapter
5. They gave me an easy one for
today. You can find this passage on
page 897 in your Pew Bibles. Go ahead and turn there now if
you have one. Now, this is one of Paul's
letters to the church in Corinth, a church that he
planted and with whom he lived for about 18 months.
And as we've discussed in recent weeks that Corinth was not an
easy place to plant a church, and it was not an easy place to
be a Jesus follower. Shortly after Paul left Corinth,
he received news that the church had more than a few problems.
They were plagued with disunity, arrogance, sexual immorality,
greed, idolatry, and even denials of the resurrection.
And to make matters worse, they were taking one another to
court, giving Christ a bad name among the pagans.
Paul responds not just by telling them what to do, but by
telling them a compelling story. He re narrates their world by
reminding them of the gospel. He reminds them of Christ's
victory over sin, over death, and over the devil.
He reminds them what they have been set free from so that they
could learn what they have been set free for.
Brothers and sisters, we never should move beyond the gospel.
That is our solid foundation. It is the grammar of our life.
It shows us what Christ has done to win US, and it shows us the
people that we are to be if we're called by His name.
Now perhaps the central question of First Corinthians is this.
With Christ's victory over sin and death and the devil, how
shall we then live? With Christ's victory as a
given, how shall we live at First Corinthians?
Chapter 5 gives us a vital answer to this urgent question.
How shall we then live now? This past Thursday, our country
commemorated 165 years since slavery was officially abolished
in the United States of America. That was on June 19th, 1865, and
for nearly 250 long years prior to that day, men, women and
children of African descent were bought, sold and mistreated on
American soil. Then, at long last,
emancipation. Freedom.
But anyone who has even had a cursory reading of the
subsequent history of Reconstruction knows that the
road after emancipation was not has not been easy.
In the struggle of Reconstruction all the way to
civil rights, the African American community consistently
appealed to the story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt to
shape their new identity. We have been set free from
enslavement, so how shall we now live?
The Apostle Paul appeals to the same Israelite history in his
first letter to the Corinthians. The Corinthians have been set
free, so how should they then live?
And Paul answers as follows. We, the church, as the temple of
the living God, are called to corporate holiness.
And this corporate holiness is, first of all, grounded in the
law of God. Secondly, it's accomplished or
sorry. Secondly, it's to be protected
with vigilance. And 3rd, it's accomplished by
the sacrifice of Christ. Our corporate holiness to which
we are called, is grounded in the love of God, the law of God.
It is protected with vigilance. And thirdly, it is accomplished
by the sacrifice of Christ the Church as the temple of the
living God. We're called to corporate
holiness, Paul said back in chapter 3.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of
God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple,
God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy, and you are that
temple. As Father Dan recently showed
us, the apostle Paul was not only a tent maker by trade, he
was a spiritual tent maker, building God's holy Tabernacle
wherever he's sojourned, whether in Ephesus, whether in Philippi,
Thessalonica, or even Corinth, he took his work very seriously.
And even as Israel was called to keep the Tabernacle holy in the
wilderness after their deliverance from slavery in
Egypt, so the Corinthians were called to keep their corporate
Tabernacle holy. How were they to do this?
Again, first of all, by being grounded in the law of God.
Look at verse 1 of chapter 5. Paul introduces the specific
problem he is addressing. He says it is actually reported
that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is
not even tolerated among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.
The Roman legal system at the time suggests that the man's
father had died, and so the illicit sexual relationship was
with his widowed stepmother. In addition to the drive of his
own lust, the man was perhaps also financially motivated, and
by enmeshing his mother-in-law to himself, the man was ensuring
that he could keep his mother in law's wealth rather than have it
transferred to another man that she might later marry.
Also, given that men married women much their junior in age,
it is quite possible that his father's widow was not too far
from him in age. To make matters worse, not only
were the Corinthian believers allowing this man to continue in
this sin, they amplified their arrogant boasting rather than
showing the corporate repentance that was needed, rather than
grieving the sin that persisted in their fellowship.
Paul immense that even the pagans under the Julio Claudian
legal system had more sense than this.
In verse one, Paul condemns this man's sexual immorality and he
does so by appealing to Leviticus.
Leviticus 8 verse sorry. Leviticus 18 verse 8.
Deuteronomy 23 verse one, Deuteronomy 27 verse 20.
And Paul draws the phrase his father's wife directly from
these passages. Wait, hold on a second here.
The 21st century might be tempted to ask, isn't Leviticus
the book? With all the weird laws about
not eating shellfish and not sewing 2 garments together in
different fabrics, why would anybody base their code of moral
conduct on this book? Now one could teach an entire
semester course and how the Old Testament law applies today.
But for now, let's just appreciate the fact that in our
Sacred Scriptures, the Apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy
Spirit, goes right to the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy for his moral foundation.
For Paul and for Jesus, the law is not abolished.
The law is transformed and expanded by Christ.
The law is not abolished. It is transformed and expanded
more far reaching in Christ. Most of the moral confusions
among Christians today, I argue, are the result of us forgetting
this crucial principle that Christ did not abolish the law.
He transformed it, he expanded it, and crucially, he gave us
the power to obey it by filling us with his Holy Spirit.
Furthermore, it is in the Torah, in the first five books of the
Bible, the law, that we find the story of creation out of nothing
and the story of redemption from slavery in Egypt.
And we get this story before we even hear one commandment spoken
from the fiery mountain of Sinai.
You see, the law given on Sinai combines with the story of
creation and redemption to show us who God created us to be and
to show us the pattern of life that leads to true human
flourishing. In particular, the laws in the
Torah regard in human sexuality are like pieces of a mosaic that
when viewed as a whole, they constitute a beautiful icon of
what it means to be male and female, flourishing in God's
image. Why does Moses and why do Paul
and Jesus and all of Scripture forbid a man to have sex with
his father's wife? Because ultimately it undermines
the grammar of marriage established in Genesis chapter
2. A man will leave his father and
mother and hold fast to his own wife, not the wife of his
father, and the two will become one flesh.
Furthermore, it's also good to remember that in an ancient
society where women were protect particularly vulnerable to
exploitation, this law protected women from the predatory
advances of stepsons living in the same households.
God's law then and now is good. It protects the vulnerable, it
constrains wickedness, and it shows us how to live in God's
image. This is why neither Jesus nor
Paul abolish the Law of Moses as they establish an ethics for the
New Testament church, whether on the Sermon on the Mount or in
Paul's letter to the Corinthians.
And the stakes were high for Paul and the Corinthian church.
Brothers and sisters, it is an honor to be the temple of the
holy God. But it is also a sobering
calling. As in the days of Ezekiel the
prophet, when the glory of God departed from the temple because
of perpetual unrepentant sin, so the glory of God was under
threat and it could have departed from the church in
Corinth. You see, sin is not just a
personal matter, it is a corporate reality.
We and cultures of the West are prone to think of everything in
individualistic terms, but Scripture, not so.
Scripture teaches us that my sin does not just affect me.
Your sin does not just affect you.
Rather, our sin affects the corporate holiness of our
gathered church. In chapter 5, verse 6, right
here in First Corinthians, Paul uses the metaphor of leaven to
describe this reality. He says, do you not know that a
little leaven works through the whole lump of dough?
This is serious stuff. This is why we begin every
service with the corporate prayer.
Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and
from you no secrets are hidden. Cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may
perfectly love you and worthily magnify Your holy name.
See, this is the prayer that invites the Holy Spirit and
opens our own hearts to receive from the Spirit the conviction
of sin as He brings to our minds the ways that we have sinned
against God and thought word and deed, by what we have done and
left undone, and how we have sinned against our neighbor.
Oh, and in such a glorious way, after confessing these sins
corporately, we cry out, Holy God, holy and mighty, holy
immortal One, have mercy on us, and then we receive the
absolution, the true declaration of the Gospel, that, brothers
and sisters, you have been forgiven.
Now this brings us to our second point.
This corporate holiness that is a gift to us from God, this
calling of being the holy temple of God, it must be protected
with vigilance. Now, we moved into our house
just outside the Pittsburgh area about two years ago.
And let me tell you, this house is still a fixer upper.
It's about 100 years old, and it has a few quirks.
I can call them Pittsburgh quirks.
If anybody's been to the Pittsburgh area, look up
Pittsburgh potty. I don't know why they would put
a toilet in a basement with nothing around it.
It's a Pittsburgh thing and also this is a 100 year old house and
so it has a fun history of what we might call repairs or
improvements. Each generation who has owned
this house has done something else and left their own
eccentric twist to the house. We're kind of discovering things
every week. It's it's a lot of fun.
Now, some of these things that we discover everyday, they can
be delayed by a few years if we don't have the money for it.
So for example, you know, if you see really atrociously ugly
1970s wallpaper, like that's really bad, but that can wait.
You know that can wait. If you have something like a
loose wire underneath your sink that you know just barely has a
little bit of electrical tape on it, or you know, a leaky roof
like that has to be addressed on day one, or a spot of mold in
your basement, Get rid of that the first day you recognize it.
Those cannot wait until next year.
They need to be addressed immediately.
Every day that you delay, you risk compromising the whole
structure of your house, and it might even pose a hazard for the
members of your household. When Paul hears the report of
this particular man's sexual immorality, and when he realizes
the hazard that it poses for the corporate holiness of the
Corinthian church, he calls for a drastic measure, the removal
of this man from the congregation.
Verse 2. Let him who has done this be
removed from among you. Verse three.
You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his
sinful nature, so that his spirit may be saved on the day
of the Lord. Verse 11 Do not even eat with
such a man. Verse 13 Purge the evil person
from among you. The removal of a member from the
church is what we call excommunication, and it is
important that we clarify from Scripture what this does and
does not mean. Excommunication is not for
unbelievers outside of the church.
It is not for unbelievers who are sojourning among us,
inquiring about our faith. Rather, according to verse 11,
excommunication is for someone who calls himself a brother or a
sister, someone who calls himself or herself a Christian
and continues brazenly in habitual sin even after they've
been confronted. Excommunication happens, first
of all, out of care for the spiritual safety of the whole
church. Secondly, it happens only after
clear warnings have been given to the church member and lesser
forms of church discipline have already been attempted.
We can piece this together from what Paul tells Titus in Titus
chapter 3 and what Jesus tells the disciples in Matthew chapter
18. Thirdly, excommunication happens
with great care not to falsely implicate or falsely accuse the
innocent and the vulnerable. Paul would also appeal to Exodus
23 that says do not falsely accuse a brother and do not
condemn the innocent. 4th And finally, excommunication happens
pastorally with the hope of eventual restoration for the
church member. Paul says it in a kind of a
brash way here, but he gets the point across.
I think. Effectively hand the man over to
Satan. In other words, send him out of
the church to have the full ramifications of what he
actually wants, to see the consequences first hand of what
his sin will bring upon him. But it's not a full stop there.
It's so that his sinful nature, that's how I think we should
translate the word for flesh. There his sinful nature might be
destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.
And perhaps this is the brother whom Paul says in Second
Corinthians he calls for his restoration to the church.
In our context today, these measures of church discipline,
and eventually, if it calls for it, excommunication, are usually
taken in the form of barring someone, indefinitely if need
be, from partaking in the bread and wine of Eucharist until this
person has demonstrated true repentance.
It may take weeks. It may even take years, but our
earnest desire as pastors is that our brother or sister will
repent and be fully restored to our table fellowship.
Because holiness, brothers and sisters, is beautiful.
The Psalms call us to worship God in the beauty of holiness,
and when the bride of Christ is beautifully arrayed, then that
shows the world again that icon of what God has created us to
be, and that is the city on the hill.
That is the light and the darkness, that is the salt of
the earth. Now you may know that every
priest that is ordination makes a vow to quote.
Work diligently with your whole heart to bring those in your
care into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God, and
to bring them to maturity in Christ, that there may be among
you neither error in religion nor immorality in life.
And when our Bishop asked me, Underoath, whether I would be
faithful to this task, brothers and sisters, I answered, I will,
the Lord being my helper. And the Bishop commended to me
this truth, that if I fail in that and am unfaithful to this
task, judgment will come upon me and all the shepherds who have
unfaithfully LED. So if I am your priest and I
give you the body and blood of Christ at Eucharist, knowing
that while you call yourself a Christian, you are living an
unrepentant sin, and that in your sin you are leading others
in the congregation to go astray, then I am breaking my
vows that I made before God and my Bishop, and I'm failing to
protect the flock that God has put under my care.
Furthermore, I am a man under authority, the authority of my
rector, the authority of our Bishop, and ultimately under the
authority of God. And so I too am subject to the
same calling, the same standard of holiness, and I have other
souls under my care for which I am accountable.
Bishops and rectors and head pastors, as the head shepherds
of our flocks, they have been entrusted with this sacred
responsibility of excommunication to protect the
holiness of the temple of God, to guard the flock that is
vulnerable, and in the Lord's grace, to work toward the
repentance and restoration of the excommunicated member.
OK, anybody ready for a deep breath?
This has been weighty stuff and you and I, we may well ask, how
can any of us live up to the standards of holiness that God
demands? Who among us does not fall short
every single day? Is corporate holiness a fantasy
for the self-righteous? This brings us to our third and
final point. This corporate holiness is
accomplished only by the sacrifice of Christ, our
Passover lamb. Look at verses 7 through 8.
Paul says, cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new
lump of dough, as you've really already are unleavened.
For Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old
leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened
bread of sincerity and truth. Now, these two verses are
literally, rhetorically and theologically right at the
center of this passage. And many of the passages in
First Corinthians, and one might argue First Corinthians as a
whole, Paul is doing this, what we call a chiastic reasoning.
He's putting one point at the beginning, one point at the end.
They kind of mirror image each other.
And right at the center is his main point.
Right at the center of this passage is, I believe, his main
point. He has the implications about
what they have to do for this unrepentant brother, but he has
the main point, grounding and all, and that is Christ, our
Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
We have the imperative, the what we must do to cleanse out the
old leaven. And this is a reference to the
Israelite law in Exodus that once a year the people were to
prepare for the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
But the Feast of Unleavened Bread does not begin until
Passover is finished. The Passover feast happens first
on the month of Nissan 15, and then 16 to 21 of that same month
is the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
So, in other words, the Feast of Unleavened Bread does not begin
until the Passover lamb has been sacrificed, until the blood has
been put on the door, until we have been covered with all of
our sin, with the blood of Christ our Passover lamb.
As the hymn the hymn writer once said, not the labor of my hands
can fulfill Thy law's demands. Could my zeal no respite, no
could my tears forever flow all for sin could not atone.
Thou must save and Thou alone. Paul calls us to the standard of
holiness and shows us that our only hope is in Jesus Christ,
who pay the penalty for our sin, who has filled us with His Holy
Spirit, has sealed us so that no one can mount an accusation for
those against those who are in Christ.
And with that, as our fundamental identity, we are to
live into this reality that Christ has already created in
US. And as the corporate body of
Christ, this is where we found, where we find our strength, our
wisdom to live in this way. Today's sermon has touched on
some weighty matters, but the worth of something corresponds
to how much it costs. What does it cost to be the
church? On the one hand, it cost a price
that we can never pay, the sacrifice of Christ, our
Passover lamb. On the other hand, if through
our baptism into Christ we have joined this covenant community
of the Church, then this will cost us our entire life lived
for Christ and in community one with another.
The cost of being the Church means nothing less than the full
allegiance to our King Jesus and the uncompromising pursuit of
corporate holiness. Christ, our Passover Lamb, has
been sacrificed for us. Therefore, with joy, with
gratitude, with vigilance, let us celebrate this festival.
Walking in light, walking in truth, spurring one another on
toward love and good deeds, Receiving the discipline of the
Lord through His Word as it is preached to our own hearts.
Coming to Him every day for forgiveness, and receiving the
Gospel as it is proclaimed over you that your sins have been
forgiven. As brothers and sisters, as the
family of God set free from slavery to sin, death and the
devil, let us pursue this holiness together, celebrating
the Feast of our King Jesus with sincerity and truth, in the name
of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.