This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom, and I want to welcome you to 1 Corinthians 5 this week,
day one of our look through this chapter. 1 Corinthians 5, there are some tough
things in this chapter, but if you walk through the tough things in this
chapter, some tough things to understand, if you walk through it and get an
understanding of it, there are some things that will strengthen your faith.
There are some things in this chapter that will enable you to be the kind of
person that strengthens the faith of others in ways that you could not imagine.

So let's dig into it. Let's dig into it beginning with verses 1 and 2. "It is
actually reported that there is sexual 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. Couldn't you rather have been
filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the man who did this? "
That's verses 1 and 2 of 1 Corinthians 5, and one thing you can say about the
Scripture is that it does not nibble around the edges of life.

It cuts straight to the middle and to the heart of our problems and our needs.
And nowhere do I think this is so clearly seen in all the New Testament, as in
this entire section of 1 Corinthians beginning here in chapter 5. You might call
this the straightforward answers for living section, because 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,
11, 12, 13, those chapters that we're going to be going through in 1
Corinthians, they're about what do you do about a marriage that's failing?

What do you do when you're struggling with issues of personal worth? What do you
do when you're tempted towards divorce? What do you do when you don't have real
love in your life?

It's just about real issues in real life. And nowhere is this seen so strongly,
so straightforwardly, as we see it with this question of immorality, in 1
Corinthians chapter 5. The Corinthians needed some clear answers on the issue of
immorality, because they lived in an immoral world.

You might remember from our beginning look at this book of Corinthians that
Corinth was a place that was a lot like, well, what some would say Las Vegas is
today, but it was even far worse, because they actually had a temple there that
was filled with prostitutes. And they thought that part of their worship, they
said that part of their worship was going to see the prostitute in the temple.
That's how twisted their world had become.

And because of that, because they lived in that kind of a world, Paul was
writing to protect them. Paul was writing to love them with these words. They
lived in a world where the message of Christ stood out like a lonely island in
this figurative sea of immoral relationships and thoughts and actions, where
everybody said, everybody's doing it.

That's the way to do it. You satisfy yourself. You satisfy your body.

You do what you want. That's why God gave you a body. And they said, no, God
gave us a body to glorify Him.

So here are the Corinthians in the midst of this kind of a world, trying to live
a different kind of life. And Paul hears this news, this news that just shocks
them. He says, I've heard that there's an immorality among you and an immorality
that even the pagans, even those who are chasing after whatever they want, would
not put up with.

A man has his father's wife. It sounds like the Bible doesn't say exactly, but
it sounds like it's his stepmother. And somehow, in this immoral relationship,
the Corinthians have become proud, proud that they are able to look at this and
say, well, we'll accept this within the church or we'll love Him no matter what.

Whatever it is, they become proud. The question that's going to hit us again and
again behind this chapter as we read it is in our lives when it comes to
immorality and how it wants to infect and affect our lives. How can you and I
want to do what's right but end up doing what's wrong?

And how can the opposite happen? How can we be tempted to do what's wrong but
instead choose to do what is right? And these verses in this chapter are all
about, even though you're tempted to do what's wrong, you can choose to do
what's right.

But they're also honest about the fact that as believers in Christ, if we're not
careful, we can want to do what's right and end up doing the wrong thing, the
immoral thing again and again and again. These are verses. This is a chapter
that makes us be honest with ourselves.

In fact, chapter 5 and chapter 6 are two chapters about sexual immorality. And
they help us to deal with two influences toward immorality, what's happening
within us and what's happening outside of us. This chapter particularly focuses
on what's happening within us, within the church, within our own hearts.

And the picture we're going to see in this chapter is the picture of leaven. The
picture of leaven that goes into bread dough and causes the dough to rise makes
a difference because it's within the bread. How do we handle the rampant
influences toward immorality which exist around us?

Paul says, "I want you to be careful of the immorality that's in this world. "
And the Greek word there is pornea. We get our word pornography from that.

How do I handle the fact that pornography is rampant in our world today through
the internet and so many other means? And that because of that other immorality,
or not even because of that, just because of our world, other sexual immorality
is just rampant in the world. And Paul talks about immorality here.

Very important to understand terms from the beginning. He is talking about this
word, even though we use pornography, we use pictures or images from this word,
the word in Greek actually means any sexual involvement outside the bounds of
marriage. This word is not simply, by the way, pointing to actions, it's also
pointing to attitudes of the heart.

What Jesus said when He said, "When you look on a woman to lust for her. " Paul
writes and he says, "Now from the beginning, I want you to know you're in
danger, because somehow you've become proud of a sexual immorality within the
church. " Now what had happened?

How in the world had they become proud of immorality? Well, there are three
words to understand from the beginning of this chapter. The word freedom, the
word forgiveness, and the word sin.

And the reason they had become proud is they'd misunderstood all three of these
words. They'd understood our freedom in Christ. Jesus has set us free.

He set us free to be and do all that He wants us to be and do. He set us free
from the law, from the Old Testament law, from any legalistic law in our lives.
He has set us free to live a new kind of life in the Spirit.

But they had confused freedom with license. License the idea that I can do
whatever I want. If I am free to do anything, that means I do whatever I want.

That's not our freedom at all. Our freedom is in Christ. It's not in me that I'm
free, it's in Christ that I'm free.

And in Christ, I can do whatever I want. In Christ, when I'm following Him,
wanting to please Him, looking to the plan that He has for my life, then I can
do whatever I want. Then I am free.

But if I'm living in me, if I'm living in the world, if I'm living in my
selfishness, then if I do whatever I want, I'm going to end up ruining my life
and the lives of everybody around me. So when it comes to freedom in your life,
don't let it become license. That's what was happening to these Corinthians.

The second word is the word forgiveness. And for forgiveness, they had confused
it with abuse, an abuse of grace. They said, well, we're believers, so this man
has sinned, but we're all forgiven because of what Jesus has done.

And that's true. There's no doubt about that. And so they said, we have to
accept it.

And that's an abuse of grace. As we walk through this chapter, we're going to
see what an abuse it was and what danger they were putting themselves in by
doing this. To confuse the fact that Jesus has forgiven us by saying that
somehow that means Jesus accepts everything that I do is a total abuse of the
grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Of course, God does not want his children involved in sexual sin or in financial
sin or in relational sin or any other kind of sin because he knows how deeply
sin hurts his children. So the idea that forgiveness means an abuse of grace,
the Corinthians were confused. They confused freedom, they'd confused
forgiveness, and then they'd also confused sin.

They'd made sin a reason for pride. Now, if you don't think we can do that, you
haven't really looked probably at your own heart or at what happens in other
people's hearts. The truth is people do become prideful of their sin.

They do become prideful of the fact that they drink more alcohol than anybody
else and do crazy things. Look at what a great man I am. Look at what a
courageous woman I am.

Why? Just because I sinned? They do become prideful of an adultery because it
says to them that somehow they had some kind of courage when actually it was the
greatest cowardice of all.

We mask our sin with our pride. The truth is our pride, the fact that we want to
run our own lives, leads to our sin. But then once we've sinned, we mask that
sin with our pride by saying, "I really needed it," by saying, "It shows what a
great person I am," by saying, "I'm really a fun person," by saying, "I'm an
open person," all the things that you could say that mask it.

And the Corinthians were saying, "We're such an open church. We can accept
anybody and love anybody. " And Paul is saying, "No, you've confused sin with
pride, so you need to deal with this.

It's a real situation that you really need to deal with. " As we walk through
this chapter, we're going to see in the days to come how they dealt with it.
Before we go into tomorrow, look forward to tomorrow, as we look to the rest of
this week, I would guess that there's probably a situation in your life that you
need to deal with.

Now, it may not be, it probably isn't as serious as this one was. It may be
simply a conversation you need to have with somebody about, "Why did you go that
direction? " It may be a way that you've hurt someone and you need to confess it
to them.

Some sin in their life or some sin in your life has brought about a division
between the two of you. So what are you going to do about it? How's God going to
work in your life through it?

This chapter is going to give us some honest, straightforward answers for what
to do when Christians sin. As we begin to launch into it, I don't know about
you, but I need God's strength and grace in this one, so would you pray with me?
Lord, as we walk through this chapter, the reality of sin, it can sometimes be
discouraging to us.

I pray that it wouldn't. I pray that instead we hear the refreshing message of
your Spirit, that you want to make a difference in our lives, that your
forgiveness is real, that it changes us, it changes the way we talk, it changes
the way we react, it changes the way we act. So I pray you'd bring fresh light
into our lives and into other people's lives as we walk through this chapter
this week.

Use it, Jesus. Use it to bring the fresh air of forgiveness. We pray this in
your name, amen.