Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends,
If you’ve ever done any gardening or enjoyed planting flowers, you know about the challenge of WEEDS, right? It’s one thing to deal with weeds in your garden or flower bed but what about the ‘weeds of your soul’? Can you identify those ugly things growing up in your heart and mind which are distracting you from being the person God has designed you to be? Can you discern when the weeds of your soul are damaging your reputation or restraining your character growth?
For a third day today, we’re with the apostle Paul as he’s dealing with a very thorny weed growing up among the Christians in the city of Corinth and Paul is challenging them to uproot that weed before it spreads evil in the group. Let’s rejoin Paul as he is dictating his fifth chapter of this letter we know as 1st Corinthians. “Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch – as you really are. For Jesus Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the Festival, [Passover] not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor. 5:6-8) Now that might leave you scratching your head a bit.
What in the world is Paul trying to say? We remember Paul is a former Pharisee, his life deeply rooted in the Jewish Scriptures and all aspects of Jewish life, including the great festivals, especially the Passover. But Paul is also a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, his Messiah, and Paul daily celebrates that Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament Scriptures and the Festivals, by becoming the Passover Lamb, our Savior, and therefore God offers a whole new life to all those who trust Jesus for their salvation and spiritual transformation.
Paul is also a genius at weaving together multiple strands of truth logic and teaching at the same time. These three verses are wedged in the middle of a powerful chapter 5 dealing with a major sexual immorality problem in Corinth, which like a big weed was growing destructively in the middle of the Corinthian Christians. We understand how yeast spreads rapidly through a batch of dough, and the difference between dough with yeast and unleavened bread, or dough without yeast. Yeast, during the Passover festival, represented SIN and good Jews were diligent to remove ALL yeast from their foods and even their homes! (Deut.16:3,4)
They wanted to honor God in every way possible during that annual celebration of God’s deliverance of their ancestors from slavery bondage through the Passover miracles. Paul reminds them of this important practice, but also links yeast to the big weed, the sexual sin growing in their midst. Paul is urging them to cleanse their house, meaning their church, of that weed with as much effort as Jews remove yeast from their homes at Passover time. Why? Because sin, like yeast, can spread rapidly through an entire family or even church group or city! Paul is calling these Corinthian Christians to remember HOLINESS is to be a primary distinctive of God’s people. Why? Because God is holy! (1 Peter 1:15)
But you might ask, is Paul suggesting Christians should cut off all contact with sinful people and live their lives isolated from society? Oh no! Remember Jesus called His followers to be salt and light IN the society, for the betterment of the society in which they live. (Matt. 5:13-16) When God Himself was here on earth, in the person of Jesus Christ, He did not isolate Himself from people, especially those some perceived to be despicable. Jesus called one tax collector to leave his deceitful business and follow Jesus. Do you remember who that was? Matthew! (Matt. 9:9) And then Jesus had dinner in Matthew’s home with other tax collectors. In fact, do you recall Jesus, while in the city of Jericho, also had dinner in the home of chief tax collector Zacchaeus, along with other ‘tax collectors and sinners’, as Luke reports. (Luke 19)
Paul answers the question with these words: “I wrote to 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. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother [in Christ] but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man, do not even eat.” (1 Cor. 5:9-11)
Now what do you conclude from Paul’s instructions my friends? No matter where we live, work or socialize, we are surrounded by normal people who are naturally selfish, sometimes dishonest, sometimes immoral, sometimes slanderous of others… this is the human race, isn’t it? But when a normal person, any normal person, entrusts their life to Jesus Christ and invites God to do all the transforming work of salvation and sanctification in their life, they become a ‘new creation in Christ’, right?
In his second letter to these Corinthian Christians Paul explained this transformation like this: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come! All this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ.” (2 Cor. 5:17)
As a person trusts Jesus Christ to save them from their sin bondage and sin condemnation, God draws that person to Himself and changes that person into a new person, living indwelt by the Holy Spirit in a new, restored relationship with Jesus Christ! Therefore, God expects this spiritually transformed person will live a dramatically different life because of the power of God living within them! They will become intolerant of the old evil attitudes and behavior which used to be part of their lifestyle. They will have a strong desire to honor God with every aspect of their life.
So now we understand why Paul urges the Corinthian Christians to “expel this wicked person from among you.” (1 Cor. 5:13) This man who was living openly in an affair with his father’s wife (1 Cor. 5:1) while claiming to be a born again Christian and wanting to worship and fellowship with the other Corinthian Christians, was making a mockery of the cross of Jesus Christ and all Jesus accomplished in His death and resurrection. How? This immoral man was claiming to have experienced the spiritual transformation of the Holy Spirit in his life, and God’s forgiveness of his sin. He claimed he had been delivered from his sin bondage by the power of Jesus, but at the same time he was boldly, proudly, living in unrepentant evil, mocking God and honoring Satan with his blatant immorality. He was shaming his father and living in adultery with his father’s wife. Furthermore, he was evidently refusing all efforts by the Christians who cared for him and were calling him to repentance and restoration. Thus, Paul’s action plan instruction was to uproot the weed of evil from their midst by telling this man he and his open spiritual rebellion could no longer be welcome among them, until he finally would repent of his sin.
Now Paul’s words call us to look at ourselves, don’t they? Is this a picture of us, you and me? Do we not only tolerate but perhaps boldly live in open rebellion against God by our attitudes or choices or behavior which mock God and honor Satan? That’s a powerful question isn’t it my friends? I think we should pause right here and consider speaking these words to God from Psalm 26:2 “Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and my mind.” And these words from Psalm 139:23,24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me…” Here’s a song to help us do that…
Today’s Scripture is 1 Cor. 5:6-13.
Choose below to read or listen.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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