Don’t Slap Like Will Smith

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So today we’re going to be studying 1 Corinthians, chapter 5. We’re going to pray and then we’re going to get started. The title of today’s sermon is Don’t Slap Like Will Smith. Are you guys ready? All right, jesus, we thank you for your grace and mercy in our lives. We thank you for all the 10 weeks we’ve had of building up our identity, and now

Don’t Slap Like Will Smith

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we’re transitioning into seeing what that identity looks like together, working it out together, and how precious it is and how precious you view your family. And so, jesus, I pray that each person in here would really know that they are part of your family and if they are not confident in that, that, they would consider whether they have been born again into your family and they would consider what is going on and why are they here and what are you doing in our lives today. Jesus, I thank you so much for pursuing us when we don’t want to be pursued, when we want to run away. Jesus, you always come after us and you’re so full of love in that way. Thank you for making us uncomfortable sometimes, because it’s there. We find that we’re always welcomed and accepted in you. Jesus, father, we pray that you give us a spirit of understanding and wisdom revealed to us, your heart this morning, more than anything else. In Jesus’ name, we pray amen, all right.

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So it was the slap heard around the world. You guys remember the? It was the 94th Academy Awards. It’s I can remember it like it was 1,204 days ago because it was. So, you guys, was anyone watching it? Anyone still watch the Academy Awards, okay? So yeah, it’s like they’re announcing something and Chris Rock is making fun of Will Smith’s wife, and so Will Smith walks up there and says some things and slaps him across the face and everyone was so shocked that they didn’t know what to do. It was pretty crazy.

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So, following that, so following that backlash, you know, smith issued a formal apology on Instagram and Facebook. It was the biggest news in the entire world, this slap and he referred to his own behavior as unacceptable, inexcusable. And then he directly talked to Chris Rock after that and he said I would like to publicly apologize to you, chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed by my actions. They were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness. That’s a pretty good apology, right, but the damage was done. Okay, so this was not a story in his life about mercy and grace, but about consequences. Okay, because our world really does believe in punishment, it seems like.

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So what happened? Smith resigned from the academy, from his membership, and because he was facing possible suspension and expulsion for life. Like everyone was really mad because he had embarrassed them and he ended up getting banned from all Hollywood Academy of Arts things for 10 years. So that’s what he’s under right now he’s in a 10-year ban. More detail this is important, you’ll see. Okay. So the academy More detail this is important, you’ll see. Okay. So the academy they disciplined him. They said this. They said for violations of the academy’s standards of conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior and compromising the integrity of the academy. They said while we would like to clarify that Mr Smith was asked to leave the ceremony and refuse, we also recognize we could have handled the situation differently. So they tried to handle this by asking him to leave and they eventually had to suspend him.

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And this is a real-life parallel to what we’re going to be studying today in the Bible. You had no idea that Will Smith would be your illustration for Bible teaching today, but it is because we’re going to be talking about purity or integrity in God’s family, the church, okay, and how to maintain it the right way, but we’re going to see it through grace glasses. Everything that we’ve been studying for the past 10 weeks, the 10 sermons that I’ve done with you guys so far, we’ve been just building this foundation of our identity, identity, identity. It’s been over and over again. We’ve been talking about who you are in Christ, what is true about you, and now we’re seeing that, since we are children of God, since we’ve been made holy, then our lives should reflect that. It should have a practical transformation on how we actually live our lives.

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Because, yes, god’s name is supposed to be honored, we’re supposed to honor our Father. He has born us into His family, he’s given us life, he’s shared His very heart with us, his family, and invited us into His family, and we’ve been learning how we’ve been adopted into that family and so now we represent

God’s Family and Identity

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that family to the world. We’re representing his gospel, his good news. So, as a part of his family, his thoughts are our thoughts. His the things he cares about are the things we care about. We have his very spirit inside us and if you’re talking about God, all of his ways are love. That is all of his ways, so everything we do has to reflect that.

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So we’re going to see today how we can be the most loving to each other, what is the most loving thing we can do in each situation, and that love is going to be revealed through our relationships. Sorry, I’m having a hard time with my ear thingy today, my bad, okay, thanks. So our love is revealed through our relationships. How you treat one another reveals how much you think God loves you. If you think God loves you just a little, you’re going to share just a little of that love. If you are understanding your identity in Christ and how much God loves you, that love is going to be pouring out through your life. We’re going to see that, as we honor and respect people in love, that we’re sharing God’s love with them. And if we don’t honor and respect these relationships that God gives us, we confuse the love of God with something that stings like a slap Pew. It can sting when we don’t love Because it brings hurt instead of the healing, encouraging love. It can hurt us.

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Now you have to understand one thing about the Greek culture that was the culture of the world at this time. They were very sexually promiscuous, which means they had no morals. Well, this was a description of their morals, which means they had no morals. Well, this was a description of their morals. Mistresses we keep, for the sake of pleasure, concubines for the daily care of the body, but wives to bear us legitimate children. That was their opinion of what relationships looked like, especially with men and women and the church and Jesus.

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When the church came, it changed all of this. Jesus says that is not loving. It’s not loving to treat people that way. Each person is supposed to be lifted high in honor and respect and that whole thing does not honor the individual person. So Jesus says it’s not loving and it doesn’t communicate God’s faithful love to the women of the world. That’s what he says, or the men he says. So the integrity of the church is important to God because he is holy and he’s loving and we’re supposed to be the ones that are showing how holy and how loving he is to the world. We are his body, we are his kind of a mirror that shows what he’s like to the world. So there has to be a way of discipline in the church.

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God says, if someone who is a believer refuses to agree with the whole family plan that God has established, the church has to represent the head of the church. Who’s the head of the church? Jesus, and so the church. We’re supposed to represent him and what he thinks about things. And so what we’re going to learn about today is how to help that be purely communicated to the world. It’s not about punishment. None of this is about punishment. The church is not supposed to be out there punishing people, but about helping an individual realize the gravity of their sin and hopefully leading them to repentance or to change their decision making, and the goal is to protect the church’s witness and encourage the sinner to return to a life that is consistent with their identity.

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Okay, so I know we’ve talked about a lot of like, just like it seems like school stuff so far, but here’s the whole point your identity, we’ve already told you, is that you’re a beloved child of God, you have his spirit in you, you are righteous, you are holy, but if you don’t act that way, there’s this disconnect with your life and your witness, or your identity and how you’re acting or presenting yourself to the world, and we want those two things to line up. So we’re going to see these two lessons today. First, this passage highlights the importance of maintaining a community that reflects the holiness and love of Jesus, and then, secondly, while we’re also extending grace and seeking restoration for those who have fallen into sin. All right, so with all that said, you kind of have the whole layout of what we’re going to study today and what it means. We’re going to read the chapter, we’re going to dive into what it means, and you have to have courage to read a chapter like this. You have to have courage to teach a chapter like this.

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What we do at church is we teach through the Bible, verse by verse. So most pastors would not teach through this chapter, because if they’re choosing what they want to teach, you’re going to teach the things that are fun and that are exciting and that are easy most of the time, but if you’re teaching through the Bible verse by verse, you don’t. You have to deal with some difficult things, and so that’s what we’ve come to at. This portion of scripture is like some crazy stuff. So let’s see what it says. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles that a man has his father’s wife. So remember our last study last week?

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We studied that pride was the root of the problem, the pride. Paul laid this foundation, that pride was going to be the thing that caused all their trip ups. And here it’s the exact same thing. Paul brings up this

Sin in the Corinthian Church

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one specific area where pride has led to a sin, and sin is just something that misrepresents and dishonors God. So this guy was a believer, he was part of the church and he was choosing not to honor God with his life by believing in his new identity in Christ. But he was doing whatever he wanted that’s the problem here With no regard for who it hurt. He didn’t care who it hurt. Is that love? I’m going to do whatever I want without worrying about who I hurt? No, that’s not love. You think about it. This guy hurt his father, this guy hurt his mother, this guy hurt his entire family and he disregards all these people for what he wants.

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That’s a very self-centered viewpoint. He focuses only on himself Instead of seeing how he hurts people. He’s not focusing on love. Self-love is not love. In the Bible, true love is always self-sacrificial. That’s the difference between Christ’s love and the love, we think, is love, jesus’ love is always sacrificing myself for the good of other people.

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And Paul makes the connection with pride. Look what he says. He says are you puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you? So, puffed up in pride is the opposite of humility and faith. And so the church is choosing. What they’ve been doing is they’ve been choosing the path of pride instead of humility and mourning. They celebrated this man instead of grieving. It would be like the Academy giving Will Smith an award right after slapping the snot out of their host. Bro, that’s actually what they did. The next thing that happened after the slap is Will Smith got Best Actor Award. Isn’t that crazy? It’s weird. Okay.

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So Paul says there’s a simple way that we should do things in the church, and it’s called humility and faith. Humility and faith and pride is always the opposite of that and it’s always the unloving thing to do. If you do something unloving and refuse to repent or agree with God and make it right, then the church has to ask you to leave. That’s what’s happening here. We cannot be part of this unloving behavior. He says we can only represent love as far as the church goes, as far as the whole thing goes. Look what he says. For I, indeed, as absent in the body but present in spirit, have already judged, as though I were present, him who has so done this deed In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When you gather together, along with my spirit and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

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So this is where it gets really intense here, because didn’t Jesus say don’t judge? Did Jesus say don’t judge? Well, he actually said don’t make unjust judgments or don’t judge stupidly. He said to judge accurately or use the right judge. He said don’t be an idiot when you’re judging, don’t be mean when you’re judging, but understand. And Paul says this guy clearly has a problem. If Paul has heard about this guy’s life all the way from Rome, where he was, from, where he was this is like across an entire continent then this guy is absolutely not embarrassed by his choices in his life, he’s flaunting it.

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And so Paul says what happens? Is this guy needs to be delivered to Satan? Well, that’s really intense, right Because we think, oh my gosh, he needs to like tell us Satan, here you go. What does this mean? Well, this basically means that the church is protected from a whole lot of what Satan is trying to do in the world. That’s how you should see the church. The church is seen as a safe place. It’s supposed to be a safe place. Satan is trying to ruin everyone’s life, and so in the church, we’re hearing God’s word and God’s truth that will protect you from Satan ruining your life. And so being delivered to Satan means if you’re not coming to church, then you’re not hearing and receiving this guidance for your life, and so you are misguidance for your life, and so you are gosh in the place where Satan is ruining people’s lives, and so that’s probably going to be something that you feel and experience in your life. So that’s what he says. Outside the church, you do whatever your flesh tells you to do, so you’re going to face these natural consequences of those choices, which consequences of sin are always destruction, and it just happens over and over again.

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So the church isn’t punishing people like when you hear of. You ever heard of the Spanish Inquisition Okay, it’s a horrific thing where people who said they were part of the church but really weren’t. They were going around and they would kill people if they didn’t agree with how they saw things and didn’t say what they wanted them to say. So they would. And they would say they would quote this verse and say we deliver you to Satan for the destruction of your flesh, as they killed them and it was horrific. It’s not at all what this means. Okay, the church isn’t supposed to be punishing people. The purpose of casting this unrepentant sinner out

Church Discipline with Grace

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was so that they realized that the life that they’ve chosen to live inspires people towards Satan, not towards Jesus. Okay, and there’s no life outside of following Jesus. Jesus said I am the way, the truth and the life. So we know, we’ve discovered that there is only life in following Jesus. That’s what the church is. We follow Jesus, we share in His life.

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Why is this important for the church? Paul says your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. Since you truly are unleavened, highlight that in your Bible, underline that that’s Paul reminding you of your identity. For indeed, christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the fast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but of the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

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So why is all this important for that church and for our church? Because they didn’t care about the integrity of the church. They were prideful, they were thinking they were already the best church. They thought that that’s how you can tell you’re in a messed up church when you think you’re the best church. I love being a part of a church that has humility and says we are a bunch of broken, messed up people who are struggling with our sin. We have one thing in common we know Jesus has loved us, jesus has forgiven us, jesus has saved us. That’s our identity. That’s all we are hoping for. That’s all our identity is when you think you’re the best church. That’s not good. Because they were not concerned about love in one place, that attitude spread to the entire church. They were prideful and boast Because they had pride in one area.

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It spread all through the church and that’s what leaven does. So leaven is this little thing you put in bread and then it spreads. You put just a little bit in bread and it spreads through the whole thing as it bakes, and it’s always an illustration of how sin works and how pride works. And so the same exact thing happens to us in a church when you have pride in one area, it spreads to the whole thing. So that’s why we have to ask ourselves why we do everything we do in our church and as a church. Why do we do the Laguna Heights outreach? Why do we do worship the way that we do it? Why do we communicate God’s love the way that we do? Why do we have food in the back? Why do we have greeting stuff? We’re going to ask those questions and hopefully the answer is because of humility we want to be humble and faith. We want to put our trust in Jesus alone, and if we have those two things as our identity, we’re going to be doing all right as a church.

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And then he says since you are truly unleavened do you see those words in there that Paul just sneaks in, that perfect description of what a Christian is? You are already pure and righteous. He’s reminding them that they were pure and they want to be loving in their identity. But they were in their identity, but they were allowing this unloving thing in. So then that’s going to confuse everyone about what their identity really is. So, because they let this one thing in, they’re going to be asking are we really pure? Are we a pure group of people? Are we a pure family, or do we mix with sin?

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What is going on here? He says for, indeed, christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. What is Paul doing here? He’s saying you guys have this issue. You’re super prideful, you’ve messed up. What’s the solution? Get your eyes back on Jesus. What does he do? He reminds them. He’s like look at what Jesus did. He was sacrificed for you. And then he uses the illustration of the Passover. He says Jesus was the Passover lamb, and all these people know what the Passover was. It was this celebration where they killed the lamb and they put the blood on their doorposts and everyone who had the blood on the doorposts was saved. And that’s the illustration that he’s using here. He’s saying get your eyes back on Jesus, remember his sacrifice, remember his love, and then keep the feast.

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That means celebrate his life, celebrate him. It’s not about you and your behavior and what you got going on and what you want. It’s about his life. That’s why we gather together, that’s why we are the church and we’re the church Monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday and Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday we gather together, but we’re still the church all those other days and our focus is 100% on his life, not our own. That’s what the church is all about.

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And he says don’t celebrate his life with malice and wickedness. That’s a description of self-pleasure. He’s like that’s not how you celebrate his pure and holy life. That doesn’t work at all. But with purity, sincerity and truth is what he says. That’s how we celebrate his life. Remember that I am pure in my heart and I act pure because I am pure inside. That’s faith. When I’m walking in faith, I will act purely because of his identity inside me.

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So he says I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexual immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexual immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or with the extortioners or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone who is named a brother, who is sexually immoral or covetous or idolater or reviler or drunkard or extortioner, not even to eat with such a person. Okay, so in that day and in many cultures

Leaven: How Pride Spreads

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today, eating with someone was an expression of friendship and partnership. So in some cultures, if a man eats at your table, you are bound to regard him as a friend and a partner for the rest of your life.

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And Paul warns the Corinthian Christians that they cannot continue in real, deep fellowship with a notorious sinner who calls himself a Christian, who everyone knows is a believer, a sinner who calls himself a Christian, who everyone knows is a believer. He says this for what do I have with judging those who are outside God? Do you not know that? Do not judge, sorry, do you not judge those who are inside, but those who are outside God judges. Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person. So he says listen, the world is supposed to act.

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Crazy. The world, that’s okay, that’s what they’re supposed to do. We’re not supposed to tell the world how to act. It’s kind of crazy to put the Ten Commandments like all over the place and thinking that’s going to transform the world. You’re trying to tell the world how to act when they’re not going to act that way. That’s okay. They’re not supposed to, they can’t. So how do we impact the world? Well, we share with them the gospel, which is the love of Jesus, that he is their sacrifice, that he was broken and crucified for them on the cross. Then, when they believe, that they’re born again, and then their heart already has the law of God written on their heart, and that’s how the transformation happens in this world. That’s the design of how it’s supposed to happen.

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So he says you’re supposed to go out to the bars and talk with people. You’re supposed to go into the world. You’re supposed to receive them and talk with people. You’re supposed to go into the world. You’re supposed to receive them and talk with them. Do not be afraid of sinners. Don’t ever be afraid of sinners. Go out to them, put your arms around them, love them, care about them. Once they become a believer, then we help them know their identity. Once they know their identity, they will realize that they’re free from sin.

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So does this mean, does all of this that we’re saying today means, if you mess up once, you’re out of the church for 10 years, like Will Smith? Absolutely not. We are not talking about mistakes. We’re not talking about falling. Okay, there’s a massive difference between I screwed up and I’m sorry and I shouldn’t have done that. I want to do better, versus screw you. I’m going to do whatever I want and I’m going to call myself a Christian and I’m going to show up. There’s a massive difference between those two things. One has humility, the other has pride, the other has pride. And pride, the bible says, is a leaven that will spread through the whole church like cancer, and we don’t want that to be a part of the community, the identity of the people. Do we want people who make mistakes and fail and then run back to jesus? Yes, that’s like a hospital, and think of the church like a hospital. Where do do you go? When you’re sick, when you make a mistake, when you screw up? You go to the hospital. When you screw up in life, you run to church, not away from it. But you don’t go to the hospital and spread diseases like here have some of my disease. No, you go there to get healing. That’s how this is working here.

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So we don’t have any role in telling the outside world how to behave. We tell them about the love of Christ and the gospel. There are some practical examples I want to give you guys of things that we would think are really really bad, that we would be like there needs to be a separation. So if someone is abusing children, they’re not going to be welcome in this situation. Because we’re going to be protecting the kids, we’re going to make sure that that’s not a situation right, because we’re going to be protecting the kids right, we’re going to make sure that that’s not a situation. So if we ever have like a children’s ministry, there’ll always be like background checks done and make sure that that’s not part of their history, part of their past, part of a temptation in their life. You know, sexual abuse and misconduct is something that can hurt people, and so we want to make sure that the church is free from that type of problems. So I just want to summarize everything so that we understand it’s important to take the church seriously.

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Sometimes we have to ask people not to be part of meetings because of a repeated demonstrated. They don’t care about hurting people because they don’t. They’re not operating in love, and that’s a situation that sometimes has to happen in the church. I’ve seen it really rarely In 25 years. I’ve probably seen five people in thousands and thousands of thousands that were literally asked and said you can’t come until you change your opinion, until you change your lifestyle in this area or that area. But most people it doesn’t

Practical Applications for Today

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rise to that because they’re not standing in it saying this is my choice and I’m never going to change. I don’t care about any of you. Most people aren’t living that type of life. So there’s.

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I just want to summarize it by saying there’s three key factors that we will always use that are described in this chapter of how we how this happens. Okay, first, unrepentant sin. So if the individual is openly engaging in sinful behavior without any remorse or desire to change, and it’s not about they’re seeking help or nothing like that, it’s just they will not, they don’t care, they are not going to change, they don’t care. That’s kind of level. Number one we have to consider that. Number two, it’s the seriousness of the sin. So if the sin is such a nature that it could damage the reputation of the church or the people, actually hurt people, that’s very serious and that needs to be taken care of. That needs to be thought about. And number three the impact on the community. If the person poses a risk to hurting people by their actions. We don’t want that to happen either. All right, by their actions, we don’t want that to happen either, all right.

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So all of that is what 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, is about. Okay, what are we about? We’re about the love of God and his identity. In us, we are pure, and I hope that this actually encourages you, and I hope that this actually encourages you to understand and know how loved you are and how amazing it is to be a part of God’s family. So, instead of thinking that we have to create this culture of a holy family, it’s about us building this church. It has nothing to do with us. God has already made you all pure, but we just gather together and we are all a part of his family, and so this is the way a family naturally works is we’re all going after the same goal, which is to honor God, to praise him and to worship him.

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You know the academy. They kicked Will Smith out for 10 years. What gives them the right to do that? Well, they’ve formed a little organization and they care about how they’re viewed, they care about integrity, they care about their place in the world, they want to represent a certain standard and the church. You can kind of look at it the same way. We represent a holy God and that holiness is already inside us and we don’t want it to be poisoned that message of righteousness and holiness. We don’t want it to be poisoned by our actions. So it’s really good for us today to just thank God that he has cleansed us, that he has saved us, that he has made us holy.

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And if you don’t know that you are holy today, if all of this is like, wow, this all sounds like weird, but you believe that you need to be holy, you sense God pulling at your heart, saying he wants to offer you holiness, he wants to offer you his righteousness, and that happens very simply by believing in Jesus. What does that mean? It means you believe Jesus died on the cross and it was for you. You believe he rose from the dead and that was for you, and that once you believe in him, you are fused with him, you become one with him and he comes to live inside you and he gives you a new heart and a new spirit. So we’re all going to close our eyes now and we’re just going to have a moment to respond to god and to his word. Today, father, we, we pause and and ask your spirit to just speak to us.

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If there’s anyone in here who is unsure on whether they’ve been given the gift of eternal life, the gift of holiness and the gift of righteousness, all their sins being forgiven, I pray that anyone in here would call out to you and say Jesus, forgive me, jesus, save me. And for the majority in here who know you, god, we rejoice and we celebrate you. We celebrate your death on the cross that cleansed us from all sin. We celebrate that you have filled us with a new heart. We celebrate you put a new spirit inside us. We celebrate you, jesus. We celebrate that you live inside us. Live inside us. We celebrate that you make us uncomfortable when we choose self instead of love.

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Thank you for the conviction that we feel in the Spirit when we’re not walking according to the heart of our Father. Walking according to the heart of our Father, jesus, we want to honor you, glorify you, lift up your name on high, for no one has ever died for us, no one has ever loved us the way that you have loved us. We worship you, god, with our hearts, with our words and with our very lives and again for anyone who is choosing right now to believe. Lord, we celebrate that you have moved in hearts today, that your word does not return to you void, but it accomplishes that for which you sent it out. Jesus, you love us more than we could ever imagine and I pray that you’d help that love to transform us and give us the grace that you have promised us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen. Let’s all stand and sing.