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Breaking Free of the Grip of a Rip Current of Sin (1 Corinthians 5)
14 Plays3 months ago
Have you ever been caught in a rip current? On average, rip currents cause over 100 deaths per year. In 2023 ninety-one lost their life by tiring out fighting a rip current. Rip tides can move at a speed of 8 feet per second, washing a swimmer anywhere from 65-165 feet out to sea quickly.
First Corinthians 5 addresses a rip tide of sin that can pull brothers and sisters in Christ out into a cultural sea of wickedness. Their only hope is that some from within the body of Christ will reach out with both love and truth.
Desensitization to Sin, 5:1
Toleration of Sin, 5:2
Separation from Sin, 5:2
Confrontation of Sin, 5:3-5
Contamination with Sin, 5:6
Purification of Sin, 5:7-8
Insulation from Sin, 5:9-13
Back in July of 2017 a group of nine swimmers were caught in the strong pull of a rip current off the beach of Panama City, Florida. Thanks to the gracious intervention of 40 other beachgoers who formed a human chain, all nine were rescued and brought safely back to shore.
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Growing in Grace Devotions and Inspirations
Hosted by Pastor Victor Morrison
First Baptist Church
1700 Milam Street
Columbus, TX, USA 78934
http://fbccolumbustx.org/
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Transcript
Introduction and Prayer
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Growing in Grace with Pastor Victor Morrison. This is a ministry of First Baptist Church located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas. We are praying that God will bless you as you listen to this message. If you would like additional information on worship times and ministries at FBC Columbus, you can find out more at our website, FBCColumbusTX.org. And now take your copy of God's timeless word as Pastor Victor gives today's message.
Understanding Rip Currents
00:00:44
Speaker
Welcome to Growing in Grace. I'm glad you're listening today. I want to ask you a question. Do you know what a rip current is? Have you ever gone to the beach and been involved in one of those? According to the National Weather Service, a rip current is a strong, narrow seaward flow of water that extends from close to the shoreline to outside the surf zone.
00:01:08
Speaker
It's almost like it is a river of the sea, pulling everything in its path out to sea. If you ever get caught in one, the best way to survive a riptide or a rip current is not by trying to swim directly back to the shore, but rather swimming along the shoreline until you escape ah the current's strong pull. So it'll swim parallel to the shore until that happens. Unfortunately, some people do not know that. And apparently, 100 deaths occur every year because of rip currents.
00:01:45
Speaker
And in 2023, I think there were 91 people who died. ah These things are really dangerous. they can They move at speeds of eight feet per second, ah taking a person roughly 65 feet to 160 feet out to sea.
Rip Currents and Sin
00:02:03
Speaker
And so just incredible. But what I see also happening in our world There are rip currents of sin, and they can start with the flesh. They can start with the culture or maybe with Satan, but whatever, it's like there's a tremendous pull that would pull us. And so we really need to know what to do whenever that happens. And you definitely want to be involved with other people, a local church, so that you have friends that are all around you who can help you. I'm going to end today's podcast.
00:02:38
Speaker
with a reference ah to a time that some people rescued nine swimmers who were caught in a rip current.
Problems in the Corinthian Church
00:02:47
Speaker
But let me share with you a passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Listen to these words. It is actually reported that there is a sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you, for though absent in body, I am present in spirit.
00:03:18
Speaker
and As if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of the Lord Jesus, you're to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good.
00:03:42
Speaker
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed.
00:03:57
Speaker
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. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
00:04:14
Speaker
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'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he's 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.
00:04:56
Speaker
Let's look at this passage because really, even though it may sound harsh, it's really loving. There is so much love involved because this is the same book of the Bible. Remember 1 Corinthians 13? I mean, this is the same one that talks about love.
00:05:14
Speaker
And it mentions grace at least five times as we go through 1 Corinthians. And so he's not forgetting about grace, mercy, love, and ah you know encouragement and all those things. He's just saying that the body of Christ, we need to be vigilant that we don't allow things on the inside that are happening all around us on the outside.
00:05:38
Speaker
So let's look at this passage and sort of learn from it and see what the principles are that are mentioned within it.
Dealing with Sin in the Church
00:05:45
Speaker
The first thing I wanted to point out to you is found in verse 1, and that is the desensitization to sin. See, the author was appalled in verse 1 that gross sin was being tolerated within the fellowship of the church in Corinth.
00:06:01
Speaker
He says there's sexual immorality among you. So it's what's happening on the inside, not the outside in the culture. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of their permissiveness was what he describes as, it was of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. Of course, the kind was ah incest. And so it was really terrible where a man was sleeping with his ah Mother-in-law and so not mother-in-law his ah stepmother and so anyway the ah Roman there's a Roman law according to Cicero a Roman historian that said even the Romans were against incest and
00:06:49
Speaker
Well, so just think about this. He identifies the degree of depravity as a man with his father's wife. And so how terrible would that be? But he says um that it took, you know, it's like it takes this outsider, Paul, to say it is actually reported to me.
00:07:10
Speaker
So someone from the outside had to bring attention to this whole desensitization to sin that was taking place. So anyway, I just encourage you to not allow ah desensitization to sin to take place in your life. But let's move to the second verse because there's a second principle here, and it's this whole idea of the toleration of sin.
00:07:37
Speaker
Of course, the incest of the young man was a serious sin, but of equal concern to Paul was the attitude of the church toward the sin. You see, verse one speaks of their permissiveness toward the sin of incest, but verse two confronts the pride over this sin. What was the attitude toward the man and toward the sin that was brought to the attention of the apostle Paul?
00:08:06
Speaker
Well, verse 2 says, and you are arrogant? He can't believe it. He's blown away that this church that's a Christian church is not burdened about this. They're not mourning. He said, you ought to be mourning about this. And so this was a very serious thing, and the the hardness of their hearts was preventing them from being broken over the seriousness of the sin. It was so serious, in fact, that he actually says in verse 2 a third principle. That is, because of persistent defiant sin, there can come a place where a church has to say, you know what, we've got to separate from this.
00:08:51
Speaker
We're allowing this sin to drag our church, the body of Christ, through the mud in the eyes of those who know what's going on. So verse 2, Paul says this, Wow.
00:09:07
Speaker
wow You know, Paul says church discipline needs to be carried out because this person is persisting in the immorality. This person is actually defiant about what they're doing.
00:09:22
Speaker
You know, Jesus advised the same kind of accountability for persistent sin in Matthew 18, verses 15, 16, and 17. It's like there were stages of the confrontation. The ideal would be that a person goes to the other person who's living in sin and is able to talk to them.
00:09:44
Speaker
to lovingly confront them, to bring to them to their notice and to their attention, scriptures are truths that would prevent a Christian from being involved in something as gross as ah incest. But if they don't listen, Jesus said in Matthew 18, then you take two or two or more with you, two or three, so that you can establish the facts because maybe the one person who went, well, maybe they might be ah mistaken about things. And so when you get ah a small group there, then they can establish the truth about the situation. But if the person says, I don't care how many you bring, I'm not going to repent of this sin, if they refuse to repent, then Jesus said, you need to tell it to the church and you need to let him be considered as a Gentile or a tax collector.
00:10:39
Speaker
you know This is not really this passage here in 2 Corinthians 5 and then the passage of Jesus in Matthew 18. These are not the only times that a church would be ah reach a level where they say, you know, we're going to have to separate ourselves from that brother or sister who's using the name of Christ and using the name of Christian and their lifestyle is totally opposite of all that we stand for. We're going to have to put some distance between us.
00:11:10
Speaker
You could read, for example, Romans 16 verses 17 and 18, or you could go to 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 verses 6 through 12, or perhaps Titus chapter 3 verses 9 through 11. All I'm trying to say is this is actually a recurring biblical principle. I'm not trying to pull one verse out of the Bible and make more of it than it truly is. All I'm saying is there's a pattern here.
00:11:40
Speaker
There's another pattern in scripture of the confrontation of sin. I think in verses 3 through 5, you can definitely tell the Apostle Paul feels this is something serious. Even though I'm not there with you guys in Corinth, he said, I've already reached a verdict on this. This is not good. This is not healthy for the body of Christ. And so ignoring flagrant sin in the body of Christ is not a biblical option. You know, whenever someone calls themselves a Christian and they're living in defiant, flagrant,
00:12:19
Speaker
a sin, ah then we need to confront them. We need to talk with them. We need to plead with them. I'm not saying don't love them. Definitely not that. We definitely want to continue to love them. We don't want to pray for them, but we want to urge them to turn from the sin.
00:12:38
Speaker
Why? Are we basing it on our own opinion? No, actually, Paul wasn't talking about his own opinion when he says he's reached a judgment on this. He says, when you're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. So in other words,
00:13:07
Speaker
It's not based on one man's opinion. It's based on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is God revealed to us in His word about that particular sin or their way of living and so forth? And so the congregation needed to make a decision together about that so that everyone was on the same page. And in this case, it was going to be such a a serious issue of incest that they needed to actually put distance between them. They need to ah remove that person from their midst. And he he's saying that he's praying that they will be saved in the day of the Lord. And so really, we're not loving ah a brother or a sister in Christ if they're involved in something as immoral as incest by simply ignoring it, by simply you know allowing it to keep going on and on and on and so forth.
00:14:05
Speaker
I think that love would say to them, please, I urge you to turn back and to ah repent and come to the Lord. So, we're definitely wanting to communicate love to the individual that is caught in the sin, that's trapped by it, that's in bondage to it. But here's the other thing to think about. What about the body of Christ? If one doesn't do something, what will happen to them? What is love to the body of Christ?
00:14:35
Speaker
Well, I think that's where verse 6 brings in a fifth principle. That is, one has to think about the possibility of contamination with sin.
00:14:46
Speaker
You know, that's where like in a contagion, you got to be very careful because you need to avoid unnecessary contamination. And so in verse 6, Paul picks a metaphor. He picks a word picture and he says, you know, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. So what is he referring to there? He's speaking about sin and how it can spread. That's why containment is essential. And if it can't be contained, then you have to remove the person is what he's saying.
00:15:25
Speaker
But I want to move to something else that is definitely available to us in Christ, and that is cleansing, purification from sin. Verses 7 and 8 take us back into the Jewish culture. ah I know that for these Corinthians, it would have been a new ground for them. But he says to them, cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump. As you really are unleavened for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
00:15:55
Speaker
You know what I think he's referring to there? I think he's referring to justification in verse 7, when he's saying, remember the day that you got saved? The day you put your faith and trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ? Do you know why Christ died on the cross?
00:16:12
Speaker
Did He die on the cross to ignore our sins so that we could continue to live in them? No, He did not. No, He died on the cross so we could be washed, so we could be forgiven. And so it's like Christ righteousness was placed into our account on that day that we turned from sin to trust Jesus Christ. What a glorious day that was! But then, not only is there justification and that level of cleansing, but there's also something else mentioned in verse 8 in the whole context where he's talking about Christ the Passover Lamb. He says in verse 8,
00:16:53
Speaker
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." And so what he's talking about there is our progress in daily sanctification. I think that daily we have to confess our sins. Daily we need to examine ourselves and say, am I compromising? Am I am i permitting something in my life that is not Christ-like?
00:17:25
Speaker
I want to move forward. I need to abide in Christ so that the Lord can displace things like malice and wickedness so that he can replace it with things like sincerity and truth. And so that's what he's talking about is he's reminding these Corinthians, the day you got saved, you were all washed and cleansed by the perfect sacrifice of that Paschal Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ, who laid down his life on the cross for you. And so what he's saying is, you don't want to go back. You don't want to stay in those sins that he's already cleansed you from.
Christian Transformation and Repentance
00:18:06
Speaker
He says, move forward and continue to ask the Lord to forgive you.
00:18:11
Speaker
of sin whenever you allow it to come into your life. But there could be some who were confused. And so in these closing verses 9 through 13, he speaks lastly about the insulation from sin.
00:18:27
Speaker
You see, the church cannot isolate itself from sin because where could we go? I mean, we live in a broken, fallen world. As a matter of fact, at one point, we were outside the church. We were outside of faith. We didn't know anything about grace. We didn't know anything about forgiveness of our sins. We were still in ah in our sins. We were still dead in our sins.
00:18:53
Speaker
But then we came to know Christ. And so he's not saying here, oh, the church needs to go on an island somewhere and ah be all by themselves. That's not what he's saying. He makes it clear. Listen to his words again. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
00:19:13
Speaker
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. You'll have to find another planet because it's so broken here. But what he's saying is, I'm now writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister.
00:19:37
Speaker
If if he or she 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're to judge, God judges those outside,
00:19:58
Speaker
purge the evil person from among you. You see the whole idea here is he's saying there's such a difference in asking the church to isolate themselves from the sins of the world and asking them to insulate the church from sin within the body of Christ.
00:20:18
Speaker
And so these words are simply trying to compare it. Let's say go back to that whole idea of the rip current. And the rip current is now reaching into a church and it's pulling people out where they used to be before they came to know Christ. And so it could be so incredibly ah disastrous if we do not hold on foot to one another, if we do not fight for one another spiritually, if we do not hold one another accountable, if we're not consistent in teaching and defending truths that are clearly defined in the Word of God.
Church Unity and Responsibility
00:21:01
Speaker
Let me give you a practical example. My family used to go over to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and we had such a great time. But I remember sometimes being out there ah maybe on my boogie board or whatever, and I remember feeling the undertow and how strong it was. But a rib current is way stronger than just a mere undertow.
00:21:25
Speaker
Just down the beach from Gulf Shores, Alabama is Panama City, Florida. And the beach at Panama City, Florida is known for being a very dangerous place for rip currents. Well, back in July of 2017, a group of nine swimmers, some of them were ah family members to one another, but they were caught, they were all right there together and they were caught in a rip current.
00:21:52
Speaker
And so it began to pull them out to sea. They were trying so hard to swim back to shore, but it was futile. you know This whole thing moved so quickly, and they were just going further and further out. And so a young couple saw them, and they stood just at the edge of that rip current. And they held on to one another, and they reached their hand across, and they said, please take our hand. But the people couldn't get over there to them. The current was so strong.
00:22:21
Speaker
But you know what happened? When those on the beach saw that the young couple was trying to rescue the nine swimmers all by themselves, they formed a human chain. There was like 40 different people who locked arms together. And they said, penetrate that zone where the people are, and we'll hold on to you. We won't let go. Don't let go of us.
00:22:44
Speaker
And so they were able to rescue all nine of those that were caught in that rip current. And so thankfully, no one lost their life that day. Why? No one lost their lives that day because there was a group of people that said, we care enough to hold on. And so we're gonna hold on to you. And we're going to say, we're gonna bring you back to shore, to safety.
00:23:11
Speaker
I think that's what Paul's heart is here in 1 Corinthians 5. Sure, this person was defiant. This person, if you go with the back to the analogy of those who rescued the nine swimmers that were caught in the ah rib current,
00:23:28
Speaker
These people said, please save me. I want you to rescue me. But what if they would have said, I know I've got this, and they swam away from that couple? Well, there's nothing that could have been done. And so that's the case that he's referring to is we try our best to help those who are being swept away, who are in the church, but whose lives are being controlled by sin. We're trying to love them. We're trying to give them truth.
00:23:56
Speaker
But there are times when, if we're not careful, they're going to pull everybody away because they don't want to change. They're not wanting to let Christ be Lord. They're not wanting to grow in Christlikeness. They're not wanting their lives to line up with Scripture. They're actually wanting to go with the flow.
00:24:15
Speaker
It's a dangerous thing. So I encourage you to be a part of a local church and don't let the fact that the local church preaches and teaches truth. Don't let the fact that the local church has a high standard, a biblical standard. I'm not talking about pharisaical stuff. I'm not talking about legalistic stuff. That's not my heart at all. All I'm saying is we have to say, Lord, we've got to help people because all of this sin that's out there, it's taking people under. It's costing them their marriages, their families.
00:24:52
Speaker
ah Children are being so confused by it. We need to say, Lord, help us to be the one place that's going to stand for truth and stand for truth with a heart of love. Listen, friend, I'm reaching out to you right now.
00:25:08
Speaker
in Jesus' name with His love in my heart, and I'm trying to give you His truth as it is presented to us in the Scriptures. So I encourage you to do the same. For those that are in your life, reach out to them with biblical truth, but also reach out to them with a heart of love. Why don't we close in prayer? Lord, I thank you so much for the fact that we can grow in grace.
Closing Prayer
00:25:34
Speaker
I know that part of growing in grace involves speaking the truth in love. And so I pray that all of my friends would understand that I've tried my best to present the truth today and to present it by speaking ah with love.
00:25:51
Speaker
And I pray that if they try to implement any of these principles, they'd be very cautious, very careful. They would also say, if I'm going to present truth, then I want to make sure I present it with love.
00:26:03
Speaker
Lord, I just pray that if there are individuals, if there are churches out there that need to take heed to these biblical truths, that they would take heed to them. I pray for those who are caught in sin right now, that you would help them to awaken to the seriousness of sin. Help them, O Lord, to see that sin will kill, it'll destroy, and it'll snuff out all the life of Christ if they allow it.
00:26:31
Speaker
But if they will come back to Jesus in repentance, I thank you for what you said, that if we'll confess our sins, that you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So thank you once again, Lord, for your timeless truths. They'll work in any generation. They'll work in any place. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
00:26:55
Speaker
Hey, listen, friend, I hope you have a great day. I know that was a tough message, ah but I felt like it was necessary to share that one. Anyway, God bless you. You have a great day. Enjoy the Lord. And remember, keep growing in grace.
00:27:22
Speaker
This is a ministry of First Baptist Church, located at 1700 Milam Street, Columbus, Texas.