Today's teaching is going to be in really two parts. There's a corporate application as we read here in 1st, Corinthians chapter 5, what Paul, the context of what Paul is writing is intended for the church at large.

Then I'm going to pivot a little bit and use it as a springboard to talk about how it relates very much to even our personal lives in practical ways, especially for some

of you in particular family situations where I hope this will be helpful today. So keep that in

mind. That'll be the tail under the teaching when we make it more practical and personal for your

own family. But for the moment, this is going to be speaking to the church at large.

Take a look here. First Corinthians 5. I'm going to read the first eight verses.

Paul writes, verse 1. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you,

and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's

wife. And you are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed

might be taken away from among you. For I indeed, as absent in 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 are gathered together along with my spirit, in other words, he's saying, I can't be

with you in person, but I'll be with you in spirit.

With 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. He says, your glorying is not good.

Do you not know that a little leaven levens the whole lump? Therefore,

purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened. 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 the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So we come today to a difficult topic, but it is in the Bible. We go straight through the Bible, so we hit all the topics.

And this topic Paul is addressing here has to do with church discipline. Now, I'm going to

give us a working definition for those of you taking notes. Church discipline is the sometimes

necessary action of church leadership to confront someone about their open, unrepentantant

sin, to encourage them to repent, and if they do not

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