If you were to give the Corinthian Church a grade, they'd probably get about a D minus.

They were divided, they were disgraced, they were disturbed.

In fact, they were disturbed about a specific topic that they had written a letter to Paul about,

and it had to do with sexuality and what

was right and what was wrong and Corinth would even sort of pride themselves on their worldview

as it related to sexuality and it was kind of the idea of look how free we are look how open open we are. And here's the thing, you know,

this is where Paul is going to make some definitions and some bright lines. I have to say,

I'm thankful to the Corinthian church because it sort of forced Paul to nail down this letter

and the next as well, Second Corinthians, to say,

here's what's right, here's what's wrong, and here's how you deal with those that are in the church

that are practicing sin. And he's going to really nail it down. And it really will define

something that we call church discipline. How do you impose or talk

about or deal with discipline within the church? And Paul's going to deal with this. If you want to be

part of the church, there can't be this open, blatant practicing of sin. Now, there is a difference,

by the way, that the Bible even mentions about one who

overtakes sin purposefully, willfully, gleefully, pridefully, and says, I'm going to overtake sin

versus someone who's overtaken by sin. And I just want to make that differentiation before

we get into this this because that can cause

confusion on this topic that we're going to talk about tonight because all of us are overtaken by

sin. We wrestle with sin. We struggle with sin. We regret when we make mistakes and, you know,

hopefully we don't go too far before we just repent. Say, oh, Lord, forgive me for that sin. But it's,

we're trying to practice following

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