1 Corinthians Chapter 5 Verses 6 – 8

• Leaven or yeast is most often a picture of sin in the Bible and the thing about leaven is that if there is a speck in the dough then left on its own it will overtake the dough and the dough will no longer be dough at all but it will be only leaven! It’s crazy that way!  It takes over!  Changes you!  This is a persistent threat that is really always there…we have got to be on guard and really we each need to get on the offense against sin!  (Also works in the reverse for someone who is serious about their walk – Matthew 13:33)
• Jesus said in Matthew 7:5, “First remove the plank in your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck in your brother’s eye.” But DO remove the speck!  That’s the implication!  Both of y’all remove your junk!  Don’t think you need to deal with it?  Address it?  Are you ok with just one little cancerous tumor?  Or one HIV positive blood cell?  I’m NOT!  Sin will do the same thing spiritually…it spreads and takes over if it goes unchecked. 
• We don’t think so…something in us thinks that sin and the flesh are is/are manageable…but here’s the thing, you won’t be who you could be…I know inside here, this heart, is a man that can be firm founded and powerful while at the same time peaceful, joyful and gentle. All at the same time.  Lively, pleasant and happy.  Content and overjoyed with life and even the difficulties of it…and I have learned, discovered through small glimpses of what I and life could be…that my flesh and specifically the sin in my life is what limits me.  So, I’m on the offense!  I have been equipped through the cross with everything I need to overcome sin and death and I’m finally beginning to Krav Maga the crud in my heart and life!  Just like this week…my clock on my fridge has been wrong for I don’t know how long…you know what I did…?  I changed it!  What a novel idea!!  CRAZY!  Now guess what!?  It’s right!  Go figure!  HA!  Why?  I did something about it…amazing isn’t it!!  (By the way, what is the best time on a clock?  It has to be 6:30, hands down!)
• Then Paul says, keep the feast man. What the Lord has for you and for me in our lives…it’s a feast!  A feast of purpose.    Wisdom.  Fellowship.  Service.  Inexhaustible energetic exuberance!  But old leaven eats it up.  New leaven of malice and wickedness spoils it all…the key is sincerity and truth! 
• This word for sincerity is used only two others times in scripture and when we see it again in 2 Corinthians 1:12, Paul links it to grace, saying, “We conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you.” So, what I want to connect is that we have to receive God’s grace, in order to have sincerity and truth in our walks.  And man, here’s the thing, receiving God’s grace makes God’s grace, in the moment its truly received…very little if anything about you!
• A couple points on grace just for a moment, some takeaways from the Men’s retreat this past weekend…Literally, the literal definition of the word is Favor means you’ve got something, you’ve received something that not 1% of you warrants.  Grace is everything that God is free to do for us independent of who and what we are…The enemy knows your name and yet calls you by your sins while God knows your sins and yet calls you by name. 
• Grace is the weapon of the cross. The kill switch of evil.  It’s what Satan hates the most because it’s comprised of only two things…absolute love and absolute power…both absolutely out of reach of the enemy and that which he is powerless against!
• Grace precedes knowledge. We are so keen to jump to knowledge…but before knowledge even begins to grow as it ought to grow, grace must be firmly and authoritatively the BOSS…the administrator, the chaperon, the manager, the superintendent…the shot caller!  If grace is not…then the knowledge gained is weak…it’s annoying…and eventually it all has to be undone at some time in the future and reassembled and that is a huge waste of time! 
• Now Paul gives a bit of clarification that he is not talking about the world but about the church…check this out…

1 Corinthians Chapter 5 Verses 9 – 13

• We are not talking about the world. Matthew 18, Titus 3, 1 Corinthians 5, not for the world.  Do you know what is for the world?  The gospel!  We aren’t to judge the world.  On what basis?  We are unqualified and so are they.  Where or who in the world is not these things anyway?  Perhaps and probably not all of these but certainly some.  What are we to do?  Judge them?  The world doesn’t serve the Lord.  Jesus said, “Who are you to judge another man’s”  Why would we pass judgment on the world because they don’t serve the Lord…duh!  We ought to not judge but to lead, man!
• Leave the judgment of the world to God…but within the Body of Christ and specifically our own hearts, we are to take action…why? Because the flesh is a fatal feast and it has no place in the church where folks are to be built up, equipped and most especially worshipping God.
• I mean the truth is this…if we are worshipping God ourselves then we will be building up those around us…even in the world. We are going through some changes at my house.  A deck is being built, windows are being replaced…but the interesting thing is, before the deck can be built, the cement patio steps have got to be removed…before the new windows can go in…the old aluminum drafty crusty ones have got to come out…I’m not doing it…because I’m unskilled and would ruin our walls if I did…but some skilled folks are here…just like we ought to be skilled…and the primary skill has GOT to be grace.
• But there is certainly judgment in the house of the Lord. Why?  Because we are to be (as it says in 2 Timothy 3:17) the people of God, complete in our hearts of hearts and thoroughly equipped for every good work.  The church isn’t going to be that unless we individually are that…and so perhaps and even at times that takes fairly drastic action.  And we grimace…so did Jesus at the cross.  The most drastic action taken against sin ever…when grace on earth was born.