Deuteronomy in 1 Corinthians 5:13

[0:00] I thought I would speak on this because some of the Artizo interns are a bit intimidated coming to this group. So I thought, well, I'll pick a topic that can maybe shrink the group down a little bit by the time they come and speak.

[0:15] Maybe I'll just go to my next slide here and see. Can people in the back read this? I might pull the projector back if it's too small. Is that all right? Okay, good. So the reason I chose this is because I wrote a paper on it for school, so I already knew what to say.

[0:34] But I do think there's actually some helpful stuff for us to learn from this. It's quite an unusual passage, 1 Corinthians 5. I mean, 1 Corinthians itself is quite a remarkable book.

[0:46] The Corinthian church, I think, must have been quite exciting and not always in a good way. There's all sorts of juicy problems throughout that book. And 1 Corinthians 5 is maybe the highlight of sort of the, I guess, the entertainment gossip of the ancient world.

[1:04] There's a guy sleeping with his father's wife. And then in the passage, yeah, right, that's a bad thing. Also in the passage, Paul talks about handing somebody over to Satan, which, of course, brings up a lot of questions.

[1:20] And then there's talk about the destruction of the flesh, all sorts of juicy stuff going on. And then at the end of the passage, Paul commands them to purge this evil person from their midst.

[1:32] So this is our passage for the morning. And I think there are some pretty significant implications for church discipline in this passage that I think are an important message for many of our churches today.

[1:45] That, you know, we have kind of a culture where you get people into the church at any price, and you keep them there at any price, even if that price is maybe watering down the gospel or the way that we're to live.

[1:57] So I think this is actually an important passage for us to consider. As far as format for this morning, I was hoping I'll just go through what I've got here.

[2:09] If there's any questions, feel free to raise your hand. I'll have a time for questions at the end, but I'd rather you weren't confused for most of the lecture. So if I'm confusing you, speak up. There'll be time for questions at the end.

[2:21] And then I'm hoping that we'll be able to finish that with maybe 10 minutes to just discuss together the practical implications for churches today of this passage. I thought about telling you what I think about that, but then I thought maybe there's a lot of us here who might have some good thoughts, so I thought we could just chat about that for a bit.

[2:40] So hopefully we'll have time for that at the end. So to begin with, I think we should read our passage together so we all have it in our mind. So feel free to turn there in your Bibles if you want, or all the text is going to be up here on the screen for the moment.

[2:59] So it begins this way. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among the pagans. For a man has his father's wife, and you are arrogant.

[3:12] 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, and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

[3:24] When you are 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.

[3:36] Your boasting is not good. 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.

[3:48] For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 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.

[4:00] I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, 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.

[4:14] But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother, if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one.

[4:27] 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.

[4:41] And it's that last phrase, purge the evil person from among you, which is the one we're talking about today. This is a quote from Deuteronomy, as we'll see. Now this would be a pretty straightforward passage.

[4:55] Well, not a passage, but at least this last phrase would be pretty straightforward, if it weren't for the fact that it's a quote from Deuteronomy. So if we don't know that it's a quote, it seems pretty obvious, just a restatement of what he's already said.

[5:09] Let him who has done this be removed from among you. But if we happen to have read Deuteronomy recently, we might recognize the phrase, and then we'll say, well, wait, why is he quoting Deuteronomy?

[5:20] Where is it quoted? Where is it quoted? Where is verse 8 from among you in this book? Right here. This is in 1 Corinthians 5.13. Oh, I see. Yeah. And it comes from, there's nine places in Deuteronomy where this phrase is used.

[5:35] Oh, I see. Yeah. So we'll get to those in a couple seconds here. But the looming question at the beginning is, why is Paul quoting Deuteronomy? I mean, the first obvious thought is that maybe he's applying Deuteronomic law to the church in Corinth.

[5:49] He's a Jew, he's a Pharisee, or he was anyway. Maybe he's applying the law. But this doesn't seem to really hold up under a bit of scrutiny. If you know Galatians or any number of other places in Paul's writings, and Galatians 5 is a great example, though, he's arguing strenuously to the Galatians that it's wrong for them to apply the law to themselves.

[6:12] In this case, he's talking about circumcision, that if they circumcise themselves hoping that this will somehow give them a better standing with God, then they're throwing away what Christ has done for them on the cross.

[6:23] Additionally, of the nine times in Deuteronomy that this phrase, it's not up there anymore, but that our phrase is used, it's never used of this sin that this guy has committed.

[6:35] So this would be kind of a sloppy application of the law. So that would seem also unusual for a Pharisee. And then thirdly, the argument in this paragraph has nothing to do with the law.

[6:47] So Paul hasn't talked about the law at all. And we know that he does talk about the law quite a bit when he wants to. So this doesn't seem like the best solution to our problem. Another solution might be that it's a purely rhetorical device, just that Paul is using it because it sounds nice, it's got a nice ring to it.

[7:08] I also think this is doubtful. The first reason is because of the importance of the law. For someone like Paul, the law is what he was born and bred with. This is his food and drink growing up. The law that God gave them.

[7:20] This is the way it is for Jews, particularly in the first century, and especially for a Pharisee. Also, the fact that the phrase is used nine times in Deuteronomy, that frequency seems to give it even maybe a bit more of an importance in Paul's mind.

[7:38] And so based on that, I judge that it's a bit too loaded of a phrase. It's too packed with historical meaning and theological meaning for Paul to just use it carelessly, purely for its rhetorical value.

[7:53] So then, what is Paul doing? Why is he quoting this? Well, this is my thesis. First off, Paul believes that the church is part of Israel.

[8:05] I'll talk about this a bit more later, but in, I think it's chapter 10, he refers to our fathers, speaking to the Corinthian church, who are mostly Gentiles. And when he says our fathers, the context clearly shows that he's speaking about the Israelites in the Exodus.

[8:21] And so, that would be quite an unusual move for a Jew, to claim that his fathers, the Jews of the Exodus, were the fathers of a Gentile as well.

[8:35] But he does this, and he doesn't explain it, which suggests to me that the Corinthians are already familiar with this idea, from previous teaching with Paul. They already realize that they are in sort of the same religious heritage as the Israels of the Exodus.

[8:50] So, Paul believes the church is part of Israel. And he employs this quote from Deuteronomy to show that, like Israel of old, God wants the Corinthians to be a community in right relationship with him, and living lives in accordance with his character, so that they may be, first off, the first fruits of redemption that he desires for the world, and as a result of that, that they may be an image of God to the nations.

[9:18] So, that's what I'm going to try to convince you of this morning, and you can tell me if you think I'm successful or not. Next up, we need a bit of background about the city of Corinth.

[9:35] You can see Corinth there. This is from Google Maps. That's where ancient Corinth is, that little flag there, whatever it is. Important things to know about it. The first is, it was among the top four cities of the Roman world at the time.

[9:50] The other three were Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch. And it was near a narrow isthmus between the Peloponnesus. I'm not sure if I'm actually saying that right, but this is the Peloponnesus right here.

[10:01] And this is mainland Greece up here. So, you can see there's this narrow bit of land, which they call an isthmus. And Corinth is right here. So, anybody who is coming from Greece down to any of the important cities here in the Peloponnesus has to walk by or drive by Corinth.

[10:17] And vice versa, anyone coming from here up into mainland Greece has to go by Corinth as well. Here's zoomed out a bit.

[10:29] So, you can see the Peloponnesus in its entirety there. Another thing that was beneficial for Corinth in terms of economics is that the seas underneath the Peloponnesus were very dangerous.

[10:43] You'll remember the story of Paul when he gets shipwrecked on Crete. He was sailing beneath the Peloponnesus there, and they got caught in a storm, and it wrecked their ship, and he ended up on Crete.

[10:55] So, that's the kind of danger that there was in sailing around. So, what a lot of merchants would do is they would take a ship just right up to here and unload all their goods and cart them across the little narrow isthmus to another ship.

[11:11] Or maybe they would just leave them there, cart them across, and then sail the empty ship around and pick it up so they wouldn't lose their goods along the way. Alternatively, if the ship was small enough, they would actually portage the entire ship.

[11:24] So, they would ship the goods across, and then they would just roll the entire ship across on logs or some kind of rollers to avoid the dangerous seas in the south. So, of course, that's nice.

[11:34] You know, you've got all these sailors on leave for a week or something, or a few days while they roll the ship across, and merchants probably stopping to do some trading, and all these sailors on leave spending their earnings doing naughty things in the town.

[11:51] So, it was a lot of money coming into Corinth. It was also a fertile area due to the many springs and rivers nearby, and all this combined to make it quite a profitable city.

[12:06] There was lots of new money as well. That was unique amongst, I mean, a lot of cities in ancient Rome had a lot of money, but this one was unique in that it was all new money. It wasn't these families that had passed down their wealth through generations.

[12:19] It was primarily new money. The reason for that is that the city was only founded in 44 B.C. So, around Paul's time, I don't know, it's probably 50 or 60, somewhere around there.

[12:31] So, just over 100 years old, which is quite young for a city in Rome. And it was mostly repopulated with freedmen from Rome.

[12:44] Freedmen are just above slaves in the pecking order, so they're quite low class, but they are free. And Rome was too full, and so Julius Caesar thought, well, let's ship some people out.

[12:58] Why don't we ship out these freedmen? We need our slaves still, but the freedmen can go. So, get the freedmen out of there, and he thought, well, we recently destroyed Corinth, so there's no city there.

[13:09] We can just dump them all there. They can rebuild Corinth, and it'll ease our population problems. So, maybe not the easiest life for people, but it did provide opportunity for social advancement that was unusual in the ancient world.

[13:22] Now, the reason Old Corinth had been destroyed was that it was the head of the Achaean League in the resistance of Rome. And as we all know, Rome doesn't tolerate resistance very well.

[13:33] So, they did what they do, and they came, and they just razed the city, barren the buildings, killed all the men, enslaved all their women and children. Sort of nice thing that Rome is known for. It was deserted for over 100 years before Julius Caesar then recolonized it.

[13:47] So, for similar reasons, there were lots of aliens in the city. They were drawn there for the same reason, commercial opportunities.

[14:00] And for this reason, the church had a unique visibility and a wide influence. So, a lot of people's impressions of who God was would have been determined by the way the church of Corinth lived.

[14:11] It was their only exposure to God or Christians. Now, the church itself was founded by Paul, we know from Acts. And he stayed there for a year and a half after founding it.

[14:24] The Jews refused to believe, and so once that happened, he went and he spoke to the Gentiles. And this church was formed. The church, as I mentioned, was comprised mostly of Gentiles and mostly poor Gentiles, but there were a few rich people.

[14:38] And it became one of the largest and most important of the early churches in the Roman world. We know before 1 Corinthians, Paul had already written one letter to the church at Corinth.

[14:54] We don't have it, obviously. But he mentions it in 1 Corinthians 5 and 9. So, he wrote a letter to them, and subsequently, he has received a letter in response from the church at Corinth with some questions.

[15:08] Now, a third factor is that there's some people, closed people, have come and they've reported some stuff to him. They're mentioned in chapter 7, verse 1. Is that right? Yeah. Chapter 7, verse 1.

[15:20] Sorry, 1. 111. Chapter 7, verse 1 is where he mentions their letter to him. Closed people have come, and closed people are probably either people who live in Ephesus, where Paul is writing the letter from, and they have gone to Corinth, done some spying for Paul, come back and reported to him, or the people who live in Corinth and then have come to Ephesus to report to Paul about the progress of the church.

[15:46] We're not quite sure what it was. So, into 1 Corinthians. I'm just going to do a brief literary outline of the book for you, just so we have an idea of where our passage fits in with the whole book.

[16:00] First off, the first six chapters are dealing with issues reported by closed people. So, Paul starts off right away, not with stuff they've asked, but with stuff that has sort of been tattletaled to him about the church at Corinth.

[16:14] Then he goes on for the rest of the book, at least through chapter 15, alternating between issues that have been reported to him and things that they have asked him about. Then the last chapter is closing remarks.

[16:26] Thematically, the first four chapters deal with pride. It's talking about God's way being the way of humility. And Paul, he kind of has himself as an example of how he has chosen this way of humility and the Corinthians ought to follow him in this.

[16:42] And the main point is here is that God is different. His way is different and it does not seek status or power over against the others.

[16:53] And Paul has followed this way of living. This section is where you get this, the, you see that the Corinthians have been dividing themselves amongst, you know, I follow Paul or I follow Apollos or I follow Christ.

[17:06] So, he rebukes him for that. Chapter 5, our passage deals with this surprising moral failing in their community, which is sort of an ironic clash with the previous section of spiritual pride.

[17:18] In chapter 6, he talks about mediating conflicts. They're to deal with their own conflicts in the church rather than running to the secular courts to deal with their lawsuits. Looks bad for the gospel.

[17:34] Chapter 7 starts with questions that they wrote about and it begins with their questions about whether they should remain celibate or not. Now, I think this is a bit ironic given that this great sin of, of sexual immorality in their church, you'd think that maybe they would just focus on just staying monogamous rather than trying to live celibate or something.

[17:55] But anyway, that's the Corinthians for you. Chapters 8 through 10, they're building others up rather than exercising their freedom. So, this is where you hear how the discussion about meat sacrifice to idols.

[18:06] Paul talks about how he relinquishes his right to a salary, to bringing a wife along for the sake of the gospel and encourages them to think about building others up rather than claiming their rights.

[18:21] Chapter 11, charitable praying and eating is the topic here. He talks about what they have to do with head coverings, whether men and women should wear them.

[18:32] The idea is be charitable. Think about what's going to be helpful for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Same with the Lord's Supper. 12 through 14, spiritual gifts are for the building up of the community.

[18:44] So, he talks about tongues a lot and the middle chapter is about love, how love is the highest way and it must be the heart of all of their spiritual gifts. Chapter 15 is the centrality of the resurrection for their faith and then chapter 16 is just final details.

[18:56] So, then narrowing in a bit onto our chapter, we go through and the first thing of note is that a man has his father's wife.

[19:08] That's the problem. They're arrogant about it. Also a problem. Paul says they should rather mourn. Then, he goes on and he says that he's present in spirit with them.

[19:21] Gordon Fee suggests that this is talking about both his spirit and Paul's spirit. So, the idea being that somehow, in sort of this mysterious intimacy between his spirit and the Holy Spirit and their intimacy with the Holy Spirit, that when they meet together with the Holy Spirit, Paul's spirit is actually present with them in a real way.

[19:42] In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this is an important phrase. When they assemble in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, there's a bit of debate actually about what in the name of the Lord Jesus modifies.

[19:54] And there's a few theories. Three main ones. First off, it could modify actually, I have already pronounced judgment. So, that's up here. So, it could mean that I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[20:09] The second one is like it says here, that they assemble in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The third one is actually that it modifies two phrases.

[20:21] The first one is, when you are assembled. And the second one is, deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh. Both of those happening in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously, in English, it's pretty clear what the translators here think it's modifying.

[20:34] But in Greek, it's a bit less clear. It's a bit less clear. The important thing, however, to note from this is what it means to do something in the name of someone else. In the Bible, this means to do something on their behalf as if they're doing it.

[20:48] So, in this case, they're doing something on Jesus' behalf as if Jesus is doing it. We see examples of this in Deuteronomy 18.20. The prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or in other words, speaking it as if God is speaking it, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.

[21:10] So, this prophet is speaking on God's authority when God has not given him that authority. Similarly, in Matthew 24.5, Jesus says, For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and they will lead many astray.

[21:21] So, again, they're doing something as if Jesus were doing it. In this case, actually claiming to be Jesus. So, Paul is bringing this to their attention, that the Corinthians represent Jesus when they do this.

[21:34] Now, also significantly, this phrase is only used in the Old Testament of God. So, we have the Greek Old Testament, which is called the Septuagint. In the Septuagint, this exact phrase, in the name of the Lord, appears only in reference to God.

[21:53] So, this is quite a Christological statement made by Paul, equating Jesus with God. And so, not only are the Corinthians representing Jesus when they do something in his name, but they're representing Yahweh as well.

[22:05] Moving on through the passage, Paul explains in this section that a little leaven leavens the whole loaf. So, the sin of this man is tainting their entire community.

[22:18] In other words, one bad apple spoils the barrel. Then, 9-13, our passage, or closer to our quote at least, Paul explains here that they are not to associate with Christians who are immoral.

[22:34] There's a bit of confusion. In his previous letter, he said, don't associate with people who are immoral. And they took it to mean people outside the church. And he says, no, obviously we're not saying that. Because then you wouldn't talk to any of them.

[22:45] We mean in the church. If someone in the church is being immoral, don't associate with them. And then, our quote at the end, 5-13b, Paul concludes with the exclamation, purge the evil person from among you.

[22:57] Now, as I mentioned, this is a citation from Deuteronomy in several places. And the case for it being a citation, other than that it's verbatim, if that's not enough for you, I'll give you a bit more evidence.

[23:11] The word purge, the Greek word for this is only found here in the New Testament. So, the word purge, or drive out, is ex-iro.

[23:25] And it's what we call a hapax legomenon. Only once in the New Testament. Here's a bit more Latin for you this morning. I don't know Latin, but I know how to type it. So, there you go.

[23:37] The significance of this is that it does appear several times in the Old Testament. So, the fact that it appears only once in the New Testament suggests even more strongly that Paul uses this word because he's quoting the Old Testament.

[23:48] So then, what do we know so far? We know they have a responsibility to remain pure. We know that this man's sin contaminates the community.

[24:01] We know the community is complicit in the sin because they're not dealing with it. And then we know that something about the significance of this is related to in the name of the Lord Jesus.

[24:11] And we know that it tells the nations, what they're doing is telling the nations that God is okay with this kind of a sin. Which, obviously, Paul is not happy with.

[24:22] He's not going to allow that to stand, particularly in this visible church in Corinth. So, issue's not solved, but we're getting closer. The next thing to do is to look at the Old Testament context.

[24:34] So, drive out the evil person from among you in Deuteronomy. This comes up in these seven verses. It's a verbatim quote. And then there's two others that I think are helpful to include in our study as well, bringing it up to nine.

[24:50] These ones are slightly different. They say, drive out the evil person from Israel. Now, obviously, since from among you is directed at Israel in the other quotes, it means the same thing as drive him out from Israel.

[25:02] So, that's why I've included them. I think that they are a valid comparison. Now, the basics of Deuteronomy. It's mostly speeches from Moses to Israel just before the land enters, or just, excuse me, just before Israel enters the promised land.

[25:17] So, they've gone to Exodus, Mount Sinai, they get the law, come to the promised land. Joshua and the ten, or the twelve tribes, spies, went in, and the ten are bad and two are good.

[25:29] You guys know that song? About the spies? Maybe not. Anyway, there's, they fail, God sends them back to the desert for a long time, forty years. Now, they're finally back at the border of the promised land.

[25:41] Moses is about to die. So, these are kind of his last words. It's a final reorientation of Israel before Moses dies, and they cross the Jordan and begin the conquest. It seeks to remind them of who God is, who they are in relation to him, and how they are to live as a result of that.

[25:57] So, quick outline of Deuteronomy. Chapters one through three are a history from Mount Sinai until the events of Deuteronomy.

[26:08] And this focuses on how their disobedience resulted in punishment, curse, and their trust in God resulted in blessing and victory over Sihon and Og, who are kings of Bashan, kings of the Amorites.

[26:22] Chapter four. This is primarily a reminder of the importance of keeping the law. Chapters five through 26, the law is given. The first part of that, five through 11, are general laws.

[26:37] And then 12 through 26 are more specific laws. Then, chapter 27 prescribes a ceremony that Israel is to have when they cross the Jordan, reaffirming the covenant.

[26:49] 28 is a reminder that obedience equals blessing and disobedience equals curse. They are to keep the law. 29 is a reminder to keep the covenant and that the covenant is for all who are there, even aliens who are present that day.

[27:08] Chapter 30 states that though they are able to keep this law, if and when they fail, if they repent, God will restore them. Then, chapters 31 through 34 finish off the book.

[27:20] It's got Moses' last words in it. The leadership is passed to Joshua and then Moses dies. Now, a few significant things to note. First off, in chapter 4, verses 6 through 8, the reason God is so concerned that Israel keep the law is given.

[27:39] And he says, adherence to these statutes will be Israel's wisdom that catches the attention of the nations around them through lives lived in accordance with this law.

[27:50] The nations will see how remarkably near God is and how surpassingly righteous his decrees are. So, it's just a few verses, but I think they're important. Oh, here it is up there.

[28:02] Sorry about that. I think they're important verses in the midst of Deuteronomy showing that their lives are not simply for their own salvation, for their own nearness to God, although that's definitely an important part of it, but it is also for the sake of the nations.

[28:16] That living this way is supposed to capture attention. You'll remember that Abraham, when God is speaking to Abraham, he tells them that he will bless his descendants and they will be a blessing to the nations.

[28:27] So, there's this idea that this is going on, right? We see this also in the Exodus. When they come out from the Exodus, it tells us that it was a mixed multitude who came out with Israel, not just Israelites by birth.

[28:42] God is saving a mixed multitude, the nations as well. Also important, the next thing, in 3015, God says to them, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.

[28:58] And then in 3019, he says, choose life. So, these laws aren't just God's whim. He's not just saying, oh, I think I'll make some stuff up for Israel to follow so that they can know if they love me enough to obey me.

[29:09] No, these are actually real choices between life and death and he wants them to live and the only way for them to live, the only way for them to have true life is to obey God's commands. And the same thing is true of the nations.

[29:21] The only way for them to really live is to obey God's commands as well. And how are they ever going to know what God is commanding unless Israel is faithful to the covenant? Now, all of our quotes, the nine that I've mentioned, come from the area of specific laws smack in the middle of Deuteronomy.

[29:43] Now, quickly, the context of all nine of the quotes that we have here. In 13.5, we've got an idolatrous prophet and if you have such a person, the penalty is death.

[29:54] 17.7, for people committing idolatry, the penalty is death by stoning. In each of these situations, the refrain is repeated, drive out the evil from your midst or purge the evil from your midst.

[30:07] 17.12, contempt for the priest or the judge who's judging a trial is death. 19.19, false testimony. For false testimony, you're to punish an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

[30:20] Now, this is interesting. This verse, I think, is quoted quite a lot about people, about how the Old Testament is very harsh and ungracious and as God has just said, really, it's kind of a selfish ethic.

[30:36] If you do something to me, I'll do it back to you is how people often quote this. But that's not what's actually going on. This is a false witness who's brought someone to trial and there's a penalty at stake. If this person is punished or if this person is proven or guilty, then they will be punished.

[30:51] But it's a false witness, so this person is innocent. So what God has said is if someone does this, what you're going to do is you're going to punish them with doing exactly to them what they intended to do to the other person. So if they intended to cause that person to lose an eye by falsely accusing them, you take their eye from them.

[31:07] If they intended to cause them to lose a hand, you take their hand from them. If they intended to cause them to die, you take their life from them. It's a serious thing to falsely accuse someone like this.

[31:20] 21-21, for grossly disobedient son, the penalty is death by stoning. For 22-21, for an impure bride, the penalty is also death by stoning.

[31:32] Now, I've got a little asterisk here because it wouldn't fit on the slide, but what happens is if the bride is not a virgin on her wedding night, then she's stoned for her sexual impurity.

[31:46] However, if the husband has falsely accused her, then the husband is punished by, he's whipped, he's flogged. 22-22, adultery, death for both parties.

[31:59] 22-24, sleeping with an engaged woman, the penalty is death by stoning. Also, if you're an engaged woman sleeping with any man, the penalty is death by stoning. 24-7, if you kidnash someone and enslave them or sell them into slavery, the penalty is death.

[32:16] So, there's a nine occurrences of this phrase in Deuteronomy. Now, you may be wondering, why so severe? Because it is pretty severe, right?

[32:27] There's a lot of death going on here, a lot of stoning. I think the reason is because it's a life and death issue for Israel. God wants them to live.

[32:41] He's creating Israel in his image by giving them this law and asking them to live by it. He wants what's best for Israel and this is it. The law reflects his character and when Israel lives by the law, they look like God.

[32:57] Living in a different way leads to death. So, he doesn't want them to choose the way of death. He wants them to choose the way of life. So, he gives these severe penalties because of this. Additionally, it's because of the mission.

[33:14] Letting grievous sin exist spoils their image of God. Such sins are actually contrary to God's character and lead to death, not life. So, when they're representing God to the nations, if they have this kind of sin in their midst, if they have people committing adultery, people sleeping with someone's fiance, that sort of thing, false prophets, idolatry, it's going to give the nations the impression that God's fine with those things.

[33:41] And then, it's a bad representation of God which will lead the nations to a misunderstanding of God. A misunderstanding doesn't lead to the way of life, but it leads to the way of death because they don't understand what God has ordained for his people.

[33:54] God wants the nations to live as well. I think that's why these punishments are so severe. Also, the fact that it was just a very severe world, I think that's a factor as well. So, individuals who persist in sin must be expelled in order to save Israel from death and to preserve the image of God that they project to the nations.

[34:19] Now, this is called corporate responsibility. One person's sin taints the whole nation. Now, the whole nation is to be holy. So, if one person sins, then that damages the nation as a whole, right?

[34:32] Because the nation is not just a bunch of individual Israelites happening to be in the same area, but they are all the Israelites together. So, if one sins, then the nation of Israel is tainted.

[34:48] And that's why the nation is held responsible until an individual's sin, until that sin is dealt with. So, they need to purge the evil from their midst, sort of like an immune system. When the body has a toxin, it's got to get rid of that toxin.

[34:58] It can't just say, well, you know, that's only in this part, so we'll just let that be. The rest of us will be healthy because that's not the way it goes. It spreads. We see examples of this, Deuteronomy 23, 14.

[35:11] God turns away from something indecent in the camp that he sees. He turns away from the whole camp, not just that one indecent thing. Also, Deuteronomy 29, 19 through 21.

[35:23] One person in Israel going his own way brings disaster on the whole land. This picks up on that theme that I mentioned before, that Israel's relationship with God is not for their own sake alone, but for the nations as well.

[35:45] This idea of corporate responsibility did not end with Deuteronomy either. It continues on through the rest of the Old Testament and into the intertestamental period between the New and Old Testaments.

[35:57] At Qumran, we see examples of this. Qumran is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, if you're not familiar. It was where the Essenes lived during or leading up to the first century.

[36:10] It was kind of an isolated community, almost like a monastery. What we see is there's two kinds of exclusion in this community, but there's no execution. They've taken this concept and they've sort of softened it.

[36:24] Now they're excluding people. And one is a probationary exclusion, the other is a permanent exclusion. And there's different kinds of sins that can earn you one or the other. The point of this is that Paul may have known of such practices in his day.

[36:39] It would have been a familiar concept to him, potentially. And this idea of softening, this is kind of Brian Rosner's, he's the guy who seems to be kind of one of the leading guys on this.

[36:52] He brings this up because the softening is what he points out. This idea that they don't really do death anymore, they just do this exclusion. And that's going to be a bit important later.

[37:04] One textual issue that we need to do to look at is this issue of purge or drive out. What's the best translation? Now the ESV has the same word in Deuteronomy as in 1 Corinthians.

[37:17] But the Hebrew and Greek words don't mean the same thing. They're related but not the same. So, Ba'ar is that Hebrew word there. It's most basic meaning, watch this, this is pretty cool.

[37:33] To burn. Ba'ar means to burn. Yeah, that is pretty, you want to see that again? I like that.

[37:45] So, ha'la is kind of one of the better Hebrew lexicons. And it interprets the word here as to destroy. Hence, we get in the ESV purge.

[37:57] It's a pretty good translation, I think. The Greek word exiro, however, means to exclude or remove someone from a group. Sorry, I don't have any fancy effects for exclusion there.

[38:09] That's what it means, though. And hence, in the NIV, you have the word expel, or in the NASB, it says to remove. So, I think, I'm not sure exactly why the ESV chose to go with purge here, but I don't think it's quite as accurate as some of these other words.

[38:26] Now, this is important because Paul's Greek word matches what is found in the Septuagint. That's just the abbreviation for the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, LXX is 70 in Roman numerals.

[38:37] So, is this change significant? What's going on here? Brian Rosner, again, suggests that this is further evidence of softening amongst the Jewish Jews' understanding of how they're to deal with sin in Israel.

[38:53] That they've softened this word to expel because, you know, by almost the first century, you don't really want to be killing people for doing these kinds of things. All of a sudden, Israel would be getting quite small. So, expulsion is maybe nicer or making them not come to dinner for a while, that sort of thing.

[39:14] However, I think we need to be aware of what the words mean, but I think we must also be aware of the context that each phrase is in. So, here's a chart of all the occurrences in Deuteronomy, and I've got the different, the Greek words and the Hebrew word here.

[39:30] And what's significant, is that there is a Greek word that means essentially the same thing as Ba'ar, the Hebrew word, to destroy. And that's this top one here, Afhanies.

[39:44] Afhanies. And that word is used in the Septuagint in 13.5. So, we know that they could have used that if they wanted to, but they chose not to. They chose to use ex-Iro in all of the other examples.

[39:58] It's used here as well, but I've put the Hebrew word there for, I'll explain it in a minute. The significant thing here is that in all of these situations where ex-Iro is used, the context still clearly shows that the penalty is death.

[40:16] So, the fact that they have ex-Iro doesn't mean that the translators of the Septuagint were envisioning people not dying, because they left those other verses about that actually tell you what the penalty is.

[40:27] They actually still say, you've got to stone this person. They actually still say, this guy's got to die. And they didn't change those verses, so I don't think they're intending to actually change what the penalty was supposed to be.

[40:42] Also importantly, 1919, I have the Hebrew word here, because here this word meaning to burn or purge is still used in the Hebrew when the penalty is not necessarily death. It may be just an I, it may be a hand, obviously, I mean, those are pretty significant, but it's not as though Ba'ar means to kill and Ex-Ira means to just expel from your community.

[41:05] So while it's significant, there does seem to be some sort of a shift. I don't think we can read too much into it, because the context is still very strong, and it's still very clear from the context what's intended.

[41:20] So now we know a little bit about 1 Corinthians, or excuse me, Deuteronomy, we're going to return to 1 Corinthians. Why does Paul quote this verse? Brian Rosner again suggests three motifs.

[41:35] The first is a covenant motif. We've already talked about that one bad apple spoils the barrel. The second is corporate responsibility motif. This is basically that the community is responsible for an individual's sin unless they deal with that sin.

[41:51] We've mentioned that as well. The third one, which we haven't gotten to, is the holiness motif, which is basically the unholy things or people were not allowed in Israel. There are connections with the temple that he brings out.

[42:05] In a bit more detail then, basically the way he gets this is he goes, he reads this and he thinks about how unholy things are not allowed in Israel.

[42:17] Then he thinks about temple exclusion. In Deuteronomy 23, 1-8, people with certain deformities were not allowed in the temple. People with certain nationalities as well.

[42:30] Over the years, he finds out through research, this grew to include moral failings. By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, you see people with certain moral failings not being allowed into the temple. The verse before these exclusions in Deuteronomy significantly forbids sleeping with your father's wife.

[42:48] He draws this connection. He's thinking, maybe Paul, seeing this sin, makes this connection in Deuteronomy with these temple exclusions, which grew over time to include moral failings, possibly such as sleeping with your father's wife.

[43:03] Then, also significantly, Paul calls the Corinthians God's temple in chapter 3, 16-17 in 1 Corinthians. He puts all these together and thinks that maybe that's why Paul is doing this.

[43:18] There's these three similarities between the passages and Paul is kind of matching them together. I don't really buy it, though. And he's the expert, so maybe you should believe him and not me.

[43:29] But I'll tell you why I don't really think this is, at least why it doesn't satisfy me. First of all, with this covenant motif, one bad apple, it's hardly a unique concept to Deuteronomy.

[43:41] You don't need to appeal to Deuteronomy to explain to people that one bad apple spoils the barrel. Corporate responsibility, yeah, it's true, it's clearly in both, but Rosner doesn't explain why God and why Paul hold the community responsible for an individual's sin.

[44:01] And I think that's the important question, why is this happening? Holiness motif, I think he's got some striking observations, and you can't fault him for that, but I don't see how it helps us really.

[44:13] Paul doesn't say drive out the evil person from the temple, but drive out the evil person from among you. Additionally, Israel was to be holy, not just the temple.

[44:24] So the idea that he's got to somehow bring in the temple here to make us see why the Corinthians ought to have been holy, or why Israel ought to have been holy, doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

[44:38] The quote is about sins committed outside the temple. So, here's my suggestion, alternate suggestion. This is the last thing I'll say before questions and hopefully a discussion.

[44:52] Paul quotes Deuteronomy, I think, for the same reason that God gave Israel the law, for the life of the church and for the mission of the church. For the life of the church, this is a life and death situation as much for the church of Corinth as it was for Israel.

[45:10] they have to choose the way of life, just as Israel had to choose the way of life. If they allow this kind of sin to go on, they are choosing the way of death. Paul doesn't want that for the church of Corinth.

[45:22] Jesus came and died, and that is the biggest shaping thing in Paul's life, in his mind, in his spirit. Jesus' death and resurrection, and how that changes things, and the way that salvation is brought to the Gentiles.

[45:37] And so when he sees the Corinthians making these choices that lead to death, he's not going to stand for it, and he's going to correct them. The second reason is for the mission. It's also life and death for those outside the church.

[45:50] So as I mentioned, Corinth is a very visible church, in a great metropolis, with lots of people moving through. In the same way Israel's sin would have shown the nations the way of death, so the sin in the church of Corinth will also show these people the way of death.

[46:04] And Paul's not going to death. I think also in Paul's mind is probably Israel's history. We know from Israel's history that they failed at this.

[46:18] They failed to choose the way of life. They went into exile. That still didn't solve the problem for them. And now, as Paul tells us, Israel's branches are being lopped off, and other branches, the Gentiles, are being grafted into their place.

[46:32] It's not an easy thing for Paul as a Jew to stomach. He loves his people. He wants them to be a part of the tree. He wants them to be grafted into Christ, or to remain in Christ.

[46:43] And yet, they're being lopped off for choosing the way of death. And so, when he sees his brothers in the Corinthian church doing the same thing, making the same mistakes that Israel made, I think that's why he's so severe about this.

[46:54] It has to be dealt with. For their own sake, and for the sake of the world. So, that's my idea.

[47:07] Ten rick Johnnys Morc