Calling the church to the Lord
Jesus and His teaching. This isn't a gospel message of
evangelism. This isn't about Paul trying
to get Timothy to evangelize Ephesus. We don't evangelize
the body of Christ. That's hogwash. Maybe I shouldn't
say that word. Sorry. That's my go-to word lately and
I'm trying to avoid it. It's misplaced. Are there lost people in the
church? Absolutely. Always because we're
a whole bunch of sinners and some of us think that we're in
Christ and adhere to a certain set of doctrines, which is what
Christ's people do. It's part of being a bunch of
the truth. We uphold the truth of Christ, the right gospel,
the one and only gospel. But we also live in a manner
worthy of the gospel. And so our calling, no Christian has
ever been called since the history of humanity to come into the
body of Christ and evangelize it and pull out wolves and snakes
and unconverted people. No one has that calling and anyone
who claims that calling is of the enemy. That's why it's a felony to do
something like that in California. If you as much as put handbills
on the windshields in the parking lot of a church that is counter
to their faith, that's a crime. And I love it. Because it keeps
zealots from disobeying the scripture when it comes to preaching the
evangelism. But unbelievers will be in the
church. There's no way around it. They're going to be there.
What is the remedy? Learn the Word of God. Walk together.
What a greater joy for someone to come and confess to us one
day. You know, I've been I just never saw and rested in the work
of Christ until this sermon. And the Lord just opened my eyes
and said, Praise the Lord! It is about thanksgiving and
reconciliation. We have nothing else to do there.
Nothing. That person does not have to
confess anything, does not have to say anything, does not have
to evaluate anything, does not have to go through the last 70
years of their lives to come with a list of things they have
not done, a list of clothes they did not wear, a list of food
they did not eat. It's not a requirement for salvation.
It's not good news. It's not hope. It's of the enemy.
It is always of the flesh. When we insist on these things
that are not found in the instruction and the context of the whole
of a letter in the Bible, we should not do them. We should
not say that we should not imply that we should not infer. And
by the love of grace and the love of God, we should never
burden the conscience of another human being with that which God
has not commanded. And that's what's happening in
Ephesus. What's going on, James? No, this is what's happening
in Ephesus. This is what Paul is writing to Timothy about.
He doesn't detail all this false teaching anywhere, nowhere. He doesn't care. Why? Because
it's worthless. We have an entire generation
of lunacy. running amok in a world today
in the name of warner for Christ saying, let us show you all the
wrong. Get over yourselves. It is arrogance. And beloved, I've been there.
Why do you think I'm so passionately against polemics? Because I used
to be the hardest one. Thank God there wasn't an internet
or there'd be a record of it. I'm a loud person. And I've pointed my fingers at
people's faces and I've spoken very loudly with a smile. If
I'm angry, sometimes I smile. I've been loud in public with
people who were acting foolish, saying dumb stuff. I could probably teach a class
on how to be a wicked soapbox preacher. Started my ministry
as a young man on the streets. It was wrong. It wasn't good
intentions. It was denying the sufficiency
of the Scripture. Just like Peter did. Just like
several of the disciples did. When was that? When they didn't
believe Christ and walked away. When they said, no, no, no, no,
you don't have to do that. See, we forget that the Scripture
is not what's written. The Scripture was written then. But it walked with the earth.
Jesus is the Word of God. Jesus is the Gospel. And then He, God, put it in the
hearts of the apostles to secure for us so that we could walk
with Him too. Jesus Christ died to satisfy
the wrath of God for His people. The church, that means the gathered
ones, that are together. There is no
church where there aren't the prescribed, expressed order found
in the New Testament. 10 people doing a Zoom call is not
church. It's 10 Christians doing a Zoom
call to the glory of God, and Christ is together with them,
but it's not church. It's not the church. And part of the things that I
think we need to understand is the purpose, again, of dealing
with the butchers of the truth. I've said this a bunch over the
last 12 weeks. And you have to take the teaching
in whole so that you don't take a myopic focus of a particular
thing and think that I'm changing my mind, or that I'm misspeaking,
or that I'm contradicting myself. And I may be the truth, so I
may contradict myself. But my intentions that are running up
here, I've got about 14, 15 sentences in my head right now that I'm
trying to hold so that I don't forget them as I continue to
speak mindlessly right now out of my mouth. I'm not aware of
what I'm saying. I'm just saying it because it
sort of flows out. It's like you've got a faucet
and then the side of the barrel it blows. And it's wet. Everything's
wet. That happens sometimes. I wish I could control it. But
Paul says in 1 Timothy 3 that the church is the pillar and
the bunch of the truth. And then he expressly deals with this
amazing little hymn type thing about who Christ is. incarnation,
and His life, and His death, and His resurrection, and His
ascension, and His promise to come. And it's just this neat
little picture of the person of Christ. It's not sufficient
to say that's the gospel. But it is the gospel because
it points to Christ. Is it the whole gospel? Absolutely not. But it is good news. It is hope.
And it's written to believers who know the context. Somebody
could say something about Christ and the whole assembly would
be like, Amen, it is so. Why? Because we know the whole
thing. We don't have to get into every jot and tittle of every
expression of every theological thing. And that's one of the
reasons why it's so difficult to follow along in the shepherding
as a believer when you're not in the church area. And that's
why it's immensely devastating to our mental health and our
emotional health and our physical health and our spiritual health
and everything else when we walk away, that's hyperbole, but when
we walk away just flippantly from being in the assembly. And
I would, if I were a betting man, I would bet that most people
who don't attend on a regular basis don't even listen to the
subsequent messages that they miss. So they come in here three
weeks later, and they don't even know what's going on. And then
they go, oh yeah, praise the Lord, I know you don't like Taco
Bell. And that's all they're able to listen to, because it's the
only thing they're disciplined to hear, is the silly little things that
I've said. So today, I want to talk about the grace of church
discipline. Church discipline, that's what
we've been defining as a means of grace. And we've talked about
it a lot, but here's an area that we haven't talked about.
And some of you, not just one of you, but many of you have
come to me over the last three or four months and have made
a concern known to me that you don't know how to approach or
to relate to those people who have been disciplined from our
midst. And I started to think, wow,
what an assumption on my part that everybody understands that.
Because it depends on how we, you know, we read 2 Corinthians
or we read 1 Corinthians, we see very clearly, right? Throw
his body into the pit, we're safe, we can tear him up. I got
that. We get angry, we get frustrated,
yeah, get him, burn him. I've been in a meeting before
with 200 people, literally, that had hay forks and torches, it
would have looked like medieval days. When 46 people were disciplined
out of the church because of refusal to submit to the Word
of God, they cheered. And I went outside and threw
up. I was sick. I was like 24. And then later to have these
mature, so-called godly men instruct me on why it was okay for these
people to be excited about it. What? I didn't last long there,
14 months. But church discipline, what does
it mean? Discipline means, it means what? Correction? Training,
there's a good word. And we've talked about this already
in the letter to Timothy, positive formative training, that's discipline.
I mean, I've been working out more in the last few months,
just trying to get my arthritis under control and different things
and injuries and I've learned if I work out a little bit and
I do a little bit of weight training, it helps. That's training, that's
discipline. Why is it discipline? Because
training is discipline. We use the word discipline in
a negative context. I was thinking about music last week and the
week before, a lot, and how music is so imperative in our lives
in many different ways. And I thought to myself, you
know, we hear dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. We hear that. That's horrifying
to us, right? It's scary. If you're in the pool with a
Megadona, if you've got a little phobia, you're getting out. It doesn't
matter if there's no shark in there. It just scares you. But what if, like...
What if that was the music that they decided to use when the
shark came on? That would be horrifying. And for those who
are scared of clowns, it is horrifying. So it's the context, oftentimes,
of how we deal with certain things and meanings of things that cause
us to have the emotions that we have because it creates thoughts.
Certain smells create thoughts in my head. Those thoughts start
to press in me at actions and attitudes that I don't even know
that I'm doing, like when I'm hangry, or things like that.
And the word discipline is sort of like that Jaws thing. No,
we're gonna have to have some discipline here. It's always
negative. I don't care how many times I've
stood in this pulpit and said it's not negative, it's always
corrective, it's always training, it's always restorative. We still
are fighting that... There it is. Or the psycho thing,
you know? I have a story about that after
service. The scripture says, That discipline
is training. 2 Timothy 3 says that the Word
of God, all scripture is breathed out by God. That means God has
written it. God's Word is His voice. And
it is profitable. I mean, it gains something. It's useful. For what? Rebuke,
correction, training, and righteousness. That's called discipline. All
those things are discipline. The purpose of the elders is
to continually discipline the church, in a both positive and
negative sense that we positively formulate and form and grow and
mature as a people and we also correct negative attitudes and
negative behaviors and negative theological things. And it's
an ongoing, always, everyday, it's what I do. Back in 2008, I got my certification
in health fitness, weight loss coaching, and I started helping
people pro bono do some stuff and they hated my guts. They
hated my guts, because I took away all their food, I took away
all their fun, and I let them watch TV. Because they had to
do a log about all the times they spent doing certain things,
and wherever they spent the most time, we cut it in half and we won.
When you need to lose 400 pounds, we're going to get you 100 the
first 60 days. It works. There's calorie deficits. Don't eat that cake. I didn't
say you could have a slice, don't eat the cake. I hate you. I hate you. It's
discipline. If there's a coach, there's discipline. If there's a drill sergeant,
it's discipline. As long as you are following
the teaching and the training and doing your job and doing
what's required, even when it's hard, it's always profitable
because while we may feel like we've been run over by a truck,
we go, wow, I don't feel bad anymore. I have energy. I'm healthy. And then when we do something
silly and the coach has to say, no, no, no, We think it's negative,
but it's always for our good. The church is always in a state
of training. Always in a state of training.
And those, according to the scripture, who refuse training are those
who refuse Christ. And there's a sufficient word
given to us through the apostles. Now I'm talking to the church,
I'm talking to the assembly, I'm talking to the brothers and
sisters of the faith. So when I use phraseology, it's like
when I was accused one time of preaching a universalism. There
was a young man who was in the faith, was arrested and put in
prison. He was passed away a couple of
months back. And the advice I gave him when
he was incarcerated is you just got to seek after the Lord. You just got to seek the Lord. Because
those who are in Him, those who have been born of God, seek Him. And when we don't, we're called
back to seek the Lord. Our good Father? Somebody heard
an audio clip of that. See? He's a heretic. Well, if
I'm a heretic for telling the people of God to seek after Him,
then call me such. Because that's the Father I know from the Scripture. Those who refuse it, who refuse
training, the positive or the negative, and the correction,
et cetera, according to the Bible, are to be put out of the lives
of the local church and the body and the lives of its members
until they come back willingly to be submissive to the instruction
of Jesus Christ. The New Testament is written
to different audiences for different purposes, as I've already said,
and without reading the entire Bible in its context, one will
never understand the point of the collection of writings. They
won't see it. Ephesians chapter four, turn
with me there. It'll be a few years before Brother
Trey gets there, so I won't mess up anything he's got going on.
Ephesians chapter four, we're gonna go to four different places
in the scripture today to formulate this understanding of church
discipline, its necessity, and how we relate to those who have
been disciplined. and refuse it. Who refused discipline? Okay? Verse 7. Blood and grace. I can't stand
starting sentences like that, but I have to for the sake of
time. The point is that grace was given to each one of us according
to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore it says, when He ascended
on high, He led a host of captives and He gave gifts to them. In
saying He ascended, what does it mean? That He also descended
into the lower regions of the earth. He who descended is the
one who also ascended far above the heavens, that He might fill
all things. That is the death of Jesus and the resurrection
and the ascension of Jesus. That's what He's talking about. And
He gave the apostles. And He gave prophets, evangelists,
and shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work
of the ministry. To equip the saints for the work of the ministry.
I'm going to say it again. To equip the saints for the work
of the ministry. So what I'm telling you, that the elders
are to be teaching and training, that's what we should be doing.
And not just teaching stuff to know in our brains, but stuff
to do with our bodies. Stuff that we know in our brains affects
what we think about and our attitudes, and our attitudes can affect
what we do with our bodies. equip the saints with the work
of the ministry, for the building of the church, of the body of
Christ, the local assembly, until, verse 13, we attain the unity,
all of us, the unity of the faith. You see that? I don't have time
for this right now, but when that text gets landed on us,
it's gonna be big. Until we keep teaching and coaching and preaching
and overseeing and praying and correcting until everybody among
us is either been disciplined out of the church and restored,
are walking together in unity of the faith. And we keep doing
it. When's that gonna happen? Glorification.
So we're just gonna keep doing it. bid the body until we all
attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son
of God to maturity, to mature personhood, manhood, womanhood,
to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so
that we may no longer be children. I'm writing an article about
this very verse today. Tossed to and fro by the waves
and carried around by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning,
That's persuasiveness and dialogue and discussion and gossip and
slander and arguments and everything else. By craftiness and deceitful
schemes, rather by speaking the truth in love, we are to grow
up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from
whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint
with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly,
makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. And
verse 17 says, now this I say, and I testify in the name of
Jesus Christ, that you must no longer walk. as heathens do. That's the point of saying Gentiles,
because he's writing to Gentiles, right? He's saying unbelieving
heathens do in the futility, in the stupidness, in the uselessness,
in the emptiness of their lives. This is hard. This is hard to
swallow, because this is where the American church really thrives.
The whole preacher's gonna stop, you got the boots on, the lady's
gonna stomp my feet. It's gonna feel good and bad
at the same time, but I'm gonna walk out and I'm gonna get some
things straight. That's not the point of this teaching. That's
not the point of this one. Paul wrote this letter to encourage
and to build and to equip and to instruct the church for her
joy. And the way most Christians walk
around in their horror, fear, terror, suspicion, paranoia,
and everything else, they have no joy. And I don't want to hear
the gospel they're talking about. You just need the truth to be
happy like me. God bless you. Thank you. I'll eat at home. So the whole point of the church
being together, we don't see programs there, we don't see
all this, we see the church growing together. Let me say for a second,
let me give you a sound bite to hang me with, that I think
100% of the Christian life should be spent focusing on the church
growing together. No other purpose. I ain't worried
about you being called to be an evangelist or a missionary
or anything else because those things are superfluous to the
norm and those things are always going to fall right back into
the, succumb right back into the authority of the local church.
There's no such thing as a missionary without a local church. There's
no such thing as an evangelist who's not doing the work of evangelism
through and for the sake of the building of the unity of the
faith of the local family. That's why para-church ministries I don't understand. I don't understand. And so if that's
the truth, and if church discipline is the primary point of the church
in instruction, then it is a vile wickedness to let the church
exist without corrective instruction. Without training, isn't it? An
elder without training is nothing. A church without training is
dead. It's a dead faith. I got me and Jesus. I'll see
you in heaven then. Goodbye. It's worthless. No love in 1 Corinthians 13 being
fulfilled. No nothing. See, God is sovereign
over His church and He will not let His church be destroyed.
The gathered ones will not be destroyed. But individual people
all over the world are not the church. What a card. Do we understand
this? We understand this through what
the apostles teach and through what Jesus teaches. Which I would
say are the exact same things if they're written in the Bible.
If Paul wrote it, Jesus said it. Because he speaks by the
authority of Christ. That the Spirit of God and Christ
Himself sent Him to be the messenger, the apostle, the overseer, the
planter of the people of Christ. And what He says holds authority. As a command. And so church discipline is necessary.
So let's look at the several ways in which church discipline
is applied in a negative sense. We talked about the positive
sense. We know we teach and we learn and we grow. Let's talk
about the negative sense. Turn to Matthew 18. Matthew chapter 18. That's as familiar to most people
in evangelical America As Ephesians 5 is to a minute and a half. Jesus says some things. Jesus says a lot of things.
I don't like Matthew. It's gospel. I don't like it. I don't like Luke either. I love
it, but I don't like it. Because when I read the words
of Jesus and I know the point in which He's speaking and who
He's speaking against, it hurts my soul. In the very beginning of this
chapter, He's in the middle of some teaching and He talks about
what the disciples came up with. Am I the best one or what? Am
I your God? Who's the greatest? Who's the
best disciple? Because they all thought John
was. They all thought Jesus thought John was. But John was like the
most humble of them all. So therefore, he probably was
the greatest according to Jesus. But no one would ever say that. But Jesus tells them, He says, and become like, that's a simile.
He didn't say be a little child. He said become like a little
child. How's that in your brain? In your thinking? In your dependence? You will never enter the kingdom
of heaven. Now see, we can put all these things together. We
saw what he talked about in Nicodemus, right? How does that work? The Spirit
of God breeds life. Who humbles himself like this
child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Nobody wants
to be a child. I'm sure we've all had those
moments when we were at the precipice of, you know, of growing up. Oh, I wish I was little again. By the time we start talking,
I can't wait to be 20. I can't wait to be 30. I wish
I was still 30. I wish I was still 40. Just hold on. Nobody wants to
be a child again. And whoever receives one such
child in my name receives me. But whoever calls us one of these
little ones who believe in me to sin, It would be better for
Him to have a great stone, a piece of brick, rock, concrete tied
around His neck and drowned in the depths of the sea. Well, isn't Jesus a loving little
man? You mess with any of my children? You cause them to fear. You cause them to cry in unbelief.
You cause them to shudder in horror, wondering if I have saved
them in my promise. It would be better for you to
die in the sea, and fishes eat your corpse. I mean, this is
what Jesus said to these people. Now, this isn't a little G-rated
here. No, it's not G-rated. It's big
G-rated. It's God-rated. This is the wrath
of God. This is the love of God. That
was stupid, but it worked, didn't it? Henry Locker said big G-rated. I like that. That's all y'all
remember, right? And then he goes on, this is
the same teaching. Woe to the world for temptations to sin,
for it is necessary that temptations come. This is happening, y'all.
But woe to the one by whom the temptation comes. In California, there was a context
in which I always had to go to for this. There was certain pockets
of the region of the East Bay, there was always this evangelical
hatred. I hate that town over there. Y'all live there, you
know what I'm talking about. Yeah, we know who he's talking about
there. Those people tempt me to sin every day. I'm going to
kill them now. I mean, you know, hatred. But it more so includes
the context of how we cause each other to stumble in the faith.
Because what's the context of this conversation? Which one
of us is doing the best job for you? Which one of us has it all right?
It's me, it's me and Jesus. You can tell me, I won't say
anything. I love all my children. It's not talking about debauchery.
It's not talking about sexual immorality. It's not talking
about thievery. He's not talking about hurting people and murdering
people and blowing things up and being radical. He's talking
about people who are arrogant. People who know that they are
right by the grace of God. That's the Pharisee. I am right
by your grace and power, God, thank you. Versus the publican. Satisfy your wrath for me, please,
oh God. Just give me mercy. Mercy. Woe to these through whom temptation
comes. Temptation to doubt whether or
not Christ's work is sufficient. Temptation to doubt whether the
Spirit of God has taught you something, even if small and
simple. Temptation to doubt whether or
not there is hope and sufficient prescription in God's Word to
settle differences. Temptation to doubt whether or
not I should keep my mouth shut or gossip and slander in the
name of truth and calling out evil. If your hand and your foot causes
you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. This isn't a command. This is an illustration. Jesus
and the apostles taught with illustrations just like I do. For it is better to walk in lame
or crippled into life than to be thrown into eternal fire with
both hands and feet. And if your eye causes you to
sin, tear it out, throw it away. It's better if you enter life
with one eye than with two eyes and be thrown into hell. See
that you do not despise one of these little ones, one of these
weak. That's why I love when we see. Jude, and he says, Be patient
with those who doubt. Be patient with the theologically
inept. Be patient with the fearful.
Be patient with the mindless. Be patient with those who always
seem to be in turmoil, but instruct them in the ways of truth and
in the ways of attitude according to truth and the ways of intimacy
according to the gospel. Instruct them in ways where their
peace will be beyond comprehension. That they will be thankful for
the for the intimacy of grace. But I tell you, do not despise
these little ones. I tell you that in heaven, their angels
always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you
think? Jesus asked the question. If
a man has a hundred sheep and if one of them has gone astray,
does he not leave the multitude of the ninety-nine on the mountains
to go in search of the one that went astray? Does he not do that? And if he
finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than
over the ninety-nine that never went astray. instruction. See, Jesus is talking about church
discipline. He's talking about instruction. He's talking about
what he's about to talk about. And He said when one wonders
off, we just go after them. How do we do that in the context
of the local assembly? We come together in the assembly and
we say, you cannot not be here. That is step one. Step two is
you cannot decide what you will and will not obey according to
the Bible. That is step two. Step three is we plead with them
and love them to be united with us. And when they refuse the
simple, gracious, loving, kind, careful, gentle caress of Jesus
Christ their Savior, they have rejected Him. No matter their
theological positions. I want your eternal life, Jesus,
but your breath stinks. Get away from me. Give me the
ticket to heaven, but can you please get your feet off my couch? See how silly that sounds? That's
what it's like. If a man is a hunter sheep, he
goes after, he celebrates the one that went astray. We go and
we celebrate the one that goes astray. When they hear the words
of God, why do you think Jesus uses this illustration here about
being sheep and a shepherd? Because in John chapter 10, he
explains it so clearly as to what he's talking about. The
voice of the shepherd, the sheep know, hear, listen, and follow.
Do we like it? No. Do we always do it immediately?
No. Delayed obedience is no obedience. But our Savior is not standing
there with a whip. beating us back into the fold.
He's already taken a look on Himself. He's standing there
like the Father in Matthew, or Luke 15, as you see, looking
for us. And those who refuse to come
to the Father, I guess they weren't sons. It's beautiful. So it is not the will of my Father
who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. My children will not perish. So what happens when a child
goes crazy? We put it in time now. Why? So that it can calm
down and enjoy fellowship together. What happens when a child decides
that they're going to go their own way? We let them go for a
season and we keep their beds made so that when they come home
they'll have a nice warm place to sleep and we feed them when
they come and we're excited to see them. And all that being said, Jesus
then says in verse 15, that's the point of the text today,
is if your brother sins against you, notice he emphasizes that.
We don't get to determine who is and who is not our brother. God will not give a human being
that ability. We only get to determine if we
are going to relate to someone as our brother based on their
confession and based on their actions. But we cannot judge
them, either elect or not. You see? So if our brother sins against
me, this is a personal thing, go ahead and tell him it's his
fault. If I see my brother sitting over
there, that's none of my business. If I have a good relationship
with him and it comes up, I'm able to talk. But if I see him
sitting over there, that's putting you and him, I stay out of it.
It's none of my business. This is not personal relationships
here, interpersonal relationships within the church. If you say,
hey, with him and I alone, you hurt me, you sin against me because
I'm so sorry that you've gained your brother. But if he doesn't
listen, if he doesn't stop because he doesn't admit his wrongs,
if he doesn't engage in some way of intimacy, what happens? He takes some other folks with
him. Why? Hey, would you ride with
me? That's all it takes. Would you
ride with me? You know how many times I've
had to do that? Hey brothers, can you all go with me? Where
are we going? You'll find out when we get there. I just need some
business. I'm not going to fill them in on the way. I'm not going
to give them any information. Because all I want them to do
is be able to say to the church, if necessary, Tiffin's tried
to reconcile and the guy refused. We don't even know what's going
on. All right, take two or three witnesses. And if he refuses
to listen to them, because what can they plead? It doesn't matter
what happened. It doesn't matter what was said.
We forgive one another, period. End of discussion. Nobody has
to get recompensed or lose an eye or lose a foot or lose a
hand. Nobody has to dance backward, blindfolded, upside down or naked.
There's nothing necessary for us to forgive except to do it. And so the witnesses then say
what? Well, you just have to listen and repent. And if they
do not do that, take it to the church. And if the whole church
can't convince them to repent. Notice we're not talking about
what happened. We're going to deal with the attitude, the actions.
That's it. Then the church is to treat him
as a Gentile and a tax collector. That's all I'm going to deal
with right there. And I know we're running late, but I got
a few more things to say. Here's the point. What does it
mean to address someone as a Gentile tax collector in a first century
Palestinian Semitic culture? To treat them as an enemy of
the cross. How would you treat an enemy
of the cross? Would you be literal? Would you
be violent? Would you be belligerent? No, you'd be compassionate. But
are you going to bring them in for Bible study? Are you going
to bring them in for fellowship? Are you going to eat at their
table? No, you will not eat at their table. Because they refuse intimacy.
With one of us, they refuse intimacy with all of us. I can't put my
hand in your living room on the left side and eat with you if
my right hand is not welcome. That would look funny. Which
means if you could just cover your hand with a bag, you're
welcome to visit. Jesus speaks. This is about someone
sinning against us personally. This is about us reconciling
according to grace. This is the only manner that
it can be done in individual sins. The treatment is clear.
We treat them as a Gentile or a heathen or a tax collector,
someone who would be vile, be unwelcome. but we do it in a
gentle way. The person refusing fellowship,
or refusing correction, or refusing to stop their sin, or refusing
to stop gossiping, or what they recently like to say in our culture,
I'm just telling the truth. I'm marking it. You're like a
dog marking a tree is what you are. They're to be cut off, and
this is a picture of what it's like to be cut off from Christ. It's a taste of the pain of being
isolated. We go to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. The disciplined person
there is what? He's told to let them feel the
pain of their sin. If a person who refuses correction,
desires to be under the teaching of the Word, they need to repent
and make peace with the body of Christ and submit to the teaching
of the Word of God. And I have seen some pastors
who say, well, a disciplined person can come in 10 minutes
late and leave 10 minutes early. They have to sit in the back
of the room because I don't think that. I think they're just not
well. When anyone sees a sin that is
not directly related to them, they cannot create new categorical
approaches to identifying sin and make action or an idea of
something as a sin so that they can appease their own conscience.
We don't have the right to do that. And when anyone in any
sense refusing the positive correction, or the negative correction of
scripture or handling any matter, they then become the offender.
I want you to hear this. Every one of these issues where
people were excommunicated in the New Testament is because
people who were being corrected refused to be corrected. There's
nothing that we can do that'll just get us put out of the church
forever. It's when we don't listen. This person who is excommunicated
from the body is no longer to be considered or treated as a
sibling in Christ. And they forfeit all blessings
and relationships thereof. This is a command of God. Jesus' final words on this. issue
of church discipline is found in Revelation. We don't have
time to go there. When he dictates to John this vision of revealed
things, Jesus was clear that he would deal with certain congregations
because of their behavior and several of them because of their
lack of humility. and their lack of love. The church
of Ephesus in particular praised them and gave them commendation
for their astute theological stances of not allowing Gnosticism
and other things to come in and infiltrate. They put it to death
very quickly. But he said he's going to burn them out of existence
because they didn't have love for God. As the buttress in the pillar
of truth, remember, I'll say it against the third time today,
it includes living rightly according to the Bible and dealing rightly
with conflict. In addition to correcting falsehood
and error in theological things. Rome had their own problems,
didn't it? Chapter 16. People were leading others because
of their theological position. They were leading others to act
in a manner unworthy of the gospel. It's like somebody saying, Sister
So-and-so thinks that faith means this, and I'm going to tell everybody
not to come to church until she gets set right, or they publicly
shame her. Well, guess who's the sinner
in that situation? The woman who doesn't have her doctrine
right, or the person talking about her? The person talking
about her is the sinner. And an elder who won't handle
that according to the scripture and hold both the person in error
and the person with the problem with it, who may be justified
in their concern to the same level of obedience, It's not
fit to stand before the church. We don't take sides. We stand
in the same place and those who remain are the only ones who
get time. Those who remain with the body
are the only ones who actually have a voice. Telling someone to avoid an assembly
or not to listen to a pastor who has not been formally disciplined
is leading others to live in sin and is binding the conscience
of someone else. Discussing the matter with other
people will further cause other people to rebel against the teaching
of Christ and His instruction, and thus in their own minds justify
their wickedness by the smooth talking of the offender who disobeys
God in every way. Corinth had many problems. Here's
a different way of looking at some sin. What was the problem?
There were a lot of problems. What was the problem in Corinth that
Paul just got really upset about? It was the man who was dealing
and having public incestuous relations with his stepmother.
It was known. Everybody knew it. It was obvious.
They were always together. It was not something that somebody
heard through the gossip chain and Paul got wind of. The church
knew it. It was an issue where it should
have been called out and he should have been removed from the fellowship.
Paul said, removing from the fellowship that he might be restored
to you. In 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul writes these words, Now
if anyone has caused pain, He's caused it not to me, but in some
measure, not to put it too severely to all of you. For such a one, this punishment
by the majority, isolation and ostracization, is enough. So
you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be
overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So when the person comes for
repentance and reconciliation, we cannot hold it against them.
So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why
I wrote that I might test you and know whether you are obedient
in everything." Isn't that crazy? What is Paul's concern? That
the church obey him in everything, explicitly about dealing with
relational problems and sin in the church and restoring this
wicked man. You know what that does? It makes
us to be like a child and swallow our pride and to be humble. Oh,
look at them, they got that wicked old lamb back in their fellowship.
And we praise God for it, and the world looks at it and turns
their nose up at us. Spiritual elites turn their nose up at
us for reckoning. But is that not the picture of
the gospel? If anybody's got a reason to turn their nose up
at us, is it not the Lord Jesus? And instead of turning his nose
up, he put his hands out, and he said it is finished. Any love or any interaction with
a disciplined person should be when repentance is sought by
them and only to reconcile this person to unity with the body
of the Lord. We can't hang out like friends anymore. Many other examples, Galatians,
Titus, 1 Thessalonians, but remember, in closing, several things. Discipline
is the point of the assembly. Instruction and training is the
point of our gathering. We are to learn, to grow, and
to live according to the grace and for the sake of God's glory.
And we dishonor God when we permit humanistic approaches to exclude
biblical instruction. We are the light of the world.
We are better off being known as the church that doesn't permit
gossips and slanders, mavericks, polemicists, and haters among
us than being the largest and most luxurious people in town. It is unloving to permit people
to act against the nature of Christ and the mind of Christ
without correction. And one of the greatest evils
in the world is when our actions are manifest in the lives of
others in the name of Jesus. When we say, I'm doing the Lord's
work, you disobey too. The church is the buttress of
the truth. We are not to tolerate error in doctrine. But yet, there
is a prescription on how we deal with it. In that intolerance,
our hope is reconciliation according to grace and the Bible, not our
own whims and interests or personal, quote, divine eyes, which is
something that I coined a few years ago. Some examples about
that has happened among us is people who were fed up with Halloween,
or people who were fed up with dress, or people who were fed
up with the way people parented, or people who were fed up with
the way people educated their children. or the way they ate
or drink, or what they ate or drink, or the way that they did
their clothes, or their health, or their theological vocabulary,
or any other sort of thing, such things. Discipline is for restoration.
It's for restoring, not destroying. Anything that we do that can
destroy in any fashion is not of God. That is why our mouths
are the most dangerous in these circumstances. We ought not talk
to anyone about a disciplinary issue ever. I saw a screenshot this week
that was sent to me about a man who claims to be doing the divine
work of God by calling out problems with another pastor. He's a friend
of mine. He said he had the right to say what he said about this
man because it was true and that God had called him to out him
and to avoid him. That's not true. It's a lie.
It's a lie from the enemy. This man has not nor ever will
be in a good church unless God restores his mind. Because he's
lost it. And secondly, the very thing
that he said was in violation of the very thing he's commanded
in him as a believer. He doesn't have that authority. It's blasphemy to say I'm doing
the Lord's work when I'm actually doing the devil's. The church
must be pure. And that is not our goal or guidelines
to establish. We don't get to decide what purity.
It looks like the Scripture teaches us this. So living and teaching,
doctrine and lifestyle are the two pillars of glory. The picture
of love, the knowledge of the truth. While all manner of evil
can come from a true saint, we ought not to permit them to do
so without the natural consequence of training. Those who refuse,
The disciplined are also living in rebellion. Those have forgotten
we made a covenant together to live as a people for God's glory
and by His grace. Discipline is a means of grace.
If anyone refuses the discipline of another by their conscience
telling them otherwise, they're causing problems in the body
and will also be called to correction. Sort of like my children through
the years when they'd have conflict at school or with peers and they
didn't want to really be ugly, they let me be ugly. They let
me say, no, I'm sorry, Katie can't come over today. No, I'm
sorry, she can't go on that trip. No, I'm sorry, this isn't happening. I won't permit it. And they really
didn't want it anyway, you see? There's a societal sense in which
church discipline operates and must be felt in order for it
to be biblical. We are a people, not a place. When someone refuses
the manners of life together, they can't get together until
they repent. Severity is not the point. Soft
and painful sobriety is the point. That's what we're looking for.
If we're angry, we're living in the flesh. We're not being
led by the Spirit. If we're grieving and burdened, the Spirit can
cause us to do that. And the outcome of that is that
we pray for those and for others, and we praise God for His promises. Why? Because this is the picture
of grace. This is the picture of the life
of Jesus. The one who has bought us with
His blood. Preaching Christ is about what
He has done, and preaching Christ is also about what He has said
to do. If we don't get to conflate the
two as a means of salvation, only one will save us, and that
is the work of Jesus. As for the one who has been forgiven
and received mercy, he or she will live in a manner and be
willing to be corrected unto restoration, because he and she
are forgiven. Those who never seek to be restored
to be with us, according to John, are to be understood as never
to be others. God, I pray that those who are
away will come back. And I pray that they don't treat
their family, their spouses and their children the way they have
treated you. The body of their husband. who
gave his life for his bride. Jesus Christ is our husband who
was crushed for us so that we may gather with him in purity,
who was broken and bled so that we may walk in the presence of
the Father of life without fear. Lord, have mercy. Just pray. For the severity of these truths
often cause me pain, but Lord, in the midst of it, I know that
it is not me who has to deal with the outcome, but only the
principles given to me through Your Word that I might be obeying
to. You will create the outcome. So help my burden be that for
praising You and praying for them. And not to come up with
any Plan and purpose to do anything different. I need nothing more than your
promise. Help your church to be at peace by your promises. And I thank you Lord for the
opportunity to worship in this truth. We are righteous because of Christ.
Righteousness to our account. Let us live in a way worthy of
that great gift. In Jesus' name, Amen.