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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] today's scripture reading is taken from first corinthians 5. it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate a man is sleeping with his father's wife and you are proud shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this for my part even though i am not physically present i'm with you in spirit as one who is present with you in this way i've already passed judgment in the
00:00:45 name of our lord jesus on the one who has been doing this so when you are resembled and i'm with you in spirit and the power of our lord jesus is present hand this man over to satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the lord your boasting is not good don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough get rid of the oes so that you may be a new unleavened badge as you really are for christ our passover lamb has been sacrificed therefore
00:01:19 let us keep the festival not with the old bred leban with malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth i wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually moral people not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters in that case you would have to leave this world but now i am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy an idolater or
00:01:53 slanderer a drunkard or swindler do not even eat with such people what business is it of mine to judge those outside the church are you not to judge those inside god will judge those outside expel the wicked person from among you this is the word of the lord hi good morning fbc it's such a joy and privilege to be able to be here with you this morning and preach from god's word well the topic we're going to be looking at this morning uh is a bit of a dicey topic it's redemptive church discipline
00:02:32 it's the kind of topic where you should try to get the guest preacher to come and preach it so that's my job here today to kind of talk about this topic so my question to you is this what comes to your mind when you think about church discipline what is just church discipline what are the words or what are the thought processes that happen in your mind when when this word comes to you maybe it's judgment or punishment or shame the airing of dirty laundry the revealing in public what's supposed to
00:03:04 stay in private or the moralistic judgment of bigots who are sinners themselves or maybe a hypocritical license to shame others but is that what biblical church discipline really is well today this is what we want to focus on biblical church discipline and biblical church discipline is redemptive church discipline church discipline is one of the part of discipleship process the the part where we correct sin and point the disciple towards a better path growth happens through teaching and through correction
00:03:45 just think about it from a from a school point of view if you are a teacher um imagine you teach and teach and teach and you are showing people some some good stuff and they're learning and they're growing but imagine you're never really correcting anybody imagine the teacher comes and an exam comes and the person has done a poor job on the exam and you never fail them you never correct their mistakes you are actually missing out on a very important part of growth of learning even psalm 23 if you look what david
00:04:14 wrote in psalm 23 he wrote even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i will fear no evil for you are with me your rod and your staff they comfort me he talks about the rod and the staff the the staff is that one that guides and shows the path and the rod is the one that keeps the sheep in its place in in the right path that they're supposed to follow and both of them provide comfort to david so today's text one corinthians 5 helps us to understand four things about church discipline
00:04:48 which is the purp the people the who of discipline the purpose the why of discipline the practice the how of discipline and the problem the heart of church discipline let us take some time and commit this time to prayer heavenly father we come before you and we want to take this time to uh commit this morning to you uh father as we heard your word read and father about to hear your word proclaimed uh father would you show us your living word jesus christ father would this not just be a cerebral exercise but father would this
00:05:23 be something that really speaks to the heart of everybody so that they could have changed hearts and transformed lives as father we thank you and we praise you in jesus name amen well the first thing we want to look at is the people the who of discipline who receives discipline or another way of asking a question is what warrants for discipline it says here it is actually reported that their sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans for a man has his father's
00:05:57 wife well when we think about that of course we know that this is a sexual immoral sin that's happening right now maybe just to explain what was happening this is probably not a sin of incest but more a sin of adultery um it says here a man is having his father's wife is not saying that a man is having his mother um there's a difference there and probably back then culturally an older man were maybe taken on a second wife or another wife who was younger and the son was probably the same age as that lady
00:06:25 and they would have a sexual affair nevertheless it is still a great sin it's just not a sin of incest it's a it's a sin of adultery so it's a it's a sexual immoral sin and again in verse nine we read again i wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people so again uh it is sexually immoral people what warrants or sexual immorality what warrants for church discipline but then in verse 11 we see he widens the scope he says but now i am writing to you not to associate with anyone who
00:06:59 bears the name of a brother if he's guilty of sexual immorality but then he goes on or greed or is an idolater a reviler a drunkard or a swindler not even to eat with such a one so what he's talking about here is sinners what warrants for church discipline sin so who received church discipline it is sinners now but what kind of sinners now he's saying that here somebody who's called an idolater a reviler a drunk a swindler in a way it's not somebody who has just one time had a bit too much to drink
00:07:35 there's a difference between somebody has a drink and drinks too much one time or a drunkard so it's talking about people who have obsessive regular compulsive sin of a particular kind and it has to be outward sin and that's the first thing i want to talk about it's it's outward sin the bible talks about fruit very often in a way we manifest our gifts in the way we manifest the spirit is it's in fruit but also in a way you have the fruit of sin and we have to see this fruit of sin manifest itself before we can actually
00:08:07 have or call somebody to discipline we cannot just assume it there needs to be necessary evidences of it and the holy spirit does not give us magical visions to see the conditions of people's hearts and sinfulness you cannot just assume that somebody slandered you kind of just assume that somebody has an ill intent it has to be manifested it has to be an outward sin it has to be of face value you have to be able to see it well the second thing is it has to be serious you can't just church discipline every
00:08:39 single sin we are all sinners saved by grace and on a daily basis every one of us commits a number of sins if every single one of those sins would warrant for church discipline everyone would be on church discipline all the time so it has to be outwards in but it has to be serious and maybe just to give a a quick uh story about this imagine i'm somebody who loves cake i love sweet stuff and uh so if i go to the fridge and i see the last piece of cake in the fridge and i take it and without consulting my wife and informing her
00:09:08 then in a way that's sin because i'm being selfish and i'm not being kind and considerate towards my wife however that does not warrant for church discipline that does not give her the grounds to go to the church and saying massimo has sinned against me and therefore because he's taken the last piece of cake we should remove him from the lord's supper if you do that nobody would ever take the lord's supper ever so there needs to be a certain kind of seriousness and outward manifestation of the sin now how
00:09:34 do you gauge what is serious or no i think there are some cultural things that play into that um there's also some wisdom that plays into that so and it will be within the church and the body of the church that will actually be able to discern this and the leadership of the pastors and the elders as well i'm just saying not every sin leads to church discipline the bible does say that forbearance is a biblical concept as well so there's certain sins that we can forebear with one another as our brothers we can
00:10:04 overlook hopefully of course they will repent and change their ways but it does not warrant for church discipline and also we must understand it is not the severity of sin that warns for church discipline it is the unrepentant of that sin the unrepentance of that sin so it's not the severity of the sin but the unrepentance of that serious sin that warrants for church disciplines if somebody has an outward and serious sin and is aware of it is convicted of it and is repetitive of it and is trying to
00:10:39 make change in their life that means they're repentant that means they don't have to be put under church discipline because they admit i have a problem and i'm needing to make change in this what warrants for church discipline is outward serious unrepentant sin if somebody admits and recognizes it it's okay but if somebody isn't unaware or is then made aware and is still not willing to repent of that sin that's the grounds of church discipline now when we talk about the people the who of discipline we now talked about
00:11:16 the type of people it's it's a it's somebody who's outwardly sin sinning and is unrepentant but does it mean that we go around the world and we church discipline everybody of course not we can only church discipline a particular people and these people are the people from within our church members from within our local church it says here but now i'm writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother so it is somebody who bears the name of a brother somebody who is a christian
00:11:45 if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an adulterer reviled drunken or swindler not even to eat with such one and then verse 12 for what have i to do with judging outsiders it is not those inside the church whom you are to judge so if you think of the language of outsiders and insiders that means there is a particular group of people who are inside and outside now i would like to say that the best way to gauge who's inside and outside is church membership so if you are a member of a local church
00:12:16 that means discipline is for you if you're not a member of the local church then well the church can't really discipline you because you have not agreed to be part of that church and put yourself on the authority of the discipline of that church you can't just judge outsiders um in that sense um first baptist church does not have authority to discipline me and i'm not part of the body of fbc that i could contribute to decision making of church discipline for somebody of fbc or gospel city church cannot discipline a
00:12:45 member of first baptist church so the question is how do you then decide who's outside and inside well i would say church membership is the way to go and how do you decide on church membership well i think that depends on the local church decision on how to go about this my encouragement to this would be probably the way you think about committed relationships and what needs to be done to be in a committed relationship probably that is what needs to be done for church membership so if you're somebody who thinks that if you
00:13:11 want to get married you should sign something or if you want to have a business contract you should sign something a committed relationship then probably for church membership you should probably sign something too but maybe in in smaller villages or in smaller areas whether it may one just church maybe just a a strong handshake for a business deal a small handshake or a certain action or ritual to be part of a committed relationship might be enough to then say that you're part of church membership
00:13:38 but anyways what i'm trying to say here the discipline is for members it is not for people who are outside the church it's for people who are inside the church now the reality is often we get that twisted we judge outsiders and we give a lot of grace to the insiders i'm not saying you shouldn't give grace grace is a biblical concept and everything that we're doing you're talking about here is redemptive however a lot of times we are very very exclusive towards outsiders oh that that drug addict that person that sinner
00:14:06 should not enter into our sphere but then there's somebody who's within our church uh who might be a swindler or something like that and we're saying oh let's just look over that sin and we give more grace again often we get it twisted we judge the outsiders and are very lenient on the insiders so the who of discipline who receives discipline what warrants for church discipline outward serious unrepentant sin by the church members that's who receives church discipline now before we move on we have to ask another who
00:14:43 which is who therefore administrates church discipline who gives out the discipline who dispenses the discipline well in verse 3 it says this for though absent and body i'm present in spirit and as if present i have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing 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 delivered this man to satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
00:15:16 lord what i want to draw ourselves here too is it says here when you are assembled so it is the assembly of believers the local church that dispenses the church discipline it is the assembled body under the guidance of the leaderships the pastors and the elders of the church that then dispenses discipline which means it is not a particular person it is not just the elders it is not just a particular senior pastor but it is the local church that enters and supports the act of church discipline and that's what it says here under the
00:15:55 assembly of the church so this leads us to the next point which is the purpose now a lot of times we want to right away jump into the process or how do we do it but to be able to understand on how to do it we must first understand why we do it so what's the purpose of church discipline the why of discipline well i have five points here and we'll go through them i just want to give credit to uh the book which i read which kind of helped me with this which is a discipline by jonathan lehmann it's a
00:16:28 nightmarks book and everything you're about to hear is pretty much a summary of what he talks about here the purpose of uh discipline the first purpose is to expose to expose sin and remove it actually so you're exposing it to remove it it says here in verse two and you are arrogant are you not rather mourn that him who has done this be removed from among you we are so in a way you're supposed to remove so you're supposed to expose and remove and why because we are the bride of christ we are supposed to be holy and
00:17:05 pure so we are supposed to expose the sin and we are supposed to cut it out we're supposed to remove it we're supposed to get rid of it now hopefully the way that it's getting getting rid of is through repentance and redemption and the way somebody can move forward by changing their life but in an extreme cases of course it goes to its ex communication and we'll talk about that shortly as well but it is there to expose and remove sin the second is to warn in verse 5 it says you are to deliver this man to satan for the destruction of
00:17:42 the flesh so that this that his spirit may be saved in the day of the lord now what does it mean to deliver the man to satan um well it doesn't mean that you take somebody tied him on a chair around and then bring him to the most evil person in the city who you can find who he says this person is like satan and delivered to him and now deal with this person that doesn't mean that it also doesn't mean that you're calling this person satanic uh uh saying oh you are just like satan that doesn't mean that neither what it
00:18:08 means is you have to understand the concept a lot of times in the bible we say we have two dominions the dominion of darkness and the dominion of light you have the the the the way the area where god rules and where where satan rules the area where satan rules and as we read the bible it says that the world is where the prince of the power of the air rules so in a way the world is where satan has his power and is and the believer the christians under the protection of the power of god when they become a member of a local
00:18:38 church in the big day they profess faith in that way as well so all you're doing is you're actually bringing that person back to the world and saying you're no longer part of this dominion where god rules and you're no longer part of the local church so you're actually delivering that person to the dominion where satan rules now please make sure we do not enact god's retribution through judgment we are not the final judge we are not we can't tell whether a person is really a christian or another
00:19:08 christian we are just merely through discipline especially the last step of excommunication we stage in a way a small play that pictures the great judgment to come it's a compassionate warning you see the consequence of sin from the beginning of scripture was always death and exile if you look at the garden of eden as soon as uh adam and eve sinned death came to the world and they were and they were asked to leave eden death and exile in the same way if you look through the sacrificial process in the old testament
00:19:48 then you would have a a lamb an unblemished lamb that was sacrificed death on your behalf the atonement and you had the scapegoat on which the sins were cast on and it was cast out of the camp exile so the consequence of sin was always death and exile and through excommunication to removing a person from a community you're actually staging a small play of the internal judgment to come the eternal exile to come the eternal death to come you're letting them experience that through excommunication you're
00:20:20 actually letting them experience presently a consequence of sin now when you do that that's a warning the reason that we do that primarily is to save to redeem a person let's look at verse 5 again it says you are to deliver this man to satan for the destruction of the flesh so the spirit may be saved in the day of the lord the reason why you're doing is to save somebody so hopefully when they're when they're excommunicated or hopefully when they're removed from ministry or when they're removed from community when they're
00:20:53 removed from the lord's table then they will recognize oh people are saying that i'm not living like a christian and maybe they will understand that they are in sin and the hope is that they will realize this and they will put their faith back in jesus and they will repent and they will be restored back into a community and back into a full standing within the local church so the hope and the purpose is to save somebody but that's not the only purpose i mean it's of course is to expose to warn to
00:21:21 save but also to protect and we read that in verses six and seven it says your boasting is not good do you not know that a little eleven leavens the whole lump cleanse out the old eleven that you may be a new lump as you are really are unleavened now um i've been uh dealing with some bread baking over there uh mcos and lockdowns as well and i realized that you know you just need a little bit of yeast to actually work through a whole bunch of dough you take 800 grams of water 800 grams of flour and you put two grams of yeast
00:21:57 in that and it will work itself through the whole lump through the whole dough it will do its work so what this metaphor is pointing to is saying that there's a little small personal sin a little small sin that is unexposed a sin that is not dealt with has the possibility to actually work itself throughout the whole church community and therefore we actually have to protect the church community from these sins because if you do not address the sin if you do not ask people to repent if you do not go through the process of
00:22:30 church discipline you're actually saying this sin is okay because you're overlooking it and therefore imagine young and immature believers or new believers who come they will see members of the church sinning in such a way and nobody's actually addressing it nobody's actually telling them that hey this is wrong nobody is actually repenting the young and immature believers of the church will actually think that this is normative behavior of of of a christian so in a way suddenly this sin becomes
00:22:57 a normalized sin within that particular church because everybody is doing it one aspect a lot of times we can think is plagiarism um a lot of times we we or we do copies of things or or or piracy a lot of times we don't address this and suddenly we think it's okay to do it because everybody does that so you can see how little leaven leavens the whole lump how little sin actually works itself throughout the whole body and the reality is all sin affects our brothers and sisters in a particular way
00:23:25 so one way that we're supposed to do it is through church discipline we actually protect the church paul was angry in this letter in this segment where he's saying that they were not addressing the sin of this man who was actually sleeping with his father's wife and he's saying you need to address it you need to do something about it the problem was that they were not doing something about it you need to protect the church and lastly you need to present a good witness to jesus let's go back to verse one
00:24:02 it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans for man has his father's wife there is sin going on in the church that even people who are not christians outside the church would not tolerate what kind of witness does that give to jesus imagine a a community where sin goes on and people saying i would never want to join this community they have lower standards than we have and they are priding themselves of being holy and pure but look at them it's not a good
00:24:36 witness for jesus we need to preserve the attractiveness and distinctiveness of the christian church when i was with you here last time i talked about being salt and light we're supposed to be salt and light we're supposed to be pure and distinctive you're supposed to be a great witness for jesus so therefore we have to protect the church and we have to present the bride pure with fine linen to jesus and jesus says saul loses his saltiness if if it loses his saltiness is only good for the dumpster
00:25:10 so we have to present the church so here the purpose five reasons of why church discipline to expose to warn to save to protect and to present and now let's get to the practice the how of church discipline well first of all we got to talk about the act what is it that you're doing what's the act that you're doing and i would like to argue that it is the removal from the lord's table now there's there's two things that we have to talk about is the act and the process so in a way if you have to ask
00:25:43 about the question how are we supposed to remove the person and from what are we removing the person and i'm going to look at the second one first from what and that says in verse 11 but i'm now writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolatrous a reviler a drunken husband will not even to eat with such a one so there's a a stopping to associate yourself with that person so that you're removing that person from
00:26:16 associating yourself with them by by saying that we are the same and it says here not even to eat with such a one and i believe that this points to the lord's table this does not mean that you shouldn't have a meal with somebody in the book of james we see that if you go and call back a brother who is in sin back into the family and that that's great work done so you're supposed to please go out and and talk to people who are on the church discipline who are sinning and have meals with them and talk with them
00:26:45 and actually try to explain the gospel to them and show them where they're going wrong and show them grace and love them back and hopefully they will repent so it doesn't mean do not have a fellowship lunch with them but what this means here is that during the times where this was written a lot of times the lord's supper was part of the service where at the end of it they would come together for a fellowship meal and during that fellowship meal they will break bread and give out the lord's table
00:27:11 so it is that meal from which they have to be removed from so what are you supposed to remove people from from the lord's table now why because the lord's table says i hereby affirm that i'm a christian i believe in the blood and the bread i believed in that jesus christ has died for me and that his body was broken for me and i repent of my sins and here i recognize i'm a sinner who's in need of grace and jesus christ has provided the grace for me and the church who then dispenses the lord's supper
00:27:42 saying that yes here i believe that you affirm this faith i believe that you're in repentance i believe that you put your faith in jesus and in here here are the elements as we share and we affirm one another's faith that we all believe in the same truth together and we are walking in this truth by actually taking the lord's table together and therefore you remove the person who is unrepentant from the lord's table because at that moment you can't affirm that this person is really believing the same truth
00:28:07 because they're not walking in the same truth and therefore you are removing that person from the lord's table now what's the process how do you go about doing that now to actually go through the process we have to jump to another text and the text is matthew 18. the process is actually moving from private to public you're moving from inclusion to exclusion it says here in matthew 18 if your brother sins against you go tell him his fault between you and him alone so first step you go to your brother and you tell him alone you say
00:28:43 hey brother or hey sister i think you're in sin i think you are sinning in this particular way if he listens to you you have gained your brother if the person then repents and believes great then you continue oh the process is done but if the person does not repent you got to continue to the next step of the process but if he does not listen take one or two along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses so you bring somebody else with you and saying now the two of us the three of us
00:29:15 agree that you are in sin and you're not repenting this is also very good to have two or three witnesses with you because maybe you're the one at fault and the other person is correct so to make sure that there's a group of people who agree on this sin you bring in other people then maybe the person will recognize oh maybe if two or three people think that way maybe i am wrong and hopefully that person repents and believes and and you can move on and the process is over however if the person still reviews verse 17 if he
00:29:41 refuses to listen to them tell it to the church and if he refuses to listen to even the church let him be to you as a gentile and text collectors now what does it mean telling to the church well i believe the first step is to inform the church leaders about it and then depending on how the church is organized it will be letting know the leaders of the church and they are trying to then also convince the brother or sister to repent and then come back into the fold as well now the church eventually will have to
00:30:08 publicly announce that this person has been removed from the lord's table it doesn't mean that you have to give out the details the church leadership can then decide on on how much detail to give out we want to avoid gossip as well um but at least the church leadership can say that this brother this sister is under church discipline and therefore has been removed from the lord's table would you pray for them would you engage them would you ask them to repent in a particular way so it says here if the person refuses to listen to even
00:30:36 the church let him be to you as a gentile and tax collector that means removal of membership removing from the lord's table eventually that means excommunication because it means that you are not repented you are not acting like what it means to be a church member in this local church it doesn't mean that you have to kick the person out of your worship service i mean we hope that non-christians and seekers and people who are uh who who want to hear more about the gospel will actually come to our worship services
00:31:03 right so it doesn't mean you kick the person you cannot enter this worship space anymore you cannot log in anymore you know it just doesn't mean that the person has to be removed from all ministry of serving because that should be just for christians or for believers or depending on how you have set up your serving structure some some of the areas you might have other people serve as well but whatever it requires a christian who affirms faith to serve you have to remove that person from there and that means also remove the person
00:31:29 from the lord from the lord's table but you can still include them in other areas now there might be some situations where you might have to physically remove somebody from a space and that's usually for extreme cases for example if somebody would come in and every single sunday slap you alarm in the face then maybe that would be a problem that person has to be physically removed right or if somebody is a sexual predator uh on on campus you know on on the church grounds you might have to physically remove them but these are
00:31:55 extreme cases and um it is the wisdom of the elders of the church and the pastors of the church would then handle those extreme cases but it's going from private to public so you might ask the question what about honor and shame you know isn't it it's very shameful to to tell people about this well actually the way god designed this process is actually taking care of your shame because it starts in private and it's just your unrepentance that slowly brings it out into the public so god designed a process that actually
00:32:28 covers your face and takes care of your shame as well now we are supposed to go slowly in pace it doesn't mean that you go to a brother today and says i think you're in sin tomorrow you bring a friend and the next day bring another friend and next day you go to the church laters and in the following day you announce it to the church no the process doesn't work that way because repentance takes time and you have to give time for people to actually for it to sink in and you have to give time people to respond to the
00:32:52 messages that you're doing so give time and be graceful about it understand that there's shame involved as well so have tact in the way you engage brothers and sisters in the way you do it god does take care of shame but so shall we in the process and grace is very important not just to tone the language and the way we engage the brother but even the process is important that communicates grace i remember my church this is not a church discipline issue but um we had a young man join our church uh he was in his late teens and
00:33:26 uh he wanted to actually come and be part of the worship service and he wanted to serve in the church and he wanted to worship lee and uh we were we didn't quite know him and we were a young church plant so of course we welcome anybody who wants to serve but we still wanted to go through a process of getting to another person so one of the elders got to know him a little bit and through that process we recognized that the person actually left the church that he was with and then actually his parents were not really happy about him
00:33:53 joining our church and he comes from a different denomination uh he was part of our other local church there was probably some some problems with him serving there so that's why he come join our church so we thought let's actually address this and let's be very gentle and kind and generous to this young gentleman uh we don't want to scare him off so we decided to maybe after worship service go have a chat with him so we took him and we i went up to him after the worship service hey would you come with
00:34:19 us to uh to the side and talk and i brought him to a room um and there was the other two elders as well there was only by coincidence one chair in that room so we set that young man on the chair and three elders were standing around him now he just stopped there look at that picture a young man sitting on a chair and three adult man standing around him i used to do surveillance in gunting and surveillance in other banks interrogation rooms are less intimidating than this our process was not gracious even though
00:34:54 our tone and our intention was but having a young man having to answer to tree all the men in a room a side of the church of the worship service that was intimidating now we didn't mean to because we didn't think through properly so even the process would determine whether you're gracious and gentle and the bible says redeem a brother in all gentleness do everything with gentleness that young gentleman never turned up to our church service ever again i'm just saying that our process has to be gracious as well
00:35:24 now is this process in matthew 18 in contradiction to one corinthians 5 because it seems that paul is writing a letter and quite publicly saying hey this person is in is acting immorally cut him out well no because this problem was known this probably was a public problem already the church already knew about this sin so he was not revealing something new to them he was just addressing something that they left unaddressed so if something is already known by the community it's already public you don't
00:35:56 have to go from private to public it's already public then you can also publicly address it public sin often needs to be addressed publicly so that you do not condone that sin so that you already are not teaching young christians and immature believers that this sin is okay because you're actually addressing it publicly so okay so we have the act the process the pace and the face slowly and full of grace which now leads us to the last point the problem what is the problem of church discipline and the problem is our hearts
00:36:30 the heart of church discipline and at the heart of our hearts is our judgment the problem is how we judge people and the reality in our hearts every one of us we are either too lenient or too harsh we are either too licentious or we are too moralistic we are the two separatists or two accommodationists we either or and now depending a particular church itself could be more of an accommodation or a church that accommodates or it could be a church that actually tries to separate them by becoming very exclusive
00:37:06 um so some churches have certain tendencies as well but also depending on who does the sin right sometimes we look at a brother who we really love and that person commits the sin we already we accommodate that we say it's okay we can look over it but if somebody who we do not know or do not like we become very moralistic with that person and that's the problem of our heart and the reality if you really look at our hearts is that every one of us has moralistic sides and licensure sides and for some people we are more
00:37:37 moralistic and for some people we are we accommodate more and for some sins we accommodate more and some other sins we are more moralistic well the corinthian church was both if you look back what the problem was they did not mourn over the sin they were proud they overlooked the sin so in a way they were licentious didn't they not address it they were they were accommodating it too much but at the same time they were moralistic because they were judging outsiders they were too legalistic on the other side
00:38:11 often when we see a person who's you know struggling with addiction we are we are casting it out we don't accept them but then somebody else who's avoiding taxes we accept them uh oftentimes if it's a person who uh it serves a lot in ministry um we overlook this sin but as somebody who's not very active in ministry uh we we actually become a lot harsher with that person we have to gauge our heart that's the problem of church discipline so how do we solve that problem how how do we get our hearts and therefore the
00:38:42 heart of the community and the heart of the church to not be moralistic and not to be licentious while the solution we find in jesus look at verse seven cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you are really as you really are unleavened for christ our passover lamb has been sacrificed let us therefore celebrate with the festival not with the old leaven the leaven of malice and evil but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth it says here christ was sacrificed and we know that he was sacrificed on the
00:39:17 cross and on the cross when you look to the cross you must recognize that there is no reason for you to be licentious to overlook sin because god did not overlook sin he sent his son to die for it in in any sin that jesus needed to die for on the cross we can't overlook if it cost jesus his life how can we overlook it we have no reasons to be licentious but at the same time at the same time when we look at it we can be full of grace and we can't be we don't have to right become moralistic because jesus died for everybody's sin
00:39:54 in the same way he died for the addict he died for the swindler he dried for a drunkard he dried for a tax evader he dried for every one of them so our sins are just equally as bad as the other person's sin so there's no no place for us to be moralistic because jesus did die for everybody's sin in a way you can see that jesus on the cross was excommunicated so that we can be reconciled on the cross he says father father why have you forsaken me he was separated so that we can be brought in and be
00:40:26 brought back together again he was hung outside the city so that we can enter the city that is to come he was both the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat he was the one who was who bore death on us and our sins were put on him he was both the sacrificial lamb and the scapegoat and when we look to the cross we can't overlook sin for a cost jesus his life and then there is a call to holiness and purity and to live out the righteousness that he secured for us but it also mends our moralistic hearts
00:41:05 for jesus died for all but not just the cross the also the empty tomb is something very important for us to look in the fact that jesus christ rose again that means he overcame sin and he overcame death which means there's power to change the resurrection power is available for all of us which means that we can look at anybody and everybody and regardless of what sin they're in right now we know that there is power to change they can repent they can't believe and yes often we say a leopard will never change changes spots
00:41:43 but through the supernatural power of the gospel a leopard can't change his part that's what it's saying people can change not by their own works not by their own strength but by the power of the gospel by the power of jesus christ who overcame sin and death on the cross which means we can engage our brothers and sisters we can pray for them we can have hope that if we put people on church discipline that they will repent and they will redeem and they will be brought back into the full there is
00:42:10 power to change there's hope for change there's hope for repentance and belief for redemption and restoration now brothers and sisters let me end with a couple of implications because all of this has implications for the local church it has implications for you fbc it has implications for every local church the first implication is this that you have to be a loving community you have to care for one another you have to belong to one another now i would like to say through church membership but you have to belong
00:42:45 through this local body and care and love and cherish one another in such a way that when you actually telling somebody you have to step down from ministry or you have to leave this community or we do not longer consider you part of this church and they actually feel it imagine your community where nobody cares nobody loves then if you ask somebody to leave they're like okay so what i i don't you don't really care about me anyways and i don't really care about you i'm just here because i hear a good
00:43:10 sermon on sunday but if there's no loving community then people won't feel the pressure of the play that you're staging for them through excommunication they won't feel the weight of exile so you have to be a loving community uh the second implication is that you have to engage with each other more than just sunday um just logging in on a sunday service will will not do it because first of all you will not be able to build that relational capital to be able to love one another secondly is it says here in the process
00:43:45 first one then two then three the implication is you have to be the one the two the three means you actually have to go and have a responsibility to engage your fellow brothers and sisters in christ when they are going wrong when they are in sin it is your responsibility in truth and love in gentleness in grace go and tell them hey brother hey sister i think you're not walking the way uh that god calls us to walk i i think you're out of line here i think you're in sin and and these are the reasons i think you should
00:44:16 repent and believe and let me pray for you and let me let me help you let me help you recover through this but the responsibility is to go and be that one to two to three if we if we're not that one that two who's gonna go how are you gonna do that process we have a responsibility to engage one another with all gentleness and thirdly there's a call to continuously look at the cross we have to recognize that our hearts are either going to be licentious or moralistic they're going to be either too lenient or too harsh
00:44:49 and the only way that our hearts get men is by us regularly looking at the cross where we recognize again that we too are sinners saved by grace and then when we engage our brothers we can see that their sinners and the same grace is available for them be a loving community engage each other and look to the cross redemptive church discipline is the loving and sincere act to protect and disciple the local church to expose sin with truth and to warn and redeem church members through repentance of sin and by the
00:45:25 power of the gospel let us pray heavenly father we come before you and we thank you for your goodness and your grace we thank you for your mercy and that through the power of the cross all sin is washed away so father help us stir up stirring up up in us a a spirit of repentance that may we may repent from our sin father give us boldness to engage our brothers and sisters who are in sin fathers help us do it with love and gentleness and father we pray that through redemptive church participant we
00:46:02 are able to be a witness to the community for christ and we are able to redeem our brothers and sisters back into the fold to present the church as christ's bride on the day to come father we thank you we praise you in jesus name amen
