It will be from two places, Matthew chapter 18 and verses 15 through 20. And then we will go also to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Hear now the reading of God's holy, inerrant, inspired word. Take care how you hear. If your brother sins against you, Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two or three, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. And then 1 Corinthians chapter 5, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Let's pray. Father, as we come to your word this morning, we rejoice that you have spoken to us. We rejoice that in your word we learn of you and who you are and how we can know you and thus we are invited into worship as we have just done in song. We rejoice that we get to be your children. And as your children, and as your children who are joined together in the church, that also means that we benefit from your discipline of us. Administered by the church. And so, Father, in these next few minutes, I pray that you would help us to tune in, that your spirit would be at work in our hearts, that we would not be distracted, but that we would be able to look and see what your word has to say for us this morning. For we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. we had you remain standing between that last song and the beginning of the reading of Scripture just because we realize it's turning into a lot of squats. And some of you were complaining about the number of reps you were getting in every Sunday, so we thought we would make a change there. And normally our Scripture reading is not as lengthy as it was today. I was pleased to arrive this morning and find you all here. You know, most of you received the midweek email that tells you the passage or passages we're going to be looking at and the topic of the sermon. And this week you probably looked and saw that it was on church discipline. And so I wasn't sure just how many would, you know, be here to hear such a message on a Sunday morning. So I was very glad to see your faces here today. We can think of discipline and church discipline in a couple of different ways. There's a positive aspect and there's a negative aspect, and the two go together and are closely related. As a pastor and as a father of six children, I've been approached various times by people asking for advice on how they ought to deal with their usually teenage child, whether a boy or a girl, and how to deal with a discipline issue, a particular thing that has come up. And it's difficult. If you've tried to counsel with someone in those contexts, that's a difficult task to undergo. And the reason it's difficult is because it's interpersonal relationships, and you don't really know what the home life is like, and you don't know the child's background and what the child's been through, and there are a lot of those questions. But the main reason that that is a difficult question to answer or problem to solve is because how do you discipline a teenager Well, it should have started teens of years ago. It should have started back when they were a toddler, when the child was a toddler. And, of course, you can't go and readdress the past. You can't go and fix the past. And that has not always been the issue at hand, but very often that's been the issue. the child was not brought up in a way to learn to submit to and respect parents and respect the rules that the parents have and the rules of the home and may or may not have learned about the faith. Those are the major contributing factors to the discipline problem that is faced in the current day. I don't have a particular one in mind, and I don't have someone in my office currently dealing with these sorts of issues, so I don't be looking around trying to see who has teenage kids, and so therefore, who isn't having the issues. It's just a general issue. Discipline is related to discipleship. The two are hand in hand. And the discipleship very often makes it so the discipline down the road doesn't even have to happen because the discipleship has taken place. And we'll see that that's the case not just in the home and not just with teenagers, but really with the church as well. So our first point today that we want to talk about is discipleship includes discipline. But really the two are related, even as you're spelling it out on your paper there, you can see that the two concepts are related, and the Bible talks about them as being related as well. We might think of church discipline as being, on the one hand, directional, and on the other hand, correctional. So there's the discipline, the discipleship that happens is training a child or really anybody in the way they ought to behave, the way they ought to go, and when they don't go that way, then comes the correction. So we might say that discipline is both directional in a positive sense and then correctional perhaps in a negative sense. Or we might think of it in terms of preventative discipline. You're teaching the child what to avoid. Right? And so, that is a positive instruction of you're trying to prevent a future discipline issue, but then, if a discipline issue does arrive later, then you've got punitive discipline that has to be brought in. You've got the preventative, and then you have the punitive. Formative, we might say, and then the corrective. One type of discipline forms the person or forms the child or forms the church in how to walk, forms what this life is going to look like, what it looks like to be a child in this home, what it looks like to be a follower of Christ. There's formative discipline, and then there's corrective discipline. when there needs to be brought in corrective. Or we might say informal discipline and then formal discipline. Informal discipline is what we encounter and go through day after day after day. When you're disciplining your child to clean his room or to make his bed or to brush his teeth or to be kind to his sister, that is informal. You didn't sit down and have a lesson. But there might come a time when he hits his sister anyway. And I know that wouldn't happen in any other home, but hypothetically it could potentially happen. And then you'll have to have a formal discipline session of whatever variety. So what we're talking about here is on the one hand discipleship, which is training someone how to walk. how to live the Christian life or live in this home or live under these set of rules, discipleship, and then sometimes there might be a need for discipline. So I think we can think about it in those different terms. And Scripture talks about it that way. We could think in terms of preventative discipline. A couple of different passages come to mind. Hebrews 3.13. Exhort one another Every day as long as it's called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin the emphasis here is on Christians Exhorting one another it's not necessarily from the pulpit in this case It's in our relationships with one another as Christians. We are to exhort one another we Encourage someone to to walk in obedience and that involves perhaps identifying where they're not walking in obedience This is normal Christian life stuff where we're helping one another see perhaps blind spots. And so we exhort one another day after day as long as it's called today because there's a tendency that each of us has when we're walking on our own to go our own way. And we need to be reminded to go the Lord's way. So there's that sense of preventative discipline or discipleship that happens within the body. And, of course, 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 talks about the ministry of Scripture hitting all these areas. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. We have scripture that helps us, that trains us in how to walk and live this Christian life, how it is we are to behave as Christians. And that might be formally from the pulpit. That might be in the home as fathers teach their children. It might be just in conversation over coffee as we make an observation perhaps about a brother and point him to scripture to say, this would be a better way to do that. Or scripture would call that behavior sin or something like that. We're holding one another accountable. to God's Word. You see how this is all preventative discipline? This is formative discipline? This is discipleship? Then, of course, secondly, there's also punitive discipline. There's preventative that we've talked about and punitive as well. When preventative discipline breaks down or doesn't result in what you would hope it would result in in this particular situation, then the church is left with a situation to handle, a problem to solve requiring some form of church discipline. And that perhaps is not something a lot of us have seen before. Maybe we've not seen that in action. And I should say at this point, before anybody starts to sweat or get a sick feeling in their stomach, that I'm preaching this sermon not because of a situation that's come up, but because we're talking about church blueprints. What ought to be baked into the cake of church life? What ought to be a part of what is the normal life and function of the church? It ought to involve church discipline, primarily in this preventative fashion. As we disciple one another, but also, if need be, in a punitive fashion. And perhaps some of us, maybe even most of us, have not really seen that in action before. It's certainly uncomfortable to participate in, isn't it? If you've been there, it's kind of like, doesn't feel real comfortable, and yet at the same time, there is something comforting about it. It's the church functioning the way the church ought to function. Now, it's very easy to overlook Church discipline, that person's going through a tough time and just leave it at that. It's very easy to avoid church discipline because it would be a big hassle for the whole congregation or we don't want to cause problems or it's not a big deal, we can just overlook it. So it's easy for it to become really not a thing in a church and I think that is often the case. But on the other hand, There might be situations or churches where discipline is avoided, and there might be other situations, on the other hand, where it's overused, where discipline is abused, where it's not administered appropriately. And that leads to problems, of course. We want to avoid both of those extremes. We dare not avoid it. The Lord says we ought to pursue it where needed, and yet we dare not abuse it. We don't want to have that kind of negative impact on one another. And so, thirdly, as we're talking about this relationship between discipline and discipleship, for us to think about the concept of discipline, we must understand what the church is. If we don't have a sound understanding of what the church is, then I don't believe we will be able to come to any kind of sound understanding or application of church discipline and what it might look like. What is a church? We've spent a year talking about it, so I would expect a long and detailed and very precise kind of explanation of what the church is, but if we were to boil it down, the church is a group of people who have recognized before God by the conviction of God, they've recognized that they themselves cannot reconcile themselves to God, that they need help from the outside, that they themselves are deficient for that task. That because of sin, because of our own weakness that we inherited from our first parents and then we happily follow along, that we find ourselves as people, as fallen people at enmity with God. And secondly, not only are we in a position of, we've recognized we're in a position of need, but secondly, we have recognized that God Himself says He will redeem sinners in the person and work of Christ. So we've recognized, I can't do this. I can't satisfy God. I can't please God. I keep contributing sin instead of some kind of merit. I need the merit of another. And so we've looked to Christ, and we found that Christ is the one who has obeyed, who has died sacrificially, and who has been raised from the dead. And by looking to Him, we have life. His merit counts as ours. We have forgiveness of sins because of what he did. The church is a group of people who have gone through that process, that is, they have understood the gospel and come to faith in Christ, realizing that our only hope, our only life is Jesus himself, and have grouped together. because God has commanded us to do so, and we recognize that it is good for us to do so, grouped together to fight this fight of faith together, to live out the Christian life with one another, because it turns out that though the church is a group of people who have realized these things, we live in a world that does not. We live in a world that would actually fight actively against those things. So we need each other, we need the protection, we need the strength, we need the support of one another and that is how God has designed it to be. The people who have come to faith in Christ, who have been baptized into Christ, who have joined together and covenanted together to live this Christian life. seeking to walk before God in light of his word, guided by the instruction of elders, protected by the Holy Spirit in this life and in this world. That's the church. And in that church, church discipline makes sense. And only in that kind of context would it make sense. And so we come to our passages today. Turn back to Matthew 18 and we're going to work through this and we're going to see the steps of punitive discipline for a congregation, for a group of people, for a church of those who have been redeemed and have been joined together in this church. We are those who have a new heart and have life with God. We are those who desire to do God's will. We have a new heart given to us, as we've talked about. We have this new life, a new desire, and we have expectation, because God is at work in us by His Spirit, that He is sanctifying us, and now you have a body of people together, joined together, who have been redeemed and are being sanctified by the work of God. What does that look like and how does it play out in practice? Well, Jesus here speaking in Matthew chapter 18 gives us some basic steps of how to handle a situation where sin might arise. How do we deal with it? In other words, how do we pursue punitive discipleship or punitive discipline in a situation where there has been sin? Jesus gives us very clear directions and so we look at our passage here and we see some steps here. First of all, verse 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Now I need to say I don't often talk about Textual variants, but there's a note probably down in the bottom of your page of your Bible there that says Some manuscripts have the words against you and other manuscripts do not have the words against you and I can't go into great detail about that and If you are reading the New American Standard It didn't include the words against you if you're reading the NIV it didn't include the words against you if you're reading the net Bible It didn't include the words against you, but all others seem to do so. The ESV obviously does. What's going on here is a discussion of scholars trying to figure out which was in the original. Did it include the words against you or not? In other words, if you look at the context of this passage, is Jesus giving direction for only those cases where person A has sinned against you and thus you proceed? And let's say you are person C over on the side and you observed this to happen, but since that person didn't sin against you, there's nothing for you to do. I don't think that's the case. I think we have warrant that even in just regular church life when we observe another Christian sinning, Hebrews 3 for example, would have us exhort one another. So without going into too great a detail about ancient manuscripts and copying practices of scribes and things like that, I would say that this applies both in the situation where you've been sinned against by a brother or sister and in situations where you've observed a brother sin. whether it was against you or not. That's the assumption I'm proceeding under. But in that case, if your brother sins against you, or if your brother sins, go and tell him his fault. Between you and him alone. How many problems in the church would be avoided if we would do that? Rather than going sideline and talking to our friend, or rather even than going to the pastor and talking to the pastor about this situation, what would Jesus have us do? Go and talk to him. Talk to the offending party. That's challenging. It shouldn't be. It's not a big deal. It's very clear. But that's what Jesus would have us do when we've observed a brother or sister sin. Now, we're not talking about rinky-dink like he was speeding on the way to church or whatever. We're not talking about something tiny. We're talking about a significant kind of sin that's like, oh, that's a problem. That's a problem. We don't mean someone coming in late to church because they slept in this morning. We're talking about a bigger deal. This is a real sin that's been committed that's gonna have some sort of impact. And when you see that happen, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't take it sideways. Don't take it to Facebook by any means. You don't even need to come and talk to the pastor about it first. Jesus is telling you right now what to do. Go talk to the person between you and him alone. Keep it small. And if he listens to you, you've gained your brother. That's the goal, by the way. That's the desired outcome. Right? Your flesh may want to make a big deal. This person sinned against me. I'm going to triumph over him in some way. I'm going to let everybody know just what kind of person he is. Right? No. What you desire is that that person would repent. And if he repents, deal. That's wonderful. All done. Right? If he listens to you, you've gained your brother, and you've short-circuited all the rest of this stuff. That's the desire. Right? That's the one that we hope for the most. But, verse 16, if he does not listen, you went to him, you talked about the situation, and he defended himself, he was unwilling to repent, he didn't think it was sin, he said, oh, you got it all wrong, or whatever, right? If he does not listen, then what do you do? Step two, take one or two others along with you. that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." So if this guy is impenitent, he's unmoved, then you take people with you. Take one or two others so that there will be two or three witnesses. Now this doesn't have to be witnesses of the offense. You know, if that were the case, you're gonna sin against someone, make sure there are no witnesses, and then you can never proceed down this list, right? You know, chew the guy out when there's no one around to hear it, right? No, the other witnesses are being brought along to observe the steps, the further process that is going on here so that they can be outsiders who are looking and they're seeing that they had this conversation. What was the conversation like? They're witnesses in that sense. not witnesses to the offense necessarily. They're there to observe the proceedings. And, it doesn't say here, but the desired outcome is the same. If he repents, you've won your brother. Wonderful. It's all done. That's the desired outcome. Now, Jesus presses on from that and kind of assumes that. He stated it there in step one. But step two, if He repents there, it's also all done. But if that's not the case, we go to step three. He's impenitent again. If He refuses to listen to them, But you can feel the incremental, the increase of weight of Veritas to what's going on, of Gravitas. I said Veritas, I meant Gravitas. You can see that at first it was just me going and talking to a person. That's tough enough, isn't it? You ever had someone sin and you're thinking, I got to go talk to this person? That's not easy, right? That's not easy to do. That takes courage. That takes some strength. That takes some humility. That takes faith. But going and taking others with you to have a confrontation, you've just upped the ante. Now it's a confrontation. It's not a conversation between two brothers or sisters in Christ. Now it's a confrontation, right? Step three, if he refuses to listen, even in that confrontational situation, you take it to the church. Having tried one-on-one, that didn't work. Having tried in this small group, that didn't work. And then it is brought to the church so that the church is brought into this situation. 1 Corinthians 5 is gonna talk about why that is the case, why it would warrant bringing the whole church into the process. But we've upped the ante again, haven't we? We've made it more difficult. We're trying to slowly increase the pressure on this person to bring them to repentance, to bring them to repentance. And so now we've even brought it to the church, but we see in the second half of 17 there, if he refuses to listen even to the church. The whole church is saying, brother, you need to repent of this sin. This is sin and you need to turn from it. And the person is saying, no, I won't. Or the person is saying, it's not really sin. And the whole congregation is observing and saying, it's sin. The only option before you is to repent. But if he doesn't repent, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, he should be put out. This person is not just demonstrating a lack of faith, not just demonstrating, giving every indication that he's actually not a believer. which is, that's going on, but there's more than that. This person has thumbed his nose at personal accountability, he's thumbed his nose at the accountability even to a group of respected people who might come to him, and now he's thumbed his nose at the entire church and saying, I'm right and you are all wrong. That person is a danger to the church. He's not just indicating that he is most likely or he's certainly not walking in faith and may very well not be a Christian at all, but he's proven to be impervious to correction, he's proven to be hostile to God's call to repentance, and he's proving himself to be dangerous to the whole body and so he ought to be put out. No longer included in the body, needs to be recognized for what He is. 1 Corinthians 5 is going to get more to that, but we have a couple of undergirding principles that Jesus is going to point out. Verses 18 and 19, truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now, if you're reading the New American Standard, it says it more correctly but less readably when it says, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. That's terrible English, but what's being communicated here is that the decision that's made by the local church in following this process, and in the end, assuming the person remains unrepentant, in the end kicking that person out That is actually the revelation of God's will that's already been made. It's now being revealed. It has already been bound in heaven and it is now being bound on earth by the decision of the church in that process. or something that was already loosed in heaven is now, the revelation of it is being made in the decision of the church in regard to this person. That's what that difficult grammar means, shall have been bound in heaven, shall have been loosed in heaven. In verse 19, again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. So, the first undergirding principle here is God has given this authority to the church. Particularly, He's talking about the authority of discipline. The heavenly decision is seen in the earthly ruling. In other words, this isn't just a church getting mad at somebody. When it's done appropriately, it is the revelation of God's decision that's already been made beforehand. And this is an authority that's given to the church. That's the first undergirding principle. I'll press on for the sake of time. I've got to mention it here. If two of you agree on earth about anything, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. You can get two people on earth to agree about anything. You can get two Christians to agree about just about anything. Is this saying that therefore you can bind God to do that thing because you found someone who agrees with you and who will pray that direction? No. We're assuming all the other aspects of prayer. that we pray according to God's will, right? We pray according to what is revealed in Scripture. We're praying for godly things. And it's prayer, after all, isn't it? We are leaving it up to God. This is God's decision. What's being indicated here is the very encouraging truth of God's blessing on the prayers of the church, even in the case of a situation of difficult discipline. Verse 20, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. This truth gives courage and strength to those who are obediently pursuing church discipline where it's needed. Your knees are knocking together, you're sweating, your stomach's upset because you really don't want to go confront that person. And Jesus said, I'm right there with you. You can do it. You can do it. The second undergirding principle, Christ is present in the discipline of the church. So before we move on to 1 Corinthians 5, just quickly here, what are the goals for discipline? Well, we already mentioned that the desired outcome is the repentance and the restoration of the sinning brother or sister. We want the person, we desire the person to repent, to be restored to full fellowship. That's our desire. We're not trying to punish this guy or this woman. We desire their repentance. Secondly, we have a great concern for Christ's reputation, don't we? In 2 Samuel chapter 12, when Nathan the prophet was confronting David about David's sin with Bathsheba, Nathan is pointing this out. He says, By this deed you, David, have given occasion to the enemies of the Lord to blaspheme. By your actions, David, you have given your enemies, the Philistines, for example, occasion to blaspheme your God. So there is a concern in church discipline for Christ's reputation. And then thirdly, we have a great concern for the church itself and the influence that is being had upon the congregation by this sinful person. So we desire the repentance of the offender. are cautious and concerned and greatly concerned about Christ's reputation in the church and then we are concerned as well about the influence being had upon the sheep within the church. So that takes us to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We won't spend long on this, but this is an extreme case, and we're going to learn some lessons from this extreme case of what we have in 1 Corinthians chapter five. Now Corinth, when I was a brand new Christian and I first read through Corinthians, I thought, hey, it's Nevada. The stuff that goes there kind of seems to go in our state too, but there's some craziness that goes on in Corinth, and this is one of those particular cases, right? Verses one and two, it's actually reported there's sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife, right? And you are arrogant. So here's a church that seems to be thinking, hey, we're so broad-minded in our love for the grace of God that look, we even have such a sinner in our midst. Isn't that, you know, aren't we gracious-minded people? We have a member who lives like that. He says, "...ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you." Let such a flagrant sinner be removed from among you. You've got to deal with this. Now, this isn't just, you know, Brother Joe had some harsh words for Brother Tom. No, this is notorious. This is in the newspaper. Even the pagans are like, can you believe those people? What they allow in that church? This is a big deal, and he says this person is to be removed. But the question is how? How are we to go about that process? Well, Paul gives us instructions there in verses 3 through 5. He said, for though absent in 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 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. You're gathered together and you are to put this man out from under the protection of the church. Deliver him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that Perhaps his spirit can be saved in the day of the Lord. Extreme measures in this extreme case that this person would be put out. Well, why take such extreme measures? It seems like a big deal. It seems like maybe Paul's overreacting and maybe the right road is somewhere between Paul's reaction and the Corinthians' reaction. No, we see why take such measures. In verse six, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? That allowing sin and such notorious sin to persist is going to infect the rest of the congregation. It's going to be like leaven. and it'll spread through the congregation imperceptibly, and then pretty soon you're gonna see another similar situation pop up, and another similar situation pop up on down the line. And so he says in verse seven, cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. Clean that out. It's got to be removed. I don't have time to talk about what he means in talking here about the sacrifice and all that's going on here. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. He's talking about who our Savior is and what, therefore, we have as a result, but we have to move on. And he says, continuing in verse eight, 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. Verse 9, 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 greedier, swindlers, or idolaters. Since then, you would need to go out of the world, 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. He's drawing a line here between those who are in the world, those who are obviously and clearly unbelievers and who don't name the name of Christ. Yeah, those people you minister to, you go after them, you share the gospel with them, and you expect unbelievers to act like unbelievers, and sure enough they do. But he says there are people who claim to be brothers and yet their lifestyle looks just like that. He said for these sorts of people you've got to draw a distinction between you and them, that there is a case, there is a situation in which you keep your distance from such people who claim to be Christians and yet demonstrate it by their lifestyle that they in fact are not. You've got to be clear in your mind about that distinction. Verse 12, what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? In verse 13, God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. What he's talking about here is the danger that comes to the congregation by allowing sin to persist. Now, when we see sin in one another, we go and talk about it, just quietly, not trying to draw attention. I'm not going to preach a sermon on what Brother Joe did. saying, brother Joe did this. No, I go and talk to him. Trying to seek reconciliation and repentance in that way. But if that fails then we go to another level and if that fails then we end up in a position where the entire church knows about it and the church agrees together, yes, this person is living in unrepentant sin and is eventually to be put out. We have to recognize that kind of leaven in our midst. Again, this can be abused as we turn into detectives and start following each other around with scrutinizing life and that sort of stuff. No. We're just recognizing that those who are in the world are going to live like the world because that's their character and nature. They are in Adam and they act like they're in Adam. But for those who are in Christ, Yeah, we have failings and all this stuff. That's what we're talking about, discipleship and all of this that goes on, but we approach and we have those conversations and we seek to call those people to repentance. So, some implications here. For this type of discipline to work, Christians have to be in a covenant relationship with one another where they have agreed to be accountable and hold one another accountable. right? Somebody, you know, walks into church today and then we confront them because, you know, they're, whatever, we saw them doing a donut in the parking lot before they parked, I don't know, right? And we confront them and they're saying, I just showed up in church today and you guys are calling me out, you know? or whatever. No, we're talking about those who have agreed by becoming members, we have agreed together that we are walking hand in hand, arm in arm, seeking to follow the Lord together. And we stumble and we fall, and so we need each other to hold one another up. So in order for this type of discipline to be understandable, it's in the context of a church. Secondly, a proper view of the church, this is the second implication, as made up of regenerate believers, as much as we can know, gives a proper place for church discipline. We're not trying to beat unbelievers over the head so that they begin to look like believers. It's not at all what we're doing. We're talking with those who are believers and helping them to live like believers. They have the power of the Holy Spirit within them after all. They have the convicting work of the Holy Spirit upon them after all and we are instruments in that process. Thirdly, if being expelled from the church, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, if being expelled from the church exposes one to Satan's attacks, so this guy has been kicked out so that he's been delivered over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. If being driven out or expelled from the church exposes a person to satanic attack, that implies that being within a church provides help and protection, doesn't it? If, in this situation in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul's solution was ultimately that the guy be sent out for the destruction of his flesh, that perhaps his soul might be saved, The implication is that here within the church, there is a degree of protection. And we experience that protection, we benefit from that protection. Hebrews chapter three, verses 12 through 14 that we've already mentioned. Hebrews chapter 10, 24 and 25, so don't forsake the gathering together. Why? For a number of reasons. One of which being that here is this place where we are protected, that God is at work to do so. The next implication, a disciplined church is a means of God's grace and protection for us. A disciplined church is a means of God's grace and protection for us. Next, the church disciplines preventatively in all of its discipleship, in training and being trained to obey the Lord in all the areas of our lives. The word is preached from the front, and that's discipleship. Exhortation happens from brother to sister and back and forth. It's given in private as needed, and that is discipleship. The vast majority of the time, church discipline takes these forms, discipleship, preventative discipline. Only when that breaks down does punitive discipline need to be done. And then finally, the goals of church discipline involve a deep concern to guard God's name and reputation, a watchful protectiveness on the rest of the church, and the love and desire for the brother or sister to come to repentance before God and restoration to the fellowship of the church. Couple of points of application and then we'll close. If you are a Christian, and not yet a member. Come and talk to us about membership. Seek to become a member and join us as we seek to fight this fight of faith together. Join us, link up with us as we seek to walk together before the Lord. You can't do this on your own. Secondly, the second application, as a member, humble yourself before one another enough to be called out when necessary. Right? That's real easy to say. Humble yourself before one another enough to be willing to be called out when necessary. That's not easy. Thirdly, as a member, have the courage and love to be willing to confront others that you see in sin. That's also hard. Some people like confrontation. I don't know what causes that. Most of us don't really like it all that much, and we'd rather dodge it. And so we see Brother Joe in sin, and we think, maybe next time. Maybe I'll go to him. Maybe someone else saw it. Someone else will deal with it, surely. I don't really want to do that. I'm scared to death to go have that conversation. Have the courage and the love for Brother Joe, the love for the body. Because if that sin persists, it will not only damage Brother Joe, it will become normal within the body and the whole body begins to be in danger. And have the love for Christ, enough to go and talk to Brother Joe on that topic. Then finally, when someone sins against you or you find out that they've sinned, don't come to me first. Don't come to Brother Stephen first. Go to the person. Don't come to anyone else first. Go and talk to that person, just you and him alone, in obedience to what Jesus said in Matthew 18. We could avoid countless problems that churches have just by pursuing that. And frankly, I want to say that this is an encouragement Not so much a correction, because I see people going to one another and having these conversations. Or rather, I see the results of them having done so. But let me encourage you even more. You don't have to come to the elders to find out what to do. I just told you what to do. Jesus just told us what to do. Go and talk to the person. Try and resolve it there. Failing that, then you can come and talk to us. What a blessing a disciplined church is. It may not always be comfortable to be a member in such a church. Being held accountable is not always comfortable, but it is always comforting because it is the hand of God at work in your life. It is the means He has given for your growth, for your maturity, for your sanctification, and for your protection. Because we know that we are joined together and we keep a loving eye on the brother or sister on our right and on our left, knowing that they are caring for us likewise. It's a place of protection. It's a place of growth, it's a place of strength. Isn't God's grace and care toward us a precious and beautiful thing? It involves elements we would not have designed, we would not have put into place, but He has thoughtfully and intentionally placed us in a church together where we can be discipled, where we can be disciplined. for our greater good and for His glory. And I wish more people understood this reality and the blessing that it is to be in a healthy church. I wish more people in our nation and around the world would understand this, not run from it, but see that it is God parenting us by means of a disciplined church. Let's pray. Father, I confess that I often am weak in the knees when it comes to approaching a brother or sister about sin. I confess likewise that often my reaction when I am approached about my own sin is to get my back up, to make an excuse, to get angry, to try to explain it away. Father, I thank You for persistent brothers and sisters in Christ. I thank you for those in our midst who have the courage and the love to approach their brother, to approach their sister appropriately, quietly, lovingly, but they have the courage to do it. Father, this is the family you have placed us in. This is the school you have placed us in where we might grow up. This is where you disciple us by means of the proclaimed word and the life of the disciplined body. Father, I pray that you would help us to love you enough to be able to desire to be in these kinds of discipleship relationships. I pray that you would give us enough of a love for the person who has sinned that we would be willing to go and talk to them and face perhaps even rejection or harsh words or belittlement or just fear. I pray that you would help us likewise to love the body of Christ here at Parkside, that we would desire that the leaven be cleansed out. We would rather see this person repent and leaven be cleansed out that way. But if necessary, that we would pursue it as far as need be, gently, lovingly, knowing that this is how you shape the body of Christ, by your hand, by the working of your spirit in your people. May we submit to it. Father, we love you and we thank you and we're We recognize that we are a deeply loved people, that you would love us enough to treat us like this, to care for us and to protect us by these means. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name, amen.