Greetings and welcome to the Beacon Broadcast from Beacon Baptist Church on Kirkpatrick Road in Burlington, North Carolina. The Beacon Broadcast is supported in part by the gifts of faithful listeners. If you'd like to correspond with Pastor Barkman and The Beacon Broadcast, or if you wish to support this radio ministry, write to The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. Now with today's message from God's Word, here is Pastor Greg Barkman. Well, we continue our discussion of church discipline, which has come up in the Standard Baptist Church Covenant in paragraph two that deals with the members' responsibilities to the church as an organization. And it says, we engage, therefore, by the aid of the Holy Spirit to walk together in Christian love, to strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge, holiness, and comfort. to promote its prosperity and spirituality, to sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines. To sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines. And it's that discipline part that seems to be very difficult for some people to handle. That discipline part that seems to have dropped out of sight in so many churches today. And yet obviously it was a normal part of church life when this church covenant was written back around 1850 and adopted by thousands upon thousands of Baptist churches, tens of thousands of Baptist churches across America in the 18 and 1900s. And it is there because it is biblical. And I am convinced that if we do not give back to this and a few other basic things that are found in God's word, we can never expect revival. We talk about the need for it. We talk about what we need to do to bring it about. And of course, we should recognize that revival is a sovereign work of God. And in one sense, there's nothing that we can do to bring it about. God has to sovereignly bring it about. But there are certainly some things that we can do to encourage the Lord to look upon us with favor and kindness and to send his spirit to revive us. And I'm afraid that the church seems to be more concerned about straightening out society than it is in straightening out the church. I'm all in favor of taking our stand on moral issues in society, but dear friends, dear friends, how can we expect unbelievers? How can we expect government? How can we expect schools? How can we expect institutions of our society to submit themselves to the Word of God if Christians won't do so? If churches won't submit themselves to the Word of God? Oh, we're all concerned about what's happening to the institution of marriage and all the laws which are breaking down marriage in our land and the laws that are giving homosexuality protected status and I'm concerned about these things too, but brothers and sisters, don't you realize where the problem is? The problem is not in society, I mean obviously it is, but the problem, the correction for the problem, the remedy, the solution is not to get in there and use our political muscle to force changes in the laws and to appoint better people to the courts, though I'm in favor of that. Don't misunderstand me. I'm in favor of that. I would love to see godly people appointed to the courts that understand the meaning of the Constitution and the original meaning of the Constitution. And don't believe that the Constitution is a fluid document to be reshaped by human wisdom and opinions that change in every passing generation, but understand that the Constitution should be understood as it was written. Believe you me, I'm all in favor of that. But you see, the solution has got to begin with the church. It's got to begin with the house of God. Judgment must begin with the house of God. And here we are, out there many times in the public arena, trying to get the world to pay attention to God's Word in areas that we consider to be important, and indeed they are important, and yet we're not interested in getting the church to pay attention to God's Word in areas that we don't consider to be so important. Brothers and sisters in Christ, whatever God's Word says is important, And if we're not willing to practice God's Word in our own churches, then what business do we have telling the world that they need to pay attention to God's Word in society, in laws, in schools? What right do we have to tell the world to listen to the Bible if we're not willing to listen to the Bible? Now back to this matter of church discipline, and we talked yesterday about what Jesus said about church discipline in Matthew chapter 18, and I'm going to return to that section again, and I read it in Matthew 18, 15. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. There's the church. This is church discipline. It doesn't start out at the church level. It starts out at the individual level, but it progresses upward to the church if necessary. If he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Assuredly, I say to you, whatsoever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. This is serious business and it needs to be taken very seriously and it needs to be acted upon very carefully, not hastily. And yes, we do have to be concerned about ill-advised exercise of church discipline and abuse of church discipline and overbearing authority and arbitrary authority of churches and individuals in churches, diatrophies-type people who love to have the preeminence and who cast out those who come to you in the name of the apostles, as John talks about in either 2nd or 3rd John, one of those little epistles. I'd have to go back and check to see which one of the two. I think it's 3rd John. So that was a real problem even in Bible days. That's a good example. Let me turn there and find that. An example of the abuse of church discipline. It's 3 John, verse 9. I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us. I wrote to the church, says John, but Diotrephes does not receive us. He wouldn't receive the letter that John wrote. He wouldn't acknowledge that John had the right to address the church, that John, as an apostle, could write a letter like this. Therefore, said John, verse 10, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words, and not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church. So here's an exercise of invalid church discipline, overbearing church discipline. Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence, apparently had gotten pretty much control of that church, and did not receive the Apostle John, and did not receive the brethren, I expect brethren, who had been sent to the church by John as messengers from the Apostle John. And if there were people in the church who wanted to receive these messengers from John, Diotrephes put them out of the church. He excommunicated them. That is an abuse of church discipline. John says, when I come, I'll straighten that out. But he doesn't say, whoa, we've got to stop exercising church discipline because of this abuse of it. He doesn't say, cancel out everything that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 18 and Paul said in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and elsewhere. Passages we'll get into on another day. But he doesn't say, hold up, we can't practice church discipline until we can make sure that it will never be practiced wrongly. When it's practiced wrongly, you deal with that. But when it's not practiced at all, you've got to deal with that. If the church won't obey her Lord in this matter, then how can we expect God? to bless the church. How can we expect God to give the church spiritual power to impact her community? How can we expect God to send revival? How can we expect God to hear our prayers? How can we expect God to allow the church to influence society, to bring this nation back to righteousness again? We won't pay attention to the Word of God ourselves if the church won't do it. Then why should we expect society to do it? I must confess, you can tell I feel very strongly about this, I must confess that in the early years of my ministry I thought it was a good thing for Christians and churches to be very actively involved in the political realm, and I have changed my mind about that. Now, again, I'm confident that believers, as individual Christians, can, should, ought, and must take their place as citizens, be informed, vote, be active and involved. But I'm also convinced that there's no sense in churches trying to organize in the political arena and for Christians to try to link up with one another to make some kind of big united front to exercise some political muscle until the church is willing to submit itself to the Word of God. Again, if we're not willing to do it, if we won't obey the Word of God, then we have no right, we have no right to call upon society to listen to God's Word. We have no right. We need to shut our mouths. And I've become convinced a long time ago that the biggest area for reform is the church. and I just decided that I didn't have time to spend addressing areas of politics. All of my time has got to be spent keeping Greg Barkman straight and trying to keep the church that God has entrusted under my care straight, to keep us obedient and faithful to the Word of God. That's my full-time job, and if I've got any time and opportunity to reach beyond my own church, it is to call upon Christians and to call upon other churches to be obedient to the Word of God. Judgment must begin at the house of God, and so my concern is to call God's people back to the Bible. I just don't have any interest in this kind of shallow, namby-pamby thin-veneer kind of Christianity that's spread so thin, it's mile-wide and an inch deep, and it's just got down to the lowest common denominator of what we all believe alike, and on the basis of that we're going to go charging into society. I think we'd better get down to more things that the Bible teaches than just the barest fundamental doctrines, we better get serious about all that the Bible teaches and get the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ committed to the Word of God, and then I don't know that we'll even have to address society. I think if we'll get our own house in order, that we'll find God's Spirit working through us to influence society in indirect ways rather than in direct political ways. The church will be influencing the world in the way the church is supposed to influence the world. By bringing proper godly fear through the proclamation of God's word and because Christians are acting like Christians in humble submission to the word of God. Until tomorrow, Greg Barkman saying good day, may God give you his eternal peace.