Okay, so we've been studying cultivating covenant community, and we've been looking at the one another commands in the Bible to talk about how we're to treat one another in the body of Christ. So we've looked at welcome one another, forgive one another, love one another. And tonight we're gonna be looking at instruct one another, though when I see that word instruct, it kind of makes me think of just communicating information. And maybe a better word would be counsel one another, or admonish one another, instruct, admonish, counsel one another. And we'll be looking at various scriptures tonight. So what I want us to do is just jump right in with prayer, and then we'll look at these scriptures in turn and talk about these things. So let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you that you have spoken to us so clearly in your word about how you want us to live, not only as individuals, but also as members of the body of Christ. We pray that you would help us to love one another well, help us to be responsive to these one another commands that we so often ignore or neglect. Forgive us for our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness, help us to Instruct one another and learn how to do that better tonight as we study your word. May your Holy Spirit give us good understanding and help us to see the relevance for our community life here at CPC. We thank you for the way that you're at work by your spirit in our hearts and in this church, and we ask that you would continue your work in our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. If you needed advice, do you have someone else in the church that you would be able to turn to? If someone came to you and they asked for advice or counsel about some matter in their life, would you feel competent to be able to give them counsel, instruction, or advice? Would you be able to teach them? Basically, what we'll be looking at tonight is this concept that as Christians, we are supposed to be competent to instruct one another. We are supposed to be able to give each other biblical counsel and biblical advice. Now, I'm not minimizing the role of needing pastors or needing counselors in our lives, but there is a sense in which all members of the body are supposed to know and love the Lord, know His Word, and be able to speak truth into our lives. We're supposed to be, as Paul David Tripp says, instruments in the Redeemer's hands. to promote sanctification in our lives. And so we're going to be looking and thinking about how to do that practically tonight. But our first scripture that I want us to look at is in the book of Romans, chapter 15. So let's just turn there first. Romans, chapter 15, in verse 14. And it's such a short little verse, but you'll see there's actually a lot of teaching here about how we're supposed to instruct one another in the body of Christ. So Romans 15, in verse 14, Paul's writing to the Roman Christians, and he says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. And so that verse is kind of a key verse that we'll be thinking about just to get started here. Notice in that verse there are two essential ingredients, essentially, for instructing one another in the faith. Very simply, but let's think about them. He says that the Roman Christians are full of goodness. That's one ingredient. And then secondly, he says, they're filled with all knowledge. They're full of goodness, and they're filled with all knowledge. Goodness is something that doesn't come to us naturally as sinners. This side of the fall, we're born and conceived in sin. And so we know that from our youth upwards, that we are not naturally good because of our inherited depravity from Adam. In Adam's fall, we all sinned. But when the Holy Spirit regenerates us and the Holy Spirit begins working in our life, He produces fruit. And we see one of the aspects of the fruit of the Holy Spirit is goodness. And so that's what He's ripening and producing in our lives. And goodness is essentially, we recognize that God has been good to us. The Psalmist says, the Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he's made. But goodness is also supposed to be reflected by us to others. So when we realize how good God has been to us, and we see how God is working in our lives, we want to share that goodness with others. and we want to be benevolent because God is good. That's his disposition towards the whole wide world, but also his disposition towards us, his elect people. And so one of the things that has to be true of us if we're going to instruct one another is that we have to have a goodwill towards others. It seems simple, but very important. Secondly, he says that we must be filled with knowledge So in order to do good to others spiritually, you have to have content, right? It's not just sentimentalism, it's not just making other people feel good, but you have to be filled with all knowledge because the good we want to do to one another in the body of Christ has to do with communicating truth, right? Jesus prays, John 17, 17 what? Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth. So the word of God is what God uses in our lives to sanctify us, And so if we are going to be instruments in the Redeemer's hands to counsel others, to give biblical advice to others, we need to be grounded in knowledge. We need to be growing in knowledge, growing in goodness. And both of these things go together. Matthew Henry, Presbyterian Bible commentator, says, goodness and knowledge go together, a very rare and an excellent conjunction, the head and the heart of the new man. So if you're good and have no knowledge, you're just going to be sentimental. But if you have knowledge and you have no goodness, you're gonna be arrogant. Knowledge puffs up, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8. But we're supposed to have goodness and knowledge conjoined together to be able to instruct one another. You've heard this statement before, and I misquoted it here in your notes. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Have you heard that before? People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. It's a platitude, but it's true, isn't it? If people don't know that we love them, if people don't know that we care about them, then they don't really care what we have to say. But if they know that we love them, we have a good will towards them, and we want what's best for them, they're more inclined to listen. Robert Murray McShane, Scottish Presbyterian minister, once said that if your people know that you love them, speaking to ministers, you can tell them whatever you want. And so, in our relationships with one another in the body of Christ, we can say hard things to one another if we know it's coming from a heart of love. Love doesn't rejoice in iniquity, it rejoices in the truth. And so, these things are brought together. And notice he says, when we're filled with this goodness and knowledge, we can instruct one another. And that word, instruct one another, here in Romans 15 and verse 14, is the Greek word, nutheteo. and it's not important that you remember that word, but it can be translated counsel, instruct, or admonish. So I don't know about you, but when I see the word instruct there in the ESV, I just think the communication information and an instructor tells you how to do something, right? And there is content, because he says we need to be filled with all knowledge to instruct one another. So there's content going on, just like in a sermon, there's content being given out. In a Bible study like this, there's content. But it's not just head knowledge. It's not just information, it's information for our transformation. And so instruction, our counseling, is giving people the truth, but giving the people the truth so that they can change. And so the kind of one anothering we're talking about is speaking truth into each other's lives, where we're sharpening one another, where we're refining one another in the faith, and we're actually making one another better, making one another more like Christ. Anyone hear that? I'm not done yet, so I don't know. Now this kind of communication, this one anothering where we're speaking truth into our lives, is often confrontational and directive. And what I mean by that is when we are called upon, and many times in the church, to speak truth into one another's lives, we have to do that uncomfortable thing of confronting someone else. And even saying that word feels very confrontational, doesn't it? It's like, I don't know if it has to be that way. There was a lady in a previous church who was really involved in another church in their counseling ministry. And I talked about, well, one of the hard things about counseling is you have to confront people with the truth of God. And she said, well, in my group of counselors, we call it care fronting. And so I was like, OK, why can't we use the word confront? I don't know. But you see, they were trying to soften it a little bit. Let's not make it sound so harsh. But confrontation is loving. It is out of care that we would confront one another. with the truth of God's word, and it's directive. So what I mean by directive is you're telling someone what to believe or what to do, right? God tells us what to believe and what to do in his word, and there is a sense in which we're supposed to remind one another, admonish one another, encourage one another to do what God has said and to think God's thoughts after him and do what he wants us to do, and we don't feel necessarily equipped to do that. We don't like the way it makes us feel like we have to, maybe we're gonna hurt someone's feelings, or maybe it's gonna be awkward, and so we try to avoid confrontation. And I've seen in the church, actually, a lot of problems grow out, and we'll talk about this at other one another commands, a lot of problems happen when we try to avoid confrontation, right? So think about one common one when we try to avoid doing Matthew 18, right? When someone sins against you, what does Jesus say? Go talk to that person. We try to avoid that because it's confrontational. It makes us feel uncomfortable. Same with this. When we teach, encourage one another, admonish one another, it requires that confrontation. Even if the confrontation, as it should be, is done in love, it's still, we don't like to do it. We gotta be careful when we think about this passage because we often believe the culture's lie that we, ordinary Christians, are incapable of offering biblical instruction and counsel to one another. We live in a culture that's been very influenced by Sigmund Freud and the triumph of the therapeutic, right? And a lot of the things that have come out of that is the idea kind of like any kind of counseling that goes on should be delegated to professionals. we can't handle it as Christians. You're not capable of talking to a brother or sister about his or her marriage problems, or child-rearing problems, or suffering, or grief. You need to send them to the therapist, and I'm not saying there's never a context where you would use someone like that, okay, so don't hear. As a professor in seminary used to say, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that our culture tends to encourage this general idea that counseling is for the licensed professionals, instructing one another is something someone else has to do. However, the Bible is very clear that God's Word is sufficient, and we as God's people are competent. to care for one another in this way. In the words of J. Adams, we are competent to counsel. We are competent to instruct one another, to teach one another, to train one another in the church. And so this is a very important part of this one anothering. Flip over to kind of enhance that teaching there to Colossians chapter three and verse 16. Another passage where that same verb is used, nufeteo, counsel or instruct or admonish. But Colossians 3.16, it's one of those passages where Paul is giving a string of commands or imperatives that flow out of our union with Christ. So we're in Christ by grace alone, and then as a result of our union with Christ, here's how you're supposed to live. And he says in Colossians 3.16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. How is that gonna happen? Teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So notice there's an emphasis there on having the word of Christ filling our hearts. So we're supposed to be filled with all goodness and knowledge. How's that gonna happen? How are we gonna be filled with all goodness and knowledge? Through the word of Christ dwelling in us richly. And so we should think of our heart, and this has been a helpful metaphor for me, to think about my heart like a reservoir. And your job is to be continuously filling that reservoir with Christ, with truth about Christ and his word. And as you're filling your reservoir, your heart, with that knowledge of Christ, having that word of Christ run you richly, then you're able to give something to others. You're able to minister to others out of the overflow of your soul. So think about when Jesus says in John 7, he says, if anyone's thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And he says, for out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. And so we come to Christ and we drink. Our need drives us to Christ. But then as we're drinking of him, we're not just a reservoir, a receptacle, if you will, of the spirit. But then the spirit flows from us to others. the truth of God. And so there's supposed to be that filling our hearts with that truth of God's Word. And notice this calls for wisdom as we receive that Word and then we start teaching others. It says in verse 16, let the Word of Christ go on you richly, teaching and admonishing one another, how? In all wisdom. So when we're filled with knowledge, you might think of the knowledge as the accumulation of the biblical truth, the data, if you will, but wisdom is also like, how do you use that? How do you apply the Bible to the core concerns of life? What difference does it make? And so you remember James 1, be doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. Or when Jesus says, he says the wise man builds his house on the rock, and he goes on and describes, that's the one who hears these words of mine and does them. So we're meant to take it seriously, and the way we take it seriously is by doing it. God actually wants us to do the things, right? You even think about the Great Commission, it doesn't say, teaching them all the things that Christ commanded, it actually says, teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded. So in the Great Commission, it's not just teaching facts and theology and information, but it's, where does the rubber meet the road? the wisdom is the skill and the art of godly living. Show someone how to live. What difference does this truth make in my life? And so that means when we're having the Word of God dwell in us richly, it doesn't just mean being really good at Bible trivia, right? I remember when I was a kid playing Bible trivia with my grandmother, and she always won. And I remember there's one question, it was like, spell Nebuchadnezzar, and I was out. I mean, spelling Nebuchadnezzar, even like writing my sermons from Daniel and trying to spell Nebuchadnezzar, I've spelled like 15 different ways, you know, just N. But knowing facts about the Bible doesn't change you. I mean, it doesn't, right? It's knowing the significance of the facts, believing the truth, and putting the truth to work by the way that you live your life. And so when you appropriate biblical truth, completely in that way, you're able to be a blessing to others, because you're not just giving them the facts, you're showing them why it makes a difference, right? In other words, it's one thing to be able to convince another person from the Bible the doctrine of predestination. It's another thing to comfort someone in their trial with predestination. They're both important, but they're different things. And what I think Paul's talking about here is that practical usage of how it affects our life. It's assuming the content, but the content has to be assimilated into our life. So you think about this, do you know others in the body of Christ that you can turn to for this kind of counsel? Are you a source of counsel in this way to others? One of the things that's interesting here, this is more of just a side note, no extra charge, but just want to mention it because it's in the verse, is that notice how one of the ways we regularly instruct one another, according to this verse, is the way that we sing. one another, because it says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. You're going to be teaching and admonishing one another, but also you're going to be singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So for the longest time in my Christian life, I thought when we gathered on the Lord's Day and we sang songs, we were singing to God. And that is true. We are singing to God. We're singing praise to God, thanks to God. A psalm, in a sense, is kind of like a prayer put to verse in its music. But also, we're actually singing to one another. The Pentecostal tradition has really emphasized this. And there is some of that in the Bible, of course, when we sing. But there's also this. We're singing to one another. And a lot of our hymns, our songs, you'll notice they're not actually addressed to God, they're addressed to the body. We're singing one another facts about Christ and truth that's meant to change us. And so These hymns and psalms and spiritual songs, that's why it's so important that those are faithful to scripture, right? And that we're singing this so that we're encouraged and enriched by it. So just a little side note there about we're not just talking about kind of informal conversations. That's really what I'm focusing on in this lesson. But there's also ways like that where we're singing and we are doing that one another command just by singing. Now let's look at an example that is in the Bible of what I'm talking about. Acts chapter 18 is really kind of one of the best examples of this kind of one anothering when we're teaching one another. Acts 18, in verse 24. Just notice how this is a great illustration of the kind of thing we're talking about. It says, Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, They took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed. For he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. So this is an amazing account. Apollos, obviously, even before he has this encounter with Priscilla and Aquila, is a man who loves the Lord and is being used by God. It doesn't speak of him in a disparaging way. It says he was eloquent, so he had the gift of speaking. It even emphasizes his competency in the scriptures. Clearly, at this time, speaking of the Old Testament scriptures, he handled those scriptures well. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord Jesus, so he was a Christian believer, if you will. He was fervent in spirit. He had zeal. He had enthusiasm, which is good. And he taught accurately about Jesus. His Christology, we would say, was great. But, so it's not so much that Apollos had inaccurate theology, just incomplete theology. He knew only the baptism of John. However you flesh that out, he didn't seem to know how John's baptism was preparatory, pointing to Christ, right? John baptized with water, Jesus baptized with the Spirit and fire, and so there was something incomplete in his understanding. Be that as it may, Priscilla and Aquila are out there in the congregation hearing him preach, and they're like, yeah, he's very eloquent, he's very zealous, he's accurately handling the scripture, but there's something that seems a little off. And what they do in that situation is kind of what we're talking about. They pull him aside and they admonish him, they teach him, they counsel him. So notice how they did that. Aquila and Priscilla instructed Apollos, they did it privately. Notice that says there in the text, they took him aside. They didn't shame him or embarrass him. So when he, right in the middle of this preaching, they didn't say, wrong. I mean, they could have done that, right? And maybe they would have been right, but that's not how they did it. Why is that significant? It shows us that they were filled with all goodness, not just filled with all knowledge, but filled with all goodness, and they were genuinely concerned for him. And so they pulled him aside, and we don't know what the conversation was like, but maybe they said, look, you are very eloquent, you're very zealous, you're faithful to Scripture, and we sincerely mean that. There's just this one little thing that we think that you're missing out on about John's baptism, and they kind of gave him the rest of the story. So pulling him aside privately rather than publicly shaming him or embarrassing him probably went a long way in having him receive that, don't you think? Because it showed concern for him, they were concerned about him. They weren't concerned with theological one-upmanship, being right. They were concerned about helping him be better. And so when we're in counseling one another, encouraging one another, we're to encourage one another to be better. It's supposed to be helpful. It's supposed to be redemptive. So we use the word confrontation. It's not a scolding, but it's lovingly, yes, you interject yourself. Aquila and Priscilla had to speak up, right? They had the courage to go to Apollos and say, hey, let's talk about this. but it's out of love, it's motivated out of a desire to help. Now notice how Apollos responded to this correction, so we see it on the teaching side, there's another side here, Apollos, he was humble, he was teachable, and he was receptive. And so that's the attitude that we're supposed to have when others come to us with God's Word, and they pour truth into our life. We're supposed to be humble. We're supposed to be teachable. We're supposed to be receptive. And so we should ask ourself that question, am I willing and then am I open to receive correction? Because that's a mark of wisdom, that's a mark of true humility. Can you honestly say that other Christians in this body have a free sin-hunting license in your life? That they're invited to speak truth to you, that they're invited to tell you where you could refine your understanding. where you could grow in your obedience to the Lord, where you could be more effective, more useful to his kingdom. It takes maturity to have that. I mean, this was just almost a great picture, right? Everything came together. Apollos had the maturity to receive the correction, and Aquila and Priscilla had the ability to come together and help him. Can you imagine how easy it would have been for Apollos to say, well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm kind of a good preacher. You might have noticed I'm a little competent in the scriptures. He didn't do that, he received it. He was humble enough to receive this couple, a man and a woman, and sometimes scholars will even point out that it might be significant that Priscilla is mentioned first before Aquila, because the woman may have been the primary one giving the counsel there. I don't know if that's the case, but some have suggested that might be the case. So this private correction by this couple that comes, Apollos benefits from it, and the result is, Apollos was already gifted and effective, but now he's sharpened and he's even more effective. He's even better. He's been polished and refined by this instruction. So what does this mean for our lives? Because I think this is something that we're all called to do, and we don't necessarily know how to get there, and obviously I can't say everything tonight, but some of the things that come to mind here, first of all, we do have to take responsibility for our spiritual growth. Because if we are not growing in our understanding of the scripture, if we're not, to use the reservoir image, if we're not filling the reservoir, we'll be dry. We won't have anything to offer. So we're supposed to be growing, grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Growing in knowledge, yes, growing in obedience to the Lord, growing in serving the Lord. not just for our own self-help, our culture knows about self-help, but so that we might be a blessing to others, so that through our growth, others in the flock will benefit. And so we're all to take that responsibility to be filled with the goodness and to be filled with knowledge so that we can be effective at sharpening one another for Christ. You are able, Paul says, God says, through Paul, you are able to instruct one another. You're competent to do this. Studying the Bible regularly, I mean, really, if you think about it, nothing really equips you better than that. Because if you're, what do we say, what does the psalmist say, Psalm 119, I've hidden your word in my heart, I've stored it up in my heart that I might not sin against you. If you're storing it up in your heart, if you're hiding that, think about Psalm 119, David says things like, I have more wisdom than all my teachers because I've kept your commandments. So we're not talking about professional skill and expertise. We're not talking about, Great academic prowess. We're talking about a student of the Bible who's learned by experience to obey God. And that produces wisdom that we can pour into one another. Think about things that you've been taught by others and how you might pass that wisdom along. So in life, people have taught you things, right? And sometimes they can be summarized in aphorisms, right? Sometimes they can be summarized in a story that you have, maybe of some way that you learned something along the way. But take that and pass that wisdom along and impart it to others. There might be select things that you know, maybe about work ethic, or maybe about struggles in your marriage, or maybe about a loss that you've had and how to deal with it in your life, or maybe about dealing with a wayward child that would be a blessing to someone else. Things that you've learned by experience through, with God's Word, guiding you that you can pour into others. And so it's not just about being a student of the Bible, but also about living life and growing and along the way. You think about Titus 2. where it talks about the older women are to teach the younger women to love their children and their husbands, right? It's like that kind of discipleship is going on because of that experience that the older women have had. They've raised children and they know a thing or two about what it's like and they can provide counsel. This means we have to have the courage, of course, to pursue others and sharpen them. If we're asked for biblical counsel on a matter, don't simply defer to someone else, though asking for help is good. Don't defer to someone else, but research the matter yourself so you can provide better help next time. So what I'm talking about there is I think sometimes we feel, your average ordinary Christian in the church, we feel like I'm not competent to counsel, I'm not able to instruct others, I'm not able to give, who am I to give biblical counsel, right? And so when someone comes to us for help, We're quick to defer and deflect to someone else. Go talk to the pastor. And there's a time to do that. What I'm saying is, also take that time where that happens to you as a providential opportunity from the Lord where you're supposed to be growing as to how do I address this situation. So sometimes it might be as like, I don't know how to help you with that. But let's go talk to this person who does. And instead of just sending them to that person, you go send that person and figure it out. You're learning from that person's wisdom about how to help in that situation. And that's how discipleship happens sometimes in the body, is that we're learning by being with each other and seeing how to do things. And that's an important thing. And so we don't want to miss out. on the opportunity to do good to one another because we don't feel competent when God says, you have the Holy Spirit, you have the Holy Scriptures, you have my promise to help you, you have your elders to help you, have other Christians to help you. There's a lot of resources you have at your disposal, but don't simply say, well, I don't think I'm...who am I to do that? But rather take the charge seriously to teach one another. So Why do we need to learn this? So important just to close, so let me drive home why this is such an important thing that we need to learn how to do. One thing here is the deceitfulness of sin, the deceitfulness of sin. So Hebrews uses this language in Hebrews 3.13, such great language. So you could do a whole sermon on it, but it says Hebrews 3.13, but exhort one another every day as long as it's called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So notice that doesn't say, the pastor's just warning everybody about, but he says exhort one another. Exhort one another that none of you are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. So sanctification, our pursuit of holiness, is a community project. we're exhorting one another, don't let sin deceive you and thereby harden you. Meaning that can happen to Christians, we can be deceived by sin and we can be hardened by sin, made callous, spiritually callous by sin. And so sin deceives us, it's like we've talked about this before, this thing about sin, we think the simplistic understanding of sin is it's just doing something bad. misdeed, right? But sin is also like, it's a parasite, it corrupts your nature, it corrupts your vision, it contaminates. And when you do sin, sin does you, it blinds your eyes, and it dulls your spiritual sensitivity. And so we need to do this because we all have times where we are beguiled by sin, and so we need that help. Another reason we need this is we're all susceptible to unbiblical ways of thinking. That's why Paul says in Romans 12 too, don't be conformed to this world, but what? Be transformed by the renewal of your minds. We're tempted, we are confronted at all times with this kind of pull of the world into thinking like it. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride and possessions. And it's just so easy. Even sometimes we slip into saying these things, and if we hurt ourselves, we'd be horrified. But we've been listening to what the world says, right? And we have blind spots. And sometimes we can't see that. It's like when you have something in your teeth. You need someone else to point it out to you. You don't see it unless someone says, hey, you've got something in your teeth. Well, you've got an un-biblical way of thinking there. And it's easy to fall into that. One of the ones I think about all the time is just kind of like when people will get really They're really involved and enmeshed in a marital dispute, and they're thinking, contemplating, maybe I'm going to pursue this divorce. And all of a sudden, they have all kinds of rationales for why they can terminate their marriage that aren't in the Bible, right? because even though they know the Bible gives grounds for divorce, they, in their mind, they've thought, well, I'm not happy, right? God wants me to be happy, right? And so we need one another to say things like, well, hold on now. Time out. Let's talk about that. You've got a presupposition in your thinking. Let's talk about that way of thinking. Is that right? make sense? And so we have to do that because we get deceived by sin. Also emotions, grief, anger, whatever it might be, cloud our thinking. And so when we are hurt, we often respond emotionally. God made us emotional beings, that's legitimate. But sometimes we're thinking with our emotions rather than controlling them, right? And the Bible does say we are not victims of our emotions. We can inform them with God's Word. We can tell them they're wrong, right? We can speak back to them. We don't have to give full vent to the emotions that we have. And so we need others to say, you know, I really, I think that is just the anger talking, and the anger is talking because the hurt's talking. And you need someone to come alongside and say, listen, let me try to help provide another way to approach this from God's word. And what happens is if we don't have the courage to speak to one another, If we don't do that, then people tend to see their life experiences confirming what they already thought. Most people, confirmation bias. So if they have wrong ideas, they're going to interpret their reality in light of those wrong ideas unless someone corrects them. truth, lovingly and carefully, like even if it's innocent, like Apollos, let's just assume he innocently had incomplete knowledge of the baptism of John and how that related to Christian baptism. Even if he was innocent there, if no one corrected him, they were robbing him of the attempt of the ability to grow and be better, and be better for the Lord. And so our questions at the end are one question you can ask somebody if you're afraid to confront them. And it feels like a trap question, but it's really not. You can just ask somebody if you're not sure if they're going to respond well to your redemptive counsel, is if there was something potentially displeasing to the Lord in your life, would you want to know? That's an honest question. If there's something potentially displeasing to the Lord in your life, would you want to know? And if the person says, no, I don't want to know, that's not a good response. But then we don't cast our pearls before swine, Jesus says, right? There is a sense in which you don't go there, right? And they may have a legitimate reason in the sense they don't trust you enough yet and those sorts of things. We know it's more complicated than that. But what I'm saying is there is a way to broach the subject with someone and try to find out the spiritual temperature. The other thing we can do to create a community where this kind of thing is more common is that when we develop relationships with one another in the body of Christ, we can actually give each other permission. and we can say something to the effect like this. In fact, another brother said this to me recently, but you can say something like this, and it would be, if you ever see anything in my life that doesn't line up with God's word, would you please tell me? If you see me doing something that is this sinful, if you see me espousing theology that is inaccurate and is harmful to me or the church, would you please tell me? Sometimes I've sat through new membership meetings where the elders meet with a new member and that will be brought up by one of the elders. They'll say, look, Do you understand that by joining this church that that means we have a right to speak into your life? And they'll say, yeah. And then the elders, the wise elders will say, do you also understand that you have a right to speak into our life if you see something that's wrong? I mean, that's what Aquila and Priscilla, they had the ability to speak into Apollos' life, right? Now, I'm not talking about developing an atmosphere where We're all nitpicking on everybody for every little sin, right? We know that the Lord, he does not treat us as our sins deserve. He's slow to chide and swift to bless. He overlooks so many things in our lives. I'm talking about the big stuff. Does that make sense? I'm talking about the big things that you think, if I don't address this with this person, this person might be harmed in some way. it might bring harm to the community, and God might be dishonored. We're not talking about being spiritual nitpickers with everybody's theology on the little, the minutiae, and everybody's every decision that they have. We give each other grace to grow and mature, but there are times where you think, you know, I know this person, and I think I need to address it. And you'll know, I think. The Lord will let you know, and you'll know that it needs to be addressed." And then that, in that context, to pursue them with a heart full of goodness and with knowledge of God's Word. Some books that I have found helpful on this topic. One is Paul David Tripp's book, Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands. You see this down there on your recommended resources. It's basically about how do we minister to one another in the body of Christ. It's a bigger category than we've talked about tonight, but it's very good, very helpful if you ever want to study that. And then more controversial book, not everything in it is, you will agree with probably, because I find myself in places thinking, I don't know if I go with that. But J. Adams' book, Competent to Counsel, Introduction to Newthetic Counseling, is very helpful in a lot of ways. He basically called the church to task for outsourcing counseling to the secular psychologist. And so instead of standing on a sufficiency of Scripture, actually giving people biblical counseling, the church had in many ways integrated the Bible into Rogerian counseling, Freudian counseling, and things like that, and J. Adams is saying, well hold on, we believe in the sufficiency of Scripture, and we believe that we're competent to counsel one another, what does that look like? And so even if you disagree, like most people do when they read the book on some of his applications, The thrust of the book is very helpful in terms of how we counsel one another in the body of Christ. I mean, obviously, he applies it to pastors, but also he applies it to members of the body as well, and that can be a helpful one if you so desire. Well, let's pray, and we'll go to our discussions. Father in heaven, we confess that you have been so good to us in the brothers and sisters you've placed in our life to instruct us at key moments in our developments. We think of those who have clarified our thinking. We think of those who have rebuked us for sin. We think of those who have encouraged us in holiness and those who have refined us. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. And we pray that you would help us to be instruments in your hand for the sanctification of others. Help us to have the courage to be able to speak sometimes confrontationally, but also with love, to speak directly, to call each other to obedience to your word, and we pray that through the gospel and through this encouragement that we would be refined as individuals and as a community. And we pray that you would help us to take away something from tonight's lesson about where we can grow and mature in this area. so that we will be doers of the Word and not just hearers only, deceiving ourselves. Bless our discussion tonight, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.