Imagine, if you will, a world unlike anything you have ever known or experienced. A world without Sunday morning gatherings, without the echo of hymns and sanctuaries, without pulpits, pews, or the sounds of a preacher's voice calling souls to redemption. A world where no deacons serve, and no pastors shepherd, and no congregation unites in prayer. In this reality, the church as we know it never was. It is not history nor memory, it is nothing more than a figment of imagination. You are about to step beyond the veil into a dimension where faith has no fellowship, where the body has no unity, and where hope walks alone. Welcome to For the Love of the Church, Season 3. All right, so on the flip side, you know, we talked about churches hurting people because of sin. There's this then other issue of, well, what happens if the believer is sinful, right? Like with inside of the church. And so I think one of the things that will be affected is church discipline, right? If there's no local church, then you got to deal with discipline. By the very nature of that phrasing. Right, yeah, it implies church, right? And even Jesus talked about church discipline in Matthew, so I was thinking this may be one of the few statements that Jesus makes that would have to be, like, removed, right? Like, that thing in Matthew 18 where he says, you know, if your brother sins, go, and if he doesn't, take it. And then if they refuse to repent, take it in front of the church. Well, what church is that? That's not the universal church. I couldn't see that would be what he means. Like, you go, oh, so-and-so sins, so you know what I'm gonna do now? I'm gonna broadcast their sin to everybody, because that doesn't seem like a New Testament principle, right? That's not what loving is in 1 Corinthians 13. So, what does he mean when he says that? And how would the universal church be able to address that sin, right? So, if I'm bringing it to the universal church, well, how? What, I have to wait for every single believer to weigh in on that sin? Right? So, like, you can't mean that scope. So, it has to be a local scope. So, that might be changed. That might be the one that's changed. But, you know, when we were going over this particular aspect before we recorded, I was thinking, There's a lot of things that I think about as I'm going through life that really scare me, and I never want to misrepresent Jesus. That always scares me to represent Jesus correctly. The other one that just scares me is church discipline. I never want to be under church discipline. I never want to leave the scope of the church. To me, the lack of fellowship and being treated like a non-believer, and to me that is the scariest position, you know, in that phrase that Paul says, you know, turn them over so that Satan can buffet the body, right? And I don't want to be a buffet for Satan. Right. Yeah, no. That's not a good kind of buffet. Yeah, that's a, yeah, but no, and it's the idea of, you know, you treat them like a non-believer. I never want to be seen as a heretic or outside of Christ, and so this is one of those things. So, I thought, well, what if I didn't have that gate, that fence, right? What if this guardrail is removed of the possibility of me being removed from the fellowship? Well, then, for me, that would be one thing that I'd be like, well, cool. I guess I can I guess I can justify my sin, right? Because this is one of those things of accountability. So, I don't know, Dave, if there was no church discipline, what other things would you be able, how would you address sin? How would the church address it? Or how would the believers? Yeah, the church could address it, because theoretically, hypothetically, the church doesn't exist. So as believers, how do we address sin? what's our motivation to address sin? If it's you and I and we're not part of a local assembly and we're just kind of out here doing our thing and I'm looking at you like, I don't know, I mean Caleb's doing his thing, what obligation, what motivation, what's driving me to confront you? Okay, so then you make it a little bit more complex with another layer of people who avoid confrontation. There's some people that love confrontation, but I think probably most people actually prefer to avoid confrontation. Like most people are not looking for it. So if I'm a believer and There's no church discipline and there's no group effort, if you will. It's just individual to individual. I'm guessing that most sin is going unchecked. Now, one thing that we haven't really talked about is the role of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is definitely still involved. He's definitely still part of the picture. That hasn't changed, so we rely on His all-sufficiency convicting us and drawing us to Christ and all of those things. However, I will say this, we all have that currently with the church, and those of us that have served as pastors and church leaders, we understand that you still have a lot of problems. I don't think that the Holy Spirit works differently. I don't think that the Holy Spirit tries harder. I think the Holy Spirit's all sufficient. I think the Holy Spirit's doing his thing, whether there's a church or not. But again, I know it's not like a broken record. We keep going back to the brilliant genius of the local church that, if I can say this without being blasphemous, magnifies the impact of the Holy Spirit. Granted, we understand the Holy Spirit is part of the Godhead and the Holy Spirit is all sufficient and all that, but the functional day-to-day impact of the local church in the life of the believer in conjunction and coordination with the Holy Spirit is definitely magnified where we're able to engage each other. So if that's out of the equation, we're still relying on the Holy Spirit to engage each individual convicting of sin and drawing us to Christ. And there's probably part of it that the Holy Spirit may convict me to go confront you about something. I think he's clearly still doing that work. But then I would say he's doing it now, and I don't always do what I'm supposed to. So I think sin is less confronted. without the local church. I think sin is more rampant without the local church, in the life of the believer. I think sin is more, it's more unchecked. I think we're more in danger of fulfilling the lusts of the flesh, Galatians 5, than we are to fulfill the works of the Spirit. And so we've left ourselves wide open to, again, another theme that we keep talking about is the impact. the spiritual kingdom impact of believers is diminished without the local church because we don't have that mechanism in place to be able to function like we should. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, I was thinking about that. Okay, so there is no local church. I see Dave doing something bad, right? Seems right. Yeah, he's saying something or doing something or thinking something that doesn't bring God honor and glory in a very egregious way. So, yeah, how would you address that in the community of believers, right? Like, let's say that we'll have a hypothetical Carl. Let's say Carl. I don't know a Carl right now, so if there's a Carl listening, we're not thinking of you. This is a hypothetical guy. Carl's sinning. He starts teaching heresy. How do you deal with that if there's no local church? The local church will be able to Stop that, right? They'll be able to talk. So what do you do? How do you do that if there's no church? So you go to Carl and you say, hey dude, you're preaching false doctrine, false teaching. And he's like, so who are you? Like, okay, thank you for your opinion, Ralph. But I'm gonna keep doing my thing. What recourse does Ralph have? Ralph doesn't have a lot of recourse. So if there is no local church, then maybe the recourse that we have to think about, so this is an interesting thought to get into is, does gossip, slander become a mechanism by which we can use to help warn others of the sins of that person? So Carl is preaching false doctrine. Carl is doing things that are egregious. If I don't have a local church, if the local church is null and void, it's not available, it's not around, how do I, how does Ralph address Carl when I go to, when Ralph goes to Carl and confronts him and Carl blows Ralph off, what does Ralph do? Well, there may be an argument to be made that Ralph needs to do something to just publicly broadcast and discredit Carl because that is actually a righteous thing to do to be able to have a mechanism to communicate Carl preaches false teaching and I'm going to broadcast that so that others may be warned. Well, If we don't have a local church, that may be the best means for Ralph because there's no ecclesiology to be violated. So when we talk about the concept of ecclesiology, we're talking about how does the church exist and function and work and all the dynamics together. So if the local church is in existence, there's an ecclesiology, like we have a belief of you know, elders do this, and deacons do this, and the church does this, and the body does this, and this is how we function. That's an ecclesiology, a philosophy. If that's out of the equation, then I don't have that ecclesiology that kind of confines me and constrains me. And so there may be an element where we are more free to do what would typically be called gossip or slander in order to say, hey, we're trying to warn you of Carl is preaching false doctrine or Carl is doing immoral things. Yeah, and you would go, okay, so let's say Ralph does get a whole bunch of his buddies, and they all agree, and then Carl hears about it. So, what does Carl do? Carl may go and get all of his buddies and go against Ralph. And then, okay, so then what? Both groups come together? Yeah, now you got a civil war. Yeah, so what are we? Yeah, let's duke it out, right? I mean, like, what else are you going to do? Then there's, like, this huge divide. Right. But that would be a more appropriate mechanism if there was no local church to politic, to try to get people on our side, to have groups going at each other, factions, divisions, dissensions, rivalries, all the things in Galatians 5. That would be an acceptable mechanism to some degree if there is no local church. Which ironically, if we plug the local church back in, that's actually how a lot of churches function right now. Yeah, they function as if there is no church. A lot of believers function as if there is no local church. Yeah. we're not going to go through the proper channels, we're going to gossip, we're going to slander, we're going to politic, we're going to go to social media, right? I mean, that's a big thing. It's a big thing to make a YouTube video calling out things. And now, I'm not necessarily saying that anytime anybody calls out something, they're always wrong, right? Because there's several ministries that do that well, but there's a lot that don't. My name is Howard and I work at Mirage Incorporated. We care about your health and well-being. Do you have trouble falling asleep, tossing, turning, staring at the ceiling like it owes you something? Well, not anymore. Introducing the Dream Coach, our revolutionary app designed to send you straight to dreamland. We've partnered with the very best in the business, Dr. Dave Dietz, the Dream Coach himself. Here's a sneak peek from lesson 35. To achieve your dream, you must first close your eyes. 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For lack of just a better way to put this, and I understand this may sound blasphemous, God's a little bit more cranky than he normally is. It could feel that way, where God's actually having to mete out, if you will, some wrath to try to keep things in line to help out the Holy, again, not to help out the Holy Spirit like the Holy Spirit needs help, but the fact of the matter is the Holy Spirit is working now and we just disregard Him. So there may be a heightened sense, if you will, of God's justice or God's wrath. Yeah, we would see is jealousy, right? I'm going to protect my own honor. And so it might be more evident, right? Because with church discipline, it's a really unique way of dealing with it, right? Plugging back in. So you have, I see you sin or you've offended me. I go to you as a brother. Right? You repent of that sin. Who knows of that? Except for the two. Right? And it's dealt with. And that's God's mechanism of how to deal with it. Okay, so I come to you. You don't. Well, then I bring somebody else, right? Giving you the appropriate amount of time to repent. If you repent after that too, well, then only three people know. Only three people know, yep. Yeah, and so this is God telling you twice, repent, repent. And if you bring the word, then you have the way to the word. And then when the church then gets involved, the church leadership, right? And the church leadership then comes in and says, hey, you are in the wrong. This has been addressed several times. Yeah, so there is like several opportunities for repentance and it's not out in the open, right? It's kind of left in isolation and I think there's a brilliance to that. One, it doesn't expose people to the humiliation of sin, right? It's gracious. It's gracious. It's gracious. Number two, some people can't handle knowing other people's sin, right? So like if you do something and I then go around broadcasting it, they won't be around you. but if you repent of that sin and they don't know about that sin because it doesn't matter it has nothing to do with them well then they can easily fellowship with you and you can you then have this sense of accountability well without church discipline that accountability is gone yeah yeah and i could i could just for i could see if there was no local church like Yeah, Ralph goes back and says, God, will you just bash Carl upside the head, right? Like, you're gonna start praying these prayers of God's wrath. Preparatory prayers. Yeah, yeah, more obviously disciplinary prayers, right? Yeah. God, go get him. Go do this. And yeah, what's interesting, like you said, is There's a lot of people with inside of the church who act like this, like there's no such thing as church discipline. They act as if there's no such thing as the local church. And so they act like this, right? So like to us, it's not hard to see what would happen because we've all met people who think of themselves as Christians, the discernment of the church or the discernment of all other Christians, and they don't function inside of a local church, right? Like we've seen this, right? I mean, we meet them out in the grocery store and they talk to us about how all Christians are hypocrites and then they talk about how bad Christians are and then they gossip about every single Christian. They go, I can't stand that place because I hate drama. And you're like, you spent 45 minutes telling me about all the drama. Yeah, I think it's interesting within the concept of church discipline, as it is within the local church. There is, like you say, there is a graciousness, there is a high level of accountability, and there's also a limiting of the knowledge and awareness of sin, if done properly. I think, you know, I don't know about other people's experience with church discipline, But I know mine growing up was we had a lot of church discipline. We had a lot of issues in our church. Church discipline, I don't think I ever grew up with the concept that church discipline had a limiting component to it because everything wound up being talked about at the church level as well. So it was like, hey, this person had this problem, and so we're gonna, yeah, we've confronted it with it, and they've repented, but we're still gonna go ahead and tell it to the church. For instance, a teenage girl gets pregnant. Well, everybody's gonna know that she's pregnant, so we're gonna tell it to the church. Okay, there's some things that need to be thought about and communicated and engaged with there to say, are we telling it to the church to use the church as a weapon of shame on that person? Or are we telling it to the church to, we'll house it in the sense of, we just wanna rally around and help her or help this young girl. Or is it like, hey, we actually just exposed her to everybody and shamed her in front of everybody, but now we're gonna tell her that we love her. using church discipline in a gracious, high-level accountability, and a limiting of information type way is really an important philosophy of church discipline. I think there's churches that have just completely abandoned church discipline altogether because they don't like the concept and they don't get the concept. Then there's churches that have taken church discipline way too far and have weaponized it and used it in a manner that is not okay. So scripture clearly says church discipline is a thing. It's needing to be done in this particular framework. And so as we think about the church being, you know, bring it back to life. It is a real thing. Church discipline needs to be done in a way that honors and glorifies Christ and is done in the way that Christ intended it to be done. High level of accountability, high level of grace, and high level of diminishing the knowledge of sin that's out there. And it's, again, a brilliant genius concept. Yeah, and having to go through church discipline several times, not myself, but the process. Wanted to clarify that, yeah. Caleb's an expert in church. The five times I've been in church discipline. But it's always been with the hope of repentance. And what's interesting is when it's done right, Yes, the sin is egregious, and you address the sin as it is. It's evil. It's wicked. And I remember one case, there was a guy doing some stuff. He was approached with the sin, approached with the sin, approached with the sin, didn't get fixed. The church said, fine. we're doing church discipline. He was, it took him like two weeks and he was like fully repentant and fully, he came back and he was like, I hated it. And when the church welcomed him back after the repentance, the celebration was as great as the depression that was caused by the sin, right? So, it was like, we won our brother, right? Like this is the goal. The goal is people walking for the Lord. He wasn't walking with the Lord, now he is. Isn't this great? So it was painful, the situation was bad, but he's walking with the Lord. Like what more can you ask, right? He's walking with the Lord. And so there's this great celebration. And I think that's one of the parts about church discipline that we often forget is, No, the end goal isn't just to kick you out because you're bad. The end goal is you're walking with the Lord. We all have sin, I get it. And we all can get to that level where we might need church discipline. But that's the point, is repentance. And one of the other things too I thought was... previously in our conversation about, you know, yeah, you might be in a church that was abusive to you, there was a pastor, there was this, and yes, I'm not saying that if you've been abused and there were some really painful things that you have to go back and submit yourself to your abuser, but I would also contend, too, that in some of those cases, church discipline should have been applied to them before it even got to the point where you were abused. And so, in a sense, you can see the effects of a lack of church discipline in you being hurt by the church. So, the church isn't functioning. The church is functioning as if there is no church, and there is no church discipline. And so, a lot of the hurt comes from a church not acting the way it's supposed to act. And if it was acting the way it was supposed to act, there's a really good chance you probably wouldn't get hurt by those people. Yeah. And I think, so another component, and this may just be for a certain segment of the world out there. So let's go back, Carl and Ralph. Carl's obviously done something wrong at some level. you know, if there is no church, like we said, Ralph maybe, you know, takes to some sort of formal public declaration, public declaring, hey, everybody, you need to know about Carl. You need to know about the details of his sin. You need to know about what he did because there is no mechanism of church discipline. There is no mechanism of believers coming around Carl and addressing that. And so that may be a legitimate form if the church does not exist. Well, So let's plug the church back in. So the church does exist, the church is a real thing, the church is functioning. If I'm Ralph, and Carl has committed some sin, and a lot of people know who Carl is, and they've committed some sin, but Carl's got some connection to me and to my ministry, and I just wanna actually protect my ministry, I wanna protect my honor, I want to protect my character and now I kind of go and I broadcast the details of Carl Sin just so everybody's aware because I really don't think that Carl's going to be taken care of the way I think he should be taken care of and dealt with the way I think he's going to be dealt with. that actually shows that Ralph or myself, if I'm Ralph in this case, actually does not believe in my own ecclesiology of the role of the local church, especially if I've communicated that I believe that and I've fostered a philosophy that says, this is what's supposed to happen. I have now violated that. by making some gossiping, slanderous public declaration about Carl because I actually don't believe he's gonna be dealt with in a way that I think he should be dealt with. And I think what we've seen through this whole, it's been a fascinating conversation to unfold. is that, unfortunately, a lot of Christians live like the local church does not exist. All of these hypothetical scenarios that you pull apart are actually like, dude, when you think about it from the standpoint of, well, what would you do if the local church didn't exist? Well, you could do this. is kind of a pragmatic thing. When we plug the church back in and the church comes back to life and we're like, well, wait a minute, that's actually how the church is functioning. I would say a lot of believers function with pragmatism like the church does not actually exist. Yeah, especially in this area, when we deal with the sins of others. Man, we could probably pull scandal after scandal after scandal, right? How many documentaries have we watched, right? How many podcasts have we listened to? The rise and fall of Jeff. Yeah, the rise and fall of Jeff. If you haven't listened, stop right now and listen to that hit piece. And how many people jump in onto this high-profile person sense. Everybody jumps in, right? There's defenders and then there's people who are not defending. Then you have like, then the degrees of separation, right? And like, well, because you didn't necessarily say what I said publicly, like I said it because you didn't do that. Well, then I can't fellowship with you. And okay, well, since you're not fellowshipping with you and you have a friend who also doesn't have the same discernment, I'm going to not, I'm going to just fellowship with them. And so you get like these third, fourth degree, tenth degree separation things. And it gets so confusing and convoluted. Yeah, it's a mess. God's a genius in instituting this. And if it's done right, it's beautiful and it's painful. It hurts. Often the right things are the most difficult things to do, but it deals with it correctly.