Re:Member Core Practices III Correction
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. We are continuing to walk through our Remember series, which is an opportunity for us to walk through our membership commitment and to remember the things we're committing to. We are in the 10th commitment today, so we'll get to that in a moment. How many of you have used Airbnb for vacation and seen that some properties have oddly specific rules? And a lot of them. So if you've seen that there are stories behind those rules. The reason I know this is because my family and a few other families went in together on an Airbnb that we've had for a year. And in just a year of having an Airbnb, I've realized that people will do all sorts of things at your property. They'll do things like have a pop up kitchen that's a food truck but in your house. And they'll just have customers just show up in the middle of a residential neighborhood to buy food and then clog your pipes with lots of grease to which costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars to fix. They'll do things like try to film a horror movie in your house. One of the families has been doing this way longer and they have way more stories. And in our rules is a nod to something that happened at one of their other properties. They had someone that brought livestock onto the property. In our rules, it says you cannot bring livestock onto the property. You know why? Because they brought some chickens, I think a turkey. They dug a barbecue pit and they slaughtered them on the property and then they cooked them on the property. And they left the carnage behind. And a live chicken that had to be rehomed. If you don't have rules in place, people are going to harm your property. That's just, that's the nature of it. That's why these rules exist. And when some people are skeptical of the Bible and Christianity, one of the things that you often hear is they'll say, why does the Bible talk about sin so much? Why does it there's such a focus on sin. And it's because God created humans humanity to live in relationship with him. Where we worship and honor him above all things, then we also live in harmony, in order with one another. And that we as humans find new, creative, worse ways to reject God and to sow disorder in creation by our actions, our inaction, we willfully and gleefully break God's rules. So the Bible has much to say about sin, because sin is a reality and God desires for us to live in relationship with him and one another in a way that is good. So there are lots of rules and lots of things where God says no to, but there's reasons for that. I want us to see that today as we walk through our 10th commitment. God takes sin seriously. And as a church, we take sin seriously because it's not neutral, it does bring harm, and God has better things for us. So I want to read the 10th commitment, and then we will pray and we'll walk through this together. So let me read our 10th membership commitment says confession and repentance will noticeably mark my life. I fully expect to be confronted and corrected as God allows other members of the Mill City family to see sin in my life. I submit to care through the process of church discipline as overseen by the elders and. And carried out by my church family. Okay, we're gonna walk through this commitment together. Section by section, we're gonna see why God takes sin seriously and why we also should, as well as we seek to be obedient to his commands. So let me pray, and then we'll walk this together. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us have ears to hear this morning in a way that would make us interact with the reality of something that is serious in a way that would help us walk in faith out of here. Trusting you above our own instincts, we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.
All right, so let's work through the first part. Confession and repentance will noticeably mark my life. So that's confession, which is admitting sin. So confessing sin, the reality with specificity in our lives. And then repentance, which is you're moving towards sin and your repentance is turning away from sin and back towards the Lord. So confession and repentance will noticeably mark my life. And that is because God takes sin seriously. And some people will try to be I don't know, Jesus had a lot of different things to say. Sometimes people speak about Jesus as if he came to bring new vibes about love and things that are disconnected from the reality of a broken, fallen world. And it's not how our Savior speaks. Do you read the Gospels? Do you see? Did you read his opening message? When you start in the Gospel of Matthew, you start reading about Jesus. One of his opening sermons is Matthew 4:17, where he says, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
> From that time Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matthew 4:17, ESV)
He says, repent for the kingdom. Turn from your sins, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And that message of Repentance is something he comes back to over and over again. It's because he takes sin seriously. At one point, there are some people that are trying to understand a difficult situation that happened to some of his fellow countrymen, some Galileans, and they're trying to make sense of why this happened to these people. And I just want to read from Luke 13 says there was some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. They're just asking Jesus about the situation where Pilate, the governor had killed a bunch of Galileans. And he answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those 18 on whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that those were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. They're trying to understand a thing from their perspective. And Jesus says, no, you need to understand what's more important. You need to repent or worse things are going to happen to you. So Jesus at various points is very. He takes sin very seriously. And it's. And we would say he's offensive, but for a reason. Because this is one of the most important, important issues to grapple with is our sin against a holy and perfect God. Sin is serious. And it's serious not just because the substance, the act in itself, but whom the act is against. And that's, I think, something that we fail to see, that we think that this isn't really harming anyone. Like, I don't really understand why this is a big deal. It's because we fail to see the sin who it's against, primarily.
> There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:1-5, ESV)
If I'm against. If I was at a football game a week ago and there was a guy behind me that was so loud and it was so evident he knew nothing about football. He was wildly obnoxious. He just. He kept yelling and calling the ref blue. And it's like, bro, that's baseball. That's not football. And he. You could see our whole section was just like, looking at this guy like, what are you even doing? If by the third quarter, when we're getting our teeth kicked in, and I'm just frustrated by what he's saying, if I just turned around and smacked the fool out of him, I mean, just crumpled him Just smacked him and he just collapses in his seat. If I did that, it would be bad. I mean, certain people in the section would celebrate. There would be a police officer who came up and put me in cuffs and took me away and I would be arrested for assault. It's bad, all right. If I got a chance to meet the President of the United States and I smack the fool out of him, way different, I'm going, I'm major prison time, treasonous act because the person is different. And I think sometimes we fail to see that when we're sinning, we're sinning against an infinite holy creator, wonderful being who thought is into existence. And we think that's just not a big deal. And it is. I love what theologian R.C. Sproul says about this. He has a famous line that says sin is cosmic treason that's been repeated over and over again for good reason. That's a helpful way to think about this. It's cosmic treason against the God of the universe. He goes on to say, sin is treason against a perfectly pure sovereign. It is an act of supreme ingratitude toward the one to whom we owe everything, to the one whom has given us life itself. That this sovereign God who created us, who formed us, it's an act against Him. He goes on to say, we are saying, God, your law is not good. My judgment is better than yours. Your authority does not apply to me. I'm above and beyond your jurisdiction. I have the right to do what I want to do, not what you command me to do. This Creator, infinite God who makes us when we sin against Him. We're saying, what you say isn't good. My ways are better, my judgment is more sound. You're not going to tell me how to live. I'm going to live my life on my terms. And that's a massive offense against the God of the universe. And it requires a steep price because we just, we believe the lies. So what if it's a little bit of this, what if it's a little bit of that? What is it really hurting? Who is it? And it's like, no. We fail to grasp that the Creator formed us to give him glory and honor and praise that he is due. And when we choose to live our life on our terms, we don't get to by our life, give a middle finger to God and say, deal with it. That's not how this works. That is a glory hungry disdain of how God designed us to live for him and his glory. And that comes at a Steep cost. The good news of the gospel is that in our glory, hungry disdain for his order, he looks at us and he says, I want to redeem that people. And that's what makes the gospel such good news. That's what Jesus coming is so wonderful that God took on flesh and dwelt among us and he lived a perfect life of obedience that we could not live. And then he goes to the cross to not just be tortured, but to endure the full wrath that we deserve for that type of disobedience and disdain, so that we can look to him as our man in the middle, as the one who takes judgment in our place. And when you believe that, as Austin declared as he entered into the waters that I've trusted in, Jesus is my only hope. When you believe this and you begin to search the Scriptures with more depth, you begin to see the reality of how heinous our sin is, of how it's not small, it's not light, it costs the blood of God, of how big a deal this is. And then when we look at passages like Romans chapter 2, verse 4, when it says, or do you presume upon, do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? It's like, I don't want to presume upon the kindness of God as forbearance. I want to see the kindness of a God who came to redeem me and see the reality of my sin and say, I want that to lead me to say, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to keep rebelling against you. I don't want to keep satisfying myself with lesser things. I want to turn from that and follow you. That as you press into the Scriptures and press into the Gospel, is the reality that becomes bigger as God becomes bigger in our lives. And because we believe that, and because that is true confession and repentance noticeably mark our lives. That's what we commit to that we need to heed the teachings of the New Testament that teach us to confess sin.
> Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4, ESV)
James 5, 16 says, Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. We have this command that would confess your sins. We confess our sins to the Lord, ask for forgiveness, but we do it in the context also of community, where we're confessing our sins to one another. So something we are called to live out first.
> Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. (James 5:16, ESV)
John chapter one says, if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in Darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So we say, I have fellowship with God, I believe in him. But we don't acknowledge the reality of our sin. He says, you're a liar. You don't, you don't actually believe this. You're not walking in the light. But then he goes, verse seven. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus son, cleanses us from all sin. That if we will bring the sin and the darkness of the corners of our life into the light. Confessing our sin to God and one another as we have true fellowship, we have fellowship with one another like a depth that's just so rich that people can know me and know my sin and also love me. That's what awaits you. He says if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What a beautiful promise. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and he's just to forgive us and cleanse us. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. We believe this, we believe this teaching. If we have the word inside us, we're going to be a people who confess and that listen, that's not just hear this, that's not just our sin, but that's also the confession of our Savior. You see when you look at the word confession in the New Testament, the majority of the times it's used is actually confessing our Savior belief, trusting him, faith in Christ. So as we confess our sin, we have a pattern of confessing our Savior. That's why when we have care nights in our community groups, about once a month we have a night where we all going to break out into guys and girls in different rooms. And we have opportunity for honesty about what's happening in our lives. Talking about brokenness and sin. But listen, care nights don't have to be this mopey. Sometimes we can lament, but sometimes we get to confess real sin in real honest ways. And in the same breath go thank you Jesus that your blood applies to this sin and that I'm covered. And someone gets to come and say absolutely because you are in Christ. God the Father doesn't look at you and see the depths of your sin. He sees the perfect righteousness of Christ. And we get to celebrate confessing our Savior, as we confess the reality of our sins. And that's what we want to be. A people that do this, that confess their sin, confess our Savior, and then repent, that take sin seriously and say, I don't want this anymore. I want Jesus. And I know I'm prone to wander, but at times I'm going to. No, I'm aggressively, intentionally, with accountability, going to move away from that, back towards Jesus. I appreciate that. One of the most meaningful compliments that I get to hear about our church is when folks jump into a group and they're just like, man, y'all are just so honest and real, and I so appreciate that. People will say, I've heard this over and over again. I just. I've been a part of ministries and churches, and it's fine. But, everyone just seems like they're okay all the time. And it's like, I just. But I just. I showed up one night and all of a sudden people were just real honest. I'm like, yeah, and I appreciate that. We seek. We're not perfect. We seek to live this out in a way that displays, I need Christ, and he's good. Yeah, my sin is serious, but my Savior is greater. So confession, repentance will noticeably mark our life. That's part of our commitment.
Let's move to the next part. He says, I fully. We say, I fully expect to be confronted and corrected as God allows other members of the Mill City family to see sin in my life. Okay. I want us to sit in the first part of that phrase. I fully expect. All right. That's carefully written. That's not. I partially expect. That's not. I kind of expect. That is full disclosure. I fully expect that at some point, someone who I'm walking with in this church family is going to come and look at me, and they're going to confront me. They're going to correct me. We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that's not true and then be surprised that all of a sudden when somebody comes and does this, it's like, what are you doing? It's like, I'm doing what. What I literally. And you literally committed to doing. We fully expect to be confronted. And the reason why is because of what we talked about last week. Last week, Commitment 9 was we're bought into community. Okay. We're bought into life together. If we're bought into life together, there's going to be some friction. All right? It's a little bit like a road trip. Ever been on a road trip? With people, it's a lot of fun. It just is. Road trips are fun. I go on road trips sometimes with my family and it's fun to be silly and to listen to music and to have fun. But also you're in a five by five box with each other for hours. And I'm a sinner and they're sinners, which means at times it's going to get a little frictiony. I'm going to be drinking a drink and I'm going to get to the bottom of it and then I'm going to open the lid and then I'm going to put ice in my mouth and I'm going to crunch on the ice. And my wife is going to have to restrain herself from punching me in the face because that drives her crazy. But I like ice. It's good. We're gonna do things that just bother each other. A few years ago we went on a road trip as pastors. We went to Louisville, Kentucky. We went to a conference. It was eight hours in the car together. And we are friends, our pastor team. We are, we're friends. But eight hours together in the car, it's just, it's gonna happen, especially us because we take too many liberties with jokes sometimes. Someone's gonna, it's gonna feel the friction, someone's gonna fire back and then it's like, oh boy, it happens. That's what life together is like. When you journey through life together, time in proximity together, you're gonna feel the friction of sin. You're gonna be sinned against. If we bind to depth and proximity and life together and all this and journeying through life together, you should expect it. That's why last week I mentioned, I said this and I'm the only one that says this as a pastor. When I'm in a group of people, I'm like, listen, at some point I'm gonna sin against you. It's going to happen. At some point I'm gonna make a joke that you didn't find funny. Because I come from a family that has very dark humor and I've worked on it for years. The Lord's done a lot in reeling it in, but every now and then flies out. And I'm not excusing it, it's a problem. But just know at some point I'm gonna do something that hurts you and we're gonna work through this together. And I've had people in my group who sat me down and confronted me in sin and in humility. I'm like, absolutely, you're right. I need to repent here. And if you're committing to do this, depth and proximity over time, we're going to live this out. We're going to be a people who expect to be confronted and confront one another. And we're going to live out the teachings of Jesus in Matthew chapter seven. He says. He gives us a process for this. He says, why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there's a lock in your own eye? Which people will just pause there and be like, yep, that's why you don't go bothering people. That's like, read the rest of the passage. He says, you hypocrite, take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Jesus at no point was saying, don't bother people with their sin. He just says, do the work of looking within first. That's what we do. We want to be a people who, when we see sin, and a brother and sister in Christ. We go, okay, pause. Look in the mirror. What's happening in my own heart? Yep, that's gotta go. Gotta repent of that. I have to confess that. Do the work, soul, work before the Lord, then come to our brother and sister and say, hey, listen, I noticed this. I also had sin here. I'm confessing it, but I need to point out this. In your life, this is a problem. God has given us a means, an order of doing this, and we should expect it. We should expect to be confronted. We should expect to confront others. We work through sin together and we hold each other accountable. We believe this and y'. All. The reason why this is important is because we live in a culture that in many ways will say, how about you live your life on your terms? And I live my life on my terms. Don't get in my business and I won't get in yours. And in a lot of ways, there's some truth to that. And the Bible agrees. There's a whole bunch of, read the Proverbs, read the New Testament. There's teachings that say, live at peace with one another. There's some Proverbs. Talk about minding your own business. Don't get engaged in every single affair. However, when it comes to sin, that argument changes sin amongst God's people. God expects his people to confront and hold each other accountable. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 5, when they're dealing with a sin situation in that church, Paul says, 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. And he says, we don't judge outsiders because they don't believe the Gospel. They don't know Christ. Why would we hold them to what we believe? We're not going to enforce our morals on other people that do not believe in Jesus. But if you claim to be a Christian and you belong to Christ and, and you are living in sin, absolutely judgment in the form of accountability is a reality. And we're going to do this, and we're going to hold each other accountable. This is what it means to live out the gospel in community.
> For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? (1 Corinthians 5:12, ESV)
Galatians, chapter six says, brothers, if anyone is caught in transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. If you catch your brother or sister in Christ in sin, you cannot remain neutral. You cannot just sit on the sidelines, because we understand the reality of sin against a holy and perfect God. And if that continues in an unrepentant manner, we know where that goes. We cannot just sit back and just be apathetic and uncaring about people who are on a path to destruction. I saw a news story out of Bozeman, Montana, a week or so ago. This guy left a convenience store and there's CCTV footage. He walks out of the convenience store. He gets into his car, seems to be in a hurry because he has his hand on the wheel. He puts it in reverse, and then he has his hand on the door. And as he's reversing back, he starts having a seizure. And he's stuck like this, and the car is reversing. And then at one point, his hand turns, and then it just starts going in a circle. And then eventually he falls out of the vehicle. And I don't know how the accelerator is stuck, but the car just keeps going in a circle around him. And at some point, you know that as it's going in a circle, it's eventually going to start edging closer to him. Now, at the same time, there's a guy that walked out of the convenience store and he walks out, he's walking to his truck, and he sees what he thinks is a car doing donuts in the parking lot. And then he looks a little closer and he sees that the car is circling with a Door open, this man. And he has a choice in that moment, he could just go. Seems pretty dangerous, pretty risky, call the cops, hope for the best. He can just get in his car and drive off and say, it's not my business. He's living his life, I'm living mine. But he doesn't. He immediately runs full speed. And listen, the car is moving. This is not just like slowly moving. This thing is going. And he times it perfectly. And he jumps in the vehicle and he puts it in park, hurts his foot in the process, saves the guy's life, calls 911, guy lives. But he could have just sat there and eventually the car circling, it's gonna run him over. And the reality is we have people in our lives. We have Christians, brothers and sisters in this church, in our lives. And if you see their sin, you're just like, not my business. That's their life, living their life on their terms. It's fine. It's gonna be hard. I don't know if I want to be in the middle of this. You're just watching it circle and circle, and eventually you're going to watch someone destroy their life. And God calls us to say, no. I want to stand in the way between them and judgment. I want to stand in the way between them and wrecking their own life. We should not be a people who are apathetic or uncaring or too busy or concerned with our own lives, that we would not lovingly, as it says, if anyone's caught in transgression, you who are spiritual should restore them in a spirit of gentleness. That we should come to them with winsome gentleness, not with a sledgehammer, but saying, hey, listen, brother. Hey, sister. I want to point this out and win them over to Christ and repenting of their sin. We should be a people that own this beautifully, pointing our brothers and sisters back to Christ. And yes, I know that's hard. It's difficult. It's hard. You're risking them getting mad at you. You're risking awkwardness, which we don't love. There's all sorts of risks involved in confronting somebody in their sin. But God calls his people to be courageous in our correction. And if we are not courageous in our correction with gentleness and love, then we are willing to watch people wreck their own lives and possibly their eternity because we don't want to get in the way. And that's not what God calls us to be. He calls us to be people who love deeply others in a way that would stand in the middle between them and the reality of what. And in the majority of circumstances, if you do this, it's going to go well. And the majority of circumstances, when you confront someone, it ends well. It ends with them knowing, loving Christ more, thanking you for having the courage of your conviction to stand in the middle. But in the few times that it doesn't go well, we have a process and that's the last part I wanted to read for out of our commitment. I submit to care through the process of church discipline as overseen by the elders and carried out by my church family. Okay. We have spent time on this aspect called church discipline. Now, if you're new or you've never heard this before, I'm not going to have the time to explain all this with the justice that it is due to. I will say we have taught on this in our Gospel of Matthew series. We spent three sermons on this. If you go to our website, go in the sermons and you go in the search bar and just type in church discipline. You'll see sermons pop up. And I would encourage you to go and listen to those to hear all the time we spent unpacking this. But I want to quickly kind of walk through the highlights of what this is and why we do it. We are being obedient in this process called church discipline to what Jesus commands us to do. In Matthew chapter 18. This comes out of the teachings of Christ. I'm going to read just 15 through 17 from this section. There's more context, but we don't have the space for it. But he says, 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. Okay? That is happening all the time in our church. One of the things we say is the church discipline is happening all the time. This is just what we do where someone sins, I'm hurt by it, confront each other, we reconcile and it's beautiful. A lot of times. Sometimes some folks will come up, this is a common thing that happens, or a common phrase that we use. Some folks will come up to us as pastors and they'll say, hey, so and so did this. And our go to answer is okay, what did they say when you talked to them about it? And they'll go, oh yeah, skip a step. Alright, cool, I'm not getting the middle of that until you've gone and talked to them. Do step one, go talk to them. It's probably going to go well and it usually does. If you've gone You've confronted, they have no. They just said, no, I'm not listening to you. I'm doing my own thing. It says verse 16, 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. That's step two. This oftentimes is a member and a group leader, a group leader and a pastor. Every situation is different, but it's a few people and then just getting in front of them say, hey, listen, please don't choose this. Please turn from this. Let's reason from the scriptures here. What does the scripture say about this? And compelling them. And again, most of the time, confronted by people who have the Holy Spirit in them. And this person has the Holy Spirit in them. Come to the conclusion. Person says, yes, I want Christ, and they repent. But if that doesn't work, verse 17, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. So if they do not listen, you tell it to the church. The church gets involved. And what happens in this process is if the person is unwilling to listen to the collective authority of the church, they're to be treated, as he says, a Gentile and a tax collector. And Christ is using the language of an ounce. So what it means there is that they are treated as an outsider. They no longer belong to the body of Christ. Those who claim to be a Christian and are willing to pursue sin unrepentantly as their church family is confronting them, they are no longer part of the church family. And if you want to go to First Corinthians 5, that two verses I read earlier in context, that's 1 Corinthians 5. That is 1 of the biggest case studies that we have in the New Testament of church discipline as it was practiced. You can go and read that and understand the situation. A man was openly pursuing grievous, unrepentant sin with his stepmother. And Paul says, no. And he says, deliver that man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh. He goes on to say, purge that evil person from among you. So we practice this as a church, and we have practiced this all the way to the end. And those situations most of the time are super Long, I mean, year over a year long process, often of just walking with people, lovingly compelling them to say, please don't pursue this, standing in the way between them and judgment. And listen, certainly if you've ever heard of this, it's been practiced poorly by churches. Certainly churches have abused this process by hurting others. I would argue that more likely the way this process has been abused in the Western American church is it doesn't get practiced at all. Because in most churches, that's the. That's the way this gets most often abused is that people just permit sin. But certainly there are times where this goes poorly. But we don't take situations that have not gone well and use that as the guide for what we do. We look at the scriptures and we trust God in the process as we seek to hold each other with this formal accountability. I mean, think about it. Imagine a church that just as willing to not ever address evil, not ever address sin. But think of the things that you would, the sins that you would not be okay with. And the church was just like, you know what? That person's living their life, they're doing their thing on their terms. It's like, you wouldn't want to be a part of a community that did that, who was just willing to watch evil play out, seeing it harm the individual and harm everyone else in the situation. God loves his people too much to permit the spread of sin and of the church that he bled and died. And as the church, we want to practice what the scriptures teach us. Because sin, one of the metaphors it uses is like gangrene. It's like an infection. And if it isn't addressed, if it isn't dealt with, it spreads. And if you've been around churches long enough, you've seen churches that have imploded because they just covered things up, they didn't deal with sin. And it spread throughout the body and it tore the church to pieces. And we're not going to be that. We're not going to be that kind of people. And if you're in a community group and all of a sudden a kid goes to the kitchen counter and grabs a butcher knife and starts running around the room. You see five adults aggressively get in front of the child, pull the knife out, because they're not okay with the child running himself with a knife. That's not going to happen. And we love each other too much to watch each other choose sin in a way that would end in horrific judgment. We won't stand for it. Apathy and cowardice have no place in the church that Jesus bled and died for. Therefore, we will take sin seriously. Our Savior did. Let me read this one more time. Confession and repentance will noticeably mark my life. I fully expect to be confronted and corrected. As God allows other members of the Mill City family to see sin in my life. I submit to care through the process of church discipline as overseen by the elders and carried out by my church family. We will be a people that takes sin as seriously as God does. We will be a people who are humble enough to be open to confrontation. We will be a people who are courageous enough to confront others. And we will be a people who are convictional enough to stay the course even when things get difficult, even when it's culturally frowned upon. Because God cares about his people and he cares about the sin that plagues us in a way that we would be obedient no matter what.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you might help us be continually compelled to your teachings, even the difficult ones. God, I pray that we would be obedient, filled with love and a spirit of gentleness, confronting and being confronted. I pray that if there's anyone here right now that has been hiding sin, if there's any Christians and members of this church that are hiding sin, I pray that you would give them the boldness and faith to walk in the light. They would not leave this day without talking to someone in their group. I pray if there's anyone here that knows someone else is sinning that they would have the courage and the conviction to be obedient. And I pray that all of our collective efforts in addressing the reality of sin would glorify you, our creator and sustainer. In Jesus name, Amen. Band's going to come up. We're going to close in worship as we sing this final song. My hope as we set.