Discipline
Transcript
How are we doing this morning? My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. My community group, the community group I'm part of, we, a couple weeks ago, were having a cookout. And so we were all hanging out, having a cookout. And we were grilling, and we had a fire pit, and we were just kind of celebrating that...
Oh, actually, we were celebrating a couple of people in our group got baptized. That's what we were celebrating. I was going to say we were celebrating that the weather was getting nicer, but that wasn't true at all. We were just enjoying the weather was getting nicer. We were celebrating that a couple of people in our group had gotten baptized, and so we were just cooking out and hanging out. And my wife came over to me.
I was standing at a table talking and just kind of eating and drinking. And she came over to me, and she goes, You're going to have to help me watch that boy. That boy is our son. He has a name, but I know who she was talking about. Because a lot of times when we go out places, I just walk off because I'm not great at this yet. And she tends to him, but he's about as big as she is now.
And he's a little over a year. But so she said that, and at that moment I was like, Okay, so I'm like, I've got to find him. And so she goes, You're going to have to help watch him. And I kind of look. And at this moment, I look behind her, and about 10 yards off, I think she just sat him down somewhere where he was safe, but then she walked away. And so he scanned the area and thought, What is the closest thing that could do me some serious physical harm?
Because that's how he goes through life. And he saw a fire pit and took off running as fast as he could towards it. And so I saw him. The fire pit was kind of down a hill, so he was going to get going as fast as he could go, and there was going to be no possible way he could stop. I saw him running towards the fire pit. It had a pretty good fire going in it.
And I took about two steps and realized there was absolutely no way I was going to make it there. And he was running about as quick as his little legs could take him towards a fire pit, and I was not going to make it. And Anna did not realize this was going on. So I took about two steps. It really felt like the ultimate dad challenge that she had just put me in. She was like, You watch him.
Best of luck. It's about to get serious. And so I see him running as fast as he can towards a fire pit. I can't get there in time. Maybe some other parents maybe know kind of that feeling. If you're maybe you don't have children or maybe you're a parent that kind of does that thing where you watch your children all the time, you know, one of those kind of parents.
Maybe you don't understand that feeling. Imagine someone swings a baseball bat at your face, and it takes four seconds to get there. But you just kind of have to watch it. Kind of like that's kind of this moment of just being like, This is going to be terrible, and I'm going to have to watch it. And we had a good run. I mean, he's a little over a year, so we did well so far.
But this is it. And it took about two steps, and I think some other people in our group noticed because they all help us watch Archer, which, thank you, Lord. And a lady named Edie, who also has a son who was born on the exact same day. Our group has three boys that were born. Two of them were born on the same day. One of them was born the day after.
And she has a son who was born on the exact same day. And she jumped up from where she was, and right as Archer was getting close to the fire pit, just scooped him up. And so he's looking back at the fire and crying and wondering why this lady is psychotic. And she hands him to me, and I was just like, Thank you very much. Like, it was just a moment of absolute relief. And I was so thankful for her and for her seeing that and jumping up and grabbing him before he ran headlong into absolute disaster.
Today, we are going to talk about church discipline. As we talk about what it looks like for us as Christians to be a healthy church, what it looks like for us together to follow Jesus together. We're talking about church discipline. And really what we're talking about, what church discipline is, is the process through which Christians address sin in each other. To pursue holiness and to avoid destruction. It's the process through which Christians address sin in each other.
To pursue holiness and avoid destruction. It is us as Christians, when one of us is running as fast as we possibly can, towards destruction. Towards pain and disaster. It's us as Christians being willing to do what Edie did, which was jump in and snatch each other up. Here's the reason why this is helpful for us to talk about. You're going to sin.
I'll let that sink in. No, that was heavy. You weren't ready for that. The question we have as a church is, how are we going to handle sin? How are we going to address sin? We're not going to not sin.
You are in a room full of messed up people and sinners. And the question for us is, how are we going to address it? How are we going to handle it? It feels a little bit like when I get to do premarital counseling with couples in our church. We talk about, basically, we're going to get together and talk about all the things y'all are going to fight about. And we're going to talk about how to fight.
So, honestly, in premarital counseling, I try to pick fights. I really do. Try to get a little bit annoyed with each other. Because here's the thing. You're going to fight. You get married your first year, you're going to think, why are we the only couple that yells at each other at 3 o'clock in the morning?
You're not. You are not the only couple that does that. You need to learn how to fight. And so, as Christians, for us, the question isn't, how are we going to be the perfect church? We're not going to be. How are we going to handle it when we aren't?
That's the question. What are we going to do when there's sin? What are we going to do when there's rebellion? What are we going to do when there's hurt feelings? What are we going to do when someone in your group has almost maliciously, aggressively begun to attack the group? What are you going to do when someone in your group just completely disappears?
What are you going to do when someone lies about you? What are you going to do when something turns up missing? Like, what are we going to do? How are we going to handle sin? That's massively important for us. It's vital for the health of a church.
And what we're going to talk about today I don't think is very popular. So I don't know. There may be a moment today where you think, this is so good. I don't think there's going to be one. I think mostly you're going to think, this all sounds terrible. I hope I never have to be involved in it.
And that is the hope. But surprise, you're going to be. So let's figure out how to do it well. Let's figure out how to love one another well, serve one another well, and be able to walk through this process well. Because we're a bunch of sinners who need grace and who need each other and who need Jesus at work on our behalf. So I'm going to pray.
And then we're going to hop in and try to figure out what it looks like for us to healthily, as we follow scripture, practice church discipline, which is how do we address sin in each other? God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you save sinners. And we thank you that you then don't expect them to be perfect, but that we continue to have grace and we continue to have hope. We thank you that you give us to each other, that we belong to one another so that we might defend and protect one another. And we thank you, Lord, that in your word you give us wisdom and clarity on how we ought to approach one another in sin.
We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's go to Luke. We're going to move around a bit today. We've been doing this throughout this series. We've kind of bounced around as we try to ask questions of scripture.
A lot of times scripture doesn't just answer stuff in one place. And so we've got to kind of move around so we can get the full picture. I'm looking forward to when we get to walk verse by verse through some books again because of my attention abilities. I like being able to just stay in one place. But we don't get to do that today.
We're going to have to move around a little bit. So Luke chapter 7, if you have a blue and white Bible like this on the row, you'll be on page 569. Am I saying this wrong? Luke chapter 17. My bad, guys. You're on page 569.
We'll be in Luke chapter 17. Believe the screen. Sometimes I say things incorrectly. So Luke 17, 569. If you don't own a Bible, this is our gift to you. Take it with you.
Okay. And he said to his disciples. This is Jesus talking. Jesus is the he here. Temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. So you're going to be tempted.
There's going to be temptations for sin, but you don't want to be the person tempting people. Temptations of sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck. That's a giant heavy rock. That's a giant heavy rock. That's a giant heavy rock.
Were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea. That he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Little ones there being Christians. Followers of Jesus. And then he says this. Pay attention to yourselves.
So that is pay attention to your own life. Pay attention to your attitude, your current discipleship, you following Jesus. Pay attention to yourselves. And then he says if your brother sins. So that's also, that's not just you personally, but that's pay attention to the family.
Pay attention to your community group. Pay attention to the Christians around you. If your brother sins, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day and turns to you seven times saying, I repent, you must forgive him. One of the first questions I think we need to ask is what is the heart behind church discipline?
Like why would we do it? Why would I address sin in you? Why would you address sin in me? Why would we have those uncomfortable conversations? Like why? What's our motivation when we go into that?
Are we supposed to be the sin police? Am I supposed to sit around and be like, let me see. Is everybody minding their manners? Out of line. Like should I get excited when I see a sinner? Does that make me feel better?
Jesus, look at how terrible that person is. Obviously you love me more now. Like is that our attitude? No. Not at all. What he says here, and I love this because it translates so well for me.
Verse 3. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. I love that he says brother. We talk about this all the time that when Jesus saved us, John 1 says that those who believed in him, he gave the right to be children of God. So we've been adopted into the family.
God is our father. We're brothers and sisters together. And they're your brother. They're your sister. And so you would address sin in them. And that worked so well for me because this is how I've worked my entire life.
I have two brothers. If I saw someone, let's say I saw you doing something. Maybe we went to school together. Maybe I just knew you. And you were doing something dumb. Here's what I did.
This was my approach to you being sinful, to you being dumb. I would think, that's dumb. And then I would say, not to you, but to the person next to me, look at how dumb they are. That was the extent of how I addressed that. If you continually did stupid things around me that I didn't like. And by stupid, I mean by my own categories of what I gauge as dumb.
I did a lot of dumb things, but they seemed smart to me. If you were stupid of a certain brand that I did not appreciate, I just would quit being your friend. Easy enough. I don't have to hang out with idiots. I'm not saying I'm right. I'm just saying this is what I did.
So, you don't need to be taking notes on this part. Nobody's like, alright, no idiots. Like, don't do that. You know, you're sitting next to one, so you're hiding it. Sorry. The people who laugh the hardest.
Sorry. Okay. Anyway. It's your brother. Brother. So, this is the way I work with my brothers.
When they did something stupid, I went to them and I said, Hey, sit down. What you're doing is dumb. I disagree with you. You are wrong. You should not do this. I'm going to stay your brother, but you're wrong.
This should not be your approach to things. You should not have this attitude. You should not be chasing after this. This is a bad decision. And here's why. I felt some ownership over them.
I felt like if I had noticed them doing something that was bad for them, that was wrong, that I didn't think headed them in the correct direction, and then five years later, I hadn't said anything, but they had completely derailed. They had completely shipwrecked. I was going to own that because they belonged to me. I was going to own the fact that I saw this coming and did not tell them. And so when Jesus says, If you're brother, what he's saying is Christians belong to each other. You're going to own this.
You don't get to say, Oh, well, that was just that other person. I didn't want to get in their business. That's not an option for you because we've been made brothers and sisters in the same family. And that helps me tremendously because I really feel this. And it's culturally induced, but I feel this. Ah, that's not in my business.
I don't really want to. But when it was my brother, it was always my business. Because you're my brother. And so that's the beginning of our heart behind our approach to sin, is that we're family. So of course we would address sin.
Jump to Matthew chapter 18. So Jesus is saying something very similar in Matthew 18, but he's going to give it a much more full treatment. And so what we'll read will sound very similar to what we just read. He says, Pay attention to yourself. If your brother sins, rebuke him, which means address it. Talk to him.
Point it out. Matthew 18 should be on page 534. It's to the left of Luke. A little bit earlier. We're going to start in verse 7. And again, it's going to sound similar to what Jesus was just saying.
Woe to the world for temptations to sin. For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes. And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands and two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Okay, so Jesus just said some things I think we've got to talk about. Feels like it. Jesus just said there's two directions. There's two tendencies. And this lines up with what the rest of Scripture says. So have you ever thought, man, this world we live in is just so beautiful.
Like you listen to Louis Armstrong sing, What a Wonderful World. Whoa, whoa, whoa, yeah. That song, you know what I'm talking about? Your little eyes tear up because these little kids are going to learn things that I'll never know. And you're like, that's true. My grandma didn't know about the internet.
Like whatever. You know what I'm saying? Like you have those moments where you just see a picture of something or you went and visited the Grand Canyon and you're just like, oh my goodness. You hold a baby and you just think, what on earth kind of place do we live in that this exists here? You have those moments. You listen to a song or something.
Like you're riding down the road, you just see something. Like for different people, it's different things. But there's these moments where you're like, this place is magical. It's the best way to describe it. Have those? Okay.
You ever have those moments where you think this is the absolute most shipwrecked, terrible place ever? Like earth is just wrong. This is just like, I don't know how it got this crooked. I don't know how it got this bent. I don't know how it got this bad. And there's a lot of philosophies and belief systems out there that are going to say, no, the world's good.
And there's going to be a bunch that say, no, the world's bad. Christianity says, yes. And yes. It's better than you could imagine. It's better than you could think. It was created by a holy God who designed it to be enjoyable and amazing and glorious and to point back to him.
And humanity completely shipwrecked this. And sin has completely wrought havoc on earth. And there are so many heinous, terrible things that happen that you are going to, that just going to obliterate your soul when you see them and when you partake in them and when they happen to you. Christianity says, yes and yes, more than you could imagine, more than you could imagine. Because we have a world created by a good and holy God that he put humanity on that has free will and humanity has rebelled and each one of us is off. Our hearts are wrong.
We're twisted and broken and this world is shipwrecked. And God is working to bring it back to what it was meant to be. And what Jesus says is, there's a place that you'll enter called life. Those who enter into life. What he originally meant this to be. And there's also a trajectory which is a hell of fire.
You see what it is, is it's the world as God meant it, completely maxed out, carried out into infinity, carried out into eternity. Or the world as we've turned it, the twisted broken sinfulness, carried out to maximum, carried out into eternity, into infinity. Those are the two trajectories. Those are the two destinations. And the Bible is very clear. Everyone on earth is on one of those trajectories.
And everyone on earth will extend into eternity, pursuing and being filled with life and joy and hope, what God originally designed, or extending into eternity where there's destruction and pain and death and suffering and hell because it's the ultimate expression of our brokenness. So what Jesus says, because he sees eternity. You see, there was a moment where Archer, it's my son, all he could see was the beauty of a glowing fire. He doesn't know what it is, he's just running towards it. Seems nice. The reason I panicked and he didn't was because I saw and knew where he was headed.
I knew how that ended up. I knew how that worked out. So Jesus steps out of eternity onto earth and he says, let me explain something to you. There's life and there is an eternal hell. And you would rather cut your feet off and make it into life. You would rather pluck your eyes out and make it into life than to be fully functional, active, healthy, so that you can sprint headlong into a flame.
That's Jesus' point here. Now, I've heard this read before and people say, well, it's hyperbole. He doesn't really want you to pluck your eyes out. He doesn't really want you to cut your feet off. He's just trying to show us the seriousness. I'm not sure that's true.
I'm going to give a caveat here in a second. Let's keep moving. We're not pulling out hacksaws yet. We're saving that to the end when the music's playing. Just kidding. Keep going.
Here's what he says. For if your eye causes you to sin, this is verse 9, tear it out, throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire. 10, see that you do not despise one of these little ones. Again, he's talking about Christians. He was given an example, so he brought a child there.
We read that at the beginning of chapter 18. But he's talking about Christians, followers of Jesus, the small ones that belong to him. And then he says something, we're about to read something that's confusing but does not have anything really to do with the point we're making today, so we don't have to spend a lot of time on it. But people don't really know what he meant here. There's a couple of different ones but we're not getting into it. So 10, see that you do not despise one of these little ones for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.
If you're confused, that was confusing. 12, what do you think if a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, I truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. What Jesus just said is heart-poundingly glorious. Jesus said, there's a shepherd who has some sheep.
He's got 99 of them that are hanging around and acting like they got some sense. He's got one of them that gets lost. Doesn't he just leave the 99 and go get the one? Doesn't he just leave them there and go find the one? And the answer is yes, that's what shepherds do. They leave the 99 and they go get the one.
And he says, and once he gets the one, doesn't he celebrate? Isn't he more excited about the one he found than the one that just stayed? Yes. You see, Jesus says, there's a trajectory entering into life or entering into destruction. And Jesus says, if you're entering into destruction and your hand is causing you to sin or your foot is causing you to sin, cut it off. And we say, well, that's hyperbole.
Jesus went to a cross because of sin. Jesus was nailed to a cross because of sin. The Son of God left eternity to pay for our sin. Jesus does not believe that is hyperbole because when it came time for him to give up everything, he did. But the only reason why you don't have to cut your feet off is because Jesus' were nailed to a cross.
The only reason why I don't have to pluck my eyes out when they cause me to sin is that Jesus' eyes closed in death. The only reason you don't have to cut your hand off is because Jesus was pinned up and his heart exploded in his chest and he died of asphyxiation and he was laid in the tomb. The only reason why we don't have to crush sin in our bodies is because Jesus was crushed for our sin in his body because he believes this. If you're not sure whether or not Jesus believed in an eternal hell, look at him on the cross. He was chasing down the sheep that went astray when he went to the cross.
Here's the good news for you today. Everybody's on a trajectory either towards life or towards eternal destruction. But if you're headed towards eternal destruction, I want you to know that the shepherd has left the 99 and he's doing absolutely everything he can to chase you down. I want you to know that that shepherd left the 99 and swapped his life for the sheep. We need to know that so that we understand the heart, behind addressing sin in each other. You see, we've got to believe that we're family and we have to have a rock-solid belief in the gospel which says that we're all sinners bound, running headlong towards a real hell outside of the grace of Jesus on the cross that makes us into a family that loves one another, cares for one another, protects one another.
The heart behind church discipline is a rock-solid belief in the gospel that we're all sinners headed for a real hell outside of the grace of Jesus on the cross who makes us family that loves one another, cares for one another, and protects one another. That's the heart behind it. That's the reason why you address sin in someone else because you actually believe that what Jesus said is true, that there are two trajectories. that's why we risk conversations. That's why if someone in your group, let's say you've got a young lady in your group and she's following Jesus until she gets a boyfriend.
The reason why we're going to talk through this is because this happens. We have a lot of relationship idolatry in our culture where love conquers all and they're not talking about the verse from Corinthians but they're talking about if I love somebody everything works out and you can all shut up and if you stand in my way you're wrong and I get to do whatever I want. If you watch a romantic comedy or any kind of romantic movie the bad guy is the person who stands in the middle of this really jacked up relationship not the two people who are chasing after a really dumb relationship. Okay, I'll give you something to think about next time you watch one of those.
She gets a boyfriend, she's following Jesus, she gets a boyfriend and now she's following her boyfriend and her boyfriend is headed away from Jesus. Why would you have that conversation with her? Because you believe, you have a rock solid foundation that says she's your sister so you have some, she belongs to you, you have some ownership and she's on a trajectory either towards life or towards destruction and that's going to extend for eternity so you have an awkward conversation. Why when somebody offends you or hurts you or sins against you do you go talk to them rather than just writing them off because you believe that their soul matters more that they're on a trajectory?
Okay. If that's the heart behind it, if that's our motivation, what's the process? Like how do we actually do this? Does he lay that out for us? I'm glad you asked. Yes, he does.
Next verse, 15. If your brother sins against you, okay, so again, putting this inside the family relationship, this is Christian to Christian, this is those who belong to each other. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.
But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. That means the gathered belonging group of Christians following Jesus. We would say, tell them to your community group and then we'll take it to the whole everybody, all the groups got to know. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, which man, really drives that home because we use those terms and know what that's talking about. Let's explain that in a second.
Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. That's taken out of context a lot. We're going to talk about that in a second too. Okay, so here's the outline.
Someone sins against you. You go talk to them by yourselves. They repent. They say, you're right. I did sin. I'm wrong.
I shouldn't have done that. You know what you say? Up top, we're good. I forgive you. We're good. Like that was the goal.
You wanted, like the repentance was, that's what you were aiming for, was them to acknowledge their sin. They don't repent. So let's take this scenario with the girlfriend thing. You, she's part of your community group. She's following Jesus. She gets a boyfriend.
She just starts kind of disappearing. So you call her up and say, hey, can we get coffee? Can we talk? She says, yeah. So you go sit down with her and you say, hey, this doesn't look good.
Like this isn't, this isn't a good trajectory for you. Like you were following Jesus and now you got a boyfriend and like, I'm, I'm pretty sure he's like leading you off. Like he's, he's taking you away from following Jesus. Doesn't seem like you're reading your Bible anymore. I think y'all are having sex. Like I think there's a lot of things going on here that aren't good for you as you try to follow Jesus.
Let's say she responds with, yeah, you're right. I didn't need to come back around. I'm sorry. I'm wrong. That's great. That was it.
That's all you had to do. That's, that's, if she, she repents, you want her back. But if she says, who are you to get in my business? We're not hurting anybody. You're just jealous. Okay.
Now you go talk to more people. This is why we say all the time. If you come tell me about a situation where this person did this against me, my immediate response should be, what did they say when you told them? Because I've got to assume we're on step two. I just got to assume, oh, you already told them and it went poorly. It's, it shouldn't be.
And maybe I'm wrong for this. It's my favorite when I say that to someone and they go, what was it? Oh, no, I hadn't, I didn't talk to them. It's like, oh, good. I especially like it if that person's there, I'll just go, hey. Hey.
Yo, Mike. Dave's mad at you. You got it, Dave. Take it from here. It's like, what the heck? I think this is the best.
Um, I tried to pick two random names so that there wouldn't be an actual Mike and an actual Dave that he walks up afterwards like, what the heck, Dave? So anyway, um, do you go tell somebody else? They come talk. If they won't listen to the two or three people, you go tell more people. It says, take it to the church. You go tell your whole group.
Hey, this is what's going on. We talked to them a couple of times. They're not listening. They're not repenting. They're not acknowledging this. Eventually you would bring it before the whole church and here's how this ends.
At some point they repent. That's option one. That's the one we're going for. Or at some point it says you treat them like a Gentile and a tax collector. Okay. First of all, that does not mean be mean to them.
Matthew, see that name at the top left corner of the Bible there? That guy was a tax collector. Okay. He wrote this down for us. What he means is you graciously pursue them as someone who doesn't know Jesus. You're going to assume that they are not a Christian.
You have to. And here's why. Christians repent. If you say you're a Christian and there's no pattern of repentance in your life, no you're not. Christians repent. Christians acknowledge sin.
That's how we got in. This is a group of people who said, I'm jacked up. You messed up? Yes. Ooh, this is me. Shh, shh.
He's talking to me. Yes. Jesus is not. That's how we get in. That's what, Jesus was not messed up so that we can be made righteous through him. But all of us are messed up.
So if you come tell me I've sinned, it's like, yes, probably. How? When? What did that do? We get to talk about it. Christians repent.
So if there's a pathway of non-repentance, at some point you have to go to your group and you say, I don't believe this person is a Christian and we have to start treating them like they're not a Christian. Which means, try to be around them. Try to love them. Try to point them to the gospel. Try to help them. But we're not holding them to the standards of Christians anymore because they're not a Christian.
They don't believe this. You would maybe need to tell them, hey, just wanted you to know I don't think you're a Christian. I love you. I'm going to keep loving you. But I don't want you thinking that you're following Jesus when you're not.
Because there's an actual trajectory towards life or towards destruction. And the worst thing we can do is in our community groups and in our church coddle and be really kind to a bunch of people headed to destruction and let them pretend that they're Christians and never have had a moment where we sat with them and said, hey, I don't think you get this. Okay. Okay. This ends in one of three ways. Oh, sorry.
Let me keep... He puts it on the church, not the leadership, on the gathered people of God. He says there's power in gathering. There's... Where two or more of y'all are gathered, I'm among you. So some of you think what the Holy Spirit tells me is more important than what He tells anybody else.
Jesus would say, nuh-uh. He speaks through the gathered church, through His people together. So if you're in your group and you're the only person who thinks what you think and your whole group that you've been with for a while and know loves Jesus and know they get together and study the Bible and have seen that they've had wisdom before and they're all looking at you and saying, hey, what you're doing is dumb and you think they just don't understand me? No. No, no. You should think, maybe I'm wrong.
I've had conversations with people before and they go, I don't want to talk to them. I know what they're going to say. It's like, good, don't talk to them. Go ahead and start doing it. I don't want to get with my group. I know what they're going to tell me.
Is it going to be something from the Bible? I love your group. I hope they show up at your house. Sorry. Anyway, that also does not mean we're two more gathered. There I am in the midst of them.
That doesn't mean when people say, so me and my buddy, we're a Christian. We can go get on a boat. That's our church. Okay, that has nothing to do with what he's talking about here. And I hope a few of your other buddies who are Christians come and talk to you alone. And if you listen, that'd be great.
But if they don't, I hope they bring more people. Okay. Let's go to 1 Corinthians because there's three ways this ends. Most of it ends with the first step, which was you go talk to them, they repent. You go talk to them, you point out their sin, they repent. Most of it does that.
Sometimes it ends with they will not repent and they are not a Christian and we just need to acknowledge that and keep loving them and keep wanting them around and keep chasing after them and keep inviting them to things and they're welcome to hang out with our group and they're welcome to be here on Sundays and they're welcome to do everything we do as a church. We just got to know they're not a Christian. That's option two. Option three is worse. It's the one we don't like as much. It's got the same goal and the same heart.
Okay. We in 1 Corinthians 5? We made it? This is Paul writing to a church. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and a kind that is not even tolerated among pagans. For a man has his father's wife and you are arrogant.
Ought you not rather to mourn? So what he says is, you've got people hanging out in your church that are actively pursuing this sin. Flagrantly, openly, actively pursuing this sin. And y'all's response was, look at how gracious we are. Look at how much we believe the gospel. Isn't this beautiful?
They're arrogant. And he says, no, you should be broken over this because Christians repent of sin. You should mourn if someone's actively, openly, flagrantly pursuing sin. You should mourn for them. You should hurt over this. Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
If that sounds harsh, it's because it is. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
He's writing to Jewish believers and here's what he's saying. When they celebrated the Passover, they celebrated with unleavened bread because leaven for them when they were doing this feast represented sin. So if you had leavened bread, you were representing that it was sin. And so they would have unleavened bread to represent it was sinlessness, that the Passover lamb was sinless. It's talking about Jesus. And he says, you've been made unleavened, meaning you've been covered by Jesus.
So when we celebrate the Passover, we're covered by Jesus. We're celebrating what he's accomplished for us. We don't have any sin. That's what he's saying. But don't you know, a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
So here's why he says, put them out from among you. There's a sin of a certain type that is only going to cause harm to everybody else around. There's a sin of a certain nature. The Bible doesn't give us a list of these. We have to base it off of wisdom and what's going on in the particular case and the people and what's happening. That the best response for Christians is to say, you can't hang out with our group anymore.
You can't hang out with our church anymore until you repent. Thankfully, we haven't had to do that here. I've been a part of churches where that has had to happen or where they told somebody he was actively, aggressively, kind of predatorily approaching females. And so they told him, look, you can come to this gathering and that's it. Like, you can be here and you can be in this group. If we see you anywhere else, that's not okay.
When you show up, you have to tell a pastor you're here. When you leave, you have to tell a pastor you're leaving. If we see you outside of that window, that's not okay. Because they were protecting everybody else. They were going to be aggressive with this guy. And they said, if you show up to another gathering, not the one we told you you could be at, you're not going to be allowed to be around at all until there's repentance, until there's change.
Now, I don't want this to ever happen. This isn't the goal. The goal is repentance. But I'll tell you one thing. If you look and say, hold on a second. So the response was, this guy's a sinner.
Kick him out. That was the response. Put him out. Don't let him be around. When Archer was running towards that fire pit, if Edie had drop kicked him, I would have high-fived her. Like, if that was as close as she could get, it was just to do that.
I'd have been like, that was the most beautiful kick. You've got to teach me your form. Thank you. Thank you. What Paul's saying is, get rough with them if you have to. Don't let them pretend.
If someone is actively, openly, aggressively pursuing sin and will not repent, then do what you have to so that they can't go home and go, oh, no, people accept me. This is okay. This must be all right. If I get to be around. If everybody in the church looked at you and said, you cannot be here because you are actively, aggressively pursuing sin and this is not okay and you're going to harm people and we don't believe you're a Christian, until you decide to repent and change from this, you're not allowed to be around. And if we find out you've headed over to another church because there's a bunch of close ones, we're going to call them.
Hopefully, by God's grace, you would go home and go, I may need to think about this. But if we all just go, hey, buddy, there's a good chance you'll think it must be okay. Verse 6, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. Meaning Jesus has already taken away your sin.
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven and the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. He gives clarification. Not at all. Meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since you would need to go out of the world.
So what he says is, when I said don't associate with sexually immoral, I didn't mean non-Christians. That's what he means by of this world. Because what he says is, you'd have to move. Off the planet. You would need to quit your job. Go to the top of Mount Everest and die.
That's how you could escape. But you'd be next to another little frozen sinner that got up there and died. Like that's, that's all, like that's his, so don't take this to mean, oh I can't have sinner friends. All your friends are sinners. Look to your left on the row. Look to your right on the row.
Next time you're hanging out with your community group, be like, hi sinner friends. That's who's there. But what he's saying is, people who are actively pursuing this and are a part of the church need to be addressed. It needs to be talked with, with them. It can't be okay for this to linger. But I am writing to you, not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother.
Christians, those who belong to Christ. If he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or as an idolater or a reviler or a drunken or a swindler, not even to eat with such a one. So what he's saying is you address it with him, you talk to him about it, they repent. He's not negating what Jesus said. He's saying that if someone's actively pursuing this and won't repent, then at some point you have to say, hey, you can't be around. We're not going to keep acting like you're a Christian.
For what do I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God Judges the outside, purges the evil person from among you. Okay, meaning the Christian church should quit acting like the rest of the world should be Christians. Step one, quit judging the world outside. Point them to Jesus.
They're sinners. They need grace. Step one, quit acting like the rest of the world should be Christians. Step two, start acting like the Christians should be Christians. It's real easy to stand up and talk about all those bad people out there. Why don't you start talking to the bad people in your group?
Because I know them and that's uncomfortable. Yeah, it sure is. We got to start addressing sin in each other and start acting like, hey, if you're a Christian, this is what it looks like. Start calling each other towards holiness and away from destruction. When someone says, you can't judge me, 1 Corinthians 5, yes, I can. I am supposed to.
Paul says, aren't we supposed to judge the people inside the church? And by judge, it doesn't mean condescending, I'm better than you. What it means is, I'm a Christian, I see what you're doing and it's not lining up with what Jesus says. We need to talk about it. I can rightly see what you're doing and address it with them. So, the heart behind this is a rock solid belief in the gospel, a belief that we're all sinners bound for a real hell outside of the saving grace of Jesus through the cross that makes us into a family that loves, cares for, and protects one another.
That's the goal, the process we just talked through. That's the heart behind it, the process we just talked through. What's the goal? What's the aim? What's the point? Why are we doing this?
2 Corinthians. Go to the right, one book. Chapter 2. Why are we doing this? Verse 5. We're going to wait a second.
I want people to see this. Now, if anyone has caused pain, He has caused it not to me, but in some measure, not to put it too severely, to all of you. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough. So, that's the majority of the church. The people who belong to the church, the majority is enough. So, you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
So, I beg you to reaffirm your love for him. For this is why I wrote, that I might test you and know whether you are obedient in everything. Anyone whom you forgive, I also forgive. Indeed, what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for the sake, for your sake, in the presence of Christ, so that we would not be outwitted by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his designs. Most scholars believe this is referring to the same person from 1 Corinthians. He came back.
He came back. And Paul says, forgive him. Reaffirm your love for him. That's why you did that in the first place. Paul says, to put him out from among you. And then he says, when he comes back, he says, bring him back.
One of the reasons he said to put him out, and I don't know if we missed this, I don't remember reading this, but it said, turn him over to Satan so that he might, for the destruction of the flesh, so that he might be brought into life. That's the point. The goal is repentance. The goal is that they would return. The goal is that we would all remain a part of Jesus' family. The goal is that we would always stay in.
And this guy comes back. I hope that we never have to stand up at a family meeting and say, this person who was a part of our church family is no longer allowed around us. With tears in our eyes to say, we've talked to them, we've talked to them, we've talked to them, they haven't repented, and they're not going to be welcomed right now. Let's all pray for their soul. I hope to God we never have to do that. But if we do, I pray for the day we get to stand up and say they came back.
It worked. Jesus chased them down. They're here. They're repentant. Let's reaffirm our love for them.
Let's lay our hands on them. Pray for them. Let's all hug them. If they're not a hugger, they can get over it. They're back. We're going to have on screen Hebrews 3 as we wrap up.
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort. That means encourage a special gospel Bible encouragement. It means point each other to Jesus. Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Just leave that back half of that verse up there. He says, take care, be watchful, keep an eye on yourselves that there's not a deceitful, unbelieving heart that sin lies to you and leads you astray. I get excited and have been all week as we talk through this and here's why. I need this. I want this. One of the things we're excited about is we go to membership where we're going to do official kind of membership where we say this is what we believe as a church and our community groups are going to say this is what we're going for as a group is to give all of us the opportunity to say I'm in and what I mean by I'm in is if I ever try to get out I want you to chase me down because I need this because sin lies to me and I want right now while I'm in my right mind that I'm following Jesus I want to look at the rest of the people in my community group and say if I start running I want you to run faster than me and chase me down.
I want you to love me enough to grab me as I run headlong into destruction. I want you to believe the gospel enough to sit me down and say you're wrong here. You need to repent here. One of the ways that we know we're loved as Christians one of the ways we know we have brothers and sisters is when was the last time someone sat you down and told you you were wrong? That's one of the most loving things people can do. I know because that's what my wife does most of the time.
You're wrong here. You need to repent here. One of the ways that we know we're loved as Christians one of the ways we know we have brothers and sisters is when was the last time someone sat you down and told you you were wrong? That's one of the most loving things people can do. I know because that's what my wife does most of the time. That's how you know you're loved. Someone cares enough about you to risk your relationship
By telling you something you don't want to hear? So your group cares enough about you to call you up and say hey we haven't seen you in a while what's going on? They call you up and say we've got to get together let's talk hey you're not following you're not doing this right you're on a path you're on a trajectory and it's not towards Jesus it's not towards holiness it is not headed in the right way and let me explain something to you
If it's this relationship Jesus said cut your feet off I know he means break up if it's school if it's whatever that's leading you away from Jesus it's not worth it and I need somebody to sit me down and say that and you need somebody to sit you down and say that because you're not strong enough on your own you're not smart enough on your own and your heart lies to you
And the author of Hebrews says take care be watchful that this doesn't happen as long as it's today point each other towards Jesus as long as it's today chase one another down because the goal is that we'll be there at the end the goal is that all of us are there at the end Matt's going to come back up here we're going to sing here you see those commercials for traffic fatalities in South Carolina they're interviewing people and they're like
What's an acceptable number for traffic fatalities in the state of South Carolina people pick a number I don't know a hundred okay what's an acceptable number for traffic fatalities in your county four five what's an acceptable number for traffic fatalities in your family and immediately everybody goes zero and they go okay why don't we make that our goal for the state zero because it's always going to be somebody's family what's the acceptable
Number of Christians that we can lose along the way what's the acceptable number of the people in your group that can get their trajectory off and run headlong into destruction what's the acceptable number that we want to stand before Jesus and say yeah I didn't really want to get in their business it didn't feel like my place if that number's me if you're talking about me the acceptable number is zero I expect everyone
In my group to be like to the point of physical aggression with me dude this isn't okay you're confused you're lost your heart's lying to you you're chasing after stuff that's not going to fill you up you're believing lies because the goal is that we would all hold our confidence firm to the end that the gospel that we believe in now we would believe in on the day that everything melts away and we stand
Before our king because there is life to enter into and there is hell to enter into and they're eternal and that's the only thing that matters if you're not a Christian I want you to know that Jesus left the 99 he left heaven to chase after you that he loves you enough to die for you so that you don't have to pay the penalty of yourself and you can be saved and you can be taken up by Jesus and you can be made his and you can be brought
Into the family and if you're a Christian I want you to care about your brothers and sisters enough to talk to them I want us to have lives marked by repentance and I want us to love one another enough to address sin in each other Christians part of our church family we're about to celebrate communion that's where we take bread and we take grape juice and we remember that Jesus' body
Was broken for us so that yours didn't have to be that his blood was shed so that yours doesn't have to be that you can be set free if you have someone who sinned against you and you haven't talked to them you need to talk to them before you take communion I fully expect that people will get up and move around the room and we'll have some conversations where we pray
With one another where we address sin in each other where we say hey I've been noticing this I haven't brought it up to you you need to confess you need to repent we have lives marked by repentance you need to repent before you take communion if you're not a Christian you can repent of your sin and you can place your faith in Jesus that he paid your penalty so you don't have to be led to destruction
And you can take communion for the first time which is a celebration that Jesus went to the cross for you let's pray God I pray that we would be a church that has a rock solid belief in the gospel that you would not for one moment let us forget that there is an eternal life and that there is an eternal destruction and God that we would love one another
Enough to address sin I pray that we would be a church Lord that doesn't talk about people but that talks to people and God I pray that you would bless this church so that this process always works God I pray that through your Holy Spirit this would always work
That there would always somewhere down the line somewhere along the way there would be repentance there would be an acknowledgement of sin that people would turn back and that we would continue to love and forgive always that we would always forgive and reaffirm our love
For one another God we praise you we thank you in Jesus name mass going to continue to play when you feel ready go take communion if you need to talk to somebody get up go talk to them we're going to move around the room we're going
To repent of sin we're going to believe the gospel