Beyond The Basics 8: The Church, misc (part 5)

Father, it is with great joy that we gather this morning, thankful for the blessing of being here, thankful for the blessing of your word, and most of all, thank you for the blessing of your son,

Jesus Christ. Lord, would you bless our time this morning as we talk about your church and what your word has to say about it and the importance of it.

Lord, we pray this in Christ's name, amen. Well, we've been talking about the church forever, a number of aspects of it, who should lead it, what should it have in a service, miscellaneous items, civil disobedience, that was a fun week.

And now we're talking about a topic that is a little bit uncomfortable, church discipline.

And of course, I'm talking about walking up and down the ranks and putting everybody in check. No, church discipline is something that is called for in the

Bible, but it's something that nobody seems to like. I certainly don't like it. It is difficult, it is touchy, it hurts people's feelings.

So the question comes about why do we practice it? Well, first of all, because the Lord commanded it.

But I thought what I might just talk about before we go to the scripture is the last serious case of church discipline

I was involved in, it was last week. No, it was actually, we haven't had any serious cases since I've been here.

But when I was in California, one bright and cheery Sunday morning,

Bill Shannon, who was my pastor there said, Steve, would you go with me after Sunday school, skip service, we need to go confront someone.

And I said, really, it's Sunday morning. And he said, well, I just got a call.

And a man's wife says he's got crack cocaine in the house, and I want you to go with me.

I don't know why he wanted me exactly. Maybe he thought I had some expertise in the matter.

So we went and confronted this man. And, you know,

I spent three years in the army. I spent 21 years on the sheriff's department. And in my entire life,

I have never heard anyone talk to anyone the way that man talked to us.

It was unbelievable. I mean, there was vitriol, hatred, spewing forth from his mouth.

Why? Because we had gone to confront him about sin.

And he was deeply involved in sin. Did we want to go there?

I'm speaking for myself, I would have rather gone and listened to John MacArthur preach. If someone tells you that they enjoy church discipline, there's something wrong with that person.

Seriously, it is not fun. Even in situations where you know you have to do it, it is not fun.

I mean, eventually this man sort of repented.

I mean, the end result, I don't think, in his life was a good one, as it is with many people who are addicted, who are involved with substances, who love it more than they do anything else.

And if that sounds harsh, it's probably because you haven't been around enough addicts. I tell people,

I dealt with this couple quite a bit, and I used to tell the wife, she would say, well, he won't steal from his children.

Next week, he stole from his children. He can't get into the safe. Next time

I talked to her, he got into the safe, because I'd always say, are you sure? Oh yeah, I'm sure of it. I go, well, okay, but my experience is, and then it's tough.

But why do we do church discipline at all? People always think about the most obvious cases are sexual immorality.

Why do we do it? Because the Lord commanded it. Let's look at Matthew 18, 15 to 20.

And who has that? Go ahead, Will. Now, why did

I include those last two verses? Anybody have a clue why

I would do that? Stephen. That's exactly right.

I just wanted to point out the context, because I remember one of my favorite Christian music guys has a, I won't mention his name, but he has a concert

CD. And in there, he goes, I'd like to thank all of our guests tonight for coming, and especially the

Lord, because we know that wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he is there.

So he's here tonight. And I'm going, well, the context is church discipline. What are you trying to say about this concert?

You know, what are you doing? Getting ready to call some people out on their sin. Notice what he says there first.

If your brother sins. Now, can you think of another verse that we might want to apply before we go to this one?

I'm going to tell you right now, it's the unbeliever's favorite verse. What's that?

I heard it. No, but yeah, Matthew 7, 1.

I call it the unbeliever's favorite verse, because anytime there's any kind of confrontation where you say, you know what?

If that's what you believe, you're not saved or you're not a Christian. Do not judge so that you will not be judged.

Let's just keep reading there in Matthew 7. For in the way you judge, you will be judged. And by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?

Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye and behold, the log is in your own eye.

You hypocrites. First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eyes.

Brother's eye. Why is that important as a first step? Because if we're going to think about my brother has sinned, what do

I have to do first? I have to examine myself and make sure that my motives are right, that I'm not guilty of the sin.

How about that? I go to someone and I confront them in sin, about their sin, and they go, well, you know what,

Pastor Steve, last week I saw you do exactly the same thing, or I heard you do exactly the same thing.

That's not good. If your brother sins, we're back in Matthew 18, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private.

So if I am in sin, you don't come to me, you know, I have a question. Why did you last

Wednesday do da, da, da, da, you know, in front of the whole Sunday school class? That is not the way to, why would we not want to go to a group to point out somebody's sin?

It's none of their business. I think that's a great point. It's between you and the person who has sinned. Why else?

That's right. It becomes a matter of external righteousness, right? We're more concerned with how we look.

We don't want anybody to know that there's any fault in us, and so we would, why else do you suppose?

They may not have sinned. Good. I mean, how about that? You bring a, you know, you confront somebody and you've completely misinterpreted what happened.

That's possible, right, Simon? Okay. Let me give you another one.

And this is going to be a thread that runs through church discipline. And that is love.

The reason you are approaching them is love, concern for them. Not out of self -righteousness, not out of any other motivation, but love.

And how loving is it to say, Pastor Steve, I'm just wondering, Wednesday you parked illegally, da -da -da -da, you caused fire trucks to run off.

What were you thinking? Yeah, it's vindictive.

It's not loving. It's not at all motivated by a sense of wanting the best for that person.

That's what we want. We've talked about humility, about the need to consider others more important than ourselves.

And you know what? I'm going to tell you what. It is tough to kind of examine yourself, cinch up your belt and say, you know what?

As much as I would like love to cover a multitude of sins, to just be able to ignore that sin,

I can't. Not because I want to go to that person and confront them, because it's really best for them.

My concern is not for me. My concern is for them. The Lord commended it, and he did not think it would be easy.

And by the way, this is one of our standards for church membership. We believe that in order to be an effective member of the body, you need to be able to confront someone.

That's why we probably won't have any five -year -olds being baptized and joining in the church. Pastor Steve, you know, that's probably not going to happen.

Look at how he goes on in verse 15. If he listens to you, you have won your brother.

What's he saying? What's Jesus saying? You go and you confront the person, and they nod their head and they say, good point.

So you've won your brother, right? Is that the objective? What's that?

You want them to repent. You want them to hear you with ears that are open to the truth.

And notice what the objective always is, is to win your brother or sister. In other words, to restore them, to bring them back into a right relationship.

But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you. So here's the scene.

You go and you confront him or her on whatever the sin is. They say, you know what, you're wrong, or I'm not going to stop doing that, whatever they say.

And you are so concerned for their well -being and for the holiness of the church that you can't drop it.

Otherwise you shouldn't have gone to them in the first place. And so then what do you do? You go and you take another person or two with you.

You go and get someone else. Why? Why would you want to do that?

What's that? Witnesses, it says right there in the text. It's not a trick question. So that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

You need to have someone go with you. So it's not just he said, she said, she said, he said, whatever the situation is, you want someone else to be there with you so that when that person, and that's what

Pastor Bill was doing in that case, he wanted me to go with him so I would be his witness.

And then if he refuses to listen to this group of two or three in the same scenario, then tell it to the church.

Tell it to the church. And typically how that's practiced is that means the church leadership.

Now, let me give you an example of what would not be appropriate church discipline thinking.

You become aware of someone's sin. You pick up the phone and you go, Pastor Steve, there's a situation you need to deal with.

Pastor Mike, Pastor Dave, Elder Pradeep, you know, the church leadership hotline.

That's not the way it goes. We are basically the second to last step. You bring it to us and then we go confront why.

Why would you then bring it to the leadership? You've got these two or three witnesses, they go, and then you kick it up to the church leadership.

Why? Because at every step of the way, you're trying to keep the number of people minimum, but you're raising the kind of the stakes, the heft, the overall weight of the situation.

You want to impress upon them the importance of repentance. You want them to repent every step of the way.

So the church leadership would then go to them and then what we would do here is we would then even read their name from the pulpit and say, if you know this person, go to them.

We would urge the entire church body to be involved, to go to them, to urge them to repent.

And we will say, without giving specific details, what the sin is.

Why? So that everybody knows, A, that this person is in sin, B, that they have an obligation as a member of the body of Christ to come alongside this person, to love them, to confront them, to urge them to repent.

And finally, he says, truly I say to you, or I skipped that, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, then let him be to you as a

Gentile and a tax gatherer, tax collector. In the mind of a

Jew, there would be nothing lower than a tax collector. That was just the depth of sin.

You couldn't get any worse than that. So what happens if someone is put out of the church?

What do you do? Stop talking to them immediately. Pray for them, which is the key in every step along the way.

Again, as you examine yourself, as you try to remove the beam from your own eye and you ask the

Lord to reveal any sins that you have, you want to pray for them even after they're put out of the church. And when you meet with them, you want to give them the gospel because either they're not saved or there's something horribly wrong in their understanding of it.

Pastor Dave. Yes, good question.

It is something that we want to be careful about. As an example, one of the things we talked about here was earlier was drinking.

Drunkenness is always condemned. And I remember a situation in my own life where a person who was professed to be a

Christian and by his own admission now would say that he was not, was in the habit of getting drunk, passing out even.

So should you confront someone in that sort of situation? The answer is obviously yes. Now, if someone takes a drink, should you confront them on that?

Brother, you're in sin. You need to repent. I don't think so.

I mean, if you can find a scripture that says it is always a sin to have a glass of wine, it is always a sin to fill in the blank, then sure.

But when we have Paul telling Timothy and understanding that situation was a little bit different when he says, have a little drink of wine for your stomach, it can't always be sinful.

And drinking is not condemned. It is drunkenness that is always condemned. Can you think of other situations where preference might be wrongly interpreted as sin?

Dancing is one. People are like, dancing is sinful. Well, is it? I think it can be.

But is it always? No. Charlie? I think it was the hairstyle, not the length of it.

That was parking lot time right there. Yeah, length of hair, that would be a questionable issue.

I mean, I think there are many such issues, music, schooling.

Some people are of the mindset that if your child goes to public school, that you're going to have years added on to purgatory.

I think, I just realized what's going on. And I'm always mindful of my time in purgatory.

Of course, I'm kidding. But you know, a lot of these things are preference issues.

You know, I said to someone not so long ago, I said, well, if homeschooling is the only biblical, if it is indeed a sin, then

I know a lot of people at my former church that need to be put out of the church because they had their children, including me, had my children in public school.

So I think it's always a balance. We want to make sure that we are correctly interpreting the

Bible and applying it. We want to make sure that that person is in sin, not just violating what we would see. You know,

I remember once just being shocked, shocked that one of the pastors of Grace Community Church was coming out of a movie theater right as I was going in.

But that's, I don't know, you know. But that's something that people, some people will view as, you know, a sin.

You know, don't, how does that go? Don't smoke or chew and don't go with girls who do.

You know, those are all sins, Dave. Yes, some of these things are not so easy to detect.

And they may be easy to, well, or not easy. I mean, something like that might take a little getting into.

For example, I might walk by a classroom here and I might see, you know, a teacher yelling at one of the kids or whatever and just go, well, that was just uncalled for.

And so I walk back and I want to confront this guy. And then I talk to him and I find out what he was actually doing was telling the children not to stick their fingers in the electric socket or something, you know, so they raise their voice.

Well, that's not, you know, some fit of rage or something like that. So I always need to be careful about those things, but he's exactly right.

You know, if I'm allowing someone's observable behavior or something that I think certainly seems, now, let's put it this way.

Dave mentioned the wandering eye. Would it be all right for me to say, if I observe something, for me to go to someone and say, you know what,

I don't know, but it seems to me that this is the case. Can we just talk about this? The wrong way to go about it would be, brother,

I know that you did it, you know, how do I know? You know,

I better be real careful about that sort of thing. So I think that's a good point.

Other thoughts about that? Yes. And that's what we're talking about in terms of preference.

Somebody may say it's G only. Some people, you know, are of the opinion that any kind of movie is not okay.

Somebody would say PG. And you know, in all these cases, I'm like, well, you know what? The ratings are set by unsaved people who have completely different standards.

So it's always gonna be subjective. And it, you know, it basically is dependent upon what,

I think it behooves us as Christians to know what's in a movie content -wise before we go and see it so that we don't go, what am

I doing in this movie theater and how do I get out? I mean, before I was saved, I had that experience once.

I was just like, I mean, I was in Okinawa in a movie theater full of GIs and I was just like five minutes into the movie.

I'm like, how do I get out of here? You know, Bruce, don't go there because we're going there in a minute.

I'm stuck. Don't make me get angry.

All right. Any other thoughts that won't make me mad? Yes, Simon.

You know, that's a great question. What about brothers and sisters who go to a different church? I remember once discussing this issue with one of the elders at Grace Community Church and he said, you know, it's such a shame that there's not some kind of church discipline databank.

He goes, because typically what will happen is we'll start pursuing someone in church discipline and they just go to another church.

So, you know, what about somebody who goes to a different church? Well, ideally the situation would be the same.

You know, you would go to them. I mean, it's not King's X. I go to another church, therefore you can't confront me.

You know, if they profess to be a believer, they still need to be confronted about it. And then it would probably be wise at the second step, if you know someone else at that church, to take that person with you to go confront them.

And then hopefully to the leadership of that church. But there are a lot of churches that won't have anything to do with church discipline.

So what do you do at that point? I mean, we could read, you know, let's say you know Bill Jablonski, you know, at some other church.

Well, if we read his name here and tell everybody to go after him, you know, and he lives in New Hampshire or something, that's really not that effective.

And that, you know, we'd become known as the fighting fundamentalists of West Boylston. We'll discipline anyone out, you know, for even if they've never been here before.

So, you know, our concern is just mostly for the local body, but as individuals, we are part of the universal body of Christ.

And so that's an excellent point. We need to be aware of that and to, it's still the body of Christ, we still need to confront those people, but I think there's a limit on what we can do, especially since many churches are not willing to do this.

Why wouldn't they want to do this? What's that? It's not popular, it's not easy, and it doesn't seem very loving.

You know, so the most loving thing to do is let people go on and sin. Not at all.

So the Lord commanded it. Look, the apostles practiced it. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 5, and Bruce Binney, Bruce, would you read that please?

One to 11, sure. You know,

I was just, as I was listening to Bruce, I was just looking at verse 10, and I thought, isn't that a great verse? He says, look,

I'm not telling you not to associate with the people of this, you know, the sinful people of this world, because if you weren't to do that, you'd have to leave the world.

You know, if we were to say, hey, don't have anything to do with sinners, you'd have to leave. You'd be gone.

And it is so, this term here in verse 11, any so -called brother.

How'd you like that term applied to you? He's a so -called brother. Who is a so -called brother?

Someone who professes to be a Christian. Yeah, their actions don't follow what their mouth says.

I mean, if we were to apply this standard universally, we'd have a tough time.

You know, I mean, if we could make somebody wear like a name tag that says I am a Christian, everybody in the country who says they're a

Christian, I think after a short time, we'd start handing out new name tags that said so -called brother.

And notice how seriously he takes it. This is after somebody gets put out of the church. If he is an immoral person or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or a swindler, what are we to do?

Not to even eat with such a one. They're put out of the church and then we have them over for dinner.

No, no, we're not to even eat with such a one.

What does that mean? That just means that we don't host them. We don't somehow put a stamp of approval on the actions that got them kicked out of the church.

What do we do with them? Again, we call them to repentance. Other thoughts on this?

Let me just say this, the purpose and I think it's very clearly laid out here and I'll get back to this in a minute, is holiness.

Get the leaven out of the lump of dough. Get the sin out of the church.

Drive the sin out of the church by repentance if possible and by church discipline if necessary, if need be.

And look at that. Verse five, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord Jesus, the day of judgment. What does he want? He says, I've delivered. What does it mean that he's given such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh?

What is he talking about? Allowing bad things to happen to him?

Pastor Dave, or was it you? Someone in the back, John. Putting him out of the church.

There is suffering involved with being put out of the church. You are cut off from fellowship.

There ought to be, if you have any love for the brethren at all, that ought to give you pangs of longing, of missing the fellowship, of missing your family.

It's all designed for one thing to drive you to repentance. And if you never repent, then there's a word for you.

And it is so -called brother. You're a fake brother. You're a pseudo brother.

You never were in the faith. Not just carnal

Christians. Not so, you know, you've received the fire insurance, but you know, you haven't jumped out of the fire yet.

No, I just made that up. Sounds like it too. Okay. What is the purpose of church discipline?

Well, we talked about it, restoration. We want to see them restored to full fellowship. You know, if you go to your brother and he repents, then the next time you see him, you go, oh, you know what?

I just don't have the same feeling for you as I used to. It's just not, you know, it's just, dude, you are, you're kind of ceremonially unclean.

Maybe you need to go spend 60 days outside the camp. No, that's not restoration.

When there is repentance, there is restoration. It is full. It is, we forgive as God forgives us.

Fully, totally, 100%, not holding anything back. We restore them. Let's move on to the holiness of the body of Christ.

Still here in 1 Corinthians 5. Let me just read verses 12 and 13.

Paul writes, for what do I have to do with judging outsiders, with the world? Do you not judge those who are within the church?

But those who are outside, God judges. And look what he says here. Remove, quoting from the Old Testament, remove the wicked man from among yourselves.

This is why we are so big on being a church body of believers.

We don't, when you join the church, we have you write your testimony. And if you say something like, well, you know, on judgment day,

I hope I'm good enough to get into heaven. We're gonna ask you some questions because we don't think you get it.

You cannot be good enough. You have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ alone for salvation, not trusting your own works, your own goodness.

And in the same way, we want to remove those who do not give evidence that they do not believe by their lifestyle.

We need to remove those people from the body of Christ. The body of Christ is to be pure.

You know, we often say to husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

And what's the rest of that verse? That passage, Ephesians five. What does he say,

Paul? He says that he might whisper, no, gave himself up for her, verse 26, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

That's what Christ wants, but we want to be loving and just keep all the sinners in there. Keep the people that are known to be involved in various sins and just kind of let them slide because it wouldn't be nice to kick them out.

That wasn't Paul's position. It wasn't the Lord's position and it ought not be our position.

All right, let's talk for a few minutes about factiousness before we divide the body. Titus three, verses 10 and 11.

Maybe we hear factious. We don't quite understand what that is, but if I said faction, we would understand,

I think, what that is. That means a portion, a part, usually someone, if they are part of a faction, they are loyal to that faction.

So if we had a bunch of factions here at BBC, we might have a very large group that said they were of Mike, a large group that said they were of Dave, a pretty big group that said they were of Pradeep, and then two or three people, maybe just me, said they were of...

Listen, that's why we don't like factiousness. No, factiousness is the exact opposite of unity.

We are called to unity and never to factiousness. Let's look at Titus three, verses 10 and 11.

Who has that? Steve. It seems like there's kind of a shorthand involved there for church discipline, doesn't it?

Rather than go to him, then take two or three people, then take it to the church.

Just says reject a factious man after a first and second warning. Why? There's a heightened concern about that because factiousness, division, is poison within the body of Christ.

You know, this is a small example. I remember one night, I think I was still...

Grace, I may have even been out here, but there was a gentleman I knew who hung around.

He was not a member of Grace Community Church. In fact, he was an Anglican. I just saw him at the Shepherds Conference, actually.

And he used to come on Sunday evenings and it seemed like his...

And he would go to classes in their IBS there. And it seemed like his desire was to denigrate

John MacArthur and some of the elders at the church. So he was in the bookstore one night and he was kind of popping off about things.

And I'm just looking at books and I'm hearing this guy and he's talking to the bookstore employees.

And I just said, you know what? I said, you just need to stop that. I go, you're at John MacArthur's church and you're running him down, that's not right.

And he said, well, I'm not trying to. I said, well, let me just recount what you just said. And I say, you need to stop that.

And he goes, sorry, I won't do it anymore. I'm like, okay.

I mean, it's the sort of thing, it just needs to be stopped right in its tracks.

It is the kind of thing, it is like gangrene. In fact, it's called gangrene. What do you do with a gangrenous part of the body?

The doctor says you have gangrene in your foot. Frequently results in amputation and it takes radical action.

I wrote here, if Jesus loves the church and is building it, Matthew 16, 18, what of those who seek to divide?

What is their attitude towards the church? I love Jesus, but I'm going to divide his body.

Freiberg says that factiousness, denoting loyalty to a separatist group, heretical, causing divisions.

MacArthur says, summing it up, factiousness had the idea of someone who made a resolute choice.

It then started to mean someone whose choice is obstinate, stubborn, and against the truth.

It is used here to mean one who had an idea, who had chosen an idea, one who had chosen a teaching, a doctrine, a viewpoint, a perspective, a course of behavior that is not acceptable to the church.

He will not submit to the word. He will not submit to the leadership. He's gathering adherence and he's causing strife and division and factions in the church.

Someone who's so set on having his own way that he doesn't care about unity, he doesn't care what happens to the body of Christ.

And this person is to be approached once, he's to be approached twice, and then he is to be given the left foot of fellowship.

Thank you. It's true, because it is, if Jesus is building the church, if Jesus stresses, well, let's look at some of the places where the unity of the church is stressed.

Let's look at John 15, verses 17 to 19. John 15, remember when

I first got saved, I think my favorite verse, probably yanking it a little bit out of context, but I'm the vine, you are the branches.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. I used to think of, just think about that and just apply it to my life.

Apart from Christ, I can do nothing. Zero, zip. Who has verses 17 and 19 in John 15?

Go ahead, Becky. And I included those last two verses there.

I mean, obviously the first one, this I command you to the disciples, and I think the broader application is the church.

But I think it just strikes, you know, we have a little division there, at least I do in my authorized version of the MacArthur Study Bible.

But I think it gives us the contrast between how we are to look at one another and how the world looks at us.

We are to look at one another with love. We are to cherish one another as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And then we have how the world looks at us. They hate us. Why? Because they hate

Christ, and we are to look at each other with love. Why? Because Christ loved us, loves us.

If there's somebody in the body of Christ that we don't like, I don't wanna use the word hate, but there's something wrong with us.

We need to figure out what that is. We need to work on that. Unity of the body, being knitted together.

Let's look at Ephesians 4, 1 -6. Who has that?

Ephesians 4, 1 -6. Yes, Carmen. And when we think about it that way, talking about he wants us,

Paul says that he implores us to walk with all humility and gentleness, patience, tolerance.

And he says that we need to be diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit. Why? Because there's only one body, one spirit, one hope, one

Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of. I mean, when we think about the unity that is designed to be here, why would we buck against that?

We need to embrace that. We need to think of each other rightly, think of ourselves rightly, and to try and keep in mind that we are ultimately serving the

Lord and that in serving him, our ultimate goal is to be pleasing to him and to preserve what he has given us.

We need to work on the unity of the body. We need to guard against factiousness.

When Paul wrote, or when Paul was speaking to the elders of Ephesus at the very end, and he talked about how he had not held back anything from the word, that he'd given them all the word.

And he said that to them, that what? That wolves would arise. That there would be, and Jesus talked about this too, there are going to be people who come into the body, whose sole desire is to cause problems, whose sole desire is to have people follow them, whose sole desire is to cause disruption, to cause confusion, to cause disunity.

And those people are to be looked out for, to be confronted, and if they won't repent, to be shunned.

There is no room in the body of Christ for people who want to divide the body of Christ.

Comments, questions, concerns? Anyone want to start church discipline now?

Will. Well, that's an excellent question.

How do we encourage unity when even within the body of Christ, we may have different opinions about things?

And I think that is to, there's an old saying that I can't remember, but it talks about focusing on the essentials and having charity.

I think it may, I don't know how old it is, it's pretty old, that's why I can't remember it. I heard something this morning that said that you peak mentally at 22 and then you start going downhill at 27, and that just really concerns me.

But that we ought to have charity in the non -essentials. Well, what are non -essential doctrines that we can have charity in?

Eschatology. Anything else? Is that it? Okay, everything else rocks on that.

I think there are other things that we can be charitable about. Church leadership. Churches may have other ideas, like they could have deacons who run the church, or they could have congregational rule.

Does that mean that we could never work with them in any kind of spiritual way? No. The ultimate non -negotiable is the gospel.

I mean, would we have nothing to do with Presbyterians because they baptize babies? No. As long as they preach the gospel that we preach, love the

Lord that we love, brother Bruce. Good, and that would be the point of factiousness.

It may be somebody who thinks they're well -meaning. But they disagree with the pastor, the elders in different ways, and they're gonna have their say.

They want people to know that they don't agree with the pastor on X or Y or Z. Well, that person is treading on thin ice and not to be doing that.

Other thoughts? Yes, doctor.

I mean, it gets harder if you're talking about Arminianism versus Calvinism.

I guess there are shades of gray in all those things. There would be Calvinists who say that we ought not, hyper -Calvinists who say we ought not to preach the gospel to the non -elect.

I wouldn't want anything to do with those people. And then there are going to be people that are so Arminian that they sound

Catholic. You have to generate your faith. You have to maintain your faith, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And so it almost sounds like you earn your own salvation.

So I think there's always going to be a balancing act, but I think the key is the essentials.

If I listen to the pastor give the gospel message, would I say that was the gospel or would

I shriek in horror? And a lot of places, when they're going to give you the good news, here's the extent of the good news.

I've been at these churches. Someone asked a question,

I got an email about it this week. Someone asked about a particular church and I just go, I've been there, I've listened.

And they basically said, God loves you, wants you to do the right thing and is wringing his hands, hoping you'll do the right thing.

And I'm like, that is not a church that we can be associated with because that is a church that does not understand

God or the gospel. So doctrinal purity matters, but it is not, we have to be somewhat careful in where we draw our lines.

But clearly, if someone does not understand the gospel, then we would have no unity with them, no affinity with them in spiritual endeavors, which is another topic entirely.

Any other questions? Yes, good question.

She says, where it says we have nothing to do with them, not to even eat with them. Are we to take that literally?

And I think the answer is yes, in this sense that we want to not, there definitely needs to be a difference in the way we respond to them and the way we react to them, in the way we treat them.

And I would not have, if somebody was put out of the church for church discipline purposes, I am not going to have that person until they are repentant over to my house.

Why? Because the Bible says not to do that. So I'm not going to invite them in. I'm not going to sit down and have some meal with them.

In fact, I mean, I would take me personally, I would take it so far as to say, listen, if you wanna come over to my house to repent, or to express your repentant heart about whatever the matter is, well then

I'm probably gonna have a witness or two to just kind of confirm that. And then we'll go from there.

But I'm not going to continue what in essence is fellowshipping with them, because the purpose of not fellowshipping with them is to have them suffer the pain of being cut off from the body of Christ.

And I don't wanna restore that to them without repentance. So that's the objective, Pastor Dave.

Right, good. Yeah, I think that is good.

That always needs to be the key that we're not accepting of their position. Did you have another one, Kelly? That's a good question.

What if they're family members and haven't been officially church disciplined because they left the church, I guess, would be?

I mean, I think that's a matter for conscience, but I mean, for me, I would have to treat them,

I mean, running away from the church is not the same as being innocent or repentant.

So I think I'd still hold them to that same standard. Any other questions?

Okay, well, let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the clarity with which your word deals with church discipline, your love for the church, your desire for unity in the church, and Lord, how you even despise those who would divide it, those who would create factions.

Father, would you protect our church from that? Would you keep us a holy group of sinners devoted to confronting one another in love, examining ourselves first, and Father, devoted to growing in love for one another.