The Laborers' Podcast- Church Discipline

Yo, let me explain what I mean, it's not too complex, it's preaching God's word in its proper context.

As you listen, be discerning, what you have to determine, was the point of the passage the point of the sermon?

If not, this problem must be confronted today, cause he just used the Bible to say what he wanted to say.

And even if it's delivered with fire and intelligence, that's basically making what God has inspired irrelevant.

Instead of applying the word's reality, a lot of passages rely on personality, but gifts of communication can never be a true replacement for the

Holy Spirit's illumination. Without exposition, you'll lack major profit. All you'll get is tradition and your pastor's favorite topics, and that can be a slippery slope.

The word should be giving you hope, this dude is just giving you jokes. That won't help you love cry, it won't help your obedience.

We need more expositors, not more comedians. But shepherds who labor in the text and faithfully connect you to the

Savior, then wait for its effects. God gives the increase, holiness, love, unity, the word faithfully preached builds up the whole community.

If not, your Sunday meal will not last, and you'll have to supplement it with the podcast. Don't entertain us, that won't sustain us.

Preach the word, preach the word, preach the word. This verse right here, it's for the pastors.

I just want to encourage y 'all, man. Yeah. Y 'all should be mindful of this devout thesis.

All of the Bible is about Jesus. The Old Testament, Jesus Christ concealed. The New Testament, Jesus Christ revealed.

This truth of the Lord Christ boldly conveyed this in Luke 24 on the road to Emmaus. The Lord of Prophets and the teachings of apostles, all of these point back to Jesus and the gospel.

So if the work of Christ is what the word is about, ultimately that should be what the sermon's about. Forget applause, you got to let the cross rock ya.

All roads in the Bible lead to Golgotha. Whatever the text, faithfulness demands that we should hear the echoes of nails hitting his hands.

Don't try to be original, say the old story, and watch your people change as they behold glory.

The glory of Jesus, we need to see it. Yeah, preach the word. Come on.

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the podcast tonight. We really appreciate you watching. Let us know that you're watching.

Say hello, ask questions, join in, leave your comments. We'd really appreciate your participation in this conversation.

This is the Laborer's Podcast. This is us coming together from the

Truth and Love Network and forming the Laborer's Podcast. We have

Tyler, who is with the Bread of the Word Podcast, Jesse, the Chicano Knox, who is with the

Bible Theory Podcast. That's correct, right? Right, right. Bible Theory. The Bible Theory Podcast.

We have Claude, the Happy Calvinist, who is with the Here I Stand, and I can do no other, the

Here I Stand Theology Podcast. We're thankful to have these brothers with us tonight.

Dan's not with us tonight, but we're with the Truth and Love Podcast. Thank you for watching. Again, let us know that you're watching.

Let us know how we can pray for you. We're doing a series on pulling from Scripture.

Of course, Scripture is God speaking to us, telling us who He is and who He would have us to be and who we are apart from Him.

But we are wanting to draw from Scripture to learn, when we look at our church, what

God would see in us. And a lot of people are calling it, the buzzwords today are a healthy church, a biblically healthy church.

So we want our churches and its practices to match what we see in Scripture.

And so, in that series, tonight, our topic is going to be church discipline.

I know that it may be new to your ears. You have maybe heard this terminology thrown around a little bit.

Maybe you are extremely familiar with it and you've studied it. But that's the conversation that we want to have tonight, is that the

Bible teaches that a Christian church, His church, would practice church discipline.

And, of course, our goal, our passion, our desire is to reach our community.

We want to lock arms with you, brother and sister, to reach our community. I don't think this conversation is going to be exhaustive.

It's not going to be too deep. Hopefully, we will touch on some of things, some hot -button topics of current issues today.

But, you know, this may be for people who are unfamiliar. It's not being taught in your area that this is a biblical mark of a healthy church.

And so we want to introduce it. We want to talk about it and maybe go a little deep into the conversation.

So how are you brothers doing tonight? You doing well? Yeah, I'm doing good.

Can you guys hear me okay? Absolutely. Loud and clear. All right. Perfect.

Yeah, I'm doing good. How about y 'all? How's the weather over there? Hot. Yeah, it was a hot one over here, too.

It was a hot one over here, too. It's like instant sweat.

You walk outside. Absolutely. We had a heat index of 107 degrees today down in South Carolina.

That's like duct tape on your face, man. Isn't it part of South Carolina known as Death Valley?

Yeah. What's that? The stadium where Clemson plays. Yes, yes. Boo Clemson.

Roll Tide! Yeah. And I'm from up north.

I grew up with the Pac -12, so don't hate on me, man. Uh -oh. Okay. We don't get as much love as the

SEC, but whatever. That's true. That's true. Well, you guys ready to jump in?

If you are, we will. Again, we're talking about church discipline. My first question, we'll just go around and see what you guys have to say.

Tyler, you're at the top, so I'm going to start with you, brother. Here's my first two questions. Is church discipline biblical, and where is it taught in Scripture?

Well, the first question is yes. The second question is there's really a lot of places we could go to pull out what we call church discipline.

A lot of the favorite places are like Matthew 18, the letters of John. But let me refer to Ephesians chapter 5.

It's a little more generic than some other passages, but there's just some great stuff in Ephesians.

Ephesians is a book I've been through probably half a dozen times. It was my favorite book as a teenager.

I got a lot out of it. But chapter 5 tells us, once I get there.

It's all good. This is interesting, going to Ephesians.

As a general context, I can see where you're going, but I'm interested to hear this. Yeah, me too. Ephesians chapter 5, verse 1 says,

Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us, and gave himself for us.

A sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. But sexual immorality and any impurity or greed should not even be heard of among you, as is proper for saints.

Obscene and foolish talking or crude joking are not suitable, but rather give thanks.

For know and recognize this, every sexually immoral or impure or greedy person who is an idolater does not have an inheritance in the kingdom of God.

So what Paul's telling the church in Ephesians is, we're to walk differently. And this problem of sin is still something we deal with.

This is still something we have to be aware of. We have to be cognizant of it, possibly even more so.

Because now there's a higher calling on this thing called the church. And the church is beautiful, but it's also full of broken people.

The church is full of sinners. I go to church with a lot of sinners. And this idea of discipline is

A, recognizing that our churches are full of sinners and that we have to walk with Christ.

We are walking with Him, as Paul says in Romans, this is our worship to sacrifice our lives for His, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

And then Paul tells us in Ephesians to walk in love. And so this word, discipline, ultimately has the word in it, disciple.

That what our aim with discipline is to help each other be disciples who walk in love and love

God. Go ahead.

I was surprised that you said church is full of sinners, man. That's nuts. That's crazy.

I thought it was full of holy people. You know, the righteous. There's no problems in the church, man.

I don't know what you're talking about. Maybe I'm in the wrong church. No, your church is being honest.

Your church is being honest. You're being real. That's right. I think it was

Billy Graham that said, if your church is perfect, just wait till you get there. That's right.

That's right. A lot of truth in that. So, okay.

You referenced Matthew 18. And I think this is going to segue into our next question. We talk about some of the doctrines that we believe in, that we hold on to, even some of the fundamentals, such as the

Trinity. And some proponents of these doctrines, they'll say, well, that word's not in the

Bible. And you'll have that come up with different theological arguments, like the rapture.

Well, the rapture's not in the Bible. And we'll say, those folks will say, or those folks that defend the

Trinity will say, well, the concept is taught in the Bible. It's a little bit different with church discipline.

And that's why I think the importance of it should come up in our hearts, in our minds, in our conversations, in church life, just as much as some of these other doctrines, because you go to Matthew 18, and Jesus spells it out for us, the procedures, the application.

Jesus gives the teaching, the doctrine, and application there, and the reason for it.

Yeah. I mean, it's just laid out there for us in Scripture. So, speaking of the importance of church discipline, and the fact that it's so clear in Scripture, my second question, and we'll go down to you,

Jesse, and I don't know if any of you guys have ever thought about this. As I've studied church discipline over the years, this question has come in my mind, and I've not had too many conversations about it, but I have heard some discussion.

Would you consider church discipline a church ordinance? If so, why? If not, why?

So, and maybe we can define what an ordinance is, and we may call that different things in our different churches, and that's okay.

I think our staples, the ones that most people would consider ordinances, would be baptism and the

Lord's Supper, especially in baptistic churches. Those would be your two ordinances, but some people would categorize church discipline as an ordinance.

Some people would not. Have you thought about that, Jesse? If you have, where would you land on that?

Yeah, great question. Yeah, I'm not sure if I could actually find it as an ordinance, because basically what you're trying to say is ordinances is the same as the

Lord's table, as an institution within the body, like a sacrament.

Is that what you mean? Is that what you're meaning? Yeah, I wouldn't say it would be an ordinance, because the scriptures already kind of, it's a pretty major theme in the scriptures.

Obviously, when you go back to the garden, you have Adam and Eve in a perfect situation in the sanctuary of God, in the garden, right?

And then they sin and they rebel against God and God kicks them out. So basically that act of God kicking them out is like a sort of discipline, like a correction to purify, right?

Although it caused massive consequences in the world, as in sin, death, misery, you know what

I mean? And so I don't know if you could possibly make it into a sacrament, because once,

I think it's a slippery slope, because once you go there, then you're kind of going back to having like potentially, logically, the end result might be seven sacraments at the end of the day, which is kind of like a reversal of the

Reformation, which they kind of, they landed on two sacraments, because they had seven.

You know what I mean? With the RCC, they had seven. So Martin Luther, Calvin, and even

Theodore Reza and everybody, they all concluded that there was technically just two.

All other things are just like institutions, like marriage. Marriage is like, according to the

Roman Catholic Church, is a sacrament. It's one of the seven sacraments. But is it, right?

Is it just because it's a custom and God had the first, conducted the first marriage between Adam and Eve, is that a regulatory institution within the universal church?

And the Reformers opted out from that understanding based on the reading of the scriptures.

But you got to be thinking about, I know, what you call it, Tyler mentioned it earlier, discipline is a very important thing.

You know what I mean? And discipline, the concept of discipline is basically, I have a quote right here by Matthew Henry, and he says, the way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve the purity of it.

You know what I mean? You can't preserve the church without having some sort of, you know, actions in place, some sort of like consequence in place.

In fact, when you join a church, like, first of all, you can't get discipline if you're not part of a church.

If you're not a member of the church, there's no official discipline. There's no official excommunication or ban or whatever.

Like you can't really get banned if you're not part of there, right? I guess they get to tell you not to join, not to like come on the premises again or whatever.

But technically there's no official ban if you're not really a part of the church, right?

So like this discipline only applies to Christians and it only applies to church members, right?

It doesn't apply to like anybody walking into the church. So yeah, I would say it's important too to answer your question.

I wouldn't say it would be an explicit ordinance like the sacrament.

That was an excellent answer. I really appreciate that, Jesse. That was fantastic. Does anybody have any other thoughts on that?

I know Jesse brought up some church history, which is something you're interested in, Tyler. Any other thoughts on that?

I think that was really good. I say amen and amen. All right, moving on to you,

Claude, to the next question. This landed on you and I'm thankful because Claude sent us some good reading material prior to the program and I really appreciate it.

And one of the things that he sent to us, I think is addressed in this question.

And so the question is, what are some misconceptions about church discipline and what is it not?

I would say this. One of the misconceptions concerning church discipline from the world looking in and from the church or individual

Christians not being taught this from the ground up is that it's unloving.

It's unkind. And they would say, some would even, of course, use the term, it's very judgmental.

Some would say, oh, did you not read where Jesus said judge not?

And then we follow with saying, oh, did you not read what Jesus said immediately following that statement?

And that we as believers are called to judge one another very much.

Now, we're not called to, I mean, church discipline isn't, and I'm gonna read from my notes here, church discipline doesn't, it isn't meant for us to, as elders of the body and the body itself amongst one another, it isn't meant to try to police the private lives of church members.

Its purpose, church discipline's purpose is to correct the public sins of our brothers and sisters in Christ, restore them to right relationship with the

Lord, and when that happens, we're in right relationship with one another, and there is harmony and unity within the body.

Okay, so before we move on, anybody else have anything, any other misconceptions that you've heard or anything you wanna add to what church discipline is not?

Yeah, if I could. Sorry about that, man. Go ahead, Tyler. You're good. I don't have a whole lot of experience at enacting church discipline, but I have sat under some subpar examples of church discipline, and I can speak a little bit from that end of the spectrum with misconceptions that,

I actually talked to somebody about this recently, about this notion that the pastor should have the undying loyalty of his congregation and that they should be his faithful followers, and so when we think in that term of who is loyal to me in the church, we have this, almost this hermeneutic of looking at people in light of who

I need to get back in line, who do I need to police, as Claude was saying, who is the problem here, but I don't think that's what we find in scripture.

Correct. We're talking about provoking one another to love and good works.

We're talking about helping make disciples of one another, of bearing one another's burdens, and these kinds of phrases occur throughout the whole

New Testament, and so it is a grave misconception to view the pastor as the king of the church, who is wielding this rod of iron.

He's not the head of the church. Christ is the head of the church, and so the pastor is an authority who is under authority, much like the government, that it is set up by God to do what he set it out to do while honoring the fact that he is over them.

Yeah. That was tweet -worthy there, and organ -worthy. The preacher's not the head of the church.

Thank you, Cindy. Play the organ, bro.

What were you going to add, Jesse? No, Tyler already said a bunch of stuff, but you know what?

Going back to what the Calvinist was saying, basically, it brought me back to Revelation 3, where Jesus says,

To those whom I love, I reproof and discipline. So be zealous and repent.

Yeah, the concept of love is connected to discipline because if God didn't love us, he wouldn't discipline us, and if he didn't discipline us, he wouldn't be our nurturing father.

And if you have kids, and if you're watching, you understand what this is, and obviously it applies to the church because the pastors are like shepherds.

They're not lords, right? They're like under -shepherds. They're just people like me and you.

They're humans, and we make mistakes too, but the pastors love their congregations, or at least they're supposed to, and if they love their congregations, their congregate members, the church members, they would discipline people, right?

Not saying take out the paddle and start whipping people. I'm talking about discipline as in reproof to correct what was crooked or something like that, and Proverbs 29 brings that fatherly, family -type image to this whole biblical concept of discipline because a lot of people confuse discipline with punishment, and a lot of people think, oh,

I don't want to get punished by the Lord, or this is punishment, and sometimes the Lord does punish.

He does discipline Israel sometimes like that, but usually it's correction, and it's because he loves his people.

He wants them back. Obviously, we'll talk about that later, I'm sure, but Proverbs 29, 15 in the beginning, in section

A, it says, the rod and reproof give wisdom. So when

I discipline my daughter, for example, I tell her, I'm like, do you know what the rod is for?

Do you know why correction is for? You know what I mean? And when I was growing up, my mom didn't tell me this.

It was just like, bam, you got the chanclet, you get the belt. Discipline without any knowledge, discipline without any wisdom or love.

It was just that secular -type discipline. It was punishment, basically.

Time out. I'm going to count to three, that secular version of discipline, which is not discipline at all, and is not loving.

And so pastors who love their church will discipline their church members because we have a

God who loves us and who disciplines us, and the rod is to correct us, is to bring us back with him, you know what

I mean, to give us wisdom, so next time we'll learn and grow and not do that again. You know what I mean?

So that's real quick. I want to stay on that. Amen. Yeah, that's fantastic.

And before we run out of time, I do want us to talk about what it is. And, you know, we talked about where we could find it, but what church discipline is and make sure that we have some right conceptions of what it is.

And we leave folks with that. Before we go any further, though, we have a brother of mine that is asking some practical questions.

And are you able to see the comments? Is anybody able to see the comments? I can.

Okay. Oh, there they are. Great, great. So I want to pop them up one by one and let you guys see if you want to try to answer any of these questions.

So Brother Bruno Ramos, he says, why does leadership let members just sneak out the back door and bring it to the body?

Hmm. So why does leadership let members just sneak out the back door?

Hmm. Yeah, I don't know what... I think there's a couple of things missing by that.

Tyler, what's your thoughts on that? I think some of it has to do with some of what

Claude was saying about we don't want to judge people. We don't... There's a line we don't necessarily want to cross there.

Why does leadership let members sneak out the back door and bring it to the body? I think sometimes it comes back to we want to be nice.

We want to not step on toes that we don't want to hurt people's feelings. But sometimes we have to have those hard conversations.

Sometimes it does look like that rod. Psalm 23 tells us that his rod and his staff comfort me.

And part of the imagery there is the shepherd would literally break the legs of the sheep to keep them from running away if it was detrimental to the sheep for them to keep running away.

Sheep are not wise animals. You can read all about this online. But sheep are smart, but they don't have wisdom.

And so sheep need to be constantly guided. And sometimes the task of the shepherd was a bit invasive, like breaking the legs or he has a rod.

He has a staff that's got a hook on it so he can drag the sheep. And oftentimes

I'm speaking very generally on churches in the United States. But oftentimes pastors are hesitant to be shepherds in that sense.

Because it's hard. Because it's not popular. In an age where we want to be nice.

Where we want to be open and affirming. And to use a lot of that kind of language.

We don't want to shepherd when it gets harsh. If that helps.

Yeah. And Rob, if you want to show the remainder of his questions his explanations there in the next couple and all the way down to where he says leave the body sneak out the back and not be brought to the church.

I think I understand what he's saying here. And I'd like to take a stab at answering that.

Yes, sir. Yeah, there's some clarification.

And then I think this one part of it in order to key the peace in the church and not create an atmosphere of murmuring and gossip if families and members of the body are on the fence to the point that they are about to leave especially if they are faithfully serving why do we find out only once they are gone for weeks.

If I'm understanding Bruno correctly he's saying when instances maybe particularly within church leadership elders or deacons they fall into sin they continue in sin nothing said to the congregation nothing's brought before the body and they try to sweep them out the back door as though they're being whisked away by a private jet so no drama happens so nothing comes up and nothing takes place.

Hopefully that's what you're saying there, Bruno. That's what I'm picking up on from the context there.

And I would say Bruno's concern is very real that the issue of sin itself is not addressed within the church and before the church body for after having gone through the steps of the gospel steps of church discipline, right?

Go to the individual one -on -one if they won't hear you, take two or three witnesses with you.

By the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established. If they don't hear you then take it before the church right?

Again, that's the hard part right there. That's the challenge or that's the public challenge the private challenge is being physically and spiritually willing to say, you know what?

I'm not going to gossip about this. I'm not going to ask so -and -so what he thinks about this.

Listen, if you've got a problem with a brother or sister in Christ if they are in sin and I'm not talking about a pet peeve

I'm talking about sin because there's a big difference between pet peeves and sin. That's right.

But when the brother or sister is in sin the scriptures teach us that if you see a brother or sister overtaken in a sin you which are spiritual should go to them in the spirit of meekness and consider yourself lest you also be tempted, right?

Because the sin, just because somebody sins differently than you it don't mean that you're any better or any different than them.

You're just better at sinning in this area than they are, right? Or so on and so forth.

Right. Rather than let this be swept under the rug and rather than just letting it go untold or unheard then the challenge is, and I'll speak personally to this.

This takes us right to what we talked about before we came on Rob. This goes to the hard part of actually going when you have to go that third step of church discipline and bring it before the church that is challenging.

But remember the purpose of church discipline itself, right? It's open rebuke after following gospel steps.

And the end goal in church discipline is reconciliation. That's the bottom line.

It's not to embarrass anybody. It's not to put anybody down. It's to the goal is to be reconciled to God first and then to your brothers and sisters to which you have committed yourself being a member of that body of believers.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead. Is it all right if I go ahead and share this,

Rob? Absolutely. Because in 14 years since Reformation Baptist Church was planted we still have growing pains.

We still have problems. We still have issues. We still ain't got everything figured out.

We ain't got most stuff figured out. We don't know exactly how to do stuff and just like anything with life, sometimes application of the

Scriptures for us is trial and error. So Bruno said, yeah. So application is trial and error.

So here's the thing. Let's say and this is a literal example, adultery happens within the church, right?

Within the family of a deacon, the husband and the wife, right?

So this happened in the church. The issue was addressed individually.

We actually the morning we found out about it, we actually went directly to their house, talked with them about the issue.

The wife was unrepentant. The husband, he slipped out.

He ain't gone. I don't even know where he is now, but the wife absolutely because she committed adultery.

She was unrepentant. She was refusing to acknowledge her sin, right?

So then after that, two or three witnesses came from the church. So two or three witnesses go to her.

They go to in the spirit of love because they're concerned because this is a young family and man,

I'm talking about a faithful family had a handful of kids.

I mean, they were good parents and no doubt they still might be quote -unquote good parents, but where they went is absolutely the wrong direction.

So she wouldn't hear two or three witnesses. So here comes the hard part, and this is about four or five years ago now,

I guess. Here comes the hard part. So they're not coming to church anymore.

So the easy thing to do would be to say, you know what? They're not here anymore. That drama's not in the midst of the congregation, so we're not even going to say anything about it.

But here's the problem. It did affect the congregation because everybody, being a small church, everybody knows each other, right?

And generally, everybody loves each other to the point where we don't want to allow one another to live in sin because it hurts the individual and it hurts the body as a whole.

So we had to come to the decision, got together with our elders, we discussed, we talked about it, and the best way that I knew how to make application here was, because they weren't there anymore, was to do this.

I spent an entire sermon on one Sunday actually going through step by step what is church discipline, what's the purpose of church discipline, why church discipline is important, how it was set up and established for the church of the living

God, for us to give accountability to one another and to glorify God. And then that following Sunday, we got up, we announced to the church that the gospel steps had been taken, and though we did not want to do it, and though we did, and like we admitted just a minute ago, we did not know exactly what the right thing to do, but the best thing

I knew how to do in application was this. I wrote a letter to the individual. Now here's the thing.

The letter wasn't just between me as a pastor and the elders of the congregation to this individual, but this was intended to be a letter from the entire congregation.

Because as a body, we are a whole. So this is what that letter said. Of course no names are going to be here, but this is,

I want everybody to get the gist of this. So letter from the church.

I wrote, it is in Christian love that I'm writing this letter. Very simply and to the point, we want to address the issue of your sin, and how it has affected both your relationship with the

Lord and with His people. You are aware that as Christians and members of the local body of Christ here at Ramona Baptist Church, that we are accountable to one another for our lives.

How we live matters. Morality matters. Holiness matters.

If you are a Christian and you have a responsibility, direct message. If you are a

Christian, you have a responsibility to repent, to turn away from your sin. We have followed gospel steps as laid out in Matthew 18.

Individuals have come to you and addressed the sin. Two or more have come to you and addressed the matter of sin.

And now the third step in the process of church discipline is to bring it before the church and to let the church as a body address the issue of sin.

This letter is to let you know that we as a church body love you, and our desire for you is to be reconciled to your husband and to the body of Christ.

If you repent of your sin and reconcile with your husband, then as a church, we will move forward together.

If you do not repent, then as a church, we will break fellowship, meaning that you will not be allowed to partake in communion until such time as you demonstrate biblical repentance.

We love you and desire the best for you. Sincerely, Rev.

Armada Baptist Church. I read this letter to the church. I laid it down on the front table, and I said, having been instructed what the

Bible teaches us about church discipline and our responsibilities to one another in the body of Christ, if you, as an individual member, agree with what the scriptures say and with the body of this letter, then

I want to ask you as an individual member, when we dismiss, come up, put your name on this letter.

And that's exactly what we did. And it ended up every single member came, and they signed their name on that letter.

Now here's what that does. See, it's not just the elders trying to follow biblical counsel.

Now it's the whole body united together as one to seek the honor and the glory of God.

I'd love to be able to tell you their marriage was restored, fellowship to the church is restored.

They've not been back since. However, as believers, we took gospel steps, and we followed through with this, and it wasn't swept under the rug.

It wasn't made a pretense that this never happened, but it was a demonstration of just how that sin truly affects the body of Christ, and how it hurts not just the sinners, the one who's doing the sinning, but it affects those in whom they are in contact with, much like Achan in the

Old Testament. I'm sorry I took so long.

Thank you for sharing. I think it's so important for people to hear and see the compassion behind it, and the desire to honor

Christ and honor the Father in this practice, because we love

Him, and we love people. That was precious, and it showed the difficulty, but yet the obedience.

I want to address Bruno's other practical question here, but let me chime in just for a second, because I think each of us can bring to the table a lot of the who, what, when, where, why questions about church discipline, and I'll just give you one example, or two examples that pop into my mind, but it goes back to the very beginning when

I started with Tyler, and I asked Tyler the question, is church discipline biblical? And Tyler answered with the affirmative, yes.

So that's where we must plant our feet, and it's not just with church discipline, it's with every other biblical doctrine.

That's where we must plant our feet. If it's biblical, if God is teaching us to practice this and obey this, then we must plant our feet there, so in my mind, if I'm a pastor, and this, there's a situation, and I need to practice church discipline,

I need to be obedient, but I'm afraid I might lose my job.

I go back to the question I asked Tyler, and then proceed from that in my direction, and how

I approach it. In a church that I attended many, many years ago,

I had a conversation with several folks about why are we not practicing church discipline?

We need to have this conversation, and the individual that I was having the conversation with said, I look back in church records, and our church did practice church discipline years ago, but one of the reasons it looks like they stopped practicing church discipline is because it looks like it turned into a witch hunt, and they just were going after everybody, and so we must ask ourselves the question, just because people in our past practiced it wrongly,

I need to go back to the question that I asked Tyler, is it biblical? Because somebody did it wrong, or because of this reason,

I'm fearful of practicing it. We go back to the first question, is it biblical?

That's where we plant our feet. If people did it wrong, we can learn where they made their mistakes, and how

God calls for us to do it, but we always go back to that first question, no matter what our experience, no matter what we hear, what we read from the past, we go back to that first question.

Let's look at this practical question that Bruno asked, and we have another question. Let me find it again.

Okay. Jesse, maybe you can chime in.

This may or may not be related specifically to church discipline. It may just be a fault in leadership, maybe.

I'll let you see what you think about it. What if they are not in sin, and they decide to leave the church, and the leadership knows it, but the leadership doesn't say anything to the congregation?

Yeah, it's a hard one. It depends. You have to go on a case -by -case situation. First of all, the elders of the church are supposed to handle everything with love and care.

They're supposed to be spiritual. They're supposed to handle everything with knowledge and wisdom. That in itself, it's like running short in our day.

You have to trust that you have really good leaders to handle situations like that. It takes me back to 1 Timothy chapter 5 verse 19.

Paul says, do not omit a charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

I know it applies to elders between elders, but at the same time, you can apply that a little wider to church members and be like, you know, this is what he said, or that's what they're doing.

It goes into rabbit trails. It's a slippery slope to get into that kind of thing.

Plus, not everything needs to be said to the church. You know what I mean? It's kind of like a wild fire in California.

There's always fires in California, right? Burning up like 128 acres or 128 ,000 acres.

It's all over the news. Just watch. Church discipline could be that.

It could turn into a wildfire within the snap of a finger. A pastor could come up and say something and be like, it's true, but there's no evidence.

Then the pastor should apply wisdom and say, maybe this should not be public in the sense where the church doesn't need to know this.

This is between me and family X, Y, and Z. This is between me and elders so -and -so, between the deacons and that family.

That's a case. If you study biblical counseling, there's a thing called cases.

Every deacon and every elder, if you've been involved in church life and church polity, you will have cases with families dealing with my son is struggling with pornography.

88 % of men struggle with pornography, according to Barna and Pew Research. Are you going to stand up the next

Sunday and just give an announcement that to everybody? One, you're going to destroy the kid and he will never come back out.

Two, it's a family situation. Legally, you could probably get sued for defamation and all kinds of stuff like that.

Do you want your medical records to be blasted against everybody on social media?

No. There's a HIPAA act to protect your private health care rights, to keep it private.

Church leaders should take situations case by case. Not everything needs to be brought before the church.

According to biblical counseling, some cases need to be handled privately.

Some church disciplines need to be handled privately. Not every single thing needs to be blasted through an email and blasted out loud on a

Sunday. You don't want to cause gossip on one hand and you don't want to cause self -destruction on the other hand, too.

Both kind of lead to the same way. You've got to be careful. That's why I take discipline and wisdom and knowledge for a pastor to handle a certain case of biblical counseling because that's what it is.

It's counseling. You're counseling people with the Word of God. You're not just pastors are not news reporters.

They're counselors. That's what

I would say. Well, and what you were saying really ties into this next question and,

Claude, we don't have to answer this question specifically and get more in detail in the specific case that you were talking about but Jesse is bringing up a great point about counseling and that I think and correct me if I'm wrong, guys, but counseling is definitely a part of this.

This should be a slow process unless they want to move it forward quickly themselves but this should be a slow process of reconciliation and counseling is to me, newthetic.

It's bringing Scripture to the table, teaching, reproving and correcting and that is what counseling is and we should take as much time as necessary.

We're not witch hunters. We're not head hunters. We're not looking to quickly kick people out of church.

We are looking for reconciliation between all parties, the Lord and each other and so I think counseling is definitely part of it.

Yes, and it should be it should be what's the word?

Pursued. Exactly. It should be pursued. Yes, Ms. Carter.

The offer of counsel was there. There was just no reception.

Sometimes that's the case and that's the hard reality of things.

We want the best. We seek the best for the body of Christ but sometimes folks don't want what we want.

They want what they want and that's the problem of sin. That we want what we want more than we want what

God wants or what God has provided and given to us. Yes, and to me as difficult as it is and I know it's difficult.

It's difficult for me to be corrected. It's difficult for me to want to correct someone else.

We all understand how difficult it is but it goes back to first being saved, dying to self and submitting to Christ and this is what he would have me to do.

Submit myself to a local body of believers. Submit myself to the authority of the elders and therefore be open to being corrected and being open to correcting others in the biblical way that we've been talking about.

And so that's just part of Matthew 28 18 -20.

Disappointing others and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. That's right. Submitting to that.

And to quote a non -biblical author but a pretty wise man, Al Mohler said this concerning church discipline,

God's loving discipline of his people is his sovereign right and is completely in keeping with his moral character.

His own holiness, his fatherly discipline also establishes the authority and pattern for discipline in the church.

Correction is for the greater purpose of restoration and the even higher purpose of reflecting the holiness of God.

So Tyler, we'll turn to you and we'll proceed to the next question. And I want to set it up with these words and I'll try to make it quick.

So the next question is, why is church discipline more than preaching on Sunday? And we had a question before the program started maybe a day or so ago.

And we'll try to interpret his question. What does that mean in preaching, specifically to church discipline?

So we were talking about before the podcast, some people categorize church discipline in two different ways.

Formative discipline and church discipline. And so there's two questions or one thing to avoid.

We want to practice both and not one or the other because some people lean on the formative side and say, well

I'm practicing church discipline because I am teaching,

I'm preaching, I'm approving, I'm approving from the pulpit, from the classroom. And so I'm practicing church discipline by practicing formative discipline, which is the teaching part of it.

And then the corrective part of church discipline is the following the steps that Claude has been talking about from Matthew 18.

Go to them privately, take one or two with you. And so to be biblical, we've got to practice both.

We can't say, well I'm doing it just, I'm practicing church discipline because I'm practicing formative.

We've got to be practicing both to be biblical. And so I think where the gentleman was coming from when he asked the question, what does that mean in preaching?

Tyler, if you were to give pastors advice, and Claude and Jesse, you're welcome to chime in on this one.

We want to introduce this to our congregation. We want to, as part of formative discipline, we want to be teaching what is and how to practice corrective church discipline.

We want it to be, you know, it's not an ordinance, as we talked about earlier, but it is important in our church life, in our church body.

So how would a pastor introduce it to his congregation? How would he keep it important in church life?

Do you have any thoughts on that? As someone who has been in the pew and who has sustained church hurt before, let me start off by saying there is not many different hurts that are quite like church hurt.

And in the context of church discipline, or lack thereof, when you don't bring something before the church, arguably, it could end up hurting worse than bringing it before the church.

Because when you've been hurt by someone in the congregation, and you've gone to them with a brother, you've gone through the steps, and the pastor won't bring it before the church, and basically demonstrates that that hurt is not worth addressing.

That hurts. That hurts. And in my experience, that hurt for a good while.

I wrestled with depression for a good long bit following that experience, and it stagnated my spiritual growth for a season.

God was gracious in that season, and He put good godly people in my life to help get me out of that and get me back on where I needed to go.

And I refer to Colossians 1, another fantastic epistle.

Colossians is basically an exhortation to growth. And it says in chapter 1, for this reason also, since the day we heard this, we haven't stopped praying for you.

We are asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, wise so that you may walk worthy of the

Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work, and growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might, so that you might have great endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the

Father, who has enabled you to share in the saints' inheritance in the light. Ultimately, I guess

I would say that when done well, church discipline is two parts.

Because A, it's the church discipline, so it's beneficial to the church body.

It strengthens the body, it unifies the body, but it also makes disciples. It enables people to grow.

And sometimes that means giving them room to grow in a different geographical place.

And it may be that growth is not in your immediate presence. But ultimately, it strengthens the church and it makes disciples.

I'd like for you, Tyler, to answer. Looks like Jesse wants to give us something. But based on something you said,

I'd like for you to address this, if you would, because depression and anxiety can come from many different places.

Your example was it can come from church hurt or things going in a not so good direction within the church body and relationships.

But it also can come from other places. Your personal relationships, it can come from health problems, different places.

So, practically, how can you help somebody who is in that place to restore and help their heart, their mind, their relationship with the

Lord? For me, personally, I needed space and I needed

Scripture. The best place for me to camp out during that time was the first three chapters of Revelation.

And I pondered those letters to the seven churches and how these churches are just as messed up as me.

And it was realizing that I am not alone in this notion that people are imperfect.

If you are reading Revelation, if you're John and you're having this vision and God's showing you all these churches that are a mess and you're coming up on the end of your run, that's not necessarily an encouraging thing, that all these churches are a hot mess and you're well beyond your golden years.

But where does God go after that? He gives him a vision of his glory. And he gives him a snapshot of the worship in heaven.

That's a massive paradigm shift right there in what we're beholding.

And I greatly benefited from pondering those opening chapters.

That's actually what Bread of the Word was birthed from, was pondering these letters.

And I've benefited from reading the Psalms, which are every bit as much so that these people are just as messed up as me.

We're reading the cries of broken people. I think part of helping someone heal in depression is helping them know that it's not something new.

It's not something that's an isolated incident that many people have gone through this before.

Many people have glorified God with this journey, with this struggle. I'm a testament of that.

Amen. Amen. Jesse, what did you want to share with us, brother? Well, I wanted to quote real quick, because you said something in the beginning before Tyler got into that, was how can a pastor introduce this to his congregation?

Obviously, he does it when he preaches, but like I said, it does connect to church membership, because you can't really discipline people who don't belong into the church.

And when I was in the OPC, which is the Orthodox Presbyterian Church back in 2000 and I'm, what, 15?

And I still have the book of church order, you know what I mean? I used to read this stuff like a lot. And in here, you know what

I mean, this is 2015, and a lot of it has probably not changed with this when it comes to the reception of new members.

They ask you basically five questions. So basically, you know, your whole family has to go up on a

Sunday before the sermon, you know what I mean? And they kind of see you and they ask you five questions.

Basically, initiation or like, basically these questions is kind of like a public affirmation of your faith.

And this is probably the strongest way a pastor could remind those who are sitting and who are already members.

And then number two, make it absolutely clear on where the church stands and make it absolutely clear on what they believe about church discipline.

And actually, they do the same thing in the PCA. So, you know, they ask, you know, five questions just very, they just word it differently.

But here in OPC, question five, they ask you this, and they say, do you promise to participate faithfully in this church's worship and service, to submit in the

Lord to its government, and to heed its discipline, even in case you should be found in delinquent in doctrine or life.

And then the person has to say, yes, or amen, or I do, whatever, basically affirming like, yes, I'm going to submit and participate to this church and if I found, in my moral life, if I'm found delinquent,

I'm going to submit to the, you know, to the church's discipline, whether it be private or formal or whatever avenue it goes.

Amen. I think that, you know, it just reminded me of what the

OPC does and what many churches do, whether OPC or not, is that it's like a very clear way to like, you're going to become a member here?

That's great. But just let you know, you know, there might be discipline, just in case, you know, if we do find you in delinquent, like in doctrine, like if you don't believe that Jesus is

God, for example, you know what I mean? Or if you don't believe in the Trinity, for example, that's a delinquent in your doctrine, right?

And that's counseling, you know what I mean? We're not going to kick you out because of that, but, you know, repent and turn and believe, obviously, the truth.

We may hold you back from communion at that point, but like you said,

Rob, it could take months to even come to any conclusion. It could take months.

It could take maybe years, you know what I mean? You just never know, but I just wanted to say that real quick. Well, I think that's a great idea, using these special occasions of introducing a member, a potential member to the congregation.

Church membership is a great time to do that, or when you're practicing the Lord's Supper or communion.

And I know that churches, some churches may still do it. I know churches used to do it. Baptists used to have their covenant hanging on the wall.

I didn't agree with everything in the covenant, or some people would paste it in the back.

First, when you open up their hymnal, it would be pasted there in their hymnal, and they would recite it together, you know, occasionally.

When you take those opportunities to interject and explain, well, this is what we mean by this, and this is what you're covenanting to and in, and I think that's a great idea, taking those opportunities to remind people what you've entered into.

Amen. Yeah, that's fantastic. So, we don't have any time left to jump into those hot topic button issues that are currently going on in the world today, in the church, which is okay.

I don't want to take you away from anything that has been said. So, just to recap, you guys fill in the blanks of anything that needs to be said, because we want to leave people with a positive understanding, and just a positive idea of what church discipline is.

Our main text is Matthew 18. Jesus takes us through the steps, and He gives us the purpose.

You know, it's to glorify God. It's for reconciliation, which is a joyous thing.

The process is never easy or difficult, but the conclusion, when it's able to go through its fruition, it's joyous, and it's wonderful, because it glorifies

God. It's putting us back in a position where we're reflecting correctly

Christ and His bride. So, anything else that you guys want to add, or any book recommendations that you would like to share?

Nine Marks have pretty good series on church and ecclesiology. I use

Nine Marks a lot. Obviously, Nine Marks Ministries with Mark Dever, Jonathan Lehman. I like those guys a lot,

Kevin DeYoung. Those guys have written a lot on church discipline. So, I would recommend

Nine Marks of a Healthy Church. One of the chapters in there is actually about church discipline. So, Nine Marks of a

Healthy Church by Mark Dever. What is a healthy church? That's a great place to get started, because it kind of introduces a new believer, a young believer, a person who may not be familiar overall with ecclesiology or church at all.

It would be a great introduction of one of the chapters in there is discipline.

Another good place would be Paul's letters to the Church of Corinth, because those letters are actually in the middle of a church discipline scenario.

So, Paul is walking through this with the Church of Corinth, and it was a hard scenario.

It was not something any of us would want to be in. This isn't the kind of scenario we necessarily ask for, but Paul is walking through the steps, and he's bringing all these doctrinal elements into the play.

He's correcting the church. At times, he's pretty harsh, but he's kind of doing this panoramic of what does this look like to live out this thing we call church discipline.

Yeah. And I would suggest the confessions of Westminster in 1689

LBC, the Belgic Confession, all of these, all of those historic church confessions, they outline church discipline.

Cool. And here's two of my suggestions. One of them comes from Jesse.

He suggested going to Non -Marx Ministries. This book, you can find it there at Non -Marx

Ministries. It's called Polity. It's a collection of historic Baptist documents. So if you're from the

Baptistic perspective, especially the Southern Baptist perspective, this may be interesting to you. This is looking at historical documents and the things that we used to practice.

It features people like Benjamin Keech, Benjamin Griffin, the Charleston Association, Samuel Jones, W .B.

Johnson, Joseph Baker, J .L. Reynolds, P .H. Mill, Eliezer Savage, and William Williams.

So this is just historical documents that show it's nothing new. It's biblical, and we used to practice such things, and it kind of gives their perspective on it.

Here's another good book, The Manual of Church Order by J .L. Dagg, and one of his famous quotes is, when discipline leaves the church,

Christ goes with it. And we could debate that quote, but I really think that quote ties into the end of Matthew 18 there, where Jesus is talking about the keys of the kingdom, and a verse that's highly,

I think, misquoted where Jesus says, Where two or three are gathered in my name, there

I am in the midst. And people use that quite frequently, and sometimes I think out of context, but the context of that verse is

Matthew 18, church discipline, where two or three are gathered there in my name, the keys of the kingdom, having that authority, declaring what, declaring on earth what heaven has already declared,

Jesus said he would be there in their midst. And so, to me, how that relates to Dagg's quote is, if he's in our midst, when we're obeying him in church discipline, if we're not obeying him in church discipline, what does that say?

So, thank you guys so much. This is a difficult topic, but it's a biblical one, and it's a one that, you know, part of Christ's teaching that we need to honor and obey.

So, thank you guys so much, and thank you guys for watching and asking questions and participating. We really appreciate it.

Claude, if you would share the gospel with us, and Jesse, if you wouldn't mind praying after he does that, that would be great.

So, the gospel is laid out in the Scriptures, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 4 primarily is that Christ died for our sins, according to the

Scriptures, that he was buried, and according to the Scriptures, he rose from the grave. The Scriptures teach us that we are, every single one of us born in sin, shaped in iniquity.

We have the curse of sin passed down since the fall in the Garden of Eden. However, we have the wonderful, great, and gracious goodness and mercy of our

God, who sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for our sins, in our place, when we deserved the wrath of God, Jesus Christ took upon himself the wrath of God on our behalf, so that we might know the forgiveness of sins, and that we have eternal life, that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God, that there is no other. Scriptures teach us that there is no other name given among men, named among men, whereby we must be saved, but by the name of Jesus Christ.

And because of that, I can gladly affirm what the Apostle Paul said,

I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation, to the

Jew first, and also to the Greek, and also unto all them that believe on his name.

And the Scriptures state that whoever, whosoever calls upon the name of the

Lord shall be saved, as long as there is breath in your body, there is hope, as far as we are concerned.

So, turn from your sin, believe on Jesus Christ, trust in his finished work on the cross, trust in the life that he offers you now and today.

Amen. Let's go ahead and pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for sending your Son Jesus to come down and take the punishment that is due to us, that you came and voluntarily put on a human suit, and, you know, you took on the full wrath of sin, and it was real, the death was real, the humiliation, the separation was real,

Lord, and historical, and, you know, it's not made up, it's not fairytale, it's not delusion, it's not mythological, all these fancy words that these people try to throw at us,

Lord, and teach us in schools and preach at us, Lord, it was real, it was historical, so we have faith, not goodwill faith, we have saving faith in your

Son Jesus, we believe and we repent of our sins, Father. I agree,

Lord, we are wretched sinners, we are, we don't deserve your mercy, we deserve, you know, the death penalty,

Father, for cosmic treason, for things that we have thought, things that we have done, things that we have done, but Lord, if we are

Christians, if we believe, if we turn and change our mind about the path that we were on,

Lord, and follow you, you know, your word is true and it says that you will forgive our sins and separate them from, like, the east from the west and you will remember our sins no more, in your word,

Father, your faithfulness is true to redeem us and to make us a new creation, a new person, to set us on a new path.

Father, this podcast, this technology that we use is about this new path that we're on, following you hard and going all out, being sold out to the gospel.

The same thing with John Knox who said, give me Scotland, God, or I die.

Father, give us YouTube or we die, Father, give us unbelievers, give us those who are cast out, those who are struggling, those who are depressed, those who are just wandering off and, you know what

I mean, looking for something to watch and yet, they watch us and then, you know, they become saved because of the gospel.

Father, bring those people to us, help us in our families, help us with our kids, help us with our ministries, help us in our marriages,

Father, help us to love our wives, help us to smile because sometimes we don't smile enough,

Father, you know, and help us to be cheery, cheery Calvinists, happy Calvinists and not grumpy old folk people, you know what

I mean. Father, help us and we can't do this on our own, you know, we're poor and wretched, so help us to be redeemed folk like they say in the

South, Lord Jesus, help us, help our podcast, help our listeners, God bless everybody who's listening to this and in the name of Jesus, we pray.

Amen. Amen. Thank you brothers, thank you everybody for watching, we really appreciate it and remember that Jesus is

King, go live in the victory of Christ. Speak with authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ, we hope to see you soon.