The Laborers' Podcast- Church Discipline

It's what y 'all need to be listening for. 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.

What's 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.

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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 Christ.

It won't help your obedience. We need more expositors. Not more comedians. But shepherds who labor in the text. Then faithfully connect you to the Savior. Then wait for its effects. God gives the increase.

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Preach the word. Come on. Preach the word. You gotta Preach the word. Yeah. 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 in 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 you. All roads in the Bible lead to Golgotha. Whatever the text Faithfulness demands. That we should hear the echoes of nails hit in 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 that.

Preach the word. 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 Laborers podcast. This is us coming together from the Truth and Love Network and forming the Laborers 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. And we have Claude the Happy Calvinist who is with the Here I Stand.

And I can do no other than the Here I Stand Theology podcast. And we're thankful to have these brothers with us tonight. Dan and I are with the Dan's not with us tonight but we're with the Truth and Love podcast.

And thank you for watching. And 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 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. So this, 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 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. Good, good. 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. Oh. 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.

But 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.

Enough 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.

Church Discipline as a Biblical Mark of a Healthy Church

Well, you guys ready to jump in? If you are, we will. Again, we're talking about church discipline. And so my first question, we'll just go around and see what you guys have to say. So 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, first question is yes. 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.

So 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. So 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. Amen.

Amy Rivers, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Nah, I was. I was surprised that you said church is full of sinners man. That's that's not 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.

Now your church is being honest. Yeah, your church is being honest. You're being real. That's right. Yeah, I think it was Billy Graham that said if your church is perfect. Just wait till you get there.

A lot of truth in that. So, okay you you referenced Matthew 18. And I think this is going to segue into our next question. We talk about some of the doctrines that that we believe in that we hold on to.

Even some of the fundamentals. Such as the trinity, you know and some proponents or of these doctrines. They'll say well, you know 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 it 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 and our minds. And 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?

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 will be your two ordinances. But some people would categorize church discipline as an ordinance. Some people would not. Have you thought about that Jesse?

Where would you land on that? Yeah, great question. 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?

So I don't know if you could possibly make it into a sacrament. Because 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 landed on two sacraments. Because they had seven. You know what I mean? With the Rome, with the RCC, they had seven. So Martin Luther, Calvin, and even Theodore Beza 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, you know, the reading of the scriptures. But, you know, you got to be thinking about. I know, what do you call it? Tyler mentioned 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. Amen.

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. Yeah, okay. That was good. Already got it. Yeah. All right, moving on to you, Claude, to the next question. And 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. But 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 going to 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 want to 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 was actually talking 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. 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, right?

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, Christ is the head of the church, that's right.

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 happy Calvinist was saying, basically, it brought me back to Revelation chapter 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, you know, and if you have kids, and if you're watching, you understand what this is.

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, 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 like, take out the paddle, start whipping people, I'm talking about discipline as in like reproof, to correct what was, you know, 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 you know, this is punishment, and sometimes the Lord does punish, like 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 chocolate, you get the belt, discipline, discipline without any knowledge, discipline without any wisdom or love, it was just, it was just, you know, just that secular type discipline, it was punishment, basically, time out, I'm gonna count to three, though that secular version of discipline, which is not discipline at all, and it's 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, and it's to bring us back with Him, to, you know what I mean, to give us wisdom, so next time we will learn and grow and not do that again, you know what I mean?

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

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?

So why does leadership let members just sneak out the back door? 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 Klaub is saying about we don't want to judge people, or 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 him 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, and 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. You're good with that.

So, go ahead. Yeah, there's some clarification. Yeah. 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?

Right. So, he's talking about, if I'm understanding Bruno correctly, he's saying when instances, maybe particularly within church leadership, elders or deacons, right? 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, right?

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. So, 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.

After having gone through 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 old 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 a 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.

So 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. 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. That letter? Yeah. 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 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. 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, right, 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, they, 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 is 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 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.

And so this is what that letter said. Of course, no names are going to be here, but 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, then 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, Ramona 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 contact with, much like Achan in the Old Testament. So, yeah, thank you. I'm sorry I took so long. No, that's fine.

Thank you for sharing. I mean, that's 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.

And 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. 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 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 a 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? And so because somebody did it wrong or because of this reason, I'm fearful of practicing it.