Should You Love The Church (part 5) - [Ephesians 5:25]

I have a quote here from R. Kent Hughes in his book, what is it,

The Disciplines of a Godly Man, that's what it is. Listen to this, he says about, now this is a little lofty so I'll have to break it down for just a minute, he says, church attendance is infected with a malaise of conditional loyalty which has produced an army of ecclesiastical hitchhikers.

The hitchhiker's thumb says, you buy the car, pay for repairs and upkeep and insurance, fill the car with gas and I'll ride with you, but if you have an accident you're on your own and I'll probably sue.

And I think sadly this is how many people view church, they're ecclesiastical hitchhikers, that is they move from one ride to the next to the next to the next and their only conditions are, what,

I want it to be easy, I want it to be at absolutely no cost to me and when

I'm not happy I'll find another car to ride in or another church to go to. And I really started this series because this bothers me,

I mean I just don't think this is how we should ever view the church, we've been talking about the different, really how to find a church, what to look for in a church, the different aspects of it and we come, last week we talked about spiritual gifts and this morning we're at, we'll see, it's the nine marks, so we're at mark number seven, the biblical understanding, a biblical understanding of church discipline, a biblical understanding of church discipline and of course we have to go to Matthew chapter 18, so let's turn there, we will read verses 15 through 17,

Matthew 18, and if somebody would read that please, Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 to 17.

Fred. Okay good, thank you.

Now to just kind of go through those step by step, if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private or as Fred read, you and him alone, what does that mean?

Stephen. And so what, keep the circle tight, so what often happens is people go to someone else to complain about it, to complain about a situation that should not happen, ever.

So if someone sins and notice, does it have to be against you,

I mean I don't think so, you know, can you see your brother or sister in some sin and it's not against you,

I think it definitely can be. What, well

I mean there are a number of examples, you can just see the way people treat others, you can see the things that they're involved in, you might by chance see someone go where they ought not to go, you might see someone by chance, maybe it's not even initially in your mind, maybe it's not even a sin, but it certainly seems very unwise, like let's say for example, you were to see me having lunch with a woman who was not my wife, would you say, good job pastor

Steve, way to evangelize, you might say, gee

I don't know, you might come to me and say, gee I don't know what was going on, maybe somebody went to the restroom and there was a third person at the lunch, but you ought to give me a chance to explain, but I think it's good, not for us to be, you know, here's the problem

I think with this first step, is people go, well who am I to judge, or am I to be the sin police, you know, the

SPs, driving around, waiting for the scoop so I can swoop on people, and that's not the picture, the picture is, and this is consistently what

I want us to think about, this isn't about us judging someone else, this isn't about us establishing our superiority over someone else, and when

I say us, I mean each individual in this room, if you love the Lord Jesus, this is for you, if your brother sins, go and reprove him in private, why?

Because you're mad at him, because you're better than he is, because, because you love him, if you see somebody sinning and you don't do this, what are you doing?

You're sinning, and so often I don't think we think about that, someone's in sin, but you know what, it's like, you know, in the 70s there used to be police shows where people used to say what, you know, why didn't you tell somebody, why didn't you call the police, why didn't you do this or that, the other thing, and what did they say?

I didn't want to be involved, you know, or as I would often hear, well,

I didn't think it was my business, it's not my problem, let's go back to that, the wording again, if your brother, this is somebody who is in Christ, a

Christian, if you saw your physical brother doing something that was detrimental to him, would you do anything about it?

No, I don't care about my brother, and of course you would, but somehow we think, well, it's a

Christian and they can handle it on their own, or it's none of my business, it is your business,

Jesus makes it your business, and again, he says to go and reprove him in private, you want to talk to him, you know, go and email him in private, no, he said no, that's exactly what he said, then look, let's move on, we're still on step number one, if he listens to you, you have won your brother, now, what does our

Lord imply there? What's the goal? Restoration and reconciliation, the motivation is love, he's your brother, the goal is restoration and reconciliation, it's not, you know,

I'm going to nail somebody, but moving on, but if he does not listen to you, now, here we are at step two, what we commonly call step two, if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed, this is an

Old Testament principle, you had to have witnesses, I mean, some things we can't actually even believe, if I was to tell you something, maybe you'd believe it, you'd just go, well,

Pastor Steve would never tell a lie, because I'm like George Washington, but sometimes we hear something, we go, that can't possibly be true of that person,

I know that person, and they would never do this, so that's why we take one or two witnesses with us, and we go to that person again, and what do we do?

We confront them again over the same sin, now, you know, obviously at step one, maybe it just seemed like they were ignoring you, maybe it just seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal, maybe you were stretching things out of proportion, but now they've got two or three people coming to them, and what do they start to feel maybe?

Pressure, okay, that's one word for it, I mean, if it's pressure, I guess

I don't really like that so much, because you can be pressured into doing a lot of things, buying a vacuum cleaner, buying a house, buying a car, they feel the seriousness, the weight of it, you know, they begin to understand, look, if one person comes to me, maybe that's a busybody,

I mean, maybe that's their thinking, maybe I think, well, it's nobody's business but mine, and if this person, what do they know, but now two or three people are coming to me, and I started thinking, maybe this is something

I'm not thinking rightly about, maybe I need to repent, and you know, just even at this stage, think about it, you go to somebody because you're concerned about them, that's the motivation, it says your brother, your sister, someone you care about, somebody in Christ, and you know, here, let me just underscore this, do you have the right not to care about your brother or sister in Christ?

If you do not love, then you do not know the

God of love, right? This is first John material here, you can't call somebody your brother or sister and be indifferent to them, the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference, if we love them, we will proactively do things on their account.

Now, if someone has taken the time to actually go to one or two more people and to come back with you, or come back with them, then you feel more the gravity of it, but again, what's the purpose of all this?

The purpose of all this is never to kind of set somebody up to take them down, you know, whatever a worldly mindset would say, the goal is always restoration, but now you've gone with two or three witnesses because one person, you know, turns into a he said, she said, to use a colloquialism and you don't want that, what you want is there to be an overwhelming testimony that this is in fact what's going on.

Then verse 17 again, and if you refuse to listen to them and to this little group that has come to him, then what do you do?

Tell it to the church, tell it to the church body. Now, again,

I think the reason should be obvious, why would you want to tell it to the church?

Because now you're not just, you've got a couple of witnesses and now you are bringing more weight and the way we implement this is somebody after stages one and two have taken place, probably actually after step one has taken place at some point, the elders are going to get involved, but depending on the seriousness of the situation, but two or three people have gone and then it comes to the elders and we will go because we want to take every possible step we can to avoid what's coming up if there's no repentance and we also want to keep it as private as possible.

But presuming that we actually stand up here and read this person's name from the pulpit, it's still not with the purpose of kicking them out of the church.

What's the purpose? Just as it was in the beginning, to see them restored, to see them repent.

Finally, step four, he says, and if he refuses even to listen to the church, so what we do is we let the weight of the church, the church, we tell them, we don't tell them, hey, by the way, so -and -so is involved in X, Y, and Z, or they've done this and they don't think it's wrong.

We can't convince them they won't repent. What do we say? Therefore, we're kicking them out. No, we say we want you, any of you that know them, any of you that don't know them, we want you to go to them and call them to repentance.

Again, the objective is restoration, and it's done not out of spite or anger or judgment, but out of love because unrepentant sin indicates what?

If someone won't repent of a sin, what would we think? They're not

Christians. People who love the Lord confess their sins.

If we do not confess our sins, then the truth is not in us. Yes, good.

That's an excellent question. What Bob said was, okay, let's talk about this two or three witnesses thing. If I see something and I'm the only one who saw it, then how do

I go about recruiting two or three witnesses? Because two or three people didn't see what happened. It was just me. Is that a fair summary?

And the purpose of the two or three witnesses isn't, you know, Bob and I saw something and we're going to go after that person.

It's Bob comes, I'm just using me because it's easy. You know, Bob comes to me and says, this is what

I saw. I went to that person. They won't repent or this is what happened. This person won't repent.

And so now the two of us go and my purpose isn't to say, oh, I saw it too. I heard it too.

This isn't test of lying as we used to call it on the police department. You know, you swear to it and I'll lie or you lie and I'll swear to it.

This is, this is,

I'm there to witness their response. If they say, well, yeah,

Bob brought it to me and I repented. I don't know what he's talking about. And I just go, Bob, we need to have a little confab here.

You know, but typically, and I remember this is a fairly unusual request.

I was asked by my pastor in LA to skip morning service.

That doesn't happen very often. He said, well, we need to go and confront somebody. And I think you're the right man for the job.

And he said, the main reason I want you is because this man is addicted to methamphetamine and his wife thinks he has some.

And so, you know, you would kind of know about that sort of thing. And I said, well, okay. If you insist.

And we, we did find the drugs and all that. And I honestly, I'll never forget that because I've never heard.

I now here's the man's pastor and me, and I've never heard such language. I've been around a little bit.

You know, I worked in a jail for a long time. I was in the army. I've worked on the streets. I've never heard anybody talk the way that guy talked.

This was a heart of somebody who did not want to repent. That was very clear. So why the witness then?

The witness goes so that the person's unrepentant is seen. Their lack of willingness to submit to the word of God.

To be restored to the body of Christ and to have the reconciliation really between. In most cases, it's between the one person who sinned and the person who's been offended.

In some cases, it won't be like that. But to see that reconciliation. That's the goal.

And then reconciliation in the broader body of Christ. Does that answer your question?

Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Well, and that's an excellent point.

Let me just address that. And then if you want to say something else we can, but the, if you're thinking rightly and you know that you're a sinner saved by grace, and someone comes to you and confronts you about a sin, your response should be.

You don't know what you're talking about. Shut up and go away. No, what's it going to be?

It's going to be like your first thought should always be. I need to at least examine this and see if it's true.

And if right away, you know, it is true, then what should you be thinking? I need to repent of that.

I need to ask your forgiveness. I need to ask whoever I sinned against. I need to ask for their forgiveness.

By the way, let me just say as an aside. I'm not a big fan of I'm sorry. I like to lecture people on that.

And you know why I like to lecture people on it. If I sit against you and then I say, I'm sorry, then what have

I done? I've given something instead of gotten something.

I agree. But what I basically just said is I've not completed the circuit.

The circuit needs to be, I ask your forgiveness. Why? Because I've sinned against you. And then you need to do what?

Forgive me. It's easy to say, I'm sorry. Imagine, you know,

Hallmark selling a whole line of, please forgive me cards, you know, instead of I'm sorry or whatever, that'd be nice.

And then you'd have to have the, actually, they should do this because then there would be the, I forgive you cards.

So, you know, you could send the end, please forgive me. It'd be double, right? So much better than I'm sorry cards.

But there needs to be a process. Restoration is, will you please forgive me?

Yes, I forgive you. And then what? Like God forgives us, it's East from West, right?

We don't bring it up again. As much as it depends on us, we don't think about it again. And we're just done and we're over with it.

Anyway, now I've digressed here. But the point is, if you're thinking rightly as a

Christian, and obviously if you're in sin, maybe you're not thinking rightly. But what ought to happen is you ought to have that moment where Nathan appears to David and says, you are that man and you ought to be pierced to your heart.

Because you ought to realize I have sinned against that person. I sinned against God and I need to make things right.

Obviously, Jesus died for the sin. But until I ask for forgiveness, then

I don't have that restoration that there ought to be. Was there something else you want to say? Okay.

It's going to be one more person that has the knowledge of the sin, but there was not the help in the process. Well, now that's a good question.

Bob comes to me and I say, dude, I would do this because I really like church discipline.

No. Bob comes to me and I say, you know what, Bob, I don't want to be involved.

That's your issue. I think, first of all, then there might be maybe an issue with me.

The second thing is, I would say, if you want to go about it the best way, maybe it's like this.

Listen, there's somebody who's in sin and I've already confronted them.

I need somebody to go with me and confront them again. Would you be willing to do that? And now I haven't told them what the sin is.

I haven't told them who the person is. And they say, no. Well, then I'm going to give them a little mini sermon about church discipline and what their motivation ought to be.

What are you trying to tell me? That you don't love your brother or sister enough to go confront them? As Jesus said,

I don't think they'll refuse me after I say that, but that's because I'll arm twist them and I'll say, gee, well, now we've got two cases of church.

No, I, hey,

Micaiah thought it was funny. Okay. He thinks everything's funny. All right.

So now it comes down to this. He, the two or three witnesses have come to him and he's refused.

It's been told to the church, the church has gone and confronted him and listen, it says, and if he refuses to listen, even to the church, let him be to you as a

Gentile and a tax gatherer. Now to the

Jewish mindset, you know, the lowest thing you could be is a non

Jew, a Gentile and, or, you know, even worse to be a Jew and a tax gatherer collecting taxes for the

Romans. That's just as bad as it gets. So what is he saying? Treat them like the scum of the earth.

What Jesus said. Now we just get to that. They're not part of the church anymore.

You put them out of the church. Why? Because you hate them and you want them to know it. You know, now you can send them.

I hate you letters, Hallmark, you know, Hallmark cards. No, because Steven, that's right.

The objective is to get them to restoration. And so you treat them as an unbeliever is the, the overriding idea.

And so then you evangelize them. You give them gospel. Bruce, did you have something else to say?

Because, because you have to treat them as if they're an unbeliever. Why do you know if they're an unbeliever? No, but they're certainly acting like an unbeliever.

And, you know, just imagine one person comes to you and asks you to repent. You say, no, two or three people come to you and say, you need to repent.

You say, no, the whole church comes to you and says, repent your names right up for the pulpit. And you say, no, the church kicks you out.

And you still won't repent. Well, what does that say? It says you're pretty hard in your heart.

Well, I know I'm right. And everybody else is wrong. Now, I suppose we probably needed to define sin a little bit.

You know, if, if it's a matter of, you know, opinion, somebody's at the cheesecake factory on Sunday, and you think that, you know, that's a sin, well, then we need to talk about what a sin is.

If, you know, someone is so drunk or hung over on Sunday morning, they just can't get to church.

And that's the, you know, pattern of their life. You know, can you be thrown out of church for drunkenness?

Eventually, if you refuse to repent, yes. I mean, there, you know, typically, what do we focus on in terms of church discipline?

The most common thing is, it's not all that common, but the most common thing would be somebody being unfaithful to their spouse.

But addictions, you know, drunkenness, apostasy, you know, leaving the faith, let's put it this way.

If somebody in our church said, you know what? I think I'm going to join the Mormon church. Would we be right in going after them?

Yes. Should we confront them? Should we go through all these steps? I would say yes. Why? Because they're leaving the truth and they're going to error.

And we're just going to go, well, you know what? It's just a different church. No, Bruce. Yeah, factiousness, but factiousness is a little bit different.

It gets a Titus three. It gets a little shorter because it doesn't have to go through the process.

They get a warning and then they, sorry, can I say this? The left foot of fellowship.

There's the right hand of fellowship. And then there's, you know, what's amazing is

I was meeting with an elder at Grace Community Church when I was just a young puppy in the

Lord. And he said, one of the big issues we have is church discipline.

And I go, yeah, I imagine that'd be really tough. He goes, no, you don't understand. He says, if we start the process of church discipline, even, you know, somebody leaves their wife and goes to live with somebody else.

He says, if we start the process of church discipline with somebody, what do they do? They leave the church and they go where?

To another church. And he goes, what's amazing is we'll contact that other church and they'll just say, well, we don't do that.

We don't do that. Really? Jesus says, this is what you do.

And you don't do that, Brian. You know, there's a good question.

Can you discipline? I'll put it another way, but it's the same question. Can you discipline somebody who's not a member of your church?

Steven. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, otherwise the solution,

I don't ever want to face church discipline. Therefore, I won't join the church.

I'll never. No, if you're part of the body. Now, if somebody showed up once or twice,

I don't think we'd pursue church discipline if we found out about it. What we would do is, because they probably stopped coming, but we would, you know, evangelize them and try to figure it out.

But if somebody has been attending here regularly, and then they go, well, wait a minute, you can't come after me because I'm not a church member.

Well, yes, we can. And we would. So good question, Bob. Yeah.

As Carl Truman said, look, when there was one church per town, right? It was a little more difficult.

And, you know, you had to get on your horse every Sunday morning and get up at, oh, dark 30 to make it to, you know, another church 30 miles away.

Probably not so easy to escape church discipline, especially by the time you got all the family loaded in the wagon and hitched up the, you know, all that kind of stuff.

We don't live in that world anymore. So now people can just get in their car and zip over to another church. Or, you know, they, you know, you go from here to the congregational church where the lady pastor is more than happy to have you.

And Mark, yeah,

I mean, people have different standards. You know, Mark mentions some people don't like the way other people park.

I remember I got chewed out for that once when I was in the sheriff's department. Lieutenant comes in a briefing and, you know, everything's all done.

And the lieutenant says, there's somebody here. And he knows who he is, who's parked in a marked spot because we had no parking anywhere in the parking lot.

I was going to move it after briefing, you know. But what about that? You know, are there a list of sins that we will discipline for?

And, you know, and that's it. Yes. Yeah.

And I think love covers a multitude of sins. But, you know, ultimately here's what I would say. I'd say we might have more patience in some situations.

Specifically, let's say it is just between two brothers. And it's totally contained there.

Might we take longer in dealing with that than something where everybody knows, you know, husband

A has moved out of his house and is living with wife B? Well, that's something we have to take care of.

We can't just kind of go, well, you know, let's just let it play out. And so if it was just two brothers or sisters or brother and a sister or a couple or, you know, a small little situation, then maybe as pastors and elders, we just meet with them over and over again looking for this reconciliation.

Sometimes, you know, it takes a third party to kind of mediate to sort of interpret the situation so that finally the light comes on for the other person.

So I think to get back to what you're saying, Mark, there are a list of sins where there is a list of sins.

There are sins in which there is more urgency. Where we do have to worry about the leaven and the lump.

And, you know, we certainly want the bride of Christ to be holy and without sin. But then there are other sins where maybe it's easier to be more patient and to work through them because the risk of it spreading is not so great.

Bob, right.

And agreed, you know, so if it's a matter of clear sin, but sometimes, you know, someone needs convincing that what they did was sinful.

You know, it's not so easy in some cases. And there could be a variety of reasons for it.

You know, maybe somebody's newer in the faith. Maybe they're not as well taught. Maybe their sense of sin and righteousness has been dulled by too many years.

I don't know, working as a cop or working in the... Now, that didn't happen to me.

But working in the business world, whatever, whatever it is where you just kind of become complacent about certain things.

And, you know, the scripture needs to be brought to bear. But, you know, are there some sins in which, again, we're more likely to be patient with?

I think so. But if there's a pattern of unrepentance, then we have to keep pushing the ball forward, as it were, not because we want to, but because it's the right thing to do.

I mean, it's hard to get into too many specifics without knowing what the situation is.

And, you know, by the grace of God, this isn't something that we have to do often because we, you know,

I know this is hard to believe, but we don't like it. Yeah, if it's something that would damage the reputation of Bethlehem Bible Church, if it's something that would, you know, bring us into disrepute in the community, then certainly that would be something that we would want to look at as well.

But, I mean, there are a variety of possible circumstances and it's hard to kind of, you know, bring it all down.

But, yeah, Russ. Well, I agree with that.

You know, I use that because I don't know if it's still female or not, but the congregational church here in town has or had a female pastor.

And so right away, you know, my take on it would be they don't have a real high view of scripture.

And so if you go to that church, you're probably going to be safe because they're kinder, gentler, not so concerned about what the

Bible says. So, yeah, that's why I said that. Bruce. Yeah, well,

I think we're going to get to that. But, yeah, that's true. There needs to be some association or some lack of association for those people.

And actually, I don't actually have that because we just kind of got through First Corinthians. But, you know, so what do we do in a situation where somebody is known as a drunkard, as, you know, all those kind of things?

It's the same thing, right? If we most people here are old enough to remember the

Andy Griffith show, you know, with Otis, the town drunk, you know, and Otis was a nice drunk, not like most of the drunks

I met during my career. And he would just let himself into the jail and pass out.

And, you know, the next day they'd let him out and all that kind of thing. And he'd go repeat the cycle. So, you know, is that a sin?

And the answer is yes, because the Bible says what? Drunkenness is sin.

Ephesians 5 .18. I mean, there are multiple scriptures that would tell us that. And First Corinthians 5 says, you know, if someone's a drunkard, don't associate with them.

What does that mean? That means you put them out eventually. But what you do is you go through this process. So, I mean, yeah, there is a list.

But, I mean, is it an exhaustive list? Let's say that someone is a habitual in whatever sin it is.

They won't repent. Then do you just keep them in that? Well, you know, we can't find one that says, kick them out if they commit this or that sin.

No, it's any sin at all. That they're in the habit of doing that they won't repent of.

And that's the thing right there. You know, if they... And, you know, how many times should you forgive them?

490. And 491, you're done. So what you want to do is start... If they're in the habit of committing sin, you want to just keep a little journal, you know, buy yourself a little book.

No. All right, we're at 491. Woohoo!

Pastor Steve? Yes, Stephen. Yeah, and I think that's a great reminder, you know,

Matthew 7, 1. And that whole process of examining yourself, removing the beam from your own eye before you worry about the speck in your brother's.

And that's a good process to go through to really avoid us from being hypocrites or to help us avoid being hypocrites.

Did I see a hand over here? Okay, Brian. Well, and I would certainly hope that people would understand.

I think sometimes it's not so clear for people, you know, especially when they first get saved.

I think there's a tendency to maybe think that... To go one of two ways. I know when

I got saved, I think... Let's see, what did I get rid of right away? Had to get rid of all my comic books.

Had to get rid of all my albums. Had to get rid of... I mean, I got rid of a lot of stuff. Why? Because they were worldly, they were wrong, they were, you know, therefore sinful.

And on the other hand, some people get saved and they just like... They're thinking they're forgiven of everything and so they have a very low threshold of what sin is.

So I think in both cases, you don't want to be... I think the key for us is always to be measured and to be thinking rightly first about ourselves, but secondly, to have their own best interests and not want to, you know, jump down somebody's throat.

But also to understand that maybe they're not properly informed. But when you confront somebody about their sin and you are able to bring the word of God to bear and they still say, you know what?

I don't think it's wrong. Well, then two or three witnesses come along and say, oh, yes, it is.

And this is what the Bible says and you need to repent. Well, then we're at a whole nother stage.

I saw a hand over here. Okay, but the hand went down. Yeah, Chris. Well, yeah, church sins that split the church.

Let's just put it this way. As Titus 3 would make plain, there's a lot less patience, a lot less latitude given to those who would cause division within the body of Christ.

If Jesus is building the church and Jesus and God, generally the triune

God, values unity in the church, then the worst thing that could happen is somebody who wants to split the church up.

So that would be as bad as it gets pretty. Yeah, and it really is.

I mean, I guess in one sense, just kind of get back to what you were saying, the goal is restoration and our motivation is love and we want to glorify the

Lord and all this. And the idea that churches might glorify God by being too loving to implement the exact directions that he gave us on church discipline is wrong.

Love doesn't cancel out whole sections of the Bible. The Lord gave us these things for a reason and are they uncomfortable?

In fact, I think the number one reason people don't exercise church discipline, most churches don't, is because it's uncomfortable.

Who am I to exercise church discipline? I'm a sinful person. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.

But what Pradeep is saying is, there are some cases where we have to act quickly and we talked about that, but there are other cases where it may be more discipleship, it may be more education, bringing this person up to speed.

Someone might say, well, how can someone not know that it's a sin? Well, I don't know.

But I mean, we can't cover every possibility out there.

We just have to kind of take them as they come. And some people, as I said, somebody might say that they've always run their business like this.

This is why I've always done business. No one's ever told me that there was anything wrong. Well, by worldly standards, maybe it's okay.

But when we bring the Bible in, we say, well, you know what? What you're doing is dishonest. Well, I never thought about it that way.

Well, you should. And so, you know, maybe it's so nobody else knows about it, except for this guy and his accountant.

And, you know, over time we instruct him on that and that would be fine. But it's a little hard to cover every possible thing here without, you know, taking names.

And I'll see you later. But really the ultimate goal is to obey the

Lord, to glorify him and the purity of the church. If a church allows people to get away with known sin, you know, well, we're a church where people, this is the spiritual triage center.

People come here because they need help. They're spiritually sick, they're sinners.

And we understand that. We're just here to care on them and to love on them. Well, that's not what the church is called to be.

The church is called to be a place where truth is brought to bear on our sins.

I've said this on many occasions. I think the best sermons are the ones where you feel the most convicted. Where you just go, okay,

I am Isaiah. I'm undone. It's not because I'm the worst person in the world.

It's because I recognize that that word of God was just for me and I needed to hear it. And there are things in my life

I need to change. When the Bible is brought to bear on your life, it will expose what?

Sin. And this is a good thing. This is a good thing because it reminds us that we've been forgiven of these things, how we need to think before we act, how we need to learn more so that we'll obey more and that will please him more.

And we'll talk more about church discipline next week, but we need to close in prayer. Father, I thank you for this time.

And this is just a most difficult topic and one that is often neglected, misunderstood, virtually ignored in many, many churches that would name your name across this country, especially we just think of the sin that is allowed to go on within the walls of the church because people are afraid to call it what it is.

Father, would you help us not to be more judgmental of one another, but to be more loving of one another, to be loving enough to see our brother or sister in sin and to come alongside them, to admonish them if they need to be admonished, to teach them if they need to be taught, to be patient with them.

But Father, not to let things slip through the crack just because it's inconvenient, just because it's hard.

Father, give us a boldness, a boldness to love one another. We pray in Christ's name, amen.