Episode 69: Church Discipline

Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom

I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?

You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be

Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving

Jesus in a local, visible congregation. I don't know how to feel about myself, Edward. What do you mean?

It is going to be in the 60s today, the last day of January, when we're recording this, and you know

I love cold weather. Yeah, and it's been real warm the last few days. But I'm kind of confessing that I'm liking the warmth.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Everybody knows that I like cold weather, but the reality is everybody would like for it to stay like 50 to 60 degrees all the time.

I mean, everybody likes that. I mean, I don't know anybody that's like, oh, it's just nice.

People rarely complain when it's in the 60s. No matter if you love summer or if you love winter, people rarely complain.

Yeah, it's just nice. Does that mean heaven is going to be set at the new heavens, new earth?

Yeah, 68 degrees. Really? There's got to be snow in the new earth because it's so beautiful, man.

Maybe we can have snow in 68 degrees. Wow, like Olaf.

Yeah. I'll be doing whatever snow does in summer. Okay. Well, you know,

I think thinking about the weather like that, everybody would like it to be nice like this all the time.

But the reality is if I have to deal with one extreme or the other, I'd rather deal with the cold.

Yeah. Welcome to the Rural Church podcast. I was going to say welcome to the delicious dish.

You remember that? Sorry, not live. I did not know. I did not know that one. Okay. I was going to say look it up, but don't look it up.

Okay. Welcome to the Rural Church podcast 2 .0. I'm Alan Nelson, your co -host, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

One of the pastors of Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas. And with me is

Eddie Ragsdale, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall. Eddie, I've got an email today.

I've known about it, but I'm just going to give a plug. I think the

Founders Conference next year is going to be really good. And we're not getting any kind of kickback for saying that.

I'm saying it just because I'm saying it. I think the Founders Conference in 2025 is going to be a good deal.

I'm actually considering saving up and maybe trying to bring my family because it's on the topic of revival.

And you and I both in a coming episode, we're going to both talk about that.

We both kind of have some stuff coming up. So that'll be a future episode, but maybe you should go too.

Yeah. I might be interested. I'm actually going to a conference next month in Columbus, Ohio.

It's one of the regional Ligonier conferences. That'll be great.

I've never been to a Ligonier conference. I did years ago. You know how those Presbyterians are, bro.

It's expensive. But I'm going. They don't care about these poor

Baptists. But I'm going to on a covenant conference in Kentucky, LaGrange, Kentucky in March.

And we're actually taking a group with us. We're going to have like 11 people going. Wow. Wow. So I'm really excited about that.

But the Lord bless you now. We've done a past episode on conferences so y 'all can look that up. But today,

Eddie, I'm going to tell you some stuff live that you, I mean, I know we're recording, but you haven't heard what I'm about to say.

You know what our topic is. Today we're going to address church discipline. It's a good topic to always talk about.

But I'm going to tell Eddie and our listeners a very, very brief and not detailed at all story of what's going on in our church.

I think it's a good thing. But I'm going to keep all details reserved for those who need to know them.

But essentially last week I got a phone call. I was actually visiting one couple and we're talking about a situation, a good thing.

They had us over for supper. It was good. Got a call from another couple that there was a situation going on.

I met with that couple and there had been some sin issues come to light and they were public in nature.

And so the next day I had some more meetings. Essentially Sunday had some meetings, but a man was confronted with sin.

He was broken over it. He confessed that sin publicly. And we wanted to wait a little bit longer, but the issue was it was just a hard burden to carry around.

And it's hard for people to kind of, the ones that knew about it to kind of be quiet about it. And it just came out

Sunday evening and confessed sin. The church has seemed to respond well, restoring.

These things happen or they, you know, church discipline should be happening no matter what size your church is.

And when we think about church discipline, I'm going to turn it over to you in just a second. But when we think about church discipline, we often think about removing people from the role, but that should be the rarest.

When you talk about the totality of church discipline, that step should be happening the least compared to all the other steps.

So do you want to, I don't know if you have a Bible in front of your brother, but do you want to read Matthew 18, 15 through 20, and just kind of give us an introduction here?

You bet. So the Lord Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of evidence of two or three witnesses.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And even if he refuses to listen, even to the church, let him be to you as a

Gentile or a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whoever you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven for where two or three are gathered in my name.

There I am among them. And yeah, like you were saying, Quatro, we see here in this text that the first step is just an individual brother going to his brother and, and pleading with him to repent and most church discipline, the healthier a church gets, the more likely the individuals are to respond with repentance to that initial action of church discipline.

And so if that's happening, nobody else really knows. And that should be happening all the time.

Maybe even almost weekly, you know, we're, we're encouraging one another, you know, this isn't coming down on one another in the sense of like, but you're like,

Hey brother, don't say that. Or don't, don't be like that. Or, so yeah, that's good. Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and I think also we, the only alternative is if, if this is never happening and you're saying,

Oh, but, but it's not a problem. Well, the only way that could be the case is if you're saying, well, we're not ever sinning.

Yeah. You're either not sinning or you're just theologically ignorant or you're in blatant disobedience.

Right. Right. We're either not sinning or, or we're just not doing church discipline where we should be.

In the South, especially this is hard because we really have this idea of like, well, I'm not getting in their business, but it's really not that so much as you don't want people in your business either.

So you just kind of like, you smile at church, you have this superficial relationship and you don't want to get deep, but we need to be developed.

You can't necessarily have deep relationships with everybody in the church, but we need to be developing these deep relationships that we are in each other's lives.

Well, and no matter what relationship is Jesus assumes there's going to be sin in the church.

We strive, we're Baptist. So we strive for a regenerate church membership, but that doesn't mean a perfect church membership.

We're still sinners and we need, we need grace. Anyway, I keep interrupting. No, no, no.

I mean, that's good. You know, when then we see the progression that Jesus gives here, if we find ourselves going in the person's not responding with repentance, then the idea is not, well,

I'm going to take somebody else with me so we can bully them into doing what we want. Rather, the idea is, look, we are concerned about this.

And I even think that that we have here the possibility of if there was some kind of miscommunication or confusion about what happened, taking the other brother to be a moderator, even to help the conversation can be a blessing.

That's right. You need someone that is going to be as impartial as they can be. The two or three witnesses is not someone who witnessed the action because there are so many actions that you wouldn't have any witnesses for.

They need to listen to the case. And sometimes they'll be like, you're wrong.

You say that this person sinned, but they didn't sin. You know, so that may actually happen.

I think you're a hundred percent right. I'll just use this example, but you could have a scenario where you had two different individuals in your church who they had different ways that they applied discipline to their children.

And the one person's seen what the other person did. And I'm saying the person was not abusing.

They weren't beating their child. And they said, I think that's sinful.

I wouldn't discipline my child that way. And so they go to them, you need to repent. And the other person's going, no,

I didn't do anything wrong. This is the way we discipline children in our home. And you could have a scenario where actually when you bring the two or three witnesses, they're able to, which now you have the issue of the person that brought the accusation needs to repent.

There's no scenario once this gets initiated where somebody's not going to need to say.

That's right. And let me say one more thing, because I do, there's a lot more I want to talk about after we get through this part, but I do want to say one more thing.

Like if you notice the progression is you're keeping this as small as you can. Yes. You're not. So initially you're not posting on Facebook.

So you're like someone offend you. And so you post this cryptic message or status on Facebook or whatever.

And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not how we do it. We deal with that person alone. And then even this next one, we're still dealing with it in a, in a very close circle.

And even at this point, you're not necessarily getting the elders involved. You may, but you're not necessarily yet.

So if that doesn't work, let's say it is a legitimate sin issue. They're confronted. They don't repent. You don't go the next day with the group.

You give time sufficient time, you know, you pray, you seek, maybe you visit them again, but anyway, they're not repenting.

So now you go with two or three witnesses, steal the same thing. They've doubled down. They're not repenting. Let's take it.

Let's take it. Let's in this fictitious scenario, we're giving this brother or sister hasn't been to church in three months.

And person goes and says, hey, brother, I've just, you need to come now. This actually may be more of an elder situation, but anyway, they're not coming.

You go with two or three witnesses. They're still not coming. Okay. What's next. So Jesus says, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, the way that this is going to function today in most of our churches, you would bring it to the elders, to the pastors to be brought before the church.

Yeah. You don't bring it. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. I think because of the responsibility and oversight of the elders at this point, they're getting involved.

However, I want to be careful and say something. It's not elder discipline. It is still it's church discipline, but, but at this point, the elders need to be involved.

Right. Because I'll say this as a pastor, you know, we have a, we have a portion during our

Lord's day meeting when we open it up for people to give reports, you know, praise reports, share about witnessing encounters, prayer requests, those kinds of things.

If somebody just had said nothing to me and they get up and they go, this person's been sinning.

I'd be like, Oh no. That should have been talked about before, before we got in here, you know?

Yeah. And that's that, that wouldn't even be exactly the meeting probably were that we would have that in, you know?

So my point is just to say, I think that your elders need to be involved because they may be, but be able to even bring even a clearer sense to the person who needs to repent of how serious the issue is.

I think sometimes people just, they don't think it's very serious. And, and even in this scenario, just to be clear, once it's brought to the church, it's not over.

It's not like, well, once it's brought to the church, you're gone. No, it's because what Jesus says next, if he refused to listen even to the church.

So that means if he does listen to the church again, the whole point here, you've gained your brother.

You've gained your brother. You've gained your brother. I mean, it's only said that one time, but that's the point. If he listens to two or three witnesses, you've gained your brother.

If he listens to the church, you've gained your brother. The whole point of church discipline is not excommunication.

The goal is restoration. Right. It's always restorative discipline. That's right.

So now it's brought to the church value. Hypothetically, the church is reaching out to him.

You got various brothers, sisters, it's public. Now everybody knows you hope for there's repentance, but if there's not, what's the next.

He says, let them be to you as a Gentile and as a tax collector.

And I will say, I think, and this is maybe a point we need to talk about a little bit because I do think this is an area that we really struggle with today in the church because we would say, well, what does it really change for them?

Because most of our churches,

Lord's Day gathering is a public gathering to preach the gospel.

So what do we do with Gentiles and tax collectors? Gentile and tax collectors basically saying a person outside of the body of Christ, not a believer.

Well, we want them to come because we want them to come hear the gospel. Whereas I think probably in the first century, the local church meeting was more just a believer's meeting, excluding them probably meant excluding them from the whole meeting.

Because if they weren't having the Lord's supper with them, then they weren't at the meeting at all. But I don't know anybody nowadays, hardly whoever says, well, this person is not allowed to come to your church at all.

Well, they should be excluded from the meeting. And if they get to this point, if they're under discipline, if they're under the discipline of the church, because they have refused.

I mean, I cannot imagine very many scenarios where they would want to come to church. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably not normally the case.

I mean, I'll be honest, details wouldn't be appropriate. We have a scenario that's actually been ongoing in our church now, and the person won't talk, won't communicate.

I keep trying to communicate with them and they won't, can't be called to repentance because won't respond to any communication.

And that's really difficult because it's not even them refusing because they won't even acknowledge the conversation, which that in itself is a sin on top of whatever the other issue is.

So I want to say again, the point of the excommunication is also for the sake of their soul.

Yes. The idea is now it's hard today. It's almost unimaginable today because you're like, well, they'll just go somewhere else.

Maybe they will. But the idea is the exclusion of the body will really get their attention.

And that they will repent. The whole goal in this again is what repentance and restoration. Let me just tell you, because I want to get to those other verses too, because I think those are used erroneously, but this is what happened,

Eddie. So all this is going on. I wake up Sunday morning. So my Sunday morning routine is number one,

I get up, I do my own, if you want to call it quiet time, you know, time with the Lord. I do go over my sermon, but first and foremost,

I read the Bible, pray, you know, look. And so as I'm doing that and, you know,

I'm not a continuationist or anything. So I'm not, but at the same time, I think it's helpful, you know, from a cessationist perspective to not discount things like this.

I just felt led to look perhaps at this passage,

Matthew 18. It just came to my mind, you know, I was just thinking. So I looked at it and all of a sudden an outline kind of formed.

I was just working on it. You know, I'm, you know, this is, this would certainly not me be claiming that I was heard an audible voice or something like that, or the spirit put new revelation in my mind.

I'm not saying that at all, but I just, I think as Christians, as we're in tune with God and the

Holy Spirit and walking through the scriptures, that these kinds of things happen. And I came up with this outline.

I said, I think I'm going to preach on this today. So I had my Ephesians already ready. Then I had this outline ready. I'm not recommending that this is a very common occurrence in pastors, but I did change it.

And this is the little outline I came up with essentially three points on this passage. One, the rarity of church discipline, two, the responsibility of church discipline and three, the reason for church discipline.

Now I'm not going to go through that whole outline. There'd be a whole sermon, but the first thing I talked about is like what we've already talked about.

This is a very rare thing in churches today. Let me throw that out there to you first and just ask you like, why is this process confronting sin going with the group?

I mean, Jesus tells us, I mean, it's like, here it is in the word, excluding members. The Southern Baptist convention a number of years ago,

I thought it was bad because basically it was one third of the SBC was showing up on church on Sunday mornings.

I thought that was bad. It's worse today. It's like one fourth. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's very hovering.

Now, honestly, I mean, of course you had COVID and all that, but still, I mean, you have one fourth of people essentially on rolls are coming to church.

So the question I'm just going to ask you real quick is why is this so rare in churches? Because the church is even more deluded with false converts.

I think that's the biggest reason. I mean, we could probably talk about several possibilities, several different things that from an anecdotal perspective that we've noticed over the years.

But I think that issue that the church is that so many churches are full of unconverted people and unconverted people, they don't want to be disciplined.

And so they don't want to discipline others because that's why unconverted people love the command to not judge.

Yeah. Yeah. And another thing is those who are converted and we've talked about this ton on this podcast, they don't.

So many of them don't understand the church. They separate the church from the gospel.

Now, of course, in gospel proper language, we, you know, the church is not the gospel, not, not saying that, but to understand the gospel, we understand that the result of the gospel is the church.

Jesus came to save a people from their sins. Right. And, and I've used this illustration before, but the blood of Christ that flowed outside Jerusalem flowed into Jerusalem and to Judea and into Samaria and into the uttermost parts of the world.

And what happened? Local churches spring up. So we don't, we don't understand. So that's one reason, you know, so I agree.

Unbelievers misunderstanding the church. Then we talk about the responsibility and I walked through those verses that, that we just went through and I added this and I'll let you speak to this as well, but I added this, there are other scenarios that, that I think it's obvious, especially like you go to passage like first Corinthians five, there are other scenarios that you can't go through those steps as neatly as it's lined out.

You want to mention, I mean, like, you know what I'm saying? Like there's, there's public issue that I use a silly illustration, but a man gets drunk.

He goes to the local football game, goes out on the field is, you know, fights the ref or something.

And, and he's a member of your church. Like, okay, you can't, that's just a made up scenario.

Not that it couldn't happen in a small town, but, but you have to address that differently.

They, because of their sin have accelerated the process. Right, right. Yeah. Well, as you were saying earlier, a part of this process is about I've always kind of used the rule.

The repentance needs to be as public as the sin. You know, if, if, if nobody knew about the sin hardly then you don't necessarily have to make the repentance, this big announcement that this has happened.

But if everyone knows about the sin, because like you said, they were, they were streaking on the 50 yard line during the, during the homecoming game that,

Hey, everybody knows, everybody knows that that happened. Right. So we, we need to go ahead and, and, and deal with that in a more public manner because everybody knows what happened.

And I also want to say by that we do not mean do not mean 100 % do not mean that we cover up abuse or harm.

So I'm not saying, oh, this, this person sexually abused a child or a woman, and we want to keep that private because nobody knows it happened.

I don't mean that. In that case, in a case like that, the person, you know, we want to protect the, the innocent and the vulnerable.

Yeah. I am saying generally, if, if the person has offended one other person, it wasn't something abusive like that.

This idea that every, that now we need to go around and make sure everybody knows that, that this person committed this sin.

I just don't, there's no, there's no help to the church or to the individual in doing that.

If they're repentant. Just thinking off the top of my head, but criminal automatically is going to be public. Right. But I'll say this public repentance is not required, but it's not forbidden.

So for example, I think, I think of an example. You can't, there's a man who's caught by his wife looking at pornography and she contacts the elders and there's counsel and you, and you work through that and that's not a public sin.

And it, and it turns out to just be, it wasn't a, you know, it wasn't like a habitual thing. It was like, he just fell.

And so you're counseling and, and he's repentant and he's broken. And, and, and you're not bringing that to the church.

You don't have to bring that to the church because you should, well actually you shouldn't bring that to a church because it's not a public thing.

It's, it's a, you know, it's contained. But if the man is to say there could be a scenario where the man says, you know,

I really, I actually want to confess this to the church and I want accountability. There could be a scenario where you may allow someone to make public confession.

But, but like what we're both saying is it's not, it's not required. In fact, if you were going to make public confession about every sin, boy, all your entire

Sunday would be, would be filled up for all of us. You know, cause that's the thing. We're not saying there's some people in the church that sin and some don't know.

We all sin. Yes. And that's why we need church discipline because we need the encouragement, the accountability and sometimes even the rebuke.

So here's what I said about the responsibility. And I'll just run through this real quick. The reason that a church should do church discipline, the responsibility of church is because we fear

God. For God to say, do this and we don't do it. That's lack of fear. The epitome of an unbeliever is

Romans 3 18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Well, how can a church say that they fear

God and don't do what his word says? We do church because we fear God. Secondly, we do churches on this big one.

I'll let you talk about this too. We do church discipline because we trust God. Now, what does that mean,

Eddie, that we trust what God's word has to say about this? The scriptures are clear that this is a means that God uses to bring sinners to repentance, right?

I mean, we think about this passage that the Lord gave us in Matthew 18. We could also go back to Matthew 16, where Jesus uses very similar language to this and the keys of the kingdom passage with Peter.

We go to what Paul says to the Corinthians. And what we see is this kind of restorative, this kind of restorative discipline is, is really about us trusting the

Holy Spirit to use this to draw sinners to repentance. And this is the best way you can't come up with.

Yeah, we won't come up with a better plan. That's right. That's right. That's what churches think. You know, if I don't deal with this, if we just ignore it, well,

I come up with a better plan. Let's say we'll make private sins public, or we'll make public sins private, or we'll cover up like you, like many churches have done in, in the history of the church, maybe abuse or scandal, or, you know, well, this pastor, he's not only up and up, but we, we need him because he's charismatic, you know, speaker or whatever, you know, you can't do it better than God.

So when we do church discipline, according to the scriptures, we fear God, we trust God. Thirdly, we do it because we love the church.

So again, this is out of love for brothers and sisters. You need a church. Like if you're part of a church right now, that doesn't care about this, you need to, you need to encourage them to care about this.

If they refuse to care about it, you need to very seriously consider looking at another church.

Cause, because historically three marks of a church, not of a healthy church, but three marks of a church versus a non -church.

Right. Your church had the right preaching of the word of God, had right administration of the ordinances and practice church discipline.

So it's like, if you're doing the first two, but not the other, historically, there'd be people that look at your church is not even a church.

So, so this is a big deal. And, and it's something we all are probably most listeners have failed in our church.

It's failed in, and we need to grow. We've, we've, we've sought repentance, public repentance, growing, seeking to have accurate membership roles, seeking to love one another.

um, and then the last thing I'll say is the, so the rarity responsibility, and then I mentioned the reason, and then

I do after that, I want to get to these last verses there. Right. But so here's some of the big picture reasons.

I'll just run through them real quick. The glory of God, right? This is about God's glory. And then the purity of the church.

We show before watching world that we take holiness seriously. The unity of the church, right?

A little leaven leavens, the whole lump, a little sin coming in divides the church. And then restoration and healing was the fourth one.

So in Luke 17, Jesus says, if your brother,

I don't have it pulled up in front of me, but if, if your brother sins rebuking, if he repents, turn and forgiving.

And if he, and if he sins seven times against, against you in a day and repents, you turn and you forgiving.

So, so as long as he does, he's not doing it eight times, right? You have to, no, no, no, no, that's the point.

And we take a brother, you know, that the American legal system is based on this

Christian principle, innocent until proven guilty. If someone comes to you, if a brother comes to you and says,

I repent, we should take him at that with also understanding that true repentance bears fruit, but we don't have to give someone a trial or where they form penance.

That's a Roman Catholic. Right. If they say, I repent, you say, okay.

And you go forward, you forgive your store for a second Corinthians chapter two verse.

I think it's seven and eight talks about, you know, restoring that brother, loving him.

That's what we're doing here in church discipline. And then the last point, glory, purity, unity, restoration, healing, and then beauty.

Why do, why do we do church discipline? Because the church is beautiful. It's the most beautiful place on earth.

It's a foretaste of heaven and Christ is worthy of a healthy church. So that was the outline.

Even thinking about the beauty. You, you look at Ephesians five and Christ is purifying his bride by washing with the word.

Right. Blameless and holy. And so, yeah, this idea that we are seeking after holiness in the church, we know we're not going to be perfect, but we are seeking after holiness.

God has called us to be holy, be holy as your father in heaven is holy. Right. I mean, we ought to be seeking after that in the church.

We have a high expectation for our elders, for our church members. Why? Because we believe in regenerate church membership.

We believe that Christians love Christ. And there has to be room. Like there has to be room for repentance because we know what the gospel is.

We love the gospel and we know that we're imperfect. And so there's room for repentance while simultaneous encouragement for holy living.

We have to recover what the church is. A lot of the problem, I think here comes from there's been so much preaching of cheap grace.

Yeah. Instead of sovereign free grace. And a lot of people think free, that's cheaper than cheap.

No, no, no. Free. The free grace of Christ is the most costly because it, but the cheap grace that, just, just, just kind of add a little

Jesus to your life. Would you come to church sometimes? Would you let us baptize you?

Put you on a roll? We've kind of preached that cheap grace instead of that sovereign free grace.

and, and a church that's not holy is the outcome of that.

Yeah, that's right. So you want to get into binding and loosing? Yeah. The whole, the whole thing there, which

I actually, I don't think it's as complicated as maybe what some make, but, but I want to get in the whole thing there because of the church discipline passage.

Yes. And this is part of the church discipline passage. Everybody seems to know verse 20, right?

What's verse 20 say? For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am

I among them. So we know that one because it's quoted all the time. You know, I don't got to go to church.

I'm here or, you know, well, we had this little prayer meeting or, or, or, or in a sense, like maybe see a picture of, of, of a, a team praying after the game.

And, and it's got this verse quoted on the picture, you know? Yeah. And it's like, look, this verse is in the context of church discipline, the two or three language.

That's not the first time you, you see it. Where do you see that first? When you're talking about Matthew 16.

Yeah. The two or three. So it all goes together. So let's start.

What is it? Verse? Is it just 1920 or is it 18, 19, 18? Well, 18 says, truly

I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven.

And, and I'm reading here from the ESB. I know in the NASB, it says, whatever shall have been bound in heaven.

And it, it gives it a little bit different translation there. But, but the idea, if we go back to Matthew 16, you have to take into account,

I think what's in Matthew 16 to understand this, because there's two places where the church is mentioned in the gospels.

The church, the, the word church translated that way. Two times in all the four gospels.

And it's Matthew 16, Matthew 18, both times. It has this same binding and loosing language.

And clearly I think, and I, for us as Baptists, we should love this because the point is that the church on earth should reflect what is truly the state of the church.

Yeah. And the key as it is, which means regenerate church membership, which, which means if people have proved themselves to not be genuinely a part of the church, then they should be outside the church.

If people come professing faith, repenting, trusting in Christ, we should want them to be included in church.

There's not a mixed in that sense from what we can see, you know, so this acknowledge false converts.

Sure. Sure. Yes. But we're seeking to have a regenerate church.

Yeah. That reflects what is in heaven. So when it says, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

And the idea is we're not changing what, what is true in heaven.

We're trying to reflect what is true in heaven on earth. As Christ has come to be

Lord on earth, his kingdom comes on earth. And by the way, this is only, this is only doable in local visible congregations.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. This can't happen with the church at large. Well, we acknowledge a universal church.

We acknowledge one big body of Christ, but these things are impossible. As Jesus knows, as he teaches apart from the visible local church.

So if someone's like, well, I'm not part of a local church. Okay. Well then how are you part of this binding and loosing? That by the way is the responsibility of the church.

These keys in Matthew 16, they're not given to Peter in the sense of being the

Pope. They're not given to Peter in sense of this is important too. They're not given to Peter in sense of, in the sense of he's going to be an elder of the church.

So it's not that they're given to the Pope. It's not that they're given to the elders or the Presbytery. It's that they're given to the church.

Now, of course, elders, we talked about play an important role in the oversight of that, but they don't hold the keys exclusively.

Yes. It's given to the church and it's the whole church's responsibility for binding and loosing.

The church is not infallible. We're going to get it wrong. We're going to let people in sometimes that aren't converted and we may church discipline someone who is like, what

I mean is exclude someone from membership who is converted. We can get it wrong both ways, but the idea you put it so well, brother is we are to reflect on earth as it is in heaven.

Well, and I love what you were saying there about the, this can only be done in a local church.

You know, if someone says I'm not a part of a local church, well, basically, then who could, who could discipline you?

You know, if there's a brother here in town here in Marshall, who's not a part of any local church, but he's claiming to be a

Christian and he's in sin. I can't bring him in here and say, okay, Marshall, first Baptist, we're gonna, we're gonna church discipline this man.

Well, he's not a part of our church. If he's not a part of any local church, who, who could even do what this passage is, you could go to him and call him to repentance.

Actually, I've done that. I mean, I've spoke with other professing

Christians, you know, and called them to repentance that weren't a part of, of our local church.

But if they're not a part of a local church, there's no church body that could do the very thing that Jesus is commanding us to do in this passage.

Yeah. And if you're not living under the commands of Jesus, you don't love him.

Now that's not, that's not me saying that Jesus says that in John 14, 15, that's right.

Obey my commandments. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's good, but I think it's so helpful.

I didn't plan to get in that conversation, but church discipline is a, another evidence of the necessity of every

Christian to be part of a local church. And you should be part of a local church that loves you enough to discipline you. That's right.

What do we say to, to children who grew up in a home without discipline? We said, well, their parents don't love them.

That's right. Why would we think of anything different with the local church? If you go to a church that doesn't discipline you, you go to a church that doesn't actually love you.

We'll say, well, yeah, we all love each other. No, you're part of a church that doesn't care about church discipline. Who the church really loves is themselves.

That's right. They don't love you. well, even you, that's such a great analogy because parents who don't discipline their children, they, you're right.

They're not loving their children. What they're actually doing, they tend to just want the ease of not having to do the hard work of disciplining their children.

Right. That's too much to bother with. And it's the same in the local church.

We don't want the difficulty. We don't want the uncomfortable nature of having to deal with church discipline.

And so we, we call it loving them. But what it really is, is we just don't want to do hard things.

I will just briefly touch on the other side. Churches can abuse this.

Absolutely. And I even read some of them. They're really fascinating. I love it.

I long for these days. If I read some of the minutes of old Baptist churches and some of the times

I read, I'm like, I think this was too far, you know, and sometimes it was like,

I mean, it seemed like trivial matters. So, for example, Peter says love. He's quoting from the

Old Testament. Love covers a multitude of sins. Okay. There are a lot of things that we just, when we see a person, maybe we're offended by a person and we're just like, you know,

I let that go. I love that person, you know, and I'm able to let that go. For example, let's just do something silly.

But, you know, I was supposed to make the church's special stew for the potluck, but sister so -and -so made it, made one exactly like mine, and everybody liked hers better or whatever, you know, like we're going to let stuff go in a local church.

But when we have those cases now, if you can't let it go, that's responsibility of you to go to that person.

But I am saying here that I think I've read in cases that this can be misused.

So we're not saying it can't be misused, but we're not. We're not at that. That's not the problem today.

And for the vast majority of church. Yeah, that's not the problem. The problem is this other side where it's not used at all.

Right. So, yeah, you could, you could turn it into a form of legalism, but that's not like you said, that's licentiousness is a far greater pandemic in the church today than legalism.

So this kind of legal. So let's guard against that because we know that potential. I think as Martin Luther said, you get up on one side of the horse and fall off on the other.

Yeah. So that's not what we're doing. We want to get up on the horse. Don't fall off the other side. Stay on the horse.

All right. Yeah. But let's just touch real quick. Verse 20. Because.

Okay. I think we've walked through this stuff. Well, okay. But what does verse 20 mean then?

Does that mean like every group of people I get together with? I can cite the promise of this verse.

No. However, we certainly believe that Jesus is present with his people.

Amen. You know, he's omnipresent. Like I'm not trying to diminish that at all.

But he's also present. You know, oftentimes people will bring this up. Like you mentioned earlier, a couple of people agreeing together in prayer.

Well, but that's not what this is about because it's about church discipline. And also you do believe that Christ is with you when you pray by yourself.

Right? Yeah. Of course. Of course we believe that. So that, that can't be what

Jesus means is, oh, if you get a couple more people, then Christ is more present when you pray.

that's not what it means. I'll just have church at the ball field Sunday. Because when two or three are gathered, y 'all just got church out there in the hunting cabin

Sunday. Cause we're too. No, that's not what he's talking about. Okay.

So what is he talking about? Well, I give a spiel and then you, he's talking about that. He's gathered with the church when the church is assembled, because this church has to be assembled.

All this tab. So when the church is assembled, the Lord Jesus in a mysterious, but very important way is with that church in a way that he's not with, that he's not everywhere.

You know, I mean, like he's, he is omnipresent. He is everywhere, but he's in different places in different ways.

And let me just give you an analogy. So for example, God is in hell. Like what? Yes, but he's in hell.

Not, not for blessing, but for wrath is, is, is a wrath, you know, and, and we're not saying,

I know we get into crazy stuff here. We're not separating God. We're not, you know, we're not, you can't do that, but the manifestation of his presence is different in different places, if you will.

And the, and, and he is specially with his gathered church. In a special way to comfort them, to bless him, to encourage them, even in this specific case with his authority.

Like when you discipline rightly, you are doing so with and under the authority of Christ.

It's not. So, so someone said, you can't judge me. Christ judge judges me. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

First of all, you don't know what you're saying, but secondly, Christ is judging you through the church.

That's the whole point. Yes. Churches can misunderstand, misapply this, but the point is

Christ uses his churches to bring discipline to his people. Anyway, what do you think?

Well, yeah, I agree with all of that. And I also think as far as the language of where two or three are gathered,

I think so often we, we divorce it from this context and we forget that.

Just remember what we just read back up in verse 16. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

I think Jesus is tying the whole thing together. And he's saying from the point that you begin to bring other people with you from that second stage, it's, it's a church.

It's a matter of the body of Christ from that point all the way through to the, to the point of even excommunication.

If it, if the person continues to be unrepentant, I think the whole point that Jesus is making when he says for two or three are gathered in my name, there am among them.

He's saying this whole, this whole process is under the authority.

Jesus is under the authority of the local church and Christ as the king. He's a part of it. Right. Yeah.

It's not, it's not this idea that because I've heard people say when, when bringing up that this church, this one

I've kind of heard people say, sir, you're saying like three of us could get together and kick somebody out.

No, no, we're not talking about that. We're saying this whole thing is the church submitting to the

Lordship of Jesus Christ. That's what we're saying. Big picture. I want to say that we have to understand the reality that the church is not ours, that the church is

Christ. And if Christ's body and Christ owns the church and we will all stand before the

Lord one day and to give an account for how we treated the church.

So this can be hard because of culture, because of what you've heard from other people.

You can think, man, I don't want to do this. And it is hard. It's like anybody, if you've got people in your church are like, man, we just can't wait.

It's hard. It's hard. It can be taxing. But at the end of the day, this is about the worthiness of Christ and the good of the church.

And I just, more and more I grow. I hope this always happens. Hope I hope I'm not done yet.

But over the last couple of years, especially I've grown with the idea of, man,

I'm just going to give my life to the church. Christ is worthy of a healthy church. That's where I'm at.

So what, any, anything else you want to add? Well, and, and I think a lot of times let's be, let's be honest.

We don't do church discipline because we're just cowards. We have, it takes some courage to say,

Lord, I'm going to trust you. I'm really going to believe what you've said and I'm going to do it.

Yeah. And, and you know what it might cost. It might cost people that weren't under discipline, but who this, this rubs them the wrong way and they leave.

You might have people leave your church who weren't under discipline, but, but this so goes against them culturally.

Cultural. And, and, and we have to be willing to say, you know what, I'm, I'm going to honor

Christ no matter what it costs. Oh, amen. What a great place to end.

Amen. I'm going to honor Christ no matter what it costs. May that be the mentality of our churches, our pastors, church members, deacons.

May that be what we are after. Christ is worthy.

Good, good word, brother. Anything else? That's it, man. All right, brother, sign us off.

We'll see you guys next week. If, if you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what

God's doing. This, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the, the masterpiece of God.