Church Discipline (part 3) - [Matthew 18:15-17]

Bethlehem Bible Church

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We've been talking about church discipline, and I just thought, well, here's something that I probably won't cover, but to just kind of show, because we, as we've mentioned before, you know, you typically think church discipline, it's usually something like sexual sin.

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But we'll say that there are other things within the Bible that the Bible would tell us that need to be purged from the church.

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If church discipline has, really it has two purposes, what would you say those two purposes are, church discipline?

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To keep the church pure, and? To reconcile those in sin. And well said.

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Did you have something else, Steve? I mean, that's what we want, right? And so with that said, let's look at 2

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Thessalonians 3, and here we're going to see that there are other issues.

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Verse 6, other things that should not be permitted within the body of Christ. Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, now notice those first three words, now we command, not suggest, now we command you, brothers, in the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother, brother being a

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Christian, who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you receive from us.

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What does it mean to walk in idleness? And notice it's

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I -D -L -E and not I -D -O -L. Although, you know, that would make a pretty good show.

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American Idol. I -D -L -E, and they could just show people who never work and stuff like that.

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Stephen? An unruly kind of life, right? One, laziness.

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You know, 9 to 5, their job is making sure that they don't have a job.

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So that, yeah, that would be, that would be not the way. Now, we're not just talking about somebody who's unemployed, but somebody who intentionally keeps themselves unemployed, who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you receive from us.

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For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us. That's kind of the royal us, because we were not idle when we were with you.

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Nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it. But with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you.

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Verse 9, it was not because we do not have that right. In other words, he says we had the right to be paid while we were with you, because he was ministering to them, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate.

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For even when we were with you, we would give you this command. If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

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For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.

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Now, such persons we command again and encourage in the

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Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

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If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.

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It's pretty strong. And, you know, just imagine today if we were to say, you know, we have to, sad duty, we have to tell you somebody won't get a work, or won't go to job, or won't go to job, or won't get a work.

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I speak for a living. Refuses to get a job and won't go to work.

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What will we say about that person? Well, you know, they just need another government program. Bible says not to associate with them.

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What do they mean by that? When Paul says don't associate with them, what is he saying?

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No fellowship with them, Stephen. And fellowship with the idea of, you know, when you have people over your house,

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I keep getting the answer and then calling on Stephen. If you... I don't know, it doesn't seem right, but...

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If you're not going to have fellowship with someone, it means you don't have them in your home and just kind of hang out with them.

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What you would be doing is evangelizing them. You would be calling them to repentance. And we've been talking about church discipline.

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And again, I really do want to hand out this flowchart, but it looks like I just need to give it to Tracy because it really looks like I printed out on a dot matrix printer.

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And maybe, you know, it was either that or the font is so...

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Do they still have fonts that you can do that look like dot matrix?

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Because that's what it looks like. And I printed it out on my regular... It's not a laser jet, but it's an inkjet.

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It just looks horrible. But it shows that the purpose ultimately is to bring those folks to repentance.

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We've talked about Matthew 18, the steps, the necessity of going to those who sin.

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And, you know, a lot of times we think it has to be against us. That's really not in the manuscript.

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If you know that somebody's in sin, even though it's not against you, I mean, if you see them doing something, and it's not just like, you know, they went into...

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I'll give you an example. Is going into a liquor store a sin? No. I mean, there are a lot of places where you could go where it's not sinful.

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Then there are some places you can go where you just have to say, Okay, short of being law enforcement on duty,

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I can't see any reason why any Christian would ever go in there. So if you see that, then you'd want to talk to that person.

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And notice in Matthew 18, as we've discussed, it says to reprove him in private. I think sometimes prayer meetings can devolve into...

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Often we talk about it being gossip meetings, but pseudo kind of church discipline meetings, right?

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You want to pray for... I won't even name the person, but there's someone who's involved in... What is that?

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That's just not right. You need to go to them in private. But that's hard. It's hard.

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I won't ask for a show of hands, but if I was to ask you how many people have actually confronted somebody else in sin, I'm going to guess that it would be not as big as it should be.

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Even when somebody does something to us, what do we typically do? What's the easy thing to do?

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That's not the easy thing to do, though. Love covers a multitude of sins, right? The easy thing to do is maybe not...

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Well, a lot of times the right thing to do is to cover a multitude of sins. But if you can't do that, if you can't just forget and forgive, then what should you do?

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You should go to them, but what do we do instead? Ignore it?

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Let it fester. Right? I mean, it's like that bee that Pastor Mike talked about being down his biking jersey.

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You know, just think about it. If that was sin, would you just leave it there permanently? And yet that's what we tend to do.

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The easiest thing to do is to just pretend either that it didn't happen or leave the burden on them.

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Well, they're the one who did it, so they have to deal with it, but I'm not going to like them until they make things right with me.

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And that's not right. There needs to be peace and harmony within the body of Christ.

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So we've talked about the steps of church discipline. We've talked even about bringing charges against elders and whatnot.

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Now I want to move on to a different topic still within the confines of church discipline, and that's divisiveness.

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Divisiveness. Let's look at Titus 3, verses 10 and 11. And when somebody has that, if they would read it, please.

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Titus 3, verses 10 and 11. Yeah, Bruce, when you have that. What was the word there?

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Stirs up division. The ESV says factious.

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What do you suppose a factious person, somebody who wants to stir up division, what sort of thing would they be saying?

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Can you imagine anything like that? Charlie.

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Okay, so like a critique of the elder board. And it's not just your own personal preference that, you know, maybe you go home in your journal.

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I almost said diary. In your journal, you know, or in your blog post.

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Well, as long as it's private, and you say, you know, I really prefer Elder Pradeep's preaching to Pastor Steve's.

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That would be fine. But when you start kind of grousing about it within the church, that would be, that would be part of it.

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I mean, think about 1 Corinthians, you know, the first, the beginning section of it where Paul writes, you know, some are saying that I'm of Apollos.

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I'm of Paul. I'm of this group and that group and the other group. That's factionism.

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That's division. Now, somebody might say, well, you know, is that like Presbyterian Baptist?

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No, that's not it. It's somebody who's really trying to stir up problems within the local body.

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Can you think of other factious issues that might come up? Go ahead,

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Brian. Color of the carpet. Well, I mean, seriously, one of the reasons why we, you know, our church meetings are a little bit different.

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In fact, we've had people say they like our church, you know, our annual meetings because we don't fight over the color of the carpet and stuff like that.

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But people want to, I mean, I've been at churches where they want to nitpick on everything. Can you think of other issues,

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Stephen? Okay, so scriptural issues.

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I mean, I can think of a few issues that might come up. You know, somebody says, well, I don't like the fact that the elders here, this is an elder -led congregation, elder rule.

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I prefer congregationalism. I don't think it's right that they don't have women elders. I don't think, you know, there are a number of things that we believe are clearly taught in Scripture that maybe somebody doesn't like.

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Somebody else had a hand up? Mark. Music or style of music.

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Yep. Yep, that's a pretty good one. And, you know, again, one of the things that people call and they ask about is, well, what kind of music do you play?

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You know, do you have other instruments besides the piano or maybe an organ? Because if you do, we're not going there.

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Or on the other hand, if you don't have, you know, rock and guitar, I'm not going. What kind of version of the

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Bible do you use? But specifically what this is talking about, though, is within the body here, people kind of getting other folks at the church to follow them, to come after them.

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And it could be issues like eschatology. It could be all kinds of different things.

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And people are just looking to gather people around them and against the leadership of the church.

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And by the way, look at how he says to deal with this. This is not something that, you know, is done in a style that's typically, we would think of as church discipline.

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Because the goal, in this sense, the goal is different than typical church discipline.

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Church discipline, we've said that the objective is to restore them. In this instance, what's the goal of with a factious person?

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What's the goal? What's that? Yeah, but I'm saying if we go to them, what's our goal with them?

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Look, you're being factious. What do we want them to do? Stop it. I mean, in a not so nice way, you could say the goal is to get them to shut up.

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Right? Just stop it. Why? Because what they're saying is not building up.

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It's not edifying. It's not adding to the unity of the body.

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It's taking away from it. I mean, I don't have to necessarily change somebody's opinion on things.

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I don't necessarily have to convince them that they're wrong, and maybe they aren't wrong.

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The question is, is it a sin issue that they're trying to do, or is it a sin issue that they're trying to perpetrate disunity in the body?

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And that's the key issue, Stephen. Yeah, because basically what they say is, look, they get a first warning, and then what?

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A second warning, and that's it. They're gone. You know, this is like,

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I'm learning more and more about soccer. I actually watched a little bit of it yesterday. This is like, somebody says, why?

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Well, it was a fun game. But this is like, you get a yellow card, right? And then what?

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And you're gone, or a second yellow card, and you're out. Why is this?

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I mean, this goes above and beyond Matthew 18.

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And like I said, it does have a slightly different tone and a different goal to it. It's still the purity of the body.

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It's still the unity of the body is the goal, but when it comes to the individual, the issue is different. Why? Because, well, because they're not repentant.

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But I mean, even so, in other situations, we would go, okay, you go to them once, then you take, you know, one or two witnesses, then the church goes after them.

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And only after they refuse all those three steps do we go to step four, which is to put them out of the church.

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But here there are two steps. It's going to permeate the church and many people are going to be involved.

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It really is more like, we've used this term, we've used this kind of term before, but it really is like gangrene.

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It really is that. It's infectious. It needs to be stopped. And there's great trouble within the body of Christ if that doesn't happen.

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I mean, we read and we know about many situations where churches get fractured by this.

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And it usually starts with rumors. It usually starts with innuendo.

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There was a church up north of us a couple of years ago. And they kicked their church, their pastor out and then asked us for a pulpit supply.

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That didn't really go very well because we knew the pastor, we knew that they hadn't done things right.

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And when the deacon wrote me and said, you know, we'd like you guys to provide a church supply or a pulpit supply,

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I said, well, is it true that for months before you fired the pastor, you guys were having prayer meetings where basically no praying went on and all you did was spread gossip about the pastor?

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Is it true that, you know, and I just went through a list of things and guess what? I got no response.

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If they were convinced in their own minds that they had done the right thing, then I would have expected some kind of defense.

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And I just asked questions. But people who divide a church or who are secretly meeting, and that was the issue there, they were secretly meeting, doing these things outside of, you know, if you're going to have a church prayer meeting, what's a nice thing to do?

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Pray is one, but what's another thing? You know, invite the pastor. That's a good thing.

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Let the pastor know there's going to be a prayer meeting. I mean, what kind of prayer meeting is that?

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We're going to have a secret prayer meeting where we're going to pray for the pastor. We'll pray for him.

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You know, if we've got an hour and fifty -eight, you know, two hours scheduled, an hour and fifty -eight minutes will be dedicated to critiquing him and then the last two minutes will be praying about how we're going to remove him.

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We're going to get the pot good and hot before we invite the pastor. That's just wrong.

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And so a factious person is somebody who desires to split the body of Christ, they desire to divide the body of Christ.

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And now, think about it, it may not even be, now is it possible to do this kind of thing unknowingly or foolishly?

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I think it is. Maybe your goal isn't to stir up division and you just don't know any better and so you're running around gossiping, complaining, rumor mongering.

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Then what happens? Somebody comes to you and says, you know what? What you're doing is you're sowing discord.

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In the church, you're running around, you're not Johnny Appleseed, you're Johnny Troubleseed. You know, everywhere you go, a little trouble here, a little trouble there.

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Somebody comes to you and says, stop it. Just stop it. If everything

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I say is supposed to be edifying, that is building up, not just in my home, not just to other

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Christians, but within the body of Christ, I need to be building up the church, not tearing it down.

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Then if somebody comes to me and says, you know what? What you're doing is causing trouble.

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It's causing dissension. What should happen? Well, you should stop it, but you should be thinking, well, wait a minute.

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What I'm doing is not right. I should be thinking about places like Ephesians 4 and asking myself whether what

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I'm saying is building up or tearing down. Ephesians 5, all these kind of, you know, you know what to do, now do it.

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But there are people, I think, who deliberately go into places and cause trouble. You know, what is it about people that they think that they can come into a church and change it?

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Or stay in a church and change it? I've had people tell me before, well, you know, we're going to stay in such and such a church and we're going to try to change it from the inside.

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What does that say? I mean, especially think about, you know, let's say I was a Roman Catholic and I go, well, you know what?

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I know the Roman Catholic Church has the wrong doctrine, but I'm going to stay and fight from the inside.

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Okay. Carry on. Have a nice day, but talk about Mission Impossible.

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Now, would you say that it would be fair to say that maybe Martin Luther's goal was to create factions?

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Well, you could say no, but I think in one respect it was. I mean, his first goal was to transform the church.

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He was like, wait a minute. These things are not right. Let's talk about them. But after that, after they were trying to kill him and everything else, then what he was trying to do was draw people out of the false church and teach them the truth.

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But when you stay in, I have a good friend, I won't identify him because now he knows better, but he once stayed in a charismatic church, even though he wasn't a charismatic, and he said, although you guys probably know who he is, because he said,

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I'm going to try to ride this out and for the sake of my brothers and sisters in Christ, I'm going to try to keep them on the sort of straight and narrow road of charismatic theology.

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And that didn't go real well. In fact, the whole church wound up dissolving. But here's the thing about factious people, and I think this is probably true without exception.

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No church ever had divisions in it without somebody, what? Dividing it.

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Somebody wanting to cause those divisions. Somebody, you know, running around during Sunday school or after the meeting or whatever, saying, you know, what do you think about Pastor Steve's shoes or what about that or what, you know,

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I don't know how these things talk or start. I remember once somebody telling me after, when we were in Los Angeles, somebody coming up to me and saying, did you hear that,

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Steve? He said, Pastor MacArthur, what he just taught was blasphemy.

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What would you say? I don't think this was my best moment because I didn't metaphorically say, shut up.

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I said, shut up. And I said, are you out of your mind?

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You can't talk like that. And I said, you shouldn't even say that to one other person.

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Not one. Why? Because if I'm thinking, okay, if John MacArthur's wrong, what do

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I do? Now you guys are like, if John MacArthur's wrong, that's impossible. Okay.

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But he would say that's not impossible. What should I do if John MacArthur, if Pastor Mike, if Steve, if Harry, if somebody says something that's wrong, what do you do?

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Steven. You go to them. You don't, you know, get out of the meeting and go, did you just hear what he said?

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That's terrible. How could he possibly believe that? And by the way,

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John MacArthur wasn't wrong and he didn't speak heresy. That man was wrong, which he later admitted.

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It's just not what we do. There's another time and you guys are thinking, I think I'm a big troublemaker. I was just in the bookstore.

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In fact, I think I was even out here and maybe just back in California perusing the bookstore and it was an evening and there was almost nobody in the bookstore except for there was me.

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One guy who I knew was trouble because I'd been in a like an

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IBS type class with him and he wasn't even a member of Grace Community Church.

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He was actually a member of an Anglican Church, Episcopalian Church and he was in the bookstore talking about Phil Johnson and John MacArthur and critiquing them.

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And again, I just went up to him and I said, what are you doing? You know, are you crazy?

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This is their church. If you want to talk to them about errors that you think they might have, well fine, do that.

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But you don't run around their church and you know, just throw little hand grenades out there.

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It's not the right thing to do. If you care about, if you say you care about the body of Christ and now you're going to be in here doing that, they should give you a police escort out of here is what they should do.

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Yeah, well, the

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Church of England you're talking about. Well, there's, well the only split between them,

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I mean there's still the Episcopalian Church is called the Episcopalian Church only because you don't come to the

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United States and say we're the Church of England. At least you didn't you know, back in the day.

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That wasn't really popular. But, you know, it's interesting now because and this is true in the

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Roman Catholic Church and it's true in the Episcopalian Church of England that the most conservative portions of those churches are no longer in England or the

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United States or anything else. It's where? You know, it's in Africa, it's in South America you know, where they really take their doctrine pretty seriously.

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But, yeah, I mean there's no there was no schism like that. It's just they just changed you know, it'd be like I can't even think of a good example it'd be like well, going to the if the

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Soviet Union still existed and saying we're the American Church you know, it just wouldn't go over very well.

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So, you know, oh, the homosexuality question.

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Yeah, there is a schism there but that's just I would say that that is it's factiousness, yes, but it's based on if you have a hermeneutic in other words a way of studying the

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Bible that basically says you can kind of gloss over a lot of things and it started

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I think really well, I don't know when it started but when you can say well, it's okay for women to be in ministry even though Paul says

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I do not permit it well, if you can argue that away then every other thing just kind of eventually is going to to go with it so it's not surprising to me that they would have vote to have a homosexual in ministry.

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Yep, Charlie. Yeah, and that's a great point

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I mean, imagine Reformation Day is a day for mourning because it was a day of disunity or whatever, yeah that would be like the same idea

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Fourth of July I mean, God sovereignly ordained that there be a United States whether or not and I don't think you could argue that taxation without representation is a good reason to start a revolution not biblically you can argue it politically

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I don't think you can argue it biblically little problems like you know winter under Caesar and all those things but does

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God I'll get to you in a minute Mark you know the idea that Martin Luther and maybe a small group around him were probably the real church

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I think that's right was it right to do what he did well

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I think so you can't you know let's just suppose Martin Luther had gone to the Pope and said your eminence your grace your holiness you're just wrong about how somebody gets to heaven well that would have been a short conversation because they didn't really do the whole factious thing like once or twice and then have nothing to do with him nothing to do with him meant take him out and hang him so they weren't real big on that and in fact that's what they tried to do they declared him a heretic and they tried to kill him but the point of this is it's really talking about within a local body and so we need to kind of constrain ourselves a little bit by that Mark Mark that man

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Mark raised a good question which is you know shouldn't serious doctoral problems you know being taught from the pulpit or something of that nature shouldn't that be handled within the elders well

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I would think yes but maybe the elders didn't hear it or don't understand it or you know so so I still think the right thing to do would be you know since Mark raised a question

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I'll just make Mark the issue you know Mark thinks Mark thinks that Pastor Mike said something wrong although he doesn't

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I'm gonna protect him too you know and he goes to Mike and Mike says well you know

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Mark I think you're all wet but Mark's still convinced then what should he do well then

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I think he should go to the elders and if the elders say you know what Mark you're right then

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Mike needs to recant but that's that's a whole different matter but yes

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I would agree with that it should be done by the elders but you know the last thing and maybe

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I think always the first thing that people want to do but the last thing they should do is complain amongst each other it's the easiest thing to do in the world

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I mean it's so hard it is so hard to think okay Pastor Mike's got you know a doctorate and and who am

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I but he definitely you know said something wrong well and it's not like you know he said you know that was

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Mount Zion and it was actually the Mount of Transfiguration or whatever you know

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I mean some serious doctrinal problem I don't want to confront him well nobody does but listen if I if I know anything about Mike or even

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John MacArthur it's that they take criticism seriously and they want to look at themselves and make sure these things aren't true or that they do have things right and so I'm sure he would take it that way

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I remember once this is slightly off topic but I think it's pretty closely related somebody came up to me one day and said kind of a personal attack on MacArthur and said that they didn't think he was very loving and I said now

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I knew she was pretty new to the church and so I just said well have you talked to him and she said no and I said well

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I think you ought to so the very next week she comes up to me and I total credit for going up and talking to John MacArthur because I mean that's a little intimidating she comes back to me the next week and she says

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Steve John MacArthur is the nicest man and her issue was with you know charismatic theology and she goes did you know that he married a charismatic and she was just like crying her eyes out and she just thought he was the most wonderful guy and you know

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I mean a lot of times here's something you know to just think about if you stand up in the pulpit and you just kind of go well in your mealy mouth and you're like well oh

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I'm sorry I don't mean to talk about Joel Osteen but if you if you just kind of say sorry if you just kind of say well you know

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I don't want to be too dogmatic I don't want to be too harsh I don't the

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Bible is very didactic it's very I mean it's it teaches it preaches it presents things in black and white and it doesn't often give shades of grey and so if you get up there and you're like well

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I don't want to be black and white I'd rather be grey then you ought not to get up there and so what ought to happen when we hear any sermon is we we ought to feel like the word of God is just kind of poking us in the chest it's pressing us it's pushing on us to see whether there's some change that we need to make you know if you can stand up there and go

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I can take it there's nothing you can do that's fine but usually what happens and I find the best sermons for me are the ones where I just go

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I'm either reminded of the love of God or some aspect of the message has made me think

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I've been thinking about things wrongly there are things that I need to change in my life and that's what we ought to be looking for so the tendency is to think of the guy who gets up there and just think well he's just really he has all the answers he thinks he has it wired you know he's

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Mr. Know -it -all and that's how people you know for example they listen to John McCarthy they think well that guy's really tough and you talk to him and you're just like he really is a super nice man but you can't get up there and just want to be everybody's friend that's not what it's about it's about proclaiming the truth other questions comments ok yeah oh

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Harry always and it's an excellent point well

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I mean it's no different than you know Matthew 7 what do you want to do you want to remove the beam from your own eye before you worry about the speck in your neighbor's eye so I think it's always right if you're going to go approach someone to think what about my own life you know

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I want to make sure well let's just put it another way before you preach on Sunday morning what do you think is happening if you're studying a passage for a week or two weeks or however long it is what do you think happens to you as you study that passage you become convicted of the truths that are contained therein and what you're going to preach right so you know people go wow that was a harsh sermon or whatever and I'm like dude you should have been there when

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I was studying it for the last two weeks well I was you know you only got 45 minutes of it I've had a couple weeks because that's you know it's no accident that the

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Bible says in Hebrews 4 .12 that it is what sharper than any two -edged sword it's able to kind of get in there and cause you to go ow and to think there are problems here but yeah that's right we need to make sure that we're not you know just kind of full of ourselves before we go confront someone else but I would go so far to say that there has never been talking about factious people that there's never been a church split without somebody splitting it church doesn't get together on Sunday morning and go you know what everything is great here we're completely unified we all agree we all love the

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Lord we all love each other let's split I don't think that's ever happened but if you look at the churches that do split

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I promise you I promise you there's a ringleader there's more than one ringleader

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I mean when a pastor gets run out how does that happen when he's unbiblically run out I know of a man who was run out of a church once and you know what his main sin was besides preaching the

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Bible he offended the number one giver at the church by preaching the

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Bible by saying if you're a Christian in 1st John this is what your life looks like not perfectly but this is what your life looks like this is the direction of your life and that man was so offended that he said

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I'm gonna leave and I'm taking my money with him unless the people of this church fire him and they did so who runs the church the

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Lord the pastor or the man with the biggest wallet yeah that's a great that's a great point

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I mean Charlie says how many times would you let if Jesus is the bridegroom the church the church is the bride how many times should the

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Lord allow his bride to be insulted assaulted everything else before he says you know what you're not gonna do that again how many times would as a husband we had a little conversation about this last night my wife probably doesn't know we had a conversation about it last night but I just thought you know

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I don't I don't think that there are you know many kind of insults that I would allow to go towards my wife before you know my cup overflows and that's that's just the reality of it you know and so where do you just think well the

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Lord is just kind of like well that's okay if they wanna say that oh that's alright it's no big deal that's not what the

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Bible says you know well here let's put it another way you're allowed to have your own opinion but if it's wrong don't express it right and by wrong

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I mean unbiblical if you if you have an issue with somebody in leadership you have an issue with something that is done here then you need to go to those people the people who are responsible and deal with it otherwise just kind of go and I mean this is this goes right into a topic that may seem unrelated but when it comes to church discipline it's not and it's this it's submission we talk about it what is submission submission is

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I agree I agree with you a hundred percent no I said on many occasions

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I think the most difficult command in all scripture is what close she said submit to authority wives submit to your husbands cause

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I am a husband I wouldn't want to submit to me true right submission doesn't mean agree the easiest thing for my wife to say is well

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I agree with Steve therefore I am going to agree with him the hardest thing for her to think is

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I disagree with Steve but he is responsible he is going to give an account so I need to submit to him this isn't a sin issue

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I can submit to him I think he is wrong but I can submit to him and the same thing goes

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I thought she was standing up back there same thing goes for the church you are in the church you think well

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I don't know if I necessarily agree with the color of the carpet which is pretty much somewhere between grey and brown right now with coffee stains and everything else you have to ask yourself is what the issue that is in my mind that is bothering me is it so severe that I need to leave the church because if I can't learn to just kind of go with it and if I can't talk to the elders about it or if I go and talk to the elders about it and they go well this is our conviction and I can't prove to them biblically that they are wrong what do

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I need to do I have two choices I can submit or I can leave what

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I cannot do is say I don't agree and I am going to let everybody else know anyone who will listen to me craziness

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Harry I am a holy rebel no, no you are not somebody write that down a deadly cocktail of what?

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arrogance and cowardice it is cowardly and that is exactly right and whispering campaigns are always cowardly yes

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I think what we have though in the case of Martin Luther is a fairly rare exception because really the only established church was apostated and abandoned the gospel and so what he was

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I think he would have been happy in fact I think one of his writings if I recall correctly from seminary was something along the lines of you know they can have the pope they can have

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Mary they can have all this other stuff but I can't abide the perversion of the heart of the gospel you know if it is not in other words that was that was the issue wasn't so much all these other things he would later rail about but the idea of salvation by imputation of Christ's righteousness and his perfections to us and all those things that Rome said were wrong and it is interesting when you read the

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Roman Catholic Church and its history how they really have transformed because you read the

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Council of Orange which I think is like 600 AD somewhere in there you read that and you go

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I can agree with that but now you read the Council of Trent 900 years later and it's it's way off right well to take it a step further and you know would it have been nice if he could have gone like I said gone to the

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Pope and said your holiness your eminence your grace and whatever other superlatives he wanted to apply and say but the history of the church was what they went around and they everyone who didn't toe the line with the

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Roman Catholic Church was put to death it's a pretty tough way to go

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I mean around from a period of like maybe 1000 AD to 1200

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AD the most powerful man on the on the face of the planet was the Pope if he said something then you know you were stuck with of course that's after Martin Luther or before Martin Luther go ahead

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Charlie and I think ultimately the standard has to be the

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Bible and you know the Roman Catholic Church had gone far far from the Bible we need to close there sorry

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Brian and we can pick it up here next week Father we just thank you and praise you for your word thank you and praise you for the gospel of Jesus Christ thank you and praise you that we can have all of our sins forgiven even those sins of gossip and whatever else we may have sinned with our tongues with our minds

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Lord help us to learn how to joyfully submit to those in authority above us and to carry out the dictates of Matthew 18 and to do so through the lens and the prism of Matthew 7 that is to examine ourselves first Father I pray that you'd give us each just the humility to do these things and to do them for your glory in Christ's name we pray