The Privilege and Safety of Church Discipline

Our text this morning is 1 Corinthians chapter 5. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the

Gentiles. A man is sleeping with his father's wife, and you are arrogant. Shouldn't you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this?

Even though I am absent in the body, I am present in spirit. As one who is present with you in this way,

I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of our

Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough?

Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us observe the feast not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, otherwise you would have to leave the world.

But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler.

Do not even eat with such a person. For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders?

Don't you judge those who are inside? God judges outsiders. Remove the evil person from among you.

Let's pray. Father, Lord, we come before you today.

We're in spirits of humility and worship. Lord, we thank you for the gathering of your saints, for the singing of spiritual songs and hymns, and Lord, for the proclamation of your word.

So this morning, I pray for Brother Tyler as he comes to exposit and deliver a message that you've given to him.

God, that your spirit would work in this place to convict, to encourage, to equip and prepare us for the life in the church and life outside.

God, I pray that we would be emboldened, that we would be encouraged, that we would be strengthened by your word, that we would be people of your word, people of the truth, who are not cowed by controversial things, but who know the truth and stand firm, firm in the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Lord, let your church and the worship of this church be a sweet smell in your nostrils this morning.

God, we love you. We submit the worship of our mouths and our hearts into your holy place.

God bless Tyler and the preaching of your word this morning. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Well, good morning.

Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 5. Word on the streets is we were going to have a great coloring sheet for the kids, but when

Kelsey put that in chat GPT, she was told it would be wildly inappropriate.

That's where we find ourselves this morning. I don't want to hear anybody here talk about how

Corey and Josh are not incredibly smart, because when you're playing in these Sunday mornings, you're looking forward to the text that's coming down the line and you come across that, the smart thing to do is go, let's bring in a guest speaker for that one.

Here I am. Just kidding. I volunteered. I wanted all the heat for this, but one thing that Angela and I did want when we were searching for a church home was a place to worship with our kids in the congregation.

We've loved the crying, the giggles, the peekaboos over the shoulders. We've loved that things, but I'm not going to lie.

When I read this, I was like, how do we get them out of the room for just a little while? But I don't think that was from the

Lord because this is the word of God. Our kids need to hear this to prepare them for what they're walking into.

For you parents, though, I've taken out a lot of bad puns and bad jokes out of my normal talks around these subjects to my normal 25 -year -old male audience.

However, if you have questions on the ride home, my advice is just to answer them directly and concisely, and if they have more questions, you can follow them up later.

There is a cancer in the church today. There was a cancer, you read it here 2 ,000 years ago in the early church.

There was a cancer 1 ,400 years before that when Moses gave the law to the Israelites.

You may think reading that that it was sexual immorality. I want to make the argument today from the text that the cancer is the lack of church discipline.

You're going to see that because when you have a lack of church discipline, it allows in all sorts of other diseases to infect the body.

Fair warning, you may get tired of hearing about sex from the pulpit for the next few

Sundays. I'm going to make the suggestion that it might be on you because it's in the text, and sex is a glorious and God -given gift to us as His people, as His church, but what does

Satan do with all good things? He twists it, and he puts it in the dark. There are hundreds of references to it in Scripture.

So I want to make four points this morning, these are them. We are all sexually broken to one degree or another.

Some things aren't our fault, but we are all sexually broken. Number two, church discipline is always good.

Doesn't mean it's not painful, doesn't mean it's not difficult. Church discipline is always good. Number three, church discipline is the privilege and responsibility of every member.

If you call yourself a member of this church, it is your privilege and responsibility. And lastly, church discipline protects the body of believers.

Sometimes in my discipleship meetings, I'll ask you to do it. If you've taken notes, scratch something out of your

Bible, and when you say something like that, you hope you look up to your audience and see a bunch of red flags going off, which

I do, good. I don't know if you know this, but these section headers, these chapter numbers, these verse numbers were all added later.

They're helpful, they're for our reference. Mine at the top says, sexual immorality devalues the church.

If I were to have been part of the ESV team back in the day, I would have written,

Corinth's failure to discipline is shameful. And we're going to see where it's brought them as we go.

And we need to remember one thing about this letter to the Corinthians. This is written four to five years after the church was planted by Paul.

What are we in, year two, two and a half, as this church? We're going to see how far a church can drift if we miss this one piece.

So let's dive in to the text. But if we can, I'd like to start back in chapter four.

Jesus is king, context is queen. Let me read from verse 19, chapter four, verse 19, as we go.

Because you'll see the context here is power. There's a satanic power here, and there's a power of the spirit that comes through the church.

Verse 19, but I will come to you soon at the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.

For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish?

Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not even tolerated among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.

Very interesting to me. It's been reported. This is widely known. This is not a hidden sin.

It is reported amongst the town. How? I think if you look back in chapter one,

Chloe sends a report. And she's saying, hey, there's some things going on, which is fascinating to me.

Because if you were to flip to the last chapter, chapter 16, you'll see three guys bring a letter to Paul.

Stephanus, Fortunatus, and Achaicus. They have questions. They have questions about sex. Even they have questions about marriage.

And I believe Paul doesn't start those questions, answering those questions, until chapter seven.

Chapter seven, verse one says, now concerning the matters about which you wrote. He spends six chapters correcting the

Corinthians before he even gets to their questions. They had a lot of questions about sex, but they didn't want answers to sexual sin.

And we see there's some grievous sin here. Sexual immorality. I have to do this.

What is that? I never do the Greek, because I think God is unbelievably gracious to give us revelation in our first language.

Have you considered how beautiful it is that you can read God's word in English? However, the

Greek here is pornea, pornea. Which is obviously where we get our word pornography from, right?

This man is fornicating with his stepmother. This is something so vile that these local

Corinthians pagan would even reject. Now let me ask, are all sins equal in God's eyes?

No. No, they're not. Some sins are extremely more grievous than others.

That's why they carry greater consequences. Now, do all sins separate us from the Lord? Absolutely. Do all sins create a need for us to have a savior?

Absolutely. But some sins are grievous, and that's what we find here.

I don't know if everybody knows this about me, but I've worked with Razorback athletes and coaches for 16 years, teaching them to walk with the

Lord and fulfill the Great Commission. It's been awesome. The last few years, my ministry has shifted because of pornea, because of sexual immorality.

And it is wrecking a generation. It's shifted to focusing on missionaries, campus ministers, pastors who have sexual immorality addictions, and they're disqualifying themselves.

They're walking in as a hypocrite. Here in the church, however, at the Church of Corinth, we have a man so deep in sexual sin that everybody knows about it.

It is wildly known. And here's the crazy part. Nobody does a thing. And Paul's about to rip them from it.

He's about to slam it. My thought, though, is, are we any different as the church at large?

Everybody knows it's a problem. You guys hear about it from up here a lot, but I want you to know it's because we have something special going on here, okay?

Most churches never hear about it. I've got a lot of guys free, and they say, why don't I hear about this from my ministers?

Why didn't I hear about this growing up when I was a kid? It would have saved me from a lot of pain.

I think it's because if we as the big C church admit that it's a problem, you have to do something about it.

And then it gets messy. It's awkward conversations. It's a difficult thing. That's why when

I first met Josh, I drilled him on his past, his present, where he's taking us in the future. It's a great conversation.

And I was blessed. When I met Cory for the first time, he invited me over to his house. I'm hammering him. How's that for a polite dinner conversation?

But I refuse to be a part of a church where I know, because I've seen it in so many guys' lives and women's lives, that there's a tornado wrecking the souls.

And I want you to hear from me that we would be fools to think that sexual immorality is not in CBC, in this room right now.

And I want you to hear the grace of the Lord this morning. I do not like giving stats out, but I'm going to give you some.

The Barna Group, if you're unfamiliar with them, highly respected in their research. Listen to this.

Three out of four practicing Christian men, practicing, meaning they don't just identify as Christians, they are practicing their faith, ages 18 to 70 watch porn, that's 75%.

For the younger generation, 18 to 43, 9 out of 10. In my personal experience with hundreds of men 30 and under, 100%.

I should say 99. What about the one? Those are the ones that got free. That's where we are.

Christian women, 18 to 43, 7 out of 10 admit to consuming pornography.

If you have secret sexual sin in your life, I want to give you the three possible outcomes of it.

Not just sexual sin. If you have any secret, unrepentant sin in your life, I want to give you, biblically, what the

Bible says is going to happen. These are for believers only. If these don't happen to you, you should be very afraid, because that means you're not in the club.

It's death, discovery, and disclosure. Death, what do I mean? God may take you out for his glory and for your good.

We see that in Scripture. You don't have to agree with me on this. I personally think we will be in heaven with Ananias and Sapphira.

I think God's sacrifice on the cross covered their sin. However, God made them an extreme example of, hey, we're not going to have secret sin in our church, and we're not going to lie to the

Spirit. I think our elders do an incredible job at guarding this table every single week.

Do not come up here if you have unrepentant sin in your life or enmity with a brother or sister.

Don't come up here. You bring sickness on you or possibly even death. That's an option.

Discovery. Your sin will find you out. It's for your good, and it's grace when that happens.

I got this one guy free from his porn addiction. The guy loved the Lord. He's a businessman, a father.

He put in the work, and he found freedom. He's walked in sobriety for two years, then I stopped hearing from him.

He calls me and says, hey, I've fallen back in for the past two months, and my wife just caught me.

And then he said something that I've seen a theme amongst guys. I'm so glad I got caught.

He sees the grace in it that God is pulling him out of his sin. He's walking in a lot of pain, and he's on thin ice, and he's almost about to lose his marriage.

And it's going to be tough. It's going to be difficult. The last one and the best one is disclosure. That's what I'm going to stand here today and show you how good the

Lord must love you to give you the opportunity to do this with a brother or sister sitting next to you.

Disclosure. Confess your sin. Do not just confess it to the Lord. You must confess it to one another.

You have to confess it to one another. In fact, I laugh.

We talk about it all the time in reformed circles about the depravity of man.

Oh, we're so terrible, but God must love us so much to love somebody like me. Think about that for a second.

I know I've sinned. You know you've sinned. We're all big sinners, but we don't know each other's sin.

Isn't that interesting? It's kind of crazy to me. Here though, in the text, we have a man in public sin.

I imagine that he's gifted. He's probably a large donor. He's probably been used by God to some degree or another, and everybody in the church is going, whoa, we don't want to mess this up.

We've got a good thing going here, so let's just not stir the pot, and they do nothing.

Nobody says anything, including these guys who bring a letter to Paul. We have a group of believers priding themselves in their acceptance of all things.

That's verse two. Look at it. And you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn?

Let him who has done this be removed from you. You hear that? Arrogant. It's pride.

In a lot of ways for us, it looks like pride hiding as humility. Here's what it would look like. Man, I'm such a sinner.

I could never go to somebody else and call them out on their sin. Oh, that'd be so hypocritical of me.

Let's walk that out for a second. If because I've sinned, I can't go to Tyler here and call him out on his sin, what's going to happen to his sin?

It's going to grow. Because you've sinned, you feel like you can't come to me and call me out on my sin, what's going to happen with my sin?

It's going to grow. And so collectively, we've amplified sin in our midst.

How arrogant, how prideful can we be? Verse three, for though absent in the body,

I'm present in spirit. And as a present, I've already pronounced a judgment on the one who did such a thing. We talked about in chapter four, tutors and fathers.

Here we have a father acting as a father because the children won't make the decision that needs to be made.

There's no vote. There's no investigation. There's no need for witnesses. Why? Because the whole town is the witnesses.

There's some things you don't have to pray about, right? When you're in a subjective situation, it's often hard to make objective decisions.

I love when Josh tells us, and forgive me for this, brother. This is my best impersonation, y 'all, we're such feminists, it's not even funny.

And every time he says that, I'm like, ah, not me. But then I get to think about it, he's right.

We're up to our eyeballs in our feminist society. We can't even see. We can't even make objective decisions.

We need an outside objective voice to speak into us, and if you didn't know, it comes from right there.

It comes from right there. That's what we have Paul doing here. Verse four, listen to this, when you are assembled in the name of the

Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, there's that word power, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the

Lord. You ever handed somebody over to Satan? We don't do that word.

Why would we? What does that mean? Look what it says, when you're assembled, what are we doing right now?

We're assembled in the name of the Lord. What is a business meeting that we have at church?

We are assembled in the name of the Lord. You do not get to sit this out.

We must all raise our hands and say that is egregious and it's not to be here.

Why do we kick the man out? Because we love him. What's the goal?

Look at it, it's his salvation. How much must the Lord love the guy to kick him out of the church?

Have you thought of it that way? How much did God love Adam and Eve, enough to kick him out of the garden and guard the way back to the tree of life?

You may think that's judgment. No, it's so that they will not come and eat of the tree and live forever in their sin.

Church discipline is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It seems harsh, but really it's love.

It's what it is, it's love. In fact, the men who love me the most in the world, I got four texts from guys this morning who

I have been incredibly harsh with saying they're praying for me.

These are the ones that you will love enough to get in their face. I've been pretty good,

I think, at teaching them to read their Bibles, to walk with God, to fulfill the great commission.

We would have our meetings and I would ask them to close in prayer. And they would normally pray something like this,

Lord, thank you for your word and may we go out and live it so others can know you. Great prayer.

But then when I started realizing what was happening in the hearts of these guys, I got up close, real personal, and I started attacking the sin in their life, outside objective voice, speaking into their subjective situations,

I still do all the same thing. Teach them to walk with God, teach them to read Scripture, teach them to share their faith.

Now when they close in prayer, it sounds a little more like this, Father, you are so good.

Thank you for Tyler and what you've done through him in my life. May you use me in the lives of others the same way.

You hear the difference? They glorify the Lord because of the work he's done through somebody else and they want it to be the same for them.

You see, there's two kingdoms. There's Satan's and the Lord's.

We were all once part of Satan's and we've been redeemed into this glorious kingdom called the church.

And we must sit here and see things for what they are and look at it, verse 5, and say, don't bring that junk in here.

Don't do it. I love you too much to do it. And what are we to do?

Remove them. That's hard. For his good and because we love him.

Not spiritually, or excuse me, we are to remove him spiritually, but not physically.

We continue the relationships with him, but we don't call them a brother. I move from fellowshipping with them as a brother in Christ to evangelizing them.

That's what we do. Does the man repent? I think so.

It's actually kind of neat. We at least know the church walks in obedience. I'm going to read for y 'all 2

Corinthians 2, 6 through 7. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough.

So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed with excessive sorrow.

And then go to chapter 7, verse 9. As it is, I rejoice not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting.

For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.

Godly grief, worldly grief. Worldly grief is, man, I'm upset

I got caught. Godly grief is, thank you, Lord, for binding my sin out.

You know, I'm tired of leading Christian college guys to Christ. You heard that right.

Maybe I should do it this way. I'm tired of leading Christian college guys to Christ, and their parents getting angry at me because they prayed a prayer with them when they were 5 years old.

They had a baptism when they were 7 years old. But what was lacking in their life was discipleship and discipline.

Imagine a high schooler having his high school buddies and older men come to him and say, hey, we know you're fooling around with women.

Let us help you for your good in the glory of God. What pain could he be saved from, right?

Imagine a middle schooler being unbelievably disobedient to his parents and another 12 -year -old coming to him and going, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are we doing here, or a parent of a 12 -year -old actually disciplining them.

How mind -blowing would that be? What if the parent said, hey, don't take from the Lord's table today.

Would you like to talk about your disobedience? No. Don't take from the table.

We'll talk about it when you're ready. What's that 12 -year -old going to do? He's going to sit a little more attuned to the preaching of the

Word of God, and the Spirit is going to work in and through that. You know, church discipline is the great sifter.

It finds those who are falling through the crack, who are maybe just getting Jesus off the ricochet.

You may have experienced the grace of the Lord and truly repented and are falling more and more in love with Jesus and crushing your sin, but the person sitting next to you is just here because truly our community is great.

Sarah makes some incredible treats in the back, and they are worth coming back week after week, right? Josh gives unbelievable

Bible trivia answers, and that's what a lot of people show up for church. Church discipline finds that out.

They're not here because they love Christ. They're here because they love the idea of loving Christ, and this is what it looks like.

We read in the call to worship, Matthew 18, if I were to come to you, a brother in Christ, and say, hey, here's some sin.

Turn and repent. You would say, yes, thank you, let's go.

But if I go to that guy next to you, and I say, here's some sin.

Turn and repent. They rebel. And so I grab Mike, and Mike and I go, and we say, here's some sin.

Turn and repent. And then they start saying, you guys are judgmental. What's wrong with y 'all?

I thought y 'all were nice. And then we grab Josh and Corey, and we say, hey, we have an issue here, and we say, turn and repent, and they say, no.

Then we bring them before the church, and you have a responsibility to say, turn and repent, and then they will rebel.

And then we borrow them from the table. It's difficult, and we turn from fellowshipping to evangelism.

And they don't fall through the cracks any longer. And how good will that be for their soul?

That's the point of verse 5. They're loved. They're pursued. They're cared for.

Let's read verse 6. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our

Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

How much sin should you get rid of? All of it. Will you be able to do that?

No. When do you stop trying? Never. Look what it says.

Passover lamb. This is a direct look back to Exodus, as the blood of the lamb freed them from slavery, right?

Well, guess where we are. The blood of the lamb has freed me and you from the slavery of sin.

Where is this sin, so that I may crush it to the glory of God? Glorify the

Lord, as we sang this morning. How do you do it? You crush sin. And most people won't know about it, guys.

Where does God get the most worship? I believe in your homes, when nobody, there's not an audience, nobody sees what's going on.

Look what else he talks about. This unleavened bread, this celebrate the festival, what are we talking about?

If you didn't know, leaven is always symbolic of sin. Just a little bit will leaven the whole lump, it'll rise.

This unleavened bread festival, the feast of unleavened bread, what the

Jews would do, the Israelites, is have a deep cleaning party.

You think you know what deep cleaning is? You don't. Because they would have to clean out their whole house and literally wipe every inch of every surface, because you can't see the smallest piece of leaven, so you have to wipe everything down.

What is this symbolic of? Find the sin and kill it, and it's not easy.

It says to celebrate the festival, who here is celebrating the feast of unleavened bread this year? Anybody? Great.

Here's what it looks like for your Christian life. You crush sin to the glory of God. I have guys that call me every time before they go to the gym.

Why? Because they know they're going to see women dressed like prostitutes there, and they want to crush the lust in their heart to the glory of God, and they want to honor their future wife, and they want to honor those women who aren't even asking for the honor.

They're celebrating the festival. Any businessmen in here? They've literally asked me about male -only gyms.

All we got to do is crank out a few more godly disciples, and we got a business model there. Women, though, we're tired of the leggings and the sports bras.

Just going to leave that where it lands. Verse 9, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.

What letter? We're in 1 Corinthians. Is there a zero Corinthians that I'm missing here? Don't worry about it.

Yes, there's another letter. If the Lord wanted it to be inspired scripture, it'd be in your

Bible right now. He's that powerful, okay? But the point of reading that line is, warnings had already been given.

Corrections had already been made. Do this and thrive, and they failed to do it, so now Paul has to bring some clarifications.

Verse 10, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy or the swindlers or the idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world, but now

I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality.

Whoa, stop right there. Should we go around the room and raise our hands if we're guilty of pornea, sexual immorality?

We should not. Do not raise your hand because we are all sexually broken to one degree or another.

We are. There's some in here who have had sex outside of marriage.

There are some here who have looked at a lot of inappropriate things online. There are some here who think they've done everything right on paper, but they're still sexually broken.

So what does this mean? It means unrepentant sin. It means habitual practicing sin.

You're messed up and I'm messed up, but we are, to the glory of God, working to kill it and crush it.

Now if you go year after year after year after year after year of working, working, working, working, working, and nothing's changing, hey, we need to have a conversation.

You might not be in the club. So what is it talking about? It's talking about if you've messed up and you refuse to correct it or admit it.

Let's keep going with that line. Or there's greedy people or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler.

Not even to eat with such a one. How extreme are we to be? You don't get close to these people because it will spill off on you.

You evangelize them. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

God judges those outside. Listen to this. Purge the evil person from among you.

That is harsh language. That is ripped directly from Deuteronomy.

And I've got a whole list of verses here that for the sake of time, I'm not going to read, but just know it ends in execution.

Old covenant, sin, execution. New covenant, excommunication.

That's grace and it's for the salvation. I do want to read one Deuteronomy verse though. This is

Deuteronomy 17. Then you shall bring out to your gates that man or woman who has done this evil thing and you shall stone that man or woman to death with stones.

On the evidence of two or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death.

A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. The hand of the witnesses shall be the first to put them to death.

You hear that? And afterward, the hand of all the people. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Church discipline is a must. Church discipline is the privilege and the responsibility of every member of the church.

Josh talked about it in chapter four about fathers. They will be held accountable to how this church goes in a greater way than you and I will.

But you will be held accountable for your brothers and sisters, especially if you know.

Especially if you know. We got to get close to each other. We have to have the painful conversations because they're going to bring fruitful relationships.

And aren't you glad we don't have to bring stones to those conversations? I am. The Lord's kind to us.

You'd need a dump truck to come talk to me. That's how bad I've been. Here's a couple to -do points, okay?

Correct one another often and early. And be willing to be corrected yourself. And for the love of this church in the year 2030, the year 2050, correct my children.

You do not need my permission, okay? You do have my permission to correct me on anything.

You have my permission to come and search my history, my bank accounts, my apps, whatever it may be.

You have my permission. I don't say that so you'll be like, oh man, Tyler's got it all figured out.

I say that because I'm scared to death. You'll do it. And it protects my sinful heart.

It protects me. This is good for me, right? You see the safety that is in these passages if we do it.

We won't find ourselves in a situation like they have with this man. If we do, we can handle it.

But we don't want to take that pill trip, okay guys? I'm going to come to many of you with growth opportunities.

If I throw out 20, hey, can I talk to you about something? I better get 20 in return.

If I come to you, you better come to me. And if the game is sanctification, I'm winning because I'm getting 20 times the reps, 20 times the practice, 20 times the personal coaching and encouragement and admonition.

It's good. It's safety. And men, this is how you get respect. This is how you gain it.

The top five guys in my life have all blasted me and called me out, hands down.

On the flip side of it, this is how you lose respect if you don't do it. In fact, I remember my first week of college in the dorm at the

University of Arkansas. I'm out in the hallway and I'm seeing this skater -looking guy with long hair going in and out of the rooms at the end of the hallways, which

I knew all the druggies lived down there. And I'm like, why's he going in and out? This guy's trying to rob us or something. I'm going to keep my eye on him.

Next week, he comes into my room, don't worry, got my eye on him, shares the gospel with me.

I'd become a believer a couple years before that. I was humbled to the core.

I confessed that to him. We had a great laugh. He got me plugged into Bible studies, campus ministries.

It's the first time I saw guys kind of walking with Jesus. He called me a year ago. That was a long time ago.

He called me a year ago. He was just blessing me, encouraging me.

I mean, I felt like during our conversation, I could have ran through a brick wall because he's like, your ministry is amazing.

Keep it up. You're faithful. I was fired up. But then, he kind of jokingly let it slip that he knew about sin

I was in back then. Sin I thought I had hidden, sexual immorality

I didn't know how to escape from because I never had a man tell me what to do. What pain could he have saved me from?

I mean, I lost a little respect for him, but you know, as I say that,

I'm going to call the guy. He doesn't know this. He's worthy of respect. He's a faithful man.

He's an honorable man. Anybody who shares the gospel with me is my brother. Let's go. I'm going to call him.

Hold me accountable to that because he's not, yeah, he shouldn't lose respect in my eyes.

Forgive me for that. Bring your sin to us.

Bring your sin to Josh, to Corey, to each other. We're not wolves seeking to ravage, to tear up, to devour.

We're seeking to mend, to love, to bind up, and we don't discipline because people sin.

We discipline when people refuse to deal with their sin. Sin's not the problem when it comes to church discipline.

Don't hear that wrong. Sin is a huge problem in general. But the problem arises when there's a failure to do anything about the sin.

And discipleship is almost always the answer to everything, just so you know. Let me give you two practical things to do in your discipleship relationships.

Number one, confess sin to one another. Older people, did you know you can confess sin to younger people you're discipling?

You don't have to pretend like you have it all figured out. Praise the Lord. Tell me what you did wrong and save me from the pain.

Please. It's the best thing my guys tell me that I do when

I tell them about how I've treated Angela poorly or what I've done with my kids or about my past.

They say it's been the best thing apart from studying Scripture with you. Confess sin to one another.

Secondly, read the Word of God together. If all you're doing is get together and talking, you're not letting the

Lord talk. Okay? Read the Word of God together.

And here's what's going to happen. You're going to find it's hard work. It's really difficult. The Bible calls this laboring for a reason.

It is difficult work. Men, it starts with us. A man that has no discipline creates families that have no discipline.

Families that have no discipline creates a church that has no disciplines.

And so let me close with this thought. It's difficult.

Sermons to a local congregation are exclusively for believers.

So if you find yourself in here and you're not a Christian or even if you think you're a Christian but you're really not,

I'm not talking to you. You've walked into a family meeting. Most churches, in my experience, there are some unbelievable ones out there, but most churches right now on Sunday mornings are doing their weekly evangelism outreach.

Does God use that? Absolutely. He's gracious for it. But what we do in here is we have a family meeting and we want to hear from the

Father. It's one of my favorite things to do to ask somebody. If you had somebody you wanted to know about God, what would you do?

Most people would say, I'd bring them to church. It's a great answer.

You know what's a better answer? I'd walk them to the throne of the living

God. I've sat under preaching for years. I've been face -to -face in discipleship.

I'd confess my sin with them and tell them how God has freed me from it. And I'd walk them into a relationship with the

Lord myself. And then I'd bring them to hang out with the family. How much better is that?

That's something special that we have brewing here. That's the mission of the church, okay guys? What we do here in our private homes, crushing sin, can literally echo to China.

I've seen it with my ministry on campus. I've seen it. So if you've ever brought somebody on a

Sunday morning and thought like, man, I hope they don't feel judged or I hope they get a lot out of it, you kind of got it backwards.

You brought them into a family meeting. We welcome outsiders, obviously. We would love outsiders to repent and turn and see the goodness of brothers and sisters loving each other despite their sin, but we don't want to get this backwards.

These four walls should not be the epicenter of conversions in Northwest Arkansas.

They shouldn't. They should be the witnesses to training, admonition, love, encouragement, motivation, and the conversion should be dotted all the way around our communities.

And then once they're family, we bring them back in the barracks. We line them up for drills. And God's going to do amazing things.

You can come as you are, but you can't stay that way. You're going to find that all across Scripture.

So how will they know us? By the way we love one another. That sounds really good.

What does it actually look like? It looks like Jake coming to a rough around the edges guy like Tyler and saying, dude,

I've seen some things. Can I help you with that? And then an outsider going, wow,

Tyler, he just told you how terrible you are. And I'm like, no, he just loved me.

He saw vision in me and what the Lord can do in me. They will know us by how much we love each other.

We don't want to really a letter like this to the Corinthians. We'd love to get a letter like Paul wrote to the

Philippians or even to the Romans where he says, I thank my

God for you because I've heard of your faith. The whole world has heard of your faith.

This is how we do it, friends. I love you. I'm here for you. Our leaders are here for you.

Please, if you're in darkness, in secrecy, it's time.

It's time. Let me pray for you. God bless us. We need your strength to confess sin.

We really need it to confess it to one another. And I pray you will stir in our hearts that we will be known as a church for not only how bad we've been, but Lord, how good you've trained us to be because you will get the glory for that.

We love you, Lord. We know you've done a lot here. We know you are going to work in the lives of a lot of people and we beg it to be done through us.

We want to be used by you, Lord. We want to throw off this weight and the sin that clings so closely and we want to run with endurance the race you've set before us and the race you've set is glorious and we'll let go for eternity.