The American Churchman: Church Discipline and Why it Matters

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And welcome once again to the American Churchmen podcast, where we encourage men to take responsibility and dominion to glorify

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God in the areas he's given them. We are going to talk today about church discipline, church discipline.

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This is somewhat of a controversial subject in some circles. It probably shouldn't be though, because the

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Bible talks about it quite a bit. And we have a special guest with us today to talk about that. Before we get to all that though,

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I need to mention that we do have a men's retreat coming up. And this is sponsored by TruthScript, which sponsors this podcast.

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So check it out. You can go to musicandmasculinity .com if you want to sign up. We got good speakers.

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And I think I've talked about it before, so I don't want to beat the dead horse, but it's coming up here pretty soon,

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September 25th through the 28th. We look forward to seeing you there. And of course, as always, if you want to support

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TruthScript, you can scroll down to the bottom of the landing page, truthscript .com,

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or really any page on TruthScript website. And you will find the menu that has donate.

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We are a 501C3 and then publish if you would like to publish with us. We really appreciate that. We found some really good authors who some of them didn't have a place to put their great thoughts.

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And TruthScript has been a great place for that. So today I'm obviously your host. Matthew Pearson is here, my co -host.

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And we have a special guest. We have Pastor Joey DeRuntz. He is a pastor at Master's Bible Church.

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And you can go to mastersbiblechurch .com if you want to hear his sermons or his writings. And I guess you could say you're in this

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Portland, Oregon area, even though you're in Washington. So do people come from Oregon? Do they come across the bridge to your church,

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Pastor Joey? Yes, they do. And thanks for having me on. Yeah, we're in what's called the

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Portland metro area. So people come from Portland and even a little South of Portland, which is no small feat because, you know, there's a

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Columbia River in between and that's tend to be labeled the invisible wall.

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People don't like traveling over that river, but yeah. We're right above it. We suggest they take a bridge, probably, you know.

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Yeah. Don't try to swim it. It would be, yeah. Oh man, it's funny.

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I live on the other side of the Hudson River. I say the other side, cause I grew up on the opposite side. And it's the same thing.

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There's like a mental barrier. And I say to people, I'm like, they made a bridge, you know, you can go across it. It's like not that hard, but I don't know what it is about bodies of water.

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But anyway, it was good to be out at your church for the conference on politics.

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Now it seems like, I mean, it seems like it wasn't that long ago, but I guess it was now. It was, what was that?

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Like six, seven months ago, something like that. I don't know. Yeah, it was February. Oh my goodness.

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Oh my goodness. Time flies. But yeah, it was good to be out there. And you told me a little bit about your story with the church and just church discipline.

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Let's just say you've had experience in this area, which is why I asked you to write about it and why we're going to talk about it today.

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So looking forward to that. Thank you. Before we get to that, Matthew, as always, well, most of the time.

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Mostly. Yeah. Yeah, mostly. I get a little distracted. I want to say busy, but oftentimes it's me being bad with time management.

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Well, it's, you know, you're a seminary student. What, you know, that's. Dude, I didn't have any classes this summer. I ain't got no excuse the past few weeks with it.

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I wasn't trying to. I did just move. So I guess there's that. To host podcasts when I was in seminary. It's like, you're crazy.

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That's what it is. But we're going to talk about the beauty of God. And I don't know, that's a, that's an attribute

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I don't hear talked about a lot. So I'm actually excited to hear what you have to say, Matthew. Yeah, yeah. So as always, to open up our conversation about attributes, we have two verses.

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This time I just pulled two from the Old Testament because New Testament speaks a bit about this, but it seems like the

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Old Testament is a bit more explicit regarding beauty. But the first verse that we're going to open up with is

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Psalm 27, four, where the Psalmist writes, one thing have I desired of the

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Lord that I will seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the

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Lord and to inquire in his temple. And then our second verse is going to be Ecclesiastes chapter three, verse 11, where Solomon writes, he hath made everything beautiful in his time.

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Also, he has set the world in their heart so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from beginning to the end.

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So when speaking of beauty, there are varying definitions that we can give. It's somewhat like, you know, a controversial term in philosophical discussions on like what beauty truly means.

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Bonaventure in his very short mystical work, The Journey of the Mind into God, he simply defines beauty as, literally these are the exact words, nothing other than numerical quality or certain relations of parts with agreeable color.

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So yeah, numerical quality, relation of parts with agreeable color. Or for him, he would say apt proportionality, something of that nature.

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Aquinas, likewise, and the Sumo, when he speaks about beauty, he speaks of those containing three parts, those parts being integrity, that is being complete and whole, the object, which is beautiful, being complete and whole in its form.

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Proportion, which would just be the order and the arrangement of parts or harmony. And then clarity, that which shines forth from the object, communicating the essence of the object to our sense perception.

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And while many parts of these definitions of beauty can, in some sense, be applied to God, I guess we could think of completeness of perfect harmony within God.

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We can think of this and God being beautiful. Nevertheless, they're not able to fully capture his true beauty.

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One of these things being harmony of parts. While we would say that God is harmonious in all that he is, in many of these episodes going over the attributes of God, we speak about how all that is in God is

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God. God is not made up of parts. He's not a composite being. Rather, God, all that is in God is

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God. So God still, nevertheless, is the very foundation of beauty and such that all that has beauty participates in him insofar as they both reflect him both naturally and supernaturally in nature and in grace, which would make this attribute a communicable attribute.

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And so when I say naturally and supernaturally, something following its created end, like by nature, can be said to be beautiful.

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But in regard to grace, something which is still lacking in man because of the fall, we lack this original righteousness.

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We have a loss of these particular gifts. So in the act of regeneration and receiving these gifts of the spirit and being justified by faith, our old man is restored.

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We are elevated. We are truly made to go to our true end. We are supernaturally restored by God.

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And thus, in that sense, we can be said to be beautiful because God is communicating this attribute in some sense to us.

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So again, when we speak of beauty in scripture, the way that scripture talks about God's beauty is that it's most clearly expressed not in some proportionality according to the senses because God, by his divine nature, is invisible, but God's beauty is most clearly expressed in his majesty and his glory.

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This is how Bobbing speaks much of it because in God, there is no physical form to look on, yet he nevertheless manifests his beauty to us through his sublime greatness.

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Bobbing states of this relaying to God that it is called glorious insofar as it elicits gratitude, praise, and honor, and it is called majesty insofar as it is bound up with his absolute dignity and demands submission from all creatures.

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We see beauty in scripture itself, scripture being the very word of God, which

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God gives to us, elucidate the path of salvation to us. We see beauty in the scripture with its integrity, wholeness, and clarity because all the parts are so harmonious with one another that even reading and hearing the scriptures, it reveals the beauty of God because the scriptures themselves are beautiful.

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When putting this together, I thought of the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 1 .5, where it states of the scriptures how it contains the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God.

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The full discovery of it makes the only way of man's salvation. The many other incomparable excellencies and the entire perfection thereof are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God.

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So in speaking of God's beauty, we must always draw our mind to his majesty and glory, and glory is fun that we are speaking of that because actually for our final attribute we'll be going over will be glory.

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So I won't expand a whole lot on God's glory because we wanna save a bit for the next time when we speak of this, but I do wanna say some words about beauty itself.

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In contemplating beauty, we are always be directed back to God's beauty, and in being directed back to God's beauty, we're able to contemplate him as he truly is and to be drawn to worship him.

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One of the big things that I've been kind of wanting to hammer on as we go through these divine attributes is that you don't wanna just have a purely theoretical theology.

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You don't wanna have a purely heady knowledge of God. You want your knowledge to translate into practice, and part of translating that knowledge into practice is not just through the good works that we do, though all these things should result in the fruit of good works.

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Good works are important, necessary aspect of the Christian life, but one good work actually that we should be doing is worship of God, contemplating him in his beauty and in his full sublimeness.

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And so in contemplating beauty, we ought to contemplate God as he is truly glorious in and of himself.

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All harmony within creation should always point us back to the harmonious creator who does and ordains all for his glory and for the good purpose of his elect children.

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And so when we think about beauty, always draw back to God's beauty, contemplate him in his glory and think also in his beauty, the fact that he intends good things for us and most especially be drawn near to the incarnation of our

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Lord Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life in our stead, who died the death that we deserved bearing the wrath which we deserved and nevertheless gave us his righteousness and rose for our justification.

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All of this can be said to be one of the most beautiful outworkings of divine mercy, which truly is something beautiful.

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And so all of that would be divine beauty in a nutshell. Okay, if I was your seminary professor,

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I'd give you an A for that. That was - Thank you, John. It was beautiful, that's why. Oh, there you go.

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That's what I was aiming for. Yes. Pastor Joe, you have any thoughts as you heard

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Matthew's describe that attribute that you would like to add to the beauty of God? Well, I would say,

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I think it's awesome that you did that. That's not often discussed. I think it's important to remember that beauty, like you said, is a moral category.

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So we like to say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it's not, it's actually a moral category. You said it's communicable.

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And I think that should translate into everything that we do. So every time we're working on something,

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I think it's especially pertinent for us as men because we tend to just go for, does it work?

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Does it function? But the question that we should be doing being image bearers of God and especially renewed in Christ is, not only does it work, but is it beautiful?

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And you'll notice like even in architecture that we used to have in this country versus the architecture today that's very communistic and bland and drab, they're stealing away the beauty, which means they're stealing away part of our humanity.

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And you can see it's ultimately an attack on God. That's a good thought.

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Yeah, definitely. Something else about beauty as well is that I said something in some of the definitions about sense perception.

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And oftentimes when we think of sense perception, obviously that includes like sight, smell, touch, all those things.

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But most of the time when we think of beauty, we oftentimes, for the most part, think of the eyes or the ears.

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But there's many other aspects of beauty because you can have a beautiful architecture or a beautiful sounding piece, but if it lacks truth, it lacks a fundamental like component of beauty.

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And when I was going through what Aquinas was sort of saying about one of the parts of beauty, which is clarity that was shines forth from the object, communicating the essence, part of included in that is truth.

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So you can have something which may sound beautiful, look beautiful, but it doesn't have this component of truth or it has a fatal flaw and the other direction.

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And so that's why, when we might speak of church architecture, we want beautiful churches. I would say I'm all for that.

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But at the end of the day, you can have a church which is aesthetically beautiful and may have this like beautiful song and singing, but if it lacks truth to it, what good is that?

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I mean, think of like these gorgeous PCUSA churches which have beautiful buildings and may have a gorgeous choir, but has a patrix preaching that Christ didn't truly rise from the dead.

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And that was a metaphor for being your true self and coming out of the closet to reveal yourself as they them. So there's all these components of beauty.

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And the most incredible thing about God is God fills all those categories. The only category which he doesn't really like fully fill is the idea of like sight, because we can't fully see who

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God is with the physical eyes, but Christ himself and taking on flesh, he made God visible to us.

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Even if we can't see him, even if we can't depict him as he was, that's the reformed Presbyterian in me coming out.

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We still have this idea that God assumes all things to redeem all things, and God assumed beauty to make all things truly beautiful in his sight.

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Yeah, you know, I was thinking about when you said that, I'm really glad you mentioned it. The fact that you can go into a beautiful church, and I know you wanted to say

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Eastern Orthodox, but you just said PCUSA. I don't really find them very pretty though. I think they're too gaudy. Oh no, all right, well, shots fired.

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But you go into one of these churches that is high liturgical and there's young guys.

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I don't know to what extent, but there's been stories on young guys want to go to these churches, and they're looking for tradition, and I think beauty is part of that, but it's like, you know, okay, so what about truth, right?

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Like where does truth factor into this? What are your convictions? And I keep thinking about this, and I don't know exactly how it connects, but Satan presents himself as an angel of light.

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And I'm speaking on counterfeit virtues at a conference next week, and it hit me when you were talking.

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I was like, oh my goodness, okay. So that's, like, I don't know if that's gonna go into the category of counterfeit virtue, but maybe it will because you can,

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I mean, isn't that like the corruption of even like pornographic content, right? There's sort of like a twisted marred image there.

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It's like taking beauty and then twisting it all and trying to appeal. It's the angel of light thing.

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It's, I don't know exactly how to articulate that. I'm gonna have to think about it, but you know, just like there's other attributes of God, I guess that you can,

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Satan can try to steal and corrupt and counterfeit. Beauty seems like it's one he can do too.

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So I don't know. I was thinking about that same passage too, because, you know, you take, you start harmonizing scripture together to form a theology of it.

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It's fascinating in, is it Philippians 3, when we think of enemies of the cross of Christ, Paul describes them as those who set their mind on earthly things.

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And like that's setting the bar pretty low for an enemy of the cross of Christ to what we tend to think. And then speaking of beauty, you know, scripture presents how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

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And you think on the face of it, they're not gonna be very beautiful, especially in that time period. I mean, they're traveling, but it's the truth.

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It's the content. It's the function of what those feet are doing that brings about the beauty. And it's like a 2

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Corinthians 4 kind of thing, right? Not looking at the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen.

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It's almost platonic. It's like there's, I guess, form, but there's like,

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God is invisible and he's the source of all the beauty. And he's the most beautiful thing in the universe.

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So everything else has to flow from the beauty that he has in his character. If it's beautiful, it's because it reflects the beauty of the one who made it.

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And I don't know, there's like a search for the ultimate beauty. I don't know. That was like deep and philosophical, wasn't it?

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I don't know. Or maybe it was just dumb, but I appreciate you delving into that more.

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That's such a hard topic because it's not as cut and dry, but aesthetics is so integral to our

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Christian theology because it comes from God. So beauty, sounds, all of that.

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We do have a few questions on that, and then we'll get into the church discipline stuff. Let me see if I can find them now, because they're now back.

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Someone made a point about God's invisibility and now I cannot find it. Where did it go?

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All right, I lost it somehow. They were asking how, I think you kind of answered this already,

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Matthew. I think, oh, here it is. Is this it? Cosmic Treason says, if beauty isn't visible since God is visible, what is beauty?

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Is it the correspondence of form to function or simply something pleasing or desirable? I think you kind of already touched on that, right?

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Well, I mean, I spoke about how there are those, when I was defining beauty in the beginning, how that kind of related primarily to creatures because part of it involves sense perception.

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And so we can't fully understand divine beauty. But I mean, I know that Aquinas in the

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Summa, when he speaks about beauty, he actually attributes it to the Trinity as well.

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And like part of the, let me go back to the definitions. Like one of the definitions was clarity that was shines forth from the object, communicating the essence of the object to the senses.

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Like obviously there's no way to fully communicate to the senses, but one of the examples he gave is like how the father and begetting

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Christ in this communication of the divine essence in eternity, there is a sense in which the son, because he is the image of the invisible

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God, how he has that clarity shining forth. He has the imprint of the father in him.

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So it's more difficult to speak of beauty when we speak about God. And I myself hesitate to do so because I don't wanna like use the wrong categories when speaking about God and accidentally like commit a grave error or whatever.

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But all that to say, like there is a way you can intuitively know that which is beautiful in creation.

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And from that, you can know that the invisible God who is transcendent somehow matches this in some way or the other, in a way which we cannot fully comprehend, but you know, if this stems from God, God is beautiful in one way or the other.

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And how are we able to do that? Like, how are you not able to have the exact words to say? I mean, maybe if you read like a bunch of scholastics all day and you go on Discord with your buddies and you talk about it and you're

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AI translating stuff. And I know some guys that do that, but like, of course you can maybe do that, but the normal person knows what beauty is because this is something which is given to us by God.

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It's written in the heart. We have this natural knowledge which God has imbued us with, and you're able to recognize it.

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Yeah, like a sunrise or something. It's like, it says something about God, right? Yeah, and God's creation reveals him in the same way that an artist's painting or song or whatever it is reveals the artist.

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Right, right. Yeah, all right, well, go ahead. The two most helpful things that I've read having to do with God's beauty, one of them is the

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Charnock Attributes of God. He has a great quote in there where he says, power is God's hand or arm, omniscience his eye, mercy his bowels, eternity his duration, but holiness is his beauty.

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And then he expands on that. And then Jonathan Edwards has a treatise on beauty. And one of the things that he brings up in there that I found really helpful is how beauty compounds.

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So like if we went back to like brought up the church, like having a beautiful old PCA church, but you've got a lesbian in there preaching, that strips some of the beauty, but beauty compounds.

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Like you can see someone that has beautiful eyes and you go, wow, they have beautiful eyes. And then they have a facial structure and a beautiful nose and they have the symmetry.

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And then those compounding aspects make something more beautiful. Like having an old church with a faithful pastor and a loving congregation.

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It's compounding the beauty. My fiance is actually, for her Bible college, she's reading through Charnock right now. I'm very jealous.

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It sounds like maybe you're saying also that there's a detail to it. It's not like it's a frackle.

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Well, frackles are beautiful, but like, so like AI, you've seen these AI images of people or videos now.

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And sometimes something isn't quite right. And it's like, you know it's twisted or off somehow because, and then you focus on the detail and you find out, oh, like it's missing some of the things that would convey human attributes.

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There's like wrinkles missing, or it's like, it's almost, it's too impersonal.

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It's like the Soviet architecture that you talked about before. You know, I think of a drum tracks like that a little bit too.

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Like, so it was the music that has, like it's too perfect almost, but it's not actually perfect. It's just stripped the humanity out of it.

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So it doesn't have the human element that is detailed that makes it beauty.

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And yeah, such a deep topic. But we do need to talk about church discipline.

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You know what's really beautiful? Churches that have discipline. So how do you like that transition?

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So we already have questions coming in. I'm gonna hold off on those. And if you keep asking questions, I will highlight them and come back to them.

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But we're gonna give the floor to Pastor Joey. He wrote two articles for TruthScript.

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If you wanna find those, go to truthscript .com. One of them is I think on the front page right now, actually, so you can check that out.

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It is the church that loves enough to confront the necessity of corrective discipline. And he really just makes the argument for why church discipline is mandated by Christ.

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It's a non -negotiable. In order to love, you do have to have truth.

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Without truth, you don't really have love. And he goes through some of the process of this.

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So without just reading the article, Pastor Joey, maybe walk us through what church discipline is.

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Maybe just also summarize why is it controversial because it is in scripture, but people seem to have problems with it.

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Summarize that, okay. Well, I think as with anything, we wanna start with why are we here?

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What's the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever, right? In our salvation and everything that we do, it should be with an eye towards glorifying and enjoying

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God, which means if He's spoken on it, then we want to know that what

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He's spoken and we want to prayerfully and joyfully submit to what He's spoken. And He's given us two different kinds of discipline if we summarize it up, as I listed in the article, formative discipline, which is your day in, day out,

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Bible reading, prayer, preaching of the word, fellowship with the saints, means of grace, and then corrective discipline for when we stray.

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And we see in scripture that this is what God does to His children that He loves.

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I like the way that King James puts it, if you're without discipline, then you are not sons, but bastards.

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I think that the harshness of that language to our ears, I think is sometimes helpful to put things in a proper perspective.

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Scripture is replete with talking about not only how the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, but fathers do that with children.

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Years ago, I was reading this really tiny little book by Arthur Hildersham. It's called,

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Dealing with Sin in Our Children. It's an old Puritan book. And he brings up the objection that people have on corporal punishment, on spanking your kids when there's rebellion.

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And he says, objection. And I was thinking, this is weird because I didn't think that was an issue, you know, like 400 years ago.

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I thought that was just a modern issue. But when you read through church history, you find it's always been an issue.

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The objection was, how can I find it in my heart to beat so sweet a child? And his response was, the

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Holy Spirit says you lie. And then starts listing scripture. And I think we've lost that, especially with the attack on the family.

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We've lost that because churches are built up of families, of seeing that discipline is actually a good thing, starting with self -discipline.

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And it's coming from a God who is love. And He's telling us this is loving.

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And I think when we refuse that, we need to recognize that's a rebellion against authority issue.

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That's not really like a doctrinal disagreement. We're refusing to submit to the clear teaching that God's given us in His word.

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And then we're not loving people. You know, you think of when somebody's in sin and you know, like when they're stuck in this sin and they're in habitual sin, they're showing that they're not a

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Christian and they're on the path to hell. And for us to just see that and do nothing and then call it love is a wicked twisting of God's word and a reproach upon His name.

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So there's a lot of directions we can go here. I wanna actually give the first question to you,

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Matthew. I know you were thinking about questions about church discipline. Do you have anything you wanna ask at this point? Nothing.

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Actually, no, I lied. Something which I was thinking of, which you just said regarding, you know, habitual sin is

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I think there also needs to be, you know, the sort of distinction between those who are caught up in a state of sin and seeking to mortify that sin versus those who are unrepentant of their sin.

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Because in studying repentance, when we think about what repentance truly is, it's like a turning away from sin towards Christ.

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And then there's also God's mercy at play, the fact that God is patient with us despite sin. And there's like a few categories of people.

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There are some who turn from sin and do not make a practice of it. You know, as John says in 1

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John, not to make a practice of sinning. But then there are also those who continuously fall back in certain sins, but try their best not to.

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And even then, you know, you need to be a bit harsher with some people over others.

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There are some who are genuinely trying, but they're just still struggling. And, you know, you have to have a degree of harshness, but you're able to discern like, no, there is true repentance here.

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Others, you feel almost as if, are you really trying at all? So I guess like something that would be good food for thought when thinking of church discipline is if somebody is in a state of continuous sin, is discerning whether they're truly repentant or not.

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Because, you know, like you think of someone parenting a child being like, if you were really sorry, you wouldn't keep doing that.

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And, you know, sometimes if we're like caught in a state of sin, we may like, you know, repent to God and God's like, if you're sorry, you'd stop doing that.

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But I guess as a pastor, you know, you have to sort of try to discern how do you tell whether someone's repentance is genuine or not?

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And I think that part of it is, are you putting proper guardrails in to guard your heart from certain sins and things like that, et cetera, et cetera.

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But I don't know, I'm just, it's not really a question, but it's more like kind of me going off on like a field of being like, how do you discern true repentance in men?

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Because like part of the way you do, you have to sort of be able to do that because you as an office bearer in the church have access to the keys of the kingdom and to believers, the door is open and to unbelievers, the door is shut.

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And like you were saying, those who make a practice of sinning, they practice lawlessness and they demonstrate that they're not a brother.

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So I guess part of that is contemplating how we discern true repentance from false repentance. I think that's the question behind it.

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What's the distinction and when does the mechanism of church discipline then come to bear on this?

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Yeah, that's a good point. It's a challenge. I'm a sinner too.

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I've failed. I've failed even in like steps going through church discipline and aspects of it because on the face of it, when you just read through Matthew 18, you're like, oh, that's simple.

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There's four steps. Boom, done. Yeah, yeah. But how much time in between each step?

29:43

How many times do you repeat the same step with the same person? And learning that no two church discipline situations are the same.

29:52

Even though it might be the same sin in two different people, it's different circumstances, different responses.

29:58

And so each one is a case -by -case basis. Working patiently with the person.

30:04

Like one of the things I brought up in the article is what you're looking for is visible unrepentant sin.

30:09

So it has to be sin and it has to be visible. It can't just be like, hey, I can see by the way you looked at me that you've got this sin in your heart.

30:17

No, it doesn't work like that. And then repentance is that mechanism. Do we keep going or do we back up?

30:24

And there are certain times when, yeah, you do see somebody, especially like if it's some kind of what today we call addiction and there is a brokenness and it looks genuine and then they fall back into it.

30:37

One of the things that you're looking for is growth, teachableness. Are they continuing to submit?

30:43

Where are they going when they do sin? Are they running away or are they running back to the

30:49

Lord and are they running back to his people for help? And are they taking the things that they're learning and applying them?

30:55

It's not gonna be perfect, but they're growing a little bit, a little bit. I like how you brought up dealing with children because it's similar, right?

31:04

You deal with your kids and it's like, sometimes it's the same thing multiple times a day, every day.

31:10

And then the Lord's growing you in that moment too, showing you how you do the same thing in different areas.

31:16

And it's humbling and drives you to prayer with your child. But I think teachableness, that growth, are they growing?

31:25

We've all heard the illustration, sanctification should look like a healthy stock market. There's ups and downs, ups and downs, ups and downs, ups and downs, but the trend is up.

31:34

And I think that's what we're looking for there also. And you're just patiently walking with people, understanding different people are at different levels of maturity.

31:45

And the goal is restoration. The goal is to present every man complete in Christ. And so we don't wanna be quick and willy -nilly, like just excited, oh, wow,

31:54

I get to practice Matthew 18. That shouldn't be an attitude that we have because our desire, again, is to present every man complete in Christ.

32:06

And so that means we're gonna labor, we're gonna be patient with certain people when we do see that repentance.

32:13

And the more you've practiced it, the more you can start to see when there is like a really hard heart and someone just doesn't want any of it and they don't care and they're gonna do what they're gonna do.

32:25

Yeah, I think one part of it as well, forgive the noise in the background, it's the dryer.

32:32

I think one other part of it as well, I thought of the Heidelberg Catechism, question 85 and speaking of church discipline.

32:38

One of the things it speaks of is, not only not giving up the errors or wickedness and these things like that, but if they do not heed also their admonition.

32:51

So I think that part of seeing healthy repentance in somebody is if church discipline does begin to become like enacted, that there's like a healthy reception of it, that this is for your good and there's cooperation with that.

33:03

And I think that oftentimes like not cooperating shows obviously no repentance.

33:09

So I think that's a big one too is, if that stuff does start to happen, there's a openness being like, this is medicine for my soul that I need.

33:18

So I have a question and this is, it's kind of a two part, but the first is aspect of this question is whether or not church discipline itself is inescapable in some form.

33:28

And I don't, maybe I should speak broadly. It's not, it may not be church discipline biblically, but it seems to me like in any group, there's going to be a distinction between insiders and outsiders.

33:41

So I've been in churches, not as a member, but I've been familiar with churches that say, or they don't practice church discipline the way

33:52

Matthew 18 says, but they do still have, even if it's not official, a insider outsider distinction, right?

34:00

If you do something and it may be, being too quote unquote judgmental or unloving, right?

34:07

It may not be, it may be that you're trying to do church discipline and that's the pretext for kind of shunning you, right?

34:16

There's still this distinction. There's a cloud of suspicion over you. You're not as welcomed, right? So that's one of the things

34:22

I've wondered is, whether or not it's inescapable to try to police or put gates up for the integrity of a group.

34:33

And the other part to this question, if that's true, I guess, is what does church discipline look like?

34:44

So someone violates the law of God.

34:50

It's very clear cut. But practically speaking, does it go, what's the biblical church discipline?

34:58

Is it like, all right, shunning right now? Obviously not. We kind of already touched on this a little, but there's these steps.

35:05

If the goal is restoration, then what does that look like for a healthy church, right?

35:14

I guess both these questions come down to what is definitional about church discipline to a church?

35:21

Is a church even a church if it doesn't have church discipline? I think Martin Luther said no, right? So it's like, if this is important and you're going to have a distinction between insiders and outsiders, how does

35:32

God want us to draw those lines? Because it's important, apparently. Yeah, it's a good question.

35:40

And yeah, you're right. Every church does practice church discipline. It just depends who and how.

35:47

For whom are they doing it and how? Like we've got a gay church down the road here. I think it's Methodist or something.

35:53

And they've got a big old sign out that says, all are welcome at the Lord's table. And if you go there and you are a

36:01

Bible -believing Christian and you're having conversations with them about the unbiblical -ness of their pro -homosexuality and everything else, they'll put you out.

36:11

At the same time, they have signs up saying all are welcome. And they're not unique in this. A lot of churches do this.

36:18

Andy Stanley's church has done this. It kicked people out, but they're not doing it biblically.

36:24

So who and how? Who it's supposed to be done for is Christ, right? For his glory.

36:30

So while our goal is going to be the restoration of the sinner, we have to remember that that's a subordinate goal under the goal of glory to God.

36:38

Glorifying God has to be the chief end. If we make just restoration of the sinner the chief goal, then we'll end up bending certain scriptures and bending things and doing more pragmatic kinds of means to try and get that person to have this new minimum threshold that we've just now set by bending the scripture to get back in.

36:58

The way that it's supposed to be done is normally you're following Matthew 18.

37:05

So the keys are given or will be given when he will build his church,

37:11

Matthew 16, with Peter. And then in Matthew 18, you have your next times church is brought up.

37:18

And out of all the four gospels, three times Christ speaks of the church, Matthew 16 and then

37:24

Matthew 18, and then that's it. And surrounding both of those, it has to do with church discipline.

37:31

He starts out in 15, if your singular brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.

37:37

So you see this, you see this sin, your job is not to go then and tell somebody else,

37:44

I saw Bob sinning. Your job is to go to Bob and say, hey, Bob, I don't know if he knows this, it might be a blind spot for you, but you were doing this and this is what the scripture says.

37:54

That's incompatible, did you know that? Because you're trying to win him. Maybe Bob says,

38:00

I don't think that's a sin. And so you labor and you're reasoning together and he's like, no,

38:05

I don't think it's a sin. And so then you go and you get one or two more other people and your aim should be believers that you know to be mature.

38:14

And then have that hash out again with Bob and you in the presence of those other witnesses so that they can then weigh in on that and say, no,

38:23

Bob, this actually is a sin. These are the reasons why. And if he keeps pushing against it, then ultimately at some point, you're gonna have to go to step three, which is you're gonna need to tell the church.

38:35

And what you're doing is you're activating all of the members of the church to go after Bob and to go and to persuade him to the truth.

38:46

And if we think about the context that this section of scripture comes in, it talks about the man who has the 99 on the mountains and goes and search for that one strange sheep.

38:57

So that's the context. How do we do that? Matthew 15 and following. So it's a rescue mission all the way through.

39:07

Then if he doesn't listen to the church, and granted, you should be giving time, like what we'll do is we'll make an announcement from the pulpit, and then we'll get together at a member's meeting and we'll discuss, hey, have you been able to talk to Bob?

39:21

How's Bob doing? Has there been any growth, any softening of his heart there?

39:27

So that then helps us to know, okay, how do we keep moving forward to win Bob back to the truth?

39:33

And one of the comforting aspects when you get to verse 18, after step four, which would be letting be to you as a

39:39

Gentile and a tax collector, which is outside of the covenant community, right? Truly I say to you, and that's plural, truly

39:48

I say to y 'all, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

39:54

The verbs that he uses here, Jesus uses here is great. If you just use the future passive, then that would mean

40:01

Peter's leading and then heaven's following. But he uses two different verbs here.

40:07

One of them is a future, and then the other is a perfect passive. So perfect is action that happened in the past and the effects continue.

40:14

So when we see this unrepentant sin, that's an indicator from heaven for us that this has already been declared in heaven.

40:22

And then our job on earth is just to follow through, which is why it's so important to have that biblical authority that we're following with the scripture.

40:30

Likewise, if they repent, then that's already been loosed in heaven, and we should recognize that with the repentance, and then we follow through with the declaration that heaven's already made.

40:43

So this mechanism is loving, and it goes back to the final authority of scripture ultimately.

40:49

It's about whether or not you're gonna follow God essentially, because that's why we're here, right?

40:57

So, I mean, I could probably fill up the time with a lot of questions. I don't wanna do that though, because we only have 20 minutes, but I would like to hear some practical things.

41:05

So maybe as I get to some of these questions, if you could weave in, Pastor Joey, if you have any practical stories of either encouraging, this is someone who came back and you don't have to obviously say their name or embarrass them, but or discouraging kind of, but like we did the right thing, this person was a threat to the body and we had to remove them.

41:28

Here's the first question. What would church discipline for gossips look like?

41:35

Jonathan Grant asks. So it's a specific sin. I don't know if you've ever had a specific situation where you had to do church discipline for someone who gossiped.

41:44

Yeah, so whatever the sin is, the process is likely gonna be the same.

41:52

The thing that'll ramp it up is how public is it already? In 1 Corinthians 5, everybody knows that this dude's sleeping with his dad's wife.

42:02

And so there's no point of going through steps one and steps two. It's already publicly known and it's scandalous.

42:09

And so it needs to be addressed. We see the same kind of thing when there's a false teacher online and you address him publicly and people go, did you talk to him privately first?

42:20

And it's like, well, he's teaching this publicly. So it needs to be met with publicly. I think Luther put it, if you're a pastor or you're teaching stuff publicly, you're already in the ring.

42:30

And so it's our job as those who wield the truth to meet it head on. But yes, we have dealt with gossip.

42:38

Sometimes it can be a little harder. I mean, you might suspect somebody's gossiping, but you pray for those people, you pray for the truth to come out and then it does come out because gossip doesn't just stay quiet, it ends up spreading.

42:53

And we had gossip sweep through our church a couple of times early on.

42:59

And so what we did, one of the things is we put together a handbook on gossip and slander, walking through what scripture says about this and how we're to deal with it.

43:08

Like most people don't know, Proverbs 17, four says that an evildoer gives heed to the lips of wickedness.

43:15

A liar pays attention to a destructive tongue. So the person that's actually listening to the gossip is called an evildoer and a liar just for listening.

43:27

And I get it, it's an awkward position to be in. And it feels like kind of endearing almost that the person has come to you and they're telling you these things, but know for certain, if they're gonna come to you and talk trash about somebody else, they're gonna talk trash about you to somebody else.

43:44

It's not that you're special, it's that this is the person's character. And it does bring up an important point.

43:51

In any healthy church, there's always church discipline going on. We tend to use church discipline as like just thinking about excommunication, step four or step three, telling it to the church.

44:01

But steps one and two should be being done regularly. If we believe that we are still sinners, even though we're redeemed in Christ and that we still have sin and that sin comes out, there's gonna need to be addressing and correcting and walking and counseling and admonishment, counsel given.

44:19

And so in a healthy church, you have those things going on a lot of the time. One of the things that we train our people to do and that we seek to model ourselves is when somebody comes and they go, hey, did you hear about Bob?

44:32

Bob's doing this. It's like, hold on a second. I'm gonna stop you right there. Have you talked to Bob about this?

44:38

Oh, well, not yet. Okay, good. Well, it's Tuesday right now.

44:45

I think Friday is enough time for you to talk to Bob. I'm gonna call you on Friday to make sure that you've talked with him.

44:52

And I don't want you to talk to anybody else. Talk to him. That's helpful when you have a culture that does that and shutting down that gossip because we all see, whoa, hold on a second.

45:02

I'm not gonna let you throw diarrhea on me. I'm not gonna be that evildoer that listens to this wickedness.

45:09

And I'm not gonna let you do that. And I don't want you to do that to somebody else either. I wanna see you built up in the truth.

45:14

I wanna see you as someone that speaks truth, speaks not just with his lips, but in his heart as well. So God's providentially brought you to me with this sin.

45:22

I'm gonna seek to help you as best I can. And we have had some people where it's gone all the way through.

45:28

They wouldn't repent of their gossip. And once they were disciplined out, then they just continued in it at other churches.

45:38

And the churches didn't, they usually listen to them and go, oh, I'm so sorry.

45:43

Like damsel in distress kind of a scenario. And some of them even took to our Google reviews page and started or continued attacking there.

45:53

And so giving us one stars and then listing all of this stuff that was a mixture of gossip and slander and everything all over the place.

46:01

But it did, as a side note, it did get me thinking, if you live in an area like Portland, do you really wanna go to a five -star church?

46:09

Probably not, no. It's, yeah, if it's reflective of the population there and they're pretty pagan,

46:16

I guess, if you, that's a good answer. And it's not, yeah, you've actually had experiences with that particular sin.

46:25

Rick Ralph Davis says, most pastors block the congregation from obeying God's word. Okay, I don't know where he's getting this.

46:30

Insisting that only pastors or elders can act, but scripture never limits church discipline to church leaders.

46:37

It is given to the whole body. And, okay, so actually that's a good question, I think.

46:43

Because if I could rephrase that, I think what he's asking is, or saying, is that there are churches where the pew sitters kind of like let the pastor handle all the shepherding.

46:55

And so if there's a sin issue they know about, they never confront it. They head down, pastor will deal with that if he wants to deal with it, or he'll find out about it if the

47:06

Lord wants him to find out. But in the passage, it seems like though, you're going brother to brother first.

47:14

And then if there's not a positive response, then you continue.

47:20

And so at what point does a pastor get involved in that? I think he could be one of the witnesses that you bring with you, could be a pastor.

47:29

I mean, you're looking for a mature believer and Lord willing, your pastors are mature believers. If not, he's talking to his disciples in this section.

47:38

He's talking about wielding the keys that he's given to his apostles and apostles give to the disciples that are the leaders in the church.

47:45

And then they're the ones that are going to tell the church. So it's not an either or thing.

47:50

And we got to think about what would it look like if there was no church structure, there were no elders.

47:57

Who's telling the church? Does this just mean like right after prayer and service, some

48:02

Joe Schmoe stands up and goes, hey guys, just want to let you know, Bob's an unrepentant sin over there. And so I'm telling you all, we need to go get him.

48:11

Like there's gotta be some order, you know, God's a God of order. And I think the way that it's laid out and who he's talking to, it's the elders that would be the ones that would make the announcement, but absolutely every member needs to be involved.

48:24

And so regularly when people come and go, yeah, so -and -so I think is struggling with this.

48:31

Oh, how did it go when you talked with him? You're empowering and teaching your congregation to do the work of service, right?

48:41

That's Ephesians four. A lot of people get caught up thinking, like you said, the pastor has to do everything.

48:48

And some pastors even think that, and it's not biblical. In Ephesians four, 11 and 12, he says,

48:55

Christ gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ.

49:06

It's the office holders that are equipping the saints and it's the saints that are doing the work of service and that's building up the body of Christ.

49:15

And so it's a whole church endeavor. I would agree with that assessment.

49:25

Yeah, for sure. And with my understanding of church discipline in kind of response to the idea that it is like, you know, everyone's involved.

49:34

I agree that's true to an extent, but when we look at Matthew 16, the keys are given to Peter and then the keys are given to the rest of the apostles, which kind of sets this precedent that those who possess the keys and who can enact church discipline and all that is primarily the job of the elders.

49:53

But I would definitely agree that there's a sense in which the whole body is involved in receiving the excommunication.

50:00

Because I know we're about 50 minutes in now, but we'd even discuss the idea of, you know, abuse of power because, you know, elders possess real power, which is given to them by divine authority.

50:12

Nevertheless, though, being fallible men, they can make errors. And, you know, we saw this in the

50:18

Reformation with the excommunication of Luther and the other Protestants. And, you know, sort of, it's also kind of trying to think through how to recognize, you know, a true use of the keys from an abuse of tyrannical power and what to do in circumstances like that.

50:36

But I don't know if we have the time to get into all that fun stuff right now. We can go a little longer if necessary,

50:43

I suppose. There's a lot of questions coming in, by the way. So we may end up doing that anyway, but I'll just keep pitching them to you.

50:52

My internet went out there for a second. So sorry about that. I noticed when you didn't say anything, I'm like, oh yeah,

50:57

I am a co -host. I should say something. I thought you were just really focused. I thought so too.

51:03

Can you see the comments, Matthew? Can you display them or no? I can't display them,

51:08

I don't think. Only I have the keys, okay. You have the keys of the kingdom here, John. I have the keys of the stream yard.

51:15

All right, so Betty says, we had a children's church leader who was female and several men went to her husband when he left her or said he was leaving, but he was not part of our church.

51:24

He just said, yeah, no. Yeah, no, okay. Seemed wrong application.

51:30

So that's a good question. What if, you can't really discipline someone outside the church, right?

51:37

I guess that's - They're already out of the covenant community. Right. And so you're evangelizing them.

51:44

You can still tell them, hey, what you're doing is wrong and argue from the word what you're doing is wrong and call them to repentance.

51:52

But it's like, you know, when you take biblical counseling classes, all counseling is pre -counseling until someone comes to Christ because unless you have the spirit of Christ, you're not empowered to actually obey the truth.

52:05

Yeah, that's a good point. Ralph Davis says, I have never once seen a church practice discipline against a reviling or rebellious woman.

52:13

How many churches do you know that discipline women? Not many. And my experience actually has been quite a few.

52:20

I think most of the previous discipline cases at my church involved women. Obviously there's been disciplined men and women, but I think the last like five years, it's mostly been women who have like left their husbands and stuff like that.

52:35

So, yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, what that looks like in the wider evangelical

52:42

Christianity. I know in our area, not many churches practice discipline at all.

52:48

And nor since they don't do that, they don't uphold the discipline either. I could count on one hand, the number, and I wouldn't fill it up, the number of churches that have even upheld a discipline.

53:03

But I think if scripture calls something a sin, then, and there's counsel, you go through all the same things that we've discussed, then you would move towards excommunication, unfortunately.

53:16

But for the purity of the bribe, right? Because a little leaven leavens a whole lump.

53:22

So we've had to do with women that refuse to submit to their husbands and with husbands that fail to lead their wives.

53:33

Those are things that scripture commands us to do. And there's a measurement by which it's supposed to be done.

53:39

And so we've had to go all the way through in step four with the lady, she was just, rebellion against all kinds of authority, which you would expect, right?

53:48

We teach our kids, when you disobey your parents, you're actually disobeying God because God put your parents there as a rightful authority with delegated and limited authority.

53:58

By God's grace, that lady, she also said I was a false teacher, that I was teaching a workspace gospel because I taught that the irreducible minimum of Christianity from first John is that you love

54:10

God and you love his people. So that's workspaced, and so.

54:19

Okay, well Jesus said, how do you know you love him? You keep his commandments. Pastor Tom Rush is in the chat.

54:25

He says, just a thought, church discipline never works when you don't do it. Thank you for that. True. Pastor Tom Rush, that is true.

54:32

It does not work if you don't do it. A question from Jate Bure, if a man is very involved in the church, his actions are closely observed.

54:40

Instead of pursuing holiness, we see him pursuing a girl young enough to be his daughter. Should he be disciplined?

54:46

Okay, so this I think is a question of what is, it is a practical thing though. Okay, so what is sin?

54:52

Like, is there something in scripture that says an age gap that's too far is sinful?

54:59

Man, that's such an easy question. I'm gonna let Pastor Joey answer that. Oh, I think

55:05

Proverbs 18, 13 is a very important passage that we should all have memorized. 18, 17 is he who pleases case first seems right until another comes and examines him.

55:17

And then 18, 13 is it's a folly and a shame to him who answers before he hears. And so you see this, this man may have a daughter, may realize that this young girl doesn't have a dad.

55:30

The looks of it might be off to you, but we don't wanna ever rush just to jump into discipline.

55:38

And it shows that there's not a love for the older man there. We do have to remember that when we are talking with older men, we're to address them as father.

55:46

So while we might be talking to a younger man and we might tell him, you know, buck up and kick him around a little bit, not physically, but you know what

55:54

I mean? We can be a little more direct and blunt with a younger man. When we're talking with an older man, we need to have more respect and more reverence because scripture commands that of us.

56:04

Find out what's going on, how he's doing. Here's one thing that's really helpful to remember as like this basic operating procedure for all of us as Christians.

56:14

And if you're a husband, you should already know this. You know that we're to love our wives like Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her.

56:24

You think about like Romans 5a, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So that paints a very vivid picture of like someone that is hating, spewing vitriol, spits flying out their mouth, veins bulging in their head.

56:37

Still Christ loved us and came for us. And so when we see like our wives acting in a way that is wrong and is sinful, we shouldn't just try to fight and get our own rights across or beat her down or anything.

56:51

What we should do is we should look at that and go, I know her and I love her. And when she's thinking rightly, she wouldn't do anything like this.

56:58

She must be hurting, something must be wrong. And God has entrusted me to be the person that goes and rescues her.

57:04

And I'm the shock absorber, I'm the punching bag in that. And all of that lets me share in the sufferings of Christ.

57:10

And so I'm gonna go do that. We should have that same kind of mentality member to member within our congregations as we're seeking to win the person that we see sinning.

57:19

We should know if they were thinking rightly, they wouldn't be doing this. Something's off, some kind of sin has gotten hold of them.

57:25

The devil's seeking to hold them captive to do his will. And God has in his providence entrusted me to see this so I could be a means of rescue.

57:34

Yeah, that's a, maybe we don't have time for it. That's a difficult question of age gaps and all that kind of thing.

57:41

I think the general sentiment though is if it's someone that's older, that they're either predatory or trying to take advantage of someone and maybe get them to do things with their life choices that aren't to their benefit.

57:54

And I think what you said is so wise to investigate what's actually going on there.

58:01

I was thinking the other day, I think I wrote a post on it that so much of the sexualization in our culture has also destroyed healthy relationships that are just friendliness between males and females.

58:14

Like it's all viewed as if you're nice to a female, then you must want something from them that they shouldn't give you.

58:21

And it's like, well, that shouldn't be the case. Like obviously there should be boundaries socially, but man,

58:27

I think you're right that scripture does say treat older men as fathers. So older men in the church should treat younger women and men as like their children.

58:38

And anyway, that's - Love hopes all things, love beliefs all things. And so we don't wanna just jump to a negative assessment of someone, that's sinful thinking.

58:48

Smog Wolf, man, I don't think that's his real name, but he says, what's a list of sins? Where does one observe these in scripture?

58:55

How do elders guard the congregation and what sins are being addressed? So I think that's a very basic kind of Bible 101.

59:02

Where do you go to find out what's a sin? That's what he's asking. Ten commandments, that's one place.

59:09

First Corinthians six, any of the Pauline epistles? A lot of vice lists.

59:15

Yeah, read the Bible. That's what Matthew said. There you go, yeah. All right, it looks like those are most of the questions.

59:24

And one other quick point, honestly, the Proverbs, like there's so many wisdom sayings pertaining to particular vices and sins.

59:33

You can obviously go to the law, go to any of the epistles, but you'll see a lot of, I would say clarity in the

59:39

Proverbs about what you may not think is sin actually turning out. No, this is wrong and you may actually be doing it when you don't know, so.

59:49

Here's one thing that you notice, like the longer you walk with Christ, when John talks about young men, children, young men and fathers, and fathers, the goal and their desire is to know

01:00:02

God. The children, it's like, man, my sins are forgiven. And you can resonate with that as a

01:00:08

Christian. You remember like when your sins are forgiven and you realize that, and it's just like, there's nothing else. There's nothing else matters.

01:00:14

My sins have been forgiven. I belong to Christ now, this is the coolest thing ever. And then sanctification hits.

01:00:20

And then you're just like, oh my goodness, I thought everything was gonna be like justification. But as you grow, you realize like,

01:00:28

I'm doing pretty well. Like, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not out there murdering people.

01:00:34

I'm not stealing. I'm not pursuing homosexuality or sexual immorality or whatever it might be.

01:00:40

All of those sins of commission by and large have been subdued by the Spirit.

01:00:46

And we think we're doing pretty well. And then we realize there's a whole nother category of sins of omission, things that I'm commanded to do.

01:00:54

That I'm not doing, things I ought to do that I'm not doing, that I'm leaving undone, right? Like the catechism says, what is sin?

01:01:00

Any thought, word, or deed that breaks God's law either by commission or omission. Commission being what God forbids, and then omission, not being or doing what

01:01:08

God requires. One thing that you see is what we as Christians do where we'll fall into sin is inordinate affections.

01:01:17

We'll take a good thing, take for example, like family or our children or spouse. Those are all good things and gifts from God, but we'll elevate them to a wrong level to where now they become, we've made them an idol.

01:01:31

Like Calvin talks about the human heart's a factory of idols. We'll take good things and then turn them into idols.

01:01:37

And sometimes that's visible. And then we go and we talk to the person and say, hey, you're putting, you have an inordinate affection for your children.

01:01:46

You're placing your children above the Lord Jesus Christ. This is dangerous.

01:01:53

Yeah. Yeah, good point. I think sometimes I've noticed this in church discipline cases that it might be what we would consider to be a kind of a minor sin or like a lesser sin.

01:02:04

It's not publicly egregious, but then when that's confronted, then the true heart comes out.

01:02:10

And then the real sin is revealed. And I don't know how many people get disciplined eventually, not because of the initial thing they were confronted on, because of their belligerence and pride and unwillingness to repent.

01:02:20

That seems to be like, that's the thing that actually creates the excommunication at the end.

01:02:27

I'll give you a story on that. I've never, it's one of the weirdest things I ever heard. We were having a young men's group and I was talking about missionary dating and how that's not biblical.

01:02:39

And we're not supposed to be pursuing someone to date while at the same time, trying to evangelize them so that they get saved so that we can actually justifiably date them and pursue them for marriage.

01:02:51

And there was one person that got really, really upset with this and wanted to come back and have a meeting.

01:02:58

And in that meeting, he said, I'm concerned that you are completely overlooking an unreached people group in our culture.

01:03:08

Beautiful women, attractive women are an unreached people group. I remember you telling me this, yeah. And I was just like,

01:03:16

I'm like, when was the last time you looked at porn? I'm sorry,

01:03:23

I'm laughing. But it's like the unreached people group of beautiful women. That's a,

01:03:29

God's just calling me as a missionary, you know? So it's the weirdest excuse.

01:03:37

It's like he had nowhere to go. He had to desperately cling to something. Oh my, all right.

01:03:43

So there's one question. Barry Moss asks if you're on X Pastor Joe, are you on X? Yes. You are, what's your handle?

01:03:51

Pastor Joey, I think. You can't be, you couldn't have taken that. Really? Something like that.

01:03:58

Pastor Joey D, maybe? Maybe, I'm gonna look right now just to see. Yeah, all right.

01:04:05

Well, Matthew - Yeah, Pastor Joey D. Okay, all right. I was gonna say like Pastor Joey would have been taken.

01:04:12

I would have figured early. All right, well, there's some questions coming in, but I think they're complicated and it'll probably take us a little too long.

01:04:18

I wanna pitch it to you, Matthew, to ask or talk about anything that stands out to you here in our closing minutes.

01:04:24

No, I think we're good. Yeah, so I mean, any encouragement then,

01:04:31

Pastor Joey, for pastors who, or laymen, I guess, anyone who is a

01:04:37

Christian, and this might be new to them, how do they approach it?

01:04:43

They have a friend who's in sin and they wanna confront that issue that bothers them.

01:04:50

What do they do? I mean, do they have to talk to their pastor? They might have to talk to their pastor first if they don't even do church discipline at the church, right?

01:04:56

I mean, just to kind of, I don't know. What do you think? I mean, there's a lot of components to it. One principle

01:05:02

I'll say is you do right before the Lord, no matter what. And so if you see someone in sin and you lovingly confront them and talk with them and you're seeking their restoration, even if the church that you're a part of doesn't do that, it doesn't negate your responsibility to obey the

01:05:19

Lord Jesus Christ. So don't let someone else's disobedience become your disobedience. If you're a pastor,

01:05:25

I would say, don't immediately implement it, but with anything that you do, whenever you're making a change, teach on it.

01:05:33

Teach on it, have Q &As with your members afterwards so that you can field questions and help them understand.

01:05:40

Take several weeks, teach on it. You wanna be able to hear from the congregation.

01:05:45

You wanna make sure that they're asking good questions, that they're understanding it as well. Because if we don't understand something, then we're not gonna do it.

01:05:53

For people, I would say, love the Lord, love

01:05:58

His word. There's so few churches that are doing church discipline now.

01:06:04

It's really hard to grow up in a church where you see it done and you see it modeled. And so a lot of us are trying to start from scratch in a lot of ways.

01:06:13

We're finding some good resources from older authors where they did it and some examples of what not to do that we can see more clearly with hindsight in the day and age we live in.

01:06:23

But you're gonna stumble and you're gonna fall, whether you're a pastor or not.

01:06:29

You're gonna make mistakes as you go through it. You're gonna realize I was too harsh, I was too soft, I was too slow on this.

01:06:35

I should have been a little more courageous. I should have been less harsh. And I think keeping that biblical principle of love, love for one another and understanding that we all are gonna fall short and we're all gonna stumble from time to time and making sure that there is that love there so that we can build one another back up.

01:06:53

And when you do sin, own it, right? Even in the homes, all this starts in the home, right? If you're a father and you sin against your kids, you need to seek their forgiveness.

01:07:02

You're modeling what a Christian is to them. And a Christian seeks forgiveness when they sin.

01:07:08

So if you're not practicing this in the home, it's definitely not gonna come across in the church in the right way.

01:07:15

Don't be authoritarian, don't be tyrannical, but don't be a coward either.

01:07:21

Be bold and be courageous for Christ with the grace that He supplies and do it all for His glory.

01:07:26

Remember, our time here is short. Scripture talks about, Romans 13 even talks about how the sun is rising.

01:07:34

It's that time right now where the sun, you can see the light coming over the mountain, but you can't quite see the sun yet.

01:07:40

And you know, in a few minutes, that's gonna be shining on my face. That's how close we are to stepping into eternity.

01:07:46

And there's some things that can only be done right now. And one of those things is the obedience of discipline within the church.

01:07:54

Yeah, that was so well said, especially about the imminence of our death coming before the

01:08:01

Lord. One of the things I just thought of that I wanna add to it too, is I think a lot of people, especially if this is new to them, they're gonna have a difficult time.

01:08:09

Sometimes they are gonna have questions about something that bothers them, whether it's a sin or not.

01:08:15

And I don't think, I think pastors should be there as resources for those kinds of things.

01:08:21

So if you see a brother in sin and you're not sure, or you don't know how best to handle it or approach him, I don't think it's a gossip thing to go and ask for advice from a wise, old, godly person that should be a pastor in your church to figure out, to set a game plan to help the person.

01:08:37

And that's different than gossip because gossip is about pushing them down, promoting yourself.

01:08:44

Like if you're a part of the solution and you're, yeah, just don't avoid confronting sin because you're unsure.

01:08:50

Like if you have a feeling in your head or something's unsettling,

01:08:57

I think it's worth examining it further, searching the word of God, obviously, seeing, okay, is this, something's right, wrong about this.

01:09:05

Is it false teaching? Is it sin? And then going after it when you, it's like, it's not in the

01:09:10

Bible, but I think it was a Davy Crockett quote, be sure you're right, then go ahead. So be sure you're right, then go ahead.

01:09:18

That's something I just felt like I needed to add. Yeah, sometimes an open -ended questions are really good with that.

01:09:25

So I saw that you did this. What were you thinking? What were you feeling when you did that?

01:09:31

Yeah. Trying to get an under, it goes back to like that Proverbs 18, 13 principle, right? You want to gather information.

01:09:38

Maybe I saw something wrong or maybe it wasn't wrong, but you're absolutely right. Like anything in the

01:09:46

Christian life, we can abuse it. And so the abuse of something doesn't nullify the right use of something.

01:09:52

And if you need help and you have a godly pastor, you can talk to your pastor and say,

01:09:59

I need help on going about this situation with so -and -so that I saw. How should I do this?

01:10:05

Yeah, Galatians 6, 1. I was thinking about Galatians 6, 1. If anyone is caught in a transgression, you are a spiritual restorer and a spirit of gentleness.

01:10:15

Sorry, go on. Yeah, absolutely. I was just reaffirming what you were saying. Sometimes we have to get more counsel on a situation and not all talking about someone or their situation is gossip.

01:10:29

But the thing that we have to be very careful of is how finicky and how deceitful our hearts can be and how we can use that as a justifying excuse.

01:10:38

So I would say read Thomas Brooks's book, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices.

01:10:45

Examine that against your own heart and then move forward. Good, good advice there.

01:10:51

Well, we're, yeah, this is actually a longer one, but I think it's all been good. If people want to contact

01:10:57

Pastor Joe, if you have further questions and, oh, I wrote it down. Where did

01:11:02

I put it? I lost your website. What's the website, Pastor Joey? Mastersbiblechurch .com.

01:11:09

Thank you, mastersbiblechurch .com. You can, I'm assuming your email's there or go on xpastorjoeyd and I appreciate it.

01:11:18

That's the podcast. God bless. We'll see you next week. Thank you, brothers. Take care, y 'all.