Episode 106: A Foundation for Church Discipline

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February 19, 2025

Danny Thursby, an elder at Grace Bible Church in Conway, AR, joins Pastor Allen to discuss the "whys" and "hows" of church discipline.

00:00: Welcome to the Ruled Church Podcast. This is my beloved son, with whom
00:05: I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas?
00:13: You see that one in Pechote, Mexico? Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.
00:21: The church is not a democracy. It's a monarchy. Christ is king. You can't be
00:26: Christian without a local church. You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the
00:37: Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible -believing church, and spend your life serving
00:44: Jesus in a local, visible congregation. Okay, I'm terrible at small talk, Danny, but I notice you're drinking some green tea.
00:53: Yeah, honestly, so I'm a big tea guy. I love tea.
01:01: Yeah, I love hot tea. I know that that's embarrassing for some to be associated with me for that reason.
01:09: But the reason why, to be honest, the main reason why I'm drinking it this morning is because I was running late, and it was faster to make tea than it was to make a cup of coffee.
01:22: Okay, so growing up, my grandparents lived, this is well before I was born, my grandfather was in the
01:29: Air Force, but they lived in England for a time. Yeah. And they got into the habit of tea.
01:37: And so when I was growing up, and we'd go over there, I mean, they weren't, they're not British, they're born in Texas.
01:43: They weren't, yeah, they weren't proper about it. That's right, but we had tea. They made a little tray, and we had tea a lot, and I guarantee you the tea
01:51: I was drinking was way more unhealthy than what you're drinking because I loaded it down, you know?
01:57: Well, see, what happened for me in college, I spent a summer in Jordan, in the
02:04: Middle East, and there's some Egyptians that I was basically,
02:10: I didn't stay with them, but I was with them every day, and they had tea. They're into tea.
02:15: They ate tea every day. Well, we're— And so I just came back from that summer, and we're just hooked on it.
02:24: Yeah. Well, I hate small talk on podcasts. You try to go in, and then it's all of a sudden, it's like, how long is this banter?
02:31: So we'll get in. Yeah. Welcome to the Real Church Podcast. I am your host, Alan Nelson.
02:37: I am one of the pastors at Providence Baptist Church in Perryville, Arkansas, and with me today is one of the elders at Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, Danny Thursby, Mr.
02:50: Tea Man himself. Danny, you want to take— You want Danny T. Thursby, yeah.
02:56: You want to take us like— Give us a two -minute, you know, introduction of who is
03:03: Danny Thursby. Yeah, that's great. First off, thanks for having me on.
03:10: Some people have the goal of being on Joe Rogan. I just want to be on the
03:15: Real Church Podcast. 2 .0. Yeah, 2 .0. I was on 1 .0,
03:22: but I needed to be on 2 .0. Yeah. So I can die a happy man now.
03:28: I'm ready to go. But the
03:34: Lord saved me when I was young. Let me give you the quick version of it.
03:39: You know those like Hell House ministries or Judgment Day ministries? I wasn't saved there, but that's where kind of like my mom and my pastor and stuff started taking me seriously that, hey, this guy actually might— this little kid might actually be converted.
03:59: Because basically, I kept pestering my mom and the pastor about, hey,
04:04: I've been saved. I want to be baptized. I want to be baptized. I want to be baptized. We go to this
04:10: Judgment Day ministry, which I wouldn't recommend now. Especially taking, you know, a six -year -old kid.
04:17: Sure. You know, hey, let's take you through a
04:22: Christian version of a horror house, basically. But at the end of that, you know, there's this evangelistic pitch, the, you know, bow your head, close your eyes type thing.
04:36: And basically, I'm critical of it now because it's emotionalism, but I'm like, hey, I'm going to see if this guy will— you know, hey,
04:42: I'm saved. So, yeah, I'm going to tell this guy, this evangelist or pastor up here that, yeah, I'm saved.
04:48: I want to be baptized. And so I walked the aisle or did whatever thing there.
04:55: And then after that, my mom and pastor were like, okay, yeah, let's baptize him.
05:03: And it's not that I grew up a perfect child or didn't struggle with sin, especially my—
05:09: That's two different people, your mom and your pastor. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
05:15: Two different people, mom and pastor. Yeah, that's a good distinction, especially when you're kind of in— amongst families that like to homeschool and stuff like that.
05:28: You got to make those sorts of distinctions. That's right. Hey, she can be your mom and your teacher, but she can't be your mom and your pastor.
05:37: Amen, amen. Well, sorry to cut you off there. That's— No, you're good. No, that's—
05:42: So— Go ahead. So, grew up in a Christian home. My dad was saved at some point during my childhood.
05:52: I'm not exactly know when, but he had a dramatic conversion. The whole household changed, and it's never been the same since as far as—
06:03: My dad was never a bad man, but there was just peace in the home that wasn't there before.
06:11: You know, I had a great— I had a great childhood. Grew up in Texas. Came to Conway, Arkansas for college at Central Baptist College.
06:22: That's where I really grew in the Word, grew to know the truth, especially over that first semester there, or that—yeah, that first year there at college.
06:34: That's when I found Grace Bible Church. Second year of college, met my wife.
06:40: We get married eventually, and yeah, the
06:46: Lord just never had us leave here. He just provided opportunity for us to stay. I said, Hey, I've got a good wife, good job, great—a good church.
06:59: What's the reason to leave? And so, this is where we've been, and I was ordained as a pastor at Grace Bible Church in 2017.
07:09: I've got two children—three children, but one is on the way, due in just a few months.
07:16: And yeah, really, that's kind of a snapshot on my life and how the Lord's brought me to where He's brought me.
07:22: You can't really say everything, you know, like in that short amount of time, but I appreciate you.
07:28: I was just thinking here that you and I met— it was actually almost 10 years ago now, it was in later 2015.
07:36: 2015, yeah. And I had had—and now it's 2025. So I had a conference, and I asked
07:43: Pastor Jeff Johnson to preach on the authority of Scripture, and he brought Danny Thursby with him, and Danny and I have been friends since and have been through some good things together, and he's been a help to me, and just—I'm really grateful to have you.
07:58: And I want to say, just kind of getting into our topic, ease into that, but the last year and a half or so,
08:05: Danny, I've kind of just been loving Psalm 87. It's like, not that I didn't read it.
08:14: I've read it a lot before, but sometimes the Lord just brings Scripture to your heart that, you know, you didn't understand before.
08:22: And I'll just read that, the first three verses. I'm going to ring the King James. His foundation is in the holy mountains.
08:30: The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee,
08:37: O city of God. Selah. And I preached that last Sunday, and I'll preach it out of the ESV, but there is something sometimes beautifully poetic about the
08:46: King James. But— Yeah, yeah, sometimes it adds that little extra punch.
08:53: Yeah, yeah. One of the things about that psalm, and we're not really going to get into the psalm itself, but I just kind of use it as a launching point.
09:01: One of the things about the psalm is, you know, what is this city? Of course, in the foreground here, you have
09:07: Jerusalem. But you understand that God loves Jerusalem, not about its geographic location, so much as the fact that that's where his people are, and he dwells with his people.
09:18: And so we can understand, you're not crazy if you see the church here. This is a pointing us forward, you know, to the church.
09:26: And I just think about those three. Glorious things are spoken of thee,
09:31: O city of God. And the church is glorious. And of course, the church universal is glorious, but the church universal finds expression on earth in local, visible congregations.
09:44: Well, we don't have time to get through, you know, people are like, well, I don't have to go to church.
09:49: I am the church. Well, there is a truth, a smattering of truth there that individuals make up the church.
09:59: Certainly, that's true. I'll say it that way. But you individually are not the church. That's right.
10:05: That's right. Yeah. Number one. Number two, as part of the church, as part of the stones in the temple, it is your duty, but also privilege, together with the church.
10:18: So there's no understanding of church without gathering. And we understand that that gathering, and here really kind of broach the topic, that gathering is in visible local congregations under qualified leadership, in covenantal relationships, formal membership.
10:40: And the church then, as an assembly, has a measure of authority.
10:47: You want to mention anything about that? Yeah. Yeah. I love where you started with that psalm.
10:55: And for sure, you can project that into the New Testament or New Covenant.
11:01: We see the New Testament pick up on, you know, the church being the true
11:08: Israel, the church being, you know, a living temple of God, Ephesians 2, like you were referencing, a temple made of living stones, you know, actually.
11:20: To riff on, just riff on something else you said, a great way that I found to explain it is when people were like, no,
11:27: I am the church. It was like, oh, okay. Well, are you also the bride of Christ? You, personally? Are you the bride, you know, are you the bride of Christ?
11:35: Yeah. And, you know, you can kind of get away with saying, oh, we are the church, or I am the church.
11:44: Yeah, I am the church. But you can't really get away with saying, oh, I am the bride of Christ. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't sit as well.
11:53: That's right. But Keech also, Benjamin Keech wrote a little book.
11:59: It's in little book form now. I don't know if it was originally a book or a sermon or whatever.
12:05: But he, it's entitled The Glory of the True Church. Yeah, The Glory of a
12:13: True Church. And in DC, yeah, shameless, shameless plug by association.
12:23: Glory of a True Church, Benjamin Keech, and he talks about that. And there is glory in the church because that is where God dwells.
12:31: That is how God has, you know, really chosen to meet with us.
12:38: And, you know, in a prominent, in a prominent way, I'm not saying exclusively.
12:45: I do think that you should, you can worship God in the deer woods or on the golf course or whatever.
12:54: But not in the way that he has prescribed us to worship him.
13:01: Yeah. And it's not just Sunday, and it's not just on Sunday morning attendance or Sunday morning worship.
13:09: But it's bigger than that. It's broader than that. It's God has saved us, redeemed us, not to be an individual that loves him and loves others.
13:21: But as you said, to be part of his church, his bride, his temple, made of living stones, his family.
13:34: And you've said this so many times. I mean, I've heard your preaching, teaching so many times, but you just can't understand, especially the
13:42: New Testament, outside of a body, a body of believers that have joined themselves together in a redeemed community.
13:56: Yeah. You know, that we, that we, that's called church or the assembly, you just can't understand it.
14:03: It's like a foreign, you know, it's lifting the New Testament out of its context.
14:08: And really, you could say the same thing out of the Old Testament, but the context is a little bit different.
14:14: There's a, you know, not that we need, we want to get into this, but, you know, there's an external context of, you know, a people or lineage of Israel that you've got to understand the
14:28: Old Testament in. Yeah. That's distinct from the New. But you've said it so many times, and I can't agree anymore, that the
14:38: New Testament comes to us, you know, in, it's in, through, and for the church.
14:45: Even if you look at Christ in His original calling of the disciples, that's Him, you know, laying the foundation, planting the seeds of the
14:56: New Testament church. Amen. You know, if I may make an application from the Psalm I read, it says, the
15:01: Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. He doesn't say
15:07: He doesn't love the tents of Jacob. He does love Jacob's dwelling. And so if we make an application, the
15:13: Lord loves you in your opening the Bible in the morning. He loves that in your prayer.
15:18: He loves that. That's important. That's actually critical to a Christian life and your family worship and all these things.
15:26: Absolutely critical. And God loves it. But there is something that is particular and special about the people together.
15:35: I think you have multiple kids. I have multiple kids. I love spending that one -on -one time with my children.
15:41: It's great. It's important. Yeah. And I love it. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But there is something special when all my, now your kids are still kind of young.
15:50: And so they're usually in the home. My kids are kind of scattered sometimes. Now they're teenagers, so they're not out of the house, but still got different events.
15:59: But I love those evenings. I try to cherish those evenings when we're all together. I love those. You know, so we're getting into then the idea of God's, there is something special in particular about the local church.
16:13: And one of the things Jesus says in Matthew 18, right?
16:19: That I've given you the keys of the kingdom. So who has,
16:26: Danny, the keys to the kingdom? The Bishop of Rome.
16:32: Okay. Now we're going to end the podcast. Thank you for, you know, yeah,
16:37: I would make it, I would make an argument that it's the church, you know, it's not the
16:44: Presbytery. It's not, it's not any kind of ecclesiastical authority above the church because there is none.
16:52: It is, it is the church. And so the, so the keys I'm arguing is the responsibility of the church is to, and this sounds hard, probably to the evangelical mind.
17:04: And particularly to like, I think sometimes the real, maybe kind of fundamentalist
17:10: Baptist mind. But it's the church's responsibility to say, you're in, you're out of the kingdom.
17:16: Now the church can get that wrong. It's not an infallible thing. We can tell, we can say people are in who are not in, and we can say people are out and not out, but maybe flesh that out for a second.
17:30: Yeah, of course. I'm joking about the, the, the Bishop of Rome. But yeah, there's a sense of authority there.
17:40: And Christ says it emphatically when he says, oh geez,
17:52: I'm a bad podcast guest at this point. It just, it just, it's just what, oh, when he says, what, what you bound on earth is bound in heaven.
18:04: Yeah. Binding and loosing. Yeah. Yeah. But the binding and loosing, right? So yeah, there's an, there's an authority there.
18:11: And here's, here's the, here's an important distinction that a lot of people don't understand.
18:19: A lot of people don't understand that the church does have real authority.
18:25: Yeah. And, you know, on the subject of, you know, of that we're getting into on church discipline,
18:32: I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But, but even the pastors of the church can't just dictate and say, hey, this person's disciplined out, but this person's not.
18:43: That's right. It needs to be a whole, it needs to be a whole church. And there's a variety of ways that churches do this, but it needs to be a whole church discipline.
18:52: It can't just be the pastor of the church or the pastors of the church have decided to do this.
19:00: But it needs to be the whole church under the authority of Christ practicing this thing. And as we'll talk more, we'll see how that is indeed glorious.
19:11: But, but people neglect to realize that the church does have real authority.
19:16: That God practices discipline and judgment through the local church.
19:24: I mean, the church has kind of woken up to, okay, what is God's role for the state, you know, state government over the past, you know, four years?
19:35: Or, you know, in my mind, you know, pastors and churches that I know and talking to that they've had to dig into that over the past four years and kind of learn a new, yeah, what does the
19:46: Lord say about state government? And we've learned that God has a purpose and God does give some authority to the state government to punish the wicked and evildoers and things like that, that the state government's authority is derived from God.
20:03: And that's why it matters when they breach that authority, when they go outside that authority, that they're sinning against the very living
20:10: God. Okay, well, still Christians have a hard time understanding it. Okay, but God's given authority to the church as well.
20:17: Some authority to the church as well, and authority on spiritual, you know, on spiritual matters.
20:23: And you're right that it's not that the church gets it, whatever the church says it goes, like when we've had to discipline people out of our congregation for unrepentant sin, you know, it's, it's, it's even said that, hey, we're not saying, we're not, we're not saying that we know, we've looked into the heart of this person and have determined that they are not a believer.
20:54: What we're saying is that God has told us to make these sorts of judgments, judge them by their fruit.
21:02: And so we're saying, hey, they should be treated as an unbeliever, that we can't consider them as a believer because of their unrepentance.
21:13: And so we're not, we're not giving a eternal declaration. We're giving a, a practical temporal declaration based upon the word of God.
21:25: And if they return, then that was the Lord's discipline.
21:31: And if they don't, then it was, then it was pruning. And the Lord's going to make that final revelation or determination, however you want to think about it, on the last day, on the day of judgment.
21:43: In fact, that's part, that's really the point and the goal of church.
21:49: You know, here's what we're talking about. I got ahead of myself. But part of the glory of the local church is the authority and discipline of the local church.
22:02: And why, why is that glorious? It's because in putting, in practicing church discipline on somebody, you're disciplining them, even to the extent of putting them out of the church, with a love and motivation that their soul might be saved on the, on the last day.
22:21: That's what the scripture says that you, in 1 Corinthians 15, that, that Paul says, hey, deliver them over to Satan so that their flesh may be destroyed now, but their soul may be saved on the, on the last day.
22:36: And that's a strong statement. Yeah, that's a statement that, you know, when
22:41: I first started learning about this, kind of went against the grain of, it just kind of went against, you know, just went against the grain.
22:52: It doesn't sound like a good thing, but it's actually a glorious thing. Yes, the two camps, and we can talk about these camps.
23:00: I'm sure you've ran into both of them. The two camps I run into when it comes to church discipline, you have, it's very rarely to find the biblically balanced, faithful, long, you know, the two camps are either one,
23:12: I don't care. I don't know what it is, and I don't care about it. Yeah. And then, and then the other camp actually does come up some too, and that is, all right,
23:21: I'm disciplining. I'm looking at everything. Everything. I can't leave it alone.
23:27: I can't, I can't do the love covers a multitude of sins. I've got to, I got to latch on to everything, and we want to be balanced.
23:35: So let me start here, because what you're saying, and some of this may be foreign to some people, and these are things that our church has gone through and is growing in.
23:45: So one thing I would say before you're ready to be a church, and by the way, one of the marks of not a healthy church, okay,
23:56: I'm just talking about one of the historical marks of a church, is that it practices discipline.
24:04: That's right. So, so this isn't one of those things like, okay, like if you want to be a good church, you need to practice churches.
24:11: Well, yes, that is true. But it's also, it's even more basic than that.
24:16: It's just the nature of being a church is that you discipline.
24:22: So if you're going to be a good church, yes, you want to discipline, but it's even, it's to the very, it's kind of like saying, you know,
24:28: Danny, if you want to be healthy, you should breathe. Like, well, yes, you should breathe,
24:34: Danny, but it's more, it's more basic than that. You're going to breathe if you're going to live.
24:39: So let's, some of the things that may be foreign, I want to try to help some people, and this may be controversial, it shouldn't be, but the same thing is practice on the front end, when you bring people into membership, and particularly we can talk about baptism.
24:56: So I don't think, hopefully no one would listen to this podcast and think that if someone comes up to any person that comes up to a pastor or to the church and says,
25:06: I want to be baptized. Surely you don't think that on the spot, they should immediately fill up the baptistry and baptize them on the spot, because we don't know who they are.
25:19: We, so the church has a responsibility, and again, you're not saying, like you said on the other end, you're not saying you're not a
25:26: Christian. I mean, you're not saying I can see in your heart, and I know that you're not a
25:32: Christian. You may be a Christian, but the church has a responsibility to give right judgment, and I was thinking about 1
25:39: Corinthians 5 .12, which that is with discipline, because a lot of people read Matthew 7 .1,
25:44: judge not, judge not, judge not. And Paul literally says, you're supposed to judge those in the church, and he's not saying like condemnation there.
25:55: He's talking about we should give the proper understanding of a person's walk with the
26:00: Lord. We are responsible for that. So, I don't know, we could stay the whole podcast in here, but I guess what
26:08: I'm trying to get at is before you run headlong into, okay, we got discipline. So Sunday, let's find somebody to discipline them.
26:15: Before you get to that point, you need to be a church that practices healthy entrance.
26:26: And so I'm saying healthy baptism practices, healthy membership practices, formal, you know,
26:33: I know some churches, I'm sure you do too, Danny, that they do not practice formal membership.
26:40: And you're like, what? The Lord does? So we should have our membership seat to match here.
26:49: So I guess I'm just trying to talk about that's on the front end, you know, before we get to, and by the way, discipline,
26:56: I guess I'm kind of getting ahead of myself too. When we say discipline, we're not always talking about the end result.
27:02: Like this should be happening regularly among members. I think of scenarios.
27:09: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, two things. Let me speak to that. And then if it's okay, let me just introduce, let me just give some, kind of introduce what discipline is.
27:25: Yes, at the very least, formal church membership is a necessary inference of the scriptures, right?
27:40: With, you know, even from the very, you know, the kind of very beginning of Acts, we have the day of Pentecost.
27:51: And after that, 3000 were added to their number daily or in one day.
27:58: Okay, well, they were, that's the inference there is that they were doing something there.
28:05: It's like they were, they were keeping track of this. They were not necessarily, you know, publishing numbers like a lot of churches like to do.
28:15: Hey, we had this many baptisms this Sunday and stuff like that. Not as a form of marketing, but they were over, the apostles there were overseeing a people.
28:28: Hey, this many number was added to us today. We see that in the administration of kind of the proto deacons and the administration of the food to the
28:38: Hellenistic widows. That there was an accounting. Yeah. There was a,
28:43: Hey, these people have joined us. These people are among, these are our people and those are not our people.
28:49: That's right. And, and that's what you're professing when you are being baptized and when a church is baptizing you.
28:59: Is that this person is being baptized, not just into Christ and identifying with Christ, but identifying with his people.
29:11: Amen. He's identifying, he's, he's identifying with the baptized, those who have been baptized. And so at the very least church membership is a necessary inference of scripture.
29:25: If not outright, you know, prescribed, right?
29:31: Because there's all sorts of arguments, you know, against, against formal church membership.
29:38: And, and, brother Jeff has used this example in the past. And I really,
29:44: I really like it. It's, he's just like, okay, why have a, why, why have formal marriage?
29:49: Why not just move in with someone, commit yourself to someone, you know, show up at the house every day with the same person.
30:01: Why have formal marriage? If, you know, you know, we don't see that, you know, where's that prescribed in the
30:06: Bible? You know, why have a wedding ceremony? We're, we're, you know, what, you know, what's the point of that?
30:13: And, and that's kind of, you know, just an illustration showing us like, hey, no, when there's a commitment, clearly the scriptures tell us to have both a commitment and a submission to the church.
30:30: Then you automatically have some sort of agreement or I'll say covenant, some sort of a, maybe agreement's not the right word, but some sort of covenant or responsibility.
30:42: And as soon as you have that, you have something formal. And so you might as well, you know, just church practice in life.
30:50: You might as well treat it that way. Yeah. And say, hey, this per, this person is a baptized member.
30:56: This person is not. They just showed up one Sunday. They're visiting and checking us out. Let me just, that seems important to me.
31:02: That seems important. Well, I just want to interject, you know, cause I'm a hundred percent agreement. But like Psalm, we're in 87,
31:08: Psalm 87, 6. The Lord shall count when he rideth up the people that this man was born there.
31:14: Selah. Yeah. We could talk about that. But anyway, the Lord's writing down people. I know you have the poetic language, but then we also, everybody, so he may not have known that verse, but everybody knows of the
31:25: Lamb's book of life, names written down as it were. And so it's like, look, God does, if God can just know, he doesn't have to write anything down.
31:35: Yeah. Look, I'm arguing with you, you know, in the same vein there.
31:41: It's like, I just don't find a compelling case to argue against formal written down.
31:47: This is who's right. If God has been. Yeah. Yeah. And there's been, you know, people at our church, though, we don't agree with them.
31:57: And we might get heat of this. If somebody listens to this online, there's been some people at our church that we consider members, but they have conviction or conscience issue against formal membership.
32:13: But they're communicated to of like, OK, you're, but we're going to treat you as members.
32:19: So this doesn't mean, this doesn't mean that, you know, this isn't like what, you know, it's not like we led with this, but for the purpose of our discussion, this doesn't mean that somebody can be a member here or even say, hey,
32:36: I'm not, I don't believe in church membership, but this is my church. OK, well, if this is your church, then we're going to treat you as a member, whether you hold to church membership or not, or you believe that's a thing or not.
32:51: And for the purposes of our conversation here, if somebody is a member among us, even if they don't think so, it's not that that precludes them from something like church discipline.
33:09: It's like, oh, well, they don't believe in church membership, so we can't discipline them. No, we've still got to be obedient to the scriptures.
33:16: And we've got to believe that, hey, this is good for them. This is necessary for them for their spiritual well -being and sanctification.
33:26: We can't neglect that just because they don't have our same view of church, you know, same view of church membership or even church discipline or things like that.
33:37: Now, for the record, this is a vast minority. I can think of two people that have been part of our church over the years that have an issue with formal church discipline.
33:47: Formal church membership. Yeah, that's what I meant, formal church membership. Well, and formal church discipline for that matter.
33:59: But, yeah. Well, in the life of the church. It's not. In the life of the church.
34:06: The only point I'm trying to make is, you know, we try to be patient with people and where they're at convictionally and biblically and doctrinally and their understanding and stuff like that.
34:19: But just because you don't believe something that is in the scripture doesn't mean the church doesn't get to practice it.
34:25: Yeah. Yeah. I was just saying in the life of the church, we have this infallible standard, this sufficient work in the scriptures.
34:33: Yeah. But that doesn't mean it details every single scenario. And sometimes things come up.
34:39: And that's why the blueprint, the Lord has given us a blueprint for church discipline.
34:45: There we go. But this blueprint is in the reason this is the
34:50: Lord is so wise. And there's a reason this is so beautiful is because this blueprint is applicable to every situation, any and every situation.
35:00: If the Lord were to say, OK, if you catch a man lying, here's how you're going to deal with it.
35:06: And that's all he told us. Well, then we say, well, but what about if he's caught in this situation?
35:12: You know, in Matthew 18, he's given us that blueprint that applies to every situation.
35:18: Although, of course, we know from like First Corinthians five that there are some more extreme cases that skip some of the steps in in Matthew 18.
35:30: But did you did you want to just kind of get like when we when we talk about church discipline, what do we say?
35:36: Well, we're almost done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
35:42: We're almost done. OK. Church discipline.
35:47: What we mean by that, you know, when people talk about that, they're basically talking about a process of correction in a church that is mainly drawn from from two essential texts on churches.
36:03: When there's this, there's others, but there's two essential ones, Matthew 18 and First Corinthians five.
36:10: And in Matthew 18, Christ lays down. He frames it as, hey, if if somebody has offended, you know, if a brother has offended somebody.
36:24: Let the offended one go to him. OK. Alone. We're not just talking. Yes. Alone.
36:30: Yeah. But we're not just talking about, hey, he you know, hey, he hurt my feelings. Hey, man,
36:36: I didn't like the way you really said that. You wore the wrong color shirt. Yeah. Yeah.
36:41: We're we're we're we're not talking about those sorts of things here. We're talking about things that, you know, that somebody has sinned against another person in some way.
36:54: Maybe there's even a major dispute of, you know, major dispute of, you know, maybe even some maybe even like some cases like, hey, somebody's done somebody wrong.
37:09: Somebody's maybe stole money or something like that. Is the reason why
37:17: I'm bringing that up is what you said earlier. Churches like, hey, we're doing churches on every little.
37:23: You know, every little ticky tack thing is like, hey, we can't let love cover, you know, cover a multitude of sins.
37:31: You know, this is something that can't be ignored. This is something that that, you know, hey,
37:39: I'm sure there's plenty of things that happen to me. And I say, look, I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it.
37:45: He wasn't intending to offend me. And I never bring it up. Right. But these are these are sins that they can't be ignored.
37:53: These are sins of, I would say, commission, not omission. Oh, this person, this person doesn't reach out to pray for me like they used to.
38:06: Let's put them under church discipline. It's like, no, that's it. You can't you can't discipline for that.
38:14: You can't discipline for that. And so we're talking about active sins. This shouldn't be it shouldn't be ignored here.
38:21: Active offenses that shouldn't be ignored here. And I say this, the first step is like, how far do you get into this before people mess it up?
38:31: Step one. Right. Because because it's hard. This is what usually happens. I've seen in my life and someone gets offended.
38:38: And what do they do? They leave. They they leave or they tell other people they leave or they gossip.
38:45: Yeah, they leave. Yeah, they gossip about it, you know, or they. Yeah. And it's not handled because this is hard,
38:52: Danny. It's hard in our culture, especially Southern culture. It's hard to say, OK, brother, so and so has has offended me.
39:00: He's done wrong and it's hard to go to them and one on one.
39:07: It's just kind of countercultural. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Lord's wisdom and it's his sanctification.
39:14: Do you love him enough? All right. Like, do you love him or not? That's right.
39:20: Or do you just love yourself? Right. Well, that's what that's why Christ introduces this.
39:26: Hey, here's how you should practice discipline. It's right on the heels of in in Matthew.
39:35: It's right on the heels of Christ teaching that if your hand or foot causes you to sin, chop it off.
39:43: If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Right. It's right on the heels of, you know, if one sheep goes astray, the shepherd leaves the ninety nine to go to go find and bring back in that one sheep.
40:02: So he's talking about the the seriousness of which we need to take our own personal sin.
40:10: And he he puts that with the motivation of a good shepherd going to find the sheep that has gone astray and bring them back in the fold.
40:19: And then and then. So after teaching those things. So you get the the necessity of church discipline because of sin.
40:29: But you get the heart of church discipline in the shepherd going to bring back that one sheep. And then he says,
40:35: OK, this is how you deal with your brother who, you know, who has offended you. So you're going after them with those sorts of with those sorts of motivations, a seriousness for that brother's sin or sister sin.
40:50: But the heart of a good shepherd that, hey, I'm not going after I'm not going to them because I'm mad and I want justice for the way that they have wronged me.
41:00: I view them as a sheep who is going astray and I'm going to bring them back. And this isn't this is for any church member.
41:09: This isn't, hey, I need to go tell the pastor that they have sinned to bring them back.
41:14: No, you you go do the work of the ministry in that sense first. And then that's when
41:19: Christ escalates it. OK, if they don't hear you, if they're still unrepentant in their sin, then then bring two or three witnesses.
41:27: And that doesn't have to be two or three people that also think that they are in that certain sin or have seen them commit that certain sin.
41:38: It's not talking about witnesses necessarily in that sense, though. Oftentimes that can be the case.
41:45: Hey, you know, I'm worried about this, too, or whatever. I've seen that, too.
41:51: Let's go talk to them together. But it's just two good believers he can bring in on it.
42:00: And they're not necessarily there to witness to say, yes, we're yes, we've seen the same thing.
42:07: So maybe they have. Maybe they haven't. But they're there to witness the second engagement, be sort of mediators and be able to and be able to say, hey,
42:19: I think he's got something here that you should listen to and heed. Or because in disputes, oftentimes there's a person, a story, person
42:30: B story, and then there's the truth. Yeah, well, that is the truth. Well, I was going to say, like the
42:36: Lord and all I know is we're just going to have to have you back on and and get to some of the more harder cases.
42:43: But I do want to say one of the things it is the Lord set this up because a back handed or what am
42:53: I trying to say here? But another reason that you go to them alone and then even with the witnesses, you could be wrong, actually.
43:00: Right. You could be wrong. Right. Let me just give you a crazy scenario off the top of my head. This isn't true, but I just kind of made it up.
43:07: But you're driving down the road. You're a church member. You're driving down the road. You see one of your pastors coming out of a store and he hugs this woman that is not his wife and he kisses her on the cheek.
43:19: It's not his wife. And it's definitely like it's more than just like that. There's there's something somewhat affectionate there, you know, and you're like,
43:28: OK, so what do you do? Well, you may be tempted to just blast Facebook.
43:33: You may be tempted to just call the other elders. But in the scenario I just gave you, the pastor's sister was visiting from wherever,
43:42: California. And all of a sudden you've started this rumor mill, destroyed his ministry, affected his marriage, destroyed the church.
43:50: And it's like, well, hold on. What if you just now if that. Yeah. What if that wasn't his wife?
43:55: It wasn't his sister. Well, of course, like there's something that needs to be done. But you see, and I've been guilty of seeing a scenario before and thinking in my mind, this is how this is what happened.
44:08: This is why they do it. But then if you go to the person and you talk to them and you're still in that first stage and you talk to them, you're like, oh, actually, wow, there wasn't a sin issue at all.
44:21: I'm wrong. I saw it wrong. And now we've got it cleared up. But we're restored. We're in fellowship.
44:27: And that's the whole thing. Right, Danny? We're wanting to preserve the unity of this glorious institution.
44:34: Amen. Amen. It's preserving the unity and purity one way or the other.
44:43: So the other key text. OK, so briefly, we're coming to the end. But, you know, the person in sin doesn't hear the brother who came to him or the witnesses.
44:58: Then it gets elevated to the church. He doesn't hear the church and repent. Then Christ says to cast them out as a treat them as a tax collector, unbeliever, you know, a tax collector and a believer to do exactly what you said, to preserve the unity and purity of the church.
45:18: And that's done. That's done. That's achieved, whether they repent and stay or whether they don't.
45:25: And they're they're put out of and they're put out of the church. The reason why Paul is so emphatic in First Corinthians in First Corinthians five is, is
45:38: I believe in that case, if Corinth was doing what they should have been doing, that they should have practiced
45:44: Matthew 18. Paul's writing to them and say, hey, he should have already been put out.
45:50: Do it now is because they neglected to do so. Yeah, it's so it's not that Paul's offering up a different way.
46:00: You know that Paul's offering up. Hey, there's some cases that you can be more expedient. No, Paul's writing to say this already should have been done.
46:09: He's putting it on the church at that point. Hey, you're in the wrong for not having already put not having already put them out.
46:18: You know, for not practicing, not practicing these things. And and so that that's what's achieved.
46:28: And really with the hope that, hey, this person, once they're put out.
46:34: You know, God in his wisdom obviously knew that some Christians, real
46:39: Christians would need this. That discipline would be needed for their sanctification, that it would need to get to a point in their in their walk and in life with the
46:50: Lord. That in having to learn how to mortify their flesh, crucify their own sin, they would have to go through the hard thing of being disciplined down to church to recognize that to recognize their need for the church, to recognize their the serious of their sin to, you know, sin can be so deceptive that you have to lose everything before you realize that it's destroying your life, before you realize that, hey, that I am the problem.
47:26: Yeah. And so this isn't a this isn't a a. Oh, Christians think that they're all high and mighty or without sin.
47:34: And if somebody has sin in their congregation, they're just going to kick them out. No, we're all sinners. The distinction here in Matthew 18 and in First Corinthians five is that somebody is being stiff necked, hard headed, holding on to their sin.
47:48: They're not willing to live a life of repentance, give it up, seek the
47:56: Lord in a Psalm 51, you know, Psalm 51. They're not willing to give up that sin.
48:03: And so God says, God says, God says,
48:09: OK, you can't have a Christian that's unwilling to give up their sin amongst you. Treat them as a nonbeliever so that they might see their need for repentance and forgiveness, whether that's whether that whether they've been a false believer or whether they've been ensnared by their sin.
48:26: This is the method that God has prescribed to prune them of it. The extreme methods that God has prescribed to prune them of that.
48:34: And then that's the great thing about Second Corinthians is that Paul tells the church to warmly accept this brother back.
48:42: He has repented. We presume it's the same guy. Bring him back into fellowship and do it hastily.
48:51: He's had enough sorrow over his sin. Bring him back into fellowship. And so it's not that, hey, the church has to be perfect people.
48:59: It's just that the church has to be repenting people. Yeah. The Lord disciplines those he loves.
49:08: So in one sense, the idea is discipline is an evidence of God's love for his people.
49:19: Because if you never if you don't have that kind of if you don't have relations, we should all in one measure or another yearly be going through church discipline.
49:28: What I mean is you should have brothers in your life that are either challenging you.
49:34: This may be theologically, hey, think about this better or maybe personally like we didn't get into this.
49:39: But Danny, I know you guys are doing some stuff with family worship, challenging some brothers and physical activity and Bible reading and prayer.
49:48: And, you know, that kind of stuff should be happening all the time. If you don't have relationships in the church where people are willing to come up to you and say, hey, you know what?
49:57: I think you maybe said that a little harsh. Then then you're not in a healthy situation and you need to cultivate that.
50:04: But what we're talking about in as far as like corrective churches, but at the end is a person who just continues in that.
50:14: And that's right. They refuse to be corrected. I really think. Let me say a couple of things in conclusion.
50:19: One is I think sometime in 2025, we need to have you back on to kind of talk more about the nuts and bolts, because there's a lot of things that it's a blueprint we're given.
50:30: But then there's some questions that we may have. OK, when do you and I've come to you for counsel, you know, about some situations.
50:36: OK, when do you when do the elders get involved in or how do you handle this specific scenario or, you know, what does this look like?
50:47: And so maybe we can talk about that more. And of course, if if anybody has questions, I've shared this before.
50:52: My email is the easiest one is Quatro Nelson at Gmail. So that's C -U -A -T -R -O -N -E -L -S -O -N at gmail .com.
50:59: And if we can try to help answer questions, this is this is hard. It can be complicated.
51:05: But I want to say this. It has to be done and it's worth it. Yeah. Yeah.
51:13: Not only is it worth it. So it has to be done because the head of the church,
51:19: Christ himself, calls us to do it. But here's what the point that if somebody takes anything away from this, this is what
51:28: I want them to hear. Is that it is loving, like you just said, that God disciplines those he loves.
51:38: OK, well, then the church should discipline those that they love. I can honestly say, you know, and there's been a few church, church discipline cases here that we actually have had to put somebody out of the church that I was intimately involved in.
51:54: I can honestly say with a clear conscience, it's not because I have a grudge against him. It's not because I have an axe to grind.
52:04: It's not because I was even it didn't even have anything to do with me. I wasn't even personally offended in a manner.
52:12: So it wasn't a it's obviously a negative thing. It's not it's probably the least fun thing that there's so much good things about church life that you look forward to.
52:24: This is not one of them. Yeah. So it's a painful process. But I can honestly say with a clear conscience, hey, it was motivated by love every time.
52:36: Yeah, I'm doing this. I'm doing this because I love this person and I want what's best for them.
52:42: And coddling and coddling them in their sin is not what's best for them. Yeah. And then it's effective.
52:49: It's effective. And it's worth it, like you just said, is because either you believe that this is
52:56: God's means for bringing back lost sheep or it's not. Yeah. And so it's worth it, even if you wanted to be a little pragmatic about it.
53:08: It's like, OK, what's the best way that we can reach this person? Well, sometimes it's with tough love.
53:15: You know, sometimes it's with God's prescribed method of, hey, they need to they need to they need to lack this.
53:26: They need to be put out of the community of the saints to realize that they actually need to be in it and they need to repent of their sin.
53:35: And and they they really what they need to realize is they can't have God in their sin.
53:41: Yeah. Wow. Amen. That's that's that's you know, that's what it is. And this is the way that the
53:47: Lord has said that I will discipline them in this way through the church. I will teach in this through the church.
53:53: I will brought I will bring them back into good fellowship with me through the discipline of of the local church.
54:04: And so really, that's do you actually believe that that God tells you to do it and that it works?
54:09: That's what I had to come to eventually. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I have to. This is what this this is what this is what he said works.
54:17: If the Lord as we you know, and where we began, the Lord loves the church so much. He loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling place of Jacob.
54:27: Don't you think that things that he says for us to do in the church are going to be for the utmost attention to her beauty and glory?
54:36: Yes, absolutely. He's a good husband. He's a good architect.
54:43: He's it's the church is his body, his building, his bride, his city. He cares for her.
54:49: So what he says is good. You know, we are two Baptist preachers because we've said we're almost done like a lot and and we keep going.
54:58: But but I really want to say I really want to say this, Danny. Let me just we're really going to end with this.
55:04: Do you have like someone listen to this? Maybe they're new. They've stumbled upon this and like what do you have like a one or two resources like, hey, go, go read this.
55:14: Yeah, I kind of should have thought on the spot. Yeah, I should have. Yeah, I should have thought about this beforehand.
55:22: I have I have a couple I'll mention while you're thinking. But I know Jay Adams has a helpful work on Handbook of Church Discipline.
55:33: I, you know, not just to plug him because he's our friend, but Jeff Johnson's work on the church.
55:40: It used to be called The Church Why Bother, but it's just a really simple read. Now it's just called The Church Media Gratia. Yeah.
55:46: Gratia. But that's another helpful resource. You got any that you want to mention?
55:54: Yeah. Jay Adams Church Why Bother is good. Nine Marks has some good stuff on it.
56:02: They've got some good stuff on. Nine Marks is kind of when I. You know, cut my teeth on coming in.
56:09: Right. Right. That was like 2009 or something. So. Yeah. Nine Marks still has some good stuff on it.
56:16: You know, not that it really matters. There's some particulars that that, you know,
56:22: I don't think necessarily needs to be practiced the way that they. Sure, I'm in agreement with that. Yeah.
56:28: But not that that matters. It's still good stuff. You know,
56:34: I would have to I would want to look, you know, more directly find it. But Calvin's John Calvin's got some really good stuff on church discipline.
56:43: And then and then what you said, Keech, the glory of a true church, glory of the true church. He talks about church discipline in that.
56:50: Yeah. The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession is chapter 26, I believe, on the church is.
56:57: Yeah, it's fun. I mean, that's a short read, too. You can go find that online right now. I think
57:02: I think it's maybe one or two paragraphs. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. That's a bad.
57:08: Well, on church discipline, it's like one or two paragraphs. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right.
57:13: Well, thanks for for joining us today, Danny. It's been a joy to have you on. Like I said, we'll need to get you on again and kind of go through some of the nuts and bolts of of the later stages of church discipline.
57:24: But thanks for joining us. I appreciate you guys listening. And we'll we'll catch you next week on the rural church podcast.
57:40: If you really believe the church is the building of churches, the house, the church is what
57:46: God's doing. This this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the poem of the masterpiece of God.