A Sin Too Far

The Gospel Came in Word and Power, and the Call to Walk More and More

Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. I'll read verses 1 through 8, but I will preach only up to verse 6. And God willing, in two weeks from now, you will hear verses 7 and 8 brought to you in a separate message.

As you turn there, the Apostle Paul has, in the first three chapters of this letter, reminded his beloved Thessalonians of how the gospel came to them. You recall the phrase, not only in word, but in power and in the Holy Spirit.

He reminded them of how they had seen the gospel which captured them, lived out by Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, of how and why he sent Timothy to establish and exhort them in the faith, of how Timothy returned to him and brought back encouraging news of their steadfastness in the gospel in the face of much affliction.

And now, as was the Apostle Paul's practice, he turns from the theological constructs of the first few chapters, or first many paragraphs, because they didn't have chapters then, of his letter, and he turns from there to the, as we heard this morning at Sunday school, the so what.

What do we do with this? The practical part, as we like to call it, the applications. He tells them that while their lives seemed to be aligned with all they had been taught so far, and so they were actually pleasing to God, they yet had a long road of growth before them and many sins to avoid along the way.

With that brief introduction, please stand in honor of God's holy word, 1 Thessalonians 4. Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.

For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.

For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards this disregards not man, but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you. God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of his words.

His word, please be seated. Now I had great advantages in life. I was raised by well-educated and professional parents. My mother had two master's degrees, one in European history, and she could name to you all the cousins and the first cousins and the uncles throughout all of Europe, really from England all the way to Russia.

All these interrelationships, and she knew them and she knew what they meant. She had a master's degree in that history, and she had a master's degree in English Lit, and she taught high school English at Saratoga High School, not far from here.

My father was also well-educated. When he finished his doctoral work at the University of Oregon, we moved here to the San Jose area, and he became the curriculum superintendent of Alum Rock School District, not far from this place, and later, after a few years of that, the same job here in Sunnyvale School District, where his office was just about a mile from where I now stand.

So I was raised with quite the advantage. My mother was the cultured one in the family. She knew etiquette. She knew which order the silverware went and which order to use it. Instead of just picking up your soup bowl like we would sometimes do and drinking it, she would be appalled at that, but she understood etiquette.

She was really the cultured one, and she rarely used contractions. The first time she heard me say, I ain't going to do this, she looked at me and said, I am not going to do this or that. I never want to hear that kind of uncouth talk from you again, and by the way, you shall indeed do this or that.

She was very cultured, knew etiquette, and she had a look, my wife could describe to you also, that could melt you. Well, one day, I had to be taken out of school early. I was sent home for fighting. My dad was away at the time, so I had to face my mother.

She read the notice, read what it said on there, not just shoving, not just being a bully, but really fighting, and I really wish my dad was home, because if my dad was home at the time, he would have yelled at me.

He would have told me to knock it off. He would have added quite a lot to my chores, and I would have had to do them, but it would have been over. My mom would look at me, sort of like Elisha, staring at King Hazael until he was ashamed, and she said something like this, my son is better than that, at least I thought he was, and she later explained to me that there's a step you take away from decent, civilized behavior that is almost impossible to step back from, and teacher that she was, she gave me a reading lesson, and I had to read Lord of the Flies, and teacher that she was, I had to report to her what I learned from it.

I learned that depravity, that's my word, I don't remember the word she used then, but that was my word now, for obvious reasons, I learned that it was too near to play footloose and fancy-free with it.

Pleasing God by Walking in His Word and Example

Well, this is what Paul has for the Thessalonians here in these verses as well. He's affirming to the Thessalonians that they're doing well. He said how you ought to walk and to please God. Let me put the emphasis a little bit differently, and to please God, and then just as you are doing.

And then he exhorts them to stay the course. He says that you do so more and more. And then he warns them of a sin too far, of steps over boundaries that are almost impossible to reverse. Have you ever been in that moment where some tantalizing temptation is dangled before you?

In the middle of our passage here, it's sexual temptation, a proposition, a shady, but it could also be a shady financial deal. It could be an embellishment on a resume that you know could never be refuted or traced back.

You know it's wrong, and you know that to partake of this thing would be a denial of all you thought that you were. Have you ever been in that moment? But there it is, once entering your thoughts, it's always there, just ready to burst forth and bring you into that kind of sin.

Have you had that crisis moment? Well, this is what the Apostle Paul warns the Thessalonians against. He says you're doing well, you're on the right track, you are pleasing none other than God himself.

Just as you're doing, and do so more and more. Stay on that road, because there you see, there's a sin that can open a floodgate to more sin that's almost impossible to repair. Nothing is beyond the power of God, so I speak in human terms here.

There's a sin that can open a floodgate to more and more sin that's almost impossible to repair, and Paul would have them to avoid that and to continue living lives that please God and to do that more and more and more.

He would have them to avoid such sorrows, and he would have us to avoid such sorrows. Live lives pleasing to God, avoiding that sin too far. To live a life pleasing to God, you must grow in his word. These are the first couple of verses the Apostle gives.

Finally, then, brothers, verse 1, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

Now, I want you to notice right away that Paul's not using a sledgehammer to pound them into submission. It's an entreaty. He says, we ask you, we urge you, we entreat you would be a good way to look at it.

We're cajoling you along in the Lord Jesus to do this. It's more of an entreaty, but nor is it a gentle sort of, hey, I'm okay, you're okay, what you're doing is fine, don't worry about it, just it's in the Lord Jesus.

As you live in the sphere of the Lord Jesus Christ, as he is in you and you in him, it has more teeth than just I'm okay, you're okay. It's by virtue of our union with him, by the authority delegated by him to me, is more the flavor of this.

Without losing the idea that he is encouraging them that they're on the right track. They are asked to recall what they had received from the apostle. You know what instruction we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Recall this, remember the instruction, remember the words that we gave you, and that with the authority of Jesus himself, the authority of the risen Lord. That's what the two references to Jesus are here, in the Lord Jesus is living in the sphere of Jesus, through the Lord Jesus is the authority of Jesus through the apostle.

And he says to walk. You receive from us how you ought to walk. Now walk in the Old Testament and the New Testament like means to order your life. What is the ruling principle of your life? What is that sieve through which all decisions go?

It's to be the Lord Jesus Christ and the instruction, the apostolic instruction that he gives today, the scripture. To walk and to please God then. What does that mean? It means to do all things to his glory.

That's 1 Corinthians 10 .31. They had received this by way of Paul's preaching and by way of his example, which is very clear in chapter one of this epistle where he says you know what kind of lives we led among you, how we lived holy in your presence.

So it wasn't just the word of God preached to them, it was that and it was their example. I discussed last year when we were in Philippians the importance of example. We need to see how things actually are done sometimes.

You know we can read for example the book of Proverbs. Most of us can understand what it says about let's say child rearing. And we can believe it is the very word of God. We can have faith and have every desire to put it into practice.

We just don't know what to actually do. And most of us are helped to see a godly couple showing us the how of the written word. So right away we see in these verses the importance once again of example, of setting the example, of looking for examples in each other.

And even in a church as small as our church when there's something that you have trouble implementing from the word of God in an issue in your life that you know you need to correct or do better in, that example is very likely here.

If you ask, if you look, primarily it's the Lord Jesus Christ. But what are we looking for here? It's someone who emulates the Lord Jesus Christ in their example of that particular issue. It's here. It's what Paul says to them.

You know the instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus Christ? Let's combine that with what he said earlier about having lived it out before them. They saw the instruction and they heard the instruction.

You know what the instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus, once again that harkens back to 2 .13 where the Thessalonians recognized Paul's preaching as what it really was, the word of God. So they received it by word and deed and they received how they ought to live to please God and what?

What was the result of that? Well they did it. They lived according to what they'd seen and heard from the apostle, recognizing what they heard as the very word of God, therefore seeing the very word of God lived out in their lives, and they did it.

They followed it. Now wouldn't that be great if someone came to you and told you that they knew that you were representing Jesus Christ well and that you were actually pleasing God his Father? Now I cannot tell you that with the kind of authority that the apostle Paul had.

He was directly inspired by the Spirit of God. But just imagine for a moment that I could make that statement to you and it was credible and authoritative. I said, you know what? I've seen how you live.

I've heard your responses to things, the way you answer questions people ask you. You, you are pleasing God. Wouldn't that be great to hear? I mean if I heard somebody say that, if the apostle Paul came to me and said, you, Josh, are pleasing God the way you live, you know what I would do?

I'd declare victory and go home. I would stop right there. I wouldn't take another step. This is great. I'm pleasing God. It's all over. I'm not going to take any chances with such a great commendation as that.

Of course, that's a little silly, but I want us to understand the magnificence of what he's saying here because he means quite literally what he's saying. You are pleasing God. You saw, you heard from us how to please God just as you are doing.

But he goes on. He goes on. The urging entreaty at the end of verse 1 is this. What's he entreating them to do? That you do so more and more. That you do so more and more. He asks them to keep doing what they're doing.

Well, no, that's not it. Does he say just keep doing what you're doing and keep the course that you're on? No, he says what you're doing, but more and more. Now, does that sound like a taskmaster who could never be satisfied?

I don't want to call him a taskmaster, but I ask you, does it sound that way? He says, hey, you're doing great, but you're not doing enough. Yeah, you're pleasing God. For goodness sake, you're pleasing God.

Now, do it more and more. It's like the Egyptians in Exodus who placed so many tasks and taskmasters over the Jews and they were never satisfied. Well, I guess the question here is who could ever be satisfied with how much they please God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Who could ever be satisfied with how much they satisfy Him, how much they please Him? Now, remember, Paul means literally they please God with their lives. Paul wants for the Thessalonians, what every Christian, what you, if you are in Christ Jesus, must want for yourself and for others, which is to grow ever more pleasing to God, to follow His ways ever more closely, to be ever more consistent in His Word until His Word fairly comes out of you as the first instinct to everything you see, to become more and more like His Son, which Romans 8 .29 says is your predestined destiny from God, to be conformed to the image of His Son.

This is what Paul wants. What does it mean to please God? It means to be like His Son, Jesus Christ. How do we become like His Son, Jesus Christ? We know and we follow His Word. How do we follow His Word?

Well, first, we recognize His Word as the Word of God, as the authoritative Word of God, and then we do it by example. We do it by implementing what we see. If you're one of those who can read and follow instructions right away, great.

Do so. Be an example to me. My son can do that. He can open up an auto manual. He can read a very complicated set of instructions. He can close the book and he can go and he can put wrench to the engine or whatever it is and do it.

I can't do that. I read the instruction three times. I lay out my tools. I put it up on the carburetor or on the top of the engine. I look at the picture and I turn a nut. I look at the picture. I can't do it.

Some of us need to see it laid out. Others, like my son, can just read it and do it. We need to become more and more like Jesus. This is what the Apostle Paul means to do it more and more. Growing in His Word, growing in knowledge and implementation of His Word.

What he actually writes in the original is just as you are doing, in order that you might abound or become rich, more. That word more is at the very end of the sentence. So just as you are doing, in order that you might abound more.

He's not being impossible to satisfy. He's not failing to acknowledge, compliment, or even notice the progress they made and how amazing it was. Think of it. When we started this book, this letter, we pointed out that Paul was there for maybe as few as three weeks, but no more than four and a half weeks.

And here they are, recognizing the Word of God as the Word of God. Think of how powerful that is. Following the example of the Apostles because they heard the Word of God. They recognized the Word of God.

Therefore, they recognized the conduct as it comports to the Word of God. And here they are, in less than a couple of months, pleasing God. And Paul says, gain riches more and more. The riches and the glory of Christ as you reflect Him more and more.

More about Jesus would I know. More of His love would I know. More and more would I have the riches of being in Christ's image. You know, have you ever seen a child's first steps? Most of us have. You know, you love that time when a child, a baby, an infant can, for the first time, put one leg in front of the other without holding on to mommy or daddy's thumbs.

And what do you do then? What do good parents do when they see that child take those first couple of steps without holding on to thumbs or anything else? Just two steps. What do you do? Well, you say, glad that's over.

Now we can leave little Johnny or little Judy on their own to figure out how to skip and how to run and how to jump. Because now they give that one step. So, we're done. Our responsibility is over, right?

Well, no one would do that. No one would do that. They would stay with the child. They would show them how to skip and how to run and to jump and so forth. That little example falls apart when we think of ourselves with God.

Because as his little children, we never do let go of his thumbs. Insofar as his thumbs that we hang on to are the word of God that he's given us and his Holy Spirit who is in us who guides us into that word.

Paul doesn't leave them on their own like that. He tells them to continue to grow in the Lord and in their pleasing God and their lifestyle. To live pleasing to God is to grow in his word. To grow more and more.

To abound in his word. And to live pleasing to God, you need to know what his will is. Do you not? If you're going to please God, you need to know the will of God because it's his good and perfect will that he has given to us in his word.

To live pleasing to God, you must know his will. And that's verse 3 through the first half of verse 6. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter.

Sanctification, Sexual Purity, and the Greco-Roman World

So I want to ask you to think about this for a moment. After all those encouraging words, after telling the Thessalonians that you are pleasing God, you are pleasing to God, you receive from God to walk and to please God just as you are doing and to do so more and more, but if they're doing it, what is this doing here?

I mean, if they're living pleasing to God, how could they need to be told this? I mean, if they've been involved in this kind of sexual sin that's described in these three verses, he could never have written that they pleased God, could he?

I mean, just ask the Corinthians. Does sexual sin please God? If they're involved in that, would Paul have written this? Again, for homework tonight, read the first several chapters of 1 Corinthians. He couldn't have.

He wouldn't have. Well, a little background might help here. A little background into the Greco-Roman world of that day. That Greco-Roman culture of that time was like a petri dish for sexual misconduct.

But for them, it wasn't misconduct. Promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, prostitution were not only rampant, but accepted as normal. It was just part of life then. And truly, there's nothing new under the sun.

As I was reading the background commentaries on this, and I'm reading about that world about 2 ,000 years ago, I said, well, I could just say that this is this greater Bay Area where we live now in 2001.

There's nothing new under the sun. A man might have a concubine then. He'd have a concubine for relationship. A woman he could talk to. They could read books together and discuss them and that sort of thing.

This was the one he related to. And then he could have a prostitute for gratification of another sort. And then he could have a wife, someone to have his children and to manage the home and to raise up those children and so forth.

This was the lifestyle that these very Thessalonians had known and from which just a few weeks before had been called out of. And he says, don't be like the Gentiles who do not know God. Don't be like the Gentiles, can we say, who you not very long ago were.

He says the Gentiles who do not know God. In that phrase, Paul's just thrown a whole bunch of people under the bus as we say today. I mean a whole bunch of people. A great big mass of people. In fact, when he says the Gentiles who do not know God, he just threw most of the Roman Empire and with it most if not all of the conquered peoples whose religions were incorporated into the work and woof of that empire.

He just thrown them all under the bus. And then he backed that bus up again just to make sure the tire tracks were there and then he put it in first gear, went forward and got the grooves deep and permanent.

Those are serious words. The Gentiles who do not know God was just about everybody else. We could say that when Paul said that, he just offended the world. Much of which was just waiting to be conquered and incorporated into this empire and their religion becoming a part of it.

It's almost like a precursor to Star Trek's Borg where everybody gets incorporated into this one collective. But that's the world that they had lived in. That's the world that was still all around them.

So this is the will of God. Your sanctification. One, abstain from sexual immorality. Weren't they? Well, of course, they must have been to have had those earlier words written to them. Two, that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor.

Didn't they? Paul said they received how to please God and were doing so. Three, that no one transgressed and wronged his brother in this matter. If this is God's will, and it is, and they were doing it, and they were, why is this here?

Well, as I said, the culture they had so recently been drawn away from was all around them. Chapter 1, verse 9 says that they had turned from idols to serve the living and the true God. This definitive turning of repentance when you come to Christ in faith.

And repentance means to turn away from all that you were and go towards all that God is. All that displeased Him and now all that does please Him. All the sin of which you repented towards the holiness and the image of Christ.

That definitive turning away to repent, as we say, unto salvation. Turn around and go diametrically opposed to what you were. To what you were. Past. Were. Not living in the passion of lusts like the Gentiles who do not know God.

Like the Gentiles who you so recently were yourselves. You think of the Thessalonians with all this around them. Paul was there for maybe four weeks. Then he went to Athens and then he went to Corinth from which he wrote this letter.

So this letter is still very fresh in terms of their walk with Christ. If you've been there for four weeks, let's just add a couple of months, they're less than a year into faith when they get this letter.

Commending them that they are pleasing God and to do so more and more. You see, when you turn to Christ, you turn to a Lord who is greater than your past. You turn to a Lord who's bigger than the culture from which you came.

You turn to a Lord who's bigger and greater and more powerful than your secular parents. That's who I described in my introduction. My parents were Jewish. And in the extremely secular version of Jewish that most Jews are today.

Christ is bigger than that. Christ is bigger than your Jehovah's Witness upbringing, than your Catholic upbringing, than your agnostic upbringing. Fill in the blank. He's bigger than the culture from which you were taken.

When you turn to Christ, you turn to a Lord who's greater than all that you left behind. That's why repentance, Old Testament and New Testament, they both mean in the Hebrew and the Greek just the same thing.

Turn around 180 degrees, the other direction. That's the old stuff. The old wineskins, as Jesus calls them. You're heading towards new wineskins. You don't want to patch it up and put an old patch onto a new skin because it will burst.

You're going to a Savior who Joel 2, verse 25 says, will restore the years that the locusts have eaten away, these great swarms of judgment that God has called to drive us away from our sin, and to Christ.

You're to a God who is not only greater than whatever culture you came from, you turn to a God because of whom culture even exists. So what's this doing here? To this group of Thessalonians, this church there that was, Paul says himself, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, is pleasing to God.

Well, it's because the temptation to fall back into our old ways is a clear and present danger. And most especially, sexual sin is a clear and constant temptation. So in verses 1 and 2, he encourages them.

Now he warns them. And here comes the title of this message. A sin too far. Sexual sin, is that sin too far? Is that boundary that once crossed is almost impossible to retreat from? Is it too easy today to cover our tracks with pornography, with sexting, with online relationships, all done in privacy?

You start to think, Psalm 94, 1 through 7 would say that God does not hear, God does not know, the God of Jacob doesn't pay any attention to me. Why does Paul bring this one out? Why does he warn us of that?

Because that's the sin too far. You know, if you were there for the Sunday school curriculum we had before the one we're in now, based on Ray Ortlund's book called Israel's Whoredom, where we studied how idolatry and sexual sin were so closely interrelated to each other.

How tightly they're bound together. And how it's sexual sin that leads you further from God than almost any other kind of sin that you can do. Worse than embezzlement. Worse than violence. In chapter 5 of Ephesians, beginning at verse 22 and going through verse 33, Paul addresses the relationship between husbands and wives.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Wives, obey your husbands as unto the Lord. And all that in between. We're not gonna read the whole thing. But Paul doesn't say simply stop doing the bad and start doing the good.

You gotta be better than you are. When he gets to the sexual relations between the two, between the one man and the one woman, the literal man, the literal woman, married before God, husband and wife, when he gets to the physical relation between the two in verses 31 and 32 of that passage, he says, and the two shall become one flesh.

That is, they will have sexual relations. Properly and beautifully and wonderfully before God and according to his design. Let me read to you verse 32. And as I read verse 32 of Ephesians chapter 5, think of where we are in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

This mystery is profound. And what I'm saying is it refers to Christ and his church. This beautiful picture, this God's design for the relationship between a husband and a wife is a picture of Christ and his church.

If you remember from the Sunday school curriculum how idolatry leads to that kind of sin and that kind of sin leads to more and more idolatry and draws you further away from God than almost anything else.

So are you doing well in your walk with Christ? I was talking to a friend just a couple of days ago. A dear friend of mine, a dear Christian brother who doesn't live in this state. And he was talking to me about what church to go to.

The church he was at had some problems. He couldn't worship there in freedom in his spirit. His conscience was bothered. And we were talking about what kind of church to find. And I said to my friend, what you have to ask yourself is are you the same Christian today that you were five years ago?

And he thought about it for a second. We were talking about what kind of church to go to, what kind of teaching to give, how attached they were to the Word and so forth. And he thought about it for a moment.

He says, you know, I am. I am the same. I haven't really grown. Sexual sin is not unforgivable. No sin is more powerful than Jesus' cross or the work of the Holy Spirit in you. But here's what happens.

When your body returns to a form of Edenic, and I mean the Garden of Eden, Edenic innocence, we read there in Genesis, the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. When you take that outside of its bounds, when you expose yourself to relations that God did not intend, there's a shame that's so shaming that it's smothering.

It puts a wound in your soul that is severe and incurable. That's Jeremiah 30, verses 12 to 15. That's why violating this most basic and most sacred trust opens this floodgate to other sin. I think this is why the Apostle Paul tells them, why I tell you, this is this kind of sin to be most careful of because of what it leads to, because of what it implies, because that in its proper bounds is to be this picture of Christ and His church.

It opens a floodgate. Have you ever seen that commercial for Flex Seal? Raise your hand if you know what Flex Seal is. Ah, a lot of you. Good. Okay, so the guy's got that aquarium, now you're all going to know what I mean, and it's got that gash in it so all the water's coming out, and he takes a spatula with a big glop of Flex Seal on it and goes across his gash while the water's coming out and it seals it right up.

I'm not going to practice. I don't really trust that it's going to work quite that well, but you understand the point. Voila. The leak stops. And I think about that and I say, you know, if only sin were like that.

If only we could go buy a can of Sin Seal. Take a spatula and put it across the gash. We ourselves opened up and stopped the flood, the floodgate to other sins, to more and more sin. Not just sexual sin, but it opens you up to so much more because it violates something so basic within us and intended by God to be so beautiful.

Look again at verse 6. He says that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter. In this matter. What matter? In sexual sin. You could transgress and wrong your brother back in that day by having an adulterous relationship with his wife, by taking him from her, sort of like David did against Uriah when he took Bathsheba from him.

Even if you're not that much more powerful over the other one, it's still transgressing and wronging your brother in this matter. But he says, don't wrong your brother in this matter. And I want to point out to you that your sin, sexual and otherwise, is not your business alone.

That you've wronged your brother or your sisters, we could say, in this matter. It's not just your business. It affects us all in the body of Christ. Your sin affects me. Conley and myself as your pastors.

Particularly affects you. Whether you feel it explicitly and can put it down in writing what has happened or not. Our sin affects each other. You think of Joshua chapter 7. You don't have to turn there.

I'll make this story very quick. In Joshua chapter 7, they conquer Jericho and the soldiers go rushing into the walls that God calls to collapse. They've been told not to touch the devoted things, which means the precious things that were used in that city for their idolatrous gods.

They're told to leave those alone. And one soldier, a single soldier, Achan, he takes them for himself. Well, their next battle is against the city of Ai. And they're defeated there terribly. And Joshua falls down before the Lord.

He's saying, Oh, Lord, why do you not go with the hosts of Israel anymore? Have you abandoned us? What is the problem here? And God says to him, Get up off your feet. Israel has sinned. The nation has sinned.

They had all paid for one man's sin. Well, in the same way, but even more, you wronged your brother in these kind of matters. We're going to open this up way beyond just sexual sin in a moment. But know this, that your sin affects more than just you.

And even if I or anyone else never finds out, the effect is there. 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, both say that the body of Christ is a body. That you're a foot. I'm a hand. You're an eye. There's a mouth over there.

We interrelate to each other and we need each other. We're incomplete without each other. Ephesians 1, verse 23 says that we, the church, are the very body of Christ. And then 1 Corinthians 12, 26, and this is exactly the point I'm trying to make, says that when one suffers, we all suffer.

And if you're suffering for your sin, we all suffer for your sin. If you confess your sin and tell us your sin or tell a brother or sister in private about it, we suffer with you as we go to God together and seek His restoration.

And if you're suffering from your sin and you're keeping it to yourself, know this, we suffer just as much. And we may not be able to put down on paper and say, well, this is what's going wrong so someone here is sinning and so we have to do like Joshua did and line up the clans and the tribes and everything else until we get down to Achan.