Church Discipline (2): Repent, Forgive, Reconcile, Restore | Matthew 18:15-35

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:04

All right, before we get started, let's go ahead and pray.

00:28

Our precious Heavenly Father, we come before you today before your throne of grace. We ask for mercy and for wisdom and guidance as we hear your word preached.

00:40

We ask that you bless the message and that it be edifying to those who hear and that you would help guide my words to be careful and to be accurate and to be faithful to your word as well.

00:50

Father God, help us to continue to seek a biblical understanding of church discipline and how it applies to our lives and to the lives of our fellow believers.

01:00

We thank you, Lord, and we ask these things in Jesus name. Amen. All right.

01:11

So we've been talking a lot about church discipline. And I think hopefully by now, based on last week, we've have gotten a very strong impression of what

01:25

God expects of us in matters of sin and matters of dealing with sin and in matters of church discipline.

01:33

And I think the very overwhelming thrust of what the scriptures teach is extremely clear.

01:41

It's really not controversial. It's controversial in ways that people don't want to do it or they neglect it or do it incorrectly.

01:51

But the thrust of the biblical message regarding church discipline is exceedingly clear.

02:01

And so just to recap a few things from last week. If we 1st

02:06

Corinthians 1131 actually says, but if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

02:15

So here we see the operating principle of the necessity of judging sin and ourselves.

02:23

And if we do so, if we are self -aware of our state of our sin, and if we judge it properly, if we crucify it, if we repent of it, then we don't need to be judged.

02:34

We don't need to have to escalate the process of church discipline. And so once again, there is a principle of judgment in the church regarding sin.

02:50

And this verse really kind of blew me away. But once again, it kind of encapsulates everything that we've been talking about so far.

03:00

And this one would be good to turn to so everybody can follow along because it is an important verse. It's Hebrews 3 verses 12 and 13.

03:09

Hebrews 3 verses 12 and 13. This is a very clear passage which says,

03:40

So here you see again the biblical imperative of exhorting one another every day insofar as the day is still today.

03:53

And there we see again, because of the deceitfulness of sin, because sin has a hardening effect, it has a conscience nullifying effect.

04:04

The deceitfulness and sinfulness of sin is a serious matter. And that is why God has instructed us to deal with sin in a very serious way.

04:14

To deal with it promptly, to deal with it comprehensively, to deal with it in ourselves and to deal with it when fellow believers when it's called for.

04:24

So we have to be very mindful of how the Lord has instructed us to operate with respect to dealing with sin.

04:34

And one thing, there's another verse here in the Old Testament. It's Leviticus 19 verses 16 through 17.

04:42

This also has a very, you see the emphasis on confronting sin, on judging sin.

04:51

You see it very clearly throughout the Old and the New Testament. So in that passage, it says,

05:14

So there you see again, there's an importance of confronting sin in your neighbor, in ourselves to deal with it directly, deal with it frankly.

05:29

And so this verse, by the way, this verse just happens to be the verse right before the greatest commandment, the second greatest commandment.

05:40

If we read in verses 17 and on, it says, So this very command to directly rebuke your neighbor is placed right there, right before the second most important command to love your neighbor, because loving your neighbor involves dealing with his sin.

06:15

If you, like Galatians 6 says, the verse that we closed off last week, if any of you is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore them in a spirit of gentleness.

06:28

So we must have the mind of Christ with respect to dealing with sin.

06:36

And it's very clear. It's been very clear how, what God expects of us to do in terms of how we should operate.

06:44

And so, and I wanted to add a few things to what I mentioned last week.

06:51

I talked about the principle of respecting authority over certain people's lives, such as children and parents and wives and husbands.

07:03

There are other cases that are similar, such as animals, animals and their owners.

07:09

And you see again in the scriptures that there's very clear guidance in the

07:15

Old Testament with respect to certain issues in dealing with animals, like Levitic, Exodus 21, 28 through 29 says, when an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten.

07:29

But the owner of the ox shall not be liable. But if the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past and its owner has been warned, but has not kept it in and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall also be put to death.

07:44

So there you see again, a failure to heed, a failure to repent, and a failure to address sin or issues like that, that you are responsible for.

07:55

In this case, the animal being, the owner being responsible for the animal. And you see again, the same principle of addressing discipline when there's a lack of repentance, when there's impenitence, or a failure to address the seriousness of matters like that, because the ox can obviously kill somebody.

08:20

They are dangerous animals and they need to be properly cared for. And like in similar manner, sin is a very dangerous thing in our lives and it can cause great harm.

08:34

It can lead to death and it must be crucified and judged properly. So, and at this point, you know, this has been more of a sort of a topical study on church discipline.

08:50

And I wanted to encourage you all to, this is a very useful way to study the

08:55

Bible, to study the Scriptures, because there are some study tools such as this one, it's called

09:03

Nave's Topical Bible. Topical Bibles like these are very useful because they help you, they organize

09:10

Scriptures in topics. So, church discipline, money, marriage, any kind of topic like that, you can consult this and you can look up a collection of Scriptures that are dealing with that topic.

09:27

It's a very good way to study the Bible. And these are all available online.

09:32

You can pretty much find everything online now. There's topical Bibles. There's also something very, very useful called the

09:40

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, which is a, it's a massive cross -referencing of Scriptures.

09:46

When you look up a Scripture, websites like biblehub .com, they also have this.

09:52

If you look up a Scripture and the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge will cross -reference all of the relevant verses that are tied to that verse that you're looking up.

10:02

So, there are very useful study tools to help us grasp, to help us grasp the whole counsel of God.

10:12

That's the idea, is to get the whole counsel of God regarding a matter, regarding a topic. And there are

10:18

Bibles as well, such as the Thompson Chain Reference Bible. It's been a, it's a very popular

10:23

Bible that also has chain links, references that are topically, topically connected.

10:32

So, it's important to not miss important passages and important teachings of the

10:42

Scriptures regarding any topic, and especially a topic like church discipline, because you see it so often abused, misused, neglected, all of those things.

10:53

So, and that being said, I wanted to give a little bit more, dispel a little bit any doubt as to a comment

11:04

I made last week about, you know, the issue of turning the other cheek, because you see some churches that operate on the false principle of turning the other cheek when a fellow believer sins against them, or when, or when, yeah, basically when sin is committed against them, and they say, well, you should just turn the other cheek, or you're a sinner just like them, so you shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't cast the first stone.

11:31

But if we turn to Matthew 5, verses 38 through 45, we will see what

11:37

Jesus, what Jesus was referring to in that passage, and it's very clear. In this passage, which is the famous Sermon on the

11:46

Mount in Matthew 5 through 7, Christ says,

12:33

So here you see it's within the context of unbelievers. Do not resist one who is evil.

12:41

As believers who have been regenerated, we are no longer evil. We have been regenerated and are new creatures in Christ.

12:49

So it's dealing with unbelievers, when unbelievers persecute you, and again, love your enemies is talking about the context of enemies, of unbelievers.

13:02

Love your enemies. So I just wanted to help to emphasize that, because the

13:10

Scriptures, again, teach a very clear message about dealing with sin and church discipline.

13:17

So now we're going to deal with one of the more famous passages about church discipline in Matthew 18.

13:23

Let's turn to Matthew 18, starting in verse 15. Matthew 18, verse 15.

13:46

I'll go ahead and read the passage. It's a little bit long, so I'll go ahead and read all of it.

13:55

It starts, I'm going to continue on the parable of the unforgiving servant.

14:42

Verse 21. Verse 22.

16:11

Verse 23. So very important passage on the matter of church discipline.

16:26

It is very clear teaching. It starts out by, it lays out a process for escalating church discipline, when a brother sins against you or sister.

16:40

Now, there's something, I was looking at the Greek in this passage, and it's very interesting, because it actually, in the

16:50

Greek, it says, if a brother sins, it actually doesn't say against you. That might be implied, but it was interesting that the

17:01

Greek just says, if your brother sins. But most translations,

17:08

I believe, say, they say against you. Personal sin is committed against you.

17:16

So, there's a three -stage process in this.

17:22

First, you tell him his fault between him and him alone.

17:30

Now, there is wisdom. There is also wisdom in taking care of situations like these.

17:43

Again, we talked about last week, is it sin? We need to make sure that it is sin.

17:51

So, this implies we've taken the proper steps to prepare ourselves to deal with sin, even if it's somebody else's sin, because we still need to be prepared to do those things.

18:04

So, if we are going to confront somebody who sins against us, we need to first establish that it actually is sin, based on the moral law, the

18:14

Ten Commandments, what we talked about, and we have judged our own sin. We have repented and have judged our sin first, so that we are not judging our brother hypocritically.

18:27

So, I'm trying to find the word here, and there are different words used here as well.

18:44

So, there are, as you know, it is such as when the, in the

18:54

Scriptures, when they say of, it is the glory of one to overlook an offense. There are things that are offenses that are not sin, and there are sins that are actually sin.

19:02

And here, Matthew 18, the word is hamartia, and that is the Greek word for sin.

19:08

So, it is talking about, very clearly talking about sin. Now, there is wisdom again.

19:16

There is wisdom in giving a little bit of room for the brother to recognize his fault. Now, by that,

19:24

I don't mean wait months, wait years, wait weeks, and there's no need to wait that long, but there is wisdom in giving the offending party time to recognize his sin.

19:36

And I've been in situations like this myself, where I speak too harshly to an older brother, and then

19:41

I go home and I reflect on it, and I realize, oh man, I disobeyed the passage where it says to entreat older men as fathers.

19:49

And so, I call him up or I send them, I get back to them and say, hey, you know, forgive me, I was a little too hard on what

19:54

I said. And so, there is some wisdom in allowing the offending brother time to see if he repents first, without you having to initiate the process.

20:08

That makes things a little bit simpler, because he repents, he seeks restoration and reconciliation with you, there's forgiveness, you forgive, of course, and the problem is solved.

20:19

There's no need to initiate Matthew 18 at all. But it is contingent, once again, you'll see on repentance, the offending party must repent, and when the offending party fails to repent, that is when we are called to initiate the process of church discipline.

20:36

So, you tell him his fault, you tell him what he did against you. Hey, you sinned against me, you lied about me, you said something, whatever, and you confront him about his sin.

20:47

Now, if he doesn't listen to you, if he refuses to repent, once again, then the

20:55

Bible tells us to escalate to stage two, which says, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

21:10

Now, this is also very important to not misunderstand, because some churches will say, well, this means that the witnesses that you're calling for are people that actually saw the person sinning against you.

21:27

Those are the witnesses that you have to have. If you don't have two or three people that actually witnessed the sin being committed, then, basically, you're out of luck.

21:37

You cannot escalate the church discipline process because nobody else saw it. That's not what this is teaching.

21:44

This is not saying that the witnesses are people who actually witnessed the sin being committed. And here's why.

21:51

There's a very simple reason. If we go back to verse 15, it says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

22:03

Alone. Again, there's a concept here of minimizing the amount of exposure of awareness of the sin.

22:11

So, first, you go and tell him alone. Keep it contained between just you two.

22:18

You do not need to escalate or to tell somebody else what happened until step one is executed properly.

22:25

So, it's very important to understand this because the witnesses, once again, are not necessarily people who saw what happened.

22:38

Now, there is, however, in the Old Testament, so we need to be mindful of the whole counsel of God, have a proper harmony of the scriptures, the analogy of faith.

22:48

If we look in Deuteronomy 19, verse 15, we see a single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed.

23:01

Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established. So, here we see the principle of two or three witnesses in order to establish something.

23:13

But again, we have to be careful because this is talking about the theocratic nation of Israel in which crimes are being judged.

23:21

In order to judge a crime, there has to be witnesses.

23:28

And that was very clear in the Old Testament. You could not execute somebody, again, because the punishment is very severe.

23:35

And in terms of murder, murder is punishable by death. It's capital punishment. So, there had to be two or three witnesses in order for that charge to be properly established because it is a serious matter.

23:47

And of course, the witnesses, there's also processes in the Old Testament for determining the veracity of the witnesses, the truthfulness of the witnesses.

23:58

And so, we have to be aware of those things. But again, it's talking about civil matters with respect to crimes being committed.

24:08

In the New Testament, we are talking about spiritual matters with respect to sins being committed in the church, specifically within the church.

24:16

So, there are differences there in how we understand that. Now, if we go, now, when the person fails to repent, does not ask for forgiveness, we tell it to two or three witnesses.

24:36

We say, hey, I confronted this brother, this sister about his sin. He didn't want to listen.

24:42

He didn't want to repent. I would like to escalate the process. Can you come with me to help establish the charges of sin and to confront the person?

24:50

And so, when that happens, we confront them if, again, now, there's more exposure.

25:00

Now, we have revealed the matter to two or three more people in an effort to reconcile, to bring repentance in the offending party and hopefully cause reconciliation.

25:11

That is, again, the process of church discipline is to restore them, to reconcile the relationship that has been broken by sin.

25:20

So, but if they fail, yet again, if they fail in doing that, if they fail to repent, then we initiate the third step of the process and that is to tell it to the church.

25:37

You tell it before the church and the whole church now bears witness against the offending party, calls them to repentance and to repent and ask for forgiveness for their sin.

25:56

And again, this is why we need to ensure that sin has actually been committed because this is a very serious matter.

26:04

This process could potentially lead to a public exposure of that person before an entire church.

26:11

So it is very important to walk these things out biblically properly.

26:20

And the third step here, telling it before the whole church so that the person will be, again, put to shame, be convicted of their sin and bring about repentance, hopefully so that the relationship can be restored through repentance, asking for forgiveness and granting forgiveness.

26:43

If that, even if that fails, if that fails, okay, basically three strikes.

26:50

Strike three, if you still fail to repent, you're out. That is the criteria for church discipline.

27:00

It is impenitence. You escalate church discipline based on impenitence.

27:06

If the sinner continues to refuse to repent, refuse to take heed to the admonitions, you escalate up until strike three and then you're out.

27:18

You are now regarded as an outsider, as a Gentile and a tax collector.

27:24

You are no longer treated as a member of the church. You are out of the church in hopes, once again, so that you being kicked out of the church, it is being delivered unto

27:38

Satan, being delivered to the world so that you would be convicted of your sin, be put to shame for your sin and repent and again, come back to the church in repentance and in forgiveness.

27:55

So, all of this, again, the unequivocally clear condition of this whole process, the entire reason for this process is to get repentance out of the sinner.

28:10

Repentance is necessary and that is what we talked about last week. Repentance is a hallmark of the believer's life.

28:19

You must repent of sin. We should repent.

28:24

We should want to repent. We should have renewed consciences and hearts that are modeled after God's word, that are informed by God's word.

28:32

Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you so that we may be sensitive to these things and repent.

28:41

So, that is again illustrating, Christ is here very, very clearly illustrating the importance of repentance.

28:50

It is absolutely vital to the health of the church. So, this is very clear on what

29:04

Christ expects of us to do. Now, if we proceed on to verse 18.

29:12

Verse 18 reads, Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

29:20

And again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven.

29:29

For where two or three witnesses, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.

29:36

So, here we see again a very important principle of God using the church as a means to execute

29:46

His will on earth. God uses means. God is a

29:52

God of means. He uses means such as the church, such as ourselves, such as fellow believers to accomplish

30:00

His will on earth. That's just very important because God, once again, this is why it says, when two or three of you are gathered in my name, there am

30:12

I. Christ is present when matters like these are executed in the church.

30:17

Christ is present to attest to the fact that His will is being done in the church.

30:23

And therefore, if you excommunicate someone as a result of a failure to repent, Christ is recognizing that as a valid action within the church.

30:34

And that person now is not in good standing. He is regarded as an unbeliever before the church and is formally recognized by Christ as that being a properly established matter.

30:49

As long as this is properly walked out, according to what scripture says, it is binding.

30:56

It is binding. And so there's a very useful commentary on a summary of this teaching in the

31:09

Westminster Confession of Faith in chapter 30, which is of church censures. Censure is another word for discipline or excommunication.

31:19

And this chapter, interestingly enough, was taken out of the Savoy Declaration, which was a

31:25

Congregationalist confession. And the London Baptist Confession, which is the confession that we affirm more closely to, they, interestingly enough, took this out, though they do have some sections that speak to this matter, but they remove the more explicit teaching on these matters.

31:44

In the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is a Presbyterian confession, it says this, chapter 30,

31:52

The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate.

32:07

Section two says, To these officers, the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed by virtue, whereof they have power respectively to retain and to remit sins, to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, the one who fails to repent, both by the word and censures, and to open it to penitent sinners by the ministry of the gospel and by absolution from censures as occasion shall require.

32:41

So by restoring the center when he repents and asks for forgiveness. And section three says,

32:48

Church censures are necessary. Necessary.

32:53

Okay, this is again, this is not something that has been new or recent in the history of the church, especially the

33:02

Protestant church, especially the reformed church. Church censures, church discipline, church excommunication is necessary.

33:10

Why is it necessary? For the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren, for deterring of others from the like offenses, for purging out of that leaven, which might infect the whole lump, for vindicating the honor of Christ and the holy profession of the gospel, and for preventing the wrath of God, which might justly fall upon the church, if they should suffer his covenant and the seals thereof to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders.

33:40

So this is again a very serious matter. And here it very nicely summarizes those why it's so necessary to execute church discipline and church excommunication.

33:54

Now, a word on the wrath of God.

34:00

God's wrath is turned on unbelieving sinners. But the point here is, is that when you allow a person who is acting like an unbeliever in the church, you are provoking

34:13

God's displeasure in the church because you are not executing the church discipline measures that he has instructed us and commanded us to do.

34:20

When there is a person in the church who does not want to repent, there is no place for a person who does not want to repent in the church after strike three.

34:31

That's very clear. So, and then the chapter continues. For the better attaining of these ends, the officers of the church are to proceed by admonition, suspension from the sacrament of the

34:43

Lord's Supper for a season, and by excommunication from the church according to the nature of the crime and demerit of the person.

34:50

So you take, in other words, you take appropriate action based on the sin, what we talked about last week, whether it's how public it is, how scandalous it is, what kind of sin it is, so on and so forth.

35:05

So, again, very important to take the nature of sin seriously and the necessary actions that the church, we as believers and as members of the church, must take on those who sin and those who profess

35:26

Christ. So this is, hopefully, we are seeing more clearly now the importance of church discipline.

35:42

Sadly, this is a very neglected matter because you hardly ever hear about churches executing church discipline biblically.

35:50

And it's very important to get this right. So now, the parable of the unforgiving servant, this is also a very important teaching because you see

36:05

Jesus explaining to Peter, how many times should I forgive my brother? Should I forgive him seven times?

36:12

And it's kind of like, well, you know, you're only giving him three strikes. So maybe if I give him seven times, well, that should be good enough, right?

36:20

And Jesus says, no, I do not say to you seven times, but 77 times. And he tells the parable of the unjust servant, the unforgiving servant.

36:31

Now, you'll notice here, but you'll notice here, this is where, again, it is amazing how people can so easily distort such a clear teaching of scripture.

36:44

The reason the master forgives the servant, he pardons the servant, is because he told him, he implored him.

36:54

In the Greek, it says, he gave obeisance to him. He implored him. He pleaded with him to have patience with me and I will pay you everything.

37:05

Therefore, he was demonstrating what? He was demonstrating repentance. He demonstrated repentance and sorrow and grief over his debt, his sin.

37:18

And so, therefore, the master had pity. The master had pity on him and he released him and forgave the debt.

37:26

But it was because he demonstrated repentance. But as it happens, it was not genuine because he goes to his fellow servants who owed him much less and he begins to choke him, strangles him and forces him to pay what he owes.

37:49

So the fellow servant does the exact same thing. He does the exact same thing.

37:54

He falls down and pleads with his fellow servant, which is an even more humiliating thing when you think about it because it's a fellow servant, even though the borrower becomes slave to the lender, according to what the

38:08

Bible says. You become a slave, even to a fellow slave, if you owe money. So debt is a very serious matter as well.

38:15

But the point here is he throws him in prison and refuses to have any mercy on him when he had just received mercy for a far greater offense and a far greater debt against his own master.

38:31

So the master... Now, look what happens here. The fellow servant, when the fellow servant saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed and they went and reported to their master what had happened.

38:43

This is another important lesson here. They witnessed the sin that the servant committed and they reported it back to their master.

38:54

When they did that, the master summoned him and said, you wicked servant.

38:59

He rebuked him and he threw him in prison because he had mercy on him because he demonstrated.

39:08

He said, I forgave you all the debt because you pleaded with me, because you demonstrated repentance.

39:15

But because it wasn't genuine, because you didn't actually repent and you went after your fellow servant,

39:21

I'm going to deliver you to the jailers until you pay everything. And so there again,

39:26

Christ encapsulates the moral of the story by saying, my father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.

39:37

So the important principle here is just as repentance is absolutely vital to the sinner who sins against somebody or against himself.

39:48

So likewise, forgiveness is absolutely necessary and vital on the person who is the victim, on the one who is victim of the sin.

39:57

Repentance and forgiveness are two sides of the same coin in dealing with sin in the church discipline process.

40:04

There must be repentance and there must be forgiveness. There must be both in order to have proper restoration and reconciliation.

40:12

There must be both. And that is very clear from these teachings that Christ has revealed to us.

40:20

So we see in this parable.

40:28

Now, of course, because forgiveness is yet another hallmark of the

40:34

Christian life. The Bible says repeatedly, forgive just as Christ has forgiven you.

40:40

Christ has forgiven us all of our sin debt. The least we can do is forgive others when they sin against us.

40:46

Again, the Lord's Prayer. It is foundational to the Christian life and to what

40:52

God has taught us about dealing with sin. Forgive those who trespass against us.

40:59

And so on and so forth. So that's why it is so important to have this proper understanding.

41:10

But now, again, the reason the master initially pardoned the debt was because the servant implored him, fell on his knees and demonstrated repentance.

41:23

You cannot have reconciliation properly unless repentance is genuinely there in the sinner, in the offending party.

41:37

So now let me just close out with one, a few, a few more things here.

41:48

So verse 32. Yeah, OK. This is a very important lesson.

42:02

And it also teaches us to not neglect the whole counsel of God. Do not neglect the entire counsel of God.

42:11

That's why I mentioned earlier. It is good and useful to study the Bible topically, to use the treasury of Scripture knowledge.

42:21

Study the Bible comprehensively. Make sure you get the full grasp of what

42:29

Scripture teaches on a subject that you are dealing with, such as church discipline. Because once again, it will help you from making invalid conclusions on certain passages.

42:41

You see it all too often. People with superficial theologies and understandings of Scripture, they truncate massive parts of the

42:50

Bible because they do not take into account the whole counsel of God the way Paul instructs the church at Ephesus to do so.

42:57

We need to seek the whole counsel of God. And that is why if it wasn't clear enough in Matthew 18, it's even clearer in Luke 17.

43:07

So if we turn to Luke 17, verses three through four,

43:13

Luke 17. There's a parallel passage here of the process of church discipline.

43:22

Luke 17, three through four. So in this passage, we see very clearly everything we've been talking about coming to a closure.

43:46

Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him.

43:57

And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times saying,

44:03

I repent, you must forgive him. Okay, this

44:09

Christ here makes even more explicit what was implied in Matthew 18.

44:14

Because in Matthew 18, Peter says, how often must I forgive my brother?

44:20

Well, you must forgive him 70 times seven. But here, it's even more clear that if your brother sins, you must rebuke him.

44:29

And then here, it doesn't say if he sins against you. It actually says what the original Greek in the Matthew 18 passage says, if your brother sins, it doesn't necessarily mean if he sins against you, you rebuke him.

44:40

And if he repents, if he repents, forgive him.

44:46

If he repents, forgive him. So again, if he sins against you, and if you rebuke him, and if he repents, then you're called to forgive him.

44:57

You must forgive him. Even if he does it seven times to you in the same day, you must forgive.

45:03

Because true, because that is the nature of the Christian life.

45:09

Repentance and forgiveness are basic, the most basic responses of the believer.

45:16

They are the most basic, and they should be the most familiar and common responses. You repent.

45:21

Repentance is really the first step of becoming a believer. It's repentance. Repent and believe the gospel.

45:28

Change your mind about your sin, about your status before God. And so, they are hallmarks of the

45:36

Christian life. And of course, we see here again, true forgiveness, however, true forgiveness can only happen within the context of repentance.

45:46

We must repent, and we must forgive. This is vitally important. And I hope we have come away with a better understanding of the necessity of those two things.

45:57

Repentance on the side of the sinner and forgiveness on the side of the victim. And church discipline and dealing with sin and judging sin.

46:06

Those measures are taken to help bring about those right responses in these matters with the people who are involved.

46:13

And with the sin that is taking place. So with that said, we can close out this message.

46:23

Let us close out in prayer and ask the Lord's guidance and help. Our precious

46:31

High and Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for the opportunity to gather today to worship before you and to seek your counsel, seek your mercy, seek your grace, to seek your word diligently on these matters.

46:47

Lord, we ask that you help us to deal with sin. and to recognize how destructive, how deceitful, and how sinful sin is and how damaging it can be, knowing and witnessing ourselves the damaging nature of sin in our lives and in the lives of others and in dealing with it or failure to deal with it properly, how the negative consequences can be so destructive to the church and to ourselves, to our own spiritual state.

47:13

Lord, we ask that you help us to fill us with grace and truth and mercy and a willingness and the ability to crucify, to judge sin in our own lives properly and to judge sin in others out of love for them, to restore them back into the fold, back into a right relationship with the church, with ourselves, and with you,

47:38

Father God. We thank you for these things, Lord, and we ask these things in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

47:50

Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

47:59

Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

48:05

If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries such as Semper Ephraim on the radio and Thorn Crown Network podcast, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.