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No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.
Deuteronomy 27, 9,. Then Moses and the Levitical priests said to all Israel, Keep silence and hear, O Israel. This day you have become the people of Yahweh your God. You shall therefore obey the voice of Yahweh your God, keeping his commandments and his statutes which I command you today.
That day Moses charged the people, saying, When you have crossed over the Jordan, thee shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. So you've got those members standing on this one mountain, they're the blessing side, and on the other mountain, thee shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse, Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali.
And the Levites shall declare to all the men of Israel in a loud voice, Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to Yahweh, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman and sets it up in secret, and all the people shall say, Amen.
Verse 16,. Cursed be anyone who dishonors his father or mother, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor's landmark, and all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be anyone who misleads a blind man on the road, all the people shall say, Amen.
Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, and all the people shall say, Amen. And now we come to the apex, verse 20, Cursed be anyone who lies with his father's wife because he has uncovered his father's nakedness, and all the people at Corinth said not one word.
Who knows what they thought? Well, they're bad, and when you see somebody on Jerry Springer, you realize there are other people worse than you, so you must be okay. And all the people shall say, Amen.
And the church of Corinth should have known better. Paul was there for 18 months. They said nothing. The rabbis in a book that's not biblical, but taken as a commentary of these verses in Deuteronomy says, there is no forgiveness in order to atone for a man who has done this, forever only to execute him, and kill him, and stone him, and to uproot him from the midst of the people of God.
For any man who does this in Israel should not have life for a single day upon the earth because he is despicable and polluted. How about that? Back to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. He has his father's wife, sexually has her.
Not just a one-time sin, but on and on and on. And the word to have might even be married. Sexual relations with his stepmother, shameful. Pope said, excuse me, Alexander Pope, vice is a monster of so frightful mean as to be hated needs but to be seen, yet seem too oft familiar with their face.
Listen to this, we first endure, then we pity, then we embrace. Mark this, congregation, Bethlehem Bible Church is not a support group for those who have sexual addictions. Unrepentant sin is not tolerated.
People want the church not to be a support group. Oh, you're doing that, I understand. It's like in the media. If you do something horrible, just say you have an addiction and go in for treatment for a while and you're good to go.
Just don't do it as often and out in public. I can just hear the people at Corinth with all their reasons. How are we going to take this person out? Do you know? He's got all the money. And if we kick out this person with all the money, we're dust.
I've had pastor friends before that have had to announce people's names for leaving their husband unbiblically. And just before that's done on a Sunday, the pastor gets the phone call from the rich person who built the church building, says that if you now announce my daughter's name from the pulpit, I'm going to bury you.
Well, you know, we ought not to be so harsh. Maybe they're in treatment. Friends, let me say this. If the person is repentant, what do we do with repentant sinners? We rejoice, don't we? Aren't you glad you aren't kicked out of this church for sin?
What if your name got read up here because you sinned? I guess there'd be no time for special music, would there? But if the excuse is, what if they sue us, are the excuses, well, you know, I have OCD, and I'm just obsessive compulsive when it comes to this, you know, incest.
I actually looked up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM. It was published back in 2000. That's the latest. It doesn't have anything to do with sexual addiction. But it does, however, give us this wonderful disclaimer so we can just think we're okay.
It's under the section of sexual disorders not otherwise specified. So there's probably all kinds of things you're doing. We just don't have a name for it yet or medicine for you yet. It's all selfishness.
I'll give you a disorder if you want one, narcissistic personality disorder. Oh, you know what? Let's not confront the person. Let's just send them to Sex Addicts Anonymous. I found another place you could send them, Sexaholics Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous.
I'd like to send them to Support Group Anonymous because the church is a support group now instead of a Holy Bride of Christ. The treatment is always the same. Repent and experience the forgiveness of God.
Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain what? Mercy. If you're enslaved to sin, don't you want the mercy of God? I do. This whole thing, we're going to unconditionally love you, unconditionally accept you, isn't found in 1 Corinthians 5.
Paul was shocked that the church didn't deal with it, and people today are shocked if you do deal with it. The first time I ever was at Grace Church, and John MacArthur stood up and said with a sorrowful face, saddened by the gravity of sin and how it ravages people's lives, and said that they will have to remove from membership and excommunicate during a communion service, and then he named the person's name.
I almost fell off my chair. A year later, my brother came to town, and he was with his wife, I think fiancée Molly at the time, and then he did it, MacArthur, again. But when I looked at Matthew 18, when I looked at Galatians 6, when I looked at Acts 5, when I looked at 2 Thessalonians 3, what are we going to do as we say, we believe the Bible, except we don't really believe that part over there that says, tell it to the church.
That's probably not in the best manuscripts after all. There's a sin worse than incest, and that is the sin that allows a congregation to care less about the reputation of Jesus Christ. Number four. Number four.
Number one, you are your brother's keeper. Number two, sin, even in private, of a church member affects others. Three, don't tolerate unrepentant sin. And number four, it is arrogance, not love, that tolerates unrepentant sin.
It is arrogance, not love, that tolerates unrepentant sin, verse 2. We just have to love them. We just have kind of group hug, it's all time for love. Paul would say to the church of Corinth, it's not love.
Love says, Jesus said, if you love me, you will what? Keep my commandments. Love obeys. Love says, I want what's right for God and for the person and for the church. And so what does Paul say? Can you imagine verse 2?
And you are a little too loving. You've got to kind of ratchet up the discipline. No, what's he saying with an exclamation point? You are arrogant. And what's the word from last week that we learned? For all you Greek scholars, somebody say it out loud.
Fusio. You are fusio. Fusio is an onomatopoetic word that sounds like what it is. It means to inflate. You ever inflate some kind of helium balloon? And up it goes. You're prideful. He says, you're all puffed up.
You're all a bunch of hot air. You're arrogant. You're not loving. Show me a church that doesn't do church discipline, and I'll show you the most prideful church you've ever been in. Sorry, club, because it's not a church.
Their way is better than God's way. God's way is, tell it to the church, deal with unrepentant sin that affects the body. Man's way is, well, you know what? If I do it, we had all those visitors today from the college.
They're just in town for the first week of college. They're looking for a church. And if we get up and say somebody's name, they'll never get over that. They'll never come back. This is Jesus' church.
The elders are under shepherds. We do what we're told and leave the results to God, don't we? Isn't that the way we live our Christian life? It's not to be tampered with. Adding from the Bible, subtracting from the Bible.
Well, that just won't work. That's kind of antiquated. You know what we sometimes do? That was cultural. Actually, if you want cultural, did you know sacrifice was a cultural thing back then too? Where somebody would have to pay the price for somebody else.
So substitutionary atonement, that's cultural too. Paul says you're prideful. You think your ways are better than God's. You think it's your church. Oh, it won't affect us. We're smart. We've really got good leadership.
Paul was here. He taught us for 18 months. We think we know what Paul would expect. You know, the body is really bad, but the spirit's good. And so if the spirit's good and the body's bad, let the bad people do with their bad bodies what they wish.
The spirit still will be intact. Who knows what they were thinking? But one thing's for sure, they were arrogant. And Paul says, look at the last chapter, chapter 4, verse 6. That none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.
Verse 18, some are arrogant. Verse 19, arrogant. The talk of these people is arrogant. It's not within the bounds of Christian liberty. And he says, you, ye, ye are arrogant. Too confident. He says, Corinth, deal with sin or it will deal with you.
As Thomas Watson, the great Puritan, said, either kill your sin or your sin will kill you. In three weeks I'll be in Corinth and I'll look all around and the church of Corinth is dead. Churches without Matthew 18, step 1, 2, 3, and 4 are arrogant.
Because their way is better than God's way. Number 5. Number 5. Are you sleepy yet? Hello. I love 1 Corinthians because it just deals with these kind of topics. By the way, when I was in seminary, I never thought I'd say some of the things I just said today.
Who gets up and preaches about those things? But what do you do? Well, we just finished chapter 4. Let's get to chapter 6. This is the best. I want to have Paul's attitude when it comes to holiness, don't you?
Here's what God has done for me and he's caused me to be born again. By his own free choice and his own sovereign grace, he's made me alive in Christ. He's quickened me with Christ Jesus. He's raised Jesus from the dead and I'll stand before Jesus one day with you.
I want to just do what he says. I'm not really very smart, but I know if I'm told a direct order as a person in the army, I'm to obey it. There's nothing unclear about this passage. Deal with sin in the local church for the glory of Christ.
And you'll see that those people that stay are the ones concerned about holiness. Every time I read somebody's name from the pulpit, and thankfully, it's only been about 4 times in 13 years. Every time I read somebody's name from the pulpit by name with a specific sin that has permeated the body and we need to excommunicate that sin, usually one family leaves.
Now, there's a lot of reasons people leave, but that's the wrong reason to leave a church. If you're a visitor today and this is your first time, picking a church because of church discipline is the right reason to pick a church.
That church is concerned about holiness. Number five, unrepentant sin should make you mourn. It shouldn't make you happy like it does the world. This is the right response instead of being prideful. The world says, wow, look at how wild that sin is.
Paul says, here's what you should do when there's sin in the church. And I hope this is what you've been doing with our particular church discipline case that's going on right now. I hope you're mourning.
You should mourn. Verse 2, you are arrogant. Here's what we should be doing when it comes to sin in the church. Ought you not rather to mourn? Ought you to be sad? Nine Greek words for mourning. At the top of the list, there's the word for mourning.
That means the wail of a person when they've lost a loved one. When my mother died, I could not contain myself. Now you say, well, I don't mind to cry, but that whole thing where your arms start shaking, your head's shaking, and you just visibly and outwardly cry.
You just can't stop it. My father died, I'm at the funeral. It's just like you feel yourself kind of simmering, the slow boil, and before you know it, you're just weeping. Out of the nine words for mourn, this is the word that's used for when you lose a loved one, and you're just sick.
When there's sin in the church, it affects the body, and it affects the name of Christ. And Paul says, you're having a party, and there should be a death funeral procession going on there. This is the word that was used when someone was affected, a town was affected by a pestilence, and everybody died, they would mourn.
Sackcloth and ashes. And you guys have balloons out. Streamers. This is the kind of mourning where if you look at me, you say, he's mourning because I can't keep it in. And it's an ongoing thing. You ought to keep on mourning and grieving until it's dealt with.
You ought to lament over, mourn over. It's as if there's a death in the family. Carlisle said that men must see the infinite beauty of holiness and the infinite damnability of sin. Blood-bought people should hate sin and mourn over sin in the body.
Listen to D .A. Carson. Everything that we know and appreciate and praise God for, in all Christian experience, both in this life and in the life to come, springs from the bloody cross. Do we have the gift of the Spirit?
Secured by Christ on the cross. Do we have the fellowship of saints? Secured by Christ on the cross. Does he give us comfort in life and death? Secured by Christ on the cross. Does he watch over us faithfully, providentially, graciously, and covenantally?
Secured by Christ on the cross. Do we have the hope of heaven to come? Secured by Christ on the cross. Do we anticipate resurrection bodies on the last day? Secured by Christ on the cross. Is there a new heaven and a new earth?
The home of righteousness? Secured by Christ on the cross. All this is secured by Christ on the cross and granted to those who have faith in him. And in response to the cross of Christ, then we do what we're supposed to do.
As Jesus mourned over sin, when Jesus was at Lazarus' tomb, why was he mourning? He knew he was going to raise him from the dead shortly, didn't he? Because Jesus was mourning, not that his body was dead forever, but he was mourning over what sin does to a body.
And what does the world want to do? Yuck it up, laugh it up, pack up your troubles, drown your sorrows. One man said, the summon bonum of life becomes a good time. True or false? Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
I hope you say true, Jesus said it. Same word. Mourn. Crying. James chapter 4 verse 9 has a verse that seems so out of context. Who preaches on this verse? James did. He says to the church, Be wretched and mourn and weep.
Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. And finally, number six. The sixth politically incorrect thought that's important to remember while we think of church discipline. And this is where he's leading up to, by the way.
You must acknowledge that unrepentant sinners should be removed from Christ's fellowship. You've got to excommunicate them. You have to acknowledge that unrepentant sinners should be removed from Christ's fellowship.
Verse 2. See there, verse 2, last sentence. Let him who has done this be what? Removed from among you. Taken away. He did have community with you and now you move him out of community. We have communion.
We put them out of communion. We ex them. Not excise them, but like an exit you go out of. Excommunicate means you put them out of your fellowship. To be removed. To expel. And it is a command. And so what do you do?
You say, I have solidarity with the elders. That when the elders announce someone's name from the pulpit, we with them, with solidarity and agreement, say, yes, it must happen. It's not rash. It's not for punishment.
It's not for vindictiveness. It's for obedience. Their heads and maybe their church is like this huge overinflated balloon. Ever seen those balloons that you hold the handle, you blow them up about like this, and you just keep hitting back and forth?
Those punching balloons? Works perfect on like little kids' noggins. Just like that. You don't really want to fill it up too largely because those are big enough. They've got some pressure, and when they pop, they really pop.
The Corinthians, as a church, sadly because of their leader's influence, their heads are so big, they don't even care about any kind of sin that's unrepentant in their church. And with this little sentence, Paul comes along with a needle, and he just goes, get rid of them.
Kick them out. Remove them. Expel them. Sin is always in a local church. But there are some sins that are so bad for a church when unrepentant, when lived in in an unrepentant fashion, they must be dealt with.
Sexual sins. Sins of factiousness. Sins of wrong doctrine. Now, if I were you, this is what I would do, and so I hope you do it. Instead of thinking right now about our current church discipline scene and situation, yes, I mourn over it, and that's sad.
It affects other people. If I were you, I'd just examine your own hearts for a minute to say, am I leading the kind of life that contributes to the unity that Jesus secured on the cross? Are there things going on in my life, private now, but that one day God will certainly make manifest?
Are there things in my life now that could ever contribute to a problem at the church? The good news is, when you do that self-examination and then say, oh God, forgive me, cleanse me, wash me, you pray through Psalm 51, then you end up what?
Receiving forgiveness, and never end up that far down the line. Mark it well. You just don't fall out of a tree. You have to climb up it first. I can't believe that happened. Everything seemed good, and then the person just leaves their spouse.
They just commit incest with their stepmother. How did that happen? I'll tell you how that happened. Step by step by step by step, and the tree was climbed, and then the fall was great. So what does God help us to do?
We're to examine what we do now. We examine the baby steps, so we never get to that spot. God, keep me clear. God, permeate my mind with scriptures, and then heighten my conscience, so that the sins that I used to think were little, are now really big because I know they're against you.
So therefore, based on what your son has done, wash me and cleanse me. And then even murderers and adulterers can experience the joy of their salvation like King David did. Isn't that good? No matter what you've done, no matter how many times you've done it, I don't know when it's going to be that we get lawsuits at the church for doing church discipline, but the day we stop church discipline and concern for the purity of this church is the day that this church should have a new name, and that should be Ichabod.
The glory of the Lord has departed. Church discipline is to restore sinners. It's to make you afraid of sinning, but it's mainly to show that we care about what Jesus did, and we will obey Him no matter what the consequences are.
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