What is Church Discipline?

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The Lord has who He wills, so it's alright.
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Take out your Bibles and turn with me to Galatians chapter 2.
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Now, we are going to be in the same passage as last week, because I don't know how many of you remember, but last week I mentioned the subject of church discipline.
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And many of you seem to be confused by that concept.
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Some were even questioning whether or not that was something that a church should practice.
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And so, I mentioned in that lesson that maybe I ought to just come and explain it a little better.
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And so, as I was preparing for this week, I said, well, before I go on to verse 15, which, in all honesty, verse 15 of chapter 2 down to the end of the chapter is probably the most important part of the whole book.
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So, I am looking forward to getting there.
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It really does explain the doctrine that Paul is putting forward regarding justification by faith alone.
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And so, that's what we're going to look at next week.
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But before we get there, we're going to look again at chapter 2, verses 11-14, and then we're going to take a few moments this morning to talk about church discipline.
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So, verse 11, Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed.
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By the way, I'm in the New King James this morning rather than the ESV.
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So, if it sounds different than last week, that's the reason.
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Verse 12, For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles.
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But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision.
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And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.
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But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter before them all, If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews? Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for the opportunity again to preach.
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First, Lord, I want to ask that You would fill me with Your Holy Spirit and that You would keep me from error.
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For, Lord, I am a fallible man.
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I'm certainly capable of preaching error, and I don't want to for the sake of Your name, for the sake of Your people, and for the sake of my conscience.
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So, Lord, I pray for each of these men.
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Lord, that the truth would be proclaimed to them and that they would hear it.
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And that today, Lord, as we look at a difficult subject, that hearts would be stirred and opened.
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And, Lord, that there would be a movement of the heart to become even more subjected to the Word of God, that we would not force our desires onto the Word, but that we would have our minds transformed by the renewal of having been washed by the Word and changed by it.
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Father, again, as we study together, may You be glorified, may Your people be encouraged, and may those who are lost be brought to the end of themselves that they might be saved.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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So we're going to talk about the subject of church discipline.
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And I want to begin with an outline that I'm going to put up here on the board.
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I guess I'll use this side.
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I always hate this.
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Somebody spent a long time writing this.
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So I feel bad about erasing what they're doing.
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But I was told it's okay, so I'll go ahead.
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Alright, so I'll leave the bottom half that way.
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If they want to rewrite the top, they can.
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So we'll just use this part.
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In the 16th century, there was a pretty famous theologian by the name of John Calvin.
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You probably heard the name John Calvin.
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He was one of the magisterial reformers.
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What that means is he was a reformer, one of the ones who had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church, and he had the authority of the city behind him.
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That's why it was called the magisterial reformers.
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It was he and Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli that had the city councils behind them.
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And that was a lot of what allowed them to have the power and influence that they did.
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Luther was in Germany, and Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin were in Switzerland.
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Calvin was in Geneva.
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So John Calvin was very influential in helping to establish the doctrines of the Reformation.
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Now again, he didn't invent them.
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He used the Scripture, but he was a systematician.
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He systematized our understanding of our faith.
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And in his 20s, he wrote the first edition of what became known as the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
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The Institutes of the Christian Religion are a multi-volume set of works explaining the systematic theology which was believed by the reformers and showing their distinctions from Rome.
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He would later edit, and there were several editions of them.
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But imagine being...
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Think of this.
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It's the 1500s, so 16th century.
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You're in your 20s.
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You're writing with a quill pen and ink that you have to dip into a bottle, and yet you're writing volumes of material and you haven't even reached your 30th birthday.
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Just an amazing individual, intellectually and spiritually.
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And one of the things that Calvin taught was on the nature of the church.
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How are we to understand the church? The Roman Catholic Church, which was the recognized church of that day, it was the Protestants who were protesting.
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That's where the word Protestant comes from.
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They were protesting the excesses of Rome.
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And Rome had essentially become almost like a kingdom with a king.
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The pope was the king.
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And the extent of power of the Roman church went all the way around the world.
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There were Roman Catholic churches all around.
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That was the established Christian church.
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And so, when Calvin sat down to explain the nature of the church and to put out the nature of the church, he wanted to help us to understand, help the church understand what it is to be a church.
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What does it mean to be a church? You might have heard people say, well, where two or three are gathered, there Jesus is.
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So every time I meet with two or three people and I pray, we have a church.
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Well, that's not exactly correct.
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In fact, that's exactly wrong.
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That's not true.
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Two or three people gathered together for prayer does not constitute a church.
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Well, the church is the bride of Christ, yes.
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But when we talk about what constitutes a church...
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Now, can someone have a church in their home? Yes, we see house-based churches in Scripture.
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But the idea of just two or three people having a prayer meeting constitutes a church, that's not true.
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The church has pillars upon which it must stand.
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Calvin gave three pillars.
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He said there are three things that constitute a church.
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And if these three things are not present, it's not a church.
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Now again, this is Calvin, but he's basing his argument in Scripture.
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So let's just look at what these three things are.
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The first thing, the church has to have the Gospel preached correctly.
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So right there, Rome is out.
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Because they're not preaching the true Gospel.
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I mean, still aren't to this day.
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But that was one of the first statements.
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Unless the true Gospel be preached, justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to God be the glory alone, based upon Scripture alone, unless that is preached, it's not a church.
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You can call it what you want.
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It's a glorified spiritualistic social club, but it ain't no church.
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How did they seem to get away with that? You know, that people, I mean, at one time they shouldn't involve people.
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There's a lot of confusion in Roman Catholicism.
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And a lot of it is based in national identity, family identity.
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There are what we call cradle Catholics, people who were born in the Catholic Church.
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And so that establishes for them the religion of birth.
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And so there's pride in that, and there's heritage in that, and there's tradition in that.
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And there are people who do believe that Rome is the true church.
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I obviously don't, and I think that it's incorrect biblically, and I think that it can be demonstrated biblically.
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But they do have what are known as apologists.
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They have men who stand ready to defend Rome against all comers.
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And I've heard some of their arguments, and I've yet to be moved by them.
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But they are those who try to argue for the position of the Pope and the position of Mary and the position of the Eucharist and all these other unbiblical things.
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And ordinarily their argument is based on the idea that tradition has the same authority as Scripture.
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And so they'll say, well, if it's not in the Bible, it's in our tradition.
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And because tradition has the same authority as Scripture, who are you to question what we believe? So that's part of it.
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Now I want to say, I want to get to discipline, and if you guys are going to ask me a lot of Roman Catholic stuff, I appreciate it.
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But that's not what I'm intending to do.
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Yes? No, I'm an ex-Catholic, so I understand the whole concept.
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Isn't that the same concept as Pharisees and scribes? It's more tradition? Yes, and Jesus even said, you're teaching as doctrines the traditions of men.
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That very same rebuke could go against Roman Catholicism.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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Yes? I don't know what you said there.
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We're going to actually look at that passage today, but that don't make it a church.
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No, that's fine.
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He can be present, but that don't make it a church.
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That's my point.
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It don't make it a church.
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Everybody with me? What is a church? Alright, so the next thing, if the Gospel is preached correctly, if it's not, it ain't a church.
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Like again, this is the minimum.
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Right? The second thing, and this is where a lot of groups fall, is that it's the proper administration of the ordinances.
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And I'm just going to write ordinances.
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What are the ordinances? Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
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Eucharist simply means the Thanksgiving, the giving of thanks.
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So yeah, you can call it the Eucharist.
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That's a term normally used in Roman Catholicism.
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It's not a bad word necessarily, but it's got a lot of baggage.
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Sort of like the word sacrament.
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You've heard the word sacrament? Sometimes people will call the ordinances sacraments.
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I don't mind calling them sacraments as long as we understand what that means.
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The word ordinance means commands.
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So I prefer that.
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We were commanded to be baptized.
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It's not optional.
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We're commanded to take the Lord's Supper.
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Do this in remembrance of Me.
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It's not optional.
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And so if a church is not practicing baptism, there ain't no church.
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If the church is not practicing the Lord's Supper, there ain't no church.
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I mean, this is it.
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Like I said, we're talking minimums now.
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And there are churches that say, well, we're not going to have the Lord's Supper.
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Why? Why? Now, the frequency with which you have the Lord's Supper is determined by the elders of the church, the leaders of the church, and how they understand the Scripture.
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Our church does it every week.
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And that is rather unique among churches like ours.
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A lot of Baptist churches do it once a quarter or once a month.
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But it's still done.
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I'm not arguing for frequency.
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I'm just saying it must be practiced and it must be practiced right.
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But here's the third thing.
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And again, I'm making the argument.
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I'm making Calvin's argument.
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He said you've got to practice the gospel correctly.
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You've got to administer the ordinances.
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And you've got to practice discipline.
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You have to practice discipline.
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Yes, sir? Is there a wrong way to do it? Oh, sure.
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The Lord's Supper is only for believers.
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And 1 Corinthians 11 says that unbelievers should not take it, and a believer should examine himself before he takes it.
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And so if the Lord's Supper is simply put out like it was cheese and crackers at a party, and not administered with the weight which it has, then it's not being done correctly.
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So I would say it has to be given the weight that it is due.
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Same as baptism.
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It's to be administered properly.
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Now I would differ from my Presbyterian friends who baptize infants, because I don't believe in that, but that's a conversation for another time.
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But that would be another question of propriety in administration.
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How should you properly administer the ordinance of baptism? We would say, or I would say, it's for believers only.
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Only once a man has come to Christ by grace through faith is he a candidate to be baptized and not before.
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So that would be proper administration of the ordinances, proper preaching of the Gospel, and the third thing is discipline.
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Now this third one, in a way, causes a lot of churches to be disqualified as churches.
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Because they have abandoned long ago the practice of any form of discipline.
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And you say now, what is your definition of discipline? The definition of discipline is found in the Bible as a person who is in sin and continues to be in sin and refuses to repent after having been given several opportunities for repentance is to be removed from the body of the church.
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Now, I want to make a disclaimer.
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I'm going to take you to Matthew 18 and we're going to read Jesus' own words.
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In fact, you can go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Matthew 18.15 if you'd like and be there so we can read in just a moment.
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But before we get there, I want to say this.
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Because Pastor Mark and I talked about this and I told him what I was going to be teaching.
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Matthew 18.15-20.
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But before we read it though, I want to make a quick disclaimer.
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You guys are in a ministry here that is difficult to manage to say the least.
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Because it's a group of men who live together, many having come from difficult situations in life.
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And Pastor Mark has to exercise sometimes a firm hand because of the difficulty of dealing with such a large group in such a tight space.
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And so, he does exercise discipline, but sometimes it's done a way that might be a little different than what I'm going to explain.
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But it doesn't make what he's doing wrong.
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I'm just saying, he may have to increase the speed in which he deals with something because if he doesn't, it's going to get out of hand really fast.
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You understand my point? With a church like mine where I am, something like this might take weeks.
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Where he might have to deal with it in minutes or hours.
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So, understand that I'm speaking from a different context than Pastor Mark is.
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And so, what I'm going to share with you from the words of Christ, it applies across the board.
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Whether you're dealing with set free, or sovereign grace, or first Baptist, which I don't think they do discipline, but it's another story.
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The point is, no matter the church, it is going to be contextualized to the situation and to the individual issue.
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If I had a man in my church who was molesting children, then he wouldn't have three weeks to deal with it.
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You understand? It would have to be dealt with immediately.
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And so, there's that situation too.
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It's the situation of the gravity of the issue.
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If we've got a person who's having trouble with gossip, we might have an opportunity to give them time to deal with that issue before we move forward.
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Because there can be some time for grace there.
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So everybody understand that there is a contextualization that has to happen.
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That being said, let's read Jesus' words here.
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He says, Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
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If he hears you, you have gained your brother.
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But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
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And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.
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But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.
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Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
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Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
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Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven for where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.
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There's the passage you referred to, but it's in the context of discipline.
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The two or three are the two or three witnesses.
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This isn't talking about a prayer meeting.
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This is talking about a discipline session.
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The context demands it because that's the subject that we're talking about.
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The whole idea of the two or three are mentioned earlier in verse 16 and they are brought up again in verse 20.
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So let's for a moment talk about this process.
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There is a man who is sinning.
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In this case, Jesus specifically says the sin is against someone else and that part is often left out, but it does need to be considered that this sin is a sin against someone.
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So for instance, you sin against Me.
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In whatever way, I am to go to you and I am to offer a private rebuke.
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That's the first thing.
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The process is simple.
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It's four steps.
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One is a private rebuke.
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Why private rebuke? Because the goal is restoration.
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Look at the text.
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Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
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That's private.
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But if he hears you, you have gained your brother.
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That means you have restored him.
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He's repented and it's over.
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See, here's what usually happens.
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You sin against me, I go tell three other people, and now we all hate you.
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Because you sin against me, how dare you, you dirty dog.
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And I'm going to tell four friends and they're going to tell four friends and now we've got a whole mess of people that hate your guts.
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That's not Christian living.
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That's pagan living.
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The pagan man wants a group of people who agree with him.
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The Christian man wants the man who has sinned against him to be restored.
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That's a different attitude.
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So the idea behind church discipline often begins with the idea I want to see you restored.
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You're broken.
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You need to be made right.
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You have sinned against me.
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I'm going to go to you first.
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I'm not going to go to the pastor.
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I'm not going to go to the telephone tree.
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I'm going to go to you.
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I'm going to talk to you.
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Now, if I go to you, you might not be willing to receive it because you've already sinned against me.
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Therefore, you might have an issue with me already.
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And if I go to you and I explain your error to you, well, you might not be willing to respond favorably.
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In fact, I've had this situation many times where I've gone to someone and I've said, hey, you are in sin.
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Very rarely does the person say, yeah, pastor, you're right.
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Or narrowly, it's immediate justification.
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Oh, you don't know my life.
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You don't know what I feel.
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Yeah, she is a horrible woman.
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Always an excuse.
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You don't understand how tough my life is.
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You don't know why I need to drink this much.
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Whatever, right? You don't understand.
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It's always justification.
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Very rarely do you go to someone and you call them to repentance and they say, you know what? You're right.
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And I have had that happen.
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I've had a man come to me and he said he wanted to divorce his wife.
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And I said, you have no grounds for divorce.
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You need to repent and go home and love your wife.
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I said, you're in the wrong.
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You need to stop this line of thinking and you need to repent.
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That afternoon, he called me in tears.
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He was ready to repent.
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And he and his wife began counseling with me and now they're still married several years later.
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So that's an example that it can work.
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Because I didn't go and tell everybody else.
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I just stuck with him.
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And by God's grace, he was restored and now it's over.
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It's done.
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Praise the Lord.
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But again, if it doesn't work, if the restoration doesn't happen, then Jesus gives us a second part of the process.
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And this is a private rebuke with witnesses.
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So we have still a private rebuke.
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Notice again.
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But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
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This is actually an Old Testament principle.
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If you go back to the law, you cannot convict anyone based on the evidence of one witness.
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In fact, I beat jury duty with that.
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Because I was brought in for jury duty one time and I was in a group of people and they started asking questions.
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And they got to me.
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And they said, Mr.
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Foskey, are you willing to convict someone based on the evidence of only one witness? And I said, no.
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I said, Scripture will not allow it.
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I said, now we live in an age where there are secondary witnesses such as DNA evidence and video and other things that can act as a secondary witness that they didn't have in biblical times.
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I said, so if that were presented, I may be compelled.
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But I'm not going to take one person's word with no corroborating evidence because that person may have an ax to grind against that other person.
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And therefore, I'm not going to trust one witness.
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Okay, so they let me off jury duty.
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By the way, if you ever want to beat jury duty, that's how you do it.
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But I was honest.
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Literally, that's how I feel.
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Sort of like this thing that happened a year or two ago where the government was trying to bring on a new Supreme Court Justice and a woman from his past came up and accused him of malfeasance with her when they were in college.
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There was no evidence.
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Yeah, there was only her testimony.
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And there was no corroborating evidence at all.
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But what was the response from the other side? Again, it was a political response.
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We must believe all women.
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You know the danger of that? Women lie.
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Men lie.
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People lie.
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Oh, yeah.
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And money, political power, all kinds of stuff.
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And again, I'm not saying she's a liar because I'm not there.
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What I am saying is this, I can't convict that man on her evidence, testimony, if that's all I've got.
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And it works the same with this situation.
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If you've sinned against me and I go get the two or three witnesses and the witnesses say to me, you're wrong.
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Now I have to consider the fact that maybe I'm the one that needs to repent.
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Maybe he didn't sin against me.
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Maybe I was perceiving something that isn't true.
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Part of the witnesses is the protection of the individual who's being called out.
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You can't just accuse him and then bring him before the church.
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You've got to provide some evidence that this guy's actually done what you believe he's done.
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Because maybe it's you.
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Maybe you do have an ax.
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Maybe you don't even realize you have the ax to grind.
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So you go and get your two or three witnesses and then when they agree, this is why it goes on to say down here about binding and loosing verses 18 where it talks about bound in heaven and bound in earth.
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That's not talking about oh, bind your Ferrari, oh, bind your bank account.
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You hear all this garbage that people talk about with binding and loosing.
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And it's not talking about binding and loosing Satan.
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In this sense, what it's talking about is you're establishing the truth based on two or three witnesses.
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And once that's done, it's agreed upon by you, it's agreed upon by God.
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God is affirming what's happening.
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And this is why it says Jesus is there in the midst when there's two or three gathered because they're acting as witnesses and they're establishing the truth based on the biblical parameter of not having only one witness.
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This is all about establishing the truth.
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You're building a case and the case has to be built correctly.
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So that's the reason for the second time.
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And again, imagine this person is in sin.
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I've gone to him.
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He refuses to repent.
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I find a few other people who have seen this action or have witnessed this.
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We go in and now it's three of us.
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No longer just one.
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And he says to us, you're all wrong.
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I am right.
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You are all wrong.
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Okay.
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Could be true.
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Could be true that the three or four could be wrong.
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But in this case, it's a lot harder to believe because now it's not just a one-on-one, but it is a three- or four-on-one situation.
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The hope is at that point, the person would repent.
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He would say, my Lord, I've seen the error.
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I've recognized by these brothers and or sisters who've come to me, who love me, I repent and we start over.
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And guess what happens then? Restoration.
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It's over.
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If he repents, the whole process stops because that's the goal.
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If your brother repents, if he's restored, you've won him, it's over.
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You don't go out to the cracker barrel and spend the rest of the night talking about how bad he was.
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You now begin to build him up from where he is.
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There's a point now that you can build from.
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But if he refuses to repent, and here's where we get verse 17.
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And if he refuses to hear them, that is the witnesses, tell it to the church.
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Now this is important because the church, again, is not just two or three people in a prayer meeting.
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This is the gathered assembly of the saints.
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This is a public rebuke.
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Public.
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We have been in private with our initial rebuke.
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We have been in private with the two or three.
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That's still private.
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You agree? That's still not open.
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Because if it stopped there, it wouldn't go past there if every man was doing his Christian duty to keep his mouth shut.
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This hole in the front of your face is the worst thing you've got when it comes to sin.
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And if we would just learn to keep it shut, we'd be a lot better off.
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And so right there is the second thing.
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Private rebuke.
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He repents.
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It's over.
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But if he doesn't, it is then made public.
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Not on national public radio or Fox News, but in the church.
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He is brought before the church.
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Now, it may so happen that the person is not present for this, but I think in Jesus' mind, He would be.
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Because if you read verse 17 all the way through, it says if He refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.
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But if He refuses even to hear the church, that to me says the church is going to respond and He's going to hear them.
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Right? So it kind of makes me think that Jesus is assuming the guy would be there.
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And in the ancient world, I think that's a lot more common.
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Today, if this were to happen, the guy probably is not going to show up.
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If he knows he's coming to a meeting where his sins are going to be exposed, he's probably going to be gone.
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But that doesn't mean that the church still doesn't get to know about it.
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It just simply means that he's not there to participate.
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If he were right, and these three persons, four persons, he would still have the ability to appeal to the church.
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He could say, listen to me, body.
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These four people are wrong and here's why based on Scripture.
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So the church becomes not only the point of bringing the weight of condemnation if necessary, but it's also the place of appeal.
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He could appeal to the church if it were so that he had a leg to stand on.
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So the church becomes a last place of appeal.
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Notice what it says.
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But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.
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Who has the ESV? What does it say there instead of heathen? It says a different word.
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Gentile.
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And so we have to flesh that out.
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What does that mean? Well, Gentiles were not allowed in the assembly of the Jews.
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The only reason why a Gentile would be allowed in the assembly of the Jews is if he himself became a Jew by the process of circumcision and proselytization or conversion.
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In the temple, they had what was known as the court of the Gentiles.
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The Gentiles were not allowed to go in to worship, but they could stand outside.
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And there were Gentiles who feared God.
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They were called God-fearers and they would be in that court of the Gentiles.
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So the point of treating someone like a Gentile is that they be removed.
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And the same happened to tax collectors.
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Jewish tax collectors had sided with Rome and were considered to be turncoats.
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They were considered to be traitorous.
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And so they were not allowed in the assembly either.
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And so you have this situation where Jesus is giving an example that's easy to understand.
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If this person continues to sin, he refuses to listen even to the church, he is to be removed.
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And that's where the last thing, we've seen private rebuke, private rebuke with witnesses, public rebuke.
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Now, we have public removal.
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Public removal.
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He is to be removed.
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Yes, sir.
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Most people don't go past the second part.
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Most people leave before that happens.
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There have been times where we've had to make it known that there were people that were leaving for ungodly reasons.
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But if they circumvent the process and just abandon the church, this is where the modern context becomes hard to fulfill it all the way through.
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But we've gotten to that part.
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But most people just leave on their own.
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In fact, I remember the person saying, don't call me, don't contact me, I don't want anything more to do with your church.
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Because they were living in sin and they wouldn't repent.
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Huh? Yeah, I think I told that story, didn't I? Yeah.
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So, the situation again, it's difficult today because we live in a situation where if our church were to exercise discipline, you could throw a rock and hit 15 churches that would not enforce that discipline but would allow them to come into their church no questions asked.
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See, it wasn't like that in the first century.
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The church at Ephesus was the church at Ephesus.
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And if you were removed from the church at Ephesus, you couldn't go down to the second Baptist church on Ephesus Street and go to church there.
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There was a church and it wasn't like you could just leave and go to another church.
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And there was expected to be consistency that if a person is removed here, he can't just move on to another city and be received because he's still under the condemnation of the church.
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Now brother, somebody had their hand up.
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It was you.
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I'm sorry, he had his hand up for you.
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I'll come back to you in a second.
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Is this what Paul was talking about in Titus chapter 3? Yeah.
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And I'm going to go...
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If we have time, because we see this in 1 Corinthians 5.
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Remember the guy who's caught with his father's wife? Yep, and what does he say? Put him out.
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He said, if I was there, I'd already done it.
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Paul was very convinced that this was the way to handle it.
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He said, you put him out, purge the evil one from among you just like leaven has to be purged.
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Purge out the old leaven.
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That's the example of 1 Corinthians.
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But in Titus, Titus is dealing with a particular situation because in Titus 3, he's dealing with a divisive man.
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That's the language there.
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And he says once he's been worn twice, you put him out.
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And the idea there is this person, their sin is dividing the body.
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See, that's not always the case.
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If a person's in the church who's sinning, it's not necessarily bringing division in the body because the body might not know about it.
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If a man's a private drunk or a private adulterer or something, it might not be bringing division in the church.
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But in Titus 3, that man is dividing the church.
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And Paul says, you worn him twice and then you put him out because division in the church is dangerous.
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And so it's the same situation, but it's a particular sin.
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The particular sin is division.
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And then in 1 Timothy 5, I mentioned this last week, how to deal with elders.
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It says, Elders are to be reproved publicly so that all may fear.
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What does that mean? Well, if an elder is allowed to sin and people know he's sinning and nobody says anything, then everybody's going to think it's okay to sin.
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That's right.
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But if an elder sins, a pastor, and he's called out publicly, everybody's going to be like, oh, wow, if the pastor can be rebuked, then anybody can be rebuked.
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See? And so there's an issue of you rebuke the pastor publicly so that everybody knows that's not tolerated, that it's not allowed.
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So yeah, each of those situations still agree with Matthew 18.
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It's just particular instances.
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1 Corinthians 5 still follows the process.
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You know, this guy's sin is public.
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Once the sin's public, all the idea of private is put out the window.
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It's just like I mentioned last week, that woman who stood up in the church and said, I'm living with a man and I don't care.
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That sin's public now.
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You've abandoned private rebuke because you've made your sin public.
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And so you can speed up the process by simply making your sin known widely.
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If you show up to church drunk, you're going to get rebuked then.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Sorry, I made me laugh.
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Yeah, there's a church discipline express lane.
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I like that.
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And you can put yourself in it.
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Now, you've had another question, brother.
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Sorry, I was...
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I mean, there's no form of technology back then.
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That's a good answer.
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No, well, there are a couple of things to consider.
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There were letters that went between the churches.
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That's how we get the New Testament, right? And in the letters, even in the New Testament, there are men who are named, who Paul says, Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm, have nothing to do with such a one.
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So even then we can see that there were letters that went out that had named people.
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Now, somebody could obviously fake a name a lot easier then than they could now.
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They could pseudo, you know, make themselves a pseudonym a lot easier than today.
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Again, I think those letters were pretty widespread.
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But I don't have a good answer as to how it was practiced because I've never looked into that, how it was done.
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The point of the matter though is there wasn't just another church down the street you could go to.
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To go to another church, you had to pick up and leave the entire area.
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Yes, sir.
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Yes, I understand that you're probably bothered by what I said earlier, and I'm sorry if you're not understanding what I'm saying.
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No.
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But you're making a distinction that we haven't really discussed, and that's the difference between the church universal and the church local.
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Okay, the church universal is made up of every believer around the world.
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But the church local is made up of committed believers that are in covenant with one another to support and encourage one another in the body of Christ locally.
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And so while I am in the same body of Christ that every other pastor around the world is, I'm not in the same local church.
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And in my local church, there's a community that has to act these things out.
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Discipline is not done on a global scale.
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Discipline is done on a local scale.
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And so when we talk about discipline, we're talking about the local church.
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And so, with that being said, as I said, there are problems in the modern church.
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And the biggest problem is that churches will not enforce other churches' discipline.
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So if our church disciplines someone, they can leave and go to another church, be well received, and the sin is never dealt with.
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And that's a problem.
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You say, well, what do you think should happen? Well, I don't know that there is a way to solve the problem today.
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But I do think every church that takes a new member should know where they're coming from and why they left the place they came from.
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We don't encourage what's called church hopping.
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And that happens a lot in the South especially.
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People get tired of this pastor, they go to that pastor, they get tired of that pastor, they go to the other pastor, and they may be leaving a trail of sin and deception in their wake.
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So when somebody comes to our church, not only do they have to attend a class to find out what we believe and teach and make sure they agree, but they also have to tell us where they came from, why they left, what were the conditions upon their leaving.
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Because if we find out they're under the discipline of another church, we're going to investigate what happened before we ever consider bringing them into our church.
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There are churches who exercise discipline incorrectly.
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And if we were to find out that they were mistreated by another church, we wouldn't hold that against them.
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But, if we find out they're still continuing in sin, we would not accept them because they would still be under the discipline of their previous church.
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I see a lot of hands.
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Go ahead, brother.
46:26
You were first.
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I'll go to you second.
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It's a big question, and there's a lot of stuff to unpack.
46:33
Yeah, but with all these things considered, this should be pretty easy.
46:41
Okay.
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With all these things considered, the church still can't take away God's grace.
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No, absolutely.
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And that's the thing, too.
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Church discipline is not necessarily saying the person is unsaved.
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We're saying the person is living in sin.
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And that's the point.
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There's only one sin that can get you removed from the church, and that's the refusal to repent.
47:10
Right, okay.
47:11
And so they're refusing...
47:12
So we're not allowing God repentance.
47:14
No.
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If they repent, they can come back.
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Again, if we put them out, and that person...
47:18
In fact, we see that.
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In 1 Corinthians 5, that guy who was having the relationship with his mother, I believe in 2 Corinthians, that guy was restored to the church.
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And there's an example of somebody was put out, he was turned over to the world, and he realized he had sinned, and he came back, and he was restored, and it's all over.
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We never hold sin against somebody once they've repented.
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They can't do that.
47:39
So absolutely.
47:40
That can get twisted.
47:41
Absolutely.
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So not beyond the grace of God.
47:43
I agree with you, and I should have mentioned that.
47:45
Thanks for bringing that up.
47:45
Yes, sir.
47:46
Just say God restored my family.
47:55
Yeah, well my question to you in this...
47:57
Maybe we want to talk about this privately.
47:58
My question to you, why not get married? I mean, just for the broken part.
48:05
Yeah.
48:05
Well, if a couple came into our church and they were living together and they weren't married, we wouldn't allow them to join unless they married.
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And we've had that happen.
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I had an elderly couple one time come, and I remember this guy was the sweetest man in the world.
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And they were an older couple.
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And he came and talked to me.
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He goes, I want to join your church.
48:24
And I said, well, tell me about your wife.
48:26
And he said, well, she's not my wife.
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And I said, well, tell me about your sister.
48:30
Really hoping.
48:31
You know, maybe they're just...
48:36
I mean, yeah, because y'all are living together.
48:38
Y'all both gave a card and they both had the same address.
48:41
Tell me about your sister.
48:43
She's not my sister.
48:45
Are you living together? Yes.
48:48
Are you roommates? I really try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
48:51
Are y'all sharing a house because financially you need to? No, we live in the same room, same bed.
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We live as husband and wife.
48:58
But she don't want to get married.
48:59
What do you do about that? Well, I told him, I said, I love you, brother, but you're living in sin.
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And if you live in sin, we can't welcome you into the church.
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You've got to repent.
49:11
Unfortunately, he chose not to.
49:14
And that's sad because he just continues to live in sin, hoping, I guess, that grace would abound.
49:20
But the Bible tells us this.
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If we can live in sin and it not absolutely decimate our conscience...
49:28
Hebrews 12 says if you can be without discipline, you're a bastard, not a son.
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Meaning that if we can sin and it doesn't affect our conscience, we're illegitimate.
49:37
That's what the word bastard means in the King James.
49:39
It means we're not really part of the kingdom.
49:42
So that's another issue.
49:44
If a person's living in sin and he will not repent or not even consider repenting, it says something about his heart.
49:58
Well, like I said, I'd love to talk, maybe you and I could talk sometime about your situation.
50:01
I don't want to make it known to everybody.
50:03
But it's definitely not easy.
50:06
And I'm not trying to make it sound easy.
50:08
But it's serious business.
50:10
Yes, sir, brother.
50:11
What if a guy has been barfed too much? I mean, some of these women out there are what I call obscene.
50:19
I've seen these women out there.
50:20
They get married, have kids, and get divorced.
50:22
Alright, talk to you later.
50:24
I mean, I guess he gets married again.
50:27
And it happens.
50:28
He gets divorced again.
50:28
No, I just want to say, it's a serious question.
50:32
Time doesn't allow me to really address the whole question because the question of relationships and how they go south and how they go sour is a difficult one.
50:40
And it really is outside the purview of what I'm doing this morning.
50:43
But it's a good question.
50:45
I'm not trying to dismiss it.
50:46
It's just time doesn't allow it.
50:47
Last one.
50:48
Yes, sir.
50:48
What about that person? Well, that's what I was trying to do.
51:01
Do I win them over by allowing them to continue in sin? I mean, is that a condition? To be part of the church or can they still come to the church? Oh, they can still come.
51:13
They just cannot join the church.
51:15
Again, they can sit under the preaching of the gospel for as long as they will.
51:19
But I'll tell you this, after they heard that they were in sin, they didn't want to hear the gospel no more.
51:24
But yes, we don't make that a point that somebody can't come hear the gospel.
51:30
We're talking about membership.
51:31
We're talking about a part of the body.
51:33
Membership in the body is biblical.
51:35
You join the body by way of covenant and you are removed only by two ways.
51:40
You break the covenant and leave or the church removes you because you've broken the covenant in your sinful behavior.
51:48
Last one.
51:48
Go ahead.
51:49
Go ahead.
51:50
So what I'm getting from this is this falls under the category of just some of the hardest things.
51:57
Yeah, and this is the words of Christ.
51:59
I didn't make it up.
52:00
John Calvin didn't make it up.
52:02
It's just Jesus' words.
52:04
And the point Calvin was making when he said if a church doesn't do this, it's not a church.
52:09
The reason why he said that was simple.
52:11
If a church doesn't do this, then the church is allowing sin to go on without rebuke and ultimately what's going to happen is the same thing that happened with Achan.
52:22
Remember Achan? He was sinning in the camp and God's people were unable to be successful in battle because there was sin in the camp.
52:32
We will not be successful as the body of Christ as long as sin goes unrebuked.
52:39
Alright, let's pray.
52:41
Father, I thank You for Your Word.
52:43
May it be that You use this to instruct us in all righteousness.
52:48
I pray it in Christ's name.
52:49
Amen.