SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, Spring Lake Church.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning, like Bill said, my name is Garrett.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a pastor over our downtown student ministries and our young adult group.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like Bill said, we're in this series called Uncomfortable, where we're going through uncomfortable topics, things that maybe make our uh skin crawl, things that we'd rather not talk about.
SPEAKER_00: But we know that these are certain things that if you are not being discipled uh on it by the church, that's something else or someone else is going to be discipling you on it.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to dive into these uncomfortable conversations.
SPEAKER_00: And so, ready for an uncomfortable question this morning to start things off?
SPEAKER_00: Who here loves confrontation?
SPEAKER_00: Raise your hand.
SPEAKER_00: I saw two, okay.
SPEAKER_00: So most of us, most of us are not a big fan of oh, putting it back down.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, only one.
SPEAKER_00: I saw one hand now.
SPEAKER_00: Really loves confrontation.
SPEAKER_00: So love to pull the room.
SPEAKER_00: When confrontation comes, when conflict is there, how do you respond to it?
SPEAKER_00: Who here, when there's conflict, who here is an avoider?
SPEAKER_00: Who's here is like, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, let's hope it just solves itself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna put my uh head in the ground like a little ostrich, and maybe it's all gonna be fine.
SPEAKER_00: Who here uh withdraws?
SPEAKER_00: That's like a deer in the headlight that's like, I'm just gonna not do it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna maybe, maybe, maybe I'll just say here, and I don't like shut you shut down, you don't know how to really deal with it.
SPEAKER_00: Or who here is somebody that goes in guns blazing?
SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, conflict?
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm the one.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we're gonna squash this beef, we're gonna be done with this, I'm gonna run at confrontation headlong.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That we all probably fall somewhere into those big buckets of how we respond to conflict.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that in those responses, I think we maybe we miss in a little bit way of how Jesus wants us to confront each other.
SPEAKER_00: See, culture says, all right, avoid the awkward conversation, right?
SPEAKER_00: It just can be too much work, it's hard, no one likes being uncomfortable, so you're okay.
SPEAKER_00: You can just avoid it.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that you don't really need to do, do.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says, go to your brother.
SPEAKER_00: If they're in sin, go to them, talk to them.
SPEAKER_00: See, that is an uncomfortable thing to do.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why today we're talking about church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: Fun, right?
SPEAKER_00: It should be good.
SPEAKER_00: My goal is to explore three aspects of church discipline through the lens of Scripture, but also to challenge us to live up to what Jesus calls us to do, to actually be willing to tell people the truth and actually to follow through this church discipline process as it is supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: But let me pray for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Lord, we thank you so much for your word and how good it is, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that you have given it to us as a way that we can live life to the fullest, so we can live life following you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray for us this morning as we dive into uncomfortable waters together, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this all in your Son Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So as we're talking about church discipline, I think it's really helpful to bring up maybe some guidelines or some boundaries, some questions you should ask yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't know it, church discipline is not just for the leaders of the church, it's not just for the elders of the church, that actually all of us as members of the body of Christ that we are to participate in church discipline uh together.
SPEAKER_00: And so some questions that you should ask yourself before really diving in is firstly, is the person actually sinning?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's a really important question.
SPEAKER_00: Is is the person actually sinning?
SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is there would be times where we have uh things that we feel convicted about in our own hearts that aren't necessarily sin, that we have said, you know what, this is a line that I feel like I'm not comfortable doing that, but then it is not appropriate then for you to hold that standard onto somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: For example, say you're someone you're that you would say, you know what, I just don't I don't drink alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something that I feel comfortable doing, and so I don't do it, I abstain from it.
SPEAKER_00: If you then see your friend having a singular beer, say enjoying it in a responsible way, is it not appropriate for you to then to come onto them and say, you know what, you are sinning right now?
SPEAKER_00: You have to actually make sure the person is sinning.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a conviction that you hold in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: The second is that you need to ask yourself, is what this person doing, is it a mistake, or is it actually unrepentant sin, right?
SPEAKER_00: Church discipline is not for every time someone sins, every time someone messes up, that you need to jump on them and you need to go through this process, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know that sometimes people just make mistakes that they don't do what they're supposed to do and they recognize that, but then there's also a vein when somebody knows what they're doing, knows what they're sinning, and they come at it with a posture of just like, ah, I just don't, I just don't really care.
SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't really bother me.
SPEAKER_00: And they're unrepentant, that they have not turned from this sin and turned towards Jesus and say, Jesus, forgive me for what I have done.
SPEAKER_00: So I think those first two questions I think just are good in our minds.
SPEAKER_00: We're thinking about how do we go through this process.
SPEAKER_00: And so this first aspect of church discipline that I want to talk about is that this is that church discipline is truthful.
SPEAKER_00: That church discipline is truthful, that we are called to confront fellow Christians living in sin, and we are called to share with them the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Here actually I have a uh proverb from Proverbs 27, 5.
SPEAKER_00: It says that better is open rebuke than hidden love.
SPEAKER_00: Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy of multiple kisses.
SPEAKER_00: You can leave that up there.
SPEAKER_00: I think that this passage talks about how it's better for us to openly rebuke somebody, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's better for us to openly share the hurtful truths rather than not say anything, rather than to uh rather than to stay uh what we say we would call love, but avoiding those hard conversations, avoiding the ones where we actually were going to call them out.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this, just as a culture, that this is our biggest struggle, that we don't like calling out sin.
SPEAKER_00: That we don't like looking somebody in the eye and saying what they are doing is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: We don't like doing it.
SPEAKER_00: We think it's better to say, like, you know what, I'm not gonna step on somebody else's toes.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna, I don't know their life, I don't know their story, I don't know their marriage, and so you know what, I'm just not gonna step into it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't wanna be that person, I don't want to be judgmental, so I'd rather just avoid what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we like to do other Christianese things to make it better, right?
SPEAKER_00: We say, you know what, uh, I'm just gonna be praying for that person, which is a good thing, but we can, instead of actually confronting them with truth, we're willing to say it, we're willing to avoid conversations and do other things where Jesus calls us that we should be doing that, that we are commanded to call out our fellow believers' sin.
SPEAKER_00: You might ask, okay, like, okay, what does it look like?
SPEAKER_00: How do I how do I do it?
SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure I'm doing it the right way.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus, he gives us uh instructions on how to do it, of what this confrontation is to look like.
SPEAKER_00: So we have here from Matthew 18, verses 17, uh 15 to 17, it goes If your brother or sister sins, go and point out to their fault, just between the two of you.
SPEAKER_00: If they listen to you, you have won them over.
SPEAKER_00: But if they will not listen, take one or two other believers along, so that every matter may be established by a testimony of two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church.
SPEAKER_00: And if they refuse to listen, um even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: And so it starts off right away.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gives us instruction, he's talking uh to pe uh uh to these people, and he gets say, This is what I want you to do when there is sin, when someone has this unrepentant sin in their life, the first command is to go to them.
SPEAKER_00: It's to go and to talk to them.
SPEAKER_00: Notice they says, I don't want you to gossip about them, I don't want you to avoid them, I don't want you to pretend that they are not living uh a sinless sinful life.
SPEAKER_00: We're called to confront them and to tell them the truth, to go to them.
SPEAKER_00: But notice how we're supposed to start, right?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I want you to go just one-on-one.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to go to the go to that brother or sister and talk to them about their sin.
SPEAKER_00: That we don't need to go in with a full artillery strike and go with a whole bunch of people, like a full intervention.
SPEAKER_00: No, we're supposed to go one-on-one.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus knows the power of intimate relationships with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says, go to one of them and share.
SPEAKER_00: And if they go and they turn, right?
SPEAKER_00: It says that if you point out their fault their fault and they listen to you, that you have won them over.
SPEAKER_00: That praise God.
SPEAKER_00: That the goal is to have them repent from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: But he says if they aren't willing to listen, then you're then to go to the next step, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then you're supposed to go and then you'll grab two or three more people, and then with that group, you're then to go to that person who's then living in unrepentant sin, and you are to then again call them out, tell them their fault.
SPEAKER_00: And having more people there is there for multiple multitude of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: One, you just have more voices, right?
SPEAKER_00: You have more people that are for that person.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just now one person, it'd be multiple multiple people saying, Hey, what you are doing is wrong, that you are living in sin, that you need to stop what you are doing.
SPEAKER_00: So that's one benefit of it.
SPEAKER_00: But then also, uh, from the Old Testament, uh, there in uh Deuteronomy 19, there was uh the standard that if you wanted to uh actually uh show that somebody was committing a crime, that it couldn't just be your word against their word, but you would need multi multiple witnesses to actually confirm what is going on.
SPEAKER_00: So in the same way, this is uh for protect or this is a protection not only uh for the person that's saying, but the person who's being accused.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just hearsay of one person saying something, another person saying something, that's multiple witnesses saying, we can confirm that this person is living in unrepentant sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so again, that group of two to three people, they go to this person and they talk to them about their sin.
SPEAKER_00: They call them out and showing them what they're doing is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And then again, if they still refuse, then it goes up again, it says, then it says, to bring it to the church, to bring it to the assembly of people that are there, that the whole church would then go and say, You must stop.
SPEAKER_00: That you cannot do what you're doing anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You must turn from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And if they still refuse to repent from their sins, sins, then it says that you are to treat them like a pagan or a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: If you know about the uh Bible, that tax collectors especially were not viewed in a very uh warm light, that tax collectors were viewed.
SPEAKER_00: They were Jewish traitors, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're people that were now working for Rome, working for the empire, and they were the ones that were persecuting their fellow kinsmen, that they were Jews persecuting other Jews and extorting them for money.
SPEAKER_00: And so the Jewish people did not look at them with a very uh fondness, and the same with pagans, that these are people outside of God's people and were not viewed with a very uh uh fondness as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus says, in the same way that you treat those people, that is how you are to treat somebody that is in unrepentant sin, that this person is to be excluded from covenant community.
SPEAKER_00: This person is to be uh not welcomed anymore into the assembly of the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: And I know right now, this is probably the part of the passage that feels the most uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: It can make you feel like, oh okay, maybe we should let's let's just backpedal this a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Do we actually need to go that far?
SPEAKER_00: Is that actually the lengths that things need to go to?
SPEAKER_00: And before we before we actually think those things, I think, and before we start questioning whether this is really the right way to do something, I think we should look at how we actually have gotten here.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is not the first thing that needs to happen, that there are multiple steps, right?
SPEAKER_00: First you start with one, and then you start with a smaller group, and then you start with a church, and then finally the last thing to do is to then exclude this person, to remove them from this church.
SPEAKER_00: That this is an intentional process, that this process that Jesus has put forward has never been about kicking people out.
SPEAKER_00: It's never been about excluding people, about excommunicating people.
SPEAKER_00: That this has always been a process of giving people plenty of runway to turn around, for them to look back and say, Oh my gosh, what have I been doing?
SPEAKER_00: Why have I been living this way?
SPEAKER_00: It's giving them plenty of leeway, plenty of opportunity for them to come back home and understand the error of their ways and to repent.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why we have this process for church discipline here at Spring Lake Church.
SPEAKER_00: That we have taken this and it's pretty close to what it is here in Matthew 18 with a couple uh changes.
SPEAKER_00: Firstly, it's the same where you start one-on-one.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you have, say, somebody in your life group that is living in this unrepentant sin, that they have confessed it, and over time they've kind of got callous to the sin, then you are to go to them one-on-one and to call them out and saying, Hey, I see how you're living, and I I want you to repent that what you're doing is not good, that it's not right, that you must turn from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And again, if they refuse, you bring it up and you get some more people and you go confront this person.
SPEAKER_00: And if they still refuse, uh, and Matthew 18 says to bring to the church, but in this case, what we would say is that you would bring it to the elders, which there are elders of our church, so people who are leading this church that are elected by you as a congregation.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's how we get there, is that they're a representation of you, the whole church, and that this person is then going to meet with the elders.
SPEAKER_00: And then from there, again, if they're still in refusal, they're still saying, you know what, I I don't want to repent from the sin.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think maybe they think that they're not sinning, then from there we would say, Okay, that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: We're actually gonna then uh ask you to then not come back.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna ask you uh to then not be involved and to stay away from any church activity until repentance does take place.
SPEAKER_00: So that is our process here at Spring Lake, and actually uh it is written down in all of our member booklets.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you were a member or if you've gone through the membership process, you can see that we have this laid out, written out, and so you can go and you can see it for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And this is something that if you are a member here at Spring Lake, that this is something that you have agreed to, meaning that you agree to take uh part in it, especially on like starting out on the ground level, but also it means that you are submitting to this, that if you are ever in error, that if you were ever an unrepentant sin, that you would say, I will then actually go through with this process.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not just gonna back out and say, you know what, I'm just not gonna, whatever, I'm just gonna leave.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually gonna go through the entire process of it.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: having a process doesn't mean much if we're not willing to go and take the first step.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the first step isn't going to the elders, it is us.
SPEAKER_00: We are the ones to go.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, right?
SPEAKER_00: The first step is for us that if we see our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ living in this unrepentant sin, that we are to go to them.
SPEAKER_00: See, Pastor Arlen over at our Lawrence campus, he has this phrase that I love.
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's it's really quick and simple.
SPEAKER_00: It's that Christians have courage.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have courage.
SPEAKER_00: And usually uh he's used it in the context of that Christians have courage to stand up for the gospel and be willing to share the truth of the gospel with any and all people, regardless of the ramifications, and they're people that are bold in their faith and willing to share it.
SPEAKER_00: But I think it's also very applicable to this state this context as well that Christians have courage, that they're willing to stand up for the truth and share the truth, even with their brothers and sisters that are wandering, that do not know what the actual truth is, that Christians have courage and are willing to remind people of what the truth actually is.
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, I think that we, myself included, at times, that we don't have courage, that we're not courageous, that actually we are fearful more than we would like to admit, that we are afraid, that we do not like to be uncomfortable, that we fear what they'll think of us, we fear the awkward conversations, we fear the loss of friendships, that we've allowed the fear of man to be louder than the fear of God.
SPEAKER_00: That we are afraid people, and so my encouragement to you is that Christians need to have courage, that we need to be willing to do the uncomfortable thing.
SPEAKER_00: We need to be able to love each other enough to tell them the truth, to be willing to step out and call sin what it is, especially unrepentant sin, and to call these people back home.
SPEAKER_00: But also, here is where we need to be careful, because we can quickly go from being courageous to being cruelful.
SPEAKER_00: We can quickly go from sharing the truth to then trampling them with that truth as well, that we need to know what we are to do to call out sin, but we also need to know how we ought to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Brings me to our second aspect, because that Christian uh church discipline is loving, that it is truthful and it is loving as well.
SPEAKER_00: So not only is our church discipline uh supposed to be this truth from God's word that calls out sin, but is also supposed to be loving as well, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not supposed it's not never a question of either or of do I tell the truth of this tell the truth right now, or do I love somebody right now?
SPEAKER_00: No, that we are supposed to do both of them at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4, 15 says that we are to speak the truth in love.
SPEAKER_00: That these two things are not, again, at odds with one another, but they're two sides of the same coin, that we do them at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul tells us the posture that we are to take when confronting our brothers and sisters who have fallen into sin.
SPEAKER_00: We see this in Galatians 6, verses 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently, but watch yourself, or you may also be tempted.
SPEAKER_00: Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul, again, he calls us to confront our brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: He says, When someone is fallen into sin, that you should go to them and then point out their sin, but he says that you, by the power of the Spirit, are to restore them gently.
SPEAKER_00: That that is the posture, that is how we ought to do that.
SPEAKER_00: We're to restore them gently, right?
SPEAKER_00: Paul has just finished in the chapter before talking about the fruit of the spirit, right?
SPEAKER_00: All of those, and now he wants to highlight one of them that our confrontation confrontation needs to be bathed in gentleness, right?
SPEAKER_00: This meekness, right?
SPEAKER_00: That we are not to then trample these people with our words, but we are to love them as well, right?
SPEAKER_00: There's all we always love this old adage, right?
SPEAKER_00: That sticks and stones can't uh will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Words hurt, words can be painful, words can uh degrade us down.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to be careful with the words that we are using, that we need to make sure that we don't use the truth uh as a hammer to then and then we see nail, we just want to go to town on all of them.
SPEAKER_00: No, we need to make sure that we use our words carefully.
SPEAKER_00: And again, we are truthful, but we are also loving as well, that our words should be gentle.
SPEAKER_00: We should be able to be willing to love our people as we tell them the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul also puts in there a warning.
SPEAKER_00: He says, right, to I want you to restore this person gently, but watch out, because you will be tempted.
SPEAKER_00: You might be asking, okay, in what way will I be tempted?
SPEAKER_00: And I think what Paul is trying to get at here uh is this idea of pride that Paul wants us as we're calling out people's sin, that we should not be puffed up in our own self, that we not look down our nose at some people in their sin and be thinking, oh my gosh, I can't believe this person's they're doing that?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: I can't I can't believe they're I can't believe they're still living in that way.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe they're falling into that sin.
SPEAKER_00: That we need to be on guard, that we are not coming at them, that we're not confronting them with this posture of pride and puffed upness, but we need to be humble and gentle with them.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus talks about this in Matthew 7, right?
SPEAKER_00: The parable, uh, the parable of I need to watch out.
SPEAKER_00: When you see the speck in your brother's eye, you must not go to them while you still have a log in your eye, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that when you go and you see somebody who's struggling with something, you need to not be the hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot call someone out when you are struggling with that same exact thing.
SPEAKER_00: And so we need to come at uh confronting sin not with this posture of judgment or pride and thinking yourselves better, but a posture of gentleness and love.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul finished up the section by talking that we need to be carrying each other's burdens, as brothers and sisters in Christ, that we belong together.
SPEAKER_00: That again, we like that language that we are brothers, that we are sisters, that we, through Jesus Christ, have been united together to that we belong to something bigger than ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And that means that we care for one another.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way that you, if you have siblings, you know this that you are blood, that you are family, that you care for one another, that one of you is struggling, that you want to help the other person.
SPEAKER_00: And so what that doesn't look like is just calling somebody out and then leaving them be.
SPEAKER_00: But no, caring looks much, much deeper than that.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there are times that we desire to separate.
SPEAKER_00: Love and truth from one another, that we want to use them separately.
SPEAKER_00: That there's we think there's times when we just need to love somebody right now, and then we think that there are times when we need to share the truth with them.
SPEAKER_00: And there's honestly times when we probably hold truth higher.
SPEAKER_00: That we want to say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: Truth needs to be shared no matter what the cost is.
SPEAKER_00: This kind of scorched earth policy that I'm going to share the truth, and I don't care who I hurt, I don't care who I offend, that the truth needs to be uh called out when it needs to be called out.
SPEAKER_00: There's sometimes a desire that we need to get to the truth really quickly and really hard, that we feel like, oh my gosh, if I don't, if I don't share the truth of this person right now, like what could happen to them?
SPEAKER_00: Which is true, but I don't want you to confuse urgency with harshness, right?
SPEAKER_00: That you don't need to think, oh my gosh, if I don't do this right now, what could happen to them?
SPEAKER_00: Because then we put ourselves in the position of God of thinking that you are actually in control of saving this person, of helping this person repent.
SPEAKER_00: But that's only what Jesus can do.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus, through the power of the Spirit, can bring conviction to someone's heart and help them move from death towards life to repent from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we're in these conversations as well, that we just know that it's gonna take time.
SPEAKER_00: That, right?
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know if you've ever been in a conversation with somebody that's stuck in this, that it's usually not a one-off conversation that you have, and they're like, oh, oh my gosh, I didn't even know.
SPEAKER_00: And then they go and they repent from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's gonna, it's gonna take time.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna take multiple meetings, multiple conversations, a lot of hours of dialogue with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And so in those times, I want you just to be patient, right?
SPEAKER_00: Another fruit of the spirit, patience in this whole situation, that sometimes it just will take moments that you need to wait and be patient, and you need to hear them, and you need to dialogue with them.
SPEAKER_00: That again, it doesn't always have to be the truth all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just you need to hear what's going on, and you need to again you can supplement the truth there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And also just a lot of prayer, right?
SPEAKER_00: That that we need to let God work.
SPEAKER_00: And so often that does involve praying for them and asking that God would intervene and move in their life.
SPEAKER_00: Here, our motivation should be uh to love them throughout this entire process, not just wanting to tell them the truth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough just to correct somebody, to tell them the truth and then leave them be for them to figure them out, figure it out themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Say someone's drowning, somebody's drowning, and I see them and I'm on the beach and I say, hey, stop doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Technically true, right?
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying they should they should stop drowning.
SPEAKER_00: But no, is that actually helpful?
SPEAKER_00: No, I should run into the water, I should have a life preserver, I should throw it to them, I should try to bring them back to shore, I should try to bring them back from this state.
SPEAKER_00: That's what actual love looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Not just saying, like, here's the sin, stop doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I've done my part, I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: No, being a brothers and sisters, carrying each other's burdens looks like going into the water, going into the mess, going into the uncomfortable situation and willing to help them out.
SPEAKER_00: That's what our church discipline needs to look like.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not just us going to our brothers and sisters in their sin and telling them, hey, stop doing that, don't do what you're doing, but saying, like, I want you to stop what you're doing, and I'm here for you.
SPEAKER_00: That I want to help you, that I want to be part of this process in which you repent.
SPEAKER_00: But that then raises one final question.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why are we willing to have these uncomfortable conversations?
SPEAKER_00: Because right, if it's all about just punishment, but we just want to punish people, then there's no point to having these conversations, right?
SPEAKER_00: Unless there's something behind uh something behind all these conversations.
SPEAKER_00: And why we want to do this, why we want to enter into these uncomfortable conversations is because we want to see these people be restored.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see these people be redeemed, which is our third aspect, because that church discipline is restorative.
SPEAKER_00: That church discipline is restorative.
SPEAKER_00: Now we get into what is the end game?
SPEAKER_00: What is the goal for church discipline?
SPEAKER_00: That we want to see people repent.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see people turn from their sinful ways and turn back towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, this is where some churches and some pastors have gone awry.
SPEAKER_00: That they have done things the wrong way, uh, and has which has led to abuse and church hurt, where elders and leaders can think that they can wield their authority how they wish, and they can hurt people with it, that they can call people out for unwise and inappropriate reasons that can lead to people in the church not liking leadership and feeling that this church discipline is not a good thing, that they see it only as a punishment, only as uh only as just a bludgeon for certain people.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're if you're in this space and you've experienced that, you've experienced leaders and elders using this inappropriately, that I just want to say, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry you had to go through that.
SPEAKER_00: That is not what Jesus intended for this process.
SPEAKER_00: And we see you, and we're so glad that you're here at Spring Lake, and I pray that this would be a spot where you could heal, where you can uh that you would be able to be redeemed from that situation.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we look at God's word, we can see that if church discipline is done correctly, then hopefully by the power of Jesus Christ, that the end goal is restoration through repentance.
SPEAKER_00: Here let's look at 1 Corinthians 5, 5, together.
SPEAKER_00: It says, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you're familiar with 1 Corinthians, you would know that Paul, he's talking to this church in Corinth about a situation where a man has been practicing incest.
SPEAKER_00: And in this, he sees that people that they're not behaving how they're should.
SPEAKER_00: He asks them, like, why have you not excluded this man already?
SPEAKER_00: Why are you not mourning at this situation?
SPEAKER_00: Because this man, he's unrepentant.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul here, he tells them what they should do, that they're supposed to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh.
SPEAKER_00: And so that sounds maybe worse than it actually is.
SPEAKER_00: But what again Paul's getting at is this process of church discipline.
SPEAKER_00: That what they're doing here, this is a picture of that they're to exclude him from the gathering, that they're actually giving him what he wants.
SPEAKER_00: That when someone is living in this unrepentant sin, they're saying, like, this is what I want.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to turn from what I do, that I'm fine with what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't bother me.
SPEAKER_00: And so, in that, when you exclude somebody, when you say, you're no longer welcome to be part of this assembly, you're saying we're actually just saying, like, okay, if that's how you would like to live, then I'm going to let you live in that way.
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to live that way, you can't be with us.
SPEAKER_00: And for we might, and some of us might feel like, actually, like, that doesn't, it doesn't seem that bad, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're just kind of kicking them out of church.
SPEAKER_00: They can go find somewhere else.
SPEAKER_00: That's not too bad.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to think of the first century Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Think about them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Think about this man in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: This person, say he's a pagan, he's came to life, he's rejected his pagan ways, and he's living for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And now he is then not living for Jesus, he's living in unrepentant sin, and now he's excluded from this community.
SPEAKER_00: So he can't go back to the pagans, right?
SPEAKER_00: They don't like him.
SPEAKER_00: He's left their culture, but now he's left his Christian believers.
SPEAKER_00: And so now he's stuck here in the middle, he's nowhere to go.
SPEAKER_00: There's not another church in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like here where we have the benefit of having churches a block away, right?
SPEAKER_00: That he would have to go miles away.
SPEAKER_00: He'd have to uproot everything that he has.
SPEAKER_00: And so right now he can't trade, he can't really live, he is all alone.
SPEAKER_00: He has nobody there.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why when it says handing over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that what this person would be experiencing right now is this inaugurated eschatological view of what hell is, meaning that this person, when you're being excluded, is that they're supposed to get a taste of what hell is really like.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This person, that they're cut off from God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And he's supposed to experience what it's like being a cut off from God's presence, that this person would be truly alone.
SPEAKER_00: That is what's happening right now, that they're experiencing the destruction of their flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Ryan, we talked about hell, that word destruction is this word that's really associated with hell.
SPEAKER_00: But we have to remember that this consequence is not the end goal.
SPEAKER_00: The end goal is not to just exclude them and to kick them out and to say, we don't want you.
SPEAKER_00: That there is hope, right?
SPEAKER_00: That uh that Paul continues, he says, that to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The hope is that God would use this time, that would use this consequence, that would use this suffering to reveal his sin to him and to repent.
SPEAKER_00: It's not to make him suffer, not to make him revel, not to revel in his agony, but that he would experience the consequences of his actions.
SPEAKER_00: That he'd experience the ways that he's been hurting other people and hurting himself, and that it'd be in that moment that he would be able to ask for forgiveness and repent.
SPEAKER_00: That is the whole goal of doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Whole goal is again is not just to be a punishment for punishment's sake, but is again to restore people.
SPEAKER_00: It is to bring them back, is for them to repent and to be redeemed from that situation.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you start this process with somebody, that if there's somebody in your life that you know that you need to confront on the ways that they're living, then if they claim to be a follower of Jesus and it then gets this point where they need to be excluded, they need to be uh, for lack of a better term, kicked out, not being allowed to then uh participate in church activity and know that what you are doing is good.
SPEAKER_00: That you are not just punishing them for punishing them's sake, but you are helping them towards restoration.
SPEAKER_00: That what you're doing is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes consequences are necessary, right?
SPEAKER_00: Any of us who have children, we know this: that consequences are a good thing.
SPEAKER_00: It helps them to learn that what they're going through is needed, that they need it to learn what they're doing is a bad thing.
SPEAKER_00: That the goal is not to communicate, we don't want you, but it's meant to communicate, we want you so bad that we want you to repent.
SPEAKER_00: We want you to turn from what you are doing.
SPEAKER_00: So we look at these three aspects that church discipline is it's truthful, it's loving, and it's restorative.
SPEAKER_00: That is what it should look like.
SPEAKER_00: These again, all three of these things should not be subbed out for one another, but they should all be together.
SPEAKER_00: When we go through corrupt church discipline, all these things should be held together.
SPEAKER_00: But I think before we think about actually going through this process of somebody, that we should take time and we should pause and we should remember how we have been graciously restored and redeemed by Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: That before we then get into a space of being judgmental and looking down at somebody for what they are doing, that we need to remember that we have all been saved, that we have all been redeemed, that we have all been restored.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus said he loved us enough not to leave us in our sin.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus, he pursued us, he confronted our sin, he bore our punishment, and he made a way for us to come home.
SPEAKER_00: And so we can never think ourselves as too big that we are not the ones who have saved ourselves, we are not the ones who have repented.
SPEAKER_00: We're not sorry, we're not the ones who have restored our own self.
SPEAKER_00: It is only through Jesus that we have been able to actually fully be redeemed.
SPEAKER_00: So as followers of Jesus, we should be willing in the same way to pursue our brothers and sisters, in the same way that Jesus has pursued us and died for us and help us to be restored.
SPEAKER_00: We should be willing to speak truth to their sin, to love them in gentleness and humility.
SPEAKER_00: And we should help them to be restored by the power of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So let me pray for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Lord, we thank you for Jesus, and we thank you for his death that brings us new life, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that it's through him that we have been restored.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, I pray for those in our life, those Christians who are wandering, who are living in unrepentant sin, Lord, I pray that they would hear the truth from one of us, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that we would be willing to be courageous enough, that we'd be willing to step into the uncomfortable situation, that we'd be willing to say something to them, to call out their sin, that we'd be willing to love them enough in that situation, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Lord, that we'd be able to do that, Lord, and that you would get a hold of their heart, Lord, that you would help them to see their sin, to open their eyes to the ways that they've been living, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray, Lord, that you would help that person to then be restored.
SPEAKER_00: That you would help that person to live for you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we know that's only possible because of your son Jesus, that he is the one that has first died for us.
SPEAKER_00: So help us to pursue others in the way that Jesus has pursued us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for who you are.
SPEAKER_00: I pray this in your Son Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.