Day 195: Sin Confrontation 3

July 14
Today's Connected Readings: 

• 1 Corinthians 4:14-21; 5:1-13 [Deuteronomy 21:21, 2 Corinthians 2:5-8] 
• 2 Corinthians 12:11-21 
• Galatians 2:11-20; 6:1-5
• 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15 
• 1 Timothy 1:18-20; 5:17-20 
• 2 Timothy 2:14-19 
• Titus 3:9-11 [Romans 16:17-18] 
• 3 John 9-11 
• Revelation 2:1-7

Transcript

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Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. Thank you so much for joining us for day number 195 of the Canon Connected and our third and final day on the biblical topic of confrontation. We've talked uh about a lot of different passages, and yesterday Dustin helped me, you know, work through a lot of the most important principles when it comes to confrontation. You know, things like, you know, how sometimes things seem unkind when they really are loving. Um, and American culture definitely makes the word offend or offense bad words, their sins. You should, I mean, you should not offend, okay, when biblical theology says yes, you should, if it's done in humility and done in love. And so we have to risk that sometimes. Sometimes we have to sever relationships, but we'll see again today if if there if unrepentant sin is a part of it. That's absolutely biblical, even if people think it's unforgiving and unloving and unaccepting. Uh, those are the again risks we have to take. Um, and how we have to do this by self-evaluating first. That's Matthew 7. We're going to see that again with Galatians 6. The humility that comes from understanding I'm a sinner too. I cannot come at you with this, you know, you're bad, and I'm the holy righteous, you know, Christian confronting you, um, is completely unbiblical. And I'm sure that's been a lot of what, you know, people have dealt with that have dealt with church hurt. Um, and so a lot of things that that Dustin and I talked about yesterday will be overlap again to today. Again, I think the repetition, I hope, is helpful. Um, but we start today with uh several passages in Corinthians, and it's obvious that Paul has a very messy relationship with them. He loves them so much, and he has deep emotions. We'll see in 2 Corinthians some wild, wild emotions, in my opinion. But it's because he loves them. Love does create messiness, love creates very extreme emotions. He's that's what he says and opens up our first passage from 1 Corinthians 4 today. I'm not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. That fits in so well with, you know, it seems unkind, but I'm doing it to warn you because I love you. God, Paul handed at least three people over to Satan, not because he hated them, but because he loved them. All right, same thing here. Um and he closes by saying, Which do you choose? Should I come with a rod to punish you, or should I come with love and a gentle spirit? And the idea is if you repent, okay, if you change your behavior, then you get love and a gentle spirit. But if you don't, then again, you get what seems to be harsh. And that is again a reality. It's just the reality of the fallen world we live in. And I will say this, you know, if you've ever been in a situation where you feel like even if you weren't a leader or a pastor or whatever, if you feel like you've had a relationship with the church the way Paul had with the Corinthians, because he it really is messy and it really is, you know, just difficult, and it is absolutely just uh just so much dysfunction here. And then again, I don't think this is very uncommon. Um there's a lot of healthy churches out there, I'm sure, and no doubt, this may be something some people that are listening to this never have to deal with, but it is absolutely a reality. You get a bunch of sinners together, and especially, you know, whenever things like self-righteousness get involved, and things like, you know, I'm more important or I want my way, you know, that sort of thing. It creates things like this. And so Paul just absolutely, you know, is I mean, he's wearing his shoulders on his sleeve, so to speak, in these books, especially 2 Corinthians. We'll see. 1 Corinthians 5, Paul um Dustin and I delved into that. But again, important things here, you have to cut sin off or it'll spread just like gangrene through a through a body. It's more kind to amputate a foot, okay? If the foot has a disease, it's gonna spread through the body than it is to say, well, that's gonna cause a person pain, or to be, you know, they're gonna have special needs the rest of their life, they're gonna be handicapped, and so we don't want to do that. But in reality, that's the it's the most, you know, it's the most loving thing, is the most merciful thing for sure. And also, you know, that you know, you hand somebody over to Satan for their love, to for to save them, to make to wake them up, you know, like the prodigal son with the with the wanting to eat pig slop. Sometimes people need those kind of horror, horrible circumstances to spiritually arouse them. And so, and again, and how Paul even says, you know, as I've said, we've said yesterday, don't even eat with such a person, don't have anything to do with them. Oh, that's again so unloving, so unaccepting, you know, and that's again the a wrong way to look at these things. Paul clearly is approaching this with love and humility, and yet um he's not he's not being judgmental. And so I'm sure he is still, you know, like in a modern America, he would definitely be judged for this, I don't doubt. I I put Deuteronomy 21 in 21, 21 in there because it has this idea purge the evil from among you, get the gangrene, you know, out of the body, do whatever it takes, okay? Even if it seems harsh and judgmental and offensive and unloving. And then 2 Corinthians starts by, I think, this is not 100% because he doesn't say it plainly, but it's likely that this person in 2 Corinthians 2 is the same man from 1 Corinthians 5 who was doing the horrible perverse sexual sin. And because he did repent, I don't think there's any way that Paul would have taken him back without repentance. It's just not a biblical, you know, uh biblical um thing to do that. He says, now it's time to forgive and comfort him, otherwise he may be overcome by discouragement. The assumption here to me is whoever this is has repented. And then 2 Corinthians 12. Oh my goodness, Paul here just he he's I I don't want to be irreverent about the Bible or say anything falsely, okay? I want to be very careful. But if uh if I could say it this way, all right, it almost seems like Paul is having a meltdown. All right. And I mean, he is absolut the sarcasm here, the anger, just, I mean, he is just, he feels like he is undone emotionally. And I do believe 110% the spirit inspired this, but I'm also just crazy enough to believe that the spirit could inspire people using their personality and using their circumstances and using things that are very human. It's the word of God, but this is a human being writing this. And emotions obviously are from God. God has extreme emotions for sure, but just Paul, some of the way he handles this is like it's very real. You know, he gets so mad at these people, and he feels like, and almost like he's coming across, like he feels, you know, like he he he doesn't have, you know, self-value or self-worth, or he feels insecure, it would be a better way to say it truly, about the super apostles, you know. But the whole idea here is he is having to confront these people. And again, as I've said before, a lot of people believe these last four chapters of 2 Corinthians were written, you know, with a completely different perspective than the first part, and that they may have even been a different letter and they were just put together. But Paul confronting the Corinthians here is just, and through this letter and him sending Titus and everything, it's just it's just messy. It's it's uh it's Paul being very, you know, I mean, just so transparent and just so, you know, unsightly, really. I mean, when you read this carefully, it's like, I mean, Paul is like undone. He just, he just, it feels like he's becoming unglued as spiritually as he possibly can, because again, he is writing the word of God. Contrast to this, though, we see Paul confront Peter in second in Galatians chapter 2. I'm sure he is very emotional, but again, he's very, you know, he's he's he's absolutely laser-focused on this. And so he he does confront again with love and with clarity. It doesn't feel like the way he's talking to the Corinthians, but but Peter needed this because Peter knew better than to than to ostracize the Gentiles. And so Paul had to judge him, or well, like we could say judge him, but he had to confront him. Um, and he did it, he did it well. And then Galatians 6, which echoes again Matthew 7, I think, getting the beam out of your own eye. When you confront somebody, do it in such a way, gently and humbly, help that person back onto the right path and be careful not to fall in the temptation yourself. When you confront, you have to have it in the back of your mind. Whatever the person is dealing with, you could fall into that very same trap or something similar. That's humility. We should not come again on a high horse at anybody with confrontation, but with the idea of this could be me, you know, but at the same time being clear and being direct and being, you know, bold in the sense of this is what the Bible says. More that Paul has to say about, you know, um, take notes, take note of those who refuse to obey what we say in this letter, stay away from them. That's a running theme throughout all this. You have to sometimes sever relationships, even to use modern, you know, terminology, you know, toxic relationships spiritually, unrepentant relationships, you have to sever them at times, generally speaking. But he also says in Second Thessalonians, don't think of them as enemies, but warn them as you would a brother or sister. A running theme. You love a person so you warn them. That's exactly what you would do if a hurricane were coming, right? Okay, and it's the same thing spiritually. You have to warn people. Hymenius and Alexander are two examples. Faith has been shipwrecked to hand them over to Satan, so they might not learn, they might learn not to blaspheme God. Again, he's doing it for their good. He's taking extreme measures to help people to understand how how how awful sin is. Um And then several other times all throughout, you know, these these letters to Timothy, you know, and Titus, um, Paul does the same thing. He he he he he constantly refers to these same kind of things. You know, you give warnings, you warn people, um, you confront sin because again, without it, you know, God is not honored, and it does cause you to sin whenever you don't do that. And then Paul also mentions in Romans, I can make one more appeal, my dear brothers and sisters, watch out for people who cause division and upset people's face, uh, people's faith by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught. Stay away from them. Again, the same idea uh that he's talked about many, many times. Stay away from them. Um and then we close with third third John in Revelation. Third John definitely talks about this uh Diatrophes, who loves to be the leader, refuses to have anything to do with us. When I come, I will report some of the things he's doing and evil accusations he's making against us. Not only does he refuse to welcome the traveling teachers, but he also tells others not to help them. Dear friend, don't let this bad example influence you. Sometimes it's not confrontation is not even about the person causing the sin, but it's warning other people not to be like them. I think that fits under the umbrella of this teaching as well. And then and then John writing on behalf of God to the church at Ephesus, the same thing. Confrontation. Um telling people whenever they're sinning, having the courage and the boldness and the love and the humility to to deal with the messiness of having to tell people about their own sin. And again, anybody who is has to do this sort of thing, that you have to be the kind of person that can receive it as well. I'm very thankful for the people who have confronted me in my life. In fact, I would say the people that I love the most in my life, the people that I would go to the wall for, the people that I have the deepest relationships with, the people I would say are the greatest men, typically speaking, my wife has to confront me sometimes too. But the men in my life, you know, people like my father, people like James Evans, people like Dave in Chicago, the ones who have had to tell me my sins and my faults and my weaknesses, they're the ones that I I could write novels worth of, you know, information about their integrity and character and and testify about them because they love me enough to confront me and to tell me what my what my issues were, what my sins were, what where I needed to repent. And so this is an important topic. It has to be done right, it has to be done well, and I hope these three days have done service to the biblical, you know, theology of this. And again, we're all definitely always open to questions and feedbacks and even criticisms. But we are gonna turn the page now. Um we're gonna get into uh blasphemy over the next couple of days. This definitely could have been done with uh taking God's name in vain, but it is a different category of theology, but it's very similar, you know, speaking wrong things about God. So do two days worth of that. So I hope you'll come back and be with us again as we continue to read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections. Thank you.