SPEAKER_00: Okay, do you know how to find 2 Corinthians in your Bibles?
SPEAKER_00: It is in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: Turn there in your Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put it up on the screen, but if you have a Bible, I want you to be able to have it in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: We're in chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to remind you as we start that God made you a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God designed you.
SPEAKER_00: And as you are aligned with God's purposes and his plans, when you surrender your life to Jesus Christ and you're a follower of Jesus, these things become real.
SPEAKER_00: You are a blessed person because what Jesus did for you on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: You're able to stand in that image-bearing nature because of what Jesus' work in you of redeeming you and restoring you back to that image.
SPEAKER_00: And then you're a covenant partner because of what Jesus did on the cross, giving us the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we travel through 2 Corinthians, we're asking this question of what is what is new what does 2 Corinthians teach us?
SPEAKER_00: What does it look like for us to be those people based off of 2 Corinthians?
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to talk about the place of pain, sorrow, and grief in the Christian life, as well as the theme of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about what happens when we take things too far with pain.
SPEAKER_00: Just as a recap, last week we were in 2 Corinthians 1.15 through 2.4, and we saw that Paul explained why he didn't want to be the one causing grief, inflicting pain on the Corinthian church.
SPEAKER_00: It was because this church was meant to be a source of joy to Paul.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul is in this, has this tension.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard the saying between a rock and a hard place?
SPEAKER_00: Paul was between a rock and a hard place because he had pastoral duties.
SPEAKER_00: It was his responsibility to care for this flock and correct the things that they were doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: But there was also this relational dynamic that they were supposed to be the source of his joy and he was to be the source of their joy.
SPEAKER_00: And there was supposed to be this happiness and encouragement that's flowing from the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And so last week we saw that Paul said, I changed my plans a little bit to spare you a painful visit.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't come there yet.
SPEAKER_00: I am going to come there, but I haven't come there yet because I want to spare you the pain.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to look at chapter 2, verses 5 through 11.
SPEAKER_00: Paul turns the corner and he shows us that while sorrow is sometimes necessary in relationships, it must never be allowed to run wild.
SPEAKER_00: Grief has a godly purpose, but it also has godly limits.
SPEAKER_00: You'll see what we're talking about in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: When we ignore those limits, we end up wounding people God is calling us to restore.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we talk about pain coming from relationships, I'm sure you've never experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: It's just theoretical.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: It is one of the most common human experiences, whether it's a boss you don't like, or it's a family member that's hurt you, or maybe something was done wrong, and that person had to go to jail because of what they did wrong, or they should have gone to jail, and you're processing through the pain.
SPEAKER_00: You're processing through their pain.
SPEAKER_00: And you're deciding, okay, how do I relate to this?
SPEAKER_00: What does this look like for me?
SPEAKER_00: In our culture, when we talk about sadness and grief, you oftentimes get three kind of imbalances.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you get the response of, like, let's just medicate the pain away.
SPEAKER_00: Let's just use medication because no, heaven forbid, you shouldn't feel anxious, you shouldn't feel sad.
SPEAKER_00: That should be something that medicine can take care of.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not that medicine is wrong, but sometimes it's applied in the wrong setting.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's not legal either.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Don't borrow your other friend's prescriptions.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's not a legal, but not a legal drug that's being used.
SPEAKER_00: Then we have um people that try to preserve others from feeling appropriate grief.
SPEAKER_00: So there'll be the this the scenario where no, that person right now should feel upset because they're doing the wrong thing, but then in society we want to you we want to treat people with kit gloves.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven forbid that person feels bad about the way they're living their life.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven forbid that they're doing the wrong thing with their life.
SPEAKER_00: Heaven forbid that they feel the consequences of their sin or their bad actions.
SPEAKER_00: And so we will sometimes in society preserve people from feeling appropriate grief, and then others will treat grief as something that is useless.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have a category, and so I'm gonna be a stoic, I'm gonna avoid feeling grief in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just, I'm just gonna shut down, close off my heart, I'm gonna be a cowboy, I'm gonna be a rogue, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna engage that emotion.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna avoid it uh with everything that I have.
SPEAKER_00: And so our text is gonna surface some of these themes, and we're gonna see how Paul worked through this idea in a specific context.
SPEAKER_00: Let me can I read the text to you?
SPEAKER_00: You ready?
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Uh we've got five through 11.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone has caused pain, he has caused pain not so much to me, but to some degree, not to exaggerate, it's to all of you.
SPEAKER_00: This punishment by the majority is sufficient for that person.
SPEAKER_00: As a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, he may be overwhelmed by excessive grief.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.
SPEAKER_00: I wrote for this purpose to test your character and to see if you are obedient in everything.
SPEAKER_00: In anyone you forgive, I do too.
SPEAKER_00: For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it is for your benefit in the presence of Christ, so that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's some really important context that's here.
SPEAKER_00: Before we engage this, what I want to ask you to do with me is pray.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna ask that God would teach us, but not just teach us head knowledge, but that our hearts would be open to where we may need to change.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we just come before you.
SPEAKER_00: We want to have a humility, deep humility before you.
SPEAKER_00: Like figuratively, we're on our faces before you.
SPEAKER_00: You're the king, we're not.
SPEAKER_00: You are wise, we're not.
SPEAKER_00: You have the way, you are the truth, you are the life.
SPEAKER_00: We're not.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come before this text, and you know everything about us.
SPEAKER_00: You know the hairs of our head, you know our whole story, you know the pain that we carry.
SPEAKER_00: And God, we we just lay our lives before you and we we invite you, we ask, would you speak into our lives something precious, something that we can we can chew on, something that we can go off of this week in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we we we say this.
SPEAKER_00: We want to the best of our ability to respond with obedience when you speak to us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We want to say yes.
SPEAKER_00: We want to run wholeheartedly in the direction you send us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So it's critical to understand the context for what Paul is writing.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you read this, just at a first glance, if you're just new to the Bible and you're reading, you're like, what the heck is he talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what is going on here?
SPEAKER_00: So can I can I catch you up?
SPEAKER_00: Can I just maybe you know the story already, but can I refresh your memory a little bit about what Paul's referencing?
SPEAKER_00: Because you you notice here that he's talking about um that there's punishment by the majority that's that's sufficient for that person.
SPEAKER_00: Like, who's the person and what's the punishment that he's talking about here?
SPEAKER_00: That should be your question, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna proceed answering that question by going back to his first letter.
SPEAKER_00: If we go back a year in time, when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, he's dealing with what he knew about the church, and there was this one scenario.
SPEAKER_00: There was a guy who was sleeping with his stepmom, his dad's wife.
SPEAKER_00: And the church was arrogant about it.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul, the the church, when I say that the church was arrogant, the church was patting itself on the back for being so tolerant.
SPEAKER_00: They were like, look how loving we are.
SPEAKER_00: We're letting this person do this gross thing, and we're that nice.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul's got to correct it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated by the Gentiles, the pagans, the people far from God, they don't even tolerate this kind of behavior.
SPEAKER_00: This man is sleeping with his father's wife.
SPEAKER_00: And you are arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: He just calls it as it is.
SPEAKER_00: You're proud, you're arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you be filled with grief?
SPEAKER_00: That's the word that's going to be repeated all morning.
SPEAKER_00: Grief.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this?
SPEAKER_00: So Paul puts it in the form of a question.
SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't the state of your heart be that you are sorrowful that this man is doing this thing?
SPEAKER_00: That's how, that would be the appropriate response.
SPEAKER_00: Now, some of us are responding to other people's sin wrongly.
SPEAKER_00: One of the ways is like, let them live their life.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are like, you're going to hell.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put it on Facebook.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all are going to hell.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of ways to respond improperly to other people's sin.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul is saying here, one of the things that you should feel is you should feel sad that the guy in your church is doing something this gross that violates God's covenant of marriage.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing he says is, shouldn't you have already put him out or removed him from the congregation?
SPEAKER_00: Just want you to know that being a part of our church is a privilege.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a right.
SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of people who don't come to church because I've told them you've abused your privilege of being at church.
SPEAKER_00: When you change the way you act, you're welcome to come back.
SPEAKER_00: But until you do, you don't get the benefit, the smiles, the handshakes, the love, the generosity, the kindness, your ears, if you're gonna act that way.
SPEAKER_00: The church is a privilege, it is not a right.
SPEAKER_00: And the beautiful thing about the United States of America is that that right is protected.
SPEAKER_00: If we had somebody that came in here and I said, you don't belong, now hopefully I would do that in a way that is right, but they that would be law, like that that instruction, this is like a protected space in our country, not in not in every country, but in our country, it is protected.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to see that you are of great value in that family.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not something to be abused.
SPEAKER_00: And what was happening in this church is that this man was receiving the benefits of church life while he was engaged in gross sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so in verse 3, it says, even though I am absent.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul's absent, he's in Ephesus, he's writing the letter to them.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I am present in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: As one who is present with you in this way, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul's like, I'm over here, but I'm judging the matter from over here.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the judgment.
SPEAKER_00: When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus, is that what we're doing this morning?
SPEAKER_00: We're assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And I am with you in spirit, with the power of the Lord Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we've got Jesus is in our midst.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying, I'm there in spirit, and then you've got the church assembled in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: Hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen that verse before?
SPEAKER_00: He says to the church, he's already said, I want you to remove this person from the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: You need to tell them, they are no longer welcome in the church anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're doing is you're taking that person and you are handing them over to Satan.
SPEAKER_00: And Satan is the prince of the power of the air.
SPEAKER_00: This is the world is his kingdom, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where you're an alien invader with Jesus as your king.
SPEAKER_00: Us followers of Jesus follow an alien king.
SPEAKER_00: But right now, Satan is the king of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And we're taking that person and we're turning them over to Satan.
SPEAKER_00: It's for the destruction of the flesh, but there's a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: It's so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want him damned.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want him eternally judged.
SPEAKER_00: We want to let Satan cause pain in his life so that he's motivated to repent and turn back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you're, again, if your perception of church is that we just play games, talk like Christians on Sunday, we're accommodating to a bunch of people, then what you need to understand is that you've got the wrong concept of church.
SPEAKER_00: Being here is a privilege.
SPEAKER_00: The love that you offer to others is a generosity that ought not to be abused.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul writes this letter.
SPEAKER_00: Then, after he writes this letter, the situation doesn't seem to get fixed.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a lot of situations.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just this one guy.
SPEAKER_00: There were factions, there were divisions, there were problems happening in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul makes a quick trip across the Adriatic Sea.
SPEAKER_00: Remember when I put up the map here?
SPEAKER_00: It was from Corinth over or from Ephesus to Corinth and back.
SPEAKER_00: And all we know is that he says it was a painful visit.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know anything else.
SPEAKER_00: We know that he doesn't want to do another visit like that because he sees that's not going to be helpful.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a year that passes between the first letter, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: The idea was to take this guy and put him in timeout.
SPEAKER_00: Let him experience separation from the assembly so that he'll feel pain and want to repent.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have a hard time with that.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are so compassionate and so kind, and that's a beautiful quality.
SPEAKER_00: But you've got to recognize that there are boundaries and limits, and there's a time to say to people like, nope, you don't get the benefit of this relationship any longer until there's genuine repentance in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because you are a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner.
SPEAKER_00: You're not a carpet.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God didn't call you to be the carpet that gets walked over.
SPEAKER_00: You're this fruit-bearing tree, and you're engaging the world with God's purpose that you'll bear fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're around people that are only shriveling, shrinking, whacking the fruit off your tree, then it's time to put in some tough love boundaries there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Paul's helped the church do.
SPEAKER_00: There's some structure there.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy's had his time out, like we do with kids.
SPEAKER_00: You go sit in, timeout, take a break, until you're ready to repent.
SPEAKER_00: So 2 Corinthians is written a year later, and one of the things that we're gonna see, I want to jump ahead of where we're at today.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to show you really quickly chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: Is that okay?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna jump from chapter 2 all the way over to chapter 7 because we see that there's a change that occurs.
SPEAKER_00: He writes to them, he says, For consider how much diligence this very thing, this grieving as God wills, has produced in you what a desire to clear yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So it's technical language, but what he's saying is, listen, I want you to take a step back, and I want you to see that you grieved for a time.
SPEAKER_00: This guy grieved for a time while he was in time out, while he was put out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to see that you grieved as God willed.
SPEAKER_00: God had a purpose for that grieving because it produced fruit in your life so that you would have this desire to clear yourself.
SPEAKER_00: It produced in you this literally this indignation against that sin, a fear, a deep longing, a zeal, a justice.
SPEAKER_00: In every way you showed yourself to be pure in this matter.
SPEAKER_00: That tells us that a change occurred from 1 Corinthians to 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: They did what Paul asked them to do.
SPEAKER_00: They put the guy out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: He repented.
SPEAKER_00: It looks pretty clearly that there was a change of heart and that he completely cleared himself, and the church cleared itself in the matter.
SPEAKER_00: And so now, when we get to 2 Corinthians, there's a new problem.
SPEAKER_00: We have a guy who was doing gross sin.
SPEAKER_00: He needed to take a break.
SPEAKER_00: He steps out of the church, and while he's all by himself getting his flesh destroyed by Satan, he decides, okay, I don't want to sin anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I'm ready to get rid of my sin because I like that church family over there.
SPEAKER_00: And so he repents and he he clears himself of the matter, and he's telling people in church, look, I'm not sleeping with her anymore.
SPEAKER_00: That's not happening in my life anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I'm completely done with that behavior entirely.
SPEAKER_00: And the church is not bringing him back in.
SPEAKER_00: So here's we here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Disobedience to God correlates to community pain.
SPEAKER_00: This is, I think there's four or five points here that we're going to just walk through slowly.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at 1 Corinthians 5, 2, look at you are, shouldn't you be filled with grief?
SPEAKER_00: What I want you to see first is that when you and I disobey God, it causes pain across the board.
SPEAKER_00: It causes pain in our life, it causes pain in the life of our church, and then it causes pain as we're corrected.
SPEAKER_00: There's just this like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Our disobedience correlates with community pain.
SPEAKER_00: It is painful and sad when people in our church are walking in open rebellion to God.
SPEAKER_00: So we come to 2 Corinthians 2 5.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone has caused Pain over there in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone has caused pain, not so much to me, but to some degree, not to exaggerate, to all of you.
SPEAKER_00: So he's alluding to this person who's caused pain.
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with him?
SPEAKER_00: Before we get to what do we do, just notice there's community pain.
SPEAKER_00: There's the grief over the very disobedience in his life.
SPEAKER_00: There's the pain of the process that you have to take the person through.
SPEAKER_00: There's the grief over having to expel the person from church, and that's upsetting.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the pain of guilt.
SPEAKER_00: There's this grief that is felt by the guy who is doing the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's the guilt of the church for not putting him out sooner and being arrogant about it.
SPEAKER_00: There's just like guilt across the board.
SPEAKER_00: And if you think that your sin is just something that, you know, is tucked away over here, you need to know that your sin affects all of us.
SPEAKER_00: The way that you talk, the attitude that you carry, the way that you interact with the people around you.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are serious, and they just, it's just like pain accompanies that disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: The second point is that pain, grief, and sadness can be instrumental in your life and my life, up to a point.
SPEAKER_00: Up to a point.
SPEAKER_00: This church was told to participate in causing pain in this man's life so that he would be motivated to repent.
SPEAKER_00: This is the essence of discipline.
SPEAKER_00: If you have young kids, the reason why you discipline them is that you are making for a moment their life painful.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're not talking about abuse.
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about, hey, go take a break.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to isolate you from your video games, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'm going to give you a SWAT on your butt, not on your cheek, not on your arm, your God-given butt.
SPEAKER_00: And that's only if you can control your anger.
SPEAKER_00: You never do it in anger, ever.
SPEAKER_00: Ever.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But if you can do it in love, give them a spanking, right?
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because that pain, that momentary pain, is instrumental in motivating change.
SPEAKER_00: I had two, I got spanked a lot when I was a kid.
SPEAKER_00: The last time, the last time I got spanked was because I was like 12 years old, and I think I was upset.
SPEAKER_00: And I like, I was tempted to hit my mom.
SPEAKER_00: I think I barely like tapped her, but I was angry.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my dad found out.
SPEAKER_00: He went out to the wood pile.
SPEAKER_00: He found this board that on one side it had nails sticking out of it.
SPEAKER_00: He held the side with the nails sticking out of it.
SPEAKER_00: But it was pretty much, and it really didn't hurt as bad as other spankings because it had like there was a lot of wind friction on it.
SPEAKER_00: But oh man, that freaked me out.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the last spanking I ever got.
SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, I was at an age where it was like, dude, you're you're 12, you're 13, you gotta stop.
SPEAKER_00: Like you're being dumb.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but the idea is so, but then I had two sisters that were adopted, and um, they were in foster care first, and then they were um adopted by her family.
SPEAKER_00: And the rule if you have foster kids is there's no corporal punishment, no spanking ever.
SPEAKER_00: And that's fine because there's many ways.
SPEAKER_00: There's you should have a tool basket with your parenting and your relationships where you can lovingly inflict pain.
SPEAKER_00: We see the church doing it here.
SPEAKER_00: It's not being cruel, it's not being done out of anger, it's being done to motivate change.
SPEAKER_00: So when you decide to cut the person off and you're like, hey, listen, you are a toxic person.
SPEAKER_00: I've given enough time, enough love, enough generosity to you in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: When you do it that, you're not doing it to be vengeful, you're not doing it to be um mean, you're doing it to help them change, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Holy Spirit's going to be at work in their life, hopefully convicting them of what they're doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And you're not enabling their bad behavior anymore, and you're ratcheting up the pain level in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says this to the church in 1 Corinthians, the first letter he wrote, he says, hand the person over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that sounds really violent.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like handing people over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That's not usually the kind of the language I use, but that's how Paul describes it.
SPEAKER_00: But it's for a purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Then when we come back over to 2 Corinthians, let's go to chapter 9.
SPEAKER_00: Here Paul says, or it's chapter 7, verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn't experience any loss from us.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the instrument?
SPEAKER_00: You grieved as God willed, so that you didn't experience any loss from us.
SPEAKER_00: There is a grief, there is a pain that is good in the lives of your kids, your gr your grandkids, the people around you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't rescue people from their pain if God's at work in the midst of it.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people are suffering around you, and that's God's instrument to motivate repentance, to motivate growth, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, we're learning how to do relationships according to the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: And a part of the new covenant is that God works in you.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just work outside of you, he works in you.
SPEAKER_00: He works in people.
SPEAKER_00: And this is key to how he does it.
SPEAKER_00: There comes a point where repentance occurs, and you can say to that person, that's enough.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come over to verse six, and it says, This punishment, this is, I know I'm jumping all over, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I know I'm jumping all over scripture.
SPEAKER_00: When we get back, this is our home base text.
SPEAKER_00: This is verse six.
SPEAKER_00: This punishment by the majority is sufficient for this person.
SPEAKER_00: There's enough suffering that has occurred.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's good.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Jude.
SPEAKER_00: The lost?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, in the previous verse?
SPEAKER_00: Um, for you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn't experience any loss from us.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I have to go back and look at it in context.
SPEAKER_00: I think it goes back to the because seven mirrors chapter one, and he's talking about his relationship, and there's this loss of of joy and rejoicing in one another, the more he has to correct them.
SPEAKER_00: And so he looks at his friendship with Corinth, he's like, this is a great privilege for us to be in this relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And the more I have to be the one inflicting pain and grief in your life, the more there's just this diminishing of the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: It's there's a loss.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what he's saying, but I would have to go back and look more closely at it.
SPEAKER_00: So the second point is that pain is instrumental to a point, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Point three, there comes a time to forgive, comfort, and remove the pain.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 7 and 8, as a result, you should instead forgive and comfort him.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so lift the punishment, punishment is over.
SPEAKER_00: Now, as a result, instead forgive him, comfort, comfort him, otherwise, he may be overwhelmed by excessive grief.
SPEAKER_00: So if we do not relieve the pain, it's gonna be this excessive grief.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.
SPEAKER_00: So, filling in the picture, the guy's been disciplined, he's repented, he's sorry.
SPEAKER_00: They're continuing in that posture of keeping him outside of the church, and now Paul's saying, no, no, no, let him back in.
SPEAKER_00: Forgive him, reaffirm your love for him.
SPEAKER_00: Under the new covenant, God is at work inside of people.
SPEAKER_00: Hearts get changed by God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: It is we we fall outside, we start acting outside of the new covenant when we are not honoring the work of the Holy Spirit in other people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're only inflicting the pain and the discipline to facilitate the work of the Holy Spirit in their life.
SPEAKER_00: But then when they repent, if you and I still have a hard heart towards that person, then all of a sudden we're no longer the instrument of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see you're the instrument of the devil.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So it is important that the process is followed, honoring the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in that person's life.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: I wrote this, I wrote for this purpose, to test your character, to see if you are obedient in everything.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul's saying, he's narrating, he's doing what he does, he loves to do in his letter.
SPEAKER_00: He's not just saying it, but he's saying, here's why I'm writing it to you.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, just a heads up, I'm writing this thing to you to test your character.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are really good at the like kick them out of the church part, and other others of us are really good at the um welcome them back in part, but we're supposed to play both roles.
SPEAKER_00: You need to know how, you've got to be okay and comfortable with pain happening in other people's lives, and you being the instrument of it.
SPEAKER_00: You also at the same time have to be open to their radical repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It was happening this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm out on the street, one of the people that we're working with that we're hoping for repentance, they're taught, they're talking to me.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying, I want to have a conversation, I want to repent, I want to come back to church.
SPEAKER_00: And in me, it's just as much my responsibility to be tender and soft-hearted and open, as much as it was my job to say, you cannot come to church right now as long as you're gonna behave like that.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you gotta play both both roles.
SPEAKER_00: Point four.
SPEAKER_00: We are in this together.
SPEAKER_00: Discipline and forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me read this to you and then make a point.
SPEAKER_00: So remember, back in the first letter, he says, When you're assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I'm with you in the spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, hand that person over to the Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, I want you to do this as a spiritual community.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want just the spirit, I don't just want the church leaders to do this.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to do this together, in agreement, that this person is being put out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Then we come back over to 2 Corinthians, and he says, Anyone you forgive, I do it too.
SPEAKER_00: We're in this together.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the discipline together, and we're in the forgiveness together.
SPEAKER_00: For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, it is for your benefit in the presence of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that there is this community discipline and community forgiveness?
SPEAKER_00: This is really important for it to be for effective.
SPEAKER_00: If we have somebody that comes into the church and they're abusing one of our members, and I get word of it, I go to that person and I have a conversation with them.
SPEAKER_00: If they are unrepentant and I continue to get reports of like it's still a behavior in their life, then I tell that person, you cannot attend our church right now.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Then I will inform the rest of the people that were kind of aware of it, that person is not here.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes what happens is one of you are so tenderhearted, you're like, but the church should be for everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Like, how are they gonna hear about Jesus if they can't come to church?
SPEAKER_00: And they didn't, and then one of the common things I hear is, well, they didn't do that to me, right?
SPEAKER_00: They didn't treat me like that.
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm telling you is no, they're treating somebody else like that, and you need to have Jesus' back as he's trying to work in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And if you think it's on you to undercut Jesus' discipline work in their life, then you don't understand the whole picture, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not on you to try to out love God, right?
SPEAKER_00: To be more loving than Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: It's your job to play the role in the process of discipline, making sure that there is an environment where they feel pain and they want to change.
SPEAKER_00: So I know some of you are just, you're just so nice, and you're like, you know, why do we have to keep people out of the church here?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we have to practice church discipline?
SPEAKER_00: It's because God loves them.
SPEAKER_00: We do not want to see them walking in disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: We want to see change in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And if we just love people and love people and love people and love people, that change is not being facilitated.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's like, look, I would I would help them feel guilty and like pain in their life if you'd get out of the way.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You tracking?
SPEAKER_00: So think about your relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Think about your relationships.
SPEAKER_00: This takes a lot of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: There's principles being laid down here.
SPEAKER_00: Just think through this.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean for you to walk these things out?
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's look at the last two verses.
SPEAKER_00: Excessive discipline, ongoing pain can be a scheme used by Satan to cause destruction rather than growth.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says, you need to reaffirm your love to him.
SPEAKER_00: You need to forgive him.
SPEAKER_00: It's so that we may not be taken advantage of by Satan.
SPEAKER_00: We're not ignorant of his themes.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ignorant of Satan's schemes?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ignorant of his schemes?
SPEAKER_00: If you keep walking, he says, if you keep walking in this discipline process and you don't allow forgiveness to occur when they're repenting, then you're now engaged and you're open.
SPEAKER_00: You're opening the situation up to Satan's strategies to destroy a life.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you do not forgive at the right moment, then it goes from being a productive discipline process to being something all that much more destructive.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul's laying it down wisdom here.
SPEAKER_00: He's just laying it out.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: It's for us to obey.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you need to put down some boundaries in your life.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have adult kids that should have long ago gone.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: I talked to some people in the line, they got their 30-year-old kids living at home, and they think they're being loving.
SPEAKER_00: And what they need to do is they need to cause some pain.
SPEAKER_00: Not because they're being bad or mean, but they're cooperating with God's plan for their life so they can be an independent, fruitful human being, right?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have gone through some painful stuff and you miss the lesson God was trying to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah talks about the chastening of the Lord, and Jeremiah warns that there is this scenario, there is a type of person who goes through painful experiences that God is causing, and they completely miss it.
SPEAKER_00: That's to me, that's one of the most scary scenarios that you could go through.
SPEAKER_00: That you have to go through something that is painful, grievous, and you totally miss what God's trying to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: And so I think for all of us, we need to check in with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God, these things are painful in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Are you trying to teach me something here?
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to motivate change in my life.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Be sensitive.
SPEAKER_00: God's not, you're not gonna miss it.
SPEAKER_00: In the Psalm we read at Psalm 30, Psalm 32, God will instruct you in the way that you should go.
SPEAKER_00: God's gonna speak to you and show you that thing that is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: He'll search you, he'll try your ways, he'll let you know if there is any wickedness in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to give him your ear.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what he has to say.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the wisdom that your word contains.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to see pain from your perspective.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we don't want to work with Satan by causing too much pain in people's lives.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't want to work against you as we're too accommodating or arrogant in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be wise people in our relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.