Every Member Holy

Transcript

Good morning. If we’ve not met, you don’t know who I am. I’m Greg Taylor, one of the pastors here. I have the privilege of opening the Word for us this morning. Well, this morning we’re going to start into this subject, or actually continue on into this subject. We started last week with Thomas’s sermon on the keys. We’re going to talk about church discipline this morning, and there are numerous scriptures in our Bible that look at this particular subject, but for this morning we’re going to primarily look at two, which are the most detailed. So I’ll ask you to please open up your Bibles to Matthew 18. If you are using the bulletin to follow along, that’s perfectly fine on page four. There is a typo at the top that should not say Matthew 16. That should say Matthew 18, 15 to 20, and then under that it should have said 1 Corinthians 5, 1 to 13.

The Biblical Foundation

So those are the two texts that I’m going to read for us this morning, and then we will jump into this and take a look at what God says about this. So if I could ask you, as you’re able, to please stand for the reading of the Word of God. Hear now the Word of the Lord to you, Matthew 18, starting in verse 15. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever

you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. 1 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 1. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father’s wife, and you are arrogant? Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit, and as if present I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus,

and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But

now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Let’s pray together before we begin. Our Father and our God, we humbly come before you this morning with great need. The need for the Holy Spirit to illumine these important verses to our hearts and minds. Please will you fill us and empower us to hear what you would have for us today and then make us to be people who are doers

of your Word. God, we love you. We thank you for the forgiveness of sin that we have in Jesus. And it is in his name that we pray these things, commit this time to you. Amen. This letter is to inform you that it was unanimously decided in our February 26th members meeting that your membership in our church is being terminated. Since you refused to accept the letter we sent you in November that outlined the reasons for this action, I will review them here briefly. One, you initiated the separation in your marriage without good or biblical cause, stating you intended to begin a new relationship with another man. It seems you have no desire to keep your family together and this has caused a great deal of hurt to you, your husband, your children, and many others. This is being unfaithful to the marriage vows you took before God. Two, you have continued to post

many unchristian and even indecent pictures and messages on various social media sites over the past many months. You have also been very negative and critical of many in our church family. I believe to try to take the attention off your real needs which you deny. Three, you have refused counsel or advice from your husband, your pastors, and many of your close church family members who really care for you and have tried to help you. Taking this action was not an easy thing for the church to do. There have been many prayers for you and your family over this past year and several months. There was a great deal of sadness in our meeting over having to do this. You and your family have been a very important part of our church for many years and you should know that we still love you very much. We are hoping and

praying that God will show you his will in all of this as we desire for you to do his will and repent of your sin. Please let us know if this happens and we will be here for you. Sincerely, Pastor Bill on behalf of the congregation. This was a real letter sent to a real person for real things and this person was being removed from membership in her local church. Sadly, this is a worst-case scenario of formal church discipline where a person has rushed headlong into sin and refuses to repent over a lengthy period of time, in this case, despite having pastors, members, family members who sought to see her restored. Her church was doing the hard work of formal church discipline and if only more churches were willing to do this kind of work, people would benefit greatly in the end. Thankfully, thankfully, very few church discipline cases rise to this level. So what exactly is church

For Good and Purity

discipline? Church discipline is a necessary device the Lord has given us to maintain purity and order in the church when members stumble or fall in such a way that it requires other members to get involved. We practice church discipline for the sake of the person who has stumbled, always with the goal of seeking that person to be restored to a right place with Christ as well as to a right place with all of us in the church. Ultimately, church discipline is a tool that God uses to discipline His people in order that you may share in His holiness. You might say that it is a device to keep every member holy. Now someone has described something called tardy discipline and he says this about it. He says, unfortunately, most churches don’t employ formal church discipline until offenses are so terrible, relationships so shattered, and patterns so ingrained that the chances of restoring someone are very small. But

if we will do as Paul said in Galatians 6, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. We won’t even get to a place of formal church discipline in most cases. We as members are caring well for one another. Now church discipline is something that we must do because God commands it. And if we are honest, not one of us in this room who is a believer in the Lord Jesus is above the possibility of needing another brother or sister to come alongside us and be the conduit that God uses to discipline us. All of the early reformers considered church discipline either an important mark of the church or at the very least something vital to its well-being and its health. Mark Devere in his book Nine Marks of a Christian Church lists church discipline as the seventh mark. And if

you’ve become a member of this church in the last five and a half years, you were asked to read that chapter. It was talked about in the membership class. You were asked to read that chapter, agree to adhere to it because it serves as our church’s doctrinal position on church discipline. Now we could do several sermons on this topic, but for today I have divided our subject into three sections in order to see the importance of church discipline for Trinity Church and her members. So first I want you to see that church discipline is done for the good of the sinner and for the purity of the church. Second, I want you to see that church discipline is varied. Not all church discipline is the same. It varies depending on the level of offense and the circumstances surrounding that offense or offenses. And third, I want you to see that church

discipline is everyone’s responsibility. It begins with members and it ends with members. Whether that means that the outcome is the preferred outcome that we’re seeking, restoration of a person, or in very difficult cases the outcome is excommunication for which we should grieve and weep. So let’s start by looking at our first point. Church discipline is done for the good of the sinner and for the purity of the church. So let’s start with a basic premise that you should all know that God employs discipline on his children. The same way he requires that parents discipline their children, he does this to grow us in maturity. The same way that children grow up in a home to grow up into maturity, God is using discipline on us as we go through the process that we call sanctification. And that is when you become a Christian all the way until you

Discipline Is Varied

go to be with the Lord or he returns. He is making you more like Christ. He’s growing you in holiness. Now we see God’s discipline of his people most clearly in the New Testament in Hebrews 12. So be flipping to Hebrews 12. I’m going to read starting in verse 5. But before we get there, I want to say this. I realize that this can be a bit hard for some of you depending on how your earthly fathers did or did not discipline you. Some of us had earthly fathers who made everything punitive. Or they were outright wrathful in a way that God is never with his people. And how your earthly father or even your mother disciplined you and dealt with you will certainly affect the way you view discipline. Let’s try to see this the way God sees it. So I’m going to read starting in verse 5 of Hebrews 12.

I’m going to read down through verse 11.

God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

— Hebrews 12

(ESV)

So friends, you have to remember that God’s plan is to shape you and to mold you and to mature you into greater holiness in

this age, ultimately to bring you to eternal life. And that is done partially through discipline. And God uses means to accomplish this. Teaching, preaching, his word, his church, all of these things to shape you into a holier person today than you were yesterday and a holier person tomorrow than you are today. Listen to what Charles Spurgeon said about God’s discipline. Spurgeon said God’s people can never by any possibility be punished for their sins. You hear that? Never be punished for their sins because God already punished them in the person of Christ, their substitute. But yet while the Christian cannot be condemned, he can be chastened. When God afflicts his child, chastisement is applied in love. The rod has been baptized in deep affection before it is laid on the believer’s back. So you need to remember this, if and when God brings you into a place of discipline. He is doing it for your good because he loves

you and he intends to grow you in holiness and bring you to eternity. Never, is God’s discipline done out of wrath or punishment. Christ took all of that. For honest, we need to be protected from ourselves. Just a simple truth. Think of your children, those of you who have kids. Part of parenting is protecting your kids from themselves. They’ll run into the street. You have to show them their sin and their need for Christ. You have to have boundaries and rules to protect them. And when we say that church discipline is done for the good of the sinner, look back at 1st Corinthians chapter 5 with me. We’ll be there for a little while, so if you want to flip there. In verse 5, listen to what Paul says. He says, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. The you there is

the church, you. The delivering is to remove this man from the gathered assembly until he proves to be repentant for the sake of his soul being saved. It is to remove the assurance of salvation that he receives from his brothers and sisters in Christ. To shock him into repentance so that his spirit may be saved. You don’t want to be part of a church where the members and the elders will not do this for you. Should you ever find yourself so fallen into sin and so self-deluded that you are sinning in this way, you need an infrastructure of people who will love you enough to confront you. Notice that this discipline is also done for the purity of the church. Look at verse 6. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know the little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened. For

Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The church is to be a place of purity. There’s this statement that God makes in the Old Testament when he’s giving the Israelites the law. He says it over 30 times. Purge the evil from your midst. Look down further in 1st Corinthians 5 there, starting in verse 9. Paul says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. Those are people that don’t claim to be Christians. We live and move and have our being around those people. They’re our neighbors. They’re our co-workers. But now I am

writing you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of a brother. That’s a Christian if he is guilty of sexual immorality, or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler, not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. Purge the evil person from among you. That is Paul quoting Deuteronomy, telling the church to purge itself of this man because of his unrepentant sin. Now in Deuteronomy, it was often done with stones. But praise be to God in the New Covenant, it is done with love, gently, with the goal of restoration. So God in His Word positions discipline as a positive thing for us. It allows us to know we are His, to know we are loved, and we are sharing in His holiness. Now not all discipline is done in the context of

formal church discipline. Matter of fact, most of it is not done that way. It’s not done by other members in a meeting where things are made publicly known about someone or something. Most often, God employs His people to help other people to see their sinful ways and to confess and repent. And when this is done in love by God’s people for the good of the person, it should cause someone confronting someone to do as Paul said, do this in a spirit of gentleness, all the while keeping watch on ourselves lest we be tempted. Now let’s look at our second point. Church discipline is varied. Not all church discipline is the same. It varies depending on the level of offense and the circumstances surrounding that offense. So look back with me at 1 Corinthians 5. We’re going to start reading in verse 1. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and

Three Primary Conditions

of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans. The Greeks and Romans won’t tolerate this even. A man has his father’s wife and you are arrogant. Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. For though absent in body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Here you have a situation that is so serious, Paul is telling the Corinthian church to remove him. This is a reference to excommunication. Hand him over to Satan. Jonathan Lehman says that

there are three primary conditions when church discipline situations require the speedy removal of a member. They must all be present at the same time. First one is that the sin must be scandalous. It’s something that can be seen with the eyes, heard with the ears. There’s verifiable evidence of the sin. It’s public. Secondly, the sin must be significant. It’s something so bad that it would make his fellow church members find it hard to believe he has a credible profession of faith. Lastly, the person is as best as we can tell. This is often the most difficult and trickiest thing to figure out. The person is unrepentant. The person has been confronted and refuses to let go of the sin. Notice back here in the text when Paul says, when you are assembled, this is to be done in a gathering of the local church. So this situation is so bad. Members of the

Corinthian church are being to get together, have their gathering, and remove this man. Now there are situations where a person may be involved in some scandalous sin, but it isn’t known. It isn’t public. We’re trying to figure out whether or not they’re repentant or not, or the sin is not verifiable. In other words, we don’t have any witnesses or evidence to that. If that’s the case, the direction is to slow down. Move slower than if all three conditions are present. And friends, this is when the collective wisdom of a congregation, being able to come and bring more eyes and more ears and more wisdom, and hopefully someone has knowledge of the person in some given situation to be able to make a decision that is truly in the best interest of the person. To be able to seek out the possibility there may be some victims, and ultimately to seek for the good and

the purity of the church. Now let’s look at another situation where a person is given just a few warnings and then they are removed. Turn with me over to Titus 3. I’m going to read verses 10 and 11. Titus 3. As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him. Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. Now here is a situation where someone is stirring up division in the church, which is very damaging to the church. It breeds disunity. God is said to hate it. So in this situation there is a fairly quick removal of the sinning member. Don Carson says this about it. He says, if having nothing more to do with him entails excommunication from the local church, as I think it does, we should reflect on

the categories of sin that call forth this sanction in the New Testament. One is major doctrinal aberration, especially among teachers. Second is major moral defections, such as the case in 1 Corinthians 5. And the third is here. It is a loveless, untransformed stance that refuses to see the centrality and glory of the gospel, but proves so divisive despite repeated warnings. Now let’s look at a slow response. This is given to us by Jesus, so let’s flip back now to Matthew 18, and I’m going to start reading in verse 15. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he

refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. So here we see four possible steps. It starts with just simply one Christian telling another Christian his fault between just the two of them. And notice that if the sinning party listens, it’s over. You’ve gained your brother. Repentance has occurred. Now if that doesn’t happen, step two becomes necessary because if this brother won’t listen, he refuses, then the Christian is to take one or two others along to attempt to get this brother to listen. This is also to be able to establish the credibility of this situation, should it come to the church. If the man will not listen to the little group, you have the whole church getting involved. Jesus says, tell it to the church. There is implied here a chance for a sinning brother or sister to listen to the whole church by having

a large group of people coming after them in love and gently seeking their repentance. Lastly and very sadly, if he refuses to listen to the church, Jesus says, let him be to you as a Gentile or a tax collector. This is in essence to say that the collective church body no longer affirms that this man has a credible profession of faith. So the process here went much slower. It was private, most of it, compared to 1 Corinthians where it was very serious, very scandalous. There just simply is not a one-size-fits-all model in each case. Each one is unique and sometimes requires the collective wisdom, requires a lot of prayer and the grace of God to seek the restoration of a sinner and to guard the purity of the church. Now let’s move to the last section. I want us to see here that church discipline is everyone’s responsibility. It begins

Everyone’s Responsibility

with members and it ends with members. Some of this will seem a little bit repetitive, but we’re going to go back to Matthew 18-15. We’re going to unpack this text a little deeper. We’re going to go all the way down through 20 here. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. This is informal church discipline. The goal to win the wayward person. A love that Jesus says, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. Nobody else needs to know. It’s private matter between two people and God. Now in verse 16, we have more members having to get involved. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that the charge may be established by the evidence of two or three

witnesses. There’s times when a person might not be able to receive something from just one other person. They might think to themselves, this guy’s wrong about me. Refuse to listen. But take two or three others with you. They’re all saying the same thing. It’s going to be a little bit harder. And it’s going to raise the level of seriousness in a person’s mind to see that this show of unity and love is coming after them to seek them to repent. Finally, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Now you’ve got a really serious matter on your hands. You now have the local church going after this brother. And one prays and one hopes that this level of care for someone will stop them in their tracks and be the very thing that the Holy Spirit uses to bring them to repentance. And if you

think back to the letter I read at the beginning of the sermon that didn’t happen in that case with that woman. She didn’t listen to the church. She was put out. And that’s what happens in very difficult situations where someone will not receive correction, will not repent after the whole church has gone after them. Jesus says treat them as a Gentile and a tax collector. This person has chosen their sin over Christ. They’ve been put out of the covenant community and are viewed and treated as an outsider. Now in our day and age, this seems really harsh. Not to mention how difficult it is to actually do something like this. And you might think to yourself, well, aren’t we all sinners? No, what’s the big deal? We’re all sinners, right? Of course that’s true. We are all sinners. But there’s a distinction made in Scripture between somebody who fully embraces their sin versus somebody

who’s fighting their sin, who hates their sin, who’s struggling with it. 1 John 3, 8, 9 throws a blanket on this. John says whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. That’s habitual, embracing one’s sin with no regard for God’s holiness and other people. Verse 9, no one born of God makes a practice of sinning for God’s seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. Look back with me at Matthew 18, 18. Jesus said, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. Notice the context here. The context here is dealing

with sin in the local church. This is not some new way for two or three of you to get together and say, we’re all going to agree that God will give us Mercedes-Benz. Not going to happen. Actually, you should know too that this could be translated what you, meaning the church, plural, bind or loose on earth, shall have been bound and loosed in heaven. One commentator says this about the verse, the church discipline decisions the church makes when it follows Jesus’ guidelines carefully and maintains the right attitude are in keeping with what has already been decided by God in heaven. Let me say to you that if you are ever approached in this informal member-to-member manner, receive that process the way the psalmist encouraged in Psalm 141. Let a righteous man strike me, it is a kindness. Let him rebuke me, it is oil for my head, let my

head not refuse it. And conversely, if you ever have to go to someone and approach them, you must, as Jesus said, examine yourself first for any hypocrisy. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there’s a log in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. Friends, I know this is hard stuff. This is hard stuff. But I want you to look at the great encouragement Jesus gives us in verse 20 at the end of our text. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. Jesus is certainly

with us when we are doing the work of his church. He is promised to be present in helping us. Remember the last words of Jesus in Matthew 28

. Behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. We are not left on our own to decide these issues with our own wisdom. We have the Lord’s Spirit indwelling us. He himself walks among the lampstands, the churches. He’s observing everything all the time that occurs in his church. Nothing goes unnoticed by our Lord. We have his word as our guide. We have a leadership model to follow and elders who are called by the Holy Spirit to serve and to lead and to teach and to help facilitate these issues. We have each other in the church and it is all of our responsibilities to lovingly and humbly approach church discipline with the goal of always working to see a wayward Christian restored, to guard the

A Gospel Device

purity of the church. If you think about it, it is because of the gospel that we have church discipline. Church discipline is actually a way of appropriating the gospel. It is a gospel device given to us by God in his word to call a wayward person back to Christ. The gospel says that our sins are forgiven by and through the person and work of the Lord Jesus. That applies to a person who is coming to Christ for the first time with a mountain of sins as we all did at one time. And it applies to the Christian who has stumbled and even fallen into some very serious sin. It is a gospel call to repent and obey the Lord. You must remember that Jesus knows everything about us already. He is such a good shepherd that he is willing to leave the 99 on a mountain and to go and find that

one who has run off. And oftentimes Jesus uses people like you and me to be his hands, to be his legs and his mouthpiece in calling someone back. If you’re here this morning and you’ve never come to this good shepherd, you’re not a believer, I’m so glad you came here this morning to hear the life-changing words of his gospel. That if you will turn away from your sin and you will turn to him by faith, trust in him alone for the forgiveness of your sin, believe the gospel, you will be saved from God’s wrath. Which abides upon every person who is not in Christ. Maybe you’re here this morning and you’re living in such a way that you know yourself as a Christian should not be living. Know this, people can become very good at hiding their sin. But for those who are his, he will

eventually expose the sin. So may I encourage you today, if that’s you, find a trusted brother or sister and confess to them, get your sin out into the light. Deal with it. Do not delay. It will only get worse. And if we’re honest with ourselves, every one of us is capable of falling. We need each other. We need accountability. We need prayer. We need deep friendships and fellowship with one another. Mark Dever rightly says that the church is a place only for sinners. It’s only for sinners. But we must be sinners who are also repenters. Jesus said in Luke 5, those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Having people close to us is one of the reasons we push membership in the local church the

way we do. We don’t care how many members there are here, to be honest with you. We’re not trying to achieve 200 or 300 or 500. We don’t care. What we care about is your souls. And whether that’s at Trinity Church or another gospel church, you need to be a member of a church somewhere. You need to have this around you, this infrastructure. You need to have people who will walk with you through this world. It is wicked. You need to be a person who can do this for others. Be that trusted person that can gently approach someone in need so that they may find love and support and prayer and restoration. And if you have people in your life right now that you know are in a bad place with their sin, it is your responsibility to gently seek them out in love with the goal of seeing them

restored. This is all of our responsibility to care for each other, friends. And it is because church discipline is this tool that God has given us. He uses it to discipline His people in order that you may share in His holiness. And it is actually a means of grace given to us by our loving Heavenly Father to help keep every member holy. Let’s pray.

Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have provided structure and direction and methods to help us when we stumble. We are not just left to struggle on our own. You have given us each other. You’ve given us the great Helper, the Holy Spirit. You’ve given us your Word as our objective and final arbiter of truth. Oh God, help us to better care for each other, but to always do it humbly with an attitude of love and gentleness, checking our own hearts for hypocrisy that creeps in so easily if we’re honest. God, may this be a church where people can know that they will find the care and the help they need as we all together strive to finish the race of faith as we see you complete the work that you have begun in us. God, we love you and we thank you so much for the forgiveness of sin

that we have in our Lord Jesus, and it is in His name that we pray. Amen.