Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #85： Why We Need Church Discipline

00:00:00.000 Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about why we need church discipline.

00:00:05.300 This is an important conversation about church discipline. Guys, so many of you have asked me

00:00:10.460 about it and wondering why maybe your church hasn't participated in church discipline.

00:00:16.520 I mean, when was the last time you saw your elders gather together to investigate a moral failure of

00:00:24.760 someone at your church who's in sin? I mean, I know it's a private matter, but

00:00:30.000 Have you seen that happen before? A lot of people have not.

00:00:34.260 Or they just haven't even heard how to go about it.

00:00:37.040 Yeah, and a lot of people have never seen someone actually removed from the church

00:00:43.640 because they were in persistent, unrepentant sin while calling themselves a Christian.

00:00:50.840 So we need to figure out why is church discipline so foreign to the modern institutional church?

00:01:00.000 And then we're also going to talk about the Bible's command for church discipline and why it's so vital, actually, for a healthy and thriving church.

00:01:09.920 So, yeah.

00:01:11.200 Okay, but before we jump into that, this is episode number 86.

00:01:14.600 And if you're a regular listener here, if you have not left a review, if you'd go ahead and do that, all you have to do is tap the stars.

00:01:20.240 But if you write something, Dale will for sure read it.

00:01:23.060 I am the guy that reads the reviews.

00:01:25.360 Yeah, and I enjoy the ones that are good and the ones that are critical.

00:01:29.780 But thank you.

00:01:31.220 They're so encouraging, the ones that are, I guess, favorable.

00:01:35.940 And I also take heed to some of those that have some critics.

00:01:39.380 Yeah, so if you haven't left a review yet, please go ahead and do so,

00:01:41.860 as it does help the exposure of the show with the algorithms and the way that thing works.

00:01:46.060 It does, and I think we're probably close to 5,000 reviews at this point.

00:01:49.020 I haven't looked in a bit on the actual star ratings, but guys, thank you so much for that.

00:01:54.260 I wanted to talk about one thing that Veronica and I have decided to do.

00:01:57.360 it's it's a small project but it's something that we're going to do a handful of times a year

00:02:02.480 it's called the one-on-one marriage weekend and so we used to do marriage retreats those are fun

00:02:08.260 and those were how many couples did we have of those about 15 yeah 15 couples and we see these

00:02:13.840 marriage retreats they were so intense to like plan for yeah they're really fun they're really

00:02:18.540 great and maybe we'll do them again in the future but at least in this season right now we just can't

00:02:22.660 Yeah, so we decided that we want to do, instead of 15 couples for a couple days, and I'm speaking all day, we're going to do what's called a one-on-one marriage weekend.

00:02:31.540 So if you want to grab any weekend this year with Veronica and I, and do marriage coaching and date nights together, and we're going to go do some recreational activity, and basically we're going to be double dating for two and a half days.

00:02:47.620 And then you can even come to our house church if you'd like. That's an option.

00:02:51.940 If you want to do that, you can just go to ultimate marriage forward slash retreat.

00:02:58.860 It might be retreats, but I think it's retreat forward slash retreat, ultimate marriage.com forward slash retreat.

00:03:07.440 And it's our one on one marriage weekend. They're a little bit pricey because they're one on one.

00:03:12.520 We're going to do lots of marriage coaching discussions, get to know you guys.

00:03:16.360 And so just don't be alarmed that it's pricey.

00:03:19.140 It's for couples that, one, can afford to do so, and two, might need it, that kind of one-on-one attention as well.

00:03:28.100 And the last thing I want to talk about is, if you guys have purchased my book, Real Christianity, and several thousand people have, so you might be listening to this episode.

00:03:38.560 If you want the PDF study guide, so we created a hard-back study guide, like an actual physical printable study guide.

00:03:47.520 It's 60 pages long in the book format, like if you actually bought the book.

00:03:51.700 But we have a PDF that you can have for free.

00:03:55.420 The only catch is that you have to leave a review for Real Christianity, the book, on Amazon.

00:04:01.520 And so if you want to download that PDF for free and get the study guide

00:04:06.340 and really go through the study guide and go deeper on the book's content,

00:04:11.180 please, you can totally do that.

00:04:12.620 Just go to relearnchurch.org forward slash SG for study guide, and that'll take you to

00:04:21.440 a little form, and all you have to do is fill out your name, information, put a screenshot

00:04:24.360 of your Amazon review, and it'll give you a PDF download of the study guide.

00:04:29.120 So that would be really helpful just to have those reviews on Amazon as well.

00:04:33.220 All right.

00:04:34.000 Cool.

00:04:34.640 Easy.

00:04:35.400 Jumping into today's topic, why we need church discipline.

00:04:38.540 As many of you guys know who have listened to the show, Dale and I were a part of large institutional churches for several years down in Southern California when we lived there.

00:04:49.520 Churches ranging anywhere from a few hundred people to a few thousand people.

00:04:53.820 But during our time in those churches, we had never once heard a pastor talk about church discipline.

00:05:01.240 We had never heard how to confront sin in the church,

00:05:04.260 and we never learned how to relate with people who are openly living in habitual sin within the church.

00:05:11.500 We also never saw anyone held accountable to the scriptures in a disciplinary manner within the church.

00:05:19.640 Yeah, and I mean, we're there for years at a time.

00:05:21.620 So this is something that you go like, you think you'd see,

00:05:24.260 and you're definitely walking around and you're seeing things that are like,

00:05:26.640 wow that's that shouldn't be allowed to be going on anymore or adultery or different things that

00:05:34.900 are happening or drunkenness that you know people even on staff or or you know this guy's living

00:05:39.900 with his girlfriend over here all that kind of stuff that you're like why isn't is there any

00:05:46.580 process to kind of deal with this and and um not that you're like the correction police but

00:05:51.700 the Bible talks about really keeping a purified church. And we're going to talk about what that

00:05:57.580 means today. So there's a variety of reasons that our experience was what it was, that we didn't

00:06:05.460 see this. We were, you know, we were in these big institutional mega churches. And the central

00:06:13.620 reason that we didn't see this is that most of these churches that we were a part of weren't

00:06:18.340 really churches or at least in the biblical sense they weren't churches they became evangelism

00:06:24.340 outreach centers disguised as churches but in reality they're there for evangelism outreach

00:06:31.180 and they you know they tailor the sermon to the visitors they tailor the music to the visitors

00:06:37.880 they tailor the ministries and the programs to the visitors they tailor all the marketing and

00:06:43.580 stuff to the visitors um and so it makes sense um you know because basically the church discipline

00:06:52.460 becomes really difficult because you can't tell who's a genuine christian and committed to the

00:06:57.500 church uh and who's not because you got this kind of mix of like you kind of almost have like three

00:07:04.100 categories you got like the people that are committed and are christian you're the people

00:07:08.580 who are Christian, but are like, they come 25% of the time. And you can't really call them members

00:07:15.200 of the church. And then you have the people who aren't Christians and are visiting and just

00:07:19.880 seeking. And so you got this kind of situation going on here. And basically, when these churches

00:07:27.060 have created a lost centric gathering, instead of a saved centric gathering, they forfeit the

00:07:35.400 process of keeping a church pure, holy, accountable to scripture. I mean, think about it for a second.

00:07:40.900 If you're going to hold a person accountable, you know, at church to the scriptures who don't even

00:07:47.620 believe in Jesus or believe in the scriptures, how are you going to do that? You kind of get

00:07:54.560 yourself into a dilemma. And the only way really that a local church can apply church discipline

00:08:00.160 is if they have two things established in their church culture.

00:08:04.340 First, they have a saved-centric church,

00:08:07.380 meaning that they're focused on the central work of their ministry

00:08:12.180 is to edify the saints for the outward work of their individual ministries.

00:08:17.420 It's an edification, a strengthening of the body.

00:08:21.220 That's what the church is for.

00:08:24.440 And not centrally about evangelism to the lost.

00:08:29.500 I'm not anti-evangelism at a church meeting, but I am anti because the Bible is anti of making the church prioritized focus on evangelism instead of prioritized focus on the committed centric saints that are there.

00:08:46.860 So that's the first thing that you need to have that focus is that you're preaching and speaking to and catering to and feeding the committed.

00:08:57.380 and the second thing is there must be a clear church membership process of some sort and i know

00:09:09.640 that word church membership can kind of sound like a dirty word like oh that's weird church

00:09:14.460 membership like you think of like membership classes and things i actually you'll i guess

00:09:20.540 you'll hear my argument here in a second but when you you always say i'm a member of a church

00:09:24.580 So it's not a weird thing to say I'm a member of this church.

00:09:27.540 But when you think of church membership, you think like, I don't know, like a golf course that you have to pay dues to or something.

00:09:34.500 But basically what I'm saying, they have a process at the church by which Christians, these are people who have basically have received the gospel, understand what they received.

00:09:47.120 a lot of churches that have church membership programs will actually make you recite the gospel

00:09:53.400 in your own words to determine if they actually understood what they've accepted

00:09:58.100 you've been baptized or are on your way to be baptized

00:10:03.920 and you know so finding out if they're first christians and that they can commit themselves

00:10:11.580 to this covenant body of Christ in a local expression.

00:10:17.280 And this means that these people are willingly submitting themselves

00:10:21.560 to the spiritual care of elders at the church

00:10:26.840 and formally and publicly obligating themselves to one another.

00:10:32.540 And there's a hundred one another's in the New Testament.

00:10:35.720 These are universal commands to be applied locally.

00:10:41.120 That means that those one another's get to play those out with the people in your local church.

00:10:46.960 And many churches do have really great church membership programs.

00:10:50.980 I think of Mark Devers Church, which is Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington, D.C.,

00:10:55.140 Jonathan Lehman wrote a book called Church Membership.

00:10:59.300 It's really small. It's a small, short little book, like 100 pages.

00:11:02.300 It's really good if you're interested in reading more about it.

00:11:05.460 but how fruitful and important and valuable a church membership program is

00:11:10.960 because it allows you to keep your church really healthy, vitally healthy.

00:11:17.180 And I tend to agree that church membership is really fruitful,

00:11:23.580 and that's kind of my theological and ecclesiological position.

00:11:26.480 And the reason is if church discipline moves to its climax enforcement,

00:11:33.700 which is to remove somebody from the church like excommunicate somebody from the local church

00:11:40.680 they have to have been formally part of something in order to remove that person but if you're

00:11:46.840 removing people from something they were never formally part of in the first place then you're

00:11:52.360 not really removing them so that's why i really think membership is critical in order as a

00:11:58.560 foundation for a church to execute church discipline yeah and as many of you guys know

00:12:05.620 we plant house churches and so when a new family comes to our fellowship we first ask if they're

00:12:12.260 christians and if they've been baptized and if they haven't that's our opportunity to then share

00:12:17.140 the gospel with them but if there are genuine christians who are looking for a new local church

00:12:22.340 we often tell them hey we would love to have you come join our fellowship we'd really appreciate

00:12:27.800 if you guys would come for about four to six weeks um and then just as a guest right yeah as

00:12:32.520 a guest four to six weeks and then um we do ask you guys to at that point you know prayerfully

00:12:37.420 with your spouse make a decision as to if the lord is calling you here or calling you to move

00:12:43.880 on to somewhere else um the reason we do this is because we want them to know that according to

00:12:49.920 scripture uh we are spiritually responsible for them and they are spiritually sorry i'm tongue

00:12:55.840 died spiritually responsible uh to us um we're a body or a flock or a building is the bible calls

00:13:02.660 it and we're not isolated um we're not isolated individuals who come and go as we please um and

00:13:09.160 going to go off and live an independent life we are accountable to one another yeah and this is

00:13:13.560 this is a really you know difficult concept for a lot of western christians to think of because

00:13:20.140 they love the freedom church where you can just come and go you don't have to tell anybody when

00:13:24.160 You're not going to be there.

00:13:25.580 If you didn't show up for three months, no one would even call you.

00:13:28.640 People, they love the podcast church.

00:13:30.140 If you're listening to our podcast, this is not your church.

00:13:32.260 Go, go to a, find, go find a church.

00:13:33.820 Go find a local church.

00:13:34.700 And this is the truth is that people love preaching.

00:13:37.780 Or the webcast.

00:13:39.660 People love preaching.

00:13:41.280 They don't like pastoring.

00:13:42.620 They don't like to be accountable and shepherded.

00:13:45.880 But yeah, we want people to know.

00:13:48.940 Basically, when you become a part of church and you publicly, formally make that commitment,

00:13:53.440 And you're submitted to the elders at that church.

00:13:55.740 You're making a declaration of going, I am responsible to keep an eye on your marriage.

00:14:04.700 And you're responsible to keep an eye on my parenting.

00:14:09.180 And you're responsible for keeping an eye on my spiritual growth.

00:14:14.060 And that beautiful, loving accountability structure is the foundation of a really healthy church.

00:14:23.440 And so, yeah, so we say all that is that we really want you guys to find a church that

00:14:35.740 exercises church discipline, that has church membership, that's not this kind of hodgepodge

00:14:43.740 mix of anybody and everybody, and you don't really know who's who.

00:14:49.720 You don't know if you're sitting next to somebody who's day one seeking or day 30 or year 30 in their maturity.

00:14:59.060 So let's look briefly at two central passages on church discipline.

00:15:04.880 We just laid the groundwork for all that and what the Bible tells us to do regarding confronting and dealing with sin in the church.

00:15:15.580 So let's first start with Matthew chapter 18, verse 15 through 17.

00:15:20.560 Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

00:15:25.020 If he hears you, you have gained your brother.

00:15:26.740 But if he will not hear you, take with you one or two more,

00:15:30.400 that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

00:15:34.040 And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.

00:15:37.200 But if he refuses even to hear from the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.

00:15:43.760 Cool part about this passage is that Jesus uses the word church before the church is even established here.

00:15:48.640 So this is in his ministry. Those are Jesus's words right here.

00:15:52.320 And and so he's it's just kind of a prophetic moment of the church.

00:15:55.740 This is very interesting. And not a lot of people catch that.

00:16:00.100 So I want to kind of do some expository preaching on this passage for a second.

00:16:07.300 So, yeah, first thing is, if a brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

00:16:12.240 In the church, if you guys get people that you see some sin in their life or they've offended you or they've hurt somebody, but you've been made aware, like you're the one, the spirit has either revealed or you've been wounded.

00:16:29.220 Don't go tell somebody else to correct them.

00:16:32.160 It's your responsibility to go and to go alone. 1.00

00:16:35.700 Now, I would say if it's a married woman, 1.00

00:16:38.780 see something in another married man's life, 0.61

00:16:40.640 go as couples because you and your spouse are one.

00:16:44.560 But go to him alone.

00:16:46.340 So private, you know, the Proverbs say

00:16:49.360 that it's an honor to conceal a matter

00:16:51.780 in terms of you don't want to let everybody know

00:16:54.120 that this guy's had a prideful moment

00:16:55.640 and he needs to be corrected.

00:16:57.940 And if he hears you, you've gained your brother.

00:17:00.580 Praise God if that happens.

00:17:03.100 Verse 16, but if he will not hear,

00:17:05.160 take with you one or two more.

00:17:09.780 So you have two or three total people that,

00:17:15.760 and it's referencing the Old Testament,

00:17:17.580 that by the mouth of two or three witnesses,

00:17:19.240 every word may be established.

00:17:20.960 You bring some people.

00:17:22.460 Generally, you would bring church leaders or mature men

00:17:25.340 into this discussion to establish all the facts, right?

00:17:31.140 To establish what's really happening

00:17:33.960 and to make a little court, basically, to judge this moment.

00:17:40.900 And as you see, it's becoming, each step becomes more and more public

00:17:45.920 and more and more humiliating.

00:17:49.920 And it says, verse 17,

00:17:51.280 And if he refuses even to hear them, the group of people, tell it to the church.

00:17:56.980 Now you're getting serious here, right?

00:17:59.980 You think that this would be like gossip, right?

00:18:03.960 But it's like, no, we have a brother who is here in the church and has refused to hear the sin.

00:18:10.080 He is walking and unrepentant.

00:18:11.680 Like, this is a big deal, right?

00:18:14.600 Most people never make it to this level.

00:18:17.660 They leave because they can't handle the humiliation.

00:18:20.600 But it says, but if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector.

00:18:29.400 And that's to be, let him be to you as basically an enemy, basically, that he is unwilling to repent for his sin or his offense that he's made to a certain person.

00:18:50.160 It is, you're leaving them to condemnation, spiritually, publicly, socially.

00:18:59.140 And so this is what we would do here on an individual level.

00:19:05.520 But next, I want to look at, I think, a little bit more practical of a church discipline perspective

00:19:12.400 at what Paul instructs us regarding those who are walking, again, in unrepentant sin.

00:19:20.160 And this might be somebody at your church, again, who's living with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

00:19:25.780 I can't tell you how often we've heard about this, this kind of stuff that, you know, people are living together.

00:19:31.080 It's public.

00:19:31.800 They work at the church and everybody knows.

00:19:33.600 And it's like, what?

00:19:35.760 This may be someone who's looking at pornography on a regular basis that's known about it.

00:19:42.300 This might be someone who's getting drunk on the weekends and is, again, calling themselves a Christian, showing up to church and walking contrary to the scriptures.

00:19:52.040 This might be somebody who's cheating on their spouse, committing adultery, but still partaking in the church without correction.

00:20:03.500 correction this might be somebody who's stealing money from their employer whatever it may be

00:20:09.320 but these are issues that we find commonly in in the church um and this is how paul calls the

00:20:18.060 church to handle that matter i'll let veronica read it yeah first corinthians 5 verses 9 through

00:20:24.080 13 i wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually with sexually immoral people

00:20:29.100 yet i certainly did not mean with with the sexually immoral people of this world or with

00:20:34.680 the covetous or extortioners or idolaters since then you would need to go out of the world but

00:20:39.780 now i have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually

00:20:44.440 immoral or covetous or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner not even to eat

00:20:50.920 with such a person for what have i to do with judging those also who are outside do you not

00:20:56.820 judge those who are inside but those who are outside god judges therefore put away from

00:21:02.000 yourselves the evil person what do you think about babe when you hear this passage of scripture

00:21:07.800 it's pretty intense like yikes yeah i mean it's yeah it's intense and rough it's it doesn't feel

00:21:16.180 good to my flesh but to my faith and my spirit i recognize the importance of it yeah it makes you

00:21:24.680 can you can almost feel safe that there's a process for dealing with this um so i'm going

00:21:28.780 to break this down you know he's saying i wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with

00:21:32.440 sexually immoral people yet i certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this

00:21:36.900 world or with the covetous or extortioners or adulterers since you need to go out of the world

00:21:40.820 he's saying i'm not talking about don't keep company with the people who are lost that are

00:21:45.740 walking in sexual immorality everybody who's lost is walking in all types of sins he said you could

00:21:52.460 spend time with those people because you're you're there to be in the world not of the world

00:21:55.620 and go preach the gospel to these individuals he clarifies who he is talking about he says but now

00:22:01.920 i've written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother that's a key statement

00:22:08.280 somebody calling themselves a christian yes they've named themselves a brother or a sister

00:22:13.200 in the church as walking around with the title christian who is sexually immoral or covetous 0.97

00:22:21.080 or an idolater or a reviler or a drunkard or an extortioner okay i want you to pay attention 0.95

00:22:27.260 it's not saying who has committed sexual immorality or who has been covetousness it's 0.88

00:22:32.980 saying that they are these things like they are sexually immoral it's part of their identity it's

00:22:38.340 it's like an ongoing yes it's not it's not just like a one-time situation and it's now it's not 0.98

00:22:44.180 past tense it's present tense they are a drunkard they are a reviler okay they are an extortioner 0.93

00:22:52.640 and it says this statement right here that just blows the socks off most christians 0.91

00:22:57.200 not even to eat with such a person um i'm going to give you a quick story uh i once met with a

00:23:06.800 brother at a place for lunch. And this gentleman told me that he would like to be a part of our

00:23:14.840 church at some point. And he was walking into some sexual immorality prior to marriage with

00:23:22.500 his girlfriend. And I said, hey, thanks for sharing this with me. However, I want to let

00:23:27.920 you know, because you've said this, I'm going to offer you a correction. And if you're not going

00:23:35.400 to change your ways according to scripture um you and i can't eat to get eat together again

00:23:44.740 like we can't be in company with each other um because he's calling himself a believer because

00:23:50.920 he's calling himself a believer and he's walking contrary to the scriptures and he was a little

00:23:56.420 bit shocked like wait whoa and i go yeah brother i you need to walk according to scriptures if

00:24:01.520 you're going to call yourself a christian and um by god's grace he went home he he he made a

00:24:09.080 declaration to his girlfriend or fiance uh they stopped the sexual immorality they got married

00:24:14.160 um repented for those sins uh marriage is great pregnant and now they're great friends with us

00:24:22.680 and and that is a testimony to a godly man who is interested in doing things he received the

00:24:30.980 correction yeah receive the correction praise god right praise god verse 12 it says for what

00:24:37.440 have i to do with judging those who are outside paul said i'm not judging anybody outside of the

00:24:43.000 faith we're not called to judge anybody outside of the church but we are called to judge people

00:24:48.840 who are wearing the name brother or sister not so we could be the correction police but so that we

00:24:55.020 by love can keep a pure church

00:24:59.380 and rescue brothers and sisters from their sin.

00:25:02.840 It says, do you not judge those who are outside?

00:25:04.540 But those who are outside, God judges.

00:25:07.340 Or do you not judge those who are inside? 0.88

00:25:09.200 But those who are outside, God judges.

00:25:10.760 Therefore, put away from yourselves the evil person.

00:25:15.700 So, I guess what's the final point?

00:25:19.860 You know, why are we telling you this?

00:25:21.680 Is it just so you have more Bible information?

00:25:25.020 No, I want to kind of give you some clarity here. Imagine that you have an island that's like a prison island. And every time someone commits a heinous crime, they are sent to this island. And at this island, there's now a million convicted felons, murderers, rapists, all these different people at this island. There's a million people there.

00:25:49.140 Now, let's just say that we took a thousand people from that island and injected them into a thousand churches in America.

00:25:58.800 What would that do to those churches? 0.84

00:26:04.020 Well, I mean, we know what it would do is that the scriptures talk about this idea in Galatians 5, 9, a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump.

00:26:12.900 A little bit of sin turns into a disease if it's permitted to remain there.

00:26:17.720 uh and it'll make the church sick right what does it say bad company corrupts good morals right and

00:26:26.840 so we also know you've seen this probably like if you're a youth ministry person um if you stand on

00:26:33.160 a chair and someone tries to you know say hey you're standing on the chair someone's standing

00:26:38.280 on the floor and see who can pull you can you pull the guy up off the chair up from the ground

00:26:42.700 onto the chair or can the guy pull you from the ground off the chair onto the ground and every

00:26:48.040 time the person on the ground can pull them down it's a illustration of what what happens there

00:26:53.600 and this principle of a little bit of leaven leavens the whole lump is a biblical principle

00:27:00.400 we're called to purify uh the church and uh and that's an important um uh that's that's the

00:27:08.460 important point of what we're talking about. Pastor John MacArthur once said, I really

00:27:13.880 appreciate this. He says, nothing guarantees biblical success like church discipline. He said,

00:27:20.460 you read that correctly. When it comes to growing a godly biblical church, purity must be the

00:27:27.280 priority. Adam Clark, who's a guy that I, he's from the 1700s, 18th century theologian, he writes

00:27:35.480 Bible commentaries, and I really appreciated what he said about church discipline. He says,

00:27:39.700 If evil is allowed to live inside the body of Christ, the work of God cannot prosper.

00:27:47.300 Purity and holiness and righteousness are the foundations of progress in the church.

00:27:52.280 Discipline must be exercised in the church. Without it, it would soon look like the world.

00:27:57.880 um i just want to remind you guys that jesus is coming back for a clean bride and we're called

00:28:05.180 to be representatives of christ to be regenerate to be holy first peter 1 15 says but uh but as he

00:28:12.220 who called you holy you also be holy in all of your conduct we're called to be holy as he is holy

00:28:18.500 hebrews 12 14 says strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see

00:28:27.360 the Lord. We are supposed to be a peculiar people, a different people, a righteous people.

00:28:37.460 Alexander Stotch said in a sermon, a lot of quotes at the end of this here, he says,

00:28:43.920 love is not just happy smiles and pleasant words. A critical test of genuine love is whether we are

00:28:51.840 willing to confront and discipline those we care for. Nothing is more difficult than disciplining

00:28:59.420 a brother or sister in Christ who is trapped in sin. It is always agonizing work, messy, complicated,

00:29:06.600 often unsuccessful, emotionally exhausting, and potentially divisive. This is why most church

00:29:12.740 leaders avoid discipline at all costs. But that is not love. It is a lack of courage and disobedience

00:29:21.020 to the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself laid down instructions for the discipline of an unrepentant 0.90

00:29:27.280 believer. So good. That's a great quote. I've never heard it. So good. Yeah, we need to be

00:29:33.480 thinking of it in those terms. Yeah. So what is someone supposed to do about this?

00:29:41.560 Like, what's the application? How should a member of a church take this truth and then apply it

00:29:47.580 to their church if their church doesn't follow it yeah this is a hard question that we get

00:29:52.840 you know it's kind of like the idea is it is it easier to cure an old man of cancer

00:29:59.260 or to keep a new baby from having cancer like it's kind of like the idea of like do i want to go back

00:30:04.920 into my old sick church that's kind of you know and try to see if i could bring healing to it

00:30:09.020 or would i rather go to a new church plant and just start right from the beginning and also just

00:30:12.520 before you get into this i would there's this quote that you often say um i don't know who

00:30:18.280 quoted it originally or maybe it's yours i don't know um be curious before you're critical yeah

00:30:23.420 so it could be a private matter your church could be walking out church discipline with a lot of

00:30:28.640 people and they are concealing it they are um you know keeping it as a private matter um but

00:30:33.620 generally you'll be able to tell by the fruit of the church yes do you have a church that's holy

00:30:39.200 and pure um so a couple points that i want to just leave you guys with is the toleration of sin

00:30:47.700 in a brother or sister's life is not love it's hate if you tolerate the sin in someone's life

00:30:55.900 that's not loving that's hating them being unwilling to correct sin for fear of pain

00:31:05.040 like for you know I don't want to have the painful argument it's like watching a friend fall

00:31:09.800 and not willing to grab him because you're like I don't want you to scratch my arms when you

00:31:12.900 try to pull yourself up on me okay it's it's it's terrible we must be willing to

00:31:20.220 make that correction another important principle every single person in the church should be a

00:31:29.000 part of church correction if you've never corrected somebody you're being disobedient

00:31:33.500 because there's, I promise you, you've been offended before.

00:31:36.180 I promise you, you've seen sin before that you've just overlooked.

00:31:42.660 Putting a blind eye to something like that is not loving.

00:31:46.040 It's not righteous.

00:31:47.820 You need to be willing to lovingly and gently have a discussion with that brother or sister.

00:31:57.440 And vice versa, if that person is you.

00:31:59.540 Yes.

00:32:00.040 And somebody approaches you with a loving correction.

00:32:03.500 Um, you know, if it aligns with scripture, I'd yield to that.

00:32:08.900 Over the years, I've been corrected by brothers and elders, I don't know, 40, 50 times over

00:32:17.460 the last six, seven years.

00:32:18.740 It's fantastic.

00:32:20.800 What an amazing thing to not allow me to keep doing something that's not in alignment with

00:32:28.720 scripture.

00:32:29.000 and you just get to be humble in those matters the second point i want to make is that you never

00:32:36.660 enjoy church discipline it's not something that you should be lording over we do it because it's

00:32:43.900 a part of the christian duty um and we always you know as i say in first corinthians chapter 13 love

00:32:50.780 hopes all things we hope that they it's always for the hope of restoration

00:32:57.420 um and when when man when there's two humble people there oh it's beautiful it's beautiful

00:33:04.220 and then the last thing is if your church does does not talk about this um or you don't know

00:33:10.080 like veronica said just set up a meeting with your pastor or one of the elders at your church

00:33:14.360 um and ask them what is the church's process for dealing with a person who's

00:33:19.600 at church who calls themselves a christian but it's walking in open and unrepentant sin

00:33:25.820 and discuss these passages this is matthew 18 and first corinthians chapter 5 you can go back and

00:33:31.240 read those and um and see what they what they say about that okay anything else from you

00:33:37.620 um no i mean i had a thought but it was kind of a couple points ago you should say um i think it

00:33:46.460 just ties back into what i was saying and if if the person is not receptive or you are the person

00:33:51.400 that is receiving correction you're not receptive it generally comes from a point of pride a root

00:33:57.420 issue sin is pride um so again you can't argue with a humble person again like dale said when

00:34:05.820 there's two humble people it's a it generally works out and it's a blessing and it can also

00:34:12.720 turn into a gross we've done this a few times with some families over the years

00:34:16.240 that it has turned even with the best intentions and you're even going with the loving gentle heart

00:34:24.000 and at the end of the day sometimes people don't want to hear it and they like their sin more than

00:34:30.220 they are interested in being holy and we sometimes you know i think nancy wilson was talking about

00:34:36.440 this is going um we get sometimes really upset like you know and it's hard it's an emotional

00:34:43.280 thing it's hard because it's people that you love and care about but at the end of the day it's

00:34:46.200 sometimes the lord purifying his church and so it's just a part of that of that journey yeah it's

00:34:52.940 never fun never never fun we've had to do it multiple times and it's it's hard it's one of

00:34:58.040 the most stressful things we've done um last thing i want to mention to you guys is uh if you guys

00:35:03.760 consider making a donation um to our ministry a lot of you guys already do you guys support us

00:35:10.220 at $20 a month, $50 a month, $5 a month.

00:35:14.600 We are in the middle of gearing up

00:35:17.700 for establishing a church planting school.

00:35:21.560 So many families are asking us,

00:35:23.780 hey, we want to plant a house church

00:35:24.820 or we want to plant,

00:35:25.940 we're looking for house church in our area,

00:35:27.580 we can't find one,

00:35:28.420 so we want to get someone

00:35:29.780 who's qualified and ready to do this and called,

00:35:32.800 but we don't know where to begin.

00:35:34.480 And so we want to establish this school,

00:35:36.900 this church planting school,

00:35:38.140 and we're working hard on it over here.

00:35:39.860 as well as hiring a few employees.

00:35:43.060 A budget for our little ministry right now

00:35:45.240 with just a few part-time people

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00:35:53.400 I mean, it's a couple hundred thousand dollars

00:35:54.860 just right there.

00:35:56.640 And so, you know, if you guys are,

00:35:59.860 feel like the Lord's called you

00:36:01.420 to supporting our ministry,

00:36:03.300 would you just prayerfully consider

00:36:04.820 supporting or increasing your donation?

00:36:07.460 we promise to be faithful with the money

00:36:11.220 we are always trying to be good stewards

00:36:15.820 of what is given to us

00:36:17.580 so that we can have a fruitful ministry for the kingdom

00:36:20.520 and you can do that always at relearnchurch.org

00:36:23.600 forward slash donate

00:36:25.300 again that's relearnchurch.org forward slash donate

00:36:28.820 okay that's it

00:36:31.060 see you guys next week

00:36:31.940 we'll see you guys next week

00:36:32.880 take care

Dale Partridge - February 19, 2020

Real Christianity #85： Why We Need Church Discipline

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