Father, we give thanks to Your name as You have before time began purposed to save us and to give us an eternal hope in Your Son, Jesus, Lord. So we say thank You for our unshakable, unbreakable hope. And it is the risen Christ, Lord, in all things, in our deepest fears, in our greatest battles, Jesus is our hope. And we thank You and we praise You. And God, we ask as we gather this morning as Your people that Your Spirit would use the Word to cut deep and to, Lord, reveal more of who You are that we would all the more glory in the Gospel and glory in being Your people and living for Your namesake, Lord. So we just ask You to give us ears to hear this morning. Lord, we come with open hands, Lord, not only to receive Your Word, but Lord, to give our tithe, our offering that You would take it, that You would bless it and multiply it for Your namesake. Thank You for being our perfect and great provider. And we pray that in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you, Chase and Rebecca. It’s a good time of worship.
We’re going to be in Matthew 18.
Matthew 18, verses 15-20. What is it, like four weeks in a row we’ve been in Matthew? I haven’t broken it yet. Yes, it’s pretty. It’s pretty good. It’s a pretty good record.
Verse 15.
Jesus says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you’ve 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 people. 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 am I among them.
If you’ve ever watched young children play soccer, it’s a lot like watching young children aimlessly run in circles. The two aren’t so different.
Dawson started playing soccer and Darcy’s played soccer before and they’re just excited to be out there but they’re all just doing their own thing and they’re just getting mixed up and you know, yeah they’re a team but they haven’t learned the unity aspect of like what we’re about and how this whole thing works. It’s just fun at that age. And Jesus is talking to us this morning about unity in the church. The church is nothing if it’s not a unified thing. The question becomes, what is the church unified around? And the answer to that question has to be the person of Jesus. If it’s not the person of Jesus, the whole thing falls apart. We lose our unity. We lose our very purpose for existing if our unity is not about Christ. And not just Jesus’ name like some memorial to someone who wants to live. We actively unify around this person Jesus who is particularly, and I think this is what Jesus is getting at this morning, who is particularly, holy.
The great privilege of being in the church is to, because of the gospel, be made holy as Christ is holy. So Jesus is talking to us this morning if we’re going to be a church we have to be unified in holiness. Unity in holiness. That’s what I want us to consider this morning.
Verse 15 again, Christ says, 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. So Jesus, if you recall the last few weeks, Jesus has been talking to us about what we ought not do to hurt someone else. You shouldn’t cause other people to sin. You shouldn’t treat others with contempt and condescension. So don’t lead other people into sin because there’s godlessness in your life, nor, nor so despise and dishonor other people in the church that they have low, mean thoughts of the church and of Christ and are ultimately pushed away from the church because of your poor witness. We saw him say that. But now he flips it and now his audience is not the offending party. Christ says, here’s what you are to do if you have been offended.
What do I do when someone in the church sins against me? What do I do when someone hurts me? And again, take note, we’ve been in a long discourse here in chapter 18 about interpersonal relationships between disciples in the church. Jesus has a lot to say about it, which means what? It really means a lot to him. It’s really worth considering as important as Christ considers it important.
Naturally, how do you and I respond when someone’s someone hurts us?
I’m hurting you back. I’m going to get even with you. But Christ says, if you’re my disciple, you cannot respond naturally in your flesh. You cannot respond naturally according to the world. You must respond, if you’re a follower of Jesus, supernaturally according to the Spirit.
And in my view, as a pastor, for what it’s worth, I’ve been in the ministry, I don’t know, 10, 11-ish years. This is one of the least considered,
the least obeyed passages, and at the same time, one of the most important passages. Very valuable.
First thing I want us to see from this passage, if we truly desire unity and holiness, we will seek the welfare of those who don’t seek ours. If we truly desire unity and holiness, we will seek the welfare, the welfare of those who do not seek ours. In Ephesians 6, verse 12, the Apostle Paul writes, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. What Paul is letting us in on is this. One of the best tactics of the enemy is not overt and obvious. Right? Satan doesn’t come and say, Hey, I’m your enemy, and here I come to attack you with thoughts of fear and thoughts of doubt and to tempt you with lustful thoughts and desire for power and money. That’s not what he does. One of Satan’s best strategies is to remain altogether invisible. If he can sow seeds of discord among brothers and sisters in Christ, you know what we are? We are awfully good at fighting the devil’s battle, for him. How so? Well, friend, when you are hurt and you’ve been wronged and your temptation is to hurt back and to get even and to let a relationship remain fractured, what you’re doing is shooting yourself and your own church, the body of Christ in the foot, and the devil stands over in the corner laughing. Paul’s reminder is simple. If you’re going to follow Jesus in the context of a local church, you had better prepare for spiritual warfare because spiritual warfare is what we fight. The devil is your enemy. Evil forces he controls. They seek to snuff out a Christian’s faith.
The devil relishes the thought of a church being fractured, of a church being divided, of a church closing its doors. Best of all to him, if a church can be so inbred with fighting and politics and this little tribe getting their way or this person getting his way, they never get around to doing what they’re supposed to be doing, effectively sharing the gospel of Jesus with the whole world. So that’s the enemy we have. And if we’re not careful, and I don’t think again that we generally are, if we’re not careful, we end up misplacing our true enemy, Satan, for a false one, one another, one another. Church, we fail to rightly respond to the offenses and sins done against us when we fail to remember the gospel. When we fail to remember the gospel. The gospel is the what? It’s that wonderful message from heaven whereby you and I hear that God in Christ Jesus has forgiven me all my sin. Every misdeed, even the small ones that I don’t think, too much about. That’s enough, God’s law tells me, for me to be imprisoned in hell forever. All my little sins. But even to the greatest sins that a sinner can commit, Jesus preaches freedom even to this. He preaches freedom from punishment, cleansing from the disease of sin, cleansing from all my unrighteous deeds. All of it laid on Christ and all of Christ’s righteousness laid on me. It’s what Martin Luther called, a marvelous, great exchange.
Paul says in writing to Timothy, he says this is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
I recently heard someone say, and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember who said it or I’d give him the credit for it, but grace is not a thing. You know, we often talk about grace as like a thing, like God showed me grace. Accurately, grace is a person. His name’s Jesus. The grace of God is most visibly seen in the bloody cross of Christ for sinners. People like us. That’s the good news of the gospel. And you should love that. And you should just revel in that. And you should have all the joy, all the joy and conviction about what God has done for you. But here’s the big news flash that we’ve got to constantly have. You’re not the only person God loves. You’re not the only person that gets to sing the song of grace to your right and to your left. If the person sitting next to you is in Christ, that’s a soul for whom Christ spilled His blood. The Father gave up His Son. And if that’s true, here’s what’s true. God, God expects, God demands those who have embraced His love to embrace others with that same love and forgiveness. It’s not optional. It’s a command. Paul says it this way in Colossians. Put on then as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another. And if one has to complain against another, what do I have to do, Paul? Forgive each other. How? As the Lord has forgiven you, so you… you must also forgive.
So that’s the power of the gospel at work in you, in me. I’m free from my desire to hate. And I’m free to love and forgive as Christ has loved and forgiven me. You know what happens when justice wells up inside of us and you feel awfully self-righteous because such and such hurt your feelings or such and such did that. Maybe they did it for the millionth time. Maybe they did it for the millionth time and you raise your fist for justice.
Friend, you can put it back down.
And what we can do is look to the cross and see how God has already dealt with that sin done against you and His Son already paid for it on the cross. Do you and I really think that we can bring a greater justice to someone for their sins than God already brought to His Son for those sins already? Do we think we have the right to hate someone when God has so sacrificially loved them by pouring out the blood of His Son, Jesus? That’s hateful pride, isn’t it?
But friends, if we have the Spirit of God in ourselves, we can see one another through the lens of the cross and I see I am a great sinner as this person is a great sinner and we both come to the cross zeroed out and we both need forgiveness and God demands we show it to one another. So we’re free from hate and I can seek the welfare of the one who hurts me and even hurts me deeply. I’m free to do something. Love them. Help them. Get them back to Jesus. What does Jesus say? He says, when you speak the truth, the truth will set you free. So what’s the best thing I can do for someone who’s sinning against me? Right? Or say it this way, what’s more important to you when you, when you’re in your hurt? To get even? To take a jab back? Or to help this sinner get back to Jesus? And the way they get back is you humbly speaking the truth they need to hear.
Metaphorically, friends, when you see someone in your life who’s hurting you, you should take them by the hand and gently walk with them back to the cross of Christ and say, see, you and I aren’t like this anymore. See, Christ has already covered over that sin. See, we can move on and this sin is forgiven and this sin is forgotten because we’re new creatures. So Jesus says it really point blank, doesn’t it, in our passage in Matthew. He says, tell him his fault. Tell him his fault. It’s really a pretty direct command. If you’re sinned against, go tell the person their fault.
There’s a lot of room based off of Jesus’ words here to judge one another. And how often have you heard the scriptures misquoted? People say things like, don’t judge me. God says don’t judge people. Only God can judge. You can’t judge me. Right? You’ve heard that so many times. Look in Corinthians
chapter 5. Paul says, what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? And in Colossians 3.16, he says teach and educate. Admonish one another. And that word admonish means it means to be stern. Rebuke one another when you see one another out of line. So yes, it’s true. Only God can pronounce final judgment on the soul. But hear me say this to you. And this is so important. The best way that we can love one another, the best way that we can love one another now is to point out one another’s sins and say, hey brother, hey sister, I see that in you and it’s wrong. It doesn’t look like Jesus. You need to change. You need to repent.
And I think that’s a pretty mind-blowing thing for 21st century people, Christians of here, because that touches on my human pride. Don’t tell me what to do. This is an age of self-empowerment. I get to tell me what to do.
But if we want to be New Testament Christians, there’s so much room to see how we should be with the license Christ gives us. To be up in each other’s business. Like, I love you so much, I’m going to tell you, stop sinning. Right? And that doesn’t mean I’m going to elect myself to police and I’m going to be going around, hey, you know, you seem vain. Are you vain? I think you’re vain. You know, that’s not what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying, convicted by the Word, with the right motive, coming from the Scriptures, with prayer, humility, you come to your brother and you say, I love you so much. I need to see you repent. I need to see you repent of your sin. Especially when relationships are fractured. So let me say this. And again, I guess this passage is particularly important to me, personal to me. If you plan on being a part of the local church for any length of time, hopefully the rest of your life, you have got to grasp what Christ is saying here this morning in my text. Because if you do not make a result, resolve now to have a long-term commitment to the local church, you will give up when it gets too hard. And it will get hard. Because it is not an if statement. If, if your brother hurts you, it’s a when thing. When you get hurt, you will hurt people sometimes. You know why? Because you’re a sinner. And we’re good at hurting one another. But friends, Christ calls us in His Spirit to say, no, I’m not going to obey my flesh. Surprise, surprise, Jesus expects me, since I’m His disciple, to act like Him. He expects me to respond to hurts the way that He did and seek the good of those who don’t seek my good.
I want to show you something in 2 Peter, and I think this is really amazing and important. In 2 Peter, 1st chapter, Peter’s effectively giving the church a checklist for assurance. Like, how can I know, how can I know that my salvation is real? How can I really know that I’m in Christ?
He says, for this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with steadfastness, steadfastness with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. So you see, he says, how can you really have this practice, this physical assurance that you’re truly a Christian? Well, you should be growing in godliness and your moral character. You should see that in you. But here’s another dead giveaway. You maintain affection for the local church and you love them. See? That’s so good. And that’s such a gracious thing for God to move Peter to say that because usually, you can tell that someone really isn’t into Jesus not by what they’re doing, but what they’re not doing. Which is what? Abiding with people when it’s difficult. Abiding with other people when it’s really hard and sin is on the table.
Jesus even says, you should love the person who hurts you so much. You should do all you can do to make sure nobody else knows about it. He says, you go to them in private. You know, I heard that such and such said that to you the other night at group. What? That guy’s a jerk, isn’t he? Oh, no, we’re not going to do that because I already confronted him and I forgave him of that and I don’t want him to be associated with that sin, so let’s not talk about it. Hey, I’ve experienced that with that same person. They just don’t… No, let’s not do that. I approached them. I forgave them. It is gone. It is east from west gone. Let’s not talk about that. I don’t want her to be associated with that sin. Let’s not do that. You see, that’s incredible because it’s one thing, to have your wounds affirmed. Like, I know they did do that, but can you believe I forgave them like Jesus would? They’re awful, but I found it in myself this time to forgive them. No. Jesus says, don’t even do that. Just say, no, it’s over. I don’t even… I don’t associate them with that sin they committed. That is incredible. That is supernatural. That is outside of you and me. Like, I need the Spirit to give me that kind of love because I don’t have it. And you don’t have it. We need to… We need to be living in the Spirit.
My dog, Milo, the black lab, I don’t know why, but when it gets really rainy and muddy, he especially loves to go out there and just run amok and he’ll just do his laps and he’ll come up and his whole underside is caked in mud and his paws are caked in mud. And I found myself this past week trying to reason with my dog.
I said, why do you do this? And I’m like, what am I doing? I can’t talk a dog out of its nature. Can I? You can’t. Friends, in the same way, if we don’t really have the Spirit, you can’t be talked out of your nature. It’s only living in Christ that we have this supernatural gospel love to abide together in the unity of holiness.
Friends, if Christ is your Savior, you have a new nature and you’re called to live like this.
Suffer. Tough conversation. I know it’ll be so weird. Suffer a tough conversation because you love Jesus and you love His people and you’re willing to say the truth regardless of the outcome. Because it’s not a promise Jesus gives. If you’re sinned against, the other person is going to respond the way that they should. It’s not promised. But here’s what is promised. You can lay your head down on the pillow at night and say, Lord, I’ve obeyed You. Romans 12, 18. As far as it depends, it depends on you. Live peaceably with all. Lord, I have done what I can do by Your grace and the power of Your Spirit to look like Jesus and make peace. I can’t control the other person. And that, friend, that should be enough for you. That should be enough to say, by grace, I’m looking through the lens of the cross at other people when it’s really tough.
Look at verse 16 with me.
He goes on, 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.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6,
and what Paul’s doing here in 2 Corinthians 6 is he’s quoting Isaiah and a command that God gave the people in the Old Testament. God says, therefore,
go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing,
then I will welcome you. So there’s this running motif, this idea in the Old and the New Testament, and it’s, that of separateness.
Sharp contrasts and divisions.
Abraham. Abraham was called to go out from among his own nation, the pagan nation. He was called to go out and be a separate nation devoted to God. When the Israelites are in bondage, God calls them out from slavery, not just to be free from slavery, but to be saved to Him, to be His own precious possession, to be separate, devoted to God alone. When the Israelites are in the Promised Land, they’re not supposed to look and act and mingle with the other nations. They’re supposed to be separate. And God says you’re going to be separate in your dietary laws. You’re not going to eat what those people eat. You’re going to be separate in your ceremonial laws, how you obey me as your God, different from their pagan gods. And you’re going to be separate in the civil law, in the way that you treat one another, in a way, in a way that’s superior to how they’re treating one another. So you see, God says you’re going to be, if you’re my people, you’re going to look separate. You’re going to be different.
Now, how often did they fail to look different? They often loved to mix and mingle and adopt the cultures and the gods and the sins of the nations around them. But when we come to the New Testament, God hasn’t lowered that bar at all. He’s raised it much higher. Because He’s raised it much higher. Because He hasn’t given us rules and said, here, here’s rules you can’t obey. He’s given us literally His Spirit. He has given us the power of His Spirit, a new heart and a new mind, Jeremiah and Ezekiel tell us, so that we not only desire to obey God, but we have the capacity in Christ to obey. So you see, if you do have the Spirit, you must, you must obey. It’s not even optional. It’s a matter, you is or you isn’t kind of thing. You have the Spirit, or you don’t. And if you don’t have the Spirit, you don’t have a place in the church. Much like in the Old Testament, you so often read that phrase, cut off from the people. Those who were unrepentant in their sin, they were cut off from the nation of Israel.
Look with me in 1 Corinthians 5. I’m going to read something that Paul writes to the church in Corinth.
1 Corinthians 5. He says, It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that’s not tolerated even among pagans. For a man has his father’s wife. Are you arrogant? Ought you not rather mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
You see what Paul is saying? He’s saying, Why do you care so little for your corporate holiness? That’s the, that’s the concern. That’s the issue here. Why are you so, so unbothered that there is such an ungodliness present among your church? He says, Put that man outside of the church until he repents. He says, Give him over to Satan that his soul may be saved in the day of Christ. Put him out.
Holiness, is that important? So, so that, that motif going in the Old and New Testament of separation, I think it’s a really strong rebuke to churches today that either by cowardice or lack of concern don’t take any measure to deal with the sin in their midst. Not at all. And I think, let’s use the formal word here, church discipline is what we’re talking about. I’m just not concerned about church discipline. I think church discipline conveniently goes out the window, when church life becomes about anything else than just being a healthy church.
We gotta get big. We gotta get big. We gotta look like the church down the road. What are the churches doing? It’s what we gotta do. It doesn’t matter. We gotta get big. I’m not knocking big churches. I’m simply saying, when that’s what you want, it’s really tough to care about church discipline because that’s messy and hard.
Churches are, you hear this phrase, Oh, we just want to be a church that’s culturally relevant. Like when people walk in, what are they smelling? What colors are they seeing? Are we using the right graphics? I mean, is this a place people would want to be? I mean, it’s like, hey, we get it, man. We’re using their vernacular.
Church discipline, let’s not, that sounds kind of crusty.
Worst of all, and this is becoming increasingly true of like all denominations, when a church wants to be an accepting church, which means, look, we’re just not going to call people out. We just want people to come and we just want them to feel loved and we’re not going to tell them they’re wrong and we’re not going to be pointing fingers and actually these parts in the Bible, we’re going to run some lines here and there. Church discipline, what? It disappears. And when church discipline disappears and disciples remain sinful,
that separateness that God demands, it’s gone. And then the church, the church is no longer the church at all.
It’s no longer separate.
God says, be holy in the Old Testament. Peter reiterates it. Be holy for I am holy. Go out from among them.
Many years ago, I was much earlier in ministry and I went to a prayer meeting with just a couple of people. It was pastors and there was a pastor there who said, guys, I need help. I’ve got these two guys in my church and the one guy is saying, I did this thing. This other brother did this thing to me and the other brother said, bald-faced, no, I didn’t do that thing. And he’s going, what am I supposed to do? Because he’s saying, you know, red, he’s saying blue and I don’t, they’re just literally saying the opposite things. I don’t know what to do. That’s not what Jesus means when he says, take two or three witnesses. Like, oh yeah, I saw that. You’re not always going to see sins that are done to everybody else. Why does Jesus say, take witnesses with you then? One, for corroboration. You shouldn’t be able to just say, hey, such and such stole $100 from me. Like, oh, he did? And everyone believed? Like, no, give that fella or lady a chance to say, no, that’s not accurate or yes, that is accurate. So when a brother or sister take along with them a couple other brothers and sisters, it’s to say, hey, this, offended party has said that you, the offender, you did this. They asked you to repent. They wanted to forgive you and you said no. Is that true or false? Well, hopefully they would say,
well, that’s true. And now that you’re here and I see these multiple like godly men or women pleading with me to repent of my sin. What’s wrong with me? These men, they’ve taken time out of their day. They’re pleading with me my sin. I’ve been a knucklehead here. I just need to repent of this and move on. That’s kind of the power of having two or three godly witnesses and counselors is this sinful brother or sister saying, man, I hear the multitude of wisdom and counsel coming from you. Yes, I’m going to repent of that. That’s why I had to take two or three witnesses with you. Jesus says though, but what happens if that doesn’t work out that way? He says, pull it in front of the whole church. In front of the whole church.
Now I don’t have just, two or three people saying, hey, do you realize what you’re doing? Like, let’s be clear on your sin here and why it’s important you forsake it. Now, you’ve got the entire body of Christ pleading with this person. Do you realize what you’re getting ready to give up? You’re giving up all this, all of us. You’re saying your sin is more precious to you than having fellowship here in this church. Which implies what? Having fellowship in the local church should be premium. It shouldn’t be, oh, you want to do, yeah, sure, come on in. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care who you are. Just be here. No, like, what does the Bible teach? And we’re submitting to that together. So the call to bring it in front of the church is loving. And you hear that word excommunication, which I guess that is what’s happening here. You think of like these old men in like red robes with hoods pulled over and they’re like condemning a person and throwing them out of the church. It’s scary. It’s really not what’s happening. I want you to think about this. Who excommunicates who? When you three times plead with someone, leave your sin behind, leave your sin behind, leave your sin behind. You’re giving up the gospel. You’re giving up fellowship in the church. You’re giving up God. And three times they say, no, no, no.
It’s pretty evident. It’s not so much the church saying you must leave us. It is. But it’s that sinner saying, I don’t want to be here.
I see your loving pleads with me to repent and come in unity, but nah, I’ll take the world.
So I just want you to have fresh eyes on that because when we say like, I’m going to cut you off from being a brother or sister, I’m not cutting you off as much as you have chosen to not be my brother or sister. You’ve chosen to be considered as a sinner out in the world in unrepentant sin. Charles Spurgeon said, from the first personal visit of the injured brother down to the last act of disavowalment, nothing has been done vindictively, but has been affectionately carried out with the view of setting the brother right. The trespasser who will not be reconciled has incurred much guilt by resisting the attempts of love made in obedience to the command of the great head of the church. To say it another way, friends, church discipline does not drag someone down. It seeks to lift a sinner and the whole church up.
Paul says in 2 Thessalonians, if a brother is in unrepentant sin, don’t have anything to do with him. So that he is ashamed. He’s like, ashamed? Well, that’s not loving. Friends, we should so value the body of Christ that to be told you cannot be a part of it until you deal with your sin, those should be heavy words to someone who truly has the Holy Spirit because they realize in their being separated from it, I’ve cut myself off from my true love. I’ve cut myself off from the bridegroom, Jesus. I’ve cut myself off from the bride of Christ. And that is far more precious than my sin.
So life is not about, sorry, being right, having your own way. It’s about all of us together humbly submitting to our head, Jesus, and being unified in Him and Him alone.
Think about it like this. Parents who have
a 16-year-old daughter, a 16-year-old daughter, who is terribly disrespectful, terribly disobedient, and they don’t do anything about it, they can’t be too shocked when their 13-year-old daughter is just as disrespectful and disobedient. You can’t really do much but say, well, this is the culture you let happen in your home. What did you expect was going to happen? Or to even older illustration, when you let one bad apple sit with all the good apples, what’s going to happen? You should have taken the apple out. Apples can’t repent, or I would say, tell that apple to repent and not be a bad apple, but that’s too far for the illustration. But you get the point. You get the point. Friends, Christ-centered community, and I say that phrase so much because it’s so important, so important. Christ-centered community is something to have a long view, a long-term commitment. You can’t have a loose commitment to the local church. And again, I think that our text this morning, it’s almost, it would be like listening to Mandarin for someone because they’ve never had a meaningful relationship with the local church. They church hop. You offended me? Bye. Go down to the next church. You offended me? Bye. Go down to the next church. And this idea of bearing with Christians and forgiving through really hard stuff, that doesn’t even have a context, I think, for a lot of people who claim to be Christians in the 21st century. So we have got to be committed. Like, I’m not going to be ankle deep. I’m not going to be neck deep, but I’m going to be neck deep. Completely neck. I’m just going to be so rooted in a local church and I’m going to be committed here and I’m going to abide here. And, you know, I’ve said this before in past sermons, that doesn’t mean there’s never a good reason to leave a church. There are valid reasons for why you can’t abide with the church. We’re talking about the wrong reasons here. We’re talking about because as a sinner, I don’t want someone to point my sins out to me. I’ll come to you. I’ll come to the church. I’ll get some encouraging words, but I’m ultimately going to be who I want to be in Jesus’ church. And Jesus says, no, you will not. You will not. You will all look like me and like it. That’s what Christ demands of us.
Love the bridegroom’s bride, the church. He bled for her so that she would be holy. And last of all, when we fail to maintain our unity and holiness, you know, what we fail to do is be a light to the world. Look, we’re a different people. We can love one another in ways you can’t love. We have a Savior that you don’t have. We lose the power of the Gospel when we fail to love one another as Christ calls us to. So understand this then. Unity and holiness is only possible when we’re unified with the will of the Father and the Son. That’s what it means to be unified. I’m going to finish out here just the rest of these verses. Jesus says in 18,
So the church doesn’t have the power to do what it wants to do. Hey, all you church members, I’m the pastor and I say, this is right. No, heaven’s not agreeing with that. I don’t have authority for that. But when we’re making decisions that agree with the Word, that means that God in heaven is agreeing with it. So when we see someone and they come to faith, and man, this person’s praying and they’re going in the Word, and man, I can see their godly character and they’re serving in the church. Man, we’re just affirming that person in the local church. Heaven says, Amen. Look at how Jesus saved that soul and they’re just, they’re just growing up in Jesus. But when someone says, I’m not doing that and I don’t want to obey and I want to be sinful in the church, and the church has to say, Brother or sister, you’re going to have to leave. And they say, Okay, heaven says, Amen, because that doesn’t accord with my Word. In other words, heaven, God, is agreeing with our decisions to affirm those who are growing in Christ and it agrees with our decision to excommunicate those who refuse to.
Because God loves His bride and He will see her be holy.
Why does it matter so much that we’re unified in holiness? Why does that matter? It matters because so much is gained or lost.
Friends, you and I have these short little lives here on earth and very quickly, we will all stand before a judgment and our souls will be eternally condemned or brought into a kingdom. We just have a few moments here to receive Christ, to grow up in our sanctification, to prepare ourselves for eternity, to make a difference in the world around us. So much to be gained. But if we give up Christ and we give up holiness, oh, there’s so much to be lost.
Your soul, the souls of your children, your neighbors, your friends, all that God would have done in and through a holy church, so much is lost to heaven and won to hell when we will not fight for the integrity of the gospel and we will not demand to see holiness in one another. That’s why you must, I must, we must take this so serious because we love one another and we love Jesus by His grace and we love His church.
Let’s pray.
Father, if we were all just very honest this morning,
not one of us could say we haven’t had a sin struggle this past week. Not one of us could say that we’ve made the mark that we measure up to your standard of holiness.
But Lord, what we can say because of your grace is that your Spirit convicts us of our sin and your Spirit moves us to seek holiness and to know that because of Jesus’ blood we’re made new and we’re made clean.
And your Spirit keeps us in the church where we’re helping one another stay on the straight and narrow and live holy, Lord. So we thank you and we praise you that it’s not about how holy we can be, it’s about the holiness of your grace. Your Son Jesus at work in us through the Spirit.
So Lord, we pray, grow our faith and our desire to be holy as Christ is holy. Let His holiness, let your Spirit
grow in us as the world, as our flesh, as it fades. Let the fullness of Christ be found in us, Lord.
God, I pray that we would not seek to please man or fear man or worry about what other people think, but we would do what’s right. That we would speak for truth. That we would have the humility and courage, Lord, to address sins when we need to do that and do that with the wisdom and conviction of the Spirit, Lord, that we may please you and be holy, Lord.
So Father, all the ways that the devil works against us, all the ways the world seems to tempt us, all the ways that our flesh is weak, God, we rely on your grace. We rely on your grace to save us and your grace to keep us, Lord. So let us, Lord, let us just believe that and by your grace set ourselves to abide in it. We just love you. We pray that in Christ’s name. Amen.