Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 9, 2022 | 1 Corinthians - What is Church Discipline?

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October 9, 2022 | 1 Corinthians - What is Church Discipline? · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good to see you.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: So let me tell you how I've failed already this morning.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Without preamble, we are in 1 Corinthians 5 and we're going to be talking about church discipline this morning.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I found an honest to goodness bad apple at my house earlier this week.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: It had gone rotten.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And all week long I told Hannah, I had set it out.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm going to show people this rotten apple because you've never seen a rotten apple before, right?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but it's, it's, this is the illustration that hit.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So anyhow, I all week long she's like, can we throw this out?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, no, it is for Sunday.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: We need to keep this thing.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot my rotten apple.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all uphill for me, right?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's all or downhill, maybe.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Anyhow, we the phrase though, bad apple, there is meaning behind it.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was actually my mom who found it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: She was over at our house, and uh it had sort of turned on its side.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: We have this bowl of apples right now.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Love this fall weather, and that's sitting on our table at home.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um apples, when they just even when they look normal, they release a gas called ethylene.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And but as they become more and more sort of rotten or ripe, if you will, ripe too rotten, they begin to release more and more of this gas.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is true that if you have a really bruised or overripe apple and it's with others, that it will hasten their ripening and ultimately make things rot faster.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're taught now, just imagine that I'm holding one, and then I set it down.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about church discipline, though, um, it's something that probably brings to mind a few thoughts in your head, and it can range all the way from like scarlet letter Puritan intensity to just confusion because church discipline isn't something that we talk about very often in kind of our modern church.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um and where we're looking this morning is we understand that church discipline, it's one of those sort of like family values, uh, that as a people who are committed to God and his word, that it is something that we use on a selective and special basis to be able to keep the uh moral integrity of his church, to preserve our witness to the outside world, um, and to be able to, this is kind of the bad apple part, to preserve others within the church from becoming sort of um infected with this desire to rebel against God.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna look in 1 Corinthians 5 this morning, and I want to walk with you through this, and I want to show you what Paul is saying, the specific circumstances here, some of the guardrails that we need to put up when we talk about this, and then ultimately what your commitment should be when we're discussing something as I get as heavy as this topic, right?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as we go forward into 1 Corinthians, could you turn my mic down just a little bit, please?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: As we go into 1 Corinthians 5 here, we see it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among Gentiles.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: A man is sleeping with his father's wife, and you are arrogant.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, Paul, right, because he has had, he's in Ephesus right now, right, where the church of the Ephesians would be, and he's writing this letter to the Corinthians.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And he has had people from Corinth come and visit him, whether it's Chloe's people or whether it's Stephan uh Stephanus or somebody else, they have come and reported what is going on in Corinth.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is sort of this long-range issue, something that's been going on for a while.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the situation is that there's a man within the church who is in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what Paul is saying here is he's like the kind of sexual immorality that is not even tolerated among the Gentiles.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in the Greco-Roman world, where this would be, they were very creative in all the different ways they found to sort of abuse God's notion of what sexual intimacy should look like.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And sort of the shame that Paul is saying here exists is he's like, this is something even they aren't okay with, right?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that even they're like, oh no, that goes against too many of our morals.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so he's like, you are doing something supposed to be the body of believers that is setting a moral and ethical standard for the world, and you're doing something that even they would reject.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so already in his mind, he's got this notion that the body, and when I say the body, that's language we'll talk about later in 1 Corinthians, but the body, meaning the church, is supposed to be representative to the world of Christ's standards.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Being a Christian, being committed to God, means that we say that we believe things and hold ourselves to a standard that the world around us says they don't really care about.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so part of this is preserving that witness here.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul says that they're arrogant.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard that they're arrogant before.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny, there's this word here for arrogance, it basically means that they're puffed up.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It sort of um gives this imagery, right, that they are sort of got their chests real high.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul uses, I can't remember exactly, but Paul uses this phrase like five or six times, and in all of his other letters, he uses it maybe once or twice.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's talking about the Corinthians here, and he says, You're arrogant.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why are they arrogant?
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, imagine if you said, I have the best smile in town, and somebody says, Show me, and you smile, you've got a big piece of spinach stuck like right in between, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you're like, look at that.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: How about this smile?
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's like, yeah, it's not, I mean, you don't really have the reason to be smiling.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and close your mouth.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, and you're arrogant.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Shouldn't you be filled with grief and remove from your congregation the one who did this?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about grief for a second.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Grief is not normally an emotion that we would associate with how we feel about other people's sin.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular, in, if you will, kind of this age where we are inundated, bombarded with so much news and stories about terrible things that are happening, when you hear about somebody within the church struggling, it can sort of very easily get swept up into the rest of the madness.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But in its truest sense, the church, and to be fair, the church that Paul is talking to is much smaller than ours.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's much easier for everybody to stay up to date on what's going on in each other's lives and having this very tight community.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, there's sort of an additional sense of sadness that comes when we see somebody who claims to be a brother or sister in Christ behaving in such a way as this man.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or even if we don't go to the extent of they have a relationship with their stepmother, there are a lot of ways in which people sort of boldly and wantonly go against God's desires, even though they claim to be a Christian.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when that happens, Paul says there should be grief.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: There should be a sense of sadness there, because you say, man, that's that's really that's not the way it's supposed to be.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond what it communicates to the world, beyond, you know, sort of like reputational things, that means that person's faith is struggling.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that means the relationship with God is struggling.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we care about that because we care about each other.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So the Corinthians apparently don't have grief.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: They are arrogant.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is happening in their midst, and whether or not they care is sort of beside the point, what has happened is that nothing has happened.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Something should have happened.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says here, shouldn't you have removed from your congregation the one who did this?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Paul sort of considers it almost a foregone conclusion.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like he's sort of discussing or he's like, man, what should we do with this person?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, why are they not out of there already?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that attitude kind of gives us some momentum as we move forward now into talking about sort of what Paul is sort of getting at as we see that church discipline is something that for Paul here, he's like, this is part and parcel of what the church does.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: It might not be done that often.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully it's not done that often, and it's in this very select circumstance, but it is something that happens and should happen in such a case as this.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: So as we keep going now, we see in verse 3, Paul is speaking to them and is going to exert a level of authority.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is their father.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about that last week.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: He planted the church.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one who helped, he was the one who shared the gospel with people at the beginning, and the church basically they owe all the growth to the Lord.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of who is their basically their father in the spiritual faith, it is Paul.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he had said previously, he said, Now when I come to you, right, we can either solve this beforehand, and I come to you with graciousness, or when I come to you later, there would be a rod, because we need to get this figured out.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So even though I am absent in the body, I am present in spirit.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: As one who is present with you in this way, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who has been doing such a thing.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus, and I am with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, hand that one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, Paul is not a Jedi, okay?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: He is not able to project himself into another room and see what is happening.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: When he says that he is present with them in spirit, he is talking about this unifying nature of the Holy Spirit, right?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: You all of us in here, everybody over in the cab, everybody who's watching, all of us who trust in Christ, we share in the same Holy Spirit that is within us.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so just as Paul previously, he was like, hey, I'm holding you to the same standard, I'm holding every other church, right?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are unified in purpose, we're unified in who we believe in, who we trust in, who our Savior is, and we are unified because we're held to the same moral and ethical standard.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: All of us are supposed to meet that mark.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so, with that, he says, Listen, I am with you in spirit in the sense that I am with you here, and I'm giving sort of my authority to those who are there, but it's not just me who is telling you to do this.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: He invokes the Lord.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says, by the power of Jesus, right?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says it twice here, um, with the power of our Lord Jesus, and in the name of our Lord Jesus, right?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, then he has verse five, a very interesting statement.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: That admittedly is kind of hard to read at first glance, because you say, with the power of the Lord Jesus, hand that one over to Satan?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Does that mean that Satan and Jesus are in cahoots here?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Are they working together?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Are they partners in crime?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there are three things in that passage, in this verse in particular, that are important for us understanding what's going on.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that they're handing that one over to Satan.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: The second is this phrase, the destruction of the flesh.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the third is so that their spirit may be saved.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about these things because I want you to understand what Paul is saying here.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one, that they are to be handed over to Satan.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, God and Satan are not evenly matched cosmic enemies.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's how sometimes it is projected, right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: That they are these two equal forces.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: They are not in the slightest.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Satan is not.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: We just sang a song over here in Mulvaine about God being um omniscient, right, and omnipotent.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So Satan is neither of those things.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: He is neither all-powerful nor all-knowing.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Satan, though, has been given a measure of authority under God's sovereignty to influence the world until Jesus returns, until the day of the Lord happens.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And under that specific condition where Satan now sort of, I'm using quotes, reigns over the world, he is a hammer and everything is a nail.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: The world of Satan is filled with depravity, it is filled with destruction, it is filled with evil, and one can expect that things coming from that world are going to continue down that path.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so when this one is handed, when this individual is handed over to Satan, we're saying that he is handed over into sort of this realm.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: He's being excluded from the church community, which is certainly not part of Satan.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is the opposite, the antithesis, it is everything that God has desired or hopes for.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And when these handed over into Satan, basically what's happening is that this man is given over to the desires that he wants to pursue.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing that happens in Romans 1.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: When God says basically he was holding back the sin of mankind for a time until they so desired to rebel against him that he's like, fine, go take what you want to have and realize that it does not lead to your hope.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: It does not lead to your salvation, it does not lead to your satisfaction or joy.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those things can only be found in Christ.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: So there's absolutely that component here, but we don't even have to go that far.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: To Paul, the idea that God is using Satan for his own means and for his glory is something that he's even talked about in another letter.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, Paul says, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan, to torment me so that I would not exalt myself.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me, but he said, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: God allowed Satan to send this messenger, whatever that is, to afflict Paul, specifically for the purpose, so that Paul might not exalt himself.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: God is all powerful and he is in control, and at times he uses the enemy of this world for his glory.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So in this instance, that's what's happening to this individual.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's handed over, Satan can't take him.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: That is the job of those who love God, that they hand him over to this situation for the destruction of his flesh.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Flesh is um normally in in this uh world, right?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it refers to like the meat on your bones.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um but flesh, as you're probably familiar with, is also a way to describe the sinful nature, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just previously, in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul says, I'm not talking to spiritual people right now, I'm talking to people of the flesh.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a distinction that's made between these two things.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so the destruction, and the word destruction is pretty intense.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just like rebuking or it's not, you know, chastise, it is destruction, destroy, that his fleshly nature, his sin nature, would be sort of reconciled by experiencing rock bottom.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it says an individual is cast out so that all these things happen so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's also brought up this phrase.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're using a lot of vocab that we've already talked about here.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: The day of the Lord, being when Jesus Christ returns.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul uh previously in chapter three had remembered talked about this is the whole, like, I planted Apollos watered, but you're also we're co-laborers in the field, and uh we are also building up the house, and it will be tested by fire on the day of the Lord, all that.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: So when at the end of all things, though, we recognize, and Paul has already developed this argument, that there's going to be a judgment.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says, Hey, when this guy experiences the judgment, I want it to be better for him than it is right now, and so we're going to put him outside of the community that he has rejected, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Outside of the commands that he has rejected, so that he can experience the ends of himself.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: He can be his fleshly nature can be mortified, it can be sent off so that his soul, when he goes to face God, might be better off for it.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same idea that Paul has when he speaks in 1 Timothy about Hymeneus and Alexander.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Among those who have shipwrecked their faith, that was the previous verse, are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered to Satan so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: There was a purpose behind it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is not sort of washing your hands of somebody, right?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a Pontius Pilate, like, I have nothing to do with this man's death.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is, as the elders at TBC call it in our we we have a position paper on church discipline, uh, Love with a Long-Term View.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: That we desire for, most of all, someone's soul and spirit to understand and know Jesus Christ.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And even if they don't agree in the moment that it is the best thing for them, that at times what is required within God's community is tough love.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is that situation.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's the situation with Hymeneus and Alexander, who were previously co-workers with Paul in the gospel.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And here it is.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I've handed them over to Satan, delivered them, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme, with the assumption that they're going to come back.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: But as we go on, though, Paul recognizes that this is a really hard thing to accept.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, certainly, if you are new to the Christian faith, this is probably like, what is going on?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um so let's talk about some motivation here.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we do this?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's very easy to not do it.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if we can just express that.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is very easy to ignore this command and just sort of maintain the status quo, like the church at Corinth was doing, and saying, hey, we don't love what this guy is doing, but like that doesn't really affect us.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to keep moving forward.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's good reasons.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 6 Your boasting is not good.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you know that a little leaven leavens the whole batch of dough?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch, as indeed you are.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old leaven or with the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Paul gives three reasons here why church discipline is necessary.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that the leaven spreads.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is my uh poorly executed bad apple illustration.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, leaven being whether it's yeast or, you know, in our circumstances like baking soda, you know, if you have ever made bread and used yeast, and then you set it aside at a room temperature, you come back a couple hours later, it's double triple the size.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's idea here is one that we don't often consider, which is that this man's sin is not isolated.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he might not be drawing other people into the relationship, but simply the passive condoning of what he was doing was corrupting the moral character of the church.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: It was leading them to then accept and condone other sins, not only in their community, but in their own individual life.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that absolutely happens.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: When we are around sin and accept sin, even if it's just sort of on the fringes of our existence, when we say that it doesn't matter, we can our soul begins to change and the way that we view sin and its severity.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first reason is that this leaven spreads, and this man's sin, his callous nature towards God's commands, is an attitude that would eventually corrupt others.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Second is that you're supposed to remove the old leaven.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: This sort of follows here.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 7, he says, You're supposed to clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new unleavened batch.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Fun is uh an operative word here.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: It depends if you enjoy Greek, but um there's a in Greek, unlike in English, right, when we have a noun in English, uh you can have it can be plural or singular, right?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a cup or cups, that kind of thing.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: In Greek, though, that can be an adjective as well.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this phrase unleavened a batch here is really interesting that it's not expressed in English where the word unleavened is singular and the word batch is plural.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you would normally not combine those two things together.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Unleavened would be a plural sort of, it'd be denoted at the end.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul is saying here and what he's expressing in this sort of nuance of the Greek is he's like, you all individually are like an unleavened piece of bread, or dough rather, and you come together to make this batch.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: That the church itself is this batch of individual pieces of unleavened dough.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an interesting thing that he's explaining there.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: That the only way to do that, though, is by cleaning out this leaven.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as he's moving forward here, we're sort of getting deeper and deeper into his most important illustration, which as we go from bread in general, now to unleavened bread, now he's going to take unleavened bread and describe when it's used uh very specifically for the Passover.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Passover being back in Exodus when uh the Egyptians were f or when the Israelites were fleeing the Egyptians, and they uh were supposed to bake unleavened bread as a sign that they had to hurry.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now then that leaven that concept of leaven uh developed over time to being representative of evil.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so now.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Paul is bringing in the Passover lamb, Jesus Christ, because we took the sign of the thing in the Old Testament, the Passover ritual.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: We saw that Jesus was the fulfillment of it in the New Testament.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And now he's saying, Hey, everybody in Corinth, you are covered by the blood of the Lamb of Christ.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about this before, especially in Leviticus, right?
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: This awesome sort of narrative that the Bible is connecting together.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, all of you are covered by the blood of the Lamb.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And third and finally, you should live as this unleavened bread.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: He sort of projects it to the individual.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's saying here is there is a gulf between how you are acting and how God views you.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which is sort of it's interesting to think about.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: That we are seen, those of us who have accepted Christ, as pure and spotless and righteous and sanctified because of Jesus Christ.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we often don't act like that.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so what Paul is saying here is his third and final motivation for why this is something we should carry out, is he said, I want you to bridge the gap as much as possible between how you are living and how God views you.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because those two things do not often look alike.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so you should live as unleavened bread.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate a word that he uses here when he says that you're to live and carry these things out with sincerity, not superiority.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that is a wonderful distinction for us to make.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: You might hear me talking about morals and ethics here, and I'm not saying that we're better than anybody else.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am saying we've been called to a higher standard, and we should pursue that standard with sincerity.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: We know that we mess up, like everybody else, my goodness, me chiefly of all.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we are pursuing these things with intention, with a heart for God, and not saying we're better than other people.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: But now we get to, if you will, the final question that might be asked, which is what does this look like?
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And for some, that's the hardest question.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because the idea of it makes sense, the motivation for it follows.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to playing this out in practical terms, that is when we get caught up.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's hard.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Our final passage for this morning, verse 9, I wrote to you in a letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did not mean the immoral people of this world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you would have to leave the world.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, I wrote you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister and is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or verbally abusive, a drunkard or a swindler.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do not even eat with such a person.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you judge those who are inside?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: God judges outsiders.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remove the evil person from among you.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, um this would be one of the passages that's interesting because it tells us that 1 Corinthians actually isn't 1 Corinthians.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: That 1 Corinthians, as you might have heard me say previously, uh the letter we have is actually the second letter Paul sent to them.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's apparent here when he says twice in verse 9 and uh verse 11 that he wrote to them previously.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a letter that went to Corinth, right?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: They've responded, and uh some of those responses have influenced Paul's second letter, or 1 Corinthians.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so we can kind of, I mean, it's not ultimately helpful because we don't have the first letter, but you can kind of look into some of these responses.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's why maybe you have felt over the last month or so as we've started this letter, you're like, man, he's going like, he's pretty intense starting out here.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he seems to, you know, there's no sort of lovey-dovey, it's just right into it.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's because he has a relationship with them and he has already talked with them about these things.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular with this issue, which is most uncomfortable, he has already told them to avoid uh what he calls pornea, right?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's where we would get our word for pornography, but it means sexual immorality, and they didn't do it.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: They still have somebody in their midst that they have not removed, who is boldly, uh, it seems without repentance, pursuing this relationship with their stepmother.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: So uh what's kind of, I don't know, it's a bit of dark humor, is that Paul at the end of verse 10, he's like, I didn't mean all the immoral people or the Greek, you know, and then he gives this list of people.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what he's basically saying is if I if you actually had to genuinely avoid and wall off everybody who is immoral, you would have to die and go to heaven to do it.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not possible.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Paul's actual, and which might be odd for us to consider, his actual instruction for them is that they're supposed to, they're supposed to avoid those kinds of people who claim to be brothers and sisters in Christ.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's this very sort of sinister Venn diagram that's going on where it's like those who uh have called Jesus their Savior and who say that they are Christian, that's what he means by brothers and sisters.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Those who say that they're a Christian and those who live like the world, and both of those things are sort of like good for engagement, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a brother and sister in Christ, they're supposed to be community and friends and developing deep relationships and strengthening one another and loving one another and good deeds and so on and so forth.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the world.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: There's the world that doesn't know Jesus and doesn't care about him, and they should experience love and evangelism and grace and mercy because we've experienced grace and mercy, and they should feel welcomed to be a part of this other sort of circle.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: But when those two things mix together in a very specific way, that leads to a huge problem where somebody is no longer reflecting the Christ that they say they serve, and they're acting like the world and telling the world that Jesus Christ and his commands don't mean anything.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's that's part of the deal, if you didn't know.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: We have been called to a high standard, and that standard does require sacrifice of us.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we are not saved by how well we live up to that standard.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're saved by the blood of Jesus Christ alone, by God's grace.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, like you and I have been called to live out the things that we say that we believe.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And we should we should take that seriously.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so when these when this Venn diagram kind of gets together and you get to the middle sort of circle there, that's what Paul's talking about.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh all the things that he lists in this passage, you might think it's a random list, you know, uh greedy, swindlers, idolaters, uh, drunkards, verbally abusive.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: He gets to all of them in 1 Corinthians.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were like, hey Connor, why don't you talk about those things?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't worry.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: I will.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to them.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: We will get to them, don't worry.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, important part here, right?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who claims to be a brother or sister, that is the direction.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then is all of these things, though, you can put in your own list here.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's anything that is obvious and public and shows that they don't care, right?
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for our context, right, sexually immoral, it could be somebody who, let's say they were cheating on their spouse.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's cheating on their spouse and does it in such a way that they have no repentance, they have no care, they don't seem to listen to the words of other brothers and sisters in Christ who are going, What are you doing right now?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Come back.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: If they continue to abuse those notions, those warnings, that would be a good sort of um example for us here as we're thinking through this.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do not even eat with such a person.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't you judge those who are inside?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: God judges outsiders.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remove the evil person from among you.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Don't even eat with such a person.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's certainly in view here is the Lord's table, communion, um, that somebody who is doing these kinds of things, that they would be wise to avoid taking the Lord's Supper, otherwise they could bring judgment upon themselves.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's 1 Corinthians 11.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that too.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but there were some people in the Corinthian church who were living in such a way that it was against God that when they took the Lord's Supper, meaning the bread and the wine, uh, they were bringing death upon themselves.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: God judged them early, with an early death, because of the way they were living their life.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so that would certainly be in view here, that there is still like a judgment to understand.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but what is also part of this is the much more natural expression of just community and fellowship.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if this, if you want to take our example from earlier, if this person is in your small group or your like weekly lunch buddy, like that relationship should change.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the hard part.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's the hard part and the part that everybody twists here.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness, if there has ever been a verse that has been abused, it would be don't don't you judge those who are inside.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, ooh, that one's easy.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: That one's easy to twist.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't mean that you take God's job responsibility, okay?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's still the judge of the whole world.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And in particular, that's actually part of Paul's point here, is he says, leave the judgment of the world outside the church up to God.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's not your job.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Believe me, he's got it covered.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't need your help, he can do it on his own.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, no unpaid interns in judging the world.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: But as God is doing those things, there's a level of responsibility that has been placed upon those of his kingdom, and that we should be judging those within the church.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And within that very, remember now, okay, take everything that we've talked about, within that specific sense of a situation, judgment follows, not because we say that we are better, not because we think that our sins are particularly or alone less than the one who is doing it, but because they are unrepentant in the things that they are doing, and God has already given us basically a flow chart.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, if this happens, then this happens.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And we have been given authority to exercise in that specific environment when those things happen.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that makes sense.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So your relationship should change.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: God judges outsiders, remove the evil person from among you.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let's summarize these things together and then let's talk about how this applies to all of us individually.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the problem is glaring, unrepentant sin.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, I hate using it, I'm trying to think of a better phrase, but it's not coming, like garden variety sin, okay?
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: We all mess up.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: If we were trying to take sinners out of the church, none of us would be in a pew right now, okay?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're talking about.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: But glaring, obvious sin of a high order.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in this situation, right, it's somebody who's an incestuous relationship with their stepmom, right?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: We can kind of get the image here.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But it goes to other things.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Paul lists some of them.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, hey, somebody who is a complete drunkard and does not care, somebody who's verbally abusive, somebody who cheats people, these kinds of things.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they're unrepentant.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a significant detail.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody who is not responding to the call of other Christians upon their life who have been in community with them and say, hey, what you're doing's not right.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean that I'm superior to you, but you gotta live this out a little bit better than you are.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: If that follows, then the method is that they are addressed personally with appropriate steps and removed from the church if needed.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: So the elders at TBC, we we have a flow chart, and there's five steps to it.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts out with approaching somebody individually, and the last step is it that somebody is asked to be removed from the congregation.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And every single step of the way, right, the ultimate aim is reconciliation.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody embarks down this path with an excitement to get somebody out.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And goodness sakes, if you the idea of church discipline is something that like gets your heart racing because you can think of all the people you want to kick out of the church, you gotta pump the brakes a little bit, okay?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're talking about.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: In this specific situation, you're to treat them, Paul says elsewhere, treat them like a non-Christian.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some people think of that as like an insult.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's really not.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's only an insult if you think you're supposed to treat non-Christians terribly.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you treat them like a non-Christian, meaning you are to treat them with love and evangelism, because there's something about the gospel that they have not grasped or accepted fully, and so they need to understand it and they need to hear that message.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: You aren't best buddies with them anymore like you once were, because there is an aspect, as we they've been handed over to Satan, right?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: There is an aspect of exclusion from the community that should be convicting to them, right?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: If their community continues to support them and love them in the exact same way as they had previously, and there is no change at all, then there's no loss.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: And part of that loss and experiencing Satan and sort of his wiles under God's sovereignty is that they would recognize, right, the destruction of their flesh so that their soul would be saved.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then also that we would keep our focus within the church.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody needs you looking outside the church to talk about how bad everybody is.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody is welcome in God's church because everybody is a sinner and everybody is saved by the grace of God.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so we should be a welcoming place for everybody to be.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: The motivation is something we've already talked about.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: The danger of spreading moral failure, which does happen, the harming of the church's witness for Christ, avoiding judgment for the toleration of evil, that's something.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Think about in the Old Testament, the prophets.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, who were they railing against?
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: They were railing against the church, the churches of the time, the synagogues, the religious leaders, for failing to address moral laxity.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they say, Woe to you, for you have allowed all of these people to trod on the name of God, of Yahweh, that you have made other people to think that he does not mean what he means.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And judgment was coming for them.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: They experienced the exile.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, that we can represent a sincere moral life, which is important for our witness.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: So, last thing, let's talk about an example when this doesn't happen well, what that looks like.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's very brief, and then we'll get to the last bit here.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: When we don't do church discipline, when we don't carry this out the way that God has commanded us, when we do the thing which is most convenient and sweep things under the rug and act like nothing is going on, this is what happens.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is a lack of church discipline.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: How the Southern Baptist Convention covered up its widespread sexual abuse scandal.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can read more about that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's an NPR article.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: The world who does not know Christ has an opinion about that.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: That does not represent Jesus well.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: It does not make it easier for people to come to Christ because that is the image that they're receiving.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the ultimate concern for us, right?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's sort of like a byproduct, is the witness for the world.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: The foremost concern is the moral sincerity of God's church.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: We are not superior, but we do try.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when it's done well, church discipline keeps the church healthy and gives those who reject God's commands the best opportunity to realize their mistakes and return to the community.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know that this is not the most comforting passage.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a Sunday that you would come to and want, or whenever you're listening to this, and walk away with feeling, man, particularly energized because of the lesson here.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's really important that we discuss it as a church because it does happen occasionally at TBC.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: We desire that it does not.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: But over and above our comfort, over and above our um our circumstances, over and above the potential awkwardness or breaking of friendships at the moment, we desire that God's kingdom is made manifest.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can just, if you hear me saying one thing here, it is that we do this not because it is easy or fun or any of those things, but because we are trying to honor the Lord.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it does not mean when we do these things, if the elders or somebody else has asked someone to step away from the church, it is not because we are better than somebody.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: But for all the reasons that have been listed, it is important.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing that I want you to understand is if you can get into this mindset that it is something that God has given to his church to protect his church, then you would also see that it is truly love with a long-range view.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: That the best hope for somebody who is in our community who does not care about God is to let them experience the ends of themselves.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let them experience what it looks like to pursue the thing they think is going to bring them satisfaction, realize it does not, and turn around and come back.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because this, a relationship with Jesus Christ, is the only way to find true joy in this broken world.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we care about them.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And we care about the integrity of the church, and we do our best to maintain it, even when it's not fun.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, what can you do?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can be a part of this process.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is not something that Paul just exercised over the church because he said that he was their father.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: There is, first of all, you must take this same attitude of vigilance to your own personal life.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: You are to be, before all other things, unleavened bread.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: You are to be before all other things somebody whose life looks like you follow Jesus.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best witness to the world.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that makes us the healthiest.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Above that is your family or your close friends, that you are supposed to maintain that vigilance.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean, as Paul says, he's like, you can't kick out everybody.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, you can't control who your neighbor is, who your coworker is, who you step in line next to at the checkout counter, who changes your tire.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he's like, you don't control those things.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about removing everybody who sins from your life.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: But for those who say that they know Jesus, we lift them to a higher standard and encourage them and love them.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Give them grace and mercy and patience when they don't, but not to a point of detriment, which can happen.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: Move to the next step then.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes the church community.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: That when these kinds of things happen, if I were to ever come to you and say, uh, which has happened before, that there was an elder of the church that we asked to step down because of things that they had done, and potentially for things that they had done, that they were to be removed from the congregation, you would understand my heart behind that.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is not some sort of like gossiping, you know, nature here that you would understand, but because they're representative of the church, that you would know that there's a reason we're doing it, and it's love with a long-range view.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you can maintain these things, and you can seek out these things, and most of all, you can pray for these things.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the last thing I'll leave you with is that in all of these circumstances, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: All this this is the nitty-gritty, this is the stuff that's like getting into the weeds, and all of this about maintaining a church community and a community of love and fellowship and faith, and all of these things, prayer is required.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is required for the man who is in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother, and prayer is required for those who are in the church who don't understand the gravity of following Jesus.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is required.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for yourself that you would not fall into these kinds of temptations.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: Pray for yourself that you would not judge others more harshly than you are judging your own self, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: To how we judge others is the same measure that will be applied to us.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: And pray for yourself that in these situations where something comes up, that you might be required to sever a relationship or at least change it in the way that it had been previously, that you would have the strength to do so because it's the best thing for the person involved.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then you would continue to pray for them.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and pray together.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we go to you this morning on a heavy morning.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, the idea of church discipline is not fun.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, neither is sin.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And God, we want to take sin seriously.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we're better than other people, but Lord, because we follow after a perfect Savior.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: God, you have called us to live a righteous life.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: You have called us to honor you with the way that we are living.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: We are not saved by it, but God, it is a good thing when we do it.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, please help us.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for Topeka Bible Church that you would help us to pursue your word with sincerity and not superiority.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, that we would understand that in very specific circumstances, occasionally you have asked us to remove somebody from our midst who we had previously called a friend for their own good.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, in those moments that you would give us strength, Lord, that you would give us wisdom and discernment and how to show our love best to them.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: And God, you would encourage us and you would convict us to pray for them.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: As Lord, we are continuing to pray for ourselves, that we might be able to honor you with the way we live our lives.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: Father, above all these things, I pray that by the power of your spirit we would not be arrogant.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: We would not be people who smile with spinach in our teeth.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: But Lord, we would be a church that says we humbly submit to the Word of God.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: We desire to follow it, and we mess up sometimes.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: But by your grace, we are redeemed.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for that, a gift that we do not deserve.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: We pray that you would help us to draw closer to you in every single moment, whether they are hard or whether they are good.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, everybody.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.