The Meaning of Excommunication

[ Silence ]>> If you have your Bibles, turn to 1 Corinthians Chapter 5.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

We're going to try to deal with the whole chapter, which is where the apostle is transitioning from the first reported problem of the turgic earth, their divisive nature, I'm a Paul, I'm a Paulus.

And this comes to the second reported problem of a great sin of sexual immorality that wasn't being dealt with, that was being ignored.

And there was lack of discipline.

There was no church discipline going on.

And Paul is seeking to correct the church.

He's not correcting so much the sinner, he's correcting the church.

And so as we think about church discipline, as we have experienced in the last few months, that it's very difficult.

And I've thought a long time, and we've gone through several church discipline cases that are in our history.

And I've come to the conclusion, I understand why churches don't do it.

For various reasons, it's hard to do church discipline without someone being upset that you did church discipline.

We've had people leave our church because we practice church discipline.

And it's also hard to do the church discipline.

It's easier just to ignore it.

Sometimes I'm laying in bed at night and my children's, my three boys share a room and they're angels most of the time.

But every now and then I'm in bed wanting to doze off and I hear a little argument upstairs.

You know, it's just easier just to stay in bed.

Like, "How do I let them argue?" It's hard, it's hard to get up out of bed.

It's hard to face these things.

It's hard to deal with them.

It's hard as a parent to be consistent with discipline.

In fact, I think, you know, we've sung just the deep, deep love of Jesus.

I don't think there's much more evidence of God's love on our lives than when he disciplines us.

We know that we're a child of God when he comes after us.

And it's a sign of law.

That the church disciplines its members.

It's a sign of law that parents will discipline their children.

Proverbs 13 says, "If you spare the rod, you hate your son." If you love your son, you pull out the rod.

If a church loves its members, it'll practice church discipline.

My dad's first pastoral experience was a church, a little church outside of Russellville, Arkansas, right out of Bible College.

And he wasn't there even a year and before the head deacon was arrested for drunk driving and his name put all over the paper, public transgression.

The whole community knew who this man was and here he's arrested.

And my dad called up the other deacons and said,"What are we gonna do?

We need to address this.

We need to proceed with some form of discipline and go and talk to him, see if he's repentant." And they held a emergency business meeting that evening, Sunday evening.

And lo and behold, they took a vote and voted my father out of the ministry, out of the office of pastors.

So they disciplined my dad for wanting to do church discipline.

That was his first experience of the church.

And thinking through that, it's hard.

It is hard to discipline and it shouldn't be done lightly.

Now we learn in the gospel of Matthew that there are four steps to the process when someone's in sin.

There's a private confrontation.

You wanna keep private sins private.

No need for that to be made known.

So it's a one-on-one confrontation.

And the Bible says if they don't listen, take it to with you.

So you have a semi-private confrontation and that having two witnesses is not just to up to any, but it's to make sure that the evidence is established.

Kind of like you're establishing, is this really sin?

Is this really going on?

So you have two or three witnesses verifying what's going on.

And if that person doesn't hear two or three, the Bible says bring it to the church collectively.

And the church therefore has a time for the church to hear the evidence, but also to verify that evidence themselves.

So that they can go and pursue the person and call the person and check out, see if that person is indeed in sin.

And if the person doesn't hear the church, the last step is called excommunication.

And what we see in 1 Corinthians chapter five is an explanation of the fifth step or the fourth step of excommunication.

What is excommunication?

Now, most of the time we think of church discipline, we simply jump to this last step.

In some cases, I think that last step needs to be gotten to pretty quickly.

And in fact, I think this is what's going on in chorus.

The sin is so grievous and so out in the open.

In fact, the whole church already knows about it that it needed to be dealt with right away.

And so Paul is addressing them.

And in this text, we see six things.

We see the necessity why we must carry out church discipline.

We'll see the place of church discipline or more importantly, the place of excommunication.

Third, the authority and power of excommunication.

We'll look at fourth, the nature of excommunication.

Fifth, the purpose.

And finally, to what extent do we carry out excommunication?

How far do we actually go?

So let's look at the necessity.

First of all, we see in verses one through three that this was a necessity and wasn't optional.

It says in verse one, it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that has not even tolerated even among pagans.

For a man has his father's wife and you're arrogant.

Ought you not rather to mourn.

Let him who has done this to be removed from among you.

For though I'm absent in body, I'm present in spirit.

And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.

You see, the problem that the church of Corinth has is not that they have a unrepentant church member.

Having sinners in the church are Christians who profess Christ, who's living in sin in a church.

That's not a problem.

That's gonna happen.

The problem is when the church doesn't deal with it.

This is the crux of the problem is the Corinthians were not expelling, purging, dismissing, excommunicating the member from among themselves.

You know, I once counseled a young man, maybe he's in his 20s or 30s, that was a leader in a church here in Conway, not our church, was a leader living with his girlfriend.

And I asked as the other leaders know that you're living with your girlfriend.

Oh yeah, they don't care.

They don't care.

And I said, well, God does care.

God cares.

But what a shame for the church to know about this and do nothing about it.

Paul is clearly upset with the church of Corinthians, the church of Corinth.

It was a clear case of sin.

It was a sin even the pagans blush at, having your father's wife, your stepmother.

This is clearly immoral.

This is beyond just normal sexual immorality.

The problem with the Corinthians, they boasted or they were quite proud of their tolerance of this.

Rather than mourning as they should have, Paul says, you're arrogant about it, you're puffed up.

And I think the reason they were puffed up about this and being tolerant about this sin taking place among their membership was the fact that as they were influenced by philosophy coming out of the Southern city of Athens, they were infected with this proto-nosticism of their day.

Nosticism basically says the physical body and all that is physical is of no difference or had little value to the spiritual realm or was even bad.

And so the proto-nostics of the first century split up into two different divisions.

Those who said the physical body was so sinful, they had to punish it, aestheticism, whip their bodies and bring their body into physical subjection.

So they hated their body and they denied their bodies of earthly pleasures and made sure that they purposefully did without.

This is a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof.

The other form of Gnosticism is saying, well, if the body doesn't really affect the spiritual realm, if to be spiritual as long as your heart's right with God, as long as you have a good conscience, as long as you're having communion with the Lord and all is well spiritually, it doesn't matter what takes place in the body.

And there was a saying, the food goes into the body and both food and the body would be destroyed in the day of judgment.

Both is going to be eliminated.

And so if you're hungry, then eat, it doesn't matter.

Indulge yourself, it doesn't matter.

And if you have physical and fleshly appetites, satisfy their appetites, it has nothing to do with your spiritual life.

And so they begin to take this concept of eating and indulging themselves and applying to sexual immorality.

Well, if I have a itch, I can scratch it.

If I'm hungry, I can feed myself.

Therefore, if I have a physical desires, then I might as well satisfy it.

If it's just a physical desire, it won't hurt my spiritual soul.

So they were end up participating in much sexual immorality.

We see this later on in chapter six.

In fact, Paul quotes their little saying, food is meant for the stomach and stomach for the food and God will destroy both one and the other.

But then he gives seven reasons for them to restrain from sexual immorality.

One, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.

Two, God raised the Lord and will also raise us up.

That is the body will be resurrected, it won't just be destroyed.

Three, do not know that your bodies are members of Christ.

Shall then I take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

Never.

Four, threesome.

Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

Fifth, flee from sexual immorality.

Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but sexual immoral person sins against his own body.

Six, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?

Seven, you're not your own, for you've been bought with a price, glorify God in your body.

So he's like, yes, your body does matter.

And this is a sin and it is a great sin against God.

It does spec your spiritual life.

As you see, they were having problems with the physical body, Chapter 15, some of them were even denying the resurrection of the dead.

So they were influenced by Gnosticism.

And this led to them to be arrogant about this grievous sin that they should have been mourning about.

But we see that today, we see churches rather than mourning and crying about sin within their church and being grieved.

Because of the destructive nature of sin, we see churches celebrate sin.

They're tolerant.

Rather than being mourning about homosexuality, they're ordaining homosexuals into the ministry.

This is quite sad.

And it grieves God and it should grieve us.

You see, we are called to mourn.

Verse two says, "And you are arrogant,"ought you'd not rather to mourn." See, this is a clear case.

And this person needs to be, as it says in verse two, removed.

You see, the first thing we see about excommunication, when there's a clear case of open rebellion and unrepentant sin, actively going on in our membership.

This is not a matter of debate.

It's not a matter of, hey, let's take a vote and see if there's enough people who say that this shouldn't happen.

Paul is not giving them an option.

Consider doing this.

This is a command for the church to carry out.

This is a responsibility of the church to expel.

God's already given his judgment.

We'll see this.

He's, Paul, I've already given my judgment on the matter.

This is a clear case, it's sin.

You should have already passed tits.

You should have expelled and removed this person from us.

So we need to realize this as a church body, though it may be hard and difficult, messy and no fun.

It's not optional for us.

If indeed we wanna be obedient to God, and I would say even if we want to love the person, we truly love the person.

Love God and love the person that's in sin.

We would obey God in this manner.

Now, where's the time and place for this?

Number two, the setting of excommunication.

We see that in verse four.

It says, "When you are assembled in the name of the Lord,"Jesus and my spirit is present." That is the early steps of church discipline that happens in private in various places.

Go to them, then take two and go with them.

If they don't hear, then bring it to the church.

And this last step of expelling or excommunicating a person takes place at the whole assembly.

This is why I think it needs to happen on Sunday morning, not Sunday evening or Wednesday night or business meeting when half the church is not assembled.

In the presence of them all, when you're all assembled together in the name of the Lord Jesus, one, we see that the evidence needs to be established.

And especially when it comes to a public matter, and we see that there's three reasons I believe that it should take place in the assembling of the saints.

One, to make sure the evidence is established too.

Collectively, the church agreeing and seeing and calling on the person to repent is way more powerful than just one or two people coming.

And third, to be a deterrent for the rest of us.

Paul told Timothy, "Those who are sinning, rebuke in the presence of all, that the rest also may be feared." They may fear.

Now there's a time when it's a private stuff, go privately, don't publicly embarrass people.

Private sins need to be dealt with privately.

And by the way, private sins need to be confessed privately.

But public sins, and it gets to the point, it's unrepentant.

It's time to bring it up.

We see this sin, it's evident, and we're calling it out so that everyone else may fear, that everyone else may realize it could come to them.

The first time we ever did church discipline here several years ago, it was a very hard, hard case, young man that I deeply, deeply loved.

Spent hours with him, doing my best to call him back.

And after we carried it out, I had two men in our church come to me privately and says,"I had almost slipped.

I was heading down a bad path." And they had private things that no one knew about, but they were slipping down and they saw the end.

And this was enough to call them back to repentance.

Now that's the setting, the time and the place of excommunication.

Now what authority does the church have to do this?

You know, I know in our day and age, people think the church is just a country club.

It's just a social event.

It's just a loose gathering of Christians that come together and people don't take church membership serious anymore.

And part of the reason people don't take church membership serious is because so many churches don't have church membership.

You know, it's just attendance base.

You just come and no one knows you're there.

No one knows if you're not there.

It's like your favorite movie theater.

You can call and show up, be entertained, be fed and leave.

And there's just no accountability.

There's no one knows your life.

No one knows you.

There's just, it's just your, there's no submission.

There's no, there's nothing of that nature.

And that's what people want.

I think they don't want accountability.

They don't want their lives to be evaluated, feel responsible.

And so I think church, you can't excommunicate that.

And if you do that, we'll just go to another church.

What, what, what doesn't matter what you say, but according to this text, there's great authority.

The authority is not in the church, inherently in the church.

It's a derivative derivative authority.

The authority comes from God and it, and it comes from heaven and extends back to heaven.

It's amazing if I perform a wedding, you say, well, that's just the state that performs the wedding.

No, no.

God says, what I joined together, what I joined together, let no one put us under.

You see, it's not just a man's ceremony.

It's God's recognizing this ceremony and he's writing it in his legal books.

And so when there is a church discipline case, when the church obeys God, and really doesn't have an option, but not, but to obey God, when it carries out, it's, it's a command.

And wherever you see a command, you see authority.

Anywhere God tells me to do something, I don't have to ask anyone's permission to do it.

So when I got, when I have commands from God, directly from God, no other secondary source of authority can tell me not to do it.

Every command gives freedom of obedience.

The church has been given the authority from Jesus Christ himself.

And this is why it says in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then it goes on to say in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, when you do this, you're doing it in the very power and very name of Jesus Christ himself.

And that's why Jesus said in Matthew 18,"What you bind on earth." So it doesn't matter.

What you bound on earth will be bound in heaven.

And what you loose on earth will be loose in heaven.

Don't think falling under church discipline is of no importance or a little efficacy.

It's a scary, scary thing for the church of the living God to discipline you or I.

(silence) This means that God acknowledges and upholds his discipline even in heaven, for it is his discipline.

Now think of it this way.

If you were watching my children, and I was gone on a trip, I said, please correct them.

Please discipline them.

I know I expect them to be needing some of it, and you have my permission, my authority to correct them when I'm gone.

Well, when I come back, I'd hope they have been corrected.

I've asked you to do that.

And as the kid may say, "Well, you're not my parent.

"You don't have the right to discipline me." Say, "Yes, I do.

"I've been given permission from your father." We do have the right to carry out church discipline.

We have the responsibility to do it.

We must do it.

And when we do do it, it is God working through us to carry it out.

Now, forcefully, what is excommunication?

What's the nature of this?

We see this in verse five.

And this sentence here in verse five seems so severe and it is severe.

It's very scary.

It's not a little swat on the hand.

It's something way more scary or dangerous.

In fact, I'd rather been beat with rods than have this done to me.

Look at what where's Proff says.

"Deliver such a one to Satan"for the destruction of the flesh." Now, what does this mean?

Even this phrase causes my ears to tingle.

And there's been two major interpretation of this text throughout church history.

I'm sure there's a lot more interpretation, but there's two main interpretations.

Some of the early church fathers, especially in the East, Christophstom, people in our day like Charles Hodge and Adam Clark and Albert Barnes, they believe the flesh here is talking about the physical body.

And so if you interpret the flesh here as your physical body, deliver the person's physical body to Satan for his destruction, they're interpreting this to be something that was relevant or practical in the time of the apostolic period, kind of like Erinyes and Sapphira, they were killed.

They were killed on the spot by the power of the Holy Spirit.

That's church discipline.

They lied to the spirit and the presence of the assembly, God killed them.

So they're saying that the structure of the flesh is actual physical death.

And it would only be applicable during the apostolic days.

And this is why they would say, Paul said, "My spirit has already pronounced judgment.

"This is apostolic authority.

"My presence, though I'm not physically present there,"my spirit is present.

"You have my authority.

"Deliver him to destruction.

"Basically kick him out and he's gonna die." That's not my position.

The other main position comes from Augustine and Calvin and people like Gordon Fee who interpret the word flesh here to mean the sinful desires, fleshly desires, the sinful passions, not your physical body.

That is, turn the person over and all these simple desires that they're craving, all the sinful activity they're carrying out, turn that over to Satan so that Satan could get ahold of him, that his might be saved in the day of judgment.

I think that's what he's talking about because in verse two, verse five, verse seven, verse nine, verse 11, verse 13,"All speak of excommunication as taken away from you"or deliver such a one to Satan.

"Purge one out of the old leaven.

"Do not keep company with.

"Don't even eat with such a person.

"Put away from yourself the evil person." So the idea is expelling from your community.

The reason I don't think it's talking about the physical body because we'll see at the end of the sermon that it appears that this particular brother did come back to repentance and was brought back.

He wasn't dead.

He was brought back in repentance.

Doing the very purpose, the purpose of church discipline is not to kill people.

The purpose of church discipline is restoration and bring back holiness to the community.

Now, what is the purpose?

That leads me into my fifth point, the purpose of excommunication.

We see this in the end of verse five, all the way into verse eight.

There are multiple purposes.

The first purpose is to save the person so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.

Discipline, unlike punishment, is corrective.

The goal is not to be mean-spirited.

The goal is not to be harsh or vindictive.

It's not to be unloving.

It's not to be,"Well, we don't like you, get out of the church." It's not that, it's a time of mourning, not rejoicing.

And it's the purpose is for their deliverance, for their corrective behavior.

We see in verse six, it's to protect the church.

Your boasting is not good.

Do you not know that 11 leavens the whole lump?

Charles Hodge says the nature of evil is to diffuse itself.

You can see a rotten apple.

If you leave a rotten apple alone with a lot of good apples, it's not gonna be long before that rot becomes contagious to the other apples.

What do you do if you see one bad apple in the bunch?

You remove it for the good of the other apples.

Now, what would happen if the church or court didn't deal with this man who's living an open sin in it?

And they're boasting about it.

You think that's gonna lead to holiness in the other membership?

Do you think that's gonna lead to more sexual purity and chaste and discipline lives?

No, such an example will spread and affect the whole lump, the whole assembly.

We have to, if we love not only the brother who's in sin, we have to discipline them, but if we love our church, we have to expel and say, this is not tolerated, accepted in this assembly.

It really is to be a deterrent for others, for ourselves.

And that brings us to the third purpose we see in verses seven through eight.

That's to keep the church pure.

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump as you really are unleavened.

For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.

That is seeing you're already truly unleavened.

You are, through Christ's sacrifice, sanctified.

That is, you don't become sanctified or you don't become unleavened lump because you pushed out leaven.

You're unleavened, you're pure, you're sanctified, you're holy, we're a holy church because of the sacrifice of Christ, He's made us holy.

This is the thing about salvation that we have to believe is that salvation sanctifies us, it purifies us.

It doesn't lead us to live in sin, but it saves us from sin.

It saves us from the power of sin.

And so the assembly of the saints is the assembly of saints.

Those who have been transformed and renewed and made into new creatures.

That's a reality based upon the effectual work of Christ's death.

And that's because we are a holy group.

Then remove that which is unholy among us.

Cast out.

This is why I believe in church membership.

I believe in believers only.

I believe in those who have evidence of fruit only belong to the body of Christ.

And those who show that otherwise need to be removed from membership.

Verse eight says, "Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." You see, Paul uses Old Testament imagery of both the feasts of the unleavened bread and the Passover mill as an illustration of why we must be a holy group.

Now the feasts of unleavened bread would begin seven days in advance with each home would do away with all leaven within the house.

They would purge their house of leaven.

And on the seventh day was the official day of the feast of unleavened bread, which would be the Passover mill.

This is the day that our Passover was sacrificed for us.

And as Jewish families of old would do away with leaven in their homes, when we come together for the Lord's table, we're to make sure that we have done away with all malice, wickedness, and eat the unleavened bread with sincerity and truth.

That is, this is to expel and keep the Lord's table pure.

This is why GBC, we say you're willing to partake with us if you're a visitor.

Feel free to partake and we'll have the Lord's supper in a minute.

You're free to take, but you have to be in good standings with your local church.

This is for those who are pure of heart, those who have been baptized and are in real actual communion with God and with God's people.

This is the very thing that got John Calvin kicked out of Geneva.

He wanted to guard the table from those who are living in wicked sins and the city told them to leave.

So church discipline is for restoration, for protection, and for purity.

Now, six, as we come to this last point, to what extent is excommunication to be carried out?

Is it just prohibiting people from eating the Lord's table?

I think that's principally what it is.

But is that limited to that?

You can come to church.

You're no longer a member.

You're no longer, you can take the table, but you can sit in the back or you can sit, just be quiet.

Can you come to church?

What does it mean to be excommunicated?

Well, we see here that it means a lot of things.

Not only does it mean the removal of communion, that's when we get the word excommunion.

Excommunion, communic members are those who are in fellowship or in communion with God and his people.

We're saying, no, you're not in communion with God.

And let me say this very clearly.

If you're living in unrepentant sin, now we all sin, we all fail.

We don't go a day without sin.

That's why we live by the grace of God.

We live under the blood of Christ.

Thank the Lord.

As we examine ourselves, we'll find many, the devil too will condemn us of many things.

He's the accuser of the brethren and we flee back to the gospel.

We live under the gospel.

But if we're living in outright immorality and unrepentant sin, and I'm talking about, we're addicted to sin.

John tells us those who are born of God, God cannot live in sin.

We can't have a habitual pattern of living in the same sin over and over and over again.

If that is going on in your life, then you're not.

Now, no matter how your conscience feels or what excuses you give yourself,'cause C.S. Lewis says sinners are so good at making exemption clauses for their sins.

Doesn't matter about how good you feel about yourself.

If you're living in sin, you're not in communion.

You may be saved.

You may have all your sins past, present and future, or you do if you're saved, forgiven.

But you're not in that experiential communion with Christ.

And the church is a C.S. sin.

We have to remove them.

And it's not just from the supper.

But it's from the church itself.

Now, we'll skip to verse 12 and look at verse 12 and 13 and come back to nine through 11 and a second.

For what I have to do with judging outsiders is not those who inside the church whom we are to judge.

God judges those outside, purge the evil person from among you.

That is, he's saying here, we're not here casting judgment upon our neighbors who are not Christians.

We're not here excommunicating those who are not even a part of us.

This is for us to do within the church or to judge them and to purge them from among us, to remove them.

And I take that to mean to say, no, you're not even welcome in the doors.

That's not saying this for unbelievers.

Let unbelievers come, hear the gospel.

This is a particular command for those who named the name of Jesus Christ, who are in active rebellion against Christ, were to remove them as Paul, I mean, as Jesus says in Matthew 18, were to treat them as tax collectors and unbelievers.

Now, here's the most difficult.

This is where it comes very practical for you and I.

This is where you are a participant of this.

You say, well, the church can do what they wanna do.

I'm not gonna uphold this.

I know if you're a member of a church and a church carries out church discipline, then you are required by God to carry out that discipline with the church.

So what's your role?

What's my role?

Your or my role is to not have fellowship with the person.

Now, I know there's exemption if you're married to the person or if it's a family member, or you work with the person.

Of course, there's exemptions to that where you have to carry out conversations for the sake of functioning in life.

But other than that, there's not any purposeful, warm fellowship.

And I think we need to say this in our day, even on social media.

Now, this is what it seems to be saying.

Look at verses nine through 11.

"I wrote to you in my letter not to associate"with sexual immoral people,"not at all meaning the sexual immoral of this world"or the greedy and swindlers and idolaters,"since then you would need to go out of the world.

"But now I'm writing to you not to associate"with anyone who bears the name of brother.

"If he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed,"or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler,"not even to eat with such a one." What this is saying is that warm fellowship and communion that you used to participate in and enjoy is being removed.

To disassociate, to dis-commen, literally this is where people get the word shun, to shun them.

And now this is a hard word.

We kind of want to avoid this word.

You don't really mean shun.

You know what shunning is, if you saw someone with leprosy and he's going, "I got leprosy," you're like, you walk around him.

And it's embarrassing for the person who has leprosy.

You see someone who's been excommunicated in the store and they want to go, "Hey, brother," you want to shun them.

It's like, "Wait, you call me to do that?" Well, listen to the scriptures.

2 Thessalonians 3, 11.

"We command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw, withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which you have received from us.

And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him that he may be ashamed." How embarrassing would it be if you're excommunicated and your old friends from the church walk around you and shame you?

It's meant to shame him or her.

Romans 16, 17.

"Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause division and offenses contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them." Avoid them, walk around them, stay clear from them.

1 Timothy 6, verse 3.

1 Timothy 6:3

"If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, he is proud, knowing nothing, but of his seth with desputudes and arguments over words from which come envy, strife, riling, evil suspicions, useless wringlings of men, of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain from such withdrawal yourself." Stay clear of.

We learned in 2 John 10 that we're not to even greet someone.

Don't invite them in your home.

Now again, this is not talking about just the normal wicked people in the world.

You'd have to go out of the world to avoid such people.

You can shop at their stores, you can converse with them, you can do business with them, you can invite them over to your home, you can befriend the sinners.

The Lord Jesus Christ did that.

He ate with sinners and tax collectors and befriended them and loved them.

This is talking about those who named the named brother.

So why would God put such severe discipline on someone that may actually be one of his children?

It's because he loves them.

You know what every child of God must have?

It's innate within all believers.

Because we are in Christ, united to the Lord Jesus Christ, we are spiritually one.

You know, a husband and wife, no longer are two flesh, but they've become one.

And once you become one, if you're truly one, it's hard to separate, let no one put us under.

When you're born again, you're united to Jesus Christ and you're united to his people.

You're united to a church.

We cannot help but gather together, to symbol together, to love one another, to care for one another.

God's put us in us that we need the fellowship of the saints.

We have to have it.

We don't need a command to go to church.

We want to be a church.

We don't have to be a command to love each other.

We do love each other.

In fact, it's part of our very life.

Tear our family apart.

It's disruptive.

Tear our church apart.

It's disruptive.

It's like pulling limbs off the body.

You have to have the fellowship of the saints.

Now, John put it this way, if they can leave us and not come back, they were never a part of us.

If you can live outside of the communion of the brethren, outside of the fellowship of the saints, then you're not a believer.

If you can live outside of church and be just content, alone and independent, then you need to question if you truly love God and his brethren.

You need to question, examine your heart.

But when you take away the warm fellowship of the saints, it is crushing.

It is crushing.

It's discipline.

Now, this is what we need to remember and the members that we have discipline.

And you may feel sorry for them and may want to be friendly to them and soften the blow.

It's kind of like the dad who will take a child and put some in the corner and says,"You're punished, time out.

"No TV, no gaming, no treats.

"You're there.

"Think about what you've done.

"And here comes the mom.

"Here's some candy.

"Here's a Game Boy.

"Here's a little bit of fellowship." It's undermining the severity and the redemptive process of discipline.

It's meant to sting.

It's meant to hurt.

It's not fun.

I'm not saying we rejoice in this.

Any parent hates disciplining his children.

He doesn't delight in it.

He doesn't want to do it.

It's not pleasant to do it.

God doesn't tell us to be excited about this thing.

It is difficult.

It does hurt.

But we want it to hurt.

The Bible says in the purple of the bruise, there is healing.

And may the Lord bring healing to the people we've disciplined.

Would that not be what we want?

Not their demise.

We want them to be restored.

You see, I believe this is the true power of church discipline.

It does work.

Now we know it.

I believe Paul is speaking of the same person when he writes his second epistle.

Actually, it's his third epistle to the Church of Corinth.

And this is what he says to them in chapter two of 2 Corinthians.

"For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough.

"So you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him"or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

"So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.

"For this is why I wrote that I might test you"and know whether you are obedient in everything.

"Anyone whom you forgive, I also forget.

"What you lose on earth, God says will be loosed in heaven.

"Don't think church discipline is of no efficacy or power.

"Don't devalue it.

"It works.

"It's hard, it's difficult, it's messy, it's no fun.

"But thank God, thank God he's established this"for the church.

"And I've come to this conclusion.

"I know it will work because if people stay away"from the church, it proves that they were never among us.

"So it does truly purge the church.

"But for those who are truly born again,"I do believe it brings them back.

"I will bring them back in time.

"So I've come to this conclusion"in my thinking about this for over years,"it's over the many years.

"This must mean, this must mean that there are true believers"that truly know the Lord,"that actually will fall into sin to such a degree"and that they won't hear the normal halls of repentance,"that they actually need this final step of discipline.

"And God is not giving up on those people.

"He knows that even his people whom he loves,"he will discipline and bring back to himself." Let's pray.

Now, we have those who we have disciplined.

Let's pray for them as well.

The Lord, we see the value of your church in this message and this text, we see that you love holiness and you're grieved by immorality, you're grieved by sin.

Lord, you don't, you love us too much to look away and allow us to continue in it.

It's self-destructive and hurtful, damaging.

Oh Lord, please I pray for all of us here that you would allow our conscience to correct us before we have to be corrected by others.

And when we are corrected by others, that we are quick to repent, quick to turn, that we be a humble heart.

And Lord, we pray that you would use the discipline of this church, that you've given us authority to execute, to keep our church pure and holy and also to bring back those who have been excommunicated.

Lord, we submit this into your care as we seek to submit ourselves to your word.

This we pray in your son's name.

In your son's name.

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