Amen. Go ahead and grab a seat. And go ahead and grab your Bibles and open to Ephesians chapter 4. Grab your Bibles. Ephesians chapter 4. And today we’re going to be in one verse. Ephesians 4:25, ok? That’s where we’re anchoring down, and I’ll get to that in just a moment. But I wanted to share my heart with you a little bit. So last week we’ve been asking the Lord, right, to reform us to His Word, to revive us by His Spirit. And we’ve stepped into this. Now we’re four weeks into this series called ONE- United in Christ.
And last week I was just so encouraged for where we landed, where we ended, right? On our knees in a spirit of repentance. And I heard from so many of you over the week of things that you’re doing that the Spirit of God is convicting you to walk in as you walk out your salvation. I’ve heard from so many who were convicted and are bringing sin into the light or are moved to action.
And I truly believe when a body of believers takes serious what God’s Word says, undoubtedly clear God’s Word tells us how we should live and how we should operate, how our conduct should look, our morality should look in the world, if we start to care about these things, undoubtedly the Spirit of God is going to move in our midst and unite us together.
But none of us have arrived. So all of us are in this together. There are some of you here who are struggling with sin and last week was really convicting. And you left. What I don’t want is you to leave with shame on your shoulders like you’re alone in this fight and this battle.
Some of the emails that I got are from people who have been walking with the Lord so much longer than I have been. And you know what they were saying last week? Boy, the Word of God convicted me and I am moved to action.
How could someone who has walked with the Lord for 65 years still feel conviction and still feel like they need to move to action and still feel like they need to take steps in their walk with Christ? It’s because none of us have arrived. We are all on this journey of becoming like our Savior whom we fall so short from. Amen?
And so we’ve got to work at this thing every day, and we need each other in order to do it. But hear this. Conviction without action won’t do you any good. You can come here every single week and hear convicting things from the Word of God. The Word of God will make you feel all sorts of types of ways. But if you go and do nothing with it, it doesn’t do any good.
Martin Lloyd Jones said that conviction is not repentance. Conviction leads to repentance. But it’s possible to have conviction without repentance. The feelings that we have from the Spirit of God when we feel convicted should cause us to identify the old, identify our sin, and to turn from it, to put it off that we might put on the new life in Christ.
So I want to encourage you as we keep walking in this journey and into these conducts and behaviors together. Let’s not condemn one another, but let’s walk together in conviction and repentance, moving toward the Spirit of God. So today’s message is called “Put on Truth in the Body.” And I want to deal with God’s mechanism, His plan for dealing with falsehood in the Body of Christ, namely Church discipline, church restoration, that sort of thing. So we’ll talk about that a little bit today. But here’s the big idea. Christian Body life is characterized by truthful disciples. Christian Body life is characterized by truthful disciples.
So Christian Body life, us doing life together joined to a Body where Jesus Christ is the head. We are little Christs, therefore we’re reflecting Christ. And our lives together, our unity together, is dependent, it’s characterized by truthful disciples. We must be vigilant to speak the truth, vigilant to tell the truth and to put lies and deceit far from us.
Lying has no place in the Body of Christ. Lies cause a Body to malfunction. Lies cause a Body all sorts of dysfunction. And Satan is the father of lies, and so it brings him great joy if there is dysfunction and malfunction among us because of deceit and falsehood. Ok?
So I want you to look at Ephesians chapter 4. I’m going to read verses 20 up to 25 just so we get the context of where we were last week, ok? Let’s hear the Word of the Lord together. God is speaking now and so we honor Him.
Verse 20 says, But that is not the way you learned Christ! Referring to not walking like the Gentiles.
Verse 21. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
Here’s our verse for today. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:20-25)
This is God’s Word for us today, and there’s an important thing that I want to share with you as we step into now this section and this paragraph. And even it goes into chapter 5 over the next few weeks. Paul begins to address these behaviors and he starts to list them. And when he lists them he lists a behavior to put off, a behavior to put on, and then a theological or doctrinal statement tied to the behavior. It’s pretty important to understand this.
So this week he’s saying put off lying and put on telling the truth, because theologically you have been joined to the Body of Christ and Jesus is the head. You get it? It’s imperative that you live this way because of the truth that you’ve been joined to a Body and made alive in Christ.
So next week it’ll be theologically you are made a little Christ. So He came to serve and not be served. Therefore it’s imperative that you put off false work and you do honest work. Ok? That’s kind of where it’s going over the next few weeks. So I’m telling you this because your identity in Christ matters before your behavior modification. These behaviors will not save you. You could never tell a lie, you could be the kindest person on earth, you could do honest work all of your life and still go to hell for eternity. Behaviors don’t save you.
This is a lifetime of understanding of what Christ has done for us, who Christ has made us, and then recognizing that the way that we walk should reflect that wealth. As a pastor, sometimes I feel like I’m walking this tightrope. I totally care about how you live and how I live. I totally care about how you reflect Christ in the world. I totally care about your behavior and the things that you do and the things that you say yes to and no to.
But I don’t want you to forget where you came from and where you started. Because you could spend your whole life trying to be a great person but that’s just moralism, and that’s where the whole world finds themselves often. If you don’t remember that you were dead in your trespasses and sins, Ephesians 1 through 3, and God made you alive in Christ Jesus and He breathed life into your dead bones and He gave you a new identity so that you could then walk in a manner worthy of your wealth, you’ll miss the importance of the gospel. This is the whole gospel.
You’ve got to be changed. You’ve got to be saved. And then you are made to walk in the newness of life.
So you don’t live to get to God; you get to live for God because of what the gospel has done in your life. You understand?
So let’s keep going. And point number one this morning is this: put away falsehood. Put away falsehood. So I’ll give it to you right from the text. Verse 25 says this: Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.
So Paul says therefore, referring back to the way that you learned Christ. You learned Christ by putting off the old and renewing your mind and putting on the new things, namely the things that are in Scripture, and that’s how you begin to walk. I love that Paul kind of states this as if the falsehood has already been removed. Therefore, having put away falsehood. That’s because the idea of a truly grace-saved believer being a liar is absolutely absurd. Absolutely absurd.
This is a characteristic. Lying is a characteristic of our dead position, not our made alive position in Christ.
Because liars are just simply following the course of this world. Our society and our culture, it depends on lies. Could you imagine if every lie was turned to truth in America today? I think it would implode. I think we’d be in a massive world. I think we can handle the truth, and we have been built up on so many lies.
So liars are following the course of this world. Liars follow the prince of the power of the air. John says that Satan is the father of lies. So it brings him great joy when we have falsehood among us, when we tell lies, when we have deceit in our hearts, when we hide things from one another. Liars are sons and daughters of disobedience because the truth is not in them.
Here’s what it says in 1 John 2:4: Whoever says “I know him” (this is talking about Jesus our advocate. Whoever says, “I know Jesus,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him
The Bible is unmistakably clear that knowing and obeying Jesus and lying do not go hand in hand. It is complete and utter foolishness to lie and to hide falsehood and to live a double life if you’ve been redeemed and forgiven and made alive in Christ.
It reminds me of a story that I remember my wife telling me from when one of my children was three years old. So she went out in the garage. She caught one of our kids in a bold-faced lie. And she went out into the garage and she found an ice cream cake on the ground of the garage outside of our deep freezer. And so she started walking around and she found a child and she said, “Hey, do you know anything about the ice cream cake in the garage? Were you eating the ice cream cake?”
And my sheepish child is looking up and down. “No. What ice cream cake?” Three years old, you know. “Where was there an ice cream cake?”
And as parents, right, we want to believe our children. Like we want to assume the best about our children. They’re not lying. They’re telling the truth. And there was really no reason to not believe this child other than the fact that they had purple and orange icing smeared all over their face.
And it’s almost comical, right? It’s kind of cute coming from a three-year-old. But it’s not cute at all. The older we get and the more that we try to cover up something we have done and something that God undoubtedly sees. It’s like we’re coming to church, right? To put it to your spiritual life, it’s like we’re coming in and out of the doors of church, we’re raising a hand, we’re praying a prayer, and we’re playing the Christian life. And God sees the icing all over our filthy, lying, dirty hearts.
I hear you saying you didn’t eat the cake, but the evidence is proving differently. I hear you saying that you are a follower of Christ, but the evidence is proving differently. You see how your walk and your wealth have to go hand in hand. It’s imperative that we walk worthy of our calling so that the outside world sees that our identity reflects Jesus and not just something that we say with our lips and live differently.
So the Bible says plenty more about lying and falsehood. Exodus 20:16 says this. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. That’s of course the ninth commandment given to Moses at Mt. Sinai.
Proverbs 12:22. There are lots of proverbs like this. It says lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. An abomination. Big word.
In Acts chapter 5 in the New Testament as the church is being started, Peter said, “But Annanias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man, but to God.”
And of course you remember Annanias and Sapphira, they were called to give their proceeds, the things that they had, the things that they’d been given, to the church so that it could be distributed evenly. And yet this husband and wife, they kept some back for themselves. We’ll just keep a little bit for ourselves and we’ll give what we can to the Lord and no one will ever know.
And the Spirit of God revealed it to Peter and Peter calls it out. And what happens to Annanias and Sapphira? They were struck dead in an instant. That’s how serious God is about falsehood in the church. That’s how serious God is about lying. And when we lie to one another, ultimately we are lying to the God who sees it all.
Revelation 21:8 says, But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
So God is pretty serious about lying. He pairs it up with all other sorts of sins that the Bible talks about. But I want you to think deeper than little white lies. I want you to think deeper than speaking non-truths. The interesting thing about all of these sins mentioned in some of the verses that I just read, if you are claiming to be a follower of Christ and sexual immorality or idoltay or stealing or murdering are a part of your life, then you are a liar. You’re covering up something that is not characteristic of a follower of Jesus Christ.
So you cannot say you are in Christ and then live however you want. This is falsehood that must be put far from you and this is not helpful to the Body and this is not the way that we glorify Christ. If you go back to this body illustration, it doesn’t do great if there’s lies happening in my own human body, right?
If my brain and my eyes are telling me that there’s a chair right here and that I should sit down, that’s not going to go well for me, right? If God told all of us that this morning and there were no chairs in this room, that’d be a lot of dislocated hips at Gospel City Church. If my brain and my eyes said run with great force and leap into the air and launch into perfect cannonball form because there is a swimming pool down here, I would blow my knees out and you’d all be laughing but I’d be in great pain, right? Someone is laughing over here.
But the same is true. If our body parts lie to one another, that’s a problem. But if our body parts have an identity issue, that’s also a problem right? If my right leg thinks it’s my right arm, that’s kind of weird. I might be able to get by for a little bit. I can pick up the laundry and throw it in the laundry basket, get by.
Tim, come here. If I said, “Brother Tim, good to see you. Welcome to church. How are you doing today?” I might be able to get by a little bit and I get pretty good at my identity. But Tim is a loving guy. So he’s like, “He’s a great guy, brother in Christ. A little weird. Something seems off with him.”
But eventually the truth- thanks man- eventually the truth comes out, doesn’t it, if we try to cover up our identity. Either you get caught in your identity issue; maybe you get tired of hiding it. The grace of God…sometimes the Spirit confronts us with our hidden identity and our lies and our sin and it is brought out into the open. And by the grace of God, we repent and turn toward truth. I’ve seen it the other way. Sometimes we decide hiding our true identity is too exhausting and so it’s just better to embrace it. What a sad place to get.
But we see this in the moral failures of pastors and leaders in the spotlight. And it’s not as publicized, but it’s present every day in some of our lives as we walk in the old self while claiming to have been made alive in Christ. Falsehood creeps into our mind and it moves to our heart and hardens it. And before long we are living a lifestyle that does not reflect the gospel that we claim to have been changed by. That’s not the way that we learn Christ. If you’ve truly been made a new creation and caused to be renewed in your mind and put on the new self, you have to put away falsehood.
And point number two this morning is this. Speak the truth to one another. So we put away falsehood but then we speak the truth to one another. Verse 25 of Ephesians 4 goes on, “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.”
So when the New Testament used the word “neighbor,” it’s talking about the people who you rub shoulders with on a regular basis. Undoubtedly, the people that you’re sitting in a row with today are your neighbors. The people in Gospel City Church are your neighbors. And notice what verse 25 said. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.” Every believer has a responsibility to spark the truth to the people around them, to the people that they’re joined to the Body with, to the people that you rub shoulders with on a daily basis.
So in order to speak the truth, you’ve got to know the truth, you’ve got to love the truth, you’ve got to get honest about the truth, and you have to boldly open your mouth and declare the truth. You don’t just say you’re a believer and never open your mouth. You say you’re a believer and you open your mouth that the truth might come out.
Each one of you has the responsibility to speak the truth to his neighbor. And get this. You’re never more like Christ than when you do. God is the Father of truth and He gave us the way, the truth and the life. And so when we speak the truth, we are imitating the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s not enough time to dive into all the truth that should cause falsehood to just melt like wax in your life. But it’s everything in Ephesians 1 through 3. God chose you. You have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. You’ve been adopted as His sons and daughters. You’ve been redeemed and forgiven by the blood of Christ. You’ve been sealed with the Holy Spirit and given an inheritance. You’ve been seated in the heavenly places beside Jesus. You’ve been given resurrection power.
Now you’ve been joined to a Body where there is no wall of hostility between us. And God can do this and far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, and that is enough truth to never tell a lie again. So ultimately there should be an eagerness and a willingness to speak the truth to one another. That’s a reason that you’re saved. That’s a reason that you’re joined to this Body. It should be a joy to speak the truth. Recognize that God has joined us together for our own good and for our own growth. And so we’re transparent with one another.
It doesn’t mean that we share everything, every deep dark little detailed thing in your life, some people can’t handle all of your transparency. I’ve had to learn that in my own life. We can be intentionally vulnerable with one another about our struggles. We can share our temptations. You can share your burdens. Don’t try to fight the battle of sin alone. Get people around you that you can share your burdens with, your temptations with, even your failures.
In the Body of Christ you should be able to share your failures with people and not meet condemnation but meet loving, gentle, humble, kind people who want to bear with you in love and who are eager for peace and who will walk with you until you find victory over time. That is the Body of Christ on display. So important for our lives together as believers. I want to show you what the Bible says to believers about speaking the truth to one another.
Of course we have to speak the truth to one another, especially when we get off and maybe we sin in the Body of Christ. This is different than the world outside. You speaking the truth to the world that doesn’t believe the Bible that hasn’t been regenerated is different because dead people don’t walk like saved people.
So we love our enemies. We love the people who aren’t saved. But before we care about their behavior choices, we’ve got to care about their soul. And so that’s why we have to know how to speak the gospel. That’s why we have to know how to proclaim the love of the gospel because only this can change a dead heart. But then in the Body of Christ we walk with one another in love and over time in order to become holy as God is holy.
But the Bible says a lot about speaking the truth to one another. But the world and the culture, they think it’s judgmental for us to hold one another to a standard. And this is creeping into churches even. Let’s just accept everything. Let’s just love everyone. Let’s just be loving and put off the behavior thing and just proclaim the gospel. That’s not the whole gospel. Jesus saved you so that you could live a certain way, so that you could do things on the earth that glorify Christ.
So the world thinks it’s judgmental to hold one another to a standard or to question someone’s lifestyle choices or to challenge someone’s identity in Christ or their belief system or to wonder whether or not someone is truly a Christian. That’s what the world and culture says.
But the Bible says so much differently. We should judge with righteous judgment. We should judge one another within the church in a loving way based on the standard of God’s Word, putting others before ourselves. And we get that wrong so often and Satan is preying on the church so that there would be division in the church.
So I want to give you three ways to speak the truth, three ways that I think will help you speak the truth in the Body of Christ. The first one is this- in humility, not hypocrisy. In humility, not hypocrisy. Someone who speaks the truth in humility genuinely weighs and measures their words. They consider others as better than themselves. They are gentle and kind because they genuinely care about the person’s soul over what they have to communicate. They have carefully and in repentance looked at their own sin and failures before trying to help others with theirs.
So in Matthew chapter 7 Jesus is talking. And you know this passage. This is the most popular verse in the entire Bible for the world. Judge not that you be not judged. The world quotes that all the time. It’s all over songs and rap artists and all this stuff. But they’re getting it wrong. You will undoubtedly be judged by God and it’s going to be way scarier than me asking you to repent of your sin, right?
When we stand before God we will meet God in all of His holiness, and we don’t want to take our sin and falsehood there. And so God has given the Body of Christ to shine a light on sin in the world, but we’ve got to do it with humility. And so what Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, hey, yeah your brother has a speck or a splinter in his eye, but you have a log, a gaping log, coming out of your eye. And why are you always focused on your brother’s sin whenever you have sin sticking out of your head? Deal with the sin in your own life. Deal with the sin in your own eye before you go and help your brother with his.
But it’d be pretty rude and hateful, right, if your brother actually had a splinter in his eye and you just left him alone, you just left him with it. So that’s not what Jesus is saying. Jesus detests hypocritical judgment, but not humble judgment. So hypocritical judgment is full of double standards and hypocritical judgment is putting ourselves before others. And hypocritical judgment is what the Pharisees were characterized because they were willing to point everyone else’s sin issues out without acknowledging their own gaping pride in them and their willingness to obey the law as they were holding others to.
So they tried to speak the truth, but they only proved to be hypocrites, and this is not the way. We have to humble ourselves and think highly of others and really try to care for their souls.
SPLIT HERE
That leads to the second way. Three ways to speak the truth. In righteousness, not revenge. In righteousness, not revenge.
Speaking the truth to one another should always start from a place of elevating the Word of God. Remember, when you’re speaking truth, you’re not speaking man’s laws. You’re not speaking your laws. You are speaking God’s words. And so righteousness has to be our aim.
1 Peter 4:11. If anyone speaks, speak the oracles of God. We need to make sure that the words we say are seasoned with salt and that they are the Word of God, not our manufactured words. So speaking the truth, which is a joy in the Body of Christ, becomes challenging when we’ve been sinned against or when someone we love is in sin.
And often when we’ve been personally wronged or hurt by someone else’s sin, it is easy to take on personal feelings of offense. Have you felt that? Someone that you love has sinned against you, someone that you love is heading toward destruction or running their life into a ditch. And you truly love them, but over time it starts to fester and you start to get feelings of kind of like animosity a little bit toward that person. And you’re like, well, I’m going to let them have it. I’m going to give them a piece of my mind.
And we have to protect ourselves from this kind of attitude because Satan wants to creep in and cause there to be disunity to where rather than speaking righteousness to one another, we’re trying to get revenge at one another.
Romans 12:17-19: Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
It leads to the third way that we speak the truth in the Body of Christ. It’s in care, not condemnation. In care, not condemnation.
That Romans passage goes on. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:20-21)
This is of course talking about, you know, people who persecute you, people who are evil. How much more in the Body of Christ should we bear with one another and be patient with one another and be kind to one another even when we’ve been wronged or sinned against? But it doesn’t need to be your mission to sniff out sin in the church. Hear that this morning. You don’t need to be like a sin detective. The Holy Spirit is the sin detective. The Holy Spirit has no problem revealing sin in the hearts of unbelievers.
So we have to be careful that we don’t get so on a mission to go and find every little problem and tell it to the elders or tell it to the church or go and speak our truth that we miss the point that God wants their heart and God wants to gently remove the splinter. And He may use your voice after you’ve humbled yourself and after you’ve come with gentle words and kind words. And as you speak to these people, use the Word of God lovingly, patiently, but allow the Spirit to do what only the Spirit can do in the lives of those who have stepped into sin.
Speaking the truth to each other when we are sinned against is crucial. Your brother or sister in Christ is not your enemy even if they’ve sinned against you. But Satan wants this kind of division. And the ability to lovingly and gently speak truth to a brother or sister in sin could be a matter of life or death. It could be a matter of holiness or spiritual deadness.
And so if we don’t speak the truth in the Body, how will we demonstrate to a lost world the hope of the gospel that we preach? If someone steps into sin, if there’s division among us, how will we show to a lost world that this is the Body of Christ if we can’t forgive and if we can’t reconcile and if we can’t speak truth in hard situations and put falsehood far from us?
Luke 6:37 Jesus said, “Forgive and you will be forgiven.” You’re never more like Christ than when you choose to forgive. Small things, big things- the Spirit of God can help us.
Now that leads to the third point that I want to talk about as we close, and it’s this. Our membership to the Body depends on truth. So he gave us the “put off.” He gave us the “put on.” Now he gives us kind of a theological position, and it’s tied to the membership in the Body of Christ.
Therefore, verse 25, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor. For we are members one of another. So church membership matters, ok? Paul is writing to a group of people in Ephesus who have put themselves under the leadership of the elders that he left in Acts chapter 20 in Ephesus. So they were present and accounted for. And he’s giving them some truth that they’re responsible to.
Yes, you’re a part of the global Body of Christ, but the local church membership is you saying, “I align to this thing.” But more than that, it’s you saying, “I want to be a contributing member to this thing. I want to put away falsehood in my life and I want to speak truth, but I want to live truth among these people.” And when somebody goes down the wrong path I want to be somebody that helps them get on the right path. I want to help disciple them. I want to help glorify Christ in my membership and in my contribution to the Body.”
If you come in and you come out every single week and you never make yourself known, you’re going to hear the gospel, you’re going to hear the Word preached, but you won’t benefit from a Body that’s growing up in the love of Christ together. So I think church membership matters greatly, but it’s unnecessary if we won’t speak the truth. Church membership is not profitable without discipline, not profitable without discipline, without restoration, without speaking the truth to one another.
So you’ve heard the term “church discipline.” Church restoration is probably a better term. But we can’t restore what we don’t discipline or what we don’t confront and where we don’t speak the truth.
I read this quote this week. J. Carl Lainey says this: “The church today is suffering from an infection which has been allowed to fester. As an infection weakens the body by destroying its defense mechanisms, so the church has been weakened by this ugly sore. The church has lost its power and effectiveness in serving as a vehicle for social, moral and spiritual change. This illness is due at least in part to a neglect of church discipline.”
So hear this. I don’t think the church has lost its power. Jesus Christ is building His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. But we need to be serious about sin this side of heaven, and we need to be serious about holiness this side of heaven. Only holiness will build us up into the temple of the Lord that we are becoming.
So let me share where I see church restoration and discipline happening at Gospel City. It happens in all sorts of micro ways. For the last fourteen years as a church it’s happening in an individual level. People going to people and restoring fellowship. It happens in a small group level. I’ve heard about small groups battling sin issues and talking to one another and restoring and repenting. It happens in an intensive level. It happens in members who are submitting to the leadership’s reproofs and steps of faith to get healthy and get right before the Lord.
There is a lot of truth speaking that happens at Gospel City Church on a regular basis. Many of you are a part of it if you lead a small group or a young adults group or a student group even. Some are confessing painful situations. Some are admitting their failures to give in to sin. Some are hearing hard and corrective counsel. Some are wading into the deep seated bitterness and anger and hurt that has been stuffed in their heart for years. And some are submitting to conversations that if it weren’t for Christ they would be long gone.
But understand this. All of this is making us into a Body that actually believes God can make us holy. This kind of thing is making us people who walk in a manner worthy of our walk. The fact that people are coming here and hearing hard truth and confessing secret sin means that the truth is at work among us and it will continue unless we stop speaking the truth and unless we allow falsehood to creep in.
So here’s where I want to close. I want you to turn to Matthew chapter 18 in your Bibles. Matthew chapter 18. And Jesus, He spoke to us about how to confront sin among brothers when we’re sinned against. And He gives us a very simple outline for how this should look in the Body of Christ. And in most cases, and I praise God for the last fourteen years at Gospel City Church. But what I’ve seen here is sin often getting confronted and people softening their hearts, repenting of their sins and turning and believing on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is how it should work, and it should be a joy for that to happen among one another.
All of us, myself included, should consider it a joy that I have people who can confront sin issues, and I should be quick to repent. I should be quick to humble myself. I should be gentle in Spirit and kind hearted and quick to maintain peace in the Body of Christ. Remember, that’s what Paul says is walking worthy.
But let me read what Jesus said in Matthew 18, starting in verse 15. Ok? If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Ok stop there. Notice that it says go and tell your brother, you and him alone. It didn’t say go to your best friend and vent like crazy about the person that just offended you. That’s sometimes the first step that we take, right? And that leads to all sorts of gossip and all sorts of things that bring more division and that revenge spirit in our heart. So you go to him alone.
Verse 16. 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.
So you take a couple brothers or sisters in Christ with you and you hear both sides of the story and you try to weigh God’s Word into it and you seek forgiveness and restoration among one another.
Verse 17. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
You know, I think this happens in all different ways. There’s a little bit of telling it to the leadership of the church, telling it to the parties that are available. Sometimes it’s telling it to the whole church based on the offense, based on what’s happening, ok?
And then it goes on. And if he still refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)
So here is just a helpful thing for you. God’s process for restoring falsehood in the church: you have a private correction moment. You have small group clarification. You have church urging in prayer among brothers and sisters and leadership. And the fourth step is removal of membership. Leave that up for a moment for people.
But hear this. The outside world looks at that and is like, “Whoa,” right? You’re a little bit like, “Whoa, I don’t want to be a part of that. Removal of membership? I thought we were a Body of Christ. I thought we were a family.” Yeah. and God has called us to holiness. And just like when cancer or an appendix goes bad in our body, you’ve got to get it out, right?
God is in the business of restoring all day long, but if we harden our hearts and we stiff arm holiness and we stiff arm the way of Christ, then God has called us to remove that from the Body of Christ so that it continues to grow up in love and in truth just as He has saved us to do.
So this is hard stuff, but this holiness at work. This is hard stuff, but this is actually putting feet to the fact that we believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ and we believe what we preach on a regular basis that the Word of God matters and stands. And so we have to hold it up high in our lives and in one another’s lives.
You can pray for our church. We’re growing in this. We’re getting older and there’s more and more people here. And there’s a soft, sweet spirit at Gospel City Church, and we desire for it to continue that way. And it will if we remove falsehood from our midst and if we speak truth, each one of us, to one another in love and if we’re quick to repent and turn from evil.
There is nothing sadder than the thought of someone getting to the point where their heart is so removed that they need to be removed from the fellowship. And why does Jesus call us to do that in the Bible? Because your elders and your pastors give an account for the souls of the Body of this church. And when somebody won’t heed instruction or direction, we’re just basically saying, “We love you and we’ll continue to love you, but we’re going to give you over to God now. And you get right with God and then you come back.” You know?
That is showing that we’re about holiness in this place, and you want that. You don’t want me to just say it. You want us to do it. Amen? And Scripture shows us continually that if we prioritize what the Word of God says about these things, He will continue to move in our midst.
Matthew 18 verse 20 says this. There’s this verse that people use sometimes when talking about prayer. I think more appropriately it comes after church discipline and it comes after church restoration and confronting sin.
It says, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
So when two or three people who have had a disagreement come together and where truth is being spoken and where falsehood is being removed, God delights in being in that. God delights in showing up in the midst of that. God loves to give His presence to that. And there may be nothing sadder on planet earth than a church building full of people without the presence of God. Not here.
And so we prioritize the truth among us and the Spirit of God will delight in showing up and building us up in the faith. Amen?
Come on, stand to your feet. Wer’e going to go out responding in song. In order for any of this to be true, it’s going to take the gospel. It’s going to take a whole lot less of us and more of Christ. And so let me pray and we’ll sing together as we close.
Lord, we love You. We thank You for Your truth. Your Word is truth. Sanctify us by Your truth. Continue to move us toward righteousness, toward holiness. Lord, would You give a holistic view of the gospel of Jesus Christ? Would You help us each and every one of us, no matter where we are on this journey to not feel condemnation today? But Lord, thank You for Your Spirit’s guidance and the Sword of truth that shows us that no matter where we are, You want our hearts and You can transform it.
And Lord I pray that You’d help us to have a proper view of our identity in Jesus, that we would see and recognize how much power we actually have available to us here and now. We can overcome this sin. We can overcome our defeats. We can have victory over the worldly things of this life, over the flesh, because Jesus Christ is our Savior and He has fought for us at the cross.
So Lord, humble us and make us more like Jesus as a people. In Your mighty name we pray, amen.
