Assertive Loving Care for One Another

In this part of the sermon: The sermon begins by establishing the importance of a truly regenerate and converted church membership, which is the focus of the ongoing 'Manifesto of Trinity Baptist Church'…

Paul's analogy of the church as an organic entity, the body of Christ, is used to introduce the concept of mutual care and interdependence among members.

Now, in order to set our study in a biblical framework, would you follow, please, as I read two portions of the Word of God. The first is found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12, and the second, a much briefer passage in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 2. 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. In this section of Corinthians, where Paul is dealing with the subject of spiritual gifts, he brings forward the concept of the Church, the Church as an organic entity, he calls it the body of Christ, and it's in that setting that I pick up the reading at verse 18, 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 18. But now hath God set the members...

0:14 - 1:24 Read in full sermon

The point: Make a valid biblical assessment of whether your professed faith and regeneration are real by actively manifesting biblical love in response to brethren's needs.

The active, self-giving nature of God's love (sending His Son) is contrasted with a 'gushy sentiment' or 'dormant emotions' to define true, regenerating love that responds to need.

And we ought to lay down our brethren. So if this kind of God-like love is in our breasts by the presence of the Holy Spirit, a mark of regenerating grace, and if its presence will act in us as it acts in God, that is, prepared to make the supreme, the supreme expression of self-giving love, then surely, in the presence of a brother who has mere material need, and we have the capacity to meet it, and we shut up our hearts, how does the love of God dwell in us? We may have some gushy sentiment, we may have some dormant emotions, but we do not have that love which is the proof of regeneration.

13:20 - 14:07 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine your reaction to loving correction from brothers and sisters; if you pray for holiness, you should welcome help in answering that prayer.

The image of individuals insulated in their own boxes, knowing nothing about others, is used to describe a congregation lacking the intimate involvement necessary for mutual exhortation and restoration.

And you see no little measure of that light which exposes us comes not only directly in our reading of the scripture not only indirectly indirectly in the Bible. not only directly in the preaching of the scriptures but in the congregation where there is what I've described assertive loving knowledge of one for another. We get to know one another well enough to know where there may be signs of spiritual declension and departure from the living God. So when the text says exhort one another day by day lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin there is another enough aggressive ...

24:13 - 25:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine your reaction to loving correction from brothers and sisters; if you pray for holiness, you should welcome help in answering that prayer.

Helping a brother overtaken in a trespass is compared to setting a broken bone, illustrating the restorative and healing nature of loving correction.

There was close enough interaction that a brother could see a brother overtaken in a trespass through an area of particular weakness and vulnerability. And what do you do? You draw alongside to help restore the brother to help set that broken bone of his own spiritual stature to help him back into the spiritual world. The way of righteousness and the assumption is that a true child of God does not resent that.

25:30 - 26:01 Read in full sermon

The point: Be more concerned with increasing holiness than with justifying and protecting your reputation.

The absurdity of being grateful to a dog for pointing out sin, but resentful of a brother, highlights the hypocrisy of those who claim to desire holiness but resist human correction.

Forgive him. That's the teaching of to be holy. If the name of God if a neighbor's dog could bark in such a way as to point out your sin you'd throw him a bone and say thank you.

27:27 - 27:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Examine your devotional life, secret prayer, private reading of God's Word, and family worship; if religion is not validated in the domestic sphere, it is not real.

The analogy of an earthly shepherd physically examining his sheep for a deadly disease is used to justify the 'intrusive' nature of pastoral oversight and intimate questioning about spiritual health in members' homes.

of public censure and the beginnings of formal church discipline but however it works out you see what it's doing it's making sure we don't have people who just sit here and look nice and say nice things at the door and go their way either unconverted or on the high road to apostasy or locked into a terrible terrible pattern of self-deception let me ask you this morning would anyone resent a literal shepherd of real sheep the woolly creatures you know with four legs and a tail if they saw that shepherd having heard that a certain disease was afflicting flock of shepherds flock of sheep in that...

53:40 - 55:09 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not desire a religion that can be picked up and left at the parking lot, or a formal, distant relationship with pastors; embrace warm, intimate, assertive pastoral care.

The idea of a formal, distant relationship with pastors is equated with a 'mask' of religion that can be put on and taken off, contrasting it with genuine, integrated faith.

well if an earthly shepherd of poor dumb sheep who end up as mutton anyway show their love by putting their fingers in the wool and seeking to know the true state of the sheep to see whether or not they might be afflicted with a deadly disease is it heavy handed shepherding to come into your homes and to ask you are you praying to ask you if there are sins that are eating at your vitals like a cancer to ask if indeed there's spiritual health in your heart and in your heart and in your home and in your family is that oppressive heavy handed shepherd or is anything less unworthy of the name shep...

55:09 - 56:35 Read in full sermon

The point: Do not misread pastoral aggressiveness as anything other than love and a desire to see you get to heaven safely; do not impute others' failures to your pastors.

The pastor's desire for scholarly study (likened to a juicy steak) is contrasted with the demands of pastoral calls and needs, illustrating the self-sacrificial nature of intimate pastoral ministry.

for one another so that those who are not regenerate and do not love the brethren will sense they're out of place in such a caring assembly of God's people and will either be awakened and brought to conversion or will find the self-disclosure and the accurate self-knowledge too much and fly the coop and we are committed that there will be by the grace of God an assertive loving pastoral intimacy and oversight of each member to the end that by the grace of God each one of you will be taken safely to heaven if you could get to heaven by simply getting through a membership interview and being rec...

58:05 - 59:34 Read in full sermon