69a) Corrective Church Discipline #1

The point: Pray for accurate understanding and moral courage to perform the duty of corrective discipline when called upon.

Martin uses the archaic word 'dismission' to parallel 'admission,' illustrating the church's exercise of the keys of the kingdom in both receiving and removing members.

We'll be dealing with those things which bring within its scope such matters as public rebuke, censure, suspension, and excommunication, or the canceling or reversing of the church's keys of admission into the church. And here we can use an archaic word. It is now dismission from the church. It's a proper word, it's archaic, but I like the fact that admission and dismission hang together as a helpful couplet as the church exercises the keys, entrusted to her by her Lord.

2:52 - 3:28 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin continues to expound Matthew 18, balancing the realism of sinning disciples with the idealism of a cleansed and holy community. He highlights the assumed framework of the…

Martin quotes Douglas Bannerman, who in turn quotes A.B. Bruce, to support the idea that Jesus envisioned the church as an organized community requiring discipline for purity, aligning with a Baptist understanding despite Bannerman being Presbyterian.

The realism of sinning disciples is balanced by this biblical idealism of a cleansed and holy community here on earth. And while at times we are grieved with some of our brethren who have a broader view of the church and their misuse of the passage of wheat and tares and the good fish and the bad fish, etc., listen to Bannerman speaking as a Presbyterian. In this part of his discourse, here he's quoting from A.B. Bruce's The Training of the Twelve. It's a footnote in Bannerman. In this part of his discourse, Jesus had in view the future rather than the present, contemplating the time when the ...

12:01 - 12:51 Read in full sermon

The point: Clear your mind of external influences and fix your gaze upon the Lord Jesus to hear His words regarding the necessity of corrective discipline.

Martin quotes Jonathan Edwards' sermon on excommunication, emphasizing that Christ's absolute authority alone should be sufficient motive for exercising corrective discipline, reinforcing the divine mandate.

to a life of your own. to a life of your own. obedience and submission to the Lord Jesus. Jonathan Edwards in the section of his classic sermons on the subject of the nature and end of excommunication writes but the absolute authority of Christ ought to be sufficient in this case that is in the case of exercising corrective discipline if there were no other motive.

22:27 - 22:51 Read in full sermon

The point: When a disciplined person repents, reflect the gospel by offering free, full pardon and acceptance, confirming love to them.

Martin uses the parable of the Prodigal Son to illustrate how God meets a repentant sinner with immediate, lavish acceptance, arguing that church discipline, being 'gospel discipline,' should reflect this same free, full pardon for the returning backslider.

And this you'll find I found tremendously helpful in a Mennonite writer of all writers. It crystallized some things I've been wrestling with for years. That every institution of Christ is an extension of the gospel and reflects and underscores and buttresses the principles of the gospel. Now, when the sinner coming from the far country returns in repentance and faith, how does God meet him?

32:49 - 33:12 Read in full sermon

The point: Refuse a factious man after a first and second admonition, moving beyond verbal correction to corporate public discipline.

Martin quotes Robert Murray McCheyne's memoir, where McCheyne confesses his initial abhorrence for church discipline but later recognized it as a divine ordinance as vital as preaching, serving to encourage pastors facing similar reluctance.

to be so so advanced as to not need corrective or radical discipline goes beyond the vision of Christ beyond the vision the experience the practice of the apostolic church and it's either a subterfuge or a horrible self-deception any church which acknowledges the need but will not implement corrective discipline is one that is living in disobedience and will provoke the displeasure of the Lord Jesus Christ now McShane was quoted in the previous hour and I want to quote him again in his memoir Bonar writes he did not make light of the Kirk's session's power to rebuke and deal with an offender o...

42:04 - 43:32 Read in full sermon