71a) Corrective Church Discipline #3

The point: If an excommunicated employee's sin does not affect his work, continue to employ and pay him, but cease distinctive Christian social fellowship.

Illustrates the error of ecclesiastical structures that commanded a wife to cease cohabiting with an excommunicated husband, clarifying that social discipline does not extend to common human interactions.

Nowhere in Scripture are words, we warranted to withdraw from any man those social interactions common to all men as men. And here there's been great error and reproach to Christ in church history. Certain ecclesiastical structures that told a woman if her husband were excommunicated, she was not to cohabit with him, give him the privileges of bed and board. Nowhere does the Bible teach that.

2:29 - 2:55 Read in full sermon

The point: If an excommunicated employee's sin does not affect his work, continue to employ and pay him, but cease distinctive Christian social fellowship.

Illustrates that an employer should continue to employ and pay an excommunicated man if his sin doesn't affect his work, but distinctively Christian social fellowship (like discussing God's things at lunch) must cease.

People that would be socially separated from their own children. No, this is not what the Scripture says. If you are an employer and one of your employees is a man who's excommunicated and his sin is not affecting his work, you continue to keep him in your employment, you continue to pay him a good wage for his work, but now it may be that at lunchtime you would meet with him as a brother and discuss the things of God, and as a brother you would have distinctive Christian social fellowship. That must cease.

2:56 - 3:28 Read in full sermon

The point: Engage in evangelistic social interaction with an excommunicated person, treating them as you would any other sinner, but not distinctive Christian social interaction.

Clarifies the distinction between ceasing Christian social interaction and engaging in evangelistic social interaction with an excommunicated person, treating them as one would any other sinner.

You may now meet with him for lunch to evangelize him, as you would a sinner who might be living with another woman, who might be a cursing, foul-mouthed wretch of a man. You will have social interaction with him that is not distinctively Christian social interaction. It is distinctive evangelistic social interaction, but not Christian. So you see the distinction that I've tried to express in these words.

3:29 - 3:53 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware of the carnal desire to have a detailed manual of corrective discipline that covers all case histories.

Illustrates the importance of judging motives, not just actions, by comparing an accidental killing (city of refuge) with a premeditated murder, showing God's discernment even in the Old Covenant.

Matters of motivation. Even God recognized that in the strictness of the old covenant. The man who was swinging his axe and the head fell off and killed his neighbor, he could run to the city of refuge. But if he had murder in his heart, stewing for three or four days, and went over and buried his axe head in his neighbor, he's a murderer.

11:13 - 11:31 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware of the carnal tendency to unbiblical extremes (laxity or severity) in administering corrective discipline.

Illustrates carnal laxity as a reaction against harsh, unfeeling discipline, citing the reaction against Victorian discipline leading to 'no discipline' in the next generation.

Usually, in a soft age with low standards of piety. Or, in reaction against a harsh, unfeeling discipline. The reaction against Victorian discipline was the no discipline of the next generation. And in many ways, English society is suffering to this day from my exposure to it.

13:20 - 13:40 Read in full sermon

The point: Cry to God for the grace of self-control so that temperamental inclinations or reactions to past errors do not govern the practice of church discipline.

Illustrates how personal history (being beaten as a child) can predispose someone to carnal laxity, preventing them from spanking their own child.

A man who was beaten as a child can never bring himself to spank his own son. He's reacting with carnal laxity. While on the other end of the extreme is carnal severity. Usually after a period of rediscovery of the necessity of discipline as in the Anabaptist movement.

13:40 - 13:59 Read in full sermon

The point: Cry to God for the grace of self-control so that temperamental inclinations or reactions to past errors do not govern the practice of church discipline.

Illustrates carnal severity, describing how the Anabaptists, reacting against sacralist state churches, swung into extreme shunning practices, even separating spouses and children.

Here were state churches, the sacralist structure where to be born in a given area you were automatically a member of such and such a church. And the Anabaptists saw the biblical vision of the church as gathered disciples that disciplined itself and they swung clean through the median point into a carnal severity in their practice of shunning. Even making a spouse and children to leave the home. How much we need the grace of self-control that our own temperamental inclinations won't control and govern our practice of church discipline that past errors from which we are reacting will not cause ...

14:00 - 14:41 Read in full sermon

The point: Cry to God for the grace of self-control so that temperamental inclinations or reactions to past errors do not govern the practice of church discipline.

Quotes Dabney to explain how people reacting against past errors often remove themselves too far, thinking they are getting closer to truth when they are actually overshooting it.

And one of the penetrating insights of Dabney I found when he stated persons who've embraced sentiments which after would appear to them erroneous often think they can never remove too far from them and the more they remove from them that is their former opinions they think the nearer they are coming to truth. So here's an error. They're reacting from it and they think the more I distance myself from that the closer I am to truth when in reality truth was back here. So each of us has factors that predispose us to carnal laxity carnal severity and we need to cry to God that we should be kept fr...

14:42 - 15:22 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware of the tendency to make artificial and arbitrary categories of sins with respect to corrective discipline.

Illustrates how Luther publicly rebuked a man for making an unjust gain from a house sale, demonstrating that 'covetousness' and 'extortion' were considered grounds for discipline.

You see what happens when you get artificial distinctions? Luther rebuked a man who was to make an unjust gain from the sale of a house called an extortion publicly rebuked the man because he was going to make an excessive profit from the sale of a house taking advantage of another for his own personal gain. You find the same thing with Galatians 5 19 to 21. They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God and along with the gross sins are anger and wrath and a party spirit.

16:04 - 16:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Beware of the tendency to insulate the issues of corrective discipline from their corporate context, remembering the influence of sin on the whole church.

A hypothetical scenario of a deacon's secret sin with a prostitute, raising complex questions about disclosure, office, and semi-public confession, to illustrate the difficulty of insulating discipline from its corporate context.

However what of the rest of the church? What of the influence of the sin on them? And where do you where do you draw the line? Here's a man that in a moment of weakness went into New York City plunked out his 50 bucks and spent an hour with a hooker in a cheap hotel.

16:57 - 17:13 Read in full sermon