1 Timothy 1:18-20
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Parent Night Out – Alexa Crawford, Evan Burns, Mackenzie and Hailey
Expositional Sermons – Sometimes that doesn’t always fit into a 25 minute window, sometimes its shorter…
LOCAL CHURCH 1 Timothy 1:18-20 2 Sections here
Starts with almost a snapshot thesis statement of what we have seen already - 18-19a
· “My child” – Household of God relationships, help to see what is true, help in the particulars of life. God hasn’t answered every single question you will have in life for every single circumstance…
· “This Charge” – This charge I entrust to you – WHAT charge?
Same word used twice at the very beginning of the letter V3 V5 – Genuine Christian Love
Wage the good warfare, holding faith and good conscience
The false teaching has replaced faith with speculations/controversies, and replaced love with dissensions
Charge to Remain with this: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (14)
The second part, spend the remainder of our time on, hits on a topic incredibly relevant to the theme of the local church, in fact it is only relevant to the local church, but it is a topic that I have purposefully avoided and still approach with great caution.
However it is a topic that we must broach if we are to be faithful to scripture, and it is directly relevant to our recent focus on church membership and the centrality of the local church, and your responsibility to it.
19-20
These men had turned from the Gospel, in fact REJECTING it (which by the way had nothing to do with instrumental music or how often to have communion or what sign can be on the front of the house church), rejecting that Christ came to save…
And because they rejected it, and thus made a shipwreck of their faith, Paul says he “handed them over to Satan THAT …
What Paul is talking about here is the last step and resort of what the church has historically referred to as Church Discipline, which was a process given by scripture to try to keep sheep from wandering and help them find repentance.
The church of Christ is infamous for doing a poor job of this in the past… but doing it the right way is unavoidably Biblical
Matthew 18:15–20 (ff just means following, large sections of scripture, I try to boil it down to main argument so I don’t have 30 slides for both)
We get a picture of the steps taken to hold a brother or sister accountable. The Final step is to let him be to you as an unbeliever. But think about the person we have here. I’ll use Aaron because I know he won’t mind. Imagine I find out that Aaron is robbing banks on the weekend. I follow this pattern and go to him alone . . . then I take two of our other friends, Chance and Austin . . . then I bring it to the church as his family, and he still will not repent. FOR THE SAKE OF AARON’S SOUL, the church cannot keep treating him as if he is a healthy and faithful brother. The WORST thing we could do is just shrug and hope he stops, if he doesn’t repent he is on a path to hell.
That last step is never reached in the vast majority of cases, only in the most egregious and rare cases.
If he rejects the church, he is rejecting the authority of Christ, who is with the church In these decisions.
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven…
2 Thessalonians 3:6–15
Now the reason I know this is dealing with this sort of discipline is because Paul uses this same phraseology only one other time in the scriptures, and it is arguably the most significant passage for this topic
1 Corinthians 5:1–13 (*for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved*)
Every week, late in my sermon preparation, I will read the 5-7 best commentaries on the passage I am studying, (scholars go through each verse…) every one I read this week on this passage remarked that the modern church …
Now let me say this, I don’t think we have entirely left this behind here, I know that the first steps are carried out very often between believers here, have been so with me, and hallelujah for that!
I simply want to teach this biblical doctrine as we have come to it here in 1 Timothy, and know that there are times, however rare, where the final step is the faithful and most loving step for a church to take.
And it undergirds our discussion on the local church, caused by many good things, we have often failed to have a high enough view of local bodies like this one and the role we play together in the kingdom. If you are a member here, you have a special responsibility to the other members here that you don’t have to Christians elsewhere, and they have a special responsibility to you. This sort of call makes that clear.
We have had lots of people place membership in the past months and there are more coming - Church membership can be defined simply as a formal commitment between an individual and a local church to mutual discipleship – to help each other grow in Christ-likeness and lean on each other for my own growth. This OF COURSE includes accountability. If you DON’T want accountability . . . and it isn’t from some big authoritarian . . . your siblings that love you!
1 Corinthians 11:32
We can not misunderstand the nature of this process. Church discipline was not simply intended to “cut out a cancer” in order to preserve the rest of the body, as some churches view it today. Each step was designed to bring the sinning person back into the light and joy of Christ. It is not done primarily for the other Christians here, its done for HIM or HER! So that they’ll come back! It isn’t a permanent excommunication sort of thing!
2 Corinthians 2:5-11 (who is the “You” btw– the church!)
The meaning of church discipline is simply an extension of the call to church discipleship, which naturally involves a corrective aspect where disobedience is concerned.
If we fail to hold each other accountable for sin, we are failing each other, and are failing to uphold one of the reasons that the church exists.
CHRIST COMPLETELY SAVES THE SINNER – one of the main ways He does that is through the local church.
The local church is a haven for the sinner. Paul describes this as handing over to Satan because to be disconnected from the church is to lose the power over Satan that the church has through Christ and be back into the world which is his domain.
We have said so much that the life of the Christian is a LIFE of failing, and thus a life of repentance, and a Life of veering from the path and being guided back to the path by God’s grace.