[We now interrupt our on-going series on the book of "Genesis" to bring you this special, necessary, sermon from October 18, 2009.]

10.18.9 – The Sermon Never Preached

About two and a half years ago I preached a couple times for a church in east Texas. I was looking for a ministry and had talked with one of the leaders of this church and he invited me to preach. I liked them and they liked me, so we went back a couple weeks later. The second time was a more “formal” tryout for the position of minister.

After I preached, we had a luncheon and the congregation had a chance to ask me questions. I had provided them with the same questionnaire I provided this church, detailing some of my thoughts on basic Christian and church issues. One of the questions was about my approach to church discipline. I quoted the following statement of Jesus in my answer.

Matthew 18:15-17
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 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. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” (ESV)

One of the elders of the church said, “I know that’s what Scripture says, but I can’t go along with that.”

You catch that?

Here was an elder, an established leader of a congregation, who made a public declaration not to follow scripture.

You think that’s pretty wild, right? And you can probably understand why my interest in working with that congregation disappeared, can’t you?

What would you think if I told you we have people right in this congregation who think just like the elder in that other congregation? People who think they know better than Jesus how the church should work. Why would I say that?

Because we have people in this congregation who have something against someone else in this congregation and they refuse to take Jesus’s steps in addressing the issue. I’m not going to name names, but I hear the whispering. And sometimes it’s not even whispering. I heard someone at last Sunday’s fellowship meal delineating the wrongs that had been done to them by another person. This person has brought these same grievances to me. And you know what I told them to do? I told them to follow Jesus’s instructions.
To my knowledge, they haven’t.

We may all be guilty of this. What excuses do we use? “He won’t listen to me even if I do talk to him.” Or, how about, “She’ll just get defensive and won’t change.” My first response to such excuses is: so what?

Look again at Jesus’s words.

"If your brother sins against you, go to him and show him his fault. But do it privately, just between yourselves. If he listens to you, you have won your brother back. But if he will not listen to you, take one or two other persons with you, so that 'every accusation may be upheld by the testimony of two or more witnesses,' as the scripture says. And if he will not listen to them, then tell the whole thing to the church. Finally, if he will not listen to the church, treat him as though he were a pagan or a tax collector.” (GNB)

Jesus holds out the distinct possibility that, when you go talk to this person, they may not listen. If that’s the case, he gives us a next step in the process. We involve another person (or two). But no more. There’s no place for spreading rumors or gossip here. If we have followed the Biblical steps and the person has refused to change or repent then—and only then—are we to bring the matter before the congregation.

The whole purpose of this process is to bring a person who is in error—or sin—back into the right and into the family. Remember this summer, I told you that one of the foundational beliefs of Christianity was reconciliation. We are to be reconciled to God (through Jesus’s death, burial and resurrection) and we are to be instruments of reconciliation among other people.

Let me read something Paul wrote about people that were the “worst of the worst”:

Romans 1:28-32
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (ESV)

Did you notice that right in there amongst murderers and evil people, Paul mentioned gossips? He even goes so far as to lump the gossips in with the “haters of God”!!!! We can offer all sorts of excuses for gossip; calling it news, or even a “prayer concern”. The Bible calls it sin.

Some of you know this from experience. You've seen gossip tear this church apart. Let me tell you a little story. In the house Martha and I had in Lawton, we had a bathtub that someone had—at some time in the past—put those little non-skid stickers in the bottom. They were gone by the time we got there, but you could faintly see the imprints. So we scrubbed and scrubbed and they would go away. But, a few days later, they would start to show up again. We could scrub and scrub and use everything from Comet to Borax and they would go away—for a time. But, if we weren't vigilant, the little imprints would come back.

Sin is just like that and we're seeing that acted out in NPCC. For whatever reason, we seem to have the imprint of gossip on this congregation. It's not just one man or one woman who is afflicted in this way. It's a bunch of us. What do we do about it?

Whitaker Chambers, in his book Witness, wrote this about his son, "I want him to understand that evil is not something that can be condescended to, waived aside or smiled away, for it is not merely an uninvited guest, but lies coiled in foro interno at home with good within ourselves. Evil can only be fought."

Man’s got a way of doing things and God has a way of doing things. There’s a right way to do things (God’s way) and a wrong way of doing things (mine and yours).

You know what? We are humans. And we are sinners. And sometimes we do things that hurt each others’ feelings. Sometimes it’s an accident, but sometimes it’s on purpose. And there are people in this room who feel they have been wronged by someone else in this room.

If that’s you, have you taken the Biblical steps to address the issue? It’s that hard … and it’s that simple. And it’s not optional.

Now, as a congregation, what should we do if we have someone in our midst who refuses to obey Jesus’s direct command on how to deal with such situations?

Titus 3:10-11
As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned. (ESV)

Because …

Mark 3:25
If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

We have the possibility here to be a great work for Christ. If we will speak the truth in love, operate by Scriptural guidelines, and trust God first, we will succeed beyond our wildest imaginations!

What do I DO with this?

Are you angry at someone here? About the way they’ve treated you or something they have said or done? You need to talk to that person you are mad at. Are you mad at me? Then you need to come talk to me.

You DON’T need to go and talk to someone else about the person you're mad at. If that’s the path you choose, you are choosing to number yourself with the haters of God.

I want you numbered with the lovers of God. But I’m serving notice with this sermon: this is a Bible-based congregation. We may have neglected this passage in the past, but we won’t anymore.