The doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture teaches that the Holy Scriptures are the only infallible source of knowledge and wisdom for all of Christian life and practice. The Bible is the textbook that we learn from regarding what man ought to believe about God and what duty God requires from man. And one of these duties is that of church discipline. While church discipline is not a popular concept today it is unquestionably biblical and necessary for the health of the church. Scripture, and not human opinion, is the only sufficient rule-book which guides Christ's church in exercising discipline.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Joe Moorcraft with the message, The Sufficiency of Scripture to church discipline. In Matthew 16, let's read verses 13 and following. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he began asking his disciples saying, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist and others, Elijah, but still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am?

And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and Whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven then in the 18th chapter of Matthew verse 15 and If your brother sins, go and reprove him in private. If he listens to you, you've won your brother.

But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed. And 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 gatherer. Truly, I say to you, whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you lose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am in their midst." Now before we talk directly about the subject of church discipline, we've got to talk about something else. We've got to talk about and be clear on the marks of a true church. Just because a building has the word church out in front of it does not mean it is one. You got two true churches and you got fake churches.

And how can you tell the difference? In many ways, they look alike. They have buildings that are similar. But sometimes their programs or their services look pretty identical. So how do you distinguish a true church from a fake church?

And the Bible says there are three marks that distinguish a true church. And that if a church, whoever it is, has these three characteristics, it's a true church. And if a church does not have these three characteristics, it's a fake church and you don't want to be involved in it. Now, what are these three marks? The first mark is the preaching of the Word of God.

Listen to what Jesus said in John eight. He said, Therefore, he said to the Jews, he said, If you abide in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. So you could say the distinguishing mark of a true church is the faithful preaching of the Word of God. Only the Word of God, all of the Word of God, we're back to the idea of sufficiency of scripture. We're not to interject in our preaching the opinions of men or even the opinion of the preacher, but we are to preach the entirety of the word of God.

And where there is that faithful preaching of God's word, there is a true church. Well, secondly, where there is the faithful preaching of the word of God, there is the faithful administration of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. You show me a church that does not. I have elders that administer baptism and the Lord's Supper And I'll show you a church that's not a church. It's a fake church.

That the Lord's Supper and baptism are the public means by which God's people are publicly separated from the rest of the world. And you can't divorce the sacraments from the preaching of the Word of God. It is the Word of God that gives them meaning. And that's why you don't want to have the Lord's Supper until after the preaching of the Word of God. And that's why in your church building you should have a communion table, not central.

You know, you go into some churches, Protestant and Roman Catholic, and the central thing you see when you get in the church is a communion table. The pulpit is over here or over here, and the central focus of attention is the communion table. That imparts an unbiblical understanding of the role of sacraments in the life of the church. Sacraments have no meaning apart from the preaching of the word of God. The sacraments are not the primary thing in God's worship.

The primary thing is the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. And the sacraments are under that word and have power only in relation to it and because of it. And they simply confirm what to the believer whatever has been preached in the Word of God. You could put it this way. In the preaching of the Word of God God says to his people I promise you eternal life through Christ And then when God's people take communion, the Lord by his Spirit says to their hearts, and I really mean it, that the Lord's Supper confirms what was preached in the word of God.

And without the administration of baptism in the Lord's Supper, baptism is God's brand. Like when you brand a cow, it shows to whom it belongs. That this baptism is God's brand on you and your family separating you from the rest of the world and the Lord's Supper is Is a Christian meal it's only for the family that is the family of God those who have made public profession of their faith in Christ. And then there is a third mark. And this is what, the absence of this mark is what makes a lot of churches fake.

And That is not only must there be the faithful preaching of the Word of God and the faithful administration of the sacraments of baptism And the Lord's Supper but also the faithful administration of church discipline Church discipline You show me a church that doesn't practice church discipline and I'll show you a fake church. I'll show you a church that may start out sincere and may start out dedicated to the Word of God. But you allow false doctrine and you allow false behavior to continue in your church. And eventually that false doctrine, that false behavior will drive out the word of God. Church discipline is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of purity of doctrine and purity of life.

And without the administration of church discipline, however wonderful your church is now, if you don't practice church discipline and work toward purity in doctrine and in life, it won't be long until your church is just another run-of-the-mill church that you won't have any want to have anything to do with. Turn with me to Revelation 2, 20. And let me show you how important church discipline is and what happens if you don't practice it. The risen Christ, the head of the church is addressing the seven churches in Asia Minor in the second chapter. And he says this to what to the church of Thyatira.

This is Jesus talking. But I have this against you that you tolerate the woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and She teaches and leads my bond servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and I gave her time to repent and she does not want to repent of her immorality. Behold I will cast her upon a bed of sickness and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation unless they repent of her deeds. And I will kill her children with pestilence And all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and the hearts. And I will give to each one of you according to your deeds." Now that's Jesus talking, the head of the church, to his church.

And he said, you have tolerated a wicked woman in your church whose doctrine and behavior is evil and as a result of tolerating her, she has by her life and false teaching infected other people in the church. You haven't dealt with her. You haven't tried to deal with that infection you have not administered Church discipline to her and her disciples and so Jesus says I'm going to come and I'm going to administer Church discipline myself and I'm going to kill her and her followers and all of her babies unless she repents So you see if you don't practice church discipline in your church, Jesus will. And if he has to practice church discipline in your church, It's a lot more painful Than if you practice it yourself The great theologian Berkhof said churches that are lacks in discipline are bound to discover sooner or later within an eclipse of the light of the truth and an abuse of that which is holy. One time we were renting from another big church, some room for our church to meet on Sunday afternoon.

And this bigger church was in a denomination where it was known for its conservatism. But it's all things in us that confused it and embarrassed it. And on one occasion on a Sunday morning, we had to ex commute one of our members for morality and the pastor of the church that we were renting from got word of that and He came to me and he said pastor more craft. He said I appreciate what you're doing He said I'd love to be able to practice church discipline in our church, but I'd lose most of my members. And that's the attitude today.

That church discipline, if it's not practiced, that absence will destroy your church. Now let's talk for a minute about the authority that a church has to practice church discipline and to govern the conduct of its members and to inform its members as to what they may or may not do as long as they're members of that church. Where did the church get that kind of authority to be able to govern the conduct of its members? And the answer is it got it from the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why we read the 16th chapter of Matthew, where Jesus has his disciples put out a poll to find out what people thought about him.

And they had came up with all kinds of wrong answers. Then Jesus confronts the apostles and says, who do you all say that I am? Now I use the word you all not because I'm southern, but because in Greek it's plural. He's not just talking to one person, ie a future pope. He's talking to all the apostles.

And then Peter stands up and not speaking for himself but speaking for the whole group of apostles says you're the Christ the Son of the Living God and Jesus said to him blessed to you Simon Barjona because you just didn't Learn this from flesh and blood the Holy Spirit of God taught this to you and upon this rock I'll build my church now. It's true that the word Peter comes from the word Petra meaning rock, but Peter's name and the word rock are two different genders ones feminine and ones masculine and The rock isn't the person of Peter in this text. The rock is the confession of faith that Peter makes Upon this rock Peter that you and the Apostles made that is your testimony that I am the Christ the Son of the Living God I will build a church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Now I had another turning point in my life. I told you the other day I had a turning point when I realized the difference between the first and second commandments.

That was the second blessing for me well another second blessing for me was when I realized what Jesus meant when he said upon this rock I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and so what I viewed the church as is a mighty fortress is our church And we were hiding but I didn't get the point of the song of the song and We were hiding behind the walls of this church lobbing a few hand grenades over at the assaulting in it Maybe it couldn't get us and the gates of hell should not prevail us until I realized hey Gates don't move It's not the gates that are attacking me. I'm attacking the gates of hell. The church is making its assault upon the gates of hell through the preaching of the word of God and the gates of hell will not be able to stand, withstand and hold up against the onslaught of the preaching of the Word of God. And then Jesus says to them, I give you the keys of the kingdom and whatever you open on earth shall be opened in heaven. Whatever you close on earth shall be closed in heaven.

What's the keys of the kingdom? Well a key is a symbol of authority. Somebody's given in medieval days the keys of the city that was more than just a nice little ritual of gratitude. It was or had real meaning somebody that had the key to the city, had the right of government in an over that city. And so when Jesus says to the apostles and to the church in him, it's not just the apostles, but to the church built upon the apostles and the prophets Christ being the chief cornerstone.

When he says to them, I give to you the keys of the Kingdom. What he's saying is I give to the church that's based upon the Confession of faith of the Apostles and the prophets with Christ being the chief cornerstone based upon the Word of God I give to this church the right of an authority of self-government So that when you use the Word of God properly you shut the doors of the kingdom of God through the preaching and administrating of the word of God to those who refuse to believe it and repent of it. And you open the doors of the, of the kingdom of God with the key of the preaching and teaching and application of the word of God to all of those who repent of their sins and receive Christ and bow before that word. So that's the source of the church's authority. This right to self-government, To determine its own officers so that officers aren't imposed upon it from elsewhere the state or somewhere else to determine its own membership To determine how its membership is to live to exclude from its membership those who don't walk according to the standard of conduct to determine its own constitution all of these are expressed in the authority of government that God has given to Jesus is given the church in giving them the keys of the kingdom.

Now that's important because our authority to govern ourselves as a church did not come from the state. We're not under the state. We don't have to ask the state permission to exist. We don't go to the state and say, would you please incorporate us? I hope your church is not incorporated.

Because if your church is incorporated, then it is a creature of the state. That's what incorporation is. It's a creature of the state. And you don't have to ask the state for permission to exist. I hope your church is not a 501C3 or 3C, whichever you say, and you say, well, how can we be tax-exempt if we don't have it?

Well, you don't get permission from the church, from the state to be tax exempt. In fact, our church is not tax exempt and yours is not, it's tax immune. We're not even under the Constitution of the United States. Now, that sounds so radical, doesn't it? Nothing radical about that.

That's just old-time religion. The Constitution, the organized church is not the Constitution of the United States. That's for civil affairs. The Constitution of the church is the word of god and the word of god alone and we tell people that the constitution has no authority in this church it has authority over every one of us as individuals it has authority over all the civil affairs of the united states and of course our congress has applied the cost that has broken the constitution in most everything that it has uh... Done over recent years.

But we didn't get our authority to exist and to administer self discipline from the state. We didn't get it from Caesar. We got it from the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ. And officers do not have the authority to exercise that government, which authority they got from the majority vote of the people. People say today that the authority for ecclesiastical and civil affairs comes from the people.

Well, first of all, that's not true and praise the Lord it's not true because you're accountable to your source. You know what that great usurper Abraham Lincoln said so many years ago for the first time in American history. I'm south of the Mason-Dixon, so I can say that. And so you all from Wisconsin, et cetera, just sit back and relax. He said something for the first time in American history that any president had ever said, That this is a government of the people by the people and for the people he knew that wasn't true Nobody had ever said it before That this is not a government that Originates with the people it's not a government of the people.

It's not a government for the people. It's for the administration of justice. It's not even a government by the people. It's not a democracy. It's Republic govern, not by the people, but by representatives elected by the people to enforce the Constitution in the United States.

So the government, the state, and the government of the church did not originate either from the state or from the people. It originated from the head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ, So that the church is not a democracy where the majority rules the church is a Christocracy Where Christ rules When I ask people what are the officers? What are the officers supposed to be in the church if somebody's read his Bible? He will usually say well elders and deacons and I would say well, you're just sort of right. There's another one.

They say, well, apostles. And we say, right, there was apostles in the early church. There's another one. Well, evangelists. Yes, there was evangelists in the early church, but there's another one.

By this time they're confused. What do you mean? What other office? King! That's the highest and most important office in the church.

The King of the Church, the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in His Church His Word and His Word alone is law and not the opinions of men. And so there you have the authority of the Church, its origin. I want to give you a great quote from the Westminster Confession of Faith. Now I keep quoting that not because I put it on par with the Bible.

I don't want you to put it on par with the Bible. But I do want you to read it. Buy one and read it and look up the scriptural footnotes because it represents biblical Christianity in its purest human expression. And it says things so concisely and so precisely. And I want you to listen to what the Westminster Confession of Faith says.

It says, The Lord Jesus as king and head of his church, has therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate. Now brothers, much blood has been shed over that sentence in the history and that idea in the history of the church. The Lord Jesus as king and head of his church has therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers, church officers distinct from the civil magistrate. So from the very beginning Protestant and Reformed Christianity has believed in the separation, the functional, institutional separation of church and state. We have never believed in the separation of Christ and state.

We have never believed in the separation of Bible and state. We have never believed in the religious and ethical neutrality of the state. We believe that the civil government is accountable to its source. The powers that be are ordained of God and therefore are accountable to God and to his law. But we've always emphasized that the church and the state are two different institutions with two different sets of officers, two different functions, and two different jurisdictions.

And you see that clearly in the confession of faith. But then it also says here that Christ has given the visible church the authority of self-government distinct from the government he gave to civil institutions. And so that is symbolizing the keys. Christ gave the church the keys of the kingdom, and he gave the state the power of the sword. He didn't give them the power of the keys to open and shut the kingdom of heaven by the preaching of the word of God.

And he didn't give us the power of the sword to inflict physical punishment upon the disobedient in the church. Those are two distinct functions, two distinct institutions, two distinct sets of officers, two distinct jurisdictions, and yet the church has been given by Christ, the authority of self-government. Now let's talk about that authority for a while. The first thing we need to know, which we have just talked about, is the source of that authority is not man. It's not the people, it's not the state, it's the Lord Jesus Christ.

His voice and his voice alone governs his church. Secondly, the standard by which this church authority Is to be exercised by the elders of the church is the Bible and the Bible alone? Simply because that sola scriptura because elders are called upon to exercise this authority and use the keys that Christ has given the church does not mean that they can make any kind of decision they want to make and issue any kind of decree they want to issue. That the elders of the church are limited and their authority is defined by the word of God. They just can't come up with some new doctrine, some new activity, some new function of the church, some new program because they think that would keep up with the ecclesiastical Joneses, they may only administer the word of God.

In other words, the elders of the church have ministerial but not legislative authority. That is, they are simply to administer the word of the head of the church and not make up any rules or regulations in addition to that all sufficient word. That's what it means to be a minister of the gospel. And you know in Romans 13 the civil magistrate is referred to as a minister of God because it has a similar function. Just like the minister in a church is not to administer new doctrines and new laws but simply to administer the gospel that is written in the book.

So the civil magistrate has no legislative authority as far as God is concerned. It's ministerial. It must seek to administer the civil laws of the Bible as they relate to that particular country and not to create new laws by Fiat ex nihilo out of absolutely nothing because the Bible is Sufficient not only for the government and life of the church. It's also sufficient for the government and life of the state now If you believe that you are going to get in trouble. If you believe that you are a small but fast-growing minority in the United States.

And if you believe that just as in the church, we only have ministerial authority to administer the word of God, so the state has only ministerial authority to administer the laws of the Bible and no other. The modern, spiritually declined, apostate church will come after your hide, And eventually the civil government will come after your hide in the application of hate crime laws, etc. But that's OK. Better people than we are have suffered for this great doctrine. And then also, we see that when the church's leadership and the church's courts do administer that authority and make decisions based upon the Word of God, if those decisions are biblical they are valid and they're binding upon us for two reasons.

If the elders near church meeting together officially, not just as one or another, because the church is governed not just by individual elders all as petty dictators but as presbyteries that is as elders in the church meeting together officially and struggling with the word of God and basing their decisions upon the word of God when they make decisions those decisions are valid and should be submitted to by you. If number one, they're consistent with the Word of God. And number two, because the decision that is lawfully pronounced by the Word of God, by these elders, that, that court is appointed by Christ. So even if they're wrong, unintentionally wrong, we still respect them. But when that authority is administered properly and it's in accordance with the word of God, because of the authority that God has given the elders of the church, those decisions should be submitted to by us.

Now, when we talk about the jurisdiction of the authority, the church, what we're saying is this. What's the extent of that authority? That is, what are the keys to be used for? In what areas is this authority to be exercised? There are basically three areas.

There is the authority as it pertains to matters of doctrine. There is the authority with reference to matters of worship. And there is church authority with reference to the issues of church discipline. Those are the jurisdictions in which the authority that Christ gives the church is to be exercised. So let's look at the first two quickly and focus the rest of our time on the last.

The first area, the first jurisdiction where church authority is to be exercised through the leaders of the church is in matters of doctrine. That is the responsibility of the leaders of the church to make sure that what's preached from the pulpit, what's preached in Sunday school, what's preached in Bible studies, what's preached in every family and taught in every family by every father, it is the elders of the church responsibility to make sure that all of that is in accordance with the word of God. What you teach in your home is accountable to what your church believes if you're a faithful member of a church. And elders responsibility in matters of doctrine is to make sure that whatever's taught is in accordance with the word of God. Historically, the way the church has exercised that authority in matters of doctrine is by the formulation of creeds like the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed.

Confessions of faith like the Westminster Confession of Faith and the old London Baptist confession. Catechisms like the Heidelberg Catechism and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. These documents are not documents in addition to the Word of God if they accurately reflect the teaching of the word of God. They put down in black and white. This is what we believe.

We believe the Bible. Well, what do you believe about the Bible? This. I mean, every church has some kind of statement of faith, even those churches that don't believe in confessions of faith. Somebody told me one time Because I was trying to recommend to them a confession of faith and a doctrinal statement He said I have no Creed but Christ and no law but love I said that's a confession of faith That's a creed.

It's a lousy one But it's a creed nevertheless you can't escape confessing what you believe to the world So elders with the authority of Christ in the matters of doctrine must spend a great amount of time. What is it? We believe What is it that we are to profess before the world? What is that system of truth revealed in scripture that's going to be the basis of our fellowship as well as the test of orthodoxy So elders in the church have the responsibility to use the authority that God has given them to formulate creeds and confessions Do you know that in every great period of revival over the past 2, 000 years there have been creeds and confessions and catechisms produced after that period of revival? Now I love the Westminster Confession of faith and I love parts of the London Baptist Confession.

It's a little wetter than the confession at Westminster Confession But you know both of these were written in the 1600s The great revival of the Protestant Reformation now that condemns us. What are we doing with confessions of faith? That are 400 years old. What does that tell you? There hadn't been a significant revival since.

There have been a few here and there but nothing of the dimensions of the Protestant Reformation because wherever there is a great revival of the Holy Spirit out of that the church is going to be unified in its commitment to common doctrines and common systems of faith like catechisms creeds and confessions I Pray that someday there'll not be another revival even greater than the Protestant Reformation And we'll see new creeds and confessions that don't contradict the old, but that take them to even greater heights. Until then, don't let anybody fool with the London Baptist Confession, and don't let anybody fool with the Westminster Confession of Faith. The second area of jurisdiction of authority is in matters of worship. What authority has Christ given the elders of the church with reference to worship? One thing.

Make sure that everything that God has commanded in the worship service is done in your church and don't add to it and don't take away from. The elders have no discretionary power to add new things to the worship. They can't say, well, we've got the preaching of the word of God and the singing of God's praises and those things, let's add to it drama. That would be good. I mean, people are talking about drama today.

Let's add to it dance Now somebody asked me about the references to dancing in the book of Psalms Talks about David dancing before the Lord talked about other people dancing before the Lord as they were taking the ark from the front of the battle in the victorious battle back to the tabernacle. And they were so exuberant and thrilled that they won, and they could go back and worship God, and the ark was safe. The dancing stopped, beloved, at the door of the tabernacle. They didn't take the dancing into the worship of God. The dancing stopped at the door of the worship center of the people of Israel.

But they were excited. And that dancing gave free expression to their joy and their excitement that the Ark of the Covenant had returned. So the only thing that, in the jurisdiction pertaining to worship, the only thing that elders may do is do what God commanded and make sure that in your church, in your congregational worship, You're not doing anything that God has prohibited. You're not doing anything in addition to what God has commanded. But the only thing that you're doing in your church as worship is what God has commanded in his word.

Now, part of that, the elders have the responsibility of maintaining the Lord's Day as the Christian Sabbath and making sure that your church and the families in your church are not disregarding or failing to sanctify the Lord's day in terms of civil commands and in terms of the Lord's commands So there's tremendous authority in those two areas, but the third area of jurisdiction is in matters of discipline that the elders use the keys of the kingdom in matters of discipline in this way. Basically, two ways. The elders have the responsibility to admit into the people into the membership of the church. And they have the authority to exclude people from the membership of the work of churches. They use the standard as the Word of God.

And the they have the responsibility and the authority to govern the conduct of the members while they're still members of the church and remember that authority is neither physical nor corporal but spiritual and by moral persuasion I want to read to you from the Westminster Confession of Faith again what the purpose of church discipline is. This is a great paragraph. It's chapter 30, paragraph 3 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and it says this. And listen, this is just full of truth, biblical truth. Church discipline is necessary for the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren, for deterring of others from the like offenses, for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump, for vindicating the honor of Christ and the holy profession of the gospel and for preventing the wrath of God which might justly fall upon the church if they should suffer his covenant and the seals thereof to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders." Now that is as concise and precise as you want in explaining why we have church discipline in the church.

Not just to be mean, not so that we can express an unloving spirit, not so that we can punish other people, but we have church discipline because Church discipline is a God-ordained means of reclaiming and gaining back into the fold those believers who are wandering off path. Church discipline also has its purpose deterring other people from like offenses. In our church on Sunday morning when we ever we have to excommunicate somebody for their failure to keep their church vows of Regular attendance to the church etc. Ah, man attendance improves for the next several months And it deters other people from committing to the same crime Church discipline purges out that old living that might infect the whole lump if you allow one moral per immoral person To get away with his sins in the church eventually that's going to infect the whole crowd and We have the reputation of Christ and the church to think about What do people think when they come into your church and here's all this recklessness and irresponsibility and misbehaved children and and? Backslidden fathers and irresponsible mothers.

I mean, what are people going to think about us? What are they going to think about Christ? And so church discipline has as its purpose the vindicating of the honor of Christ and to prevent the wrath of God from falling upon that church that fails to administer church discipline and fails to work toward purity and toward holiness of life. In the apostolic church, when people became Christians, they would join themselves and their families to a local congregation under the spiritual shepherding oversight of elders. Listen to Acts 20, verses 28 and 29.

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock Among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the Church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. I Know that after my departure savage Wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock and from among your own selves Men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be on the alert Remembering that night and day for a period of three years. I did not cease to admonish each one of you with tears Paul's final words to the elders the Church of Ephesus is you got to be shepherds of this flock This flock doesn't belong to you. You didn't shed your blood for it It was purchased with the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ But you've been called and set apart by the Holy Spirit of God to be overseers to be managers To be shepherds to be governors to be servants of this body of Christ There's going to be all kinds of attempts to seduce this flock away from the Lord There's going to be false teachers and people who are false livers, you might say, that are going to try to seduce the flock and you've got to be there and you've got to be watchful and you've got to be vigilant and you've got to exercise church authority and to make sure that those wolves That make their way into the church are expelled so they will not be a danger to the families in your church Now that's an important text, but do you realize that most evangelical churches in the United States do not have the office of elder Can you believe it?

There are most congregations. Now I'm not saying most congregations don't have good elders. I'm saying most congregations in the United States don't even have the office of elder in their churches and yet they claim to be evangelical. In fact, we have people in our churches and in our homeschool movement and in our various home church movements, et cetera, who think that they can live life successfully in this world, combating the enemy without elders in the local church. And for your trying to face the enemies of God in this culture and not be under the shepherding oversight and protection of God's elders in the local churches like you trying to stand up against the Green Bay Packers.

I mean you don't have a chance of survival in this world if you don't put yourself under And even then it's difficult if you don't put you and yourself under the shepherds that the Holy Spirit has put in place in his local church that have the responsibility of protecting you and your family from those who would do you harm. In these local congregations, the elders and all faithful members are to work and pray toward the end that the church would be as pure as possible in what it believes and what it confesses as well as in what it behaves, in how it behaves. If you're a member of a local church, then understand that the purity of the church and all the members of the church is the goal towards which your church must be constantly striving. The goal of faithful orthodoxy of doctrine and the faithful orthodoxy of life and love motivated by an intense love for Christ. Now I'm not talking about some kind of externalism and legalism and Phariseeism.

To make sure that everybody's dotting all the right I's and crossing all the T's in their ethical behavior and their relationship with each other without any focus upon the nature of the heart. No. That it's the capturing of the heart that's the primary focus of the preaching of the Word of God. And if the heart has been captured, It's going to show itself in what a person believes. It's going to show itself in how a person conducts his life and his family life in this world and the goal of a church should be constantly striving for purity of life and thought in all of its members and in all of its families Motivated by a heart that is in love with the Lord Jesus Christ So that the important question to ask is how is this purity of the church in doctrine and life to be maintained?

How do you do it? If that's supposed to be our goal as a church and Christ gave us the authority to use in the church to move us closer to that goal, how do we do it? Well, that's a vitally important question that's rarely asked by Christians today, but the life of the church in America depends upon our response to that question. And here is how the Bible answers the question. How do we move ourselves and our families and our church toward greater purity of doctrine and purity of life and thought?

Well, first of all, understand that church discipline is rooted in self-discipline. That church discipline is not going to work unless the members of your church and the officers are seeking to discipline and control themselves and their own desires according to the word of God. Without this self-discipline, church discipline will be either non-existence or tyrannical. It will either not exist or you'll have officers that are a bunch of petty dictators that make life miserable for everybody in the church. So the church discipline presupposes the desire of self-discipline for the members of the church.

And so when that's the presupposition, God has given the officers of the church authority to do three things to keep the church and to make the church pure. And one, and I address this particularly to elders here, the careful admission of people into the church's membership and to the Lord's table. Be careful as to who you let into your church Don't just let anybody in simply because somebody has a big billfold and you're all needs somebody with a big billfold That means nothing Make sure you who govern the church, that the people that you admit to membership of your church and the Lord's table, are members, are people who can give to you the one requirement for church government, church membership. They don't have to dot all the I's and cross all the T's of all the doctrines do believe. In our church before, if somebody wants to join our church, they have to go through about a 15 week series of lessons by me and my study in which we show our whole hand and tell them everything we believe and We say now you don't have to believe these things to be a member but you do have to ask yourself while I remain teachable and Open to these things while I am a member Because the purpose of these classes before you join the church is to scare off as many of you so you can scare off because if you don't like our doctrine now is the time to leave and Not after you join the church and we've got to go through the whole process of church discipline with you So be honest with your folks about what you believe.

One time I had a class of about 20 or so people. And I told them one time that My favorite book in my library was a book in which I didn't believe a thing by Hal Lindsey, written in 1989, called The Road to Holocaust. And in The Road to Holocaust, Hal Lindsey goes so far as to give the names and addresses of the Antichrist who in his word, Antichrists, who in his words are going to bring America and Israel to global disaster in Armageddon. So if you turn to page about 25 or 26, There's my name and my address. And Rush Dooney's name and Greg bonds is name and Gary Gary to Mars name.

And we had most people laugh in my classes. You know, the point is to get him to laugh but buddy there was one family their eyes got this big and that's the last time I saw them they didn't want to go to a church pastor by the Antichrist although we did have one young woman who was from a fundamentalist church down the road who just worshiped Hal Lindsay and she never thought she'd get to see the Antichrist. Now he's six miles away. So she comes to our church out of pure curiosity and stays for the next 20 some years. So I wrote a book review of this book on Hal Lindsay and the title of it was Thank You Hal Lindsay.

If you hadn't written that book, we'd have never gotten Jennifer Klett. But the point is that be careful that what you require of potential members is what Jesus says to require. And that is a credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Not whether they're rich or poor, not whether they're black or white, not whether they believe every single doctrinal tenet of your church, but do they have a credible, a believable profession of faith in Jesus Christ? What makes a profession of faith credible before the elders well, they show some understanding what they profess to believe and number two there's a correlation between What they profess and how they live and how they work this out in their families.

And so elders should ask them some questions. I mean not give them a standardized test on ethics or family life or theology, but to ask them some questions. How does what you believe about Christ affect the way you live? So that's one way that we work toward the purity of church is being careful as to who we admit to the church membership. In our church after they go through this class and they meet with the elders and the elders examined them and they find their testimony to be credible.

We asked them these five vows and I recommend these to you. Because these five vows, anybody who makes a profession of faith in Christ, whatever denomination, any true Christian can say these vows. We asked them before the whole congregation. First, do you believe that you're a sinner justly deserving God's displeasure and without hope except for his sovereign mercy? Two, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Savior of sinners?

And do you rest upon Him alone for salvation? Three, depending upon the Holy Spirit to give you strength, do you promise to live as becomes a follower of Christ? Four, Do you promise to support this church in its worship and work to the best of your ability? And five, do you submit yourself to the government and discipline of the church and promise to strive for its purity and peace? So there's one of the primary ways that we can advance purity of life and doctrine in our church, and that is by being careful as to who you let join.

I'll tell you something we practice that I recommend to you. Many years ago, I wrote an article for a Reformed Baptist magazine called The Sword and the Trowel. And the title of my article was, Why I don't give invitations, the failure of the altar call system to uphold the free offer of the gospel. And so I was pretty severe in my criticism of it. And a few days later, I got a letter from RJ Rushton.

He had never met him in my life. So getting a letter from RJ Rushton, he's like getting a letter from an angel or something or, or Peter or Paul. I mean, that was one of the pinnacles of my life. And he said, Joey said, I agree entirely with your article in sword and trial. He said, but let me give you a word of advice.

Evangelize, and I said, of course we do. Lead people to Christ. And of course we do. But then He said, but don't ever ask anybody to join your church. Now, when he gave me that advice, our church was about a year old and we had about 30 members.

Don't ask anybody to join your church. Let them be compelled by the Holy Spirit. Well, I thought about it and that's what we've done faithfully for 37 years and over the third past 37 years we've had close to 2, 000 people join the church and we have about less than 200 in our church now because we start churches. We plant churches with groups of members from our congregation because we believe in shepherding oversight. But God has blessed us.

You want people who are there because They think this is where God wants them to be I had an old man in our church who if you have the book letters of AW pink most of the letters by pink were written to mr. Green and his wife back in the 30s and He said Joe I'm not praying that that flocks of people will flood into this church. I'm praying that God will keep away all hecklers of the gospel. And that was a great encouragement to me. So be careful as to the government, as to the people that you let into your church.

Then also a second way that we keep our church pure and work towards, is the practice of loving church discipline. Now, discipline and discipleship are the same word. Church discipline and church discipleship mean the same thing. It is the training of a believer to live an increasingly faithful life of devotion to Jesus Christ, glorifying and enjoying God in all He is and in all He does. And this Christian discipline or Christian discipleship is comprised of three components.

They are preventive discipline, corrective discipline, and restorative discipline. That's what church discipline means, those three components. First of all, there is preventive discipline. That is things you do in the life of the church to keep your people from having to be corrected. And preventive discipline is the preaching of the Word of God and the teaching of the Word of God and intercessory prayer.

That's a part of the discipleship that the church involves itself in towards its members as its moves towards purity. Is do things in the church that with the Word of God that prevents them from getting sick. But sometimes they're not going to respond to the word of God correctly, and they're going to wander off path. And at those points, they need corrective discipline. They need someone to go to them and say, you're going down a blind alley.

You're going down a false trail. You're delivering a life that's displeasing the Lord. Get back on track. Get back on the straight and the narrow way. Your life needs to be corrected.

We'll come back to that in a minute. But then there's also restorative church discipline. That is when somebody has been corrected, now you want to restore them fully to a life of obedience to God. And that's by Christian counseling, new fetish counseling. If you parents And church officers have not read any of Jay Adams books get on it There is no body that I know over the past 30 years That has written books on how to counsel that has been more faithful to the Word of God than Jay Adams He presupposes the Bible and everything He doesn't mix I caught ray psychiatry and psychology and Baptizes or should I say for you Baptist sprinkles a little of these of the Bible throughout this pagan psychiatry and psychology.

He starts with the Word of God in diagnosing the person with the problem. And he finishes with the Word of God by giving to them a solution to their various psychological problems or whatever, her behavioral problems. So go online or somewhere and get every book that you can buy by J. Adams, especially two, One called competent to counsel, and the other called the Christian Counselors Manual, and then read them and master them. Because a part of church discipline is not only preventive discipline, the preaching of the word, it's not only corrective discipline, but is also this restorative discipline of bringing people back so they love to be on the straight and narrow.

Now, corrective discipline is what we normally think of when we think of church discipline. What do you do with somebody who's wayward? And the thing that I want to impress you with is that the Bible involves every church member in the work of discipline or discipling one another. If you remember back in Matthew 18 that we read a while ago, this whole procedure of church discipline places the primary frontline responsibility for the watchful care and discipling of members of the church on The church members themselves and not primarily on the elders When it comes to church discipline and there's somebody in your church that is living a wayward life, you don't say, why don't elders do something? That's not where you start.

You say in this model of church discipline that God has set forth for us in Matthew 18, it starts with me. Why don't I do something as an individual Christian? So what, how do you bring somebody back and discipline somebody that's wayward? The Bible says in Matthew 18, first of all, you go to that person yourself. You don't wait for the elders, you don't wait for somebody else, you go to that person yourself.

That's your responsibility. And if there's somebody in your church that you know, there's living a wayward life and you don't do something about it Then the problem is yours that you have the responsibility to go to that person and do whatever you can to try to talk them into getting back and to show them where that path is leading. Now, if that private visit doesn't work, Jesus said in Matthew 18, do something else. Go see them again. And this time, take two or three Christian brothers or sisters with you so they can bear witness to his defiance or so they can intensify your pleading with them to come back to Christ.

And if that doesn't work, there is a third thing you can do. Now bear in mind that if there's somebody that's wayward in your church most of the time if you go to that person and help him repent he will repent and In the minority of times where he won't you'd go back to him with two or three people with you. And I guarantee you in most of the times it will work. But in those minority of times where neither one of those work, then the Bible says that you are to bring them before the ruler representatives of the church, the elders of the church. Jesus said, tell it to the church.

Now when a Jewish ear heard, tell it to the church, he didn't hear the words of our democratic society stand up before the whole congregation and plead the case. When a Jewish ear heard tell it to the church, he knew that that was an illusion to turn the impenitent over to the official representatives of the church for admonition, for loving care and or for excommunication. In the Old Testament, when the elders met because of this representative church government, this ecclesiastical republicanism, it is said that Israel met. And it was just the elders meeting Because they were representative of the whole body. So to address the elders is to also address the church as the representative governors and instruments by which this authority is exercised, that if you as an individual person cannot reach him, and several of the rest of you cannot reach them, then you turn them over to the elder rulers of the church, And then they should do everything they can to try to get this impenitent person to repent.

And then if he will not repent, they should excommunicate him from the church. Now the word excommunication signifies what's taking place in 1 Corinthians 5. We don't have time to look at it, but read 1 Corinthians 5 verses 1 through 11, where Paul says there's a man in the church that you're not dealing with. And as a result, as an officer in the church and a Holy Ghost inspired apostle, I'm hereby turning him over to Satan for the destruction of his flesh that his spirit might be saved. In other words, he's expelling him from the membership of the church with the prayer that that expulsion will help him come to his senses so that he'll realize he shouldn't be out there, He should be back home.

And if that excommunication is going to work, you as a member have a role to play. Because in the last part of 1 Corinthians 5, it says concerning excommunicated people, you who are members of the church in good standing, don't eat with such a one that is helping to see that things aren't normal anymore. You still love him, you're still going to be friendly to him. But things aren't normal. And therefore, he's cut himself off from your family.

And he's cut himself off from the fellowship of your family. And he's cut himself off from the fellowship of the church and you want the most loving thing you can do is not subsidize his evil lifestyle or make his evil lifestyle easy. But don't eat with him. Don't carry on normal affairs and joys of life with this excommunicated person. Be friendly.

Bring him to church. I think the best place for an excommunicated person to be is in church, listening to the preaching of the Word of God even though he can't take communion and with the prayer that he will come home. Let me tell you one quick story take an extra minute to tell you one quick story. We've had several people excommunicated in our church over 37 years not that many but several And almost half of them have been restored. And when they're restored and they repent, they're to come before the whole church after church and stand up and ask the church's forgiveness.

And then the whole church one at a time comes up and hugs him and says, I forgive you. It's a very emotional thing. But there was one man we had to excommunicate named Rick. And Rick was married with two sons and he had him girlfriend. And he would not repent of this girlfriend.

And so we had to excommunicate him for immorality and his wife divorced him, biblically, and now the people in the church couldn't eat with him, hoping he would repent. So he calls him one day and he says, Joe, I know you're not supposed to eat with me, but I've given my wife the house and I've got an apartment, but my apartment doesn't come open for four days. And I know you have an apartment in the bottom part of your house. Can I live for four days in the apartment of your house? He says, I know you can't eat with me and all that.

I said, yes, you may. There's an outside door. You can't, you can't come through my house, but there's an outside door and you can stay in my basement for four days. Well, it just happened to be over Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving is the really big day in our house.

So we had all of our children. We had Judy Rogers, who's my wife's sister and all of her family over. Rick knew all of us. So I let him come upstairs while I was preparing dinner just to talk to people. And I was carving the turkey and I think he was hoping I'd forget.

So I was carving the turkey and everything and everybody was ready to eat and I fixed a plate of food and I handed it to him and I said now Rick you got to go back downstairs and Rick later testified to the elders before he was just before he was restored. He said, you know, that was the turning point in my life He said I had to walk down the stairs into the basement and I could hear all the joy and singing and happy joyful Relationships that were going on upstairs and I was excluded from it. But he said, Joe, there's one thing you don't know. He said the light was burned out in the basement. And he said, I was sitting down there in the basement all by myself in the dark.

Can anything be any more symbolic? And so God use that x, that x communication to bring him back to the Lord and he is a faithful Lord. So Thank you for listening It's been good to know you. I got a hot tail it out of town to prepare a couple summers for tomorrow. God bless you.

For more messages articles and videos on the subject of conforming the church and the family to the Word of God and for more information about the National Center for family integrated churches where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website, ncfic.org. You