SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/10/2023 9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-4 “The Process And Place of
Persecution”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
18:16-17
Message of the verses: “16 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. 17 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.”
Today
we begin to look at the fourth and final step in church discipline, and that is
ostracism. Now if a sinning brother refuses
to listen even to the church, he is then ostracized from the fellowship. Let him be to you, Jesus said, as a Gentile
and a tax-gatherer. Both of these groups
were seen as despised outcasts.
Non-Jews
who worshiped the One and true God and who became identified with Judaism were
commonly called a “God-fearer” (see Acts 10:1, 22), whereas the term Gentile
had no part in the covenant, worship, or social life of Jews. Now because this was a traitor to his own
people, a tax-gatherer was in many ways more despised than Gentiles. He was not an outcast by birth but by choice,
of which Matthew, the writer of this gospel used to be one of them.
Now
it is evident that our Lord was not appealing to Jewish prejudice. We know from the Word of God that Jesus came
to save all men, and among His most ardent and faithful followers were former
tax-gathers as already mentioned about Matthew, and there was another prominent
one Zaccheus and there were also Gentiles too, such as the centurion who asked
Jesus to heal his paralyzed servant. The
point Jesus was making was that a believer who persists in impenitence is to be
put out of the church and treated as an unbelieving, unrepentant outsider.
There
is a section in 1 Corinthians 5:1-2 where we read that Paul wrote the
following: “1 It is
actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a
kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s
wife. 2 You have become arrogant and
have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be
removed from your midst.” The
Corinthians were actually arrogant about this but they had it all wrong and
Paul sets them straight: “4 In the name
of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the
power of our Lord Jesus, 5 I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan
for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a
little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?” This sin was persistent and therefore Paul
tells the Corinthian church what to do with this man who obviously would not
repent of this sin. “The man’s evil
influence, described by Paul as leaven, had corrupted the moral sensitivity of
the entire church” writes John MacArthur.
MacArthur goes on to write: “Persistently unrepentant believers are to be
totally ostracized from the fellowship of the church. They are no longer to know the blessedness of
the church’s company and encouragement.
Because they willingly reject the standards of the gospel, they make
shipwreck of their faith. When
Hymeanaeus and Alexander would not forsake their profane use of the Lord’s name, Paul ‘delivered
[them] over to Satan, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme’ (1 Tim.
1:20). Such people are to be given the
choice of repenting and staying with God’s people or of holding on to their sin
and being given over to the world and the devil.”
With that we end today’s SD, but
there is still more to write about this fourth and final step of discipline.
1/10/2023
10:10 AM
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