Discipline & Repentance - Deut. 21:15-25:19

Victories: 1. 2.

Prayer: First Baptist Church Pastor Lester Jeffries

Missionary Prayer: Carolyn Curtis / SOS Pray for the spring festivals that the ministry will be a part of

Intro

I posted the scripture we would be covering this weekend on Facebook. Did anyone take the time to read it? Now, if you even scanned through it, did you get a feeling of relief that you weren’t going to have to preach it? Or maybe you read through a bit and then decided that this would be a good weekend to be out of town. I know that scripture is hard, and it can be a bit of a struggle for us to read. Now we also know that this is the Old Testament and, more specifically, this is the Law, and we no longer fall under the Law. Jesus said, Matthew 5:17 ““Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.” So with Jesus fulfilling the Law, why in the world should we even study scripture such as this? The answer is because, simply put, God gave us the law for a purpose. Just because we no longer fall under the Law because of Jesus doesn’t mean that we can just set it aside as having no purpose whatsoever. In fact, the truth is we should see the Law as a reference for our obedience.

My plan today is not to go through this scripture verse by verse or even to look at any of them in great depth. I think the best thing for us today is to recognize that God set His people aside as special, and as His special people, He treated them as His children. Our children fall under our rules, and therefore, our discipline and God are no different. God is Holy, and He wanted His children to be Holy, and the only way for them to do that was to hold them to a higher standard of living. Therefore, let’s read a bit of this scripture and then look at how God is using the Law to draw His people toward Him.

Bible Reading: Deut. 21:15-21, 24:1-4, 25:5-10

Harsh Discipline

The first point I want to present to you today is this: Discipline is supposed to be harsh. I mean, when you read Deut. 21:18-21, which talks about how if your son cannot and will not obey you, and Habitually and Maliciously rebels against you and the Lord, you are to take him before the city leaders. And if even before the leaders of the city, he is still rebellious and dangerous, you should Kill Him. Most of us look at that and are like, WOW! That is a bit too harsh, I mean, maybe prison or some sort of rehabilitation solution could be found, but death. Ouch. I get it, my thoughts are similar, however, that is not the point of this. The discipline is meant to be harsh to deter the behavior.

Good parents don’t just discipline bad behavior, but they put into place the discipline guidelines in order to deter the bad behavior. If you want your child not to be disrespectful and malicious, then you let them know ahead of time that that kind of behavior will result in a punishment that will fit the offence. Now that also means that when your child is disrespectful and malicious, you have to provide that punishment, because not doing so will show them that you did not mean what you said. It is harsh, and it is meant to be harsh in order to bring about the right behavior. That is not necessarily a modern parenting tactic, and yet I am pretty sure modern parenting tactics are often a waste of time. Good parenting is not trying to make friends with your children; good parenting is teaching, modeling, enforcing, and doing it all with love. God is not trying to make us all feel good about ourselves. He is trying to bring about the best result, and He does that by presenting the Law and then holding us accountable to the Law, but He does it all with Love.

This is what I mean by bringing about the best result. For God, the end result of a human life is to be a person who is hearing and obeying God, and if they do that, they will truly flourish. Humanities problem is that we can’t get past our desire to usurp our creator. We think that the best result is rebellion against God, and don’t think this only includes those who would consider themselves atheists or agnostics. No, sin is alive and well inside our churches and inside the lives of believers. Does that make sense? You can’t run as fast as you can from God and expect to be a faithful follower of God; those two things don’t work together, and yet here we sit, walking contradictions. Therefore, if God has a set of rules and you find yourself in direct opposition to them, then are you following God?

Maybe a better question is this: if God has a set of rules and you find yourself in direct opposition to them, then are you ready to face the harsh discipline of the Lord?

Hard Living is not Good Living

Here is what I know about rebellion. Rebellion does not bring about flourishing. The child who is an absolute terror, screaming, throwing tantrums at all times, using hateful words, etc. Nobody says, “Now that’s a kid who is thriving.” Most of us see that and have pity on the parents, but we also wonder why they would allow this child to get away with it. I often hear people say that children, youth, and adults thrive under structure, and the reason why they say it is because it is true. The Proverb that has been overused on both sides to both champion corporal punishment and deter us from it is Proverbs 13:24 “He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly.” However, the truth is that the entire Proverb is there to bring about flourishing to the wise son. Read verses 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15-16, 18.

Do you hear how Solomon is trying to get his son to understand that righteousness will bring a better life overall, and how those who choose rebellion will only find death? I know the opposition to this way of life is to say that these harsh disciplines only lead to more rebellion and sin, and that is the case if you harden your heart to the Lord and choose to be disobedient. Some say that to live under that kind of Godly oppression is hard and can be stifling, and again, I know that can also be true if you feel like the rules are being oppressive. However, the truth is the discipline of the Lord is not meant to be oppressive but freeing, for the truth is that the consequences of sin are far more harmful than obedience to the laws of God. The child can either believe that their parents are being horrid for not allowing them the freedom to play in the busy street, or they can see it as a rule that, while they may not quite understand at the moment, is there to keep them safe.

If we take this back to our passage, we see the laws concerning sexual morality in Deut. 22:13-30, and we can either see them as oppressive, harsh, and out of date, or we can see them as laws meant to keep us safe and morally pure. Here is what I do know: to live a life of sexual immorality does not bring about human flourishing. Sex outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage brings with it broken lives, broken homes, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, unwanted and unloved children, and so much more. Now I am not saying that those things can’t happen if you get married God’s way because we still live in a sin-filled world and we are sin-filled people, but the obedience to the law does bring about the best chance at flourishing. The only way to find out is to try it and see for yourself. I promise one thing: the consequences of obedience to God are much easier to live with than the consequences of sin.

Public Discipline

Lastly, I want to point out to you a truth our Western culture has a hard time with. When Christians sin in public, the discipline should be rendered publicly. Let those words sink in a bit. Now, let me try to explain them. In Deut., where do the parents of the rebellious son take him? To the elders of the city in verse 20. In the Laws of sexual immorality in chapter 22, we see over and over again that the offenders are taken before the elders of the city to face them for punishment. In the marriage duty of the surviving brother in chapter 25, once again, the matter is to go before the city elders to either take responsibility or to deny it. Many other of these laws are to be meted out in a public way because the sin was done publicly, and therefore the punishment takes on a public interest as well. This is done because the sinner must be brought to repentance so that they personally will not do the offense again, but also to present the discipline before the people so that they too won’t think that they can get away with that sin or others like it.

Here is where you and I may have some problems. You see, we like to think that our sin is private and therefore I, as a pastor, and we as a church have no right to interfere in any way. But where in the world do you get that from scripture? I get it that nobody wants to be humiliated or have their dirty laundry aired for all to see, and I know that there have been churches and church people who have done this very badly, but that doesn’t mean that church discipline should all be labeled in that same vein, or worse yet, that we should just do away with it altogether because we don’t like it. Let’s look at how God designed this discipline to happen inside our churches.

God set up Church discipline for us in the New Testament, and we as a church say that we follow it. In Matthew 18 we read this; Matthew 18:15–20 ““Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. “Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”

Let me point out a few things to you from this passage. #1. The need for public punishment is not meant for every sin we commit publicly. It starts with one believer approaching another believer to confront them with their sin. If they hear the reproof and repent, then there is no need to take the matter further. Church discipline is meant for those who refuse to be repentant. #2 is that both being confronted by our sin and doing the confronting is never easy. Friends' discipline is never easy. It is incredibly hard to be the one who has sinned and who is being confronted by loved ones who want to speak the truth in love, but it is equally as hard if not harder, to be the one who does the confronting. I know very few people who relish either task.

We often call ourselves a church family, we take communion, which is meant to be a meal between family members, and we come into membership, which is a direct link to our being part of the body from 1 Cor. 12. All these things are meant to draw us together and make us part of this family of God meeting at New Hope Baptist Church. We are to build each other up, we are to encourage each other, and those things all sound really good until sin enters into the picture, and discipline must be done. At that point, for most people, the family of God is to have no opinion, just leave my life alone. That is a horrifying way to run a family. To see a family member tearing their life apart, and then to just walk the other way and do nothing. How can anyone do that?

If God has called us to His discipline and we call ourselves His children, then when we go against that discipline and sin, we must face the music. Why? Because not facing discipline is to stop ones spiritual growth, dead in its tracks. Not facing the discipline can actually make those around us question our salvation, and you should question it, too. 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.” You see, the evidence of our true faith in Jesus Christ is the repentance leading to that salvation. Evidence of our salvation is the fact that you have Godly sorrow for your sin and you want to repent of it so that you can be free from the condemnation that the sin brings to your life.

So, you say, “I can repent on my own. Why do I need the church or church discipline to enter into the picture?” Remember this is for sin done in public, and it is sin that is not repented of. This means that you have sinned in such a way that the church and, more importantly, non-believers have seen your sin. By not repenting, you are causing not only your faith to be rendered invalid, but you are showing the world that obedience to God does not matter that much. What kind of sin does this entail? Gossip, Sexual immorality, lying, stealing, cheating, divorce, anger, backbiting, jealousy, worry, Pride, disunity. Have I got your particular one yet? What you are showing with your sin publicly is that you believe you can do what you want when you want, and God has no means of stopping you. However, when you fall under church discipline, you are declaring that God is more important to you than your vanity and you desire righteousness more than you desire your sin. Think about that. Repentance before God and your church is a method of letting everyone know that God is the center of your life. It's not easy, but it is Biblical, and it will show the world the difference they can only get with Christ.

Gospel

Jesus died for our sins, and because He did, we can place our belief in that sacrifice. 1 John 1:9 says, “we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have the promise of God that if we ask for forgiveness and believe in the saving power of Jesus, we will be saved. And from the saving power of Jesus, we become new creations. 2 Cor. 5:17 states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” This means that as Christians, we get a fresh start, we aren’t who we used to be, and we have the power of God behind us to change who we are becoming. Glory to God in the highest, for He has saved my soul, and He can save yours too if you will let Him. If you aren’t sure, then you can confess Him as your savior. If that is your desire today, you can say this prayer with me. Bow your heads.

Dear Lord, I know that I’m a sinner. I’m sorry for my sin, and I ask you to forgive me. I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead. I repent of my sins, and I ask you to come into my life and take control. I make a commitment to follow you, and I trust you as my Lord and Savior.

Friend, if you prayed that prayer today, I ask that you come and speak to me after the service.

Benediction: Revelation 22:21 “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”