February 26, 2024 • 30 mins
Get ready to join the Ninth Avenue Church in Haleyville, Alabama, for a captivating sermon exploring the teachings of 2 Corinthians 2. Connect with a gathered communion of praise and prayer, and engage in deep-rooted spiritual teachings.
Uncover the importance of empathy, patience, and love in times of spiritual struggle, drawing inspiration from relatable anecdotes and biblical teachings. Experience the joy of spiritually supporting our brothers and sisters, a fundamental principle emphasized throughout Apostle Paul's teachings.
Delve into the beliefs and teachings stated in verses 5-11 from 2 Corinthians 2, exploring the approach of addressing sin within the church. Comprehend the exceptional role of communal love, honesty, and concern in this necessary yet uncomfortable process.
Ending on a note of forgiveness, the sermon emphasizes the unsurpassed power of godly sorrow to inspire true repentance. At the same time, it reaffirms the unity and bond of love among believers. An urging call to extend this love to our spiritual brothers and sisters is served by the sermon, reflecting the encouraging power of unity, prayer, and shared faith.
Further, appreciate the depth of repentance and its significance beyond mere behavioural change. Uncover the wisdom of Psalms 51 and King David's plea to God for mercy, symbolizing the transformative capacity of remorse and repentance.
Engage in an enlightening discourse on forgiveness and restoration within Christian families. Learn the significance of nurturing, forgiving, and loving each other through Christian teachings from Galatians Chapter 6. Explore the role each believer plays in encouraging spiritual restoration within the community.
Finally, identify the spiritual warfare against Satan's insidious schemes and the role of believers in resisting evil manipulations. Draw upon Ephesians Chapter 4's wisdom to fortify against Satan’s deceptions.
In conclusion, this sermon encourages contemplation of your journey towards spiritual restoration and compels us to consider those needing spiritual assistance around us. Remember, in our journey, the power of God's grace, love, and joy reign supreme over worldly temptations, leading to spiritual liberation and profound fellowship among believers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Thank you for joining us for this program from the Ninth Avenue Church of Christ in Haleville, Alabama.
We hope that you will subscribe and will share our program with others.
Now, we take you to the service of the Ninth Avenue Church of Christ.
If you want to open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 2, we will dive into that here in just a moment.
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As we get ready to study, let's go to God in prayer.
God, we thank you so much for the chance to be in your presence this morning.
We thank you for the opportunity to lift our voices in song and praise.
And we pray that those praises have reached your throne room along with the
praises of so many other brothers and sisters throughout the world today.
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It's wonderful for us to know that our worship is not just here in this spot,
in this place, but it is a kingdom that is spread across the globe.
And that today, in a spiritual way, we are united with each and every Christian
around the world as we sing praises and commune together.
We thank you so much for the chance to worship you this morning be with us as
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we open up your word May we be encouraged may we be strengthened and we draw
closer to use and your son's name we pray. Amen.
Several years ago, and maybe you have seen this. It floats around YouTube and
Facebook and the different social media platforms from time to time.
But in 2003, a young lady by the name of Natalie Gilbert won the opportunity
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to sing the national anthem at the Portland Trailblazers Dallas Mavericks playoff game.
And it was one of those for her, for a 13-year-old. I mean, that is a life kind
of moment. It's a great opportunity.
She's so excited. She gets out on the court. She gets ready to start.
And as she starts her song, she gets a few words in.
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And like many of us probably would do, she completely forgets the words to the national anthem.
So the music's kind of playing behind her a little bit. And she's just kind
of mumbling through the words and can't really, and she's getting embarrassed.
And she's starting to cry a little bit. When all All of a sudden,
the Trailblazers head coach, Maurice Cheeks, walks up beside her,
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kneels down, holds the microphone with her, and starts singing the national anthem along with her.
Now, Maurice is no singer by any stretch of the imagination,
but in that moment, Natalie was not really worried about the words.
She was not worried about how it sounded. She was just comforted that the fact
that in maybe her most embarrassing moment, the the biggest public mess up that
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she could have, someone had the love to come along beside her,
kneel down with her, and carry her through that moment.
By the end of the song, by the end of the national anthem, the entire arena
was singing, and it ends in a thunderous applause for Natalie herself.
I believe that this is a great illustration for us as Christians,
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because the truth is that in our walk with God, we are always going to come
into times and come into moments where we what? Where we mess up, right?
And we're always going to be walking with someone or journeying with someone,
even if we're going through a pretty good period in our life,
we're always going to have brothers and sisters that have their nightly moment,
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that they just mess up and they fall all flat on their face and they just can't
seem to get it together and they can't get out of their own way.
And sin kind of takes, not really takes control, but causes problems and challenges
for them in their life at the moment.
And the question becomes as children of God, what is our role there?
What is our role in helping a brother or a sister who is caught in the struggle
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of sin and trying to move past that and into a better place in their life.
And I would challenge you that from the words of Paul here in 1 Corinthians.
That our role is that one very similar to the trailblazers head coach of our
job is to come along beside them, kneel down with them, and help them through
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that moment every way that we can.
So let's go to our text, starting in verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 2,
and let's read these few verses together, and then we'll break them down and talk about some things.
It says, If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has
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grieved all of you, to some extent not to put it too severely.
The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.
Now, instead, you ought to forgive
and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.
The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything.
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If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven,
if there was anything to forgive,
I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might
not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.
All right, so let's talk about this a little bit. Let's start back in verse
5 and just kind of break down and maybe kind of figure out what's going on.
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A lot of scholars, and if you read 1 Corinthians and then you read 2 Corinthians
right along with it, you will remember that there is a guy there in the church
at Corinth that is living an extraordinary sexually immoral life.
He is in a relationship with his dad's wife.
And so it's a really challenging situation.
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And Paul writes to the church there, and he said, not only are you accepting
this, you're excited about it. You're proud of it, right?
And he's like, you can't be this way about it.
And he goes on, and he talks about what the church needs to do to deal with this situation.
Now, we don't know for a fact that that's what he's talking about.
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There could be another issue, but it would be easy to connect the dots from
that particular issue to this verse.
It's the same church that he's writing to.
We are aware of the previous situation. It's very possible that this is the
situation that's still kind of unfolding, or rather we're seeing the bookend backside.
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We see his encouragement on the front end and his encouragement on the back
end as they dealt with this situation.
But the first thing that we see, the first thing that had to be done, the first thing,
well, maybe not the first thing that had to be done, but at the point of where
they were, it had come to the point to where this guy had to be confronted by the church for his sins.
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Now, it is very difficult in this day and age, and I don't think that's even
a fair statement. I think it's just very difficult.
To truly sit down with someone and talk to them about maybe something they're
doing wrong in their life.
Because as we talked about a few weeks ago, we don't want to seem judgmental.
We don't want to seem like we're always right and they're wrong.
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We don't want them to think that we are just all standing around and talking
about them, which is why I think Jesus talks about this in Matthew 18.
I think that's why he brings this up.
He talks about that there is a certain way that when sin Sin is present in the
church that you deal with it.
The first thing he says you do, if you know of this sin in someone's life,
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what's the first thing you do? You just go sit and talk to them face to face.
You just go have a loving brotherly conversation with them and you say,
hey, look, I know this challenge is going on and I've noticed it.
I want you to know I'm here for you.
I wanna help you work through this. I wanna help you get this out of your life.
And I just wonder how many times that a life of sin men maybe could have been
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stopped if as brothers and sisters we had that kind of love.
That even though it was uncomfortable, and you might want to say,
well, it's really not any of my business because that's what the world tells us.
It's not really of any of your business. Just let them live their life.
But the church is different than the world, right?
The church is different than the world. You are my business.
Why are you my business? Because you're my family.
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Because I love you. and my ultimate goal is for both of us or all of us to stand
before Jesus on the judgment day and him go, hey, great job. Come on in.
That is my goal for everyone here. So if that's my goal, then even when it's
hard, I need to come to you and say, hey, look, I just really need to talk to
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you about something and vice versa.
When you see something wrong in my life, you come and you have the same conversation.
But what does he say you start out with?
You start out with this one one-on-one brother, sister.
Intimate conversation. And a lot of times, I really do.
I feel like a lot of times, if those conversations would take place,
then the growth of sin would stop.
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And I think a lot of times in people's life, the growth of sin happens and continues
because we just simply don't do what God tells us to do.
And then he says, if that doesn't work, you take a couple of other people with you. You grow the group.
You bring more people that love them and let them say, say, hey, this is serious.
And then Jesus finally says, and if that doesn't work, He says,
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you bring the congregation.
You bring the whole shebang comes in.
And it's not in we're trying to point out your sin and go, hey,
this is wrong and we hate you.
No, it's, hey, we love you so much that we can't stand to see Satan have this
kind of control over you in your life, to see you fighting and struggling and
giving in to this sin, which is hurting your relationship with God,
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which then and hurt your relationship with each and every one of us.
And that is where they were here in this particular section.
They had gotten to that point and they had addressed this as a whole.
And then it kind of seems like maybe they were going overboard with it a little bit.
And as people, we do, I would say people, we do overboard real well, right?
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Maybe subtle is not always the best thing we do, but we can do overboard real
well. So they had kind of gone overboard.
But to at least I believe you've seen the practice of how the church is to deal with sin in its midst.
And I really do believe our lives, they are each other's business.
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Your sin affects the church. I am part of the church.
And in a loving way, we have to be willing to practice what Jesus teaches,
what Paul teaches of dealing with sin.
We cannot stand by and just let sin be active in the church.
And I'm not talking about momentary sin necessarily a moment where someone we're
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all going to have that momentary sin he's talking about,
And we can't stand for that either, but he's really talking about someone who
is saying, I'm giving into this over and over and over.
Like he said about this guy who's having this relationship with his dad's wife,
he says, not only are you accepting it, you're excited about it, right?
So really, the sin, there was that sin issue, and then obviously there's a bigger
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issue in the church that they had to deal with, and if that's the issue that
he's talking about, it seems like they had moved in the right direction.
So we have to remember that it is okay.
It's not always comfortable. It's never going to be fun.
But it is okay to address real, true public sin in biblical ways.
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Now, what's the purpose of it? And that's really as he goes on.
Because some people may say, that doesn't sound real comforting.
That doesn't sound real loving when I bring about 50 people up to your house
and knock on your door and go, hey, we need to sit down and talk. walk.
That doesn't seem like that would be a comfortable situation at all, does it?
And most of us would probably be like, no, I'm not volunteering for that.
Like, I'm not going to go be a part of that.
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But he says, hey, this is how we're going to deal with things.
But what's the result of that? What was the result in this particular text? Look in verse seven.
If I'm going to click here, go to verse seven, the next slide.
It says that now instead you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will
not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
So what has has happened. This idea, this relationship that they've had with
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him, practicing what God said to practice, has led him to the point of sorrow,
which is also what happens when you realize what you've done wrong and you repent.
The guilty person was sorry, and he has been led to repentance.
There is a direct correlation between sorrow and repentance. Now, in our culture.
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We've kind of worn out the phrase, I'm sorry. We use I'm sorry a lot.
We even use I'm sorry when, have you ever bumped into a wall and said, I'm sorry?
Not realizing it was a wall or bumped into something. I'm sorry.
I'm glad nobody saw that, you know, but we use that all the time. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. But this idea of I'm sorry for Paul, the idea of sorrow carried this
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idea idea of an experience of sorrow that is overwhelming.
Sorry was not just a casual. No one's just as casual as, hey, how are you doing?
There's another phrase that we use a lot. How are you today?
When you usually ask someone, hey, how are you doing today? How many of you
really are wanting to know how that person's doing?
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I've told you that story, but I've asked that question one time too many to
this lady, and she talked to me for 45 minutes about how she was was doing.
And the next day we're at the same restaurant. I'm at the same restaurant.
My granddaddy's with me this day. And there she is.
And he goes, I've not spoken to Ms. Carolyn in a while. I'm going to go ask
her how she's doing. I looked at him. I said, don't do it.
He goes, well, I need to. I said, I'll see you at the house in an hour.
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And when he got back to the house, he goes, how'd you know? I said, I did it yesterday.
Saying I'm sorry means something, especially when it comes to our walk with God, having sorrow.
Another way you could say this is I'm not happy because you were made sorry,
but because your sorrow led to repentance.
Godly sorrow brings repentance. I believe there is a sorrow,
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a worldly sorrow, that doesn't necessarily lead to repentance.
It may lead to a change of action, but not to a change of dedication of life.
See, repentance is not just changing your action.
Repentance is realizing I'm
dedicating my life to something other than God, and I need to fix that.
I need to go back in the way I was going when I was dedicated to that lifestyle.
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And so I can have this, oh, I'm sorry I got caught. I'm not going to do that again, sorrow.
But that doesn't really change my heart. It just changes my action.
But true sorrow, godly sorrow, brings me to a point where I realize,
man, I have messed messed up so bad.
And I'm brought to my knees by it. I want you to leave your marker right here
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in 2 Corinthians and go to Psalms 51.
And I want you to listen to the words of David.
This is the Psalm David writes after everything with Bathsheba and the adultery
and everything that goes on.
I just want you to listen to, we're not going to read necessarily maybe all of it.
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But we'll read a section of it. He says in verse one, have mercy on me,
O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion,
blot out my transgressions,
wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sins.
For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.
That's such a touching phrase to me because what he's saying is I can't get it out of my mind.
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Everywhere I look, I see my sin. And to me, that's godly sorrow.
It's not, oh, I got caught, so I better not do it again. It's, I have been caught.
I am sorrowful, and I can't get it off my mind of how much, not that I've necessarily
just done this, but how much I have failed God.
And as you read the rest of these words, I think that's what you You see,
he realizes he has failed God.
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Verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your
sight so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.
You teach me wisdom in the inmost places.
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Cleanse me with hippas and I will be cleansed. Wash me and I will be whiter
than snow. No, let me hear joy and gladness.
Let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
David was sorrowful.
He realized that he had hurt a lot of people, but the person that he had hurt
the most was who? Was God.
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And when we're brought to our knees by our sin and we realize that,
really and truly, that is an uncomfortable place, a challenging place,
but that is the place that we find, as he mentions at the end,
we find that re-cleansing as children of God.
I've had the ultimate cleansing through my baptism, but I can continually be
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cleansed by my repentance, and I stay in that holy state. date.
So we have to come to a sorrowful place of repentance, and we see that in this process with this guy.
The third thing I think we see here is we should seek to restore those who have
been repentant, who have repented.
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We should seek to restore those.
One paraphrase of verse 7 says, now is the time to forgive this man and help him back on his feet.
If all you do is pour on guilt, you could very easily drown him in it.
My counsel now is to pour on the love.
And I love that idea though here where he says the idea is to help him back on his feet.
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When we have a brother and sister that sin and they're in that place of sorrow
and in that place of repentance,
at that point, our only goal should be to restore them into an active and vibrant
place within the the family.
Unfortunately, a lot of churches, I believe, they practice this idea of causing
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sorrow really well, but maybe the idea of restoration does not come as easily.
But the Bible clearly teaches that we are to practice restoration.
Go to Galatians chapter 6.
Real quick, Galatians chapter 6.
It should just be a few pages over, right?
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Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.
And Paul's kind of dealing with the same idea, the same concept here.
He says, brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should
restore him gently, but watch yourself, or you too may be tempted.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
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So Paul, he talks about it in a very particular situation in 2 Corinthians,
and then kind of in a broad situation in Galatians, that our job,
our job is not, and we talked about this a few weeks ago, our job is never to judge, right?
Our job is never to judge. Our job is to encourage, and if we hold up the Word of God to someone,
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and they see, and we can see that, hey, there's a struggle here and conflict
with the Word of God, it is our job to help them resolve that conflict.
And work out that sin into a positive place, into a positive step.
But it is not our job to judge. It is our job to restore.
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Restore, restoration for us as Christians means to forgive them.
And why do we forgive them? Because we have been what? We have been forgiven.
Each and every one of us has done something that we have needed forgiven for,
ultimately between us and God, but also between us and other people, between us.
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We've all had to go to someone and say, hey, I'm sorry, right?
I'm sorry. And when we are sorry and we are seeking forgiveness from someone
else, how quickly do we want to receive that?
We want it right then, don't we? When we are the one that needs to be restored,
we want that restoration to happen quickly.
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We want it to happen in that moment. We don't want to have to wait.
We don't want to have to go through the problem. We want restoration then from those those people.
And so when we are in the place to where we're trying to restore them,
when we are trying to help them, we should not hesitate.
We should offer restoration and helping people back into their place in the
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church family as quickly as we would want it if we were the ones in that situation.
Forgiveness is a command.
It's not a, if you feel like it, and part of forgiveness is helping people restore their life.
Restoration also means love them because you have been loved.
That verse in Galatians chapter six, verse two, we see that restoration involves
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carrying someone's burdens, carrying someone's burdens. That takes effort.
And you usually don't put forth a whole lot of effort unless you what? Love somebody.
But God has carried so many of our burdens. Christ has carried so many of our burdens.
Christ took so many of our sins, if not all of our sins, actually to the cross.
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And so that's the image that I get. That's the image that I see.
As I read in Scripture of Jesus carrying his cross, was it his cross or was it my cross?
Was it his burden or was it my burden?
He had no burden. He had no sin. and he had no reason to be on that cross other than my sin.
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So when I see a brother and sister struggling, I should not hesitate to pick
up their burden. And he warns us, don't get caught up in it, right?
Don't get caught up in it to the point that you sin, but don't be afraid to
pick that burden up and walk side by side with them because we get to the impact of all of it.
The impact is not only the restoration, but it disrupts Satan's plan.
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Let's look at verses 9 and 10. This is maybe the climax of what we're really looking here.
He says, another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and
be obedient and everything.
Saying, hey, look, I'm testing you to see if you would do what I ask.
And then he said, anyone you forgive... Go back to the end. I got my remote working, right?
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Now it's not working. Go to verse 10, and I'll quit pushing buttons.
Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven,
if there was anything to forgive, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for
your sake. Then go to verse 11.
In order that Satan might not what?
Outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.
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We are not unaware of his sly ways. We know Satan's methods.
I believe for a lot of us, that's why we get frustrated when we do find ourselves
caught up in a sin, whether it's for a short period of time or a long period
of time, because we know what Satan does.
We know that that Satan likes to put counterfeit things in front of us.
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We know he offers us cotton candy lifestyles, that cotton candy that you bite into.
It looks so good and so fluffy on that stick.
And then you bite into it, and how long does it last?
It didn't even last for you to bite into it. It's just gone. He offers us that.
He offers us things that he can't deliver. He offers us things that look so
good, but yet when we grab a hold of them, they are nothing but bad for our life.
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We know that about Satan, Satan. Yet we all go through those moments where I
go, oh man, that looks like a good idea.
Let me grab that. And I grab a hold of it.
And then when I finally let go, I'm like, I can't believe it.
How did I fall for that again? I know Satan's.
And so I think that's what he's trying to get us to understand here.
He's like, look, when we're all doing this together, when we're working all
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of this together as a church family who loves each other, who's restoring each
other, who's having tough conversations.
What that ultimately does is not only restores and brings people who are struggling
with sin back into a right relationship with God, but it also looks to say,
and he goes, we're not letting you in here, man. Like, stay away.
You cannot get in here and mess this up.
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We are smarter than you. We are not unaware of what you're trying to do.
So we cannot, it's like, have you ever not studied for a test and then shocked that you failed it?
Anybody? Just me? I'm the only one John, thank you John, thank you for Like
four of us And Ellie, Ellie said she hadn't.
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You know, it's the same, like, if we let Satan in, we know what he's going to
do. He's going to mess it all up.
That's why we join together, and we say, not today, not in this place.
And when he does sneak in, when he does sneak in, we don't give him a foothold.
That's what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4. He says, do not let the sun go
down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Don't give him a chance.
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Don't give him an opportunity to get his hand in the door, because if he ever
gets his hand in the door, he can still do damage. If you get a hand in the door, he gets two hands.
He can ultimately work his way in. Surround one another in love.
And with our love and the power of Christ, we can keep Satan at bay and keep
his schemes on the outskirts to where they won't do enough damage to tear us all the way down.
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So as we wrap up our thoughts today, I ask two questions.
The first question I ask is, are you in a place where you need restoration?
Are you living and walking in a direction where I used to walk directed towards
Jesus, and now something's got my attention, something's got a hold of me,
and maybe it's not full-fledged, like I'm living a sinful life.
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Maybe it's just Satan's got your attention, and you can still still see Jesus.
But you're, you're just, you've kind of stopped and you're, you're observing,
and you're weighing your options.
You haven't really crossed the line yet, but you're weighing your options.
Hey, listen, let's just stop him right there and let, let us, let us pull you back in.
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But maybe you've done more than just your options. Maybe you've weighed your
options and you go, Hey, that cotton candy looks great.
And you're like, you're in the cotton candy machine right now.
Realize that everything that Satan offers you is emptiness. Everything is empty.
Everything that God offers you is grace, love, and joy.
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Not always easy, but that's the core of all of it. Grace, love, and joy.
So if you're trading that for emptiness, come back.
And let us, as your church family, practice restoration with you in a powerful
way. And that's the second question is, do you know someone that needs to be restored?
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Maybe someone that's not in this room that you need to call or knock on their
door and say, hey, I love you and I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.
Let's be a church that practices loving restoration. Again, it's not always going to be easy.
It's going to be hard conversations, but it can all be done in love.
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Let's close with a word of prayer. prayer.
God, I thank you for your spirit guiding us this morning and leading us to this passage,
a passage that teaches us the importance of our relationships with each other,
that this is not just about coming to church and sitting in the pew and seeing
the back of someone's head for an hour.
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This is about getting to know one another and living life with them and celebrating the ups and.
And living through the downs and in the moments of challenge,
even the moments of sin, we roll up our sleeves and we get down into life with
one another and we help each other and we help dig one another out and back to the mountaintop.
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God, I just pray for our church family that we're able to be a church of loving
restoration, that we're able to practice this, that we don't stand for sin, God.
Help us to be a church that does not stand for sin and take sin serious,
because it is serious, God.
But help us deal with it in the most loving, Christian, biblical way possible.
Even though love may not always be easy conversations, let them be filled with love, God.
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Give us the courage to have those conversations so that we can bring people
back into a walk in a relationship with you and keep Satan away from others.
We thank you for Jesus, and we thank you for his sacrifice for us and the opportunity
to live in this life with this family.
Let us never take it for granted. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
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Which will greatly assist in getting the message of God's love and salvation
to others. You can also follow us on Facebook,
Instagram,
and Twitter.
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Be sure to join us again, and until then, remember to love like Jesus.
Sing.
Thank you for joining us for this program from the Ninth Avenue Church of Christ in Haleville, Alabama.
We hope that you will subscribe and will share our program with others.
Now, we take you to the service of the Ninth Avenue Church of Christ.
If you want to open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians 2, we will dive into that here in just a moment.
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As we get ready to study, let's go to God in prayer.
God, we thank you so much for the chance to be in your presence this morning.
We thank you for the opportunity to lift our voices in song and praise.
And we pray that those praises have reached your throne room along with the
praises of so many other brothers and sisters throughout the world today.
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It's wonderful for us to know that our worship is not just here in this spot,
in this place, but it is a kingdom that is spread across the globe.
And that today, in a spiritual way, we are united with each and every Christian
around the world as we sing praises and commune together.
We thank you so much for the chance to worship you this morning be with us as
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we open up your word May we be encouraged may we be strengthened and we draw
closer to use and your son's name we pray. Amen.
Several years ago, and maybe you have seen this. It floats around YouTube and
Facebook and the different social media platforms from time to time.
But in 2003, a young lady by the name of Natalie Gilbert won the opportunity
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to sing the national anthem at the Portland Trailblazers Dallas Mavericks playoff game.
And it was one of those for her, for a 13-year-old. I mean, that is a life kind
of moment. It's a great opportunity.
She's so excited. She gets out on the court. She gets ready to start.
And as she starts her song, she gets a few words in.
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And like many of us probably would do, she completely forgets the words to the national anthem.
So the music's kind of playing behind her a little bit. And she's just kind
of mumbling through the words and can't really, and she's getting embarrassed.
And she's starting to cry a little bit. When all All of a sudden,
the Trailblazers head coach, Maurice Cheeks, walks up beside her,
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kneels down, holds the microphone with her, and starts singing the national anthem along with her.
Now, Maurice is no singer by any stretch of the imagination,
but in that moment, Natalie was not really worried about the words.
She was not worried about how it sounded. She was just comforted that the fact
that in maybe her most embarrassing moment, the the biggest public mess up that
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she could have, someone had the love to come along beside her,
kneel down with her, and carry her through that moment.
By the end of the song, by the end of the national anthem, the entire arena
was singing, and it ends in a thunderous applause for Natalie herself.
I believe that this is a great illustration for us as Christians,
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because the truth is that in our walk with God, we are always going to come
into times and come into moments where we what? Where we mess up, right?
And we're always going to be walking with someone or journeying with someone,
even if we're going through a pretty good period in our life,
we're always going to have brothers and sisters that have their nightly moment,
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that they just mess up and they fall all flat on their face and they just can't
seem to get it together and they can't get out of their own way.
And sin kind of takes, not really takes control, but causes problems and challenges
for them in their life at the moment.
And the question becomes as children of God, what is our role there?
What is our role in helping a brother or a sister who is caught in the struggle
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of sin and trying to move past that and into a better place in their life.
And I would challenge you that from the words of Paul here in 1 Corinthians.
That our role is that one very similar to the trailblazers head coach of our
job is to come along beside them, kneel down with them, and help them through
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that moment every way that we can.
So let's go to our text, starting in verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 2,
and let's read these few verses together, and then we'll break them down and talk about some things.
It says, If anyone has caused grief, he has not so much grieved me as he has
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grieved all of you, to some extent not to put it too severely.
The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him.
Now, instead, you ought to forgive
and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.
The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and be obedient in everything.
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If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven,
if there was anything to forgive,
I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, in order that Satan might
not outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.
All right, so let's talk about this a little bit. Let's start back in verse
5 and just kind of break down and maybe kind of figure out what's going on.
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A lot of scholars, and if you read 1 Corinthians and then you read 2 Corinthians
right along with it, you will remember that there is a guy there in the church
at Corinth that is living an extraordinary sexually immoral life.
He is in a relationship with his dad's wife.
And so it's a really challenging situation.
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And Paul writes to the church there, and he said, not only are you accepting
this, you're excited about it. You're proud of it, right?
And he's like, you can't be this way about it.
And he goes on, and he talks about what the church needs to do to deal with this situation.
Now, we don't know for a fact that that's what he's talking about.
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There could be another issue, but it would be easy to connect the dots from
that particular issue to this verse.
It's the same church that he's writing to.
We are aware of the previous situation. It's very possible that this is the
situation that's still kind of unfolding, or rather we're seeing the bookend backside.
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We see his encouragement on the front end and his encouragement on the back
end as they dealt with this situation.
But the first thing that we see, the first thing that had to be done, the first thing,
well, maybe not the first thing that had to be done, but at the point of where
they were, it had come to the point to where this guy had to be confronted by the church for his sins.
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Now, it is very difficult in this day and age, and I don't think that's even
a fair statement. I think it's just very difficult.
To truly sit down with someone and talk to them about maybe something they're
doing wrong in their life.
Because as we talked about a few weeks ago, we don't want to seem judgmental.
We don't want to seem like we're always right and they're wrong.
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We don't want them to think that we are just all standing around and talking
about them, which is why I think Jesus talks about this in Matthew 18.
I think that's why he brings this up.
He talks about that there is a certain way that when sin Sin is present in the
church that you deal with it.
The first thing he says you do, if you know of this sin in someone's life,
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what's the first thing you do? You just go sit and talk to them face to face.
You just go have a loving brotherly conversation with them and you say,
hey, look, I know this challenge is going on and I've noticed it.
I want you to know I'm here for you.
I wanna help you work through this. I wanna help you get this out of your life.
And I just wonder how many times that a life of sin men maybe could have been
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stopped if as brothers and sisters we had that kind of love.
That even though it was uncomfortable, and you might want to say,
well, it's really not any of my business because that's what the world tells us.
It's not really of any of your business. Just let them live their life.
But the church is different than the world, right?
The church is different than the world. You are my business.
Why are you my business? Because you're my family.
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Because I love you. and my ultimate goal is for both of us or all of us to stand
before Jesus on the judgment day and him go, hey, great job. Come on in.
That is my goal for everyone here. So if that's my goal, then even when it's
hard, I need to come to you and say, hey, look, I just really need to talk to
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you about something and vice versa.
When you see something wrong in my life, you come and you have the same conversation.
But what does he say you start out with?
You start out with this one one-on-one brother, sister.
Intimate conversation. And a lot of times, I really do.
I feel like a lot of times, if those conversations would take place,
then the growth of sin would stop.
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And I think a lot of times in people's life, the growth of sin happens and continues
because we just simply don't do what God tells us to do.
And then he says, if that doesn't work, you take a couple of other people with you. You grow the group.
You bring more people that love them and let them say, say, hey, this is serious.
And then Jesus finally says, and if that doesn't work, He says,
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you bring the congregation.
You bring the whole shebang comes in.
And it's not in we're trying to point out your sin and go, hey,
this is wrong and we hate you.
No, it's, hey, we love you so much that we can't stand to see Satan have this
kind of control over you in your life, to see you fighting and struggling and
giving in to this sin, which is hurting your relationship with God,
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which then and hurt your relationship with each and every one of us.
And that is where they were here in this particular section.
They had gotten to that point and they had addressed this as a whole.
And then it kind of seems like maybe they were going overboard with it a little bit.
And as people, we do, I would say people, we do overboard real well, right?
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Maybe subtle is not always the best thing we do, but we can do overboard real
well. So they had kind of gone overboard.
But to at least I believe you've seen the practice of how the church is to deal with sin in its midst.
And I really do believe our lives, they are each other's business.
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Your sin affects the church. I am part of the church.
And in a loving way, we have to be willing to practice what Jesus teaches,
what Paul teaches of dealing with sin.
We cannot stand by and just let sin be active in the church.
And I'm not talking about momentary sin necessarily a moment where someone we're
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all going to have that momentary sin he's talking about,
And we can't stand for that either, but he's really talking about someone who
is saying, I'm giving into this over and over and over.
Like he said about this guy who's having this relationship with his dad's wife,
he says, not only are you accepting it, you're excited about it, right?
So really, the sin, there was that sin issue, and then obviously there's a bigger
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issue in the church that they had to deal with, and if that's the issue that
he's talking about, it seems like they had moved in the right direction.
So we have to remember that it is okay.
It's not always comfortable. It's never going to be fun.
But it is okay to address real, true public sin in biblical ways.
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Now, what's the purpose of it? And that's really as he goes on.
Because some people may say, that doesn't sound real comforting.
That doesn't sound real loving when I bring about 50 people up to your house
and knock on your door and go, hey, we need to sit down and talk. walk.
That doesn't seem like that would be a comfortable situation at all, does it?
And most of us would probably be like, no, I'm not volunteering for that.
Like, I'm not going to go be a part of that.
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But he says, hey, this is how we're going to deal with things.
But what's the result of that? What was the result in this particular text? Look in verse seven.
If I'm going to click here, go to verse seven, the next slide.
It says that now instead you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will
not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
So what has has happened. This idea, this relationship that they've had with
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him, practicing what God said to practice, has led him to the point of sorrow,
which is also what happens when you realize what you've done wrong and you repent.
The guilty person was sorry, and he has been led to repentance.
There is a direct correlation between sorrow and repentance. Now, in our culture.
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We've kind of worn out the phrase, I'm sorry. We use I'm sorry a lot.
We even use I'm sorry when, have you ever bumped into a wall and said, I'm sorry?
Not realizing it was a wall or bumped into something. I'm sorry.
I'm glad nobody saw that, you know, but we use that all the time. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry. But this idea of I'm sorry for Paul, the idea of sorrow carried this
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idea idea of an experience of sorrow that is overwhelming.
Sorry was not just a casual. No one's just as casual as, hey, how are you doing?
There's another phrase that we use a lot. How are you today?
When you usually ask someone, hey, how are you doing today? How many of you
really are wanting to know how that person's doing?
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I've told you that story, but I've asked that question one time too many to
this lady, and she talked to me for 45 minutes about how she was was doing.
And the next day we're at the same restaurant. I'm at the same restaurant.
My granddaddy's with me this day. And there she is.
And he goes, I've not spoken to Ms. Carolyn in a while. I'm going to go ask
her how she's doing. I looked at him. I said, don't do it.
He goes, well, I need to. I said, I'll see you at the house in an hour.
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And when he got back to the house, he goes, how'd you know? I said, I did it yesterday.
Saying I'm sorry means something, especially when it comes to our walk with God, having sorrow.
Another way you could say this is I'm not happy because you were made sorry,
but because your sorrow led to repentance.
Godly sorrow brings repentance. I believe there is a sorrow,
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a worldly sorrow, that doesn't necessarily lead to repentance.
It may lead to a change of action, but not to a change of dedication of life.
See, repentance is not just changing your action.
Repentance is realizing I'm
dedicating my life to something other than God, and I need to fix that.
I need to go back in the way I was going when I was dedicated to that lifestyle.
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And so I can have this, oh, I'm sorry I got caught. I'm not going to do that again, sorrow.
But that doesn't really change my heart. It just changes my action.
But true sorrow, godly sorrow, brings me to a point where I realize,
man, I have messed messed up so bad.
And I'm brought to my knees by it. I want you to leave your marker right here
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in 2 Corinthians and go to Psalms 51.
And I want you to listen to the words of David.
This is the Psalm David writes after everything with Bathsheba and the adultery
and everything that goes on.
I just want you to listen to, we're not going to read necessarily maybe all of it.
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But we'll read a section of it. He says in verse one, have mercy on me,
O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion,
blot out my transgressions,
wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sins.
For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.
That's such a touching phrase to me because what he's saying is I can't get it out of my mind.
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Everywhere I look, I see my sin. And to me, that's godly sorrow.
It's not, oh, I got caught, so I better not do it again. It's, I have been caught.
I am sorrowful, and I can't get it off my mind of how much, not that I've necessarily
just done this, but how much I have failed God.
And as you read the rest of these words, I think that's what you You see,
he realizes he has failed God.
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Verse four, against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your
sight so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts.
You teach me wisdom in the inmost places.
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Cleanse me with hippas and I will be cleansed. Wash me and I will be whiter
than snow. No, let me hear joy and gladness.
Let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
David was sorrowful.
He realized that he had hurt a lot of people, but the person that he had hurt
the most was who? Was God.
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And when we're brought to our knees by our sin and we realize that,
really and truly, that is an uncomfortable place, a challenging place,
but that is the place that we find, as he mentions at the end,
we find that re-cleansing as children of God.
I've had the ultimate cleansing through my baptism, but I can continually be
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cleansed by my repentance, and I stay in that holy state. date.
So we have to come to a sorrowful place of repentance, and we see that in this process with this guy.
The third thing I think we see here is we should seek to restore those who have
been repentant, who have repented.
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We should seek to restore those.
One paraphrase of verse 7 says, now is the time to forgive this man and help him back on his feet.
If all you do is pour on guilt, you could very easily drown him in it.
My counsel now is to pour on the love.
And I love that idea though here where he says the idea is to help him back on his feet.
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When we have a brother and sister that sin and they're in that place of sorrow
and in that place of repentance,
at that point, our only goal should be to restore them into an active and vibrant
place within the the family.
Unfortunately, a lot of churches, I believe, they practice this idea of causing
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sorrow really well, but maybe the idea of restoration does not come as easily.
But the Bible clearly teaches that we are to practice restoration.
Go to Galatians chapter 6.
Real quick, Galatians chapter 6.
It should just be a few pages over, right?
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Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.
And Paul's kind of dealing with the same idea, the same concept here.
He says, brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should
restore him gently, but watch yourself, or you too may be tempted.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
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So Paul, he talks about it in a very particular situation in 2 Corinthians,
and then kind of in a broad situation in Galatians, that our job,
our job is not, and we talked about this a few weeks ago, our job is never to judge, right?
Our job is never to judge. Our job is to encourage, and if we hold up the Word of God to someone,
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and they see, and we can see that, hey, there's a struggle here and conflict
with the Word of God, it is our job to help them resolve that conflict.
And work out that sin into a positive place, into a positive step.
But it is not our job to judge. It is our job to restore.
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Restore, restoration for us as Christians means to forgive them.
And why do we forgive them? Because we have been what? We have been forgiven.
Each and every one of us has done something that we have needed forgiven for,
ultimately between us and God, but also between us and other people, between us.
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We've all had to go to someone and say, hey, I'm sorry, right?
I'm sorry. And when we are sorry and we are seeking forgiveness from someone
else, how quickly do we want to receive that?
We want it right then, don't we? When we are the one that needs to be restored,
we want that restoration to happen quickly.
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We want it to happen in that moment. We don't want to have to wait.
We don't want to have to go through the problem. We want restoration then from those those people.
And so when we are in the place to where we're trying to restore them,
when we are trying to help them, we should not hesitate.
We should offer restoration and helping people back into their place in the
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church family as quickly as we would want it if we were the ones in that situation.
Forgiveness is a command.
It's not a, if you feel like it, and part of forgiveness is helping people restore their life.
Restoration also means love them because you have been loved.
That verse in Galatians chapter six, verse two, we see that restoration involves
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carrying someone's burdens, carrying someone's burdens. That takes effort.
And you usually don't put forth a whole lot of effort unless you what? Love somebody.
But God has carried so many of our burdens. Christ has carried so many of our burdens.
Christ took so many of our sins, if not all of our sins, actually to the cross.
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And so that's the image that I get. That's the image that I see.
As I read in Scripture of Jesus carrying his cross, was it his cross or was it my cross?
Was it his burden or was it my burden?
He had no burden. He had no sin. and he had no reason to be on that cross other than my sin.
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So when I see a brother and sister struggling, I should not hesitate to pick
up their burden. And he warns us, don't get caught up in it, right?
Don't get caught up in it to the point that you sin, but don't be afraid to
pick that burden up and walk side by side with them because we get to the impact of all of it.
The impact is not only the restoration, but it disrupts Satan's plan.
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Let's look at verses 9 and 10. This is maybe the climax of what we're really looking here.
He says, another reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test and
be obedient and everything.
Saying, hey, look, I'm testing you to see if you would do what I ask.
And then he said, anyone you forgive... Go back to the end. I got my remote working, right?
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Now it's not working. Go to verse 10, and I'll quit pushing buttons.
Anyone you forgive, I also forgive. And what I have forgiven,
if there was anything to forgive, I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for
your sake. Then go to verse 11.
In order that Satan might not what?
Outwit us, for we are not unaware of his schemes.
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We are not unaware of his sly ways. We know Satan's methods.
I believe for a lot of us, that's why we get frustrated when we do find ourselves
caught up in a sin, whether it's for a short period of time or a long period
of time, because we know what Satan does.
We know that that Satan likes to put counterfeit things in front of us.
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We know he offers us cotton candy lifestyles, that cotton candy that you bite into.
It looks so good and so fluffy on that stick.
And then you bite into it, and how long does it last?
It didn't even last for you to bite into it. It's just gone. He offers us that.
He offers us things that he can't deliver. He offers us things that look so
good, but yet when we grab a hold of them, they are nothing but bad for our life.
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We know that about Satan, Satan. Yet we all go through those moments where I
go, oh man, that looks like a good idea.
Let me grab that. And I grab a hold of it.
And then when I finally let go, I'm like, I can't believe it.
How did I fall for that again? I know Satan's.
And so I think that's what he's trying to get us to understand here.
He's like, look, when we're all doing this together, when we're working all
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of this together as a church family who loves each other, who's restoring each
other, who's having tough conversations.
What that ultimately does is not only restores and brings people who are struggling
with sin back into a right relationship with God, but it also looks to say,
and he goes, we're not letting you in here, man. Like, stay away.
You cannot get in here and mess this up.
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We are smarter than you. We are not unaware of what you're trying to do.
So we cannot, it's like, have you ever not studied for a test and then shocked that you failed it?
Anybody? Just me? I'm the only one John, thank you John, thank you for Like
four of us And Ellie, Ellie said she hadn't.
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You know, it's the same, like, if we let Satan in, we know what he's going to
do. He's going to mess it all up.
That's why we join together, and we say, not today, not in this place.
And when he does sneak in, when he does sneak in, we don't give him a foothold.
That's what Paul says in Ephesians chapter 4. He says, do not let the sun go
down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. Don't give him a chance.
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Don't give him an opportunity to get his hand in the door, because if he ever
gets his hand in the door, he can still do damage. If you get a hand in the door, he gets two hands.
He can ultimately work his way in. Surround one another in love.
And with our love and the power of Christ, we can keep Satan at bay and keep
his schemes on the outskirts to where they won't do enough damage to tear us all the way down.
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So as we wrap up our thoughts today, I ask two questions.
The first question I ask is, are you in a place where you need restoration?
Are you living and walking in a direction where I used to walk directed towards
Jesus, and now something's got my attention, something's got a hold of me,
and maybe it's not full-fledged, like I'm living a sinful life.
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Maybe it's just Satan's got your attention, and you can still still see Jesus.
But you're, you're just, you've kind of stopped and you're, you're observing,
and you're weighing your options.
You haven't really crossed the line yet, but you're weighing your options.
Hey, listen, let's just stop him right there and let, let us, let us pull you back in.
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But maybe you've done more than just your options. Maybe you've weighed your
options and you go, Hey, that cotton candy looks great.
And you're like, you're in the cotton candy machine right now.
Realize that everything that Satan offers you is emptiness. Everything is empty.
Everything that God offers you is grace, love, and joy.
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Not always easy, but that's the core of all of it. Grace, love, and joy.
So if you're trading that for emptiness, come back.
And let us, as your church family, practice restoration with you in a powerful
way. And that's the second question is, do you know someone that needs to be restored?
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Maybe someone that's not in this room that you need to call or knock on their
door and say, hey, I love you and I just want to talk to you for a few minutes.
Let's be a church that practices loving restoration. Again, it's not always going to be easy.
It's going to be hard conversations, but it can all be done in love.
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Let's close with a word of prayer. prayer.
God, I thank you for your spirit guiding us this morning and leading us to this passage,
a passage that teaches us the importance of our relationships with each other,
that this is not just about coming to church and sitting in the pew and seeing
the back of someone's head for an hour.
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This is about getting to know one another and living life with them and celebrating the ups and.
And living through the downs and in the moments of challenge,
even the moments of sin, we roll up our sleeves and we get down into life with
one another and we help each other and we help dig one another out and back to the mountaintop.
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God, I just pray for our church family that we're able to be a church of loving
restoration, that we're able to practice this, that we don't stand for sin, God.
Help us to be a church that does not stand for sin and take sin serious,
because it is serious, God.
But help us deal with it in the most loving, Christian, biblical way possible.
Even though love may not always be easy conversations, let them be filled with love, God.
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Give us the courage to have those conversations so that we can bring people
back into a walk in a relationship with you and keep Satan away from others.
We thank you for Jesus, and we thank you for his sacrifice for us and the opportunity
to live in this life with this family.
Let us never take it for granted. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.
(29:54):
Which will greatly assist in getting the message of God's love and salvation
to others. You can also follow us on Facebook,
Instagram,
and Twitter.
(30:16):
Be sure to join us again, and until then, remember to love like Jesus.
Sing.
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