04 Discipleship and Discipline in a Healthy Church

[* This is week #4 in our sermon series entitled 'Marks of a Healthy Church' in which we are using selected passages from God's Word to explore the "four ships" or "armada" of the church: Worship, Discipleship, Fellowship and Stewardship. Those four pillars support everything that characterizes a healthy, impactful and God-honoring church. * David Hayes got us started with a 2-week examination of the building blocks of the church by using key passages in Acts 2 and Acts 4 about the early church. This provided a great reminder that the church does not need to reinvent itself to align with the culture. Rather, we need to rely on God's Word to provide all that we need to function effectively in this increasingly chaotic, God-rejecting and Biblically-illiterate world in which we live. * Then last week, Pastor Bob took us back a step to consider the foundation of those 4 pillars, and of the church itself, as we looked at Jesus' vitally important question in Matthew 16, "Who do you say that I am?". For without a proper understanding of WHO Jesus is, and what He accomplished through the cross and His resurrection, the church has no basis for having any value or impact on the world today (see 1 Cor. 15:1-19) * And now, this morning, we want to take some time to focus on just one of those “ships” or "pillars", namely Discipleship. We'll start by looking at the nature of true discipleship, and then take a look at what I believe is one of the too often neglected disciplines of discipleship, namely how we deal with sin in the church. In other words, the discipline of church discipline. I'll then share a few thoughts about the power behind effective discipleship and church discipline, before wrapping things up by talking about how we can apply what we learn this morning in the context of Jesus' Great Commission of Matthew 28. * This message was presented on May 15, 2022 by Chuck Sabo.