Guest Hosts: Justin Peters, Jim Osman & Gabe Hughes | What Makes a Church Healthy?

Summary

Wretched Radio with Todd Friel (Guest Host: Gabriel Hughes)

Episode: “Justin Peters, Jim Osman & Gabe Hughes | What Makes a Church Healthy?”

Date: March 30, 2026

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Overview

This episode features Gabriel Hughes (Providence Reformed Baptist Church, AZ) guest-hosting for Todd Friel, alongside guests Jim Osman (Kootenai Community Church, ID) and Justin Peters (evangelist and apologist). Together, they explore the biblical marks of a healthy church. Drawing from Acts 2, Mark Dever’s “Nine Marks of a Healthy Church,” and their pastoral experience, the hosts discuss the foundations and practical outworking of biblical church life—including the priority of expository preaching, biblical ordinances, church discipline, Christ-centered worship, and practical counsel for those in unhealthy church environments.

The episode is rich in humor, practical examples (and warnings), and pastoral exhortation, with the underlying conviction that a healthy church must be governed by the Word and oriented towards reverent worship, loving discipline, godly leadership, and true gospel proclamation.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Hearing from God & Biblical Authority

[00:06–00:39]

• Initial banter critiques the idea of “hearing God’s voice” outside Scripture.
• Justin Peters:
  “You want to hear God speak to you, read your Bible. If you want to hear God speak to you, Autumn, read it out loud. I promise you 100% guaranteed, you will hear him speak.” (00:27)
• Insight: The voice of God comes through Scripture, not mystical impressions or charismatic “prophets.” This frames the episode: Scripture is the church’s supreme authority.

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2. Marks of a Healthy Church: Foundational Overview

[03:14–05:41, 07:54–11:23]

• Acts 2:42 is cited as a model church: devotion to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer.
• Jim Osman:
  “First up for me is expository preaching. How they handle the word of God. If they get how they handle the word of God correctly, then they will get a lot of other things correct.” (04:22)
• Gabriel Hughes:
  “Everything else has to be in submission to what the Bible says about what the church is supposed to do.” (04:30)
• Justin Peters warns against importing business or political models into the church.
  “Christ is the head of the church. The church is unique. It should not look like the world.” (05:50)

Summary:

• Expository preaching is the primary mark.
• The church must submit to the authority of Christ and His Word—not to business or cultural philosophies.

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3. Distinctiveness from the World

[07:03–07:54, 20:49–21:15]

• Jim Osman:
  “They should be unique from the world, different from the world in their conduct, in their philosophy of ministry... it is marked by holiness and reverence for God.” (07:19)
• Justin Peters (on worldliness in the church):
  “If your church looks like the world, you don’t have a church.” (21:07)

Summary:

• Worldly methods or entertainment undermine church health; biblical churches are marked by holiness, reverence, and Christlike distinctiveness.

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4. Critique and Expansion of the “Nine Marks”

[07:54–11:23]

• Nine Marks summarized:
  1. Expository preaching
  2. Biblical theology
  3. Gospel clarity
  4. Understanding of conversion
  5. Evangelism
  6. Church membership
  7. Church discipline
  8. Leadership
  9. Discipleship
• Missing: Proper practice of the ordinances (baptism and the Lord’s Supper) and explicit mention of a plurality of elders.
• Jim Osman: “That list has nothing about the ordinances on there, which I think is one of the marks of a healthy church.” (09:50)
• On plurality of elders:
  “Even the preacher who preaches his expository message is one who sits under the administration of the Word, under the Word himself. He’s not over the congregation and over the Word dictating.” (11:10)

Summary:

• Nine Marks is a helpful framework, but full biblical fidelity requires right administration of ordinances and biblical leadership structure.

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5. The Right Handling of the Ordinances

[15:56–17:55]

• Jim Osman (on baptism and Lord’s Supper):
  • “Baptism being the initiatory rite... the Lord’s Supper being the continuing rite... reminders of the gospel and Christ’s work.”
  • “There should be a degree of reverence with both of those.”
• Critique of irreverent or trivial treatment:
  • Justin Peters: “No Coke and Ritz crackers for communion.” (17:32)

Summary:

• Ordinances should be observed reverently and biblically, not in a trivial or “clownish” manner.

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6. Liturgy & Reverent Worship

[18:01–23:14]

• Justin Peters:
  “The church service needs to be vertically oriented from the time it begins to the time it ends... Worship is not about us. It’s not about our entertainment. We are gathering to worship the eternal, transcendent, thrice holy God.” (18:22–18:32)
• Rebuke of entertainment-driven or irreverent worship (e.g., pop songs or spectacle):
  • “Their primary worship song was ‘Let’s Get It On’ by Marvin Gaye... That’s a goat farm, that’s not a church...” (19:46–20:14)
  • “They’re not feeding sheep, they’re entertaining goats.” (20:29)
• Jim Osman describes healthy liturgy:
  • Call to worship (Scripture), theologically rich songs, body life (announcements, missions), expository preaching, closing song, benediction—all unified by Scripture’s themes.
  • “Everything is complimentary so that... everything has a theme, everything has a purpose, everything has a focus.” (22:56)

Summary:

• Worship should be structured, Christ-centered, reverent, and rooted in Scripture—not entertainment. Liturgy exists to orient hearts toward God, not to amuse or imitate the world.

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7. The Centrality and Challenge of Church Discipline

[24:25–25:41, 30:09–39:41, 43:58–54:32]

• Justin Peters:
  “Church discipline is Jesus’ first command to his church...Hardly any churches do this... If you want to get an idea of how seriously a church actually takes the Word of God, ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew 18?” (31:05)
• Practical process:
  • Matthew 18: one-on-one confrontation, then witnesses, then the whole church, then removal if unrepentant.
  • 1 Corinthians 5, Titus 3, and other NT passages reinforce necessity.
• Jim Osman:
  “No, it [church discipline] accomplished one goal, which is the purification of the church. That person is no longer there.” (35:34)
  • Goal is purity and (ideally) restoration; if unrepentant, they prove themselves an unbeliever.
• Who administers discipline?
  • Starts with the individual; elders are involved in later stages. The congregation is informed and participatory in the process.
  • “The church, the ecclesia, the ones who have been called out. And that’s more than just the elders. That’s the congregation.” (48:20)

Summary:

• Church discipline is essential to church health—both for individual restoration and for the purity of the body. Lack of church discipline is a serious mark against a congregation’s biblical faithfulness.

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8. Practical Counsel for Those in Unhealthy Churches

[24:25–25:41]

• Justin Peters:
  “You’re not going to change the church from the ground up. A congregation, generally speaking, is not going to rise to a level of spiritual maturity above that of its leadership. So if you realize you’re in a bad church...just leave."
• If no good church is nearby, consider starting one with other like-minded believers.

Summary:

• Church health begins with leadership and biblical fidelity. Individual members should seek or start biblically healthy fellowships, rather than remain and hope for top-down reform.

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9. The Authority of the Church’s Actions in Discipline

[49:41–54:32]

• Jim Osman & Justin Peters (on Matthew 18:18–20):
  • Heaven “agrees” with biblical discipline—because when we follow Jesus’ steps, we act as his representatives.
  • The “two or three gathered” passage is not about prayer meetings but about the church united under Christ’s authority in difficult discipline.
  • “When we do this, we have the promise from the Lord that He is in the midst of his church and that this is what heaven has decreed.” (51:54–52:00)

Summary:

• Faithful church discipline is done with Christ’s presence and authority. Done rightly, it leads to the church’s purification and Christ’s honor.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Sola Scriptura:

• Justin Peters:
  “You want to hear God speak to you, read your Bible. If you want to hear God speak to you, Autumn, read it out loud.” (00:27)

On Entertainment-Driven Churches:

• Justin Peters:
  “They’re not feeding sheep, they’re entertaining goats. It’s a circus.” (20:29–20:49)

On Church Health:

• Gabriel Hughes:
  “The Bible is over the church. The church is not over the Bible.” (10:47)

On Church Discipline:

• Justin Peters:
  “If all of these steps are followed and the person does not repent, then that person has proven himself to be an unbeliever... That person is to be put out of the church. Any interaction is sharing the gospel with that person.” (38:24)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:06] – Hearing God's Voice & Sola Scriptura
• [03:14] – What Makes a Healthy Church? (Acts 2, Church Authority)
• [04:22] – Expository Preaching as the Primary Mark
• [07:54] – The “Nine Marks” Rundown and Critique
• [15:56] – The Importance of the Ordinances
• [18:01] – Reverent Worship & Dangers of Entertainment
• [24:25] – What if You’re in an Unhealthy Church?
• [30:09] – Church Discipline: Biblical Process
• [43:58] – Who Administers Church Discipline?
• [49:41] – Christ’s Authority in Discipline, "Whatever you bind..."
• [54:32] – Final Reflections and Blessing

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Conclusion

This episode confronts modern trends and calls listeners back to historic, biblical Christianity. The hosts urge churches to:

• Center everything on clear, bold, expository preaching.
• Practice reverent, Christ-focused, vertical worship.
• Rightly administer baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
• Exercise church discipline for the church’s purity and individual restoration.
• And above all, submit every aspect of church life—leadership, liturgy, membership, mission—to Scripture.

The health of the church, they warn and encourage, is inseparable from obedience to Christ as Head, expressed practically in worship, disciple-making, and discipline.

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“A genuine Christian can be in serious sin, serious sin for a season. But once these steps are followed, if that person is truly a believer, he or she will repent. This is what church discipline is designed to do. The goal is to bring a sinning believer to a place of genuine repentance.”
— Justin Peters (38:12)

“When we do this, we have the promise from the Lord that He is in the midst of his church and that this is what heaven has decreed.”
— Jim Osman (52:00)

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Transcript

[Todd Friel]

Wretched radio begins in 3, 2, 1.

[Jimmy Hicks]

God told me to tell you this.

[Jim Osman]

That's paganism.

[Jimmy Hicks]

Do you really expect and anticipate that

[Narrator/Announcer]

the divine voice of God can be heard by you?

[Gabriel Hughes]

That's horoscope reading. Standing in the office of the prophet of God.

[Jimmy Hicks]

That's reading.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Tea leaves can't have a relationship to God if you can't hear God.

[Jim Osman]

That is not biblical Christianity.

[Justin Peters]

You want to hear God speak to you, read your Bible. If you want to hear God speak to you, Autumn, read it out loud. I promise you 100% guaranteed, you will hear him speak.

[Todd Friel]

It's time for Wretched Radio with Todd

[Gabriel Hughes]

Friel filling in for Todd Friel this time around on Wretched Radio. My name is Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. To my left, Jim Osman from Kootenane.

[Jim Osman]

Close enough.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Kootenay, Idaho. And Justin Peters, no stranger to Wretched Radio. Lovely to have these gentlemen in the. I'm actually more of a guest than you are.

[Justin Peters]

Well, I don't know, man. You're. You're doing a great job as a host.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I appreciate it.

[Justin Peters]

Glad you're doing it, not me.

[Gabriel Hughes]

How many times have you been on the show? Do you keep a tally?

[Justin Peters]

Not as many as you think. I mean, a handful.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah.

[Jim Osman]

How many should we think?

[Gabriel Hughes]

I don't know.

[Justin Peters]

Well, Gabe was making it sound like I'm here every other day.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Well, you've done not just. Not what the radio side of things that we're doing here. But you guys just recently recorded video.

[Justin Peters]

We did.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah. Yesterday we were in studio doing wretched tv.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we'll see you online as well as hearing us through the podcast, probably

[Jim Osman]

in six months or whenever they get desperate enough to put us on tv.

[Gabriel Hughes]

There you go.

[Jimmy Hicks]

Whenever.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah, it's. We've gone through everything that we need to go through. And now we'll throw Jim and Justin in there. Jimmy and Jimmy.

[Jimmy Hicks]

Jimmy, I'm here. You need something?

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah, Yeah, I just wanted to know you were there.

[Jimmy Hicks]

Okay. All right. I was also going to say that Justin with Todd has a. A resource available at Fortis plus for free right now. Thou shalt judge that they recently recorded not too long ago.

[Jim Osman]

Oh, yeah, you forgot. Gabe, you forgot to plug the Fortis.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I didn't get the Fortis Institute stuff in there.

[Jim Osman]

Shave on Fortis Plus. Fortis plus platform. What is the deal?

[Jimmy Hicks]

Yeah, yeah, well, it's. Yeah, Fortis Institute. Fortis plus is the app.

[Gabriel Hughes]

And don't forget also that you get more Wretched radio looking up the Podcast, Right. So whatever podcast app you like to use, find the wretched radio podcast and get all the good stuff. Maybe your local radio station is. Is an Aaron everything, but you can get it right there on the podcast.

[Jimmy Hicks]

That's right. That's right.

[Gabriel Hughes]

And we sure appreciate local radio and it's still a great ministry that local radio stations are doing. You don't really think about radio that much anymore, especially if everybody's got phones and personal listening devices and things in their car and all different kinds of things. But there are still local radio stations doing great work in their community, and we appreciate them airing programs just like this one as well. We have three preachers that are sitting in here from three different churches. Although, Justin, you used to attend Jim's church.

[Justin Peters]

I did, Yep.

[Gabriel Hughes]

And now you've broken away. You've even jumped state lines.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah, I was fleeing church discipline to get out of. No, we started having grandkids in Montana and the grandkids pulled us eastward.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Gotcha. Well, we're going to talk church discipline, so maybe there's some personal experience that'll come in there. You know, in Acts, chapter 2, verse 42, where it talks about the church, we're talking about the very first church here that gets started through the preaching of the Gospel by Peter at Pentecost and the rest of the apostles. And it says of that church, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers and awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. Sounds like a pretty healthy church environment to me. That very beginning church. We might even be a little envious of that. I wish my church was more like a healthy, thriving church. So let's talk about the marks of a healthy church. Now, that's been a topic that was pretty popularized by Mark Dever. He has perhaps the foremost book on the subject, nine marks of a Healthy Church. What kind of marks are we looking for in a church that we might identify as healthy? What are you looking for?

[Jim Osman]

First up for me is expository preaching. How they handle the word of God. If they get how they handle the word of God correctly, then they will get a lot of other things correct.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Because everything else has to be in submission to what the Bible says about what the church is supposed to do.

[Jim Osman]

That's right. If they're willing to submit to Scripture as the highest authority and treat it with honor and reverence so that they are submitting to that that that is the voice of God to that congregation, Then typically, churches that have a good expository ministry, a good pulpit ministry, will also be structured biblically. They will also exercise church discipline. They will honor the ordinances and do those. You get a church that gets away from that, and then everything can become a clown show really quickly. So if you're looking for a healthy church, I want to first, first and foremost know, how does the man who stands in the pulpit handle the word of God? And what are the people in the pulpit expecting when they come into church? Do they have high expectations to hear an expository sermon, a good preaching that handles accurately the word of truth and proclaims the word of God with boldness, not shying away from the difficult topics? And if they're doing that, then I can think. And anything else in that church that might not be perfect or ideal is probably trending toward improvement.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Matthew 16. Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Justin, what is the church built upon?

[Justin Peters]

Church is built upon God's eternal truth, the person and work of Christ. Christ is the head of the church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Not Peter. Not Peter, not the Pope.

[Justin Peters]

No, not Peter, not the Pope. Peter was married, by the way, which is another awkward thing for Roman Catholic friends. But at any rate, yeah, Christ is the head of the church. You know, and Gabe, the church, a lot of people, a lot of evangelicals, have this idea that the church should look like our government. You know, we live in the good old US of A. We live in a democracy, technically, whatever, constitutional republic. But the church should look like, you know, our government, or it should be run like a business, have a CEO, pastor. But Christ is the head of the church. The church is unique. It should not look like the world. Christ created the church. It is his body, it is his bride. He is the head. He gets to call the shots. He defines the church. He is the one who tells us what a church is, what it is to do, how it is to be organized. And so we are just following his orders. And so a lot of us have kind of imported a very worldly view based upon businesses or the government and try to import those ideas into how a church should be run. And that's not how it should be run.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So the Greek word for church, that gets translated, church there in Matthew 16 is Ekklesia. So that's a calling out assembly of people. So how are we as the church, called out and assembled? What sort of marks define what that looks like?

[Jim Osman]

They should be Unique from the world, different from the world in their, in their conduct, in their philosophy of ministry. Many of the churches that are critiqued, even here on wretched radio that you've heard Todd describe have been churches that are trending to be more like the world in order to attract worldlings into the church. And one of the things that marks the church of Christ is that it is a singularly unique entity purchased by the blood of Christ, but it is marked by holiness and reverence for God. And a church that is not marked by holiness and reverence for God is going to be marked by other things, and there'll be worldly things.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we mentioned a moment ago nine marks of a healthy church. Are there only nine? Are there more than nine? Let's, let's run down the list here. So this is Tim Challis, how he summarized the list as Mark Dever gave them. So I'm going to give the list, then once we get to the end of the list, we'll kind of critique what we see in there. All right, so number one, what are you looking for? And this kind of goes back to what Jim had just said a little bit ago. You're looking for expository preaching and teaching. That's an important element of a healthy church. Number two, biblical theology. So what is being taught is actually flowing from the biblical text. Number three, a biblical understanding of the gospel. Not just any number of gospels that are out there, including the prosperity Gospel, which Justin often critiques in his seminars, but specifically, what is the gospel according to Jesus, according to the apostles that we have in Scripture. Number four, a biblical understanding of conversion of a person who actually is a follower of Jesus. What is that church teaching about that? What do they recognize about that? Number five, a biblical understanding of evangelism. Now the responsibility to go out and share the gospel with the world. Number six, a biblical understanding of church membership. What does it even mean to be a member of a church? That's a mark of a healthy church, how they define their membership. Number seven, a biblical understanding of church discipline. Ooh, there's something that you don't hear a whole lot about, nor do many churches practice a whole lot. Number eight, biblical understanding of leadership. How is the church structured? How is it organized? And number nine, finally, discipleship. What does discipleship look like in that church? And does it flow from a biblical understanding? So of those things that are on that list, agree with the list, disagree. Things could be added, expounded upon. What do you think?

[Jim Osman]

Well, that list has nothing about the ordinances on There, which I think is one of the marks of a healthy church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

That's an important thing.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah. And I agree that number one is expository preaching and teaching, because as I said, that would inform everything else on that list. So I don't know if I would not say there are only nine or that you can. I think all of those are good. I might add one or two. I might combine a couple of those. I think that's a good list overall. Those really are the characteristics of what the church should be about and be doing.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Justin.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah, I agree. And as Jim said, if number one is in place, if you're doing true exposition, teaching, sound doctrine, then these others should fall up underneath it, kind of under that overarching umbrella of expositional preaching and teaching. And what about. Well, I guess I would also add a biblical leadership, a plurality of elders. Okay, so I don't really see that on that side is that number.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah, if you have biblical understanding of leadership. Yeah. Right.

[Justin Peters]

Flesh it out. Just kind of. But plurality of elders. Yeah, specifically.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So what does the polity then look like? And is it a biblical polity, as we would call it, or the way that the church is governed, the way that the leadership is structured? Is that according to what Scripture says? So, again, all of this is flowing out from what the Bible says. The Bible is over the church. The church is not over the Bible.

[Jim Osman]

And even the preacher who preaches his expository message is one who sits under the administration of the Word, under the Word himself. He's not over the congregation and over the Word dictating. He's one who sits under the teaching of the Word so that He Himself is being conformed by it.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Let's see if we can narrow down these marks a little bit more and start streamline it a little bit. This is wretched radio.

[Narrator/Announcer]

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[Narrator/Announcer]

run the Gospel through a Focus Groove and they loved the part about love. Then came the notes Sin. Well, it sounds a little bit harsh, so they suggested we call it Personal brokenness. Hell.

[Jimmy Hicks]

Well, that's a big negative.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Maybe spiritual separation, saying Jesus is the only way. That's just intolerant. You have to make him one of many meaningful paths.

[Jimmy Hicks]

And the call to repent and believe

[Narrator/Announcer]

just raises a little bit of friction. How about like and subscribe? We thanked them for their time and kept the message.

[Jimmy Hicks]

If you're done rounding off the edges,

[Narrator/Announcer]

Witness Wednesday Here at Wretched Radio, we will help you share the real Gospel, a holy God, real sin, a just wrath, a crucified and risen Savior, and a clear call to repent and believe. And we'll do it kindly, clearly and without the sales pitch. It's Witness Wednesday on Wretched Radio. You can listen to your heart's [e-mail].

[Todd Friel]

Know your Reformers John Calvin was a French pastor and author of the Institutes of the Christian Religion. His writings and ministry made Geneva, Switzerland, a hotbed of Reformed theology. His institutes are still guiding documents for Reformed churches across the globe. This is Wretched Radio with Todd Friel.

[Gabriel Hughes]

This is Gabe Hughes filling in for Todd Friel this time around, along with Jim Osmond and Justin Peters, we are talking about the movie Marks of a Healthy Church. What does a healthy church look like? We could read any one of the letters in the New Testament that are written to churches, and you can find marks of a healthy church in there because Paul would find it necessary even to correct some troubling things that were going on in those churches. In Ephesians 4:32, he says, Be Kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you. So we could say that kind of behavior among the believers in a church would be a mark of a healthy church. So, guys, in the last segment, we ran down those popular nine marks of a healthy church. Jim had chimed in that he didn't see in there, a right handling of the ordinances. Jim, tell me what the ordinances are, and why is this so important in the health of a church?

[Jim Osman]

Well, historically, Protestant and Reformed people have understood the ordinances to be the Lord's Supper and baptism, baptism being the initiatory rite of the church and the Lord's Supper being the continuing rite of the Lord's Church. So those two things. And it's important to have those two ordinances practiced as part of a normal, healthy church environment because you are reminded at every baptism service that you have of what the gospel is, what baptism symbolizes, our union or identification with Christ. It's a means of grace, not in saving grace, but in sanctifying and edifying and encouraging grace to the congregation to see that played out in the physical realm. And then the Lord's Supper reminds us, however often we take it once a month, once a week, when we get together and participate in the Lord's Supper, we're reminded of, with a tactile reminder, really, of what the Lord has done for us in his death, burial, and resurrection for us. So both of those are important, and there should be a degree of reverence with both of those. The baptism service should have an air about it that this is serious, this is solemn, this is joyful. And rather than just being a clown show or a dunk tank or something like that, it should really be something that points to the Lord and the Lord. TABLE The Lord's Supper should be the same thing. It should be a regular, solemn, reverential reminder that involves a warning for those who might partake in the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, those who aren't believers or those believers who are living in sin. There should be a warning attached to that as well as sort of a somber confession of sin and recognition of our unworthiness to be even included in the new covenant that the blood of Christ has purchased.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So no water slide on the baptism. Okay.

[Jim Osman]

And no Coke and Ritz crackers for communion.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I think I've heard. I've heard some interesting communion stories as well. Did you see the Babylon Bee article? They had a water slide in Stephen Furtick's church going into the baptismal and Furtick's church actually had to address. No, our church doesn't actually have a water slide.

[Jim Osman]

Couldn't happen. If you're a more deserving person, they

[Justin Peters]

may as well, because that's pretty much what it's been reduced to at that church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

That's right. Well, so on that subject, let's talk about, like, reverent worship. So how important is the structure of the worship service itself to being a mark of a healthy church? Oftentimes we talk about liturgy or having a high liturgy. What is that? What does that mean when we're talking about having a liturgy in a church service?

[Justin Peters]

Well, the church service needs to be vertically oriented from the time it begins to the time it ends. And I would say, even afterwards, vertically oriented.

[Gabriel Hughes]

What do you mean by that?

[Justin Peters]

So. Well, you know, Gabe, the church is not about us. Worship is not about us. It's not about our entertainment. We are gathering as the ones who have been called out. We are gathering to worship the eternal, transcendent, thrice holy God. We're not at a picnic. We are there to worship the creator and sustainer of the universe, whose holiness burns with the white hot intensity of a trillion suns. So we should not approach worship in a lackadaisical way or a casual way. We're there to worship.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Very intentional, deliberate.

[Justin Peters]

Very intentional, deliberate. It should have an order to it. It should have a reverence to it. As I said, it's not about our entertainment. So there should be a reverence and an awe there of who it is that we are worshiping, what we have gathered together to do. So it should be vertically oriented.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we have an Easter service coming up and we are going to throw together a presentation of Michael Jackson's Thriller in the midst of this Easter service. Not reverent worship, I kid you not.

[Justin Peters]

You say that probably in jest, but many years ago, when Kathy and I first. Maybe it was actually right before we got married. But anyway, out of curiosity, we were in the Dallas Fort Worth area and we dropped in on Fellowship church in the DFW, pastored by Ed Young.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Ed Young, Jr. Yep.

[Justin Peters]

And I kid you not, their service, this particular service, their primary worship song, and I'm not making this up, was let's Get it on by Marvin Gaye.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Oh, my goodness.

[Justin Peters]

That's what they call worship in this. And when we left, Kathy was so. She said, that's a goat farm. That's not a church, that's a goat farm. And so I kind of.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I mean, I've heard bonkers stuff about that church. That's crazy. Yeah.

[Justin Peters]

I kid you not. Yes.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Wow.

[Justin Peters]

And I've been to that. I've been to that goat farm twice. There was another time where they. They actually did sing a Michael Jackson song. I mean, it's just. It's. Yeah, it's. It's that. To paraphrase Spurgeon, these kinds of churches, and they're a dime a dozen, they're all over the place. They're not feeding sheep, they're entertaining goats.

[Gabriel Hughes]

It's a circus.

[Justin Peters]

It's a circus.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So you have a lot of people there. I mean, tons of people there. It's one of the largest churches in, say, the Southern Baptist Convention. I think it was top three at one point or something like that. A lot of people, they're having a lot of fun, a lot of good fellowship there. Dancing and singing. Not a mark of a healthy church.

[Justin Peters]

If your church looks like the world, you don't have a church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Got it?

[Justin Peters]

You don't have a church as a church. The church is supposed to be different from the world.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah. So we talk about liturgy again, like intentional, deliberate worship, a structured worship service. What might that look like?

[Jim Osman]

I think it's. You have to have a call to worship. I think something to get people's attention. I'm just. Well, let me back up. I'm going to give you what we do in our church. We have a call to worship, which is the reading of a passage at the beginning of the scripture, at the beginning of the service to orient people toward the word of God. Then we have some songs that are theologically accurate, that are well sung, done with excellence, to the best of our ability, with the talent and the skills and the gifts that we have. And then there is a time in our worship service to make announcements pertaining to the body, possibly our community, ministries within our body, people who have needs, things like that. It might include an update from a missionary that we have who is visiting, who's presenting what God has been doing on the mission field that we have supported and helped fund. And it involves the central aspect of our services, the preaching of the word. It involves the proclamation of the truth. We open up the passage, we read the passage, explain the passage, and sit down. And then a closing song and usually a benediction. So everything about that, the benediction, the call to worship, the songs, and the scripture reading, everything is oriented to be focused on the message of the passage that I'm preaching. So our worship leader does a good job of taking the passage I'm preaching, looking at it, and understanding the themes that are going to be there and then structuring the entire service around it. So everything is complimentary so that we're not singing, you know, happy, happy, happy songs and then be getting up and preaching something entirely different and unrelated to everything else we've been doing. So everything has a theme, everything has a purpose, everything has a focus.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we're not entertaining goats, as Justin said. We're not even out to try to entertain unbelievers to come in so that they will stay there. That's not the purpose of worship.

[Justin Peters]

That's right.

[Gabriel Hughes]

We're supposed to be worshiping Christ our king. So this is for the saints. The church is for the church, essentially.

[Jim Osman]

We don't do anything in our church

[Gabriel Hughes]

for unbelievers except for maybe going out and evangelizing the gospel. I mean, yeah, that's outside of church.

[Jim Osman]

That's right.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yes.

[Jim Osman]

During our worship service, we. At no point ever, other than me preaching the gospel and proclaiming the gospel, am I ever addressing the unbeliever. We do everything we do for the sake of the elect who are there so that everything is geared toward the believer, toward edifying the saints. And in the midst of that, every service, I will proclaim or bring in the gospel at some point, in some way, either in describing what Christ has done or a direct appeal to the sinner. But that's because I know that there are people listening online, people watching online, and people who will listen to the podcast later, and people who are there who've been brought by friends or they're visiting for the first time who are unbelievers. You can't have a church of 400 people and not have an unbeliever there. So I know that there are unbelievers there. So I'm giving a direct appeal to them in terms of the gospel at some point in the service. But everything else that I do when I prepare my sermon, I'm not thinking in terms of how can I couch this for the unbeliever. I'm thinking in terms of I'm here to feed the sheep. I'm here to give sheep food to sheep.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we got somebody listening who. They're looking at their church. They're hearing us talk about what a healthy church looks like. They don't feel their church is all that healthy. What can they do?

[Justin Peters]

Well, Gabe, I would say a couple of things. One, you can go and you can talk to your leadership, but. And try to encourage them to be biblical. But I would say that even I'm going to have to qualify that a lot because I think 99.9999% of the time you're not going to change the church. I get emails all the time from people. Well, Justin, I realize now I'm in a bad church. I've been growing in my understanding of scripture. I realize I'm in a bad church. Should I leave and find a better church or should I stay and try to be a source of light and truth and help people understand so we can become a better church? And I say just leave. You're not going to change the church from the ground up. A congregation, generally speaking, is not going to rise to a level of spiritual maturity above that of its leadership. It's just not going to happen. So if you realize you're in a bad church, I mean a bad church

[Gabriel Hughes]

like an unbilled, like the gospel's gone and everything. Yeah. It's not even the focus.

[Justin Peters]

Then go to a find the closest good church that you can find and join yourself there. And if that's not available, then you may need to start having conversations with like minded believers. We need to start a healthy church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Amen. So the church, we are gathered together. We are under Christ and his word and the proclamation of the gospel. And this especially the gospel, is a true mark of a healthy church. This is Wretched Radio.

[Jimmy Hicks]

And it's now time for your daily Fortis News break, a production of Fortis Institute. Well, there was a major win for free speech last week. The fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a historic consent decree blocking the federal government from pressuring social media companies to censor Americans. The settlement will bar the search general and the CDC from leaning on tech platforms to suppress protected speech. It also established that slapping labels like misinformation or disinformation on speech doesn't strip it of its constitutional protection. Senator Eric Schmidt, who brought the original case as Missouri's attorney general, called it a massive win for the First Amendment. Meanwhile, in Michigan, a father is suing Grosse Pointe Public Schools after the district banned him from from campus for objecting to oversized pride flags in his child's classrooms. Gary Shane Pruitt posted a video showing the flags, noting one was bigger than any American flag in the building. And the school's response? They filed a no trespass order, posted his photo in the office like a wanted poster, and called in extra police. A school board member had previously told him to send his kid to school in tinted sunglasses. And over at Loyola University in Chicago, the student newspaper actually just apologized for calling an illegal immigrant charged with murdering a student, an illegal immigrant. They scrubbed the term and replaced it with Rogers park resident, adding no human existence is illegal. Want to try telling that to the student who's no longer alive? An OPUE survey finds 63% of Americans now say physician assisted suicide in either morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all.

[Narrator/Announcer]

I think Canada offers a preview of

[Jimmy Hicks]

exactly where this leads. Their assisted death program is on pace to hit 100,000 deaths this summer. That's more than twice the number of

[Narrator/Announcer]

Canadians killed in World War II.

[Jimmy Hicks]

And among those deaths were people whose only diagnosis was depression or poverty. Look, when dying becomes the affordable option, we need to stop pretending the conversation is still about compassion. Well, last week Massachusetts learned a basic economics tax the rich and the rich leave after voters approved a 4% surtax on incomes over a million dollars. The state lost $4.2 billion in adjusted gross income as the high earners packed up and left. In Austria, a fifth grade boy is being bullied and called a pig by classmates for being the only Christian in a school where 60% of students are Muslim. Also, a male golfer is suing the LPGA after last year's rule change barred athletes who went through male puberty from women's competition. Hundreds of female golfers had pushed for the change, citing a 30% male advantage in driving distance alone. And that wraps up today's Fortis News Break. I'm Jimmy Hicks. If you want more, you can download Fortis plus or sign up to become a Fortis insider for exclusive daily content. Both of those things can be [e-mail] and don't forget, you can subscribe to Fortis News on your favorite podcast app

[Narrator/Announcer]

in order to get these updates daily.

[Jimmy Hicks]

And until tomorrow, go serve your king.

[Todd Friel]

Important dates in Christian history 1549 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer produces the Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England. Henry VIII created the Anglican as a mirror of the Catholic Church, but the Book of Common Prayer helped to mould the Church of England into a Protestant church. This is Wretched Radio with Todd Friel.

[Gabriel Hughes]

This is Gabriel Hughes filling in for Todd Friel and I have along with me Jim Osman and Justin Peters. Pleasure once again, guys, to be along with you.

[Justin Peters]

Good to be with you.

[Gabriel Hughes]

When we're looking at the marks of a healthy church, we're especially looking for a church that is preaching the gospel. But then what specific elements should be contained within that church as well? So obviously there are a bunch of different things that we could say that we would hope to find in a church. But biblically, what are we looking to see? So there was an article that was done by Conrad and Bayway. You know, Conrad familiar with him, and Conrad is still pastor out there at Kwada Baptist Church.

[Jim Osman]

You can pronounce that, but you can't pronounce Kootenay.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I can't.

[Jim Osman]

No.

[Justin Peters]

I can't do.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I can't do Kootenay. Kootenay something church. What is your church? That's it. That's it. Kootenay something church. That's all it is. Yeah. That's where Jim's pastoring. So Conrad wrote an article for Crossway and he talked about the three main marks of a healthy church, expository preaching, which we all agree upon. So expository preaching is exposing what the text says and communicating God's word to God's people. Even the applications that we make have to flow from what the text says, not what we want it to say. So there's good expository preaching. There's also the right handling of the ordinances. We recognize the ordinances as being baptism and the Lord's table, as Christ had given them to his church. But then a third Conrad says is church discipline. What is that? What is church discipline and how does that work in a church? Justin, let me start with you.

[Jim Osman]

Sure.

[Justin Peters]

So church discipline found primarily Matthew 18, 15, 20. This is Jesus commands and prescriptions of how to bring a sinning believer to a place of genuine repentance. That is the goal of church discipline, barring that repentance. And he lines out these steps. Go to the first person first, in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. Wonderful. Don't talk about it anymore. But if he does not take one or two more with you, you confront the person again. If he listens to you, wonderful. You have won your brother. Don't talk about it anymore. It's overdone with. But if he doesn't listen, then you tell it to the church. And then the church has a season to go and approach this person and beg that person to repent this sinning, professing brother or sister to repent. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, Jesus says, let him be to you as a gentile or a tax collector. In other words, you treat him as an outsider because that is what he is. He or she has proven himself or herself to be a false professor of Christ. This is a very bird's eye view, but Gabe, this is something that very, very few churches actually do. And yet this is the Very first command that Jesus gives to his church. Yeah, the first command he gives to his church is church discipline. And yet hardly any churches do this. And so I tell people a lot. Every evangelical church will claim to believe that the Bible is the inspired, authoritative word of God. They claim to preach it. But if you want to get an idea of how seriously a church actually takes the word of God, ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew 18? Because it's not easy, it's not a comfortable thing to do, but it is a command from Christ to his church, and it bears good fruit when it is necessary to do. And from time to time, it will come up in the life of pretty much every church.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So out of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the word church is only mentioned twice. And it's in Matthew 16 where Jesus says, I will build my church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. And what you just mentioned about Matthew 18 regarding church discipline, it's the only two places that that word ekklesia, which we translate into church, appears in all four gospels. So pretty important instructions God is giving to the church regarding discipline. Are there any other passages that talk about church discipline? Jim?

[Jim Osman]

First Corinthians, Chapter 5. Paul encourages the Corinthian church to deal with the sinning member in that body there, a man who was. Who was having relations with his stepmother. And that was a sin that was not even, I mean, even discouraged among pagans. And yet it was happening inside of the church. And so Paul says that you have failed and that you haven't dealt with this sin. Titus 3 talks about getting rid of the divisive person. That passage, the divisive person in your midst.

[Gabriel Hughes]

That's right.

[Jim Osman]

Romans talks about Mark and avoid. You need to deal with different levels of sin, different types of sin in slightly different ways. As a church, if you have an immediate threat of somebody in your midst who's being divisive or immoral, it needs to be dealt with quickly. If you have somebody who's, you know, sinning in a different way, that needs to be maybe discipled or brought along, it might take a little bit more of a slower approach.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So who was it Hymanaeus and Alexander that Paul had put out of the church because they were preaching that the resurrection had already happened, that's false doctrine. There you go. There you have.

[Jim Osman]

You don't take eight months to deal with something like that. It's one and done.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Get them out. So with regards to handling even false teachers, there's probably another method that we would take. You mentioned Titus chapter three. So you warn a divisive person once, you warn them a second time, and after that have nothing to do with them. Knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self condemned, as said there in Titus 3. Now all this is flowing out of the directive that Christ gives to his church to be disciplined. What's the point? Point then, like say if we're confronting somebody who's in sin and that person never actually repents, in fact, what ends up happening probably more often than not is that person ends up leaving. Did church discipline fail in that instance?

[Jim Osman]

No, it accomplished one goal, which is the purification of the church. That person is no longer there.

[Gabriel Hughes]

And that's the goal of church discipline.

[Jim Osman]

That's one of them to you want a pure church, Christ wants a pure church. Another goal is restoration. So I think in that process, the person says, look, I'm not going to repent. I don't have anything to repent for. And they turn around and walk away. They have demonstrated that they themselves are.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Are, are.

[Jim Osman]

We can assume then that this, this person is an unbeliever.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Right.

[Jim Osman]

Because this process, that that Spirit of God has not brought repentance to that person, we ought to assume that in putting them out that we are going to handle this person and think of this person as an impenitent unbeliever and not as just simply a misguided believer.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Matthew 18. Jesus says, Treat them as a. As a tax collector.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Or a pagan, essentially.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So somebody would still need the gospel to be convicted of sin.

[Justin Peters]

Right.

[Gabriel Hughes]

To come back in before they can come back into fellowship with the body.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah. If the person does not repent, after you follow these steps all the way through step four, you give this person a season where the church body is made aware. And by the way, when Jesus says, tell it to the church, ask yourself, when's the last time I've seen this done at my church? Has a pastor ever gotten up in front of the entire gathered congregation on a Sunday morning and called this person out by name? And you don't have to go on all the gory details, but generally what this sin is, and if you think, wow, I've never even seen this done before, then you need to seriously consider finding another church. But if all of these steps are followed and the person does not repent, then that person has proven himself to be an unbeliever. Because a genuine Christian can be in serious sin, serious sin for a season. But once these steps are followed if that person is truly a believer, he or she will repent. This is what church discipline is designed to do. The goal is to bring a sinning believer to a place of genuine repentance. That's the goal. But if that doesn't happen, then you realize you're dealing with a false convert. That person is to be put out of the church. And now if you know this person, there's no more going over for dinner on Friday night. There's no more going to the coffee shop. Hey, how's the family doing? Are the fish biting? You don't have any more fellowship with this person at all. That person is cut off and from the only interaction that we should have as believers with a person who has been put through all these steps and still remains unrepentant. That person is now strictly an evangelistic opportunity.

[Jim Osman]

You can't pretend to have fellowship with them.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Right?

[Justin Peters]

You can't pretend to have fellowship with that person. That person is strictly an evangelistic prospect. Any interaction is sharing the gospel with that person.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we see in church discipline that the church, we, as saints, brothers and sisters in the Lord, actually have a responsibility to each other, even especially with the instructions that Christ gives to the church. In Matthew 18, if you see a brother in sin, confront him between the two of you alone. And if he repents, then you've won your brother. So any other place that we might see an instruction about admonishing or correcting or rebuking or something like that, that's given to anybody in the church. Colossians 3:16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you, richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom. Admonishing means to correct with goodwill, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. So that's what we would hope the church would be. But if somebody needs correction, then we need to identify that sin and we need to call it out. But do so in a loving manner with the intention of bringing that person back to the path of righteousness, not to show ourselves. Hey, I know better than you. I'm doing the right thing. You're doing the wrong thing. Not to lord ourselves over somebody else, but because we care for the body of Christ and we desire that his body would be holy.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah. And it's important to remember that there would be seasons in churches where you might not need to practice church discipline. So it's not like you should always have a discipline process going on. There have been seasons in our church where we spent six, seven, eight years and we haven't exercised church discipline not because we're unwilling to or we don't do it or we don't believe in it, but just because there's been no issues that have come up that need to be addressed in that way to that extent. Then there. In the last three years, there's been no less than four instances in our church where we have gone through the entire process.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Well, when it comes to looking for a church that's healthy, you still want to be looking for a church that has a biblical understanding of what church

[Justin Peters]

discipline is and is willing to use it.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah. Let's talk about who then needs to administer that discipline. Coming up here in just a moment. This is Wretched Radio.

[Narrator/Announcer]

Hey, thanks for listening to Wretched Radio today. Seriously, I mean it. Thank you so much for being a part of what we do here at Fortis Institute. Not just with Wretched Radio, but with all of our other content that we're producing on a daily basis. Whatever keeps you coming back and showing up, we don't take that lightly. There is a reality about all of this, and that's that producing daily radio like Wretched takes resources. It takes studio time, equipment, staff, distribution, and it all adds up. And the reason that we are able to continue doing this at the level that we've been doing it is because of our gospel partners, men and women just like you, who have linked arms with us and give to this ministry so that we can stay on the air and reach more people in more places all over the world. And so if our ministry has ever been a source of encouragement for you, would you consider joining us as an ongoing monthly gospel partner? You can get all of the answers to all of the questions that you likely [e-mail] right now. Wretched Amazing Grace Amazing Gospel 369 million. That's how many people are a part of the new Apostolic Reformation movement. And if you've never heard of it, that's part of the problem. Maybe you have heard of Jesus culture. Maybe your teenager listens to their worship music. Maybe your church sings their songs on Sunday morning, but you don't know what they actually teach and where it leads. Drunk in the Spirit pulls back the curtain on one of the most destructive forces in Christianity today. Who are these people? What do they believe? And why should it matter to your family and your local church? This isn't fear mongering. It's education. Because you can't guard against something you don't recognize. And this movement has tentacles in places you wouldn't expect if you care about protecting your family and your church from false teaching. That sounds Christ centered, but it's not. This is essential. Drunk in the Spirit it is streaming now for free on Fortis Plus. Download the app on your smartphone, on your smart TV or just simply go to fortisplus.org you know that moment at 3am when you you can't sleep. Everything is quiet and you're alone with

[Jimmy Hicks]

the truth about who you really are

[Narrator/Announcer]

versus who everyone thinks you are. Your wife trusts you, your kids look up to you. The guys at church think you've got it all together. But you know better. You know the secret battles, the deleted history, the promises you keep breaking to yourself and to God. Here's what took me way too long to figure out. You can't fix a spiritual problem with human solutions. Accountability is all Problems won't change your heart. White knuckling it through another week won't either. And Todd Friel is getting to the heart of this issue with his resource Play the Man. It doesn't give you another list of rules. It shows you how Christ actually changes man from the inside out, how he replaces the wanting, not just the doing, the man your family deserves. That guy is possible, but not through your own strength. It's going to be through the strength of Christ working through you. Play the Man. It's available now as an E, an audiobook and a video series [e-mail] because real men know when they need real help.

[Todd Friel]

Books of the Bible First, Timothy contains Paul's instructions to his protege for church leadership. Paul exhorts Timothy to confront and correct false teachers and to preserve sound doctrine through church structure and preaching of the Word. The church has a responsibility to preserve and maintain the truth given by God in His Word. This is Wretched Radio with Todd Friel.

[Gabriel Hughes]

This is Gabriel Hughes filling in for Todd Friel. Todd, thank you for letting me sit in your seat. It's a little bit lower than I expected because I think Todd's a freakishly tall guy.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah, he is.

[Gabriel Hughes]

You just stood right up.

[Jim Osman]

Yeah, I've got to stand up.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Jim's out of the chair now.

[Justin Peters]

Speaking ex cathedra

[Gabriel Hughes]

out of the chair of St. Jim. All right, we've been talking about church discipline. You've got sin in your church that needs to be dealt with. All of this is under the obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Who is it that administers church discipline now when it comes to the instruction we can find in Matthew 18:15, Jesus says, if your brother is in sin, you go and correct your brother just between the two of you, and if he listens to you, then you've won your brother. But if he doesn't listen to you, bring one or two others along. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Who are these one or two others that are coming along?

[Jim Osman]

They are impartial witnesses. They are there to observe what the confrontation that's taking place and to observe what's being said. And the spirit of both. It may be witnesses to the sin itself. They don't have to be impartial in the sense that they don't know this person, but just somebody who can come alongside and be a part of this process to agree with the person who is doing the confronting that. Yes, if this is an issue, this needs to be handled, and this is being done biblically.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Now, are you just grabbing two people that agree with you? See, these two people agree with me that you're in sin. What is the role of these two witnesses that come alongside?

[Justin Peters]

Well, to verify that the sin has indeed occurred and to plead with that person to repent. And I think the elders of the church need to be brought in early on in this process may not start with an elder. You know, the step one, get the person in private. It may not start with an elder. In fact, most of the time it won't. But then soon after, the elders need to be brought in to hear the story, hear what's going on, hear the allegation, see if there's a defense and establish what actually happened and if the sin is ongoing and then proceed.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Right. So I've had somebody in my church come up to me and say, hey, did you hear about what so and so was doing? I saw them doing this. They've said to me, you need to do something about this. Well, my response was, I didn't see them do that. You did. So According to Matthew 18:15, specifically the wording there is, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault. But you are the witness to it. So is it your responsibility, first of all to be the one to confront the one that you observed in sin?

[Jim Osman]

Yeah, I think it is.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah. Yes.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So then you mentioned the elders getting involved. When do they get involved in that process? What if you don't have elders and it's just a single pastor at your church?

[Jim Osman]

Yeah. After you have confronted the person who sinned against you, if they're impenitent, then you bring somebody else alongside to confront again. And I think the goal of every step of this church discipline process is to bring ever increasing sizes, circles of people into this conversation, into this process. So the two or three do not necessarily have to be somebody who has witnessed the sin against you. If I punch you in the nose right now, you and I are alone. I punch you in the nose. I don't get away with that just because I did it when nobody was around.

[Gabriel Hughes]

I hope Justin would be on my side.

[Jim Osman]

But I mean, if you come to me and you say, hey, what you did was sinful and wrong and okay, I don't hear you, you go and grab a couple other people and say, hey, this person punched me in the nose. I need to confront this person for this. You bring them in. They may not have been witnesses to this sin, but they're certainly going to be witnesses to our interaction. Your allegations, my defense of it, or my protestation that I'm not doing this. They're going to witness that and try to adjudicate or trying to bring resolution there, confronting sin where it's necessary, hopefully trying to move that person toward repentance and reconciliation and resolve. And if they can't do that, then you take it to the entire church. But before that can happen, the elders have to be brought in. We just don't have a time in our service where somebody steps up and say, you know, Gabe punched me in the nose. Nobody was there. I brought Mark and Bob along with me, and they didn't see it either. But I'm here to announce that we're putting Gabe out. Well, that doesn't happen apart from the elders of the church and the leadership of the church. So they do have to be brought into the process, at the very least for that final stage.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So where verse 17 says, if he refuses to listen to them, he's not listening to the two or three witnesses, then you tell it to the church. So how do we define church there? Is it just the elders of the church or we're taking it before the entire body? Or what does that look like, taking

[Justin Peters]

it before the entire body? The church, the ecclesia, the ones who have been called out. And that's more than just the elders. That's the congregation. So, yeah, that's when the elder, one of the pastor, the elder, interchangeable terms there. But gets up on a Sunday morning with the gathered saints and says, you know, John Doe has been engaging in this particular sin. This is the sin again, you don't have to go into all the gory details, but this is, generally speaking, this is what the sin is he's been called to repentance. These steps have been followed. He remains unrepentant. And so we're making you, the entire body, aware of it. So that as you come into contact with John Doe, if you know him, email him. If you bump into him at the grocery store, call John Doe to repent of his sin, Plead with him to repent of his sin so that he can be restored to a right relationship with the body. And if John Doe still does not heed the church after a season, you know, whatever, the Bible doesn't say exactly how long that season is. But if that season is expired and he still is not responding to the pleas of the members of the local body, then you treat him as an outsider. He's proven himself to be a false convert, and now he's an evangelistic prospect, and that's it.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So them treating him as a Gentile and a tax collector, then as verse 17 goes on to say, now in verse 18, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. So do we have authority to be able to say, well, this guy's not an unbeliever, he's not going to heaven? Is that the point?

[Jim Osman]

Yeah. That passage has nothing to do with binding Satan so that he doesn't have any influence on you or your geographical location. That passage has everything to do with. You are declaring on earth what God has already decreed in heaven. In other words, you're just simply announcing, this is the decree. We are putting this person out. We have gone through this process that's given to us by the Lord. So we're going to put this person out, and you're simply binding or binding prohibiting that on earth which heaven has already prohibited.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we just, as a church, we just can't give verification any longer to whether this person is actually walking in the faith.

[Justin Peters]

Right? That's right. And the tense there, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. I think that's a proper Greek tense there. And so in other words, what that's saying is whatever action you take, whether the person repents and is restored to a right relationship with the body. And again, that's what we're hoping and praying for. Or the person does not repent and he's put outside of the church, whatever action you take, you can know with 100% certainty that heaven agrees with you. How can we know that? Because we followed the steps of church discipline. We've done it Jesus way.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So Jesus goes on to say verse 19. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. Is that a passage about our.

[Jim Osman]

About a Wednesday night prayer meeting?

[Gabriel Hughes]

Okay, that's not about the prayer meeting.

[Justin Peters]

Yeah, I mean, I heard that all the time as a kid growing up in Southern Baptist Church, we'd have Wednesday night prayer meeting. I cannot tell you how many times I heard, well, we know that Jesus is here with us because we're two or three are gathered together. He's there in their midst and we have more than two or three. And I can remember, I would always wonder, what about if I'm by myself.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Yeah, right. You know, Jesus isn't with you anymore.

[Justin Peters]

Is Jesus not with me then?

[Jim Osman]

And that should be taken as encouragement to pastors and elders to do the right and the church to do the right thing.

[Gabriel Hughes]

Amen.

[Jim Osman]

When we do this, we have the promise from the Lord that He is in the midst of his church and that this is what heaven has decreed. So in a recent issue that we dealt with in our church, we just had to, as elders, we had to really remind ourselves that this is a difficult thing. This is a very difficult thing. And some people have warned us not to do this, but God has called us to do this and we have to do it to be obedient. And so we have the confidence that whatever it is that we are doing here, Christ is in his church and we are doing this for his sake. We have to be obedient to the Lord in this, knowing that he will bless this church as a result of this action.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So we've had to discipline somebody, we've had to put them out of the church. But Christ is with us in the midst of that. In what sense? In what sense is Christ with us when we have to discipline somebody out of the church?

[Jim Osman]

I think he's with us in his blessing. His blessing resides upon the church that does this faithfully and well.

[Gabriel Hughes]

So it's not like, hey, you guys did this, it's on you, right?

[Jim Osman]

And now you're going to give an account to it. Now that's not to say that every church discipline that has ever been done by everybody in the history, 2000 year history of the church has been perfect and biblical and that Christ blessed it, because I think that there obviously have been situations where the wrong People were disciplined or it was done poorly, the

[Gabriel Hughes]

details weren't known, like they needed to be known, that sort of thing.

[Jim Osman]

Or, you know, the pastor wants to get rid of that one deacon and who's always criticizing his preaching. And so he just sabotaged it. Yeah. So, you know, he wants to get him out of the church. And that other family doesn't give much. He needs to get them out. And the other family that's critical of that, get them out. That's a perversion of what we're talking about. That's not biblical church discipline. But when it is done rightly and following Scripture and we're doing it biblically, we have the confidence that Christ is in that event and that His Spirit is using that in the lives of his people in an appropriate way, that he is going to purify his church, he's going to bless the preaching of his word there, that he is going to use this process to accomplish his purposes. And it might be to simply put the unbeliever out so that he's no longer there, like an Aiken in the camp, like leaven in a loaf of bread, polluting everything else that goes on. Instead, he's put out so that he can have no more influence there and that the name of Christ himself can be exalted because of that local body. That church is no longer known as the place where that one guy attends. And I know what that guy does when he's not at church. Instead, that that church is now known as a place that honors the Lord. And they're interested in holiness and purity and righteousness. And Christ is there blessing his people in the midst of that, giving them strength, working through the elders to accomplish through them what he would do if Christ himself were present in that body. If he were an elder in this church, here's what he would do. In that sense, he is present.

[Gabriel Hughes]

First Corinthians is where we find passages concerning church discipline as we talked about, especially in chapter five. It's at the end of that letter, verse 22, where Paul says, if anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord. Come. May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen. Now go and serve your King.