Take your Bibles in turn with me to Galatians chapter six, Galatians chapter six this morning as we continue. Thank you, Matt, for that scripture reading this morning. That was a blessing to my soul. I think many times we forget that with the Lord, it is not difficult to save with few any more than with many. He is, as we sang this morning, truly the Almighty. And perhaps even in this, it's interesting when you read the scripture that it was even in the bleakest of days in Israel where God would break forth in great power. I was thinking of that this week. I'm reading through the Bible this year. I don't always do that, but I am doing it this year and was reading in Psalm 11 where it says if the foundations are destroyed, what are the righteous to do? And the very next verse is the Lord is in the heavens. He sits upon his throne. And we sang that this morning. Thank you for that worship. We're looking at Galatians chapter six. Last week, we looked at an overview of verses one to ten. Today we are looking at verses 1 and 2. There's really going to be so much that we can say about this subject because really this subject is the message of the entire Bible. The restoration of the sinner. It's truly the message of the whole Bible. It brings glory to Jesus Christ and God is on His throne and God is glorified by bringing forth much fruit through the believer. and the restoration of the sinner to himself. But there is much pertinence with our theme this morning when we think of the sanctity of human life. And we think just in those statistics of how many women in our land and around the world bear the burden of guilt from this practice that has really been marketed to us. And so we need to be agents of restoration to all. no matter what the case would be. Galatians 6, verses 1 and 2 says, Brethren, even if any man is overtaken in any trespass or fault, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness or meekness, one of the fruits of the Spirit that we've already studied, as you consider yourself, lest you should also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens. and so fulfill the law of Christ. Will you join me in word prayer? Father, we come before your Word. Father, these are very important verses to us. Not only when we find ourselves in need of restoration, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But Father, especially as we think as believers about how to restore Those in our church or those in our community who may not even know you, and yet they are caught, they are trapped in trespass. How that, Father, we can be a means of your grace to bring them to wholeness and restoration. Father, we pray that Your Spirit would meet with us this morning, that He would minister to us, that these would not just be words on a page, they would not just be a sermon we tuck away in the file cabinet of our mind, but that, Father, these would be truths that would truly transform us. Spirit, we are dependent upon You. Come in Your power in our midst, we pray, for Your glory. Amen. I read an interesting article in the Jackson Hole Daily. I cut it out a few weeks ago. It was an article that surrounded an interview. Maybe you read the article that was done. It was an interview between David Letterman and Oprah Winfrey. Now, neither of them are my greatest heroes in life. Nevertheless, it was an interesting article. The article was about the events that happened in the Letterman show several years ago, I think it was a couple years ago, maybe not even a couple years ago, in which the news began to leak out about all the immoral liaisons that were going on between David Letterman and members of his crew, of his staff. He was embarrassed, he was humiliated by the revelations, even though probably to us in many ways, due to the nature of the programming, wouldn't seem like that much of a surprise. Nevertheless, he was embarrassed and he was ashamed. In the interview, he had some very intriguing comments to make about how he was trying to clean up the mess. He said this in the interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said, for a long time, I thought I was a decent guy. But yet, thinking I was a decent guy, I was still capable of behavior that was not coincidental to leading a decent life. That's what I'm working on, he said. I want to be a person. I want to be the person that I believed I was. And then he makes a statement. I want to be a good person. I want to be a good person. Cleaning up the mess. You know, at times in our lives, we make a mess of things, don't we? Have you ever been there, done that one? I was remembering in my own life, I was working up in Cody at Mooncrest Ranch. We were invited to a Christmas dinner and it was at a fancy restaurant and we were served prime rib and all the guys that worked for the ranch were at the restaurant and we were all gathered around the table enjoying a wonderful meal. And I was kind of sitting on the corner of the table because it was kind of crowded in the restaurant. And here I had my plate and I had my son. Tyler was on my lap. He was only a baby at the time. That's hard to believe. He was just a baby at the time. And so I was kind of juggling all these things. And somehow in the midst of it all, I put my elbow right in the middle of my plate and flipped my dinner plate onto the floor. I was embarrassed, humiliated. I was embarrassed for my dear wife. What was I to do? How was I to clean up the mess? How do we clean up the mess? How do we clean up our mess? I want us to remember the message last week as we looked at an overview of these verses and we were reminding ourselves the crux of the commission of the Christian or of the church is to help people clean up their mess. That is what the church is all about. You know, the church is not just a bunch of programs that we put together in a weekly planner. The church is not just fancy facilities, is it? It's not cathedrals. It's not even megachurches. The church is not high-dollar heating systems and state-of-the-art stage lighting. Now, all of those things can be good and all of those things can help, but they can also detract. They can also hinder us sometimes. They can divert our attention from what is our true mission. What is our true mission? It is so easy for us to become distracted and to just simply manage people. But that is not our mission. Our mission is to help people clean up the mess. To deal with sin. It's a lot like running a spiritual ER, isn't it? I've never worked in an ER. Probably some of you have. I'm sure it's dirty. I'm sure at times it's grimy and bloody. And if you're afraid of blood, it's not a place to be. So too is ministry. So too is ministry. You better not be afraid of blood. Because it's ugly. I want us to go back in our mind to a time in Israel's history for a minute when Israel was guilty of great idolatry and God was promising judgment to them through the prophet Jeremiah. And God says something to the shepherds of Israel that is very important to us. In fact, God says it to them twice. In Jeremiah chapter 6 and in Jeremiah chapter 8, and I want you to notice this verse, God says this to them, they have healed the hurt of my people superficially, saying, peace, peace, when there is no peace. I want us to think about that. They have healed the hurt of my people superficially. How much flippancy is there in our presentation of the gospel in seeking to heal the hurt of broken people? And we just kind of make it like we're a shoe salesman for Jesus. And we're going to go out and make the deal, and we're going to close the contract, and we're going to put another notch in our gun, and there's a flippancy, and there's a superficiality in how we do that thing, and there should be a precision. If I go to a doctor, I want him to be exact with that knife. I want him to know how to use it. My friend, if you're going to go and minister to people and help people with the sword of the Spirit, you need to know how to wield it. There should be a precision. Spiritual work must not be done superficially. It should be the most fearful thing for us, even to teach cubbies. And all the way up, it should be done with exactness and with precision, wielding the scalpel of the spirit, the sword of the spirit. which pairs away the disease of the soul and heals the hurt by lancing the wound and draining the infection. Now, let's go to the text. Go with me to Galatians chapter 6. Let's consider some things that are in these verses. We're going to look at the words themselves, then we're going to illustrate them, and then we'll make some application, and then we'll summarize and close. The first thing that we see here is there is a man who is caught in a trespass. There is a man who is caught in a trespass. That is obviously just the Holy Spirit speaking to all humanity. It doesn't have to be a male. It can be anyone within mankind, man or woman or child. A person is caught in a trespass. Notice that there are two words that are important to us. In the first case, it is any man. That is an indefinite article, and in my Bible it just says a man, but it could be as easily translated with the word any man. This would go to anyone. This isn't just for Americans. This isn't just for the Jews. This is for anyone. And, it is any trespass. And I want to remind us of that because there is a huge distinction here between the Old Testament, where in the Old Testament there were certain trespasses in the list we studied in Galatians chapter 5, the works of the flesh, that if you worshiped an idol, you went out and got stoned. There was no restoration. Your life was forfeit. You did that in Israel. And yet He is telling us here that if there is any man who is caught in any trespass, those who are spiritual are to work to restore him. There is no sin beyond the pale of God's forgiveness. There is no hole that is too deep that God's grace is not deeper still. That is the force of this. Any trespass, I don't care what it is, that's running through your mind, that you say, I know God can forgive someone else, but for me, I'm different because of this. My friend, you're wrong. Satan is deceiving you. There is no hole that is too deep that God cannot bring you forth. He can forgive of any sin, of any trespass. Now, notice the word overtaken. The word overtaken is an interesting word because it is a passive verb. It's not an active verb. He does not actively catch himself. He is passively caught. Now, let's just think about that for a minute because it is true that most times we are not passive in sin, are we? We're the active agent. We do it. You know, we go and do it. So it's not that he's saying here that we're just like helplessly enmeshed in a life that just, you know, we're inexorably drawn because of our genes, there's nothing we can do, we're just a passive agent. What he's really getting at here, when we look at this word passive he has overtaken, is although we many times are active in our sin, we are always unwilling participants in the consequences. Aren't we? Think of Samson. Oh, he liked to go to Philistia, and he sure liked Delilah, but he didn't like grinding at the mill with his eyes plucked out. You see, we are actively engaged in sin, and yet passively we become trapped in it, and we don't like the consequences. And he says, when you see a man who is trapped in the mill of grinding because of his sin, we are to go to that man and we are to restore him. It's true, as the old saying goes, the chains of our sin are too light to feel until they are too strong to break. I'm reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan, the story that Jesus told where a man is overtaken by robbers. Same concept here. He is overtaken by robbers and he is beat up. Everything is stripped from him and everything is stolen from him. And he is left to die along the road. And finally, you know the story, a Levite comes by. He goes by on the other side. So does a priest. Finally, here comes a Samaritan. He goes to him where he is. He pours in the wine, which was disinfected in the ancient world because of the alcohol. It is what they would use to disinfect wounds. So he pours in the wine and then he rubs in the oil to speed the healing. He puts him on his own animal. He takes him to the inn. He pays the innkeeper that the man may convalesce. And so he goes to him where he is and he works to his restoration. But this is a man who has been overtaken in his sin. Now consider also, he says, you who are spiritual. We already dealt with this a little bit last week because we reminded us he is not here talking about just a special class of Christians. You can't just sit out there and say, Matt, that's why we pay you the big bucks. You can't say that. You can't say, well, that's why we hire a deacon board. That's not what he's getting at here. He's not talking about elders. He's not talking about deacons. If he was, he would have used those terms. He says, you who are spiritual. Now, let's go back in our thinking to the last chapter where he talked about the flesh and the spirit. And all believers are to walk in the spirit, aren't they? If you're led by the spirit, then you're a believer. You're filled with the spirit. You're walking in the spirit. This is a directive, a command to all believers. It is not a special class of Christian. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 really develops that, where Paul uses this exact term to speak of the contrast between the natural man who does not receive the things of the Spirit of God and the spiritual man who judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no man. And that's in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. We won't take the time to go there. So let's just really banish from our mind the concept that this is someone else's job. If you're in this room and you're a believer and you're breathing, this is the work that God has called us to. You have kids. Don't bring them to me to spank them. That's your job. And that is the work of restoration, isn't it? Do you spank them just to punish them and to hurt them? No, you punish them for what reason? To correct them, to get them back on the road, to restore them. So let's go on a little bit thinking we're to do so with gentleness, especially kids when we run the rod, right? You were all saying that in your mind when we're talking about spanking. We are to do so with gentleness, considering ourselves, lest we would also be tempted. Let's just look at some other verses in the scripture that talks about these concepts. Second Timothy, chapter two, verse 23. God tells us the servant of the Lord must not quarrel. But he must be gentle to everyone. He must be able to teach. He must be patient in humility. He must correct those who are in opposition. And then he explains who those are who are in opposition. They are those who are taken captive by Satan to do his will. And the servant of the Lord. must be gentle with them. Consider with me also in 2 Corinthians 2, verse 7, Paul is talking about a man who has been placed under church discipline because of a sin. And that man has been repentant. And yet the church is holding him at arm's length. And Paul says to the Christians, that's wrong. He says, don't hold that man at arm's length. Rather, forgive that man and comfort him, lest perhaps such a one would be swallowed up. with too much sorrow. Notice with me also in Hebrews chapter 5, there's a passage that we can just use to illustrate the concept. In Hebrews chapter 5, verse 1 to 4, it talks about every high priest is taken from among men. And the reason he is taken from among men is because he can have compassion on the ignorant, even on those who go astray. And the reason is he himself is subject to weakness. And so because of these concepts, we can think of what Paul is saying in Galatians chapter 6, that we are to deal with people in gentleness. Now, notice with me the means of restoration. What is the means of restoration? We know immediately that is the gospel of Jesus Christ, isn't it? It's what this whole book is about. But in another sense, it's really verse 2. When the Apostle Paul says to us here by the Holy Spirit, bear one another's burdens. And by doing so, fulfill the law of Christ. Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Burdens, in this context, are sins. They are trespasses. And the church is to bear them with others. It's interesting, there's a great contrast in these verses between verse 5 and verse 2. In verse 5 we're going to talk about responsibility, personal responsibility. For each one shall bear his own load. Each one needs to carry his own weight. That word load is an interesting word. It's a Greek word which speaks of a Roman soldier's day pack. That's all it is. It's a day pack that every Roman soldier was forced to carry. There were certain things that were in it. Every Roman soldier carried some horseshoes. So when he got to battle, and somebody's horse threw a shoe, he could give one of the shoes he was carrying to someone else. But every Roman soldier had certain things that he would carry in his pack. That was his responsibility. Every time the army moved, he picked up his load. You know, we should all carry our own weight in the body of Christ. But, When there is a crushing load, a burden beyond the ability for one person to bear, those that are in the body of Christ are to come alongside Him and to bear it for Him. And this is the contrast, the crushing weight. When we think in this context, we are talking about the crushing weight of guilt and despair. We are talking about shame, the consequences of brokenness. Think with me of Christ. As he is going outside of the city of Jerusalem and he is bearing the cross. Not for any sin of his own. And yet it is bearing him down. And Simon comes and takes it and carries it forth. This is exactly the picture that we see here. These burdens are a picture of sin. This even comes out in the Old Testament. When in 2 Chronicles 6.29, Solomon says, whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by any individual or by all your people corporately, when each one knows his own burden, you know what it is in your life. That burden you bear that maybe no one else knows. Each one knows his own burden and the grief of his own heart. And you're saying in your heart, why in the world was I willing to do that? And you spread out your hands toward his temple and you pray to God. He says, Father in heaven, hear and Father, forgive. This is a reminder to me of John Bunyan's story, The Pilgrim's Progress. The pilgrim is leaving the city of destruction. He is on his way to the celestial city. He has been pointed to Calvary by the evangelist. He arrives at Calvary's hill. His burden falls from off his shoulders, and it rolls away, and it is gone, and it is swallowed in the tomb. And the pilgrim goes on his way and he's singing these words. Thus far did I come, loathed with my sin, nor could I ease the grief that I was in, till I came hither. What a place is this? Must here be the beginning of my bliss? Must here the burden fall from off my back? Blessed cross. And so the weight falls from his back and it rolls away. You know, the world would bind the burden of men's sins to them. It is only the cross of Calvary that can cut that cord. And so we read in Isaiah 53, verse 4, He has borne our grief and He has carried our sorrow. Now, this gives us the sense of the text. Let's consider some biblical illustrations. We could think of many in the Scripture how God is restoring people. Think with me of Jacob. He's on his way going back to meet Esau. It's payday now. And he's wrestling in the mud of the river Jabbok with God, the angel, the Lord. And he changes his name. He says, you are no longer Jacob, deceiver. You are Israel, prince with God. And yet Jacob, for the rest of his life, limps on his leg. Think of David. David needed a Nathan, didn't he? needed a Nathan. Who would come to him and help restore him. Let's think of the life and ministry of Jesus as a starting point or a great example. Let's consider some of the messianic prophecies that tell us how He would do and what He would do when He came. Notice with me, first of all, in Isaiah chapter 61, verse 1 and 2. You don't have to go there, just listen. This is a promise of the Messiah. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted. to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prisons to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Consider with me Isaiah 42, verse 1-3, where we are told, Behold my servant, the one that I uphold, my elect one, in whom my soul delights. I have put my spirit upon him. He will not cry out nor raise his voice. A bruised reed he will not break. and does smoking flax, he will not quench." That's a theme verse for Chuck Colson's ministry in the prisons of our country. A bruised reed, he will not break. Consider with me Isaiah chapter 50, verse 4. This is a great verse. I've been praying this prayer for myself. The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word To him that is weary, he awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the learned. What a promise that is. Lord, give to us the ability, the tongue of the learned, that we would know how to speak a word to him that is weary. There are many people in your life that are weary because of sin. Do you have a word for him? Consider gospel illustrations, consider the gospel, the Samaritan woman in John chapter four. Go get your husband. Consider the woman taken in adultery. When Jesus restores her, go and leave your life of sin. Consider the rich young ruler when Jesus says, sell your positions, possessions and give them to the poor. Consider Peter. After denying the Lord and the cock is crowed, he has gone out and he is wet bitterly. And Jesus finds him after the resurrection and he walks the solitary beach in Galilee and he says to Peter, do you love me more than these? Do you love me more than these? And he restores him to himself. What is the goal of restoration? Let's just think about that for a minute. The goal of restoration. Is fellowship. Is fellowship not only in the body of Christ, but with God. Because what comes between fellowship? Sin. Every time. Every time. And so when sin has entered in and fellowship is broken, there needs to be restoration. Psalm 51 is a great study in that. Now, let's consider restoration is a work of God's spirit. Restoration is a work of God's Spirit. We are to be involved in it, but ultimately the work is God's. Salvation is of the Lord. This restoration always proceeds along three lines. I'm going to develop them for you really quickly this morning. The first one, this is what happens. There is a sense of sin in the heart of the person. We're going our way, we're doing things, we're living without any regard to the law of God. And all of a sudden, the Spirit of God puts within our heart a sense of sin. This is the awakening. Always from this, something goes on, and that is what we would call sorrow for sin. This is Peter going out and weeping bitterly. This is a Holy Spirit-worked sorrow. Not just at the consequences of sin, but it is in a deeper way, it is a sorrow that we have fallen short of the glory of God. It is the Jews of Peter's day, on the day of Pentecost, when they are confronted with the reality that they have killed their Messiah, and they say to Peter, men and brethren, what do we do? Every time when there is an awakening by God, these things happen. It's what we were talking about last week when Robert Moffat was working in the wilds of Africa in the early 1800s and nothing was happening. He was preaching the gospel and they seemed like stone. And one day they got up and there were people in the village sitting around weeping because all of a sudden they recognized we have sinned. This is the preaching of George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards, when men would stand and they would preach sermons like sinners in the hand of a mighty God. And people would be in the crowd and he would just be reading this manuscript and people would be sitting there and they would be weeping and they would be crying and they would fall on their knees and they would crawl to the back. They would not know what to do. And no one produced it. It was not hysteria. It was not entertainment. It was the spirit of God breaking hearts. And no one could stay his hand. It was a move of God. This is David Brainerd preaching to the early American Indians, and he would go into their tribes and he would preach to them. And once again, just like in Africa, these Indian tribes and these chiefs would be sitting in their huts and they would be weeping. What do we do? This is what always happens. Restoration is not just going and putting your arm around someone else and saying, come on back into church. We're just good old buddies. Let's get along. Restoration is the breaking of the heart before the throne of an almighty God. Because of a sense of sin, personal sin, and yet the heart of us as Americans is like flint. We don't even see it. Oh, that God would send his hand. And then there's supplication. This is that spirit of grace and supplication we talked about on New Year's Sunday from the book of Zechariah. It is a spirit of grace and supplication when we look on him whom we have pierced and we weep for him. And what we are to do as Christians is the church is to recognize this work in the hearts of people and we are to come alongside them and we are to point them to Jesus. We are not to get in the way of Jesus. We're not to short circuit his work. Well, sometimes we do that. We see somebody messed up in sin, and we see them grieving and sorrowing, and we just want to say, everything's okay, don't worry about it. My friend, that is the worst thing we can do. Sometimes we need to say, you really need to worry about it. Are you right with God? Don't get in the way of what Jesus is doing. So, this is the work of the evangelist in Pilgrim's Progress. I've been reading a lot of the works of the early Puritans. Told you I was going to be. I've been reading some tremendous stuff. Read some chapters on a study of thought of divinity in the Puritans that I'd never even heard of, and I'm sure you have not either. It is the word Causistry. You ever heard of that word? I never had. It's a 1600 word. It's a powerful concept that these guys developed. The word Causistry just simply talks about cases of conscience. Now that's not like Christian liberty issues that we're talking about. When they are talking about cases of conscience, they are talking about the art of applying soul cure for sin. Now, they were working amongst people who had just left Roman Catholicism in the Reformation. When they thought about sin, they thought about things that you did to deal with it. So they thought about three concepts, most people in this time, in medieval England, coming out of the Dark Ages, in the 1600s and the Puritans. They would always think of three things. They thought of, OK, if I sin, I go to Mass, I do confession, I do penance and I pay some indulgence, and then it's OK. That's what they thought of. And then all of a sudden, these guys are saying to him, no, my friend, that's wrong. It is Jesus and it is his blood and it is faith in him alone. And then they're saying, OK, now, how do we help people overcome sin? And they go into a whole field of study called cost history, and they would write books and they would analyze specific sins and temptations, and they would write books to help people learn how to recognize sin and how to overcome it. By the way, this is John Bunyan's book, The Pilgrim's Progress, and he was a master at this. He was the father of Cossistry. So when you read his book, you read things of people, and he would name people. He would talk about people who will be a temptation to you. People like Simple, like Sloth, like Presumption, like Talkative. Talkative? Or how about Mr. Self-Love? And he would talk about these guys and how you deal with them. He'd talk about the slew of despond. What do you do when you come to the slew of despond? You look for the stepping stones of promise. What do you do when you're in the dungeon of doubt? You look for the key of faith. And these were men who were writing books to try to help people look in their lives. There's another guy named Richard Sibbes who wrote a book in 1630 called The Bruised Reed and the Smoking Flax. And it is a tremendous book helping sinners deal with sin. In fact, there's a guy who is one of my mentors, although I've never met him because I love his books. I look forward to meeting him in glory. I say thank you for writing some books. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this, I shall never cease to be grateful to Richard Sibbes, who was a bomb to my soul at a period in my life when I was overworked and overtired, and therefore subject in an unusual manner to the onslaughts of the devil. John Newton, another man, amazing grace, wrote a book called Cartophonia. Now that's an interesting title, isn't it? What is Cartophonia? It comes from two Greek words. Carta, you can hear the word cardiac or heart. Phonia, you can hear the word photo or light. Cartophonia, light on the heart. And he just diagnoses the human heart. And he tells us how to deal with sin. And so these Puritan pastors would gather together, not just for coffee, not just for donuts, not to just brag about how big their church was, which is what a lot of pastors conferences are today. They would gather together to talk about specific people in their congregation, not to gossip, but to analyze and to say, if you deal with this issue, what do you do? How do you help that person? And they would seek to come up with regimens or prescriptions to help them. By the way, that is exactly what church discipline was. I don't want to digress too long because I'm running out of time and I've got about three more pages of notes. But this is an interesting study. Martin Luther and John Calvin both talked about in reform circles, what is a true church? A true church has three marks. according to them. Number one, first mark is it must preach correctly the gospel. Secondly, it must administer faithfully the sacraments. And they got it down to two, the Lord's table and baptism. Thirdly, and this is if you'll see books on this today called the third mark, you see the third mark, he's not talking about another gospel. The third mark refers to church discipline. Church discipline. The third mark of a faithful church is that it disciplines its members. You say, what does that mean? That really does not sound very touchy feely. That doesn't sound very secret sensitive. What does that mean? Here's what it means. In their mind, it had nothing to do with punishment. It was not meant to be punitive. The word discipline simply means training, doesn't it? To train. Now, I've got a Moyer gut. I've got a bad stomach. I have trouble with it periodically. My brother didn't get that. You've got the wrong genes, my friend. I've got those genes. I don't do it, but if I went to the doctor and I said, you know, how am I going to get over my bad stomach? He's going to give me a prescription, isn't he? He's going to give me a regimen. It might have some medication in it, and it's probably going to have some dietary things. How about if I went, I was playing soccer, I was thinking that this week, I used to play a lot of soccer, and I had a tremendous coach, and he would work with me individually to make me a better player. A good coach will do that. I played stopper, which meant I was in the middle and I was in defense. He wanted me to know how to head the ball, and he worked with me one-on-one, individually to teach me to head effectively. Spent hours doing it. Now, he wasn't doing that to punish me. He was doing that to make me better. Right? And that is exactly what the Puritans thought of when they thought of discipline. Now, we have in our churches today, in our mind, the counseling methodology. And it's kind of replaced discipline. Because if I say the word counsel, what are you thinking in your mind? Going to someone for what? Advice. If you take advice from someone, it's kind of a what? Take it or leave it. But if you were placed in discipline and training in the church, there was accountability. And that was the whole force of it. It was accountability. It was not to break anybody. It was not to destroy anybody. It was not to punish anybody. It was to train them in righteousness. That was what church discipline once was. Now, by the way, this is the work of every believer. Let me show you another verse. We've got to keep moving. Romans chapter 15 verse 14 tells us, Now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you are also full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another." We are to be admonishing. Every believer is to be engaged in this work. You say, where do I learn to do that? You think you should go to seminary? Take counseling classes online? You know the best ways to learn? Get married and have kids. You know what? Because if you have kids, There's not a day that goes by in your house that there ain't some sinning going on. Do you intervene? If you don't, you're in disobedience to this verse. Did you ever think of that? If you are a parent and you have children and they are sinning and you do not seek to intervene to restore them, then you have failed your task. That is not ultimately Pastor Matt and I's job. We'll help you. This is the work of every believer. I want you to listen to a verse and then we're going to close. I'll pick up with this next week because I've got more things I want to say on this subject because I think it's important. But here's a very important verse. In 1 Samuel, chapter 3, verse 13. God has come to Samuel in the night. Samuel's a little boy. Remember the story. Here's the Lord call to him. He goes to Eli. I didn't say anything. You go back to bed. He comes back. I didn't say anything. He goes back to bed. Finally, he thinks, this must be the Lord. So you say to the voice, if you hear it again, speak, Lord, thy servant hears. So Samuel goes back. Speak, Lord, thy servant hears. And the Lord tells him, I am going to judge Eli. And I'm going to judge Israel. And listen to why God says He is going to judge Eli. Because his sons made themselves vile. He knew it. and he would not restrain them. And he says, Eli is no more a priest. Think of that verse. His sons made themselves vile. Eli knew it, and he would not restrain them. That is the task of the parent. Let's close in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you. Your grace has been made available to every one of us in our sin. Father, we many times make a mess of things. There are many times we need to humble ourselves and to go to others, and we need to say to them, please forgive me, or we go to you, and like David after his great sin, we say, against Thee and Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. Father, help us to not trivialize sin, Help us not to play with it, not to pander it, not to nurse it in our life. But Father, may we crush it and destroy it and walk away from it. Father, may we as Christians run a spiritual Christian ER to help people that are broken and sin and need the healing of the gospel. Pray in Jesus' name.