But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property. And with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds, and bought only part of it and laid it at the Apostle's feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it, then, that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God. When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. And young men rose, and they wrapped him up, and they carried him out and buried him. After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, tell me whether you sold the land for so much. And she said, yes, for so much. But Peter said to her, how is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out. Immediately, she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in, they found her dead, and they carried her out, and they buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you and we look at this very, in many cases, disturbing passage of Scripture. Father, I pray that you would use this to guide us and to instruct us, to challenge us, and to, even as these other Christians, be fearful of your judgments and your wrath and your work through your Holy Spirit in our lives. Father, I pray that you would use these words to build us up in our faith. to challenge us in such a way that those sins that we might be holding on to would indeed be things that we would repent of and that we would let go of these things and walk faithfully before you. I pray, Father, that you would use these words to call to faith those who may not know you and call them to a saving faith in you through your Son, Jesus Christ. And Father, I also pray that in all things that you are glorified, big and small, serious and significant in our eyes, and insignificant in our eyes. And that you would be made much of in us, both individually and corporately as your church here in this community. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. So what is it that you call somebody, or maybe even a group of somebodies, that are always being caught off guard? And not just being caught off guard, but being caught off guard by the same tactics over and over and over again. You know, we've all got people in our lives that are, you know, for lack of a better term, gullible enough that they're gonna fall for the same ruse over and over again. So what do you call people like that? Do you call them maybe naive? Gullible? Perhaps if it's a group of people that are always being caught off guard, do you call them ill-prepared? If it's soldiers? who are being caught off guard by the same tactic over and over and over again. Do you call them untrained or careless or vulnerable maybe? The sad thing is that while I think it's fairly safe to say that we all know individuals that kind of like this and we kind of like smile about that because sometimes we're all so gullible of falling for the same joke over and over again, sometimes it becomes more serious. And the reality is, oftentimes, and I might even be willing to take back the oftentimes and say most of the time, churches and the church throughout the ages falls to the same trap or falls into the same trap. You know, when we think of spiritual warfare, you know, and the devil's attacks, Our error oftentimes is we kind of think like the devil is going to drive up in the tank, and he's going to pull into the parking lot while we're gathered to worship. And with the tank, he's going to start trying to blow holes through the wall of the church. And then he's going to gather his demons, and the demons are going to come with pitchforks in hand and their tails waving wildly with horns and all. And they're going to come and rush in the church and attack us with hand-to-hand combat. Maybe I've watched a few too many fantasy movies. I don't know. But it seems like throughout history, the church falls into that mindset over and over and over again. And that's not normally how the devil attacks. Normally, the devil attacks through subterfuge. He attacks from the inside out. He works on his way into the family, into the body. And by being inside of the body, kind of like a cancer corrupts, and corrupts those things around it that it sees, creating kind of a spiritual osteoporosis, if you will, in the body of Christ, weakening the bones, weakening the body. You see it all throughout Scripture. Even going all the way back to Adam and Eve, Did Satan launch his demons to attack this brand new couple in the garden? No, he didn't do any of that. But instead, he corrupted the mind of Eve, tempting her, and through her, tempted her husband, Adam, who was supposed to be her spiritual head, and protect her and guard her and guide her in truth, and he didn't. He let her eat from the fruits and then followed her in her sin. We see that in their first two children. You know, the oldest, Cain, takes out his vengeance upon his younger brother, Abel, because Abel's sacrifice was acceptable to God. We're told in Hebrews that was because Abel had faith. Cain didn't. And so he attacked from within the family. And you see this happening in the life of Noah and Noah's children. And you see this happening in the life of Abraham and Abraham's nephew. and eventually Abraham's children. And you go on and on, you get to Moses, and you think, now you've got a covenant mediator here, somebody to lead the people, and you read the book of Numbers, and the book of Numbers is filled with account after account of people like Porah, who rebelled against God, and against Moses' leadership. He was the one who God ordained to be the leader of the people, and people didn't appreciate that leadership. And then you, even in that same context, you find Balaam, the false prophet, who God speaks through, first through his donkey, but then who speaks through and tries to curse Israel and ends up speaking blessings, even a prophecy of the coming of Christ. But when Balaam's unsuccessful with that, he teaches Balak, who is the king of Moab, who hired him in the first place, how to corrupt the Israelites. And how did they do that? Full frontal assault? No. Take your pretty girls and put them up where the young men of Israel can see them. And they're going to be attracted to them. And they're going to engage in the same kind of idolatry that these pretty girls do, because the hearts of men are oftentimes weakened by the pretty girls that come by. One of the reasons young men, We say, find Christian women to date, to become engaged to, and to marry. Because that simply is nothing more than Satan's, really, attack. The way that God did through Belak. And you go through the Old Testament, and you see it count, after a count, after a count. of Satan not destroying the church by frontal attacks. There are a few of those that take place. But most of the cases, there's a corruption that goes on. In most of the cases, it's Satan kind of working his way into the body. And then once within the body, and there's trust there, and there's friendship there, and there's that relationship that gets built there, then he works through those people and corrupts. And that's what we see happening here. That's what we see happening here in the book of Acts, in this brand new church. The church is only a couple months old, probably about this point in time. It's not very old. And already Satan is finding his way in through Annias and Sapphira. This couple. That's the context of our passage. Satan finding his way into the church, infiltrating them, placing his unregenerate children within the body of the redeemed. And over and over and over again, the church of God falls for this ruse. Read the news. It's been amazing the last several months, last year. Just count up all of those people who, at one point in time, the broader evangelical church looked to for leadership as popular and engaging Christian speakers, and how many of them have either fallen into either apostasy on one hand in terms of what it is that they're teaching or doing, or have walked away from the faith entirely, saying, no, I'm not a Christian, I really never was a Christian, and have fallen for whatever trap. Look how many examples, and that's just looking at the big famous guys. Lots of them over the last year, but even over the last months that we see taking place. Satan is not creative. In many cases he's kind of just a one or two trick pony. But we fall for that trick time in and time again. And so that's what we're seeing. This brand new church here, this church that has been founded through the apostles, and there's miracles are being worked, just a few months old, and already we are introduced to Ananias and Sapphira, his wife. It's been a few weeks since we looked at it, since I've been away. But if you remember back to the passage that went just before this, you were introduced to a guy by the name of Barnabas. His name means son of encouragement. And the thing that Barnabas is credited for is he takes a field and he sells it and he brings all the proceeds and lays it at the feet of the apostles so that the apostles then can disperse it as needed. Kind of like Harvest Home. You know, but in the church, the way the church was working at that time, it wasn't just Harvest Home once a year, it was Harvest Home every week. It was Harvest Home every day in a very real sense as we continued kind of working through and seeing how the church was operating, particularly with its widows. But that's essentially what we're seeing, it's a Harvest Home. And in this case, he sold a field that belonged to him so that he could provide. for those things that were needed. And Ananias and Sapphira followed that, and the implication is that they are aware of what Barnabas is doing, and the implication is that they thought that was a really good idea, and they wanted the kind of praise and adulation that Barnabas was getting, and they kind of wanted to have that as part of their reputation too. And so they had a field and they sold that field. Everything up until this point is just fine. But then the husband and wife start talking. And they said, you know what? We really don't like the idea of giving all of this to the church. Now, if you read Peter's rebuke of Ananias, they didn't have to give it all. He said, look, the land before you sold it was in your possession, and you could do anything you wanted with it. And after you sold it, the money was in your possession, and you could do anything you want with it. What they're being criticized for is lying, and that's what they do. They make an agreement with each other, both husband and wife, and they say, you know what, we like the idea of being honored like Barnabas was honored, but we don't want to pay the price that it's going to cost us to be honored as Barnabas was honored, so we're going to tell a lie. We're going to keep some of that money for ourselves. We're not told how much that is. It could have been a lot, it could have been a little, it could have been just, you know, a small percentage of that money for themselves. But we're still going to tell the apostles, because they don't know any better anyway. I mean, they weren't there when we sold it. We're going to tell the apostles that we sold it and we're bringing all of the money in. Do you see the context? Do you see the difference between what Ananias and Sapphira are doing from what Barnabas was doing? He gave all, and said he gave all. They said they gave all, but they didn't give all. They didn't have to, but they lied about what they did. And so they created the plot They wanted to look the part. They wanted to be a poser, if you will, to use language that I grew up with. And they didn't want to have to struggle. They didn't want to have to struggle with the reality of giving it all. And so, they lied. And because of the lie, they're judged under the judgment of God. 1st Ananias is struck dead. Not lying, it's because he was lying to the apostles. but because he was lying to the Holy Spirit, who was guiding the apostles. And then his wife would secondarily be struck dead. And we go, wow, that's kind of a tough one. And we go, wow, we don't see that kind of thing happening very often in the life of the church, though I've heard some stories over the years, and it makes me tremble just a little bit. But let me ask you about this idea. A few weeks back, going on a month at this point now, I gave you some homework. I suggested that you take some time and take the fruit of the Spirit, go to Galatians 5, verses, was it 21, 22, I think it is. Make a list. Make a list. Nine in front of the Spirit. And then take it to your spouse. Take it to your children. Take it to some of the people that you work with and ask them, how do I hold up? How do I live up to those things? Does this describe me? Or does it describe me? Do I have things that I need to repent of and work on? Or, you know, where am I in this equation? Heaven forbid we're described by the fruit of the wicked that goes right before it in that passage in Galatians chapter 5. So how do you do? How did you do at your homework? What did your family, your friends say about you? You know, again, we fall into the same trap. We do it differently. You know, maybe not because we sold the field and only gave part of the money when we said we gave all the money, but it's the same basic principle. We say we're Christians and we say the fruit of the Spirit is these nine things. We say this is what we want to demonstrate in our lives, but do we do it? Do we really do it? As oftentimes, the world looks at the church today and say they're a bunch of hypocrites. They talk a good talk, but they don't live it out. They may live it out in the context of their buddies at church, but when I'm doing business with that guy or that gal, when I bump into them at the grocery store, or when I interact with them at a community event, boy, they don't talk like it. They don't live like it. It's the same basic idea. It's the same basic thing. We say something and we lie about it oftentimes. But we need to remember that when we're lying about it, particularly in the context of the church, we're lying about it to God too. And God doesn't take kindly when we lie to Him because He sees through everything. You know, I think one of the things that people really struggle with in our age, you know, every era, it's a little bit different. But you see, the church, to be a Christian, it's not just like a club. You know, all of us have been in clubs or on teams and things along those lines. You know, I was in the Boy Scouts for a lot of years and all that stuff like that. It's not just like that. With those things, you can come and go as you want. You can be a member of the Boy Scouts for a while and say, I'm not gonna be a member of the Boy Scouts anymore, and that's okay. With the church, it's not. With Christ, it's not, because he demands everything. It's a definition of who you are as an individual. It's not just something that you do. So it's a totality of your being and a totality of your life and that makes it different than any organization that you will ever be a part of. Because it will consume you and it's supposed to consume you. And it's supposed to change who you are and the way that we live. I was chewing on this passage, it really struck me, that this here is the first account in the New Testament church, in the book of Acts, where church discipline is practiced. You know, Jesus teaches about church discipline in Matthew 18 and a couple other places, but this is the first place, book of Acts onward, that you see it being practiced out in the life of the church. And the record of this is really profound because it really shows us two things. First of all, the seriousness of our sin. That's something that I don't think we really take seriously, pardon the pun, in our society, in our churches. We kind of downplay sin. We're not that bad. Oh, come on, come on, Rose Close. We're not really that bad. But we are if we look at ourselves through the eyes of God. And it also shows the severity with which God punishes sin. Ultimately, all of us are going to stand before the judgment throne. And at some point, as Christians even, we'll be held responsible to Christ for those things that we did. But those who are non-Christians will be held responsible for not only the things that they did, but the things that they didn't do. For all of their works, good, bad, and otherwise. and their punishment will be the fires of hell, eternal damnation and destruction. That is scary. It should be scary. It's supposed to be scary. What was the sin of Ananias and Sapphira? They were lying to the Holy Spirit. That's Peter's accusation in verse three. And again, in verse four, reminding us that the Holy Spirit isn't just this kind of this thing that floats around, but he is God. He's the third member of the Trinity. Third person of the Trinity, the triune God that we worship. So when we're worshiping, we're worshiping the Holy Spirit right along with the Father and the Son. And they're lying to him. They're thinking they can pull the wool over his eyes. And the judgment then is death. Death for both the husband and his wife because she conspired with him in his sin. Take some time to really think through the seriousness of that accusation and that punishment. Because that's hard stuff if we honestly look at it and apply it to our lives, because God has been far more gracious to us individually, A, than we deserve, certainly, but B, in not striking many of us dead, myself included, for some of the things that we have done or have failed to do over the lives where we have professed to be Christians. Okay, we know the events, we know the situation, so we know the context that we have here. Let's talk about church discipline for a little bit in this context. So what is the purpose of church discipline, recognizing what we have just read about in the text? You see, normally when we think of church discipline, and rightly so, we recognize that it is meant to be redemptive in its nature. Okay? The elders come to you and say, brother or sister, you know, we've been watching and observing the way that you've been living your life and what you're saying, that you were fastened Christ is different than what we're seeing as we watch you and we think that you need to repent of this sin or that sin or whatever it might happen to be. That's not meant to beat somebody up. That's not meant to say we're better than you and we're going to wag our fingers at you or something along those lines. It's meant to say We want to be redemptive. We want to work in your life along with you to draw you to a lifestyle that reflects the profession that you give for the honor of Christ. Scripture speaks about discipline as being for our training. That's just that idea there. Ephesians 6.4, for example. For our education is Deuteronomy 8.5, for reproof. Proverbs 9.7 speaks about that amongst many other places. but also to encourage us in prayer, to drive us to prayer. 1 Thessalonians 5, 17, that we're always to be committed to that prayer. All of these things are good things that should be striven for in the life of the believer, the life of the Christian. But on our own, sometimes without a little bit of nudging, without a little bit of encouragement, without a little bit of sometimes rebuke, we don't naturally do that. We kind of fall into our little rut that we all happen to have, and every single one of us has a comfortable rut of what is comfortable for us, and we kind of stay there because it's comfortable. And we don't like to get out of that rut unless We're given a little bit of a push out of that rut, where that rut is made to feel more uncomfortable than it is comfortable. What's funny to me is the world gets this. The world understands this, and we as Christians don't oftentimes completely, really embrace it. You know, if you're going to excel at a sport, you need a coach. You know, Olympic athletes, you say, well they're solo athletes, but they still have a coach that prompts them, that pushes them. And frankly, and I'm not an Olympic athlete by any stretch of the imagination, but even from my high school athletic days, the conversations that I had with my coaches weren't always easy. They weren't always welcoming and comfortable and happy kind of conversations. They were pushing me. Why were they doing that? Not because they hated my guts. It's because they saw in me a potential that I wasn't tapping into on my own. And without them pushing me and prodding me and sometimes threatening me along, I would never have reached those potentials. The elders, the leadership in the church is designed to do the same thing. They're your coaches and you elected them. When I was in high school sports, I didn't get to elect my coach. I was assigned whatever coach based on the sport that I happened to be in. But you guys have coaches. It's a good gift, scripture tells us, to the church. It's one of the blessings that God has given to you, our coaches. and the church council, who not only are striving to live a life that glorifies God himself or in themselves, but are there to help you, to prompt you, to push you when you need to be pushed, to rebuke you when you need to be rebuked and say, you're not practicing like you should practice. You need to work towards this end and this goal. And you can apply this idea to just about anything. You know, you join the military, first thing they put you through is boot camp. I've never been through boot camp, but I've heard stories. Those drill sergeants, they don't make themselves your friends. Why? Because they want to bring out of you a potential that you will not tap into on your own. They want to bring out something in you that is good and true and strong and vibrant. Again, that's what the church is for. And so when you're rebuked in the context of the church, it's not because people are angry and grumpy and hate your guts. It's because they see in you a potential that you're not tapping into. Because they love you enough to say the hard things as well as the kind things that you and I all need to hear. That's the heart of the redemptive side of church discipline. That's what we're going for. Hebrews 12 verses four through 13 really sums up this idea in a nutshell and basically says, look, at first it may seem to be pretty harsh, but we respected our parents when they were harsh with us. We need to respect the church leaders when they're harsh with us because it brings maturity. And that should be every single one of our goals individually and our goal as a church body. Because really, if we look at it, discipline has much more to do with the church body as a whole than us as individuals in the church body, sitting in our own special places, you know, that we have set apart for ourselves in our pews. up front. But just like a coin has two sides, so does discipline. Not only is it designed to be redemptive, but sometimes discipline is designed and meant to separate the sheep from the goats, to protect the well-being of the sheep. when I was in high school. Again, basic principle here. One of the teams I was on was the swim team. And the swim team had tryouts. And if you didn't meet certain things, you didn't get to be on the swim team. That was how the tryouts worked. For example, and this is the only one I really remember, the 50 yard, which is up and back. So it's a lap, or it's a full lap. It's a length and a length. We had to do it in under 35 seconds to be on the swim team. Okay, when I was at that age, ninth grade, trying out for the swim team for the first time, which I didn't make, by the way, that's all I saw was, okay, if I can't make the goal, I can't be on the team. Here's the basis, here's the line, and that's all I could see. It wasn't until several years later, after I was on the swim team, that I discovered something about my coach. You see, Coach Colangelo's purpose behind tryouts was not just to try and set a baseline, because he did, he wanted a baseline for the team. But it was to do something else as well. To discover which one of us could take instruction, guidance, coaching, and even his discipline because he realized and recognized that if we were willing to submit to his authority as our coach, he could work with us and we would increase our speeds in the water. But if we were stubborn about it, if we didn't submit to his authority, not only would we not grow in our ability to swim faster, but our insubordination would affect the whole team and bring the team down as well. Confirmation class, you had given me a hint or a great illustration this morning. It's the idea of one rotten apple ruins the bunch. That was Coach Colangelo's idea. And that's why he had tryouts. Because in many ways, the tryouts were more about what we would submit to than what we brought to the table in terms of our own skill sets. And it was meant to remove those people from the context of the team, that would tear down the team as a whole. And that's the harder part about teaching about your discipline sometimes, is because sometimes one must remove the goats for the sheep to flourish. That was Ananias in Sapphira. And God took it entirely out of the hands of the apostles. And God demonstrated His wrath upon them directly. The discipline here served two purposes. One, to punish them for their sin. They lied to the Holy Spirit. but also to protect the rest of the church further, from further corruption. And verse 11 illustrates that amazingly. Because what is the response of the rest of the body? They got scared. They were in fear because of what it is that they saw. You know, think about it this way. Up until this point, the church has been going through good times. They've been kind of happy, clappy times. You know, they've seen some healings, and yeah, Peter and John got arrested, but they only spent the night, and that's not so bad. You can get through that. We can move, and we're growing. 5,000 people, 5,000 men even. But here we've got within the midst. corruption being addressed in a very harsh way. And so they're going, yeah, this is really kind of scary. You know, we can't pull the wool over God's eyes. We should know that. But you know what, we all fall into the trap thinking we can. It's a little lie here, it's a little cheating on my taxes there, it's a little taste of pornography in another situation when nobody else is looking, it's saying the right things in public but either holding on to anger or unforgiveness or some other kind of sin deep down when we're in private. It's jealousy in any context of the form. God is aware of your sin, personally and individually, and you will face judgment for it either here or eternally if you do not repent of that sin. And God's serious about that. Secondly, the church also feared, I think, Because up until now, they've been dealing with good times. And now they've got to deal with the harsh stuff. And the reality that this Christianity, this Christian life is not just something that we do, it kind of makes us feel good, but it's something that is gritty. It's something that's got some backbone to it. And while Peter and John, These apostles, they're taking their faith really, really seriously. And do I really want to be there? Do I really want to take this that seriously? Do you? Are you? Would those who know you best describe you as taking your faith that seriously, as being a wholehearted commitment to Christ that will consume your life? I've had an ongoing conversation with a friend of mine who's in a different city, different land, so don't start looking around and going, oh. Different city, not anywhere close to us. One of the questions he asked me is, I'm really struggling here in this church. When do I get to break ties with these people? I keep on taking it back to the Belgian Confession. The Belgian Confession is published about two years before the Heidelberg Catechism. They were meant to go hand in hand with each other. One is the Heidelberg was in questions and answers. The Belgian Confession was actually a statement of faith for the churches, and they complimented each other in a lot of ways. But the Belgian Confession says, you know, here's the marks of the true church. Here's what the true church must have to really be the church of Jesus Christ. In other words, it's teaching, look, it says, look, if the church has these three things, you need to stay, no matter how grumpy and dissatisfied you might be. But if it doesn't have these three things, you need to leave, no matter how much you might like the people or what's going on. What are those three things? First of all, the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached. No compromises, no ins and outs, no fluffy stuff, but the plain doctrine of the gospel is preached. People know Christ and what it means to be saved by Him through His work and not through our own works. Secondly, that it maintains the administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ. It doesn't try and play fancy games with the sacraments, adding to them You'd be amazed at some of the things that I've heard stories of churches adding to the sacraments. You know, things that were part of Jewish tradition or things that were part of elsewhere and saying, well, we're going to make this part of the sacrament for us now because we think it's really, really cool. And thirdly, if church discipline is utilized for the chastening of sin. And the confession goes on to summarize. He says, look, in summary, in all things, that they are managed according to the pure word of God, and that those things that are contrary to the word of God are rejected, with Christ being acknowledged as the only head and king of the church. That's a really good statement. It reminds us that there are objective standards by which we measure the church. And the church should always be examining itself to ask itself, do we meet these objective standards? We've got to take it seriously, folks. This is the real deal. Jesus is serious about his church. The apostles understood that seriousness and they enforced that in the life of the church. And God in his infinite wisdom removed Ananias and Sapphira from the roles of membership in a pure and a permanent way. Far more permanent than what we might do. Because our goal is oftentimes to be redemptive. Their goal in this case, again the work of the Holy Spirit, was to protect the sheep. Protect them from the devil's influence that gets within, within the body. Two purposes, the end goals then, to correct the believer, that's the redemptive part, and to teach the believer how to flourish in Christ, that's again the redemptive part. but also to separate the unbeliever's influence from the body, so that the body may flourish. So the body may be under the redemptive and strengthening part of the spirits. And to the end result of that is certainly in many ways fear. These guys take their religion, their church, really, really seriously. But shouldn't we? Shouldn't we do that? I want to close with one more thing this morning as we talk about church discipline. Because oftentimes when we think about church discipline, we only think about the moral stuff. These guys lied and they coveted, okay? We've got two commandments that they have broken, okay? And so that's an obvious thing, or it ought to be an obvious thing in terms of how we look at church discipline. But the Bible also speaks about discipline in two other contexts. In fact, it might surprise you how oftentimes the first of those contexts is found. And the first of those has to do with disciplining for doctrinal errors. When the people who are in the church are thinking wrongly about Christ, or wrongly about the role of the church, or wrongly about the character of God, or wrongly about grace, or works, or whatever those things are, they're disciplined for that. And secondly, for behavior, not so much that is necessarily what we would classify as breaking the commandments or immoral behavior, but behavior that ultimately disrupts the purity of the church. It's a reminder to us, when we look at all of these things, that we are holistic beings. In other words, our thoughts, our ideas, are oftentimes expressed in the way that we live. And when we try and deal just with the things that we do, we fall into moralism of one sort or another. And when we try and think or deal with just what we think about, we fall into kind of a man's philosophy of one sort or another. We're designed to do both. And our Bible's theology is designed to put both of those together. And thus, church discipline is designed to address both things in our lives. It recognizes that we are whole. Our ideas, our actions, our morality are all tied together and thus it's appropriate when we are going off in one direction or another in any one of those areas for lovingly truth to be spoken to us. Lovingly the elders, the pastor, the deacons, the trustees, the church leadership to come and speak to us. To try and direct us upon that path that we ought to live. and then lovingly for the good of the body, sometimes to remove those who are bringing down the whole of the body by their own sin. Hard passage for many of us to read, because I'm sure that Ananias and Sapphira had friends in the church. I'm sure that they had probably some family members in the church. I'm sure that people liked them as individuals. God still brought judgments upon them in an absolute way. We still need to practice church discipline as part of the church. We try and we do in many cases. We all have room for growth. And part of the purpose of church discipline is to be that coach that works us towards that growth. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we come before you and ask, first of all, for your grace and forgiveness because oftentimes we do fall short of what it is you've called us to do. And Father, I pray that you, every time that we fall short in any of these areas, that you would pick us up and put us back on our feet, that we might indeed continue and be Christ's witnesses here in this community and wherever it is that you take us, into our workplaces, to hospitals, to friends' houses, to community events, that we would indeed be salt and lights in a true and a godly way. We praise you and we thank you for your patience with us, each one of us. And we pray that you are made much of by us individually and corporately. And this we pray in Jesus name. Amen.