Real Relationships - Part 2

The church is God's institution for changing the world.

Today on Daily in the Word, Dr. Paul Chappell challenges us about God's plan for the local church.

If it's just going to take a little setback of unemployment and you're going to quit church,

then you didn't count the cost when you started.

God says you're going to have to resist steadfast that devil when he comes your way

to try to swipe against your marriage and to try to get you out of church.

You're going to have to determine, I'm not going to give up that easy.

I am a disciple of Jesus Christ.

My goal is Jesus, and I will finish by the grace of God.

What is church?

Why is it important?

How does it relate to your life?

And how has it been redefined in today's culture?

You know, a lot of different institutions use the word church that don't really align

with Jesus' original statement, I will build my church.

That is why I'm here.

That is why we are in a series entitled Real Church.

Welcome to Daily in the Word.

This program features the teaching and preaching of Dr. Paul Chappell,

pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church and president of West Coast Baptist College in Lancaster, California.

Our current series is designed to give us an understanding of how a real church should function

and how we fit into God's eternal plan for changing the world.

And now, here's Dr. Paul Chappell with part two of a message called Real Relationships.

Number four, apologize.

Number five, ask for forgiveness.

Number six, accept the consequences.

And number seven, alter your behavior.

You go to the person one-on-one, and your endeavor is to make things right with them.

Wouldn't it be great if Christians would learn how to do that in the family and in the church?

I mean, just to go like, just say, hey, Joe, I want to tell you something.

I want you to know, Joe, that I heard what you said yesterday.

Over there, and it offended me.

And Joe would say, I'm sorry, will you forgive me?

Yeah, I'll forgive you.

All right, let's have a word of prayer.

Okay, let's have a word of prayer.

You say, pastor, why are you having a puppet show in the adult service?

Because when I see adults that don't handle things properly,

it reminds me of the children in the Sunday school.

Right?

So the next time you're tempted to get ticked off,

and make a small matter bigger,

let's remember our puppet show, boys and girls.

All right, never mind.

Okay, here we go.

Now, so God says, I want you to go one-on-one to the person.

Hey, look it.

Let me help you with something.

You know, before we would ever administer corporal punishment to our children,

and we did, but before we ever did,

I always made sure that I spent ample time in prayer first.

I didn't want to go off in there just demonstrating physical power and authority,

and, you know, being some kind.

I didn't want to be some kind of a big shot and maybe hurt one of my children.

In fact, it hurt me deeply if I had to discipline my children.

But let me tell you something.

When you come into a meeting like this,

make sure you're prayed up and that your heart is right.

Make sure you're tender.

Make sure that you're approaching it in the right way.

One-on-one.

Sometimes, secondly, you have to go with a witness.

Maybe you go to somebody and you say,

man, I hate to come to you with this,

but I saw you in a compromising position with a certain situation.

She wasn't your wife.

And maybe you're a little bit more comfortable with that.

And maybe the guy says, hey, nobody telling me what to do.

And you had a right spirit.

Maybe you have to go find a deacon or assistant pastor or a godly man and say,

man, I hate to ask you, but I need,

I've got to have your help with the situation.

And you go with witnesses.

2 Corinthians 13, 1.

This is the third time I'm coming to you in the mouth of two or three witnesses.

In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.

Sometimes it even goes to the church.

Verse 17.

Verse 17 says,

And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church.

But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as unto the heathen man and a publican.

Now, oftentimes as it's coming to that point,

someone has either already gotten right.

I think 99% of the time it ought to be dealt with right in the one-on-one.

But sometimes it might be escalating.

And normally, but before it escalates to that point,

you pray that someone repents and makes things right.

Sometimes someone is long gone before you can ever deal with it in the church, so to speak.

But God says,

Look at this is my plan.

And I want you to understand, Jesus loves every Christian.

He loves wayward Christians.

He loves the heathen.

But habitually sinning people continually filled with bitterness

must sometimes face the loss of fellowship

in order to realize that they must repent

and they must turn from their wicked ways

in order to bring the testimony of Christ right

and make it right in the church.

And the Apostle Paul spoke of this in 1 Corinthians 5.

In verse 13 he said,

But them that are without God judgeth,

therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.

So what do you do with someone who willfully offends?

How do you handle that?

And I want to tell you, friend,

you go to them and you speak to them in love

and you bring the need and then you reconcile

so that you can gain a brother.

Hey, it's not about proving you are right and they are wrong.

It's about gaining a brother.

It's about keeping the church strong to the glory of God.

Sometimes there's going to be a willful offense

and God says, here's what I want done in my church.

My church is the highest authority I have on earth

for these spiritual matters.

Notice secondly, there's a second category you might run into

in your spiritual life.

And that is the wayward brother.

A wayward brother.

This is not merely an offense of someone that did something

like pick on your kid or toilet paper your house

or something like that.

This is going to be someone that's a wayfarer.

And let me tell you something that you might want to remember

from Galatians chapter six and verse number one.

Notice what it says.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault,

ye which are spiritual restore such an one

in the spirit of meekness,

considering thyself lest thou also be tempted,

bear ye one another's burdens

and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Now on the one hand, we had an offensive brother,

someone that did something wrong.

On the other hand,

we have a brother,

he's not doing something against you in the church.

He's not offending you particularly,

but he's walking away from the faith.

He's going back into a life of sin.

He had not touched crack cocaine for six months.

He had been faithful to his wife for 16 years.

Suddenly everything seems to be exploding.

And sometimes when that happens,

Christians don't know exactly what to do.

And certainly we should be concerned

for the testimony of God.

We should be concerned for the testimony of God.

We should be concerned for the testimony of the church.

But what about being concerned for someone

whose life is really going away from God?

Well, God says, first of all,

I want you to restore those people.

I want you to keep loving them.

Verse one, the Bible says,

restore such an one in the spirit of meekness,

considering thyself lest thou also be tempted.

God says, I want you to be careful in the process.

I want spiritual men to be involved in this.

If you're just a few months removed from your drug habit,

it may not be best for you,

but I want you to go down there

and try to get them out of it.

You may need to get someone in your class

that's been saved a long time.

And the Bible does tell us in 1 Peter 5 and verse 8,

be sober, be vigilant,

because your adversary, the devil,

as a roaring lion, seeketh whom he may devour.

How many of you believe the devil is not happy

that people are in church serving God

and he's gonna do anything he can

to destroy them and take them away?

And that happens every single day.

And that's why the body needs to function properly.

And we need to go to those who fall by the wayside.

And we need to restore them from two things.

Number one, from Satan's trap.

The Bible says a brother is overtaken in a fault,

something that he's caught up into like a trap.

Maybe he wasn't premeditating breaking his wedding vows.

Maybe he never thought of taking that drink of vodka.

It wasn't what he woke up thinking about,

but he is in a trap.

And the Bible says we need to go to them.

Secondly, we need to restore them

from Satan's trap.

It says,

That means he has lapsed.

He is under some type of deviation from the truth.

God says,

I need you to go to that one

and restore him in a spirit of meekness.

Hebrews 12 and verse one says,

Let us, the Bible says,

lay aside every weight

and the sin that doth so easily beset us

and let us run with patience

the race that is set before us.

God says, I want you to lay aside sin.

I want you to lay aside weight.

And what a joy to run our race with one another

in the church, in the Christian life.

But every once in a while,

someone, because of weight and sin,

falls by the wayside.

And God does not want his church going,

I knew that would happen to him.

God does not want his church saying,

look at that guy, he's not as good as me.

By the way, a wise Christian,

would say, but for the grace of God,

that is me.

God wants us to reach down and say,

hey man, don't ruin your marriage.

Come on, buddy.

Come on, come back to the fellowship of God's people.

God wants us to say, look,

you need to turn from that.

Come on, I'll help you.

And sometimes they might say, no,

the church, no one wants me at church.

They don't know how bad I am.

Somebody say, come on,

but for the grace of God, that's where I'd be.

And sometimes they might say, well,

the church is a bunch of hypocrites anyways.

I know somebody who did the,

hey, hey, hey, it's not about someone else.

This is about you right now.

Come on now, come on now.

Restoring someone.

Instructing them in meekness, the Bible says,

that oppose themselves, you see.

And from the trap and trauma of Satan.

And so God says, I want you to restore the wayward.

Secondly, he says, I want you to reinforce the wayward.

I want you to reinforce them.

Now notice that in Galatians 6 too, it says,

bear ye one another's burdens.

Would you say that with me?

Bear ye one another's burden.

And sin is a burden that brings people down.

They need to repent of that sin,

but they need us to help them, to reinforce them,

to bear the burdens with them.

Turn, if you would, in your Bible

to 1 Peter chapter four and verse 14.

1 Peter chapter four and verse number 14.

And let me share with you what the Bible says

about different kinds of people.

About different kinds of trials

and how to respond to them.

1 Peter 4, 14.

It says,

If ye be reproached for the name of Christ,

happy are ye,

for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.

On their part he is evil spoken of,

but on your part he is glorified.

Now let me just stop right there.

If you, because you prayed for your lunch at work,

are persecuted,

then God says, that's a good thing.

God says, you've been a faithful witness.

God says, it's not a shame,

but it's a good thing.

God says, it's not a shame,

but it's a good thing.

God says, it's not a shame,

but it's a good thing.

to suffer for living for Jesus Christ.

But look at the next verse.

But let none of you,

speaking to the Christians,

let none of you suffer as a murderer,

a thief, or as an evildoer,

or as a busybody in other men's matters.

Now God says, when someone is involved

in committing such deeds,

they're going to suffer.

There's going to be difficulty in their life.

Now look right here for just a moment.

I can't remove and you can't remove

all the consequences of that

suffering from someone's life.

Hey, if someone goes back into drugs

and it affects their health,

there's not a lot that I can do about that.

If someone finds themselves

suffering some consequences

because of something they've committed,

we may not be able to stop

all of the suffering,

but we can do our best

to encourage them in their time of suffering.

And we can do our best

to bear some burdens by praying

for them, by letting them know

God still loves you and God's going to see you through

and God's grace is sufficient.

Romans 15 and verse 1.

We then that are strong

ought to bear the infirmities

of the weak.

There was a woman by the name of Jean Nidech.

Jean lived in New York City.

She was a homemaker.

She weighed 214 pounds.

She was frustrated with her health.

It was a burden to her for a number of reasons.

She went to the city

health department.

Asked for some assistance.

They gave her a diet that had been created

by Dr. Norman Joliffe.

She took this diet.

Jean went home and she followed it meticulously.

She did really well, but she

could not lose the last 50 pounds

the doctor said she needed to lose.

And so she called

some of her friends together who were in a similar

predicament. And all of them began

to discuss this diet from Dr. Joliffe.

They began to encourage each other

in this particular diet.

And slowly the pounds continued to

come off and victories were won.

Today, 28 years

later, Jean Nidech's group

has grown from 7

to over 1 million members

who have now joined Weight Watchers.

And who find encouragement and help

losing their weight through that program.

Someone asked Jean,

what's the secret to your success?

She said, I don't really know except

I always think back to when I was a child

looking at the parks of New York City.

I would go to the parks and

mothers would be there and they'd be swinging their

children. And she said, sometimes

I would just go and give a little push to the children

and it was always amazing to me

that with that little push they'd start

moving their little legs and rocking their

backs back and forth and pretty soon

they'd be swinging all on their own.

And she said, what I discovered

is that some people in life

just need that little

push. And I'm saying that

when someone commits something

that is an egregious situation

and there's consequences that

they're facing, they're not suffering because they

were so good, yet God

still loves them even when they were so

bad. God says

I want you to go to them with my

grace and love and I want you to

bear their burden up and don't let the

devil tell them they're worthless and

help them to continue on.

God says when someone is

willfully offending you, go

to them in love and apologize

to them in love. And God says

when someone is wayward and

they're far away from me, God says

don't treat them like they're worthless.

Because their worth is based on

their birth. And they are still

my children. And then

notice thirdly, a third group. And I want to

quickly show you some things about

this third group. This third group

are what I call the willing servants.

The willing

servants.

Now after a quarter of a century of pastoring

here nearly and 25

or 30 years of preaching, one of the things

that I have noticed about

this matter

of good willing

servants and about this matter

of relationships is that

sometimes in life and ministry

we spend the vast majority of

our time on those that are

always in the middle of a problem or a crisis

and that's okay. But I want

to say this morning, we should not

neglect those that like an ever

ready battery just keep on going for Jesus

Christ. We

should have a right relationship

with those willing

servants of God. And I want to say

today about those faithful ushers,

and those nursery workers over there

taking care of the kids. How many of you have a child

in the nursery? Just let me see right now.

That's who I'm talking about, those faithful workers there.

That choir member that sat down next

to you. That person in your class

that's just encouraging and they're there.

I want to tell you that

God wants us to respond rightfully

to them too. They need a

couple of things. First of all, they need edification.

They need to

be lifted up. Hebrews chapter

13, the Bible says, I will never

leave thee nor forsake thee so that

we may boldly say the Lord is my helper and I

will not fear what man will do unto me.

They need from the word of God to be

reminded that God is their helper.

And God is going to help them. And someone

might be here today and say, you know, Pastor,

I may not always be in the middle of a

crisis conference. I may not always be going

back to the old sins, but I'm just

trying to be faithful. And I want to tell you what,

that's a blessing. And we need to edify

that person and encourage that person.

And it needs to come from the people of God.

Notice it says in 1 Thessalonians

5.11, wherefore comfort yourselves to

gather and edify one another

even as also ye

do. God says, I want you to lift each other

up. I want you to tell your Sunday school

teacher once in a while, thanks for that lesson.

I want you to tell

the one in the parking lot,

I want you to wave and be nice.

And I know there might be an usher that told you to sit

where you didn't want to sit, but I want you to tell them

thank you anyways.

You know?

Sometimes in life,

I think all of us can get

kind of a spirit of expectation.

And I understand it.

It's a consumer mentality.

How many of you are like me? When you go to a restaurant,

you kind of expect somebody to show up and give you something

to drink.

Yeah. But sometimes

some of the most obnoxious customers

can be Christian customers.

Sometimes our spirit

with the places

we do business and even in church

can be, hey, I'm here. Come on.

Give me some

service now.

Look, I'm having a family

crisis. You probably don't even

know why. Yes, I do. Just looking at you,

I figured it out.

If you were in my family tree,

I'd be jumping out as fast as I could.

The attitude

is, hey, I'm here.

Let's do something about this.

But what about looking

at that willing servant

and just endeavoring to be a blessing

up front? Hey,

how about before she ever serves you today

at hometown buffet

or wherever you have lunch today?

How about if you say,

thank you for being here and serving today?

You know, that little lady probably doesn't

want to work on Sunday. By the way,

when you leave the gospel track with your

good tip,

she might even read the gospel

track. No one's going to read the gospel

track from a grumpy Christian.

That's not in my notes,

but I can tell some of you need this right now, so I'm just going

to talk about this a little bit. Some of you are like,

tips? Gospel tracks? What's he talking about?

I'll have to come back to that later.

I'm just saying, we need to

edify people. We need to edify

those nursery workers. Some of you that have

kids in the nursery, you need to say to that nursery worker

today, you're doing a good job. Thank you.

Thank you for that music

in the choir today. Thank you for being

an usher today. Romans 16, look

what Paul says.

The word secure means an

encourager. Paul said, I want to tell

you about Phoebe. She was a great

blessing. Ladies,

how many of you would love it if

in the Holy Bible, your name would have

been written down because you were such an

encouragement? That's the

kind of woman she was. Look

at verse 3.

He says, I want you to thank

these people who help me so much.

You know, folks, sometimes it's

just like life just keeps coming at

you. It's like the guy that was in the

boxing ring having a very difficult

match. His trainer got him in the

corner. He said, come on, champ. You're doing great.

You're doing great, champ. He said, he hasn't

laid a glove on you. He's just trying to encourage

him. The champ looked at the trainer. He

said, man, you better keep an eye on that referee

then because somebody in there is knocking

the daylights out of me.

Do you ever

have days like that where you just feel like

they're knocking the daylights out of you?

And sometimes you really can't

tell anybody much about it. You're just

kind of dazed in there.

And then all of a sudden someone comes

up and says, hey, just

keep on keeping on.

I sure appreciate it.

I'm telling you what, that's

what church is supposed to be.

A place where

people are edified. They need

edification. Secondly, we need

encouragement. We need to encourage

one another. Galatians

6-9 is a verse I've tried to share

with our

church often. Let us not be weary

in well-doing for in due season we

shall reap if we faint

not. I'm tired of what's going on in my

neighborhood. Don't give up.

I'm tired of what's going on in my marriage.

Don't give up. I'm tired

of this. Hey, don't give up. Let's stay

faithful for the Lord. Sometimes we need

another Christian to tell us that.

I heard about some fellas that were

out hunting and just a couple buddies

and one of the guy's names was Davis

and Davis said to his friend, he said,

I hate to tell you this, he said, but I thought

I'd go ahead and let you be the first. He said,

I'm getting a divorce.

Man, his friend was shocked. His friend's name was

Les. He said, what in the world?

What's going on? Davis

said, well, for starters, she hasn't said

a word to me in 30 days.

Boy, Les thought about that.

He wanted to be encouraging. Wasn't sure exactly what

to say. Finally, he said, hey.

He said, man, hang in there. He said, good women like

that are hard to find.

Now, I don't know if that was the right word of encouragement

or not, but he was trying.

Folks, I'm just saying that

we're here in church to kind of encourage

each other to stay in the race, right?

To edify one another.

To encourage one another.

And just because someone's always being

faithful, listen right here, don't

take that for granted.

Okay?

But let them know you appreciate it.

God says, when someone willfully offends

you, I want you to approach

them in the right spirit and reconcile it.

God says, I need my body to remain strong.

God says, when there's

a wayward brother and he's out

and he's violating the scriptures,

I want you to restore him and help

bear his burden and help get him back.

And God says, by the way,

the guys that never seem to be having a problem,

they're just always there

serving and always there helping.

Don't forget to give them

a howdy and a thank you once in a while.

Don't forget to edify them.

What I want you to know,

this morning, friends, is that God

always makes a way for relationships

to stay strong.

God will make a way when there seems there is

no way. God will make a way

if we'll follow His

Word. And probably the most

important thing we need to remember as we close

is that we will not

have relationships that are right with

one another unless we have

a relationship that's right with Him.

That's why God the Father

sent His Son, Jesus Christ,

so that we could be reconciled

to Him.

So that when Jesus shed His blood,

our sins could be forgiven.

And we could have a relationship with God.

And if you say, man,

everything doesn't seem right.

And I don't know that I have God

in my life. It doesn't seem to be

working in my family. It may be

that for somebody today, the very first step

you need to make is a step

to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith.

Trusting Him as your Savior.

You've been listening to Daily in the Word

with Dr. Paul Chappell,

pastor of Lancaster Baptist Church.

And president of West Coast Baptist College

in Lancaster, California.

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We hope today's message has encouraged you.

Dr. Chappell serves as a pastor

of Lancaster Baptist Church.

And he is the author of many books.

But most of all, he is a pastor.

He has a passion and love for you.

If you've been helped through Dr. Chappell's ministry,

he'd love to hear your story.

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