Theological term
Excommunication
20 sermons · All terms
The Exhortation to Perseverance and Unity
Philippians 4:1–3 sets before the church two inseparable obligations: standing fast in the Lord and pursuing unity among the saints. Working through the apostle's affection for the Philippians, his call to perseverance, and the concrete dispute between Euodia and Syntyche, this sermon shows that the absence of unity both destroys the church and renders perseverance a near-impossible task. The biblical remedy for conflict — private confrontation, appeal to witnesses, and involvement of the church — is traced from Proverbs 18 and Matthew 18:15–20, with a complementarian reading of 1 Timothy 2 clarifying the nature of Euodia and Syntyche's gospel labor. Hearers are called to fasten their grips on Christ, his doctrines, and one another for the long haul of the Christian life.
The Ninth Commandment
The Ninth Commandment — 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor' (Deuteronomy 5:20) — addresses first and foremost the crime of perjury in a judicial context, then extends by implication to every form of falsehood: lying, slander, backbiting, gossip, and tailbearing. Working through Deuteronomy 19:15–21, the study examines the biblical lex talionis applied to false witnesses, where the perjurer receives the same penalty he sought to bring upon the accused, and draws out the retributive and deterrent logic of Old Covenant judicial law. The positive requirement of the commandment — the sanctity of truth in all areas of life — is traced through Leviticus 19, Proverbs, Romans 1, and the Westminster Larger Catechism's exhaustive treatment of sins against the ninth commandment. Hearers are called to active and passive faithfulness: neither speaking falsehood nor lending an ear to those who do.
The Seventh Commandment, Part 1
The seventh commandment — 'You shall not commit adultery' (Deuteronomy 5:18) — presupposes and protects the divinely ordained institution of marriage, which Scripture grounds in three purposes: the mutual help of husband and wife, the increase of mankind through procreation, and the prevention of uncleanness. This study examines the basis of the commandment in the creation ordinance of Genesis 2, the law of God in the Decalogue and apostolic teaching, and the sanctions attached to its violation in Leviticus and Proverbs. The prohibition extends beyond adultery to fornication, incest, rape, and related sexual sins, with particular attention given to the difficult case legislation of Deuteronomy 22 and the critical difference between seduction and rape in that text.
The Healing of a Blind Man, Part 2
John 9:13–34 records the formal interrogation of a man born blind by the Pharisees following his healing by Jesus. The passage exposes the willful unbelief of Israel's religious leadership — men who suppress plain evidence, commit perjury, and wield coercion against a helpless witness — while simultaneously tracing the healed man's growing confession of Christ, from 'he is a prophet' to 'if this man were not from God, he could do nothing.' The sermon argues that opposition to the Son of God is always opposition to the Father who sent him, and that the courage to confess Christ in the face of exclusion and shame is the mark of genuine discipleship.
The Idolatry of Israel, Part 2
Exodus 32:15–35 records the descent of Moses from Sinai and the immediate consequences of Israel's golden calf idolatry. This study covers four movements in the text: Moses' symbolic breaking of the covenant tablets, Aaron's evasive self-defense, the Levites' execution of three thousand offenders, and Moses' intercessory return to the Lord. The gravity of idolatry — as a direct assault on the being and honor of God — is traced from Sinai through Numbers 25 and Psalm 106, and pressed home with Calvin's warning that the human heart is a perpetual idol factory, turning even good gifts and the self into objects of ultimate devotion.
Exodus 12 - Part 1
Exodus 12 presents the institution of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a blood ritual pointing forward to Christ, the anti-type of the Passover lamb. The chapter is expounded in three movements: the specific blood-ritual instructions God gives to Moses and Aaron (vv. 1–13), the regulations for the memorial Feast of Unleavened Bread (vv. 14–20), and Moses's transmission of those instructions to the elders of Israel (vv. 21–28). The blood on the doorposts was not a sign for an omniscient God who needed locating data, but an outward expression of the faith of those who believed Yahweh's word — a pattern fulfilled when Christ, the blemish-free Lamb, shed his blood so that the wrath of God passes over all who trust in him. The study closes by drawing out the catechetical purpose embedded in the Passover ordinance: that each generation would rehearse the redemptive acts of God and understand that without the shedding of blood there is no remission.
Waging the Good War
First Timothy 1:18–20 charges Timothy to wage the good warfare of the Christian faith, grounded in faith and a good conscience. This exposition identifies two weapons of the faithful minister—trust in the living God and a conscience calibrated by sound doctrine—set against the backdrop of false teachers who have shipwrecked the faith by rejecting the gospel of free and sovereign grace. The sermon then turns to the solemn consequence of neglecting that warfare, tracing the excommunication of Hymenaeus and Alexander as a case study in church discipline executed for the purity of the church and the potential restoration of the offender. Hearers are pressed to examine whether they possess genuine discernment regarding the gospel and genuine sensitivity toward sin, waging the warfare not to earn salvation but in response to the grace already secured in Christ.
The Rejection of Heretics
Titus 3:9–15 closes Paul's letter to Titus with a sharp command to avoid unprofitable disputes and to reject the divisive man — a command the broader pastoral epistles and the apostolic witness consistently reinforce. The sermon distinguishes heresy from damnable heresy, identifying denial of the Trinity, the hypostatic union, and justification by faith alone as the errors that condemn, while pressing the church not to confuse the struggling saint with the proud, self-serving false teacher. Church discipline for doctrinal error is treated with the same gravity as discipline for moral sin, and the concluding emphasis on good works is grounded in the confession that such works are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith, not the grounds of justification.
The Ninth Commandment
The Ninth Commandment—'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor' (Deuteronomy 5:20)—extends far beyond courtroom perjury to govern every word spoken about another person. This sermon works through the prohibition in two directions: first, the specific offenses the commandment forbids (perjury, lying, slander, gossip, and tailbearing, including both their active propagation and their passive reception); second, the positive duties the commandment requires (truth-telling under oath, honest speech in all of life, charitable restraint, and the active discouragement of slanderers). Because no hearer perfectly fulfils Psalm 15's portrait of the righteous man, the sermon closes by directing the conscience to Christ, whose active obedience and atoning death cover the very sins of the tongue that the law condemns.
The Seventh Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:18, the seventh commandment, prohibits adultery and by extension the full range of sexual sins Scripture condemns throughout both Testaments. This sermon works through the basis of the commandment in God's threefold purposes for marriage, catalogs the specific sexual sins the commandment forbids — adultery, fornication, incest, rape, sodomy, bestiality, unlawful divorce, polygamy, prostitution, and pornography — and then treats the internal disposition of heart lust that Jesus expounds in Matthew 5. The sermon concludes with practical counsel drawn from Proverbs 5 and 6 on the three means of protection against sexual sin, and closes by applying the civil, pedagogical, and normative uses of the law to the contemporary church and culture.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 12
Church discipline is not an optional appendage to church life but one of the three marks of the true church, alongside pure preaching and right administration of the sacraments. This exposition of 2LCF 26.12 and Matthew 18:15 establishes first that formal church membership is a biblical obligation for all believers — evidenced from Acts, Hebrews, and the Thessalonian epistles — and then that membership entails real liability to the church's censures and government. The sermon focuses on the first step of Matthew 18's disciplinary process: private confrontation, its proper aim (winning a brother), its proper disposition (humility, love, and a willingness to be shown a misunderstanding), and the complementary obligations of the one being rebuked.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 12
Church discipline is not the invention of elders or ecclesiastical tradition but the revealed mind of Christ, set forth in Matthew 18:15-17 and grounded in the covenantal logic of church membership. This session of a confession study on 2LCF Chapter 26 walks through the escalating steps of discipline — private confrontation, the introduction of witnesses, and the appeal to the whole church — demonstrating that each step is designed for the recovery of the offender, not his destruction. The session concludes by addressing the implications of the final step of excommunication: what it means to treat a man as a heathen and tax collector, whether he may still attend worship, and how the confession itself provides redress when church authority is abused.
2LCF Chapter 26 - Of the Church, Part 12
Church membership is not an optional preference for believers but a biblical obligation that makes church discipline both possible and meaningful. This exposition of 2LCF 26.12 establishes church membership as the prerequisite to all formal discipline, then works through Matthew 18:15 to show how private confrontation — grounded in Leviticus 19:17 and shaped by love, humility, and a commitment to God's law rather than personal preference — is the first and foundational step in recovering an offending brother. The sermon closes with practical counsel on the disposition required of both the offended and the offender, calling every church member to deal faithfully with sin rather than avoiding, broadcasting, or bitterly nursing it.
The Possession of the Church's Authority
Christ's declaration in Matthew 18:18 — 'whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven' — establishes that the local church possesses a real, though delegated, authority to exercise the keys of the kingdom through gospel preaching and church discipline. Drawing on the parallel passage in Matthew 16:19 and the Heidelberg Catechism's definition of the keys, the sermon argues that binding and loosing refer to the church's authority to exclude the unrepentant and restore the repentant, always in accordance with God's word and never by arbitrary preference. Verses 19 and 20 ground this authority in the corporate prayer and the promised presence of Christ himself among his people when they faithfully implement these keys. The sermon closes with a summons to love the church, exercise its authority prayerfully, and pursue its three primary duties — preaching, discipline, and the administration of the sacraments — without addition or subtraction.
The Procedure for Church Discipline, Part 3
Church discipline in Matthew 18:15–17 follows a divinely ordered three-step procedure: private confrontation, the involvement of witnesses, and finally the public action of the gathered church. This sermon works through the second and third steps, examining the Old Testament warrant for the two-or-three-witness requirement (Deuteronomy 19:15) and the nature of the church's decisive judgment to treat the unrepentant as a heathen and tax collector. The goal at every stage remains the recovery of the sinning brother, and excommunication — a corporate act of the whole congregation, not merely the elders — is understood as an expression of love and a means God may use to bring a rebel to repentance. The sermon closes with an evangelistic warning: the church's earthly excommunication is a pale shadow of the final excommunication pronounced by Christ on the last day.
The Procedure for Church Discipline, Part 2
Church discipline is not optional for any believer — Matthew 18:15 commands the offended party to go directly and privately to the one who has sinned against them, before any witnesses or congregational involvement. This sermon works through the situation, command, and outcome of that first private confrontation, distinguishing between genuine sin and mere preference, and between the path of direct rebuke and the path of love covering a multitude of sins. The goal throughout is not excommunication or the infliction of pain, but the recovery of a sinning brother and the preservation of the purity and peace of Christ's church.
The Procedure for Church Discipline, Part 1
Matthew 18:15 introduces Christ's binding procedure for church discipline within the local church — a subject that exposes both the authority of the head of the church and the love that drives the restoration of erring brothers. Four introductory matters are addressed before the first step is reached: the definition of formative and corrective discipline, the necessity of discipline as obedience to Christ, key presuppositions (including five biblical arguments for defined church membership), and the practice considered against common misreadings of Matthew 7 and Matthew 13. The purpose of discipline is shown to be threefold: the reconciliation and restoration of the offender, the purity of Christ's church for the glory of God, and the protection of the people of God from the spread of unchecked sin.
1 Samuel 7
Israel's 20-year lament after the Lord following the return of the ark sets the stage for 1 Samuel 7, a chapter that contrasts the manipulation of God in chapter 4 with genuine covenantal repentance, exclusive worship, and intercessory prayer under Samuel's prophetic and judicial leadership. Three movements structure the passage: the longing for God evidenced in Israel's lament, the preparation for God through tangible repentance and exclusive allegiance to Yahweh, and the presence of God vindicated in miraculous deliverance at Mizpah. Samuel functions typologically as prophet, judge, and intercessor — pointing forward to Christ, who always lives to make intercession for his people. The closing exhortation calls Christians to maintain their own Ebenezers — Scripture, prayer, the Lord's Table — as bulwarks against spiritual amnesia and apostasy.
Wage the Good Warfare
Paul's charge to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18–20 — to wage the good warfare — is the ground for a sustained argument that gospel ministry requires both the positive exposition of truth and the courageous refutation of error. The sermon works through the basis of that charge (prophetic appointment), its necessary instruments (faith and a good conscience), and the catastrophic consequences of rejecting those instruments, illustrated by the named cases of Hymenaeus and Alexander. Church discipline, including excommunication into the realm of Satan, is presented not merely as punitive but as remedial — aimed at the repentance and restoration of the erring sinner. Every Christian, not only ordained ministers, is called to maintain fidelity to Christ and his gospel as soldiers and sailors in a genuine spiritual combat.
Deuteronomy 17:8-20
Deuteronomy 17:8–20 sets forth two connected institutions for Israel's civil life: a central tribunal empowered to adjudicate cases too difficult for local courts, and a set of governing principles for the monarchy Israel would eventually request. The passage establishes that both judicial authority and royal office are subordinate to the law of God, and that contempt for divinely instituted authority — whether in court or in kingship — carries grave consequence. The same pattern carries into the New Testament, where submission to governing authorities (Romans 13) and church discipline (Matthew 18; 1 Timothy 5) reflect identical principles of evidence, procedure, and obedience. The sermon's driving application is that trust placed in any human institution — monarchy, military, wealth, or political alliance — rather than in the living God is the root of covenant unfaithfulness.