Living as an Inclusive Community. Are all people accepted?

So, the topic I’ve been given is living as an inclusive community, basically a church that includes people.
Jesus, if you know anything about Jesus at all, is the sort of person who can chat to anybody, can’t he? He was an amazing person, and he was not thrown by a name, like a Lord or whatever; he would treat people the same.
And he could speak to people of importance, and he could speak to us, commoners. And I can imagine Colin saying, “Speak for yourself. I’m not a commoner!”
Now, Jesus was known as a friend of sinners, and he related to everyone, to the poor, the diseased, those people with leprosy. He even touched those people with leprosy, and it had been seen as such a dangerous thing in those days because it’s so easily transmissible.
He could speak to the rich, he could speak to even the depraved, the wild, the lawless. And in our reading, we see him being caressed by a woman. You think, oh, caressed? Well, yes, that’s what it was actually, wasn’t it?
He was lying on the couch, and she came in, and she was crying at his feet, and her tears were dropping onto his feet. And she was wiping his feet with her hair and then pouring on perfume.
And in verse 37, it says, about that woman, she lived a sinful life. Well, literally, that means an absolute moral failure, one who violates God’s will or law.
So how did Jesus react to that?
Did he say, “Don’t touch me!” Or, “You disgust me! Your life is filthy!” Or, “Repent! Stop your wicked ways!”
Jesus had God’s eyes. He knew the exact situation with her. Jesus discerned, but he says absolutely nothing in judgment to her. He accepts her remorse and her love.
While that was going on, others were thinking, ‘if this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is, that she is a sinner!’
Jesus knew that she was a sinner, but he didn’t speak out against her.
Jesus did not criticise, condemn, or attack sinners.
We are told that Jesus went to tax collectors’ parties. And if you’ve got a bit of imagination, I should imagine that they were pretty much dens of decadence, immorality and wickedness.
But we’re never told that Jesus speaks out in disgust or rebukes any of them.
He just lived his life as an example, with his light shining before those people.
And he obviously spoke. He talked God’s way.
So, we can’t expect non-Christians to behave in a biblical right way. And Jesus doesn’t expect them to either. He does not condone the sin, and he does not condemn the sinner.
Whereas many Christians condemn sinners, and Jesus did the opposite.
He gave his life to take the sinner’s sin and that condemnation.
So we may think that Jesus, being so forgiving and unjudgmental, would open the door to so much more sin.
But he’s being patient with those who are ignorant of him, while there is still time for them to repent. But if by the time of their death they still reject God, then they will be judged, because the Bible tells us in Hebrews 9.27, “just as people are destined to die once and after that to face judgment.”
We need to live like Jesus, to accept the poor and the bad, not to judge the immoral, the cheaters, etc. That is our aim, our goal.
So you could say, all right, that’s the end of our topic of living as an inclusive community, living as an inclusive church, where a church invites everybody in, whatever their state, whatever their situation, however much sin they’ve been involved in, they come through the door and be in the worship and hear the word of God.
But if we left it at just that, it would be a very one-sided truth, because all scripture is in balance with other scriptures.
And that’s how cults begin by just homing in on a distorted scripture. We all need the balance of scripture.
And so it is the task of a Bible teacher, a preacher, to have a good grasp of doctrine so that their words are balanced with the whole of scripture.
2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 15 says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, and who can correctly handle the word of truth.”
So that means that the truth can be badly handled.
I cannot leave this topic of living as an inclusive community where we’ve left it.
We’ve been saying that Jesus does not expose people’s sins. He is a friend of sinners.
So, the question is, is he always like that? The answer is no.
At times, Jesus spoke with the force of a hammer smashing rocks. And he gets very angry with sin.
What’s changed? Well, the first situation is in John 2:14, where it says, “In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So, he made a whip out of cords and drove them all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves, he said, ‘Get these out of here. Stop turning my father’s house into a market.’”
Literally, that word market literally means a place of trade, a business.
So Jesus was angry at the leaders that they had allowed the place of worship to become a business. They were blocking people from freely entering into worship.
They were pretending to do God’s work for personal gain.
A second situation where Jesus was angry, and again it was at religious leaders, who were living in hypocrisy and were blocking people from entering the kingdom of God. And Matthew gives us an account, and it’s a huge chunk. I don’t know whether you’ve seen it. It’s 24 verses long. I’m not going to read all those verses. I’ll just read a few.
Matthew 23:13, This is Jesus speaking, the friend of sinners. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child as hell as you are.”
Whew. That is strong stuff.
Where is the gentle Jesus, meek and mild?
Well, Jesus continued to hammer them verse after verse after verse.
And then he says, in verse 25, “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside, they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside, you appear to people as righteous, but on the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”
Jesus hates hypocrisy, especially in leadership, but also any Christians who are not true but pretend.
Jesus will oppose anybody who stops people from entering the kingdom of God.
So, is this the second wing of truth that I mentioned earlier? Well, not quite. The first wing was not judging the immoral, the cheaters, and the like.
So what should the second wing be?
I think it should be church discipline, that is, within the church.
Church leaders play some part in this. The preacher the other month spoke about the criteria for a church leader, and it’s all about character, being above reproach, self-controlled, gentle, not a lover of money, et cetera, et cetera.
Jesus also says in Matthew 20:25, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and then give his life as a ransom for many.”
So in that reading, literally, where it says lord it over, it means to domineer, to overcome, subdue. The church leaders must not domineer or lord it over their flock. And the other words that Jesus used were to exercise authority, which means very similar, to exercise lordship or authority over or to domineer over.
So, church leaders must not exercise lordship or authority over their flock.
But how can a leader administer church discipline if they can’t have authority over or subdue or domineer over people? That seems like an impossible task.
Well, the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 5:1, “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings, who will also share in the glory to be revealed. Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be, not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve, not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.”
I think that’s a lovely picture of church leadership, of watching over, caring for the flock, serving, not lording it over them, and most importantly, being an example of how to live.
So how does church discipline get administered? We haven’t answered this question yet. Let’s look at some examples, and a good place to look in is the church at Corinth, because absolutely everything was going wrong there, wasn’t it?
They were really going off the rails in lots of different directions. And if we look in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 3, it says, “You are still worldly, for since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you.”
So how should we respond to that sort of thing? Well, what they did in Corinth was by teaching. There was no discipline. And actually, if you look at Corinthians, most of the failings there were tackled by teaching.
So now we will look at where church discipline had to step in, in 1 Corinthians 5:1, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate. A man is sleeping with his father’s wife. And you are proud? Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?”
This is for a sin considered terrible even by non-churchgoers. So how did they respond in this situation?
Well, it was to put out, literally remove from their midst, right from the centre, right from the middle of them. That is the emphasis of the literal Greek there.
So, what does this mean in practice? 1 Corinthians 5:4, “So when you are assembled, and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.”
It says, “So when you are assembled”, that means as a church, it’s a whole church decision, when the power of our Lord Jesus is present within the gathered believers.
It’s not one leader acting on his own because he can’t lord it over them.
So, what is the motive for the church putting this person out of the church?
Well, it’s to enable him to stop doing what he’s doing and to come back.
2 Corinthians 2:6, “the punishment inflicted on him by the majority”, not by the leaders, “by the majority is sufficient”.
“Now, instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him.”
From this instant in one Corinthians, just a few verses on, there is a similar verse in 1 Corinthians 5:11, but it is a very different situation.
It says, “I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or a sister, but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.”
So with a list like that, it’s quite easy, it’s a bit of a danger for us just to listen to, oh, “sexually immoral”, and not hear the “greedy, an idolater, slanderer, drunkard, or swindler.”
So how does the church respond to this situation?
Paul is saying here, do not even eat with such people, don’t get too close.
It’s not booting them out, but more like being separate from them. Don’t get too close. The King James Version says, “But now I have written unto you not to keep company with them.”
The literal wording is not as strong as the situation before.
And it would seem that they could still be within the church, be among them, but there was a disapproval of them.
It wasn’t actually booting them out of the church totally.
And then Paul goes on, another two verses later, and it says, “Expel the wicked person from among you.” I think what’s happening here is that’s the original language of the first case.
And I think that Paul has now returned to that original situation. It was such an obnoxious situation for him. He couldn’t get away from it, and he’d returned to the man sleeping with his father’s wife.
Now, if you’re thinking, well, hang on a minute, is this just one scripture about the whole church deciding on church discipline?
I’ll show you another area, and it’s from Jesus in Matthew 18:15. “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. And if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or tax collector.”
So basically, Jesus is saying, try to sort it out between yourselves.
If that doesn’t work, take one or two others.
And if that doesn’t work, bring it to the whole church, and then the whole church decides.
So, we’ve looked at church leaders and how they should not lord it over their flock, and how it is the whole church body that provides safety in church discipline.
Can you imagine a shepherd constantly hitting a sheep? It is absolutely alien.
Two thousand years ago, the shepherd walked out in front, and the sheep followed.
John 10:26, “You do not believe because you’re not my sheep. My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”
If the leader is a true shepherd, then the sheep will follow the voice of Jesus within that leader.
If the sheep don’t follow, then either the sheep are not Jesus’s sheep, or the leader does not speak with Jesus’s voice.
True shepherds do not beat their flock.
Harsh discipline is a totally alien work, not in their nature.
Right, but shepherds do fight off wolves. They have the authority to defend their flock from false teachers.
That is what Jesus was doing when he said to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:13, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.”
Jesus was defending the flock with all the authority of a shepherd.
So, to finish, let’s return to talking to non-Christians. We meet every day. We need to be gentle. We need to be including lots of different people, not excluding.
1 Peter 3:15 says, “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.”
We see this gentleness in Jesus when speaking to people.
May we have this gentleness and not a condemning attitude towards other people.
Let our light shine around us, and may we be a friend of sinners. Amen.