Hey everybody. Welcome to a Sunday edition of The Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Good morning. And we are not gathering together at church today. At least. That's as of right now the plan. You are bold to put stuff on tape. On tape before we actually do things. Well, I mean, I make prophetic predictions all the time for yucks. You're making a real one. I'm making a real one. I'm saying we are not gathering a church. This You are declaring it. I'm declaring it. You are bold for being a cessationist. You said on the really confidently. Yeah. Well, I'm just, this is, but this is happening. This is Sunday that we're talking about this, but as we record it, we still haven't anything to the church. That's true. But we will by the time they listen to this. Oh, okay. All right. The only ones that would know anything ahead of time would be Matt and Hannah. If they're paying attention to this as they're uploading it. We all just wanna know when you're gonna admit to being a raging charismatic. Well, you know, I try to keep it underwraps as much as I can. Well, you do a decent job, you unwrapped it. It is now as bold and as clear as the sun. Well, the sun's not out today. The sun's not out today. No, probably not. Anyway I'll offer that with humility 'cause I'm not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Well, as we record this, not all present company excluded, as we record this, we're about to walk into what is projected to be three straight days of subzero or subfreezing temperatures, not subzero subfreezing temperatures. So it's gonna be it's gonna be an interesting one. You does your family have food, supplies, water, everything like that? Prado, are you ready for the cold? Nothing extraordinary. Yeah. We have what we normally have. Yeah. And I feel good enough to say, well, we'll make it to the weekend just fine. If anything goes the wrong direction, I guess then I could start worrying. But then I know that there will be people in my neighborhood. I could call the church. Yeah. There's even people to help us out. So I'm not terribly concerned and I've seen multiple reports from my favorite weather guy. Ponder, ponder on weather. He's on our, he, I follow him on Facebook. He has said this is not gonna be anything like the 2021. He says this is gonna be a big one. I guess it has a potential to be problematic for a lot of reasons, power lines and things like that. But he said it won't be the same because this one doesn't have a secondary storm behind it. Right. So it's one big storm as opposed to multiple storms that could last us multiple days. So I feel reasonably okay in saying we've taken some. Reasonable precautions. Yeah. But what have you done? Yeah. Same. We're not panicking or anything else like that. I saw earlier this week, DFW the lines to get out of town were like Christmas. I mean, it was huge. Traffic jams trying to get into the airport. People were trying to fly, they were trying to leave town. So they were following Ted Cruz's example and trying to get outta town and not be here for it. His office said he had a prearranged schedule. He'll be back before the storm hits, right. That's what I heard too. Well, okay. Yeah, so I don't mean to unnecessarily put him on blast. I don't think this was him fleeing the storm, but we're with you. Yeah, we're just gonna write it out. But hey, it is Sunday. We do have a sermon available for you. You can watch it, you can click on the link that was provided in your email, or you can just go to our sermons page on our website. And watch that sermon. It's gonna look a little bit different. I'm not obviously at the school preaching this morning, like normal, but we'll be still bringing a message to you. It is gonna be a message that is the final message in our called out series, and it's an important one. It's on our need to take the gospel, the great commission. Why the great commission matters, why we're not already in heaven. Basically is the idea that we're talking about there because God still has work for the church to do and that's work that we can't do in heaven. So that's why we're still here and we need to be serious about it. We need to take it personally and we need to be. Thorough with the call for the Great Commission. So, hopefully you'll make time to watch that together as a family. And you can do that from hopefully the warmth of your own home. And we will be back, lord willing, in person next Sunday. But let's jump into our Bible reading for today. We're in Exodus nine and 10, and then the first part of Matthew 18. So Exodus nine and 10, we're in the middle of all the plagues. Exodus chapter nine is dealing first with the plague of the livestock. That is the livestock. Of the Egyptians are gonna die. But he says, as you pointed out yesterday, pastor Rod, that all of the livestock of the people of Israel were gonna be preserved. And so God is separating Israel out specifically on this one and saying that they are going to be kept from this particular plague. Plague number six is gonna be the boils. And this one just sounds absolutely miserable. Not that the other ones were pleasant, but now we're the boils, the sores are breaking out on both man and beast. And so this is something that is going to be painful and miserable and it's going to lead the magicians not even to be able to show up before Pharaoh. And yet God is gonna this time be the one that's acting to harden Pharaoh's heart. Verse 12. And he's not going to let the Israelites go. The next plague up is going to be the plague of hail, and this is gonna be hail. What I think is gonna be a severe lightning storm. And I think that's the fire that's coming down from heaven on earth, that could be literal fire as well. But this hail is going to do damage to not only the animals and anybody outside, but also the crops and the fields there. And yet again in verse 26, only in Goshen where the people Israel were, was there no hail. Pharaoh evaluates everything at this point and he says, you need to stop this and I will confess I've sinned against the Lord, but Moses knows what's really going on there and says in verse 30, as for you and your servants, I know you do not yet fear the Lord. And I think. This is in part because there was still hope for recovery for him, and that's in verse 32. It says, the wheat and the emer were not struck down for their latent coming up. So Pharaoh's thinking, I've still got crops that are coming up later. We can weather this storm and still make it through. So, Pharaoh hardens his heart here, but notice again it says he sinned in hardened his heart. So Pharaoh's not an innocent victim. We see Moses attributing sinfulness to him in his response and hardening his heart with all this. But there's at least chapter nine, we've got the livestock, we've got the boils, and we've got the ha hail. I don't know if we mentioned it yet, but you should also note that the very judgments that God is issuing here are intended to counter and to show himself superior to the Egyptian panoply of Gods. Now, I don't remember all the names of the various gods that are being taken down one by one, but each of these areas is meant to showcase and demonstrate God's superiority. Over the Egyptian gods. And I think if you were to think about this in today's vernacular, you might not look at God destroying crops. Maybe he would, but he might go after things like the banking system perhaps, or our internet or something of that nature. These are the gods of the Egyptians. These were the beings in whom they put their trust. And so God demonstrates by mighty acts of power that these beings that they trust are not trustworthy. Now they are all facades. They're all fakes. They're all inferior beings. In fact I would argue that probably all of them are demonic beings that are. Puppeteering or demonstrating themselves to be some kind of God and the Egyptians fall prey to that idea. But each of these plagues is meant to demonstrate God's superiority, and that's what's happening here in these passages. As we turn to chapter 10, the Lord provides another reminder as to why he's doing all this. And so we read, he says, I've hardened his heart in the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them, that you may tell them in the hearing of your son and your grandson, of how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians. So this is not only for the benefit of the immediate. Nation of Israel, but this is the benefit for future generations. As they would recount the story of the Exodus. This was part of what God was trying to get them to do. As he goes on Moses and Aaron appear again before Pharaoh and ask him a question, how long? How long will you not humble yourself before the Lord? If you jump down a little bit further, the magicians in the servants affair are also gonna ask him this. A question of saying, how long, verse seven, how long shall this man being Moses be a snare to us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God? He says, do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined? And so Pharaoh initially appears to again, be ready to concede and let them go. And yet in his conversation he wants them to go, but he says which ones are to go? And Moses says, well, we need to go with everybody. And Pharaoh hardens his heart again, basically, even though it doesn't say that in the text and refuses. And so. Once again, we find another plague coming, and this time is the plague of the locust. This is significant because the locust we're going to do damage to the rest of the crops that the hail didn't take out. If you think of the book of Joel, you think of the plague of locust and the intense damage that it could do to the harvest. And even as pastor Rod was just talking about the gods of Egypt. The gods of the harvest season. Th this would've been an attack upon the fruitfulness and the fertility of the land of Egypt, and that would've undermined some of their religious beliefs in the religious systems as well. But these locusts come in and again he calls them back, does Pharaoh, and says, I've sinned. This is down in verse 16. And he says, even now, therefore, please forgive my sin and plead with the Lord to remove the locust from me. And so the Lord turns the wind, the locusts leave. And again, the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart such that he will not let the people go. And so the ninth plague comes in, and this is the plague of darkness. And it's a darkness. It says in verse 21, that can be felt. I don't know if you've ever been in Pitch Black Darkness that. Thick where you just feel like you can, it's palpable how dark it is, but that's what it is. And it's probably not that they had no light at all. They probably still had the ability to have lamps and things. But if you've ever just been in, in a season, even overcast skies, we're dealing with gray skies right now. I remember living in Missouri, there was something called sad seasonal. Anxiety disorder or something like that. Seasonal depression, something where it was you just be in gray skies and the trees are dead and there's no life there, and you just feel the depression of it all. You feel the heaviness of it all. You take that and you bring darkness to the scene. There's no sun. They're not seeing the sun at all. And that is gonna be crippling for them. And it's gonna be crippling for their industry. It's gonna be crippling even more so for their agriculture. 'cause crops need light to be able to thrive. So this is a plague that is. Pretty miserable for them, such that again Pharaoh calls Moses and says, you need to go, but keep your herds and your flocks behind. Moses says, no, Pharaoh hardens his heart again. And this sets the stage for the final plague, which we'll get to in tomorrow's reading. I think based on verse 14 and chapter 10, that the locust at the very least are over all the land, including Goshen. Which is the concentration of all, again, God's people. I'm reading now with the eye of paying attention to do I see any evidence in the text to let me know that this is only for Egypt or that this is also including Israel. And here, I think at least for the locusts and certainly the darkness, unless there's some kind of light that God offers them that is separate which I guess is possible. But actually no, I do take that back. Verse 23. But the people of Israel had light where they lived. I do remember that. Remember that one. But the locusts were part of their. Crop destruction as well. And I think this one makes more sense to me because they don't need their crops anymore. Yeah. They are now going to be taking care. And by the way, most of them were shepherds anyway. That's why they had mm-hmm. That's why they're in Goshen in the first place. So their livestock was protected when God sent the hail, they brought in their animals. If any of them did have crops, and I suspect several of them did they were eaten by the locust, but it doesn't matter. God's gonna have them leave anyway. Yeah. And it's almost as though God is sitting there. Up to say you need to make that separation from Egypt. There's nothing here for you anymore. And so even Yeah, that's a good point. If you took out the crops, it's him saying it's time to go. Alright, well let's go over to Matthew chapter 18. Matthew Chapter 18 is an important chapter for us for many reasons. The first. 20 verses, which we're covering today. Jesus tells some more parables. Jesus addresses a really significant issue and there's a lot here. But let's talk about this because I think it's helpful for us to lay out what. What church discipline is what it looks like and what it looks like for us here at Compass Bible Church. Church discipline is really drawn out of this passage, specifically Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20 as Jesus lays out a plan there for someone who is in sin. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And then if he listens to you, you've gained your brother. If he does not listen, this is where you take. Two or three witnesses with you in order that every charge may be established. If he refuses to listen to them, then you bring it and tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector. So what is happening here? This is not the fruit police looking to get rid of somebody in the church that they're annoyed with. This is not the Jesus's instructions to say, Hey, this is about legalistic standards here, rather, this is. Jesus wanting the church to care for the godliness and holiness of one another, and he's laying out a situation here to protect both the church and the person in sin because this is actually meant for the good of the person who is sinning such that they would repent from their sin and be restored to fellowship. That's the ultimate goal of. All of these things. So church discipline is something that is important. It's something that we practice here at Compass Bible Church. And so is do we have, A lot of times people will ask us the questions about is there a document people have to sign or there's not. We believe that the church under the authority of the pastors has the ability to do this and to practice this as we see fit as the situations call for. So, church discipline is something that. Is not always gonna be evident in the sense that it's getting to that final stage. In fact, we hope and trust that most of the time it's not getting to the final stage, but there's multiple other stages that are involved where people are pursuing the righteousness, the holiness of the brothers and sisters in Christ. The verse that you might have heard people quote before in Matthew 18, is verse 20, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. And this doesn't mean how often people use it. Where if two Christians are together, Christ is there in his presence and that somehow that makes them a church. It's not necessarily wrong to say that Christ is present with you, but the purpose of his presence there is the presence of judgment. This is not presence of comfort where he's saying, Hey, I'm with you always. That's Matthew 28 here. He's saying, I'm with you as you issue and decree judgment from your formal church authority. If you tell a brother, you go through this steps and this process of confronting a brother, I'm there with you supporting this decision essentially because you're doing it in and through my authority and my leadership. I wanna point your attention to the earlier part of the chapter too, 'cause I think it really helps inform how you understand this one. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus talks to his disciples and says, look, unless you turn and become like children, you'll never enter the kingdom. And I often encourage people to not look at this, to say don't become childish, but become childlike. Jesus is not encouraging us to become immature and dependent upon others in a sinful way. What he is saying is that like children who are humble and generally speaking, trusting of their adult leaders, their parents Henry, he says here in verse four, whoever humbles himself. Like this child the point in pointing to a child is saying, look, they're humble. They have to be humble. They don't have anything to brag about. They have no degrees, they have no accomplishments they can point to, and they're trusting their parents or their leaders to care for them. And he says, in a similar way, all Christians who are genuinely Christians are going to have the same humble demeanor. You can't even enter the kingdom without having a humble demeanor. Now all of us are at varying degrees of humility. Not all of us possesses the same number or quantity, but all of us possess it. To some degree, and so here he says, if you're going to be in my kingdom, you're gonna be humble like a child. And then he says later on, by the way, when you're confronted over your sin, I hope you remember that humility is what's gonna be necessary for you to respond to that. And of course, mm-hmm. Church discipline works when there's humble Christians involved. Mm-hmm. Church discipline works best when Christians are willing to say, man, thank you for showing me my sin. I don't want sin, I don't like to have sin in my life. And especially that I'm clearly caught in this. Thank you for helping me out with this. I want you to see the humility's really important here. And then he says, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it's better for him to be tossed into the depths of the ocean. Is that talking about. Actual kids? Or are we talking about Christians here? I think, yes, if I can punt and go that way, I think it is both. Certainly I think we would group children into that, but I don't think it's limited to children. I don't think we should sit back in other words and say, oh, well, if I'm causing an adult to, to sin is really not that big of a deal in God's eyes and it's okay. I think that the point is that. The seriousness, the gravity of sin no matter what is a problem. And we should be careful that we're not causing or leading anyone else into sin, period, regardless of how old they are. Amen to that. I ul ultimately I agree with that. I was reading it again, trying to discern who do, does he have in mind here? And he uses the term little ones in verse six. He also uses the same term little ones. In verse 14 where he's clearly talking about a Christian at that point. Yeah. So I think he is intending to say little ones as in believers. 'cause again, earlier he's saying whoever humbles himself like a child, they're the ones who are. And by the way, let me just back up verse one. The disciples say who's the greatest. Yep. And I just want you to see here, Jesus doesn't say, stop talking like that. Stop it. Just be lowly and be okay with that. He doesn't tell them no. He just says, if you wanna be truly great, here's what this looks like. Yeah. The path to greatness in the Christian community as Jesus defines it, is not going to be those who have the biggest social media platforms. He's saying those who are most humble, those who are most servant oriented, those who do what Christ calls 'em to do. And willingness to be obscure and unknown and maybe not even honored for their work in this life, because he's saying, I'll honor you. I'll reward you later on. So I just want you to see again, Jesus doesn't tell you not to pursue greatness. He's just telling you to pursue it the right way. Pursue greatness the way Jesus says here. And man, what a great surprise it will be if we get to heaven. And we're like, who's that person? Yeah, with all the bling, I don't know what it's gonna look like, but the glory of God shining from this person. You'll see people there that I'm guessing some you might expect. But maybe a lot of people that you're gonna say, who is that? Yeah. And it's gonna be faithful John and faithful Jane, and faithful so-and-so who maybe didn't have any opportunity to get recognition in this life. But in the next life, Jesus will not let them be forgotten. Yeah. Let's. Pull a little bit more on the thread of church discipline here. We got a little bit of time left. Some of you may be brand new to that. That may be a foreign concept to you, but it happens in different contexts depending on what's going on here. There may be times that we as pastors decide that what it looks like to tell to the churches to go to that. Particular sub congregational ministry that they're involved in, because th those are the people, they're most likely to be able to call this person to repentance. There's an argument to be made that if I stand up before the church and I say, Hey, you know what, this woman, Jezebel that we have here, she she abandoned her family and abandoned her husband, and she's refusing to repent and she refusing to come back. And so we're disciplining her publicly Here. I, if you don't really have any sort of connection to Jezebel. Then really what that becomes is fodder for your own sinful gossip and thoughtfulness as far as what did she do and what all happened and why isn't she coming back? And I don't really know who this is. Rather, if we go to Jezebel's community group and we say, Hey, you guys listen. This is what's going on. This is where we're at. We've disciplined her at this point to the full extent. We want you to pursue her as though she's an unbeliever because that's what her heart has revealed here. She stands a much better ch chance at having people in that context care for her. Now, that's not always the case. We may at some point stand up in front of the church body and say, this is so and so, and this is their sin because it's a more public sin, or they're a more well-known figure within the church that warrants such an announcement. But, I think there's some flexibility here. Even as we were talking about, I think in yesterday's episode or the day, no, I guess two days ago, we were talking about how to be careful with pressing the application in pursuing the spirit of the law over the letter of the law. I think this is an instance here with church discipline where there's room for the spirit of the law to be sought over, particularly the letter of the law, especially considering as Jesus is saying this, the church, as we know, it wasn't in existence at this point. What does church discipline mean practically for that person? Yeah. Are they still able to come to church? Do we don't do membership? I think a lot of people know that we don't have formal membership, so their name's not removed off of the roster in that sense. What does that practically mean for the Christian or the non-Christian who is now church discipline? Can't they just go to the next church and say, well, hey, I wanna be a church member here now. No, and that's where. Hopefully if somebody's new here and they're coming to us, we wanna be able to spend some time getting to know them. Hey, where were you in church before? And ideally we want to make sure that we're reaching out to their former church to say, Hey, is this person somebody who's in good standing? So forth and so on. What it means within our body is we wouldn't necessarily bar them from coming to the church, but we would instruct the church body, Hey, there's not to be fellowship with this person any longer. What they need, their greatest need is not for you to be kind and empathetic to them or for you to exchange pleasantries around the donut table. They need, when you see them to be called to say, Hey brother, sister I love you. Not to say. You need to repent and be restored. You need to be repent and be reconciled. You need to repent and come to trust in Christ as your Lord and the Savior. That's what they need. So, they would be removed from our community group fellowship. They would be removed from any serving role. They would be removed from participation in men's Bible study, in women's Bible study. We would not want them to continue to show up and have us sit here and say, well, everything's fine. It's just that you're somehow. Under this banner of being in in church discipline. Yeah, there, there would be tangible consequences to that. We would say, Hey, there's no, don't have them over for dinner. Don't engage with them in small talk. This is, they need to feel the separation that has been created here. I heard some churches. Say that when they practice discipline, they don't say you can't come to the corporate gathering. In fact, they encourage them, like, we'd still love you to come. We want you to come to our weekend services and whatever our men's events are because we want you to hear the gospel. Sure. You clearly need to have this. Is that a right pr a wrong practice given your position? Or is that just a variance of freedom to agree, disagree kind of thing? What do you think about that? I think it's a variance of freedom to agree, disagree. I don't think I would blame a church for taking that position, but I don't know. Yeah. The more they show up. In our midst and sit under the biblical teaching, the more judgment they're storing up for themselves as they continue to remain in a state of hardheartedness. Yeah, I can understand that. I also see that you would want them to repent, especially, usually in a situation like this, it's not. Just an isolated person, right. It's a family member, right? It's a husband, a wife, a child, and the last thing you want is for them to just stop altogether because then it just feels like, okay, well this is a lost cause now. Yeah. I get that. There's a lot of complexities there, and the reason I ask is because I want you to feel some of the weight of the decisions that have to be made at our level. Yeah. But also some of the complexity about caring well for the church, protecting the church against some of the things, and I guess part of the question. For that person would be, what are they saying? How are they interacting with other Christians? Because if they're cantankerous, if they're stoking or stirring up further division because they don't like the way that this was handled or they don't like the preaching for these five reasons, I wish it was more like this and not like that and posting it on their social media. There's things that we would say, okay, you're clearly not gonna be able to stay here, but there's other situations where maybe it would make sense to say we'd like you to keep coming to the weekend service. Yeah. We want you to hear the message. And Brother John, sister Jane we are ready to have the conversation about what repentance looks like. Whenever you're ready. Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. I can agree with that. Hey, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Lord, thanks for today being Sunday, even though we're not together as a church family, I just pray that you give us opportunities to gather as individual families and to listen to the word preach and to still remember what it is to be a part of Compass Bible Church. This is our local church. This is our church family, and we love it. And so we look forward to next week, Lord willing being back together. But in the meantime, God, I pray that we would use today well, and that we would give ourselves over to, to still worship you, that we wouldn't take the day off just because we're not in person together at Founder's Classical Academy, I pray that we still wouldn't neglect to worship you as you're intended to be worship. This is the resurrection Day. This is Sunday. This is the day that we celebrate the victory of Christ over death in the grave. And so we pray, Lord, for just a great rest of our day, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey, keep in your Bibles, y'all, and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. We’re grateful you chose to spend time with us today. This podcast is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in North Texas. You can learn more about our church at compassntx.org. If this podcast has been helpful, we’d appreciate it if you’d consider leaving a review, rating the show, or sharing it with someone else. We hope you’ll join us again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.