What's going on, everybody?

Welcome back to Prescribed Truth.

I'm Jamal Benny, the one who seeks to distribute the truth that the doctor prescribes to the church in the world today.

Happy New Year.

Today's topic, I want to talk about this video that's been circling around concerning this young lady who seems to be a part of an apostolic church.

And they had her go in front of the congregation and confess her sin of fornication.

Seeing the fact that she was pregnant, very, very touchy.

And I want to be able to discuss it from a biblical perspective and also give you guys some things to think about concerning the type of churches that you may decide you want to attend.

Off top, guys, that's something I do not agree with.

I think this is something that is brought forth to humiliate an individual, especially the way this was done.

Now, granted, it probably was instruction of the leaders that this is something that she needs to do.

And therefore her, out of obedience to her leaders felt like this is something that she also needed to do.

A lot of people hide their sins, their secret sins.

It don't come out until something makes it public.

And what happened with her is that because she's pregnant, this is something that she cannot hide.

It's something that she cannot just let slide.

It's there.

Everybody is aware that this happened and that she's not married.

So let's understand, guys, that sin is serious.

Sin is breaking God's law.

And we should never look at breaking God's law like it's just something that should be brushed off to the side.

That is not the case.

All right?

It should be taken seriously.

We must uphold God's holiness.

The one thing the pastor said over the pulpit, he feel like that we, you know, he wants to be known publicly that we don't condone this sin of fornication.

And saying that she's not.

They're not going to throw her baby shower or anything like that because they don't want to condone sin.

Guys, let's be clear about something.

Having sex outside of marriage is sin.

The Bible is clear on that.

That's nothing to be debated about.

But the life growing inside that individual is not evil.

It's not.

It's not cursed or any of those things.

And I understand some of these backgrounds believe such things, that because that she was conceived, that this baby was conceived out of wedlock, that the baby is now somewhat cursed and can't be celebrated in a sense.

Now, understand, we don't want to celebrate the fornication that led to it.

But life comes from God.

Life does not come from Satan.

Now, do they have to throw her baby shower?

No.

To publicly humiliate her or to command others not to do so is step over step and bounds.

But you gotta understand the type of church that this lady is a part of, this is a legalistic church.

And I will be very hesitant to call them Christian, not because of what they did with the display with this young woman, but based off of what the beliefs are underlying everything.

Most likely these type of churches deny the Trinity.

The triune nature of God is very serious.

So who Jesus is, and I don't, I don't think these type of churches hold to that type of doctrine.

At least most apostolic style churches don't.

They usually have some type of form of modalism that they hold to, which is not Christian.

They also have this belief that people basically do good on their own, they're good in themselves, that they're not born sinners really.

Even though the Bible says that we're born and shaped in iniquity, they don't really believe that in practice.

They believe that people are generally good and bad.

You know, you can, you can decide to do good, you can decide to do bad.

It's up to you.

God is basically waiting on you to make a decision.

And so with kind of teachings like this leads to legalism.

I mean, the more good you do gives you more favor with God and the more bad you do gives you less favor with God.

But we have to understand, guys, is God is sovereign.

He's completely sovereign.

Not sovereign over some things, sovereign over all things.

Even when situations we find ourselves in that it's not pleasing to him.

He's sovereign.

God could have, if he wanted to.

If he wants to turn our ways and turn our feet to do everything perfect, but he chooses not to.

Why we tend to find ourselves giving God a lot more glory.

We realize how gracious he is because that's what he also said in His Word, that we've been drawn to him through his loving, through his love and his kindness.

That's what he said.

So it's interesting that God would allow us to find ourselves fallen, find ourselves in situations that causes us to cry out to him because that's who he is.

You know, he's our helper, he's our provider.

He's all these things and we can't do it on our own.

That's the whole point.

That's the good news of the gospel, is that Jesus did it himself.

He took on a form of Sinful, rebel flesh, yet without sin, and died on the cross and he took upon a punishment on himself that we can be free, not free to sin, not free to live any way we want to.

Because this is the thing the heart of a believer will not desire the things of Satan, would not desire the things of the world.

We will desire righteousness.

Does that mean we'll live perfectly?

No.

But we will not live our lives practicing sin.

Now, there is a such thing as church discipline, how it's supposed to go.

And church discipline is a lengthy process.

It's not a one, two, three step process and nothing like that.

It's very lengthy and it takes time and it's built on compassion and love towards the individual, wanting to see them grow in Christ, wanting to see them come to repentance and grow.

Now, how church discipline is supposed to go is that if you see your brother or sister in a sin, you go to them and correct them.

If they hear you and if they repent, you've won your brother or sister.

That's how it's supposed to start.

Now if you got somebody who's just rebellious and they don't want to hear correction, then you go bring a witness, you go bring a witness to you, to them, and you try to, you took all y'all together, try to convince the individual of their sin, hoping that they will come to repentance.

This isn't a, hey, get it together A, B and see, this is hey man, this is wrong, or hey sister, you know, let's see this.

I love you.

This is sin, God's word.

You're bringing God's word to bear in what's going on in the person's lives.

And if then you want them, then praise God.

But then you have those cases where you have one person talk to them.

You, you have a few people talk to them and they still don't want to hear.

They still rebellious and they still don't care.

They still want to do their own thing.

This is where you bring it before the church.

Now, the rest of the body is aware of what sin has happened and they are talking to the person, loving on them, surrounding them and encouraging them to trust in the Lord, to repent, to turn from this evil, turn from this sin, whatever it is, turn from it.

Because obviously this person doesn't agree to descend at this point.

The individual does not agree to this sin, does not agree that they didn't stop, does not agree to any change.

And at this very last point, when you've done all of this, that's where you have excommunication.

Excommunication seems harsh to the outside, but excommunication is basically saying, okay, we tried, now we got to send you away.

And at this point it means they're removing them from the church roles.

They're no longer part of the church and you no longer see them as a Christian.

Because the heart of a Christian turns from sin, not practices it and not amends it, not loves it.

See, but when you realize there's an individual who loves their sin, who is not turning from their sin, then they're showing fruit of somebody who may not truly be a Christian now.

And we have to send them away.

And, and at that point we still pray for them.

We don't stop loving them as far as praying for them.

But we can't, we can't associate with you at this point.

We can't break bread no more like we used to because you're a rebellion against God and you find that's okay.

That's the issue.

Now.

We're not talking about how we deal with sinners in the world who don't profess Christ.

We love on them, we come around them, we eat with them and all those things.

But when you got somebody who profanes the name of God, who has come and sat with us, who broke bread with us, proclaimed the name of Christ and then turned and now no longer wants to follow God and just spit, set God and disrespects God, that's the person you don't want to associate with.

You're not going to want to associate with, hey, I'm going to pray for you.

Pray God, rock your heart and you come back to him.

Because at the end of the day, we don't know who's God.

At the end of the day we don't know.

Only God does.

And we leave all that to Him.

Once again, he is sovereign.

So there is a place for church discipline.

But the way this was done, this girl didn't seem like she was somebody who was in rebellion.

She doesn't seem like somebody that was.

That somebody came to her and said, hey, you know, you was wrong for that, that sex outside of marriage.

And for her to say, oh no, I was completely right.

I was supposed to have sex outside of marriage.

This baby was supposed to happen the way it happened.

She don't seem like that's what happened with her.

But now that was the case.

If they've been trying to talk to her and she just been sleeping, sleeping, sleeping around and all that kind of stuff.

Like that.

And then now they bring it to her.

Hey, maybe.

But from what I've been hearing concerning the background of the story, this is not the case concerning this young lady.

That the reason why they brought her before the church because to save embarrassment from the church, because they don't want to deal with the fact that, hey, we got a pregnant sister here who is not married and it looks bad on the church.

Yes, I understand all that.

We don't want to make the bride of Christ look bad.

I understand that.

But that's where you have church discipline in place.

And when church discipline is enforced and when people are being corrected, hey, as people come around, they see an unmarried woman that's pregnant loving people around, say, yeah, she repented before the Lord, yes, she was in sin, she repented.

She trusts in the Lord.

We're loving them, right?

We're loving on her and we can go on with our lives.

And the church doesn't look bad.

The church grows and it's beautiful.

So that's my take on this, guys.

I know it could have been a little lengthy.

I know I probably went on a couple tangents, but I wanted to come on and share my piece on this.

I figured with things like this and topics like this, I wanted to come back this year for 2025 and discuss more topics surrounding these type of churches, the type of teachings that causes them to behave the way they do because in themselves they think they're right and matter of fact, they know they're right in their own minds.

But when you actually peel back the layers and look at what the word of God says as a whole, it's not worth it, it's not right, it's not good.

I don't like the fact that young woman felt the need that she had to stand before the congregation in order to confess all those things.

At this point, there are some people who believe that's okay.

I just don't.

I don't agree with that.

But there are other ways to handle sin in the church, and the Bible gives us that.

I hope this was helpful.

Remember, this world is full of errors, but the only thing the doctor prescribes is truth.

Blessings.