Summary: <p> July 8, 2012</p> <p> Rich Nathan preached this weekend on the importance of church discipline and how to properly restore a fallen brother or sister, particularly, a fallen leader. In the verses from 1 Corinthians 5, Paul confronts the church of existing sexual sin amongst the believers and charges them with not taking sin seriously. In 5:1, Paul writes, “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife;” furthermore, Paul instructs the believers in what they should have done by stating, “Shouldn’t you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this?” Paul knows that sinful behavior is infectious to the whole body like yeast in a loaf of bread. He also knows that by tolerating sin, the witness of Jesus Christ to unbelievers is destroyed and the church becomes no longer attractive to unbelievers. Rich emphasized that by exercising church discipline, the reputation of the church, the faith of the offender, and the purity of the church all have the possibility of being restored. In fact, the ultimate hope of church discipline is the restoration of the believer to God and to the community of believers.</p> <p> <a href="/_media/uploads/files/watch_and_listen/Follow-upBibleStudies/2012/Derailed/20120708%20disciplining%20and%20restoring%20fallen%20leaders.pdf" target="_blank">Follow-up Bible Study</a></p> <p> <a href="/_media/uploads/files/watch_and_listen/SmallGroupDiscussionGuides/2012/Derailed/July_08_2012_Derailed_Disciplining_and_Restoring_Fallen_Leaders.pdf" target="_blank">Sermon Discussion Guide</a></p>
