The Church of Eleven22 - S02E05 - Admonish One Another

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

In this episode, Pastor Joby talks about the fourth "one another" in this series: Admonish One Another, and what that means for our relationships with others. This "one another" is referenced in Colossians 3:16 in the Bible.

Welcome to Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin. The Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ, and we're praying this message helps you deepen your relationship with him. Now let's dive in. Hey, church family, welcome to the Deep and Devos. If you've got your Bible, we are going to be in Colossians chapter 3. And we're talking about what it looks like to admonish one another.

I know that's probably not a word you use in your regular daily, language. Let me give you the definition. Admonish means to warn, to reprimand someone firmly, to advise or urge someone earnestly, to warn someone of something to be avoided. So maybe you can think about it as oftentimes when you come to church and you hear me preach, sometimes I am exhorting you, sometimes I'm encouraging you, and oftentimes I am admonishing you. Now, this last week at church, we talked about the reality that Jesus walked into the temple and he was angry, very, very angry. And the thing that made him angry is that religious leaders in the name of his father was using the very system

that God set up to point people to the goodness and grace of God. And they were using that system to exploit the weak in the name of God. And he got angry. He got really angry. Now, some people think that anger is a sin, but anger is not a sin. In fact, the Bible says, be angry and do not sin. I mean, is that a command? It says be angry and do not sin. There are some things that make you angry, and there are some things that ought to make you angry. And so, this abuse of oppressed people under the name of religion really made Jesus angry. And so what did he do? The Bible says he made a whip. I don't know how long it takes a whip, but he did not react to the situation. He responded with righteous anger. And in my mind, I can just see Jesus walking in

and observing the situation, getting the lay of the land, seeing that his own people were being abused or oppressed. And so he leaves, and I imagine that the disciples are like, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm about to show you what I'm doing. And he makes a whip. And the Bible says he comes in and he throws over the tables. He kicks out the money changers. And he says, this house, my father's house, will be a house of prayer. And again, we talked about what righteous anger looks like. Let me ask you this.

I mentioned it this weekend. But what is it that we should get angry about? Do you get angry about the same things that God gets angry about? Because usually what angers us most is when somebody else violates our comfort, our convenience, or control. Those are things that we should not get angry about.

And so, with that in mind, in Colossians chapter 3, the Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Colossi, says these words, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved. By the way, do you know this, that if you are chosen of God, if you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, then two descriptive words of you are holy, which means set apart and beloved, that you are loved by God. May you be loved. And when you do that, when you put on God's sovereign choice of you, when you know that you have been set apart and separated from this world because God has chosen you, and you know you are loved by God,

then the rest of this list of things, these imperatives, then these are natural outflows of the fact that you know what it's like to be loved by a holy and perfect God. And so he says, put on them, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience. In other words, when God's love infiltrates your life, then you are to take off the old self, take off the carnal self, take off the selfishness, take off the impatience, take off the power play, take off the arrogance, take off the ego, and instead you are to put on compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bearing with one another. And by the way, there's one of

are one another's, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. In other words, what Paul wants us to know is that when we are chosen and set apart, when we surrender our lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, that we must forgive. He doesn't say you ought to. He doesn't say you should pray about it. He says, you must forgive. Why? Because forgiving people, forgive people. And if you're not forgiving people, it may be because you have never been forgiven. And he goes on to say, and above all these, remember last week in the Deepenedivo, I let you know if the Bible says above all else, you should pay attention to what's coming next.

Because he says, this is of highest importance. Above all these, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your heart to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. So these are the kinds of things that are supposed to be oozing out of the believer. Now, up to this point, let's be honest, if you've been around church, none of this is surprising. That if Jesus has saved you, some descriptors of who you are becoming should be things like compassionate, kind, humble, meek, patient, peaceful, unified, there should be gratitude. Then he says, let the Word of Christ,

dwell in you richly. So this also makes sense that if Christ is in you, then you should be diving into the Word of God. We talk about this all the time. He says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching, and then here's our one another, and admonishing one another. In all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns

and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, thanks to God the Father through Him. So what's crazy here is in this list of, it's either 13 or 14 qualities of a Christian, and I don't ever want you to get confused by this, okay? It's not that the activity precedes the identity, it's that the identity precedes the activity. That when you are identified in Christ, when you have surrendered your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, then these are symptoms of a gospel-infected life.

and there are things like compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, all of these things. But tucked in there is this one word that almost seems out of place. It says admonishing one another. And again, the definition for admonish. Ammonish doesn't mean to just like gently tap somebody on the head. Admonish doesn't mean to maybe share a little advice. Admonish doesn't mean to encourage somebody, hey, you might want to think and pray about that a little bit. and Monash means to warn or reprimand somebody firmly.

That's what he's saying. In this admonition for us to put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, all of these attributes of Christ, one of them that's just tucked right here in the middle is, and make sure, as a believer, loved and called by God, make sure that you reprimand someone firmly. What is this doing here? Now, let me tell you, if you get really excited about that, if you're like, all right, finally,

there's some people I need to reprimand. And I would say, just, you know, pump the brakes there are C-Biscuit because there are like 13 or 14 things that he tells us to do, and only one of them is to reprimand. And if your favorite part about Jesus is the part where he turned over the tables and made a whip, and your favorite commands from Paul are things like this, admonish or reprimand someone firmly, then you have completely lost the plot of the story. Because the foundation of this thing is grace. The foundation of this thing is love. But what is just true is this. You can't rightly love somebody

and just sit idly by and watch them destroy their life and say nothing about it. That's not love. In fact, what that is is that's just self-preservation. Somebody asked you this question, who do you need to admonish? Who do you need to warn? Who do you need to reprimand firmly? Who do you need to advise? Who do you need to urge earnestly? Who do you need to warn of something to be avoided?

Now, most of the time, we have been taught to mind our own business. You ever heard that? Well, listen, that's just none of our business. Well, the Bible says that we were indeed called into one body. So what the Bible says, this is crazy now, the Bible says that your business is my business and that my business is your business. The Bible says that if any one part of the body hurts,

then the entire body hurts. So I wouldn't look at my hand and be like, hey, my hand is causing me pain and then say, yeah, but the hand is not the rest of me, so I'm just going to ignore it and hope it works out for my hand. Because if the hand is injured, then all the rest of my body is injured. All of us are infected.

So again, let me ask you, is there somebody that you know in your life that's walking with Christ? They're a believer. They're a follower of Jesus Christ. I would just warn you that we should never lay expectations of a believer on somebody

who does not claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But are there some believers in your life? Maybe they're in your household? Maybe it's your husband or wife. And maybe you need to admonish them. You need to warn them. need to advise them, you need to urge them, you need to warm them of something to be avoided.

Because is it love for you to see somebody making the kind of decisions that is putting their life on a pathway that leads off of a cliff, how in the world could you call it love if you stand there idly by and watch them lead themselves to destruction and never say a word? The real question is this, are you more concerned about the friend or the friendship? Are you more concerned about that person or what that person thinks about you? Is there anybody in your life that you need to admonish, that you need to lovingly come to and speak to them the truth in love and say, you know I love you, but this is going to sting a little? This relationship that you're in is not healthy.

Or the way you're spending your money is not glorifying to God. or the things you're putting in your body are causing you harm in here and in here. And I know it would be tough, but the Bible says that we are to admonish one another. Now, again, and if you think, yeah, but who am I to judge? I tell you who you are to judge. You are a brother or sister in Christ. And it doesn't mean, when the Bible says, judge not lest you be judged, that doesn't mean that we are not to admonish one another.

It doesn't mean that we're not to point out sins in each other's life for the betterment of each other. It means that we are not to look down our nose on one another. In fact, hopefully you welcome some judgment into your life. There's a popular tattoo right now. It says, only God can judge me. And I get what the people are trying to say, but I'm just going to be honest, I don't want only God to judge me. I want you. I want the elders of our church. I want some other pastors and some friends of mine who I've invited into my life. I want for them to admonish me so that I can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, I can remove those things in my life that are leading to my destruction,

my family's destruction, our church's destruction, or my relationship with God's destruction. Which leads me to ask you this question, who have you invited into your life to admonish you? Because I will tell you, unsolicited admonishment is a tough one to take. You know, if I don't know you and you just come up to me and say, you know what, pastor, I just want to point something out because the Bible says that that I need to remove that plank from your eye.

You know, I can go Bible verse to Bible verse with you. And so to avoid my own defensiveness and to avoid my own ego, what I have done is I have invited some men into my life and one woman, my wife, and I have invited them into my life and say, listen, I am right now giving you permission. In fact, I am requesting of you. if you ever think I need a warning, if you ever think I need to be reprimanded firmly, if you ever think I need to be advised or urged earnestly, if you think I am heading towards something that ought to be avoided,

would you please, please, please love me more than you care about how much I like you? And would you admonish me? So Church of 1122. because God loved us enough to admonish us with His Word. I mean, a whole lot of His Word is just admonishment. It's a warning. It's an urging. It is a reprimand that if we continue on a path led by our own desires,

that it would lead to a path of destruction, and God would love us more than he cares about what we think about him in the moment, that he would love us enough, that he would send his son to warn us, to urge us, to reprimand us, and even to die for us. So who do you need to admonish? And who have you invited into your life to admonish you? And if you're like, Pastor, I don't even know where to start. Where would I start inviting people into my life that could point out my blind spots?

A great one would just be to join a disciple group. And I promise if you've never been to a disciple group, you don't just sit around in the group the whole time and point out all the sin in everybody's life. That's not it at all. But through prayer and through Bible study, you begin to build the kind of relationships where you invite the one another's in your life to admonish you, and you admonish one another. Let's pray. Our good and gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you that you would love us enough to tell us the truth in your word, that we don't even really break your laws. We just break ourselves against them. And Lord, I thank you, and I praise you that it's not our

that determines our destination. It's our direction. So God, if any of us are heading in the wrong direction, Lord, I pray that you would put real friends, real brothers and sisters in our lives that would admonish us, that would love us enough that we'd be willing to say the hard thing now

so that we would avoid the big pain later. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us for Deepen with Pastor Jobi Martin. If you're looking for additional resources to help you further deepen your relationship with Jesus Christ, visit co-e-22.com slash resources. We're praying this message you heard today helps you experience God in a unique and fresh way. And as always, be free.