What is ugly shunning?
Hi, welcome to today's little lesson.
We've been talking for the last four little lessons about the biblical topic of shunning.
I hope you've been seeing those previous little lessons.
If you haven't, searched for them, find them, and it'd be best if you watch those ones before
you watch this one.
So, we've covered a lot of ground in these first four little lessons.
I want to talk today about ugly shunning and what is ugly shunning.
Ugly shutting is when you're not following the rules, the biblical principles, what are
laid down for who to shun and why to shun and when to shun.
And I'm telling you what, I've seen some things in my day.
I've been a Christian for 40 years.
Actually, I've been in the vocational ministry for 40 years and a Christian even before that.
So, I've seen a lot and seen it all, and I've seen a lot of unbiblical, ugly shunning within
churches.
I'm thinking of one church in particular that is not too far from where I'm sitting right
now that they'll shun you, man, if you transgress any small infraction.
Questioning the leadership, for example is a big, big bad one at that church, and they
will excommunicate you very quickly if you're not clearly submitted to leadership.
Nobody is allowed to question the leadership.
Why?
Because they are ordained of God, set there by God, and to rebel against the leadership
is to rebel against God.
That's what they teach, and that's what they brainwash people to believe.
That's ugly, ugly shunning.
We've seen from scripture that you only shun people for unrepentant, grievous sin committed
by those in the church.
We saw that in Matthew 18.
Jesus said, "If your brother sins against you."
He's not talking about outsiders.
And Paul wrote to the Corinthians about this guy in the church, and he said, I wrote you
to not associate with immoral people.
I didn't mean with the immoral people of this world.
You'd have to get out of the world then.
I wrote you not to associate with any so-called brother, if he should be an immoral person
or a swindler and so forth.
And he lists these categories of very, very grievous sins in God's eyes.
And he says those kinds of people, they're not born again.
Even if they profess to be born again, don't buy it.
Don't buy it.
They're fooling themselves.
The Holy Spirit cleans people up.
At least to that degree.
Okay.
And they had a guy in Corinth who was living with his stepmother in an immoral relationship,
and goodness gracious still in the church, coming to the gatherings.
Paul said, "Out of here.
Get him out of here."
All right, so another form of ugly shunning is practiced by, I don't want to say the majority
of Christians, but man, oh man, it's practiced by quite a few Christians, and that is this
form of ugly shunning.
I'm going to call it doctrinal shunning.
Oh, I don't agree with you doctrinally, and so I will have nothing to do with you.
I can't fellowship with you because you believe in the post tribulational rapture, and I believe
in the pre tribulational rapture, and so we cannot fellowship.
Well, that's ugly shunning.
It's not biblical shunning.
It's anti biblical shunning.
It breaks the bond of unity within the body of Christ.
It shows that you think that the most important thing in Christianity is your doctrine.
Whereas, that's not true.
The most important thing is your obedience to the commandments of Christ.
That's the most important thing.
And when we divide, which we do divide, oh my goodness, do Christians ever divide over
doctrine, and they're led by their doctrinal leaders, just like in Corinth.
We are just worried about their doctrinal shunning, and Paul rebuked them for that.
They were saying, "I'm of Paul.
I'm of Apollos.
I am of [inaudible 00:04:18].
I am of Christ.
And Paul just hammers them for their divisions.
Division is a form of ugly shunning and it ought not to be.
It ought not to be.
For the life of me, I cannot understand, and I call every pastor listening to me to repent
of this right now.
Why would you ever put a sign in front of your church building that advertises to the
whole world that your different than those other Christians because you've added a doctrinal
name to your church.
We are the blankety blank church.
We're telling everyone we're not like them.
We're not like them.
We have distinctive doctrine, and that sets us apart from all the rest, and we want you
to know it, and so it's on our sign.
That grieves the Holy Spirit of God.
You say, "Well, that's just how it is.
Yeah, that's just how it is."
Grievous to God.
Ugly, non-biblical shunning.
You're saying to people, "If you don't agree with us doctrinally, you're not going to be
comfortable here because we are ...."
Now, am I saying that we should just throw doctrine out the window?
Oh no, no.
There's essential, and then there was non essentials.
The essentials are things like the Deity of Jesus Christ, his sacrificial death on the
cross, his resurrection on the third day, his coming again, his future kingdom, salvation
by grace through a living faith.
These are non negotiable, cardinal doctrines of Christianity.
But you got to agree with me.
Armies of Christians who agree on the essentials shun each other because of the non-essentials
and divide and advertise their divisions.
That's ugly shunning, ugly shunning.
Okay, so I've actually written an article that's on Davidservant.com.
If you search for it, I think the title is something like, Shunning, the Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly.
And so I look into biblical shunning, non-biblical shunning, and really on biblical shunning.
I go into some stories.
Oh my goodness.
Some of the most unbiblical shunning the world, is practice by the Anabaptists, particularly
the Amish, who have hundreds and hundreds of manmade rules, and they'll shun you for
the smallest infraction and kick you out of their church.
And worse yet, when someone gets born again amongst many of the Old Order Amish sects,
they kick them out.
So, they shun people when they get saved.
Oh, what a tragedy that is.
So, I talk about that in that article.
So, that's the summary of it, and all of this, of course, overriding all this is love, love
for people because shunning people is really a natural response to the gospel.
If I love people, I'm not going to accept their testimony that they believe in Jesus
if they're practicing grievous sin.
And if I love God, I don't want his message to be misrepresented by somebody.
And so I have to speak up about that.
I got to do something about that.
If I love my neighbor as myself, of course I'm going to confront my neighbor when I see
that he's doing something that grieves God, particularly if it's an offense, a personal
offense against me.
We talk about that.
And I can't review everything.
Okay, we're out of time once again, but thank you for listening to these five ... Hopefully,
you listened to all five of these lessons on biblical shunning, and hopefully I've given
you some basic principles to at least get you started in understanding what's right
and what's not so.
Thanks so much for joining me.
If you want to be somebody's hero, the least of these around the world are waiting for
you to visit heavensfamily.org.
Heavensfamily.org.
God bless you.