Biblical Procedures
And Commentary
Regarding Sexual Abuses in the Church
Compiled By Peggy Harris
W.A.S.H.
Women and Men Against Sexual Harassment and Other Abuses
4309 Sandy Spring Road, Burtonsville, MD 20866-1139

SEEK AND SERVE

Jeremiah 29: 11-13 Good News Bible

            “I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to bring you prosperity and not disaster, plans to bring about the future you hope for.  Then you will call to me.  You will come and pray to me, and I will answer you.  You will seek me, and you will find me because you will seek me with all your heart.”

Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary Vol. 4 page 462.

            “Here God gives His people the assurance that although, because of their transgressions, He has to discipline them, He will restore them when they have learned the lesson of obedience to Him.  In His love God will not “make a full end’ of them, as He would do with the heathen oppressors of His people.

            The reason God did not dare leave Judah “altogether unpunished’ was that the people had by this time gone too far in their sins.  Humanly speaking, there was no hope for her.  However, God promised to heal her wounds.

            Judah had been forsaken by her lovers and now she stood alone, for she had forsaken her God.

            The second and third clauses of this verse read literally, “(there are) no medicines for (your) ulcer, (nor) healing for you.”  This repeats the truth of verse. 12.  Again God challenges His sinning people to seek soul salvation through their Lord, who alone is, so to speak, the balm of Gilead for the wounds of sin.”

WALL OF FIRE

Zechariah 2: 5 & 8, 9 Good News Bible

            “The Lord has promised that he himself will be a wall of fire around the city to protect it and that he will live there in all his glory.

            Anyone who strikes you strikes what is most precious to me.”  So the Lord Almighty sent me with this message for the nations that had plundered his people: The Lord himself will fight against you, and you will be plundered by the people who were once your servants.”

Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary Vol. 4 page 1091.

            “No material walls are needed, inasmuch as God Himself will be the city’s protection.

            Every blow that strikes the saints strikes their Lord.  The Lord pledges to turn the tables to as to make those whom Israel has served a spoil to His people.”

WHAT POLLUTES YOUR LIFE

Matthew 15 The Message

            “After that, Pharisees and religion scholars came to Jesus all the way from Jerusalem, criticizing, “Why do your disciples play fast and loose with the rules?

            But Jesus put it right back on them.  “Why do you use your rules to play fast and loose with God’s commands?  God clearly says, “Respect your father and mother,” and, “Anyone denouncing father or mother should be killed.”  But you weasel around that by saying, “Whoever wants to, can say to father and mother, “What I owed to you I’ve given to God.”  That can hardly be called respecting a parent.  You cancel God’s command by your rules.  Frauds?  Isaiah’s prophecy of you hit the bull’s-eye:

These people make a big show of saying the right thing,
but their heart isn’t in it.
They act like they’re worshipping me,
But they don’t mean it.
They just use me as a cover
For teaching whatever suits their fancy.

            He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart.  It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.

            Later his disciples came and told him,  “Did you know how upset the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?

            Jesus shrugged it off.  “Every tree that wasn’t planted by my Father in heaven will be pulled up by its roots.  Forget them.  They are blind men leading blind men.  When a blind man leads a blind man, they both end up in the ditch.

            Peter said, “I don’t get it.  Put it in plain language.

            Jesus replied,  “You too?  Are you being willfully stupid?  Don’t you know that anything that is swallowed works its way through the intestines and is finally defecated.  But what comes out of the mouth gets its start in the heart.  It’s from the heart that we vomit up evil arguments, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, lies, and cussing.  That’s what pollutes.  Eating or not eating certain foods, washing or not washing your hands – that’s neither here nor there.

WHOEVER BECOMES SIMPLE AGAIN

Matthew 18 The Message

            At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, ‘Who gets the highest rank in God’s kingdom?’

            For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, ‘I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.  Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.  What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me.

            But if you give them a hard time, bullying or taking advantage of their simple trust, you’ll soon wish you hadn’t.  You’d be better off dropped in the middle of the lake with a millstone around your neck.  Doom to the world for giving these God-believing children a hard time!  Hard times are inevitable, but you don’t have to make it worse – and it’s doomsday to you if you do.

            If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop it off and throw it away.  You’re better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire.  And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away.  You’re better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.

            Watch that you don’t treat a single one of these childlike believers arrogantly.  You realize, don’t you, that their personal angels are constantly in touch with my Father in heaven?

            Look at it this way: If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them wanders off, doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine and go after the one?  And if he finds it, doesn’t he make far more over it than over the ninety-nine who stay put?  Your Father in heaven feels the same way.  He doesn’t want to lose even one of these simple believers.

            If a fellow believer hurts you, go and tell him – work it out between the two of you.  If he listens, you’ve made a friend.  If he won’t listen, take one or two others along so that the presence of witnesses will keep things honest, and try again.  If he still won’t listen, tell the church.  If he won’t listen to the church, you’ll have to start over from scratch, confront him with the need for repentance, and offer again God’s forgiving love.

            Take this most seriously: A yes on earth is yes in heaven; a no on earth is no in heaven. What you say to one another is eternal. I mean this.  When two of you get together on anything at all on earth and make a prayer of it, my Father in heaven goes into action.  And when two or three of you are together because of me, you can be sure that I’ll be there.’”

Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary Vol. 5 Page 448.

            “By refusing the counsel of the church the erring member has severed himself from its fellowship.  This does not mean that he should be despised or shunned or neglected.  Efforts should now be put forth for the erring member as for any nonmember.  In working for a person who has thus severed himself from the church, members should beware of associating with him is such a way as to make it appear that they share his point of view or participate with him in his evil course of action.”

THE MYSTERY OF SEX

1 Corinthians 5 The Message

            “I also received a report of scandalous sex within your church family, a kind that wouldn’t be tolerated even outside the church: One of your men is sleeping with his stepmother.  And you’re so above it all that it doesn’t even faze you!  Shouldn’t this break your hearts?  Shouldn’t it bring you to your knees in tears?  Shouldn’t this person and his conduct be confronted and dealt with?

            I’ll tell you what I would do.  Even though I’m not there in person, consider me right there with you, because I can fully see what’s going on.  I’m telling you that this is wrong.  You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own.  Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master.  Assemble the community – I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power.  Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny.  Let him defend it if he can!  But if he can’t, then out with him!  It will be totally devastating to him, of course, and embarrassing to you.  But better devastation and embarrassment than damnation.  You want him on his feet and forgiven before the Master on the Day of Judgment.

            Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me.  You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that.  Yeast, too, is a “small thing,” but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast.  So get rid of this “yeast.”  Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient.  The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast.  So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread – simple, genuine, unpretentious.

            I wrote you in my earlier letter that you shouldn’t make yourselves at home among the sexually promiscuous.  I didn’t mean that you should have nothing at all to do with outsiders of the sort.  Or with crooks, whether blue- or white-collar.  Or with spiritual phonies, for that matter.  You’d have to leave the world entirely to do that!  But I am saying that you shouldn’t act as if everything is just fine when one of your Christian companions is promiscuous or crooked, is flip with God or rude to friends, gets drunk or becomes greedy and predatory.  You can’t just go along with this, treating it as acceptable behavior.  I’m not responsible for what the outsiders do, but don’t we have some responsibility for those within our community of believers?  God decides on the outsiders, but we need to decide when our brothers and sisters are out of line and, if necessary, clean house.”

Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary Vol 6 page 689.

            “It would be bad enough if the report concerned any form of immorality, but that which existed at Corinth was of a nature that even heathen people condemned. This was indeed a cause of amazement and wonder to Paul, and to any person who knew the exalted standard of purity held before the believer in Jesus.  That a crime which even heathen people would regard with abhorrence should be tolerated in a Christian church greatly aggravated the offense, and called for immediate and drastic action.

            The surprising thing was that the church members were self-complacent, proud of their spiritual status, instead of hanging their heads in shame that such great wickedness had broken out in their midst.  This does not mean that they were elated or proud because of this evil thing in the church, but they were filled with spiritual pride in spite of it.  They should have humbled themselves before the Lord and taken steps to remedy the situation.

            A person living in such deliberate and dreadful immorality should be expelled from the church.  God does not bless his people when they knowingly permit open transgression of His law to continue among them.

            Immediate and drastic action was called for in this well-established case of open defiance of God’s law.

            It is the Redeemer’s plan to work through His church.  The leaders of the church, together with the congregation, are empowered to take disciplinary action in the name of Christ when this becomes necessary, and such action, when proper procedures have been followed, is ratified in heaven.  It is to be noted that Paul did not assume the role of a dictator.  He told them what his opinion was, and instructed them to assemble for the purpose of deciding this particular problem.  He would not presume to administer discipline without the agreement of the church itself. This incident shows that no minister may claim the authority to decide the nature of disciplinary action and execute it without consulting the church.  God Himself respects the authority that He has delegated to His church, and works through His own appointed agency for the conduct of His work on earth.  An illustration of this plan is seen in the matter of Paul’s conversion.  God directed one of the brethren of the company of believers at Damascus to visit the humbled Pharisee and pass on to him God’s instructions.

            To retain in the church a grossly offending member, because of a desire to help him to reform, overlooks the danger of his influence on the whole group of believers. It is often more helpful to the individual to separate him from the church so as to let him realize that his actions are out of harmony with its high standards and cannot be tolerated.

            Paul calls for a complete removal of that which is harmful to the church.  It is not only a question of disfellowshiping the licentious person; it is an exhortation to awaken all to the seriousness of being complacent and self-satisfied while such evils exist in the church.

            Once again in the closing days of the history of this world the destroying angel is to go forth on his fearful mission, and only those who have put away the leaven of sin, and have taken their stand under the blood of the antitypical Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, will be spared.  The church of God must be a pure church.  It must be entirely free from all corruption and imperfection, such as are here typified by “leaven”.  It must be covered by the blood of Jesus, who is here set forth as the antitypical Passover Lamb.

            God does not want His people to be exposed to the corrupting influence of rebellious sinners, and He warns believers not to get on intimate terms with them.  It is not a prohibition against speaking to them or attempting to reclaim them, but against maintaining close, friendly relations with them.

            Fornicators.  This term refers to those depraved individuals who indulge in unlawful sexual intercourse for gain, or simply for the gratification of their own lustful desires.  Such practices are abhorrent to the Lord.”

            Verse 10.  “Paul does not teach in this verse that Christians should not have any dealings at all with non Christians or unbelievers.  That would be altogether impracticable.  Licentiousness was so common among the Corinthians that it would not be possible to carry on the ordinary affairs of life, such as buying and selling, without coming in contact with it.  In His prayer for His followers Jesus made it clear that His people will remain in contact with the unbelieving world around them, but they are not to partake of its spirit.”

This page last updated on Sunday January 29, 2006 11:23 AM

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