Well church, we are off and running on what will be surely another exciting year with the Lord. Of course, I have no idea what exactly he has in store for us barring his return, but I do know that he is God. He is sovereign over everything, including the calendar. That he has a mission, and we are on it. What? What that means for us is varied. Lots of things. That means there are people to reach with the gospel. In our community, there are people who are struggling to find purpose. People are wrestling with anger and addiction. There’s relational breakdowns. Anxiety is on the rise. And through it all, the gospel provides the unchanging answer and the hope that fills every need. And we’re part of the team sent to declare that Jesus Christ is Lord to people who need to hear it. We’re there to declare that Jesus died for our sins, that he rose to secure our salvation and our eternity with him. That’s what we’ll be doing with our 2026. And I’ll let you in on something a little bit fun. In case you haven’t heard about it yet, you might have heard it through the grapevine, but our elders and lead team have been contemplating what to do for Easter. Last year, we maxed out three services in this room, and there’s only so many hours on an Easter Sunday morning.

I’m not sure where to put another one. And we had even more people come out for Christmas this year. And so, for this year, we’re going to try something new. We’re going to have one big, massive service for all of the people who call Calvary home. And all of our guests. This Easter, we have rented out the 1750 seat auditorium at John Marshall. And we’re going to have one. Yeah, someone’s kind of freaking out down here about that. It’s going to be a great time. Really, really excited about it. I’m sure. I’m sure, even as I say that you’re like, well, did you think about. Yes, the answer is yes. We are thinking about everything that goes along with that. Um, and so there will be more details to come on that. But that’s something very exciting here in the next couple of months to look forward to. This morning, we are in Luke chapter 17. There’s a section at the beginning of Luke 17 where Jesus turns to his closest disciples and he goes deeper in some areas, he goes deeper with them on the need for accountability, for the strength of our faith, for the attitude of a servant. And it’s just ten verses before Luke gets back to talking about Jesus public teaching, the teaching he gives to everyone. But this section has such depth to it that we’re going to we’re going to look at it over the next three weeks.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ and your desire is to grow deeper and stronger and broaden your walk with Jesus, you’re going to find what you’re looking for in these verses. If that’s not you, if you take more of a sort of a casual, not so serious approach to Christianity, let me suggest to you that it’s possible you haven’t really listened to Jesus on this, which is to say, you haven’t heard Christ on Christianity, which seems like a pretty obvious oversight, doesn’t it? When you have an active living relationship with Christ, it is constantly developing. It’s not stagnant. It’s not a thing that stands still if you’re not developing an ever-deepening relationship with the Lord, informed by His word, guided by his spirit. That’s a good indication that to you that that you don’t understand what it means to be a Christian in the way that Christ himself described it. So let me show you. That’s what we’re going to look at today. This morning, Jesus is going to show us how much we need each other and how we’re supposed to interact with each other when we follow him. And for some of you, this topic in particular is, is going to be difficult because you don’t like having spiritual conversations. For some of you, that’s true.

You just you don’t like you don’t like talking about spiritual things. You don’t like talking about your own spirituality. You don’t like talking about spiritual things with others. You don’t like confrontation. You’d rather just look the other way when it comes to things about sin. But as we’ll see today, Jesus says that we should confront sin head on and that we need each other because spiritual growth requires us to have others guide us and that we would then be guides for others. You serve a vital role in the development of the faith of the people that God has brought into your life. Do you know that you serve a vital role for them? You can open your Bibles to Luke chapter 17. I’ll also have it on the screen here this morning. Jesus is going to show us two ways that we interact with each other on issues of sin. First, he’s going to show us the wrong way that comes from the world and then the right way. That’s vital for our spiritual growth. So, let’s start with the wrong way, which includes one of the strongest warnings that we find in Scripture. And he said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

You know, one of the aspects of the Bible that I, that gives me a lot of confidence that it is God’s word is how true to reality it is. Sometimes Christianity gets painted as sort of a, a state, a state that you achieve where people get to a place where sin is no longer an issue for them. I had a pastor friend of mine one time, a guy that I really respect, tell me that he’d done an inventory of his own heart and mind and that he’d found that there was no sin anymore there and no inclination to sin. Pride, maybe I don’t. I don’t know about him, but that’s not me. That’s not how it is for me. I face temptations to sin every day. I fail every day. By God’s grace, I see increasing victory over my sin. That through the Holy Spirit’s work in my heart and mind. But the temptations are there all the time. And here Jesus says, yeah, I know, I know that the temptations are there. Temptations are sure to come. It’s not a question of will they or won’t they. They are coming. They will be there, present in your life. Jesus doesn’t describe discipleship as some sort of a state of release from all sinful temptation. Discipleship in Christ is what helps us overcome, to battle through, to defeat sin with the help of our friends, as we’re going to see here in just a minute.

But then Jesus goes in a direction that I wouldn’t have expected here. See, when he brings this up, I would expect that he would now spend some time describing how to overcome these inevitable temptations that are that are on the way. But instead, Jesus addresses the source of the temptation. He turns his attention to the person who tempts others to sin. Now, why would he do that? Well, it’s because of Jesus topic here. Jesus is not here addressing sin per se. He’s talking about our interactions with each other, and one of the ways that we can interact with each other as people is in a devastating, destructive, soul crushing way by being a tempter of the other person. Woe to the one through whom they come. So, what Jesus is picturing here is a person who either knowingly or carelessly misleads a person to violate God’s commands to sin against him. I say, knowingly or carelessly, because it could be either one of those. You could know you’re trying to corrupt a person and get them to choose to sin. Or you could just not care enough about God’s Word and mislead them in the same direction. Either way, the tempter is the cause. Do you see that there in verse two? The cause? There’s a source to every temptation.

And if and if the source is another person, that tempter, Jesus says, is in a very dangerous place spiritually. He says it would be better, better for a person to die at the bottom of the sea with a millstone tied around their neck, than to be the cause of someone else’s sin. Now, our immediate reaction to that from our sort of limited human perspective is no, it’s not. No, it’s not. That’s not better. How could that possibly be better? This sounds like hyperbole. And Jesus does often use hyperbolic language. Sort of over-the-top illustrations to make a point. But is that what he’s doing here? I think he’s using the same kind of gripping language that Jesus usually uses. But this is different because here he’s talking about death and eternal destiny. Jesus is saying it would be better for a person’s life to end than to face the consequences of being a person who misleads others into sin. I believe Jesus is talking here about degrees of punishment in hell. He’s saying you’d be better off dead immediately than to add tempter to your list of crimes against God. That’s the sense in which it would be better. That’s how serious this is. It’s better to face God’s condemnation with just your own sin than to stand before God, having enticed others to sin. The reason that temptation or tempting others to sin is, is such an egregious affront to God is that it’s false discipleship.

It’s really what it is. Temptation is false discipleship. It is literally pulling people away from the truth and sending them on a path of destruction. In John chapter 14, Jesus describes making room in heaven for his faithful disciples who are part of God’s family. He says that that that he is the way and the truth and the life, and that to be part of God’s eternal family and to be in this, this room that he’s preparing for them, they have to trust and they have to follow his way, the way that he has made. The temptation is an offer of a different path. Temptation is sending someone down a different road. When we give into temptation and we sin against God, we are in essence saying that we want to follow a different path that leads somewhere other than Jesus. Now, the wonderful news of the gospel is that Jesus has walked that path faithfully and perfectly for us. We’re not trusting in our own ability to stay faithful. We’re saved because Christ was perfectly faithful and we are in Christ. But our walk with Christ now, now that we have it, is through a world of temptation. Our spirit is now willing. It wasn’t before. We weren’t willing to be faithful to the Lord before our spirit, when we are made alive in Christ, is now willing to follow Jesus.

But our flesh is weak, and when we fail, we turn and we repent, and we rejoice in that salvation. We remember our salvation, and we keep our eyes on Jesus, and we continue to grow to be like him. That’s the Christian life over and over again. That’s the Christian life. But a tempter is one who stands at the trailhead of that other path and says, well, why don’t you come down this way? Why don’t you? Why don’t you see what’s down this way? And so, he tries to steal people from Jesus and lead them with lies down a path that ends in their destruction. That sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? That’s what sin is. It’s a pathway to destruction. The only reason that sounds dramatic to us is that we often don’t think biblically about sin. We treat it too lightly. I want you to listen to this. This is from the first chapter of the Book of Proverbs. My son, if sinners entice you, do not consent. If they say, come with us, let us lie in wait for blood. Let us ambush the innocent without reason like Sheol. Let us swallow them alive and whole, like those who go down to the pit. We shall find all precious goods. We shall fill our houses with plunder. Throw in your lot among us. We will all have one purse. My son, Do not walk in the way with them.

Hold back your foot from their paths, for their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed blood. For in vain is a net spread in the sight of any bird. But these men lie in wait for their own blood. They set an ambush for their own lives. Such are the ways of everyone who is greedy for unjust gain. It takes away the life of its possessors. That’s the way the Bible describes sin and the dangers of sin and the direction of sin. Do you see how much weightier that is than we often think sin is? These men, these tempters, lie in wait for their own blood. They think they’re going to give them something good, but it’s actually a trap that leads to their own death. And when we listen to temptation and we choose a sinful path, we are stepping into that trap. And when we become a tempter, we lay out that trap for other people. So, who are these Tempters? Who are they? Well, Jesus here does not specifically say. And that’s on purpose. The effect of Jesus not identifying the specific threat is that now these tempters are everywhere. They’re everywhere. Some are obvious. There are people outside the church that don’t profess Christ. They may even be open mockers of Christianity. They’re easy to spot and they could be corporate or they could be personal.

Corporate Tempters are organizations that produce products designed to get you to sin. So, think about things like movie studios, pornographers, influencers, book publishers. Some media are good, okay. Some groups are corporations are producing good materials. Others produce things that make money by enticing our sinful impulses. They know how to do that, so they make money off of it. We just heard an ancient proverbial wisdom from a tempters reason, right? Listen to the way they reason. Let us ambush the innocent. Let us ambush the innocent. There are lots of people in our world trying to ambush the innocent. Parents, look at your kids’ books really carefully, okay? Even the little ones. Little children’s books. Look at them carefully. Because it’s all the way down to children’s books. The vast majority of what is produced in media is not designed to move you toward Christ. It’s intended to get you to move away from him for the financial benefit of other people. Under this sort of heading of corporate tempters, I might also put false teachers, so-called pastors or Christian influencers or whoever who build up a following but are actually misleading Christians away from the gospel. You need to be. We all do. We need to be very careful about who we allow to tell us about God. We need to be really careful. I’ve seen far too many believers fooled into listening to false teaching, simply because the guy on YouTube has a big following, or is easy to listen to, or says the name Jesus.

You know, not everybody who says the name Jesus is teaching you about Jesus. And I say that as a guy on YouTube talking about Jesus, okay. Anybody can say what they want as much as they want to. Everybody in the world think about how little accountability there is to that. Everybody can do that. But I don’t actually think that the greatest threats to our discipleship are corporate. I think the bigger danger is the personal friends, family, people at work, people at school. These people are far more convincing when they mislead us because they can make an argument, an ongoing argument. People we know and we spend time with, they can personally persuade us. They know our weaknesses better than any algorithm. They can offer personalized advice that sounds wise, but is actually biblically foolish, and they can lead us down the wrong path and make it sound like it’s in our best interest. They can join with our peers, and they can pressure us in a direction that they want us to go. And I know peer pressure is a big deal among young people, but adults can fall for it as well. And Undiscerning Christians step into the trap of temptation from people we know all the time. Why do we do that? Well, sometimes it’s because we don’t want to disappoint those people, right? We care what they think of us.

We want to keep those friends. We want to appease those family members. That’s one reason sometimes it’s because we have a very false sense of God’s grace. We have such a low view of God’s lordship in our lives that we treat his grace like it’s ours to control, like it’s ours to use whenever we need it. For Christmas, my mom bought our family one of these fire blankets. Have you seen these? Fire. It’s a blanket if you have a fire in your kitchen. Instead of grabbing the fire extinguisher, you grab this blanket and you throw it over and you smother it. And as soon as we unwrapped it, my daughter immediately says, let’s try it out. I was so proud in that moment. I was like, ah, the timing, the quick wit. Mhm. My work is done. But think about that for a moment, okay. I want you to think about that, that blanket for just a moment. Here we have this grace from God that covers over the fires of our sin. When we fail, God’s grace is there. Christ saves us from our failure and our weakness because we are safely under his protective grace. In a sense, whenever we sin. But then we repent and we rest in the grace of Christ. It’s like we’re throwing a gospel blanket over our sin.

But to choose to openly, defiantly sin against God because we presume on his grace that it will cover it like is like intentionally setting a fire in your kitchen because you have the blanket. There are people in church today who treat God’s grace just like that. That’s how they see it and treat it, and they entice other people to do the same. Church, we need to be on our guard because ungodly tempters lurk. They come from all angles. They can be. They can be as far away as Hollywood, and they can be as close as your spouse. And their goal is to get your eyes off of Jesus and onto another path that is leading away from him that ends in your destruction. So, what do we do? What influence should we have? What guidance do we need? Well, Jesus explains. Pay attention to yourselves. If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, you must forgive him. You know, we might think that the best way to avoid tempters is to spend less time listening to people. But Jesus says that what we actually need is more interaction with the body of Christ. And here’s where I, as I mentioned earlier, the interaction is not always comfortable because Jesus says that the way to make sure that we’re kept safely on the path of discipleship is to watch after ourselves and each other carefully.

We need each other, and that means speaking up when we see our fellow Christian engaging in some sinful behavior. The word brother here is just a collective term for any fellow Christian, because Jesus command to pay attention here, I believe what he’s commanding is includes saying something even when someone is moving in the direction of temptation. In the Proverbs, the wise father tells his son not even to go down the street where temptation is calling. I’ve had pastors and elders in my life point out the potential of temptation to me, and I really appreciate that there would be people close enough to me and care enough about me to want to see potential dangers down the road for me. It might feel difficult, but this is a very loving, intentional process for helping each other avoid the trap of sin. I mean, look at the process. It begins with rebuke if your brother sins, rebuke him. Rebuke is pointing out a sin and showing disapproval. Now, this is not just yelling. Okay, I know that when we think of rebuke, we get it confused sometimes with being angry with people. Rebuke can be angry, but it doesn’t have to be. Rebuke is pointing out sin and disapproving of it. And since God is the one who defines sin, it requires showing how the sin is a violation of God’s Word, not just our personal preferences.

Okay, godly rebuke requires godly parameters and commands. If I just yell at someone because they didn’t do what I wanted them to do, I haven’t biblically rebuked them at all. In fact, there’s a good chance that my anger in that situation also requires rebuke. Ironically, when we rebuke biblically, we are guiding them back to the truth of God’s Word so that they continue to pursue Christ. And this is a vital part of the operation of the church community. And it is necessary as a discipline so that we will stay faithful to Christ. So, let me ask you, church, why don’t we do it? Why don’t we do this more? I can think of dozens of reasons why we don’t do this, why we don’t rebuke like we should, but I. I don’t have time for dozens. So let me just give you a few big ones. How about, we don’t point out the sins of others and help guide them to God’s Word? Because we don’t know God’s Word well enough to do it accurately. Or how about we’re afraid they’ll be mad at us, and we don’t like it when people are mad at us. Or how about we’d rather just not get involved because it’s time consuming? Or how about we’re afraid someone will then point out our sin, and we’d rather not deal with it because we’ll be embarrassed.

We’ll feel like a hypocrite. Or how about we’re part of the reason the person chose to sin in the first place is to do this would implicate ourselves as well. Or how about we actually reap some of the benefits of their sin, and we don’t want to lose what we have. Or how about we just don’t care? Now we say we care because we know that’s the right thing to say, because we’re Christians, but we don’t. When it comes to actually doing the hard things that Jesus tells us to do. We’re just not that interested. I could go on all of these excuses for failing to lovingly rebuke our fellow believers in God in a God honoring way is basically, you’re basically saying to them, I’d rather you go down the path of your own destruction than, say a hard thing to you. Think about that church. That’s what we’re called to be for each other. We’re called to be this for each other. Discipleship is a group project. You and I need godly rebuke because the deceitfulness of our hearts is there. We can convince ourselves of a lot of things that are not true. When I when I tell myself, oh well, it’s just a you know, what’s the harm in a little sin? It’s not hurting anyone. That’s not true.

That’s not true. Sin is war against God. It damages my heart and my mind. It pulls me away from Jesus and it affects the people around me. There’s no such thing as a little sin. I need an outside voice that shares the truth and the real consequences of my sin. I need a reality check that brings my mind and my heart back into alignment. And I can’t do that myself because I can’t see myself with outside perspective. We need rebuke for the same reason we don’t do our own surgery, right? We don’t do our own surgery. You do your own surgery on yourself? I hope not. Why don’t we do that? Because I don’t know what the surgeon knows. And I can’t see what the surgeon sees. Knowledge and perspective that is embedded in a loving rebuke is a gift. And it’s a gift that we’re missing out on when we refuse to give it to each other. I left out one reason that we don’t rebuke like we should. It’s a big one. I left it out because it’s addressed in the second step of the process. You see, the second step is to forgive the person who wrongs us with his sin when he repents. So sometimes the rebuke we give is for a sin that wronged us personally. Now everything that is involved with the process of restoration is not listed here by Jesus.

For example, in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus includes the step of assessing yourself to see where you went wrong first before rebuking. But here Jesus focuses just on the first step and the final step in in the sin you’re rebuking. If that sin is against you and the person apologizes for it, then forgiveness is a requirement. It’s a requirement. It’s not a suggestion. It’s not just the best way to live. It’s not contingent on whether you feel like it. It is a command from Jesus. If you rebuke a person for a sin against you, you must forgive them when they repent. And of course, the reason we don’t do this, the reason we don’t rebuke, is because we don’t want to forgive. We want to hang on to that bitterness. That’s what we would rather be bitter than call out the sin. But that’s what we’re called to be church. We have to do this. And how often must we grant this forgiveness when they repent? Every single time. It’s the third step of the process. Like shampoo, lather, rinse, repeat. Right. You just get. You just keep going. Notice that’s not a total of seven times. Okay. You’re thinking well okay, I asked seven times. Now we’re on number eight. Now I don’t have to do it. It’s not a total of seven times. It’s seven times in the day. I don’t think I even talked to anybody long enough to go through seven cycles of forgiveness and repentance in a day, and that can’t happen.

And that’s the point. It’s an excessive way of saying every time, every time you may feel like your patience is running out with someone, but the command to forgive them does not run out. And the reason this endless cycle of rebuke and forgiveness is so important is that it is the opposite of what happens with temptation. Okay, the tempter takes you down a wrong path away from Christ. Rebuke addresses the lies of the sin and forgiveness removes the bitterness of sin so that we stay firmly on the path of discipleship. You see how they work in opposite ways. In other words, it’s the application of the gospel that’s really what we’re doing here. We’re applying the gospel. Think about what Christ did to address our sin. He called our sin what it is. He didn’t shy away from it. He took the punishment for that sin in himself on the cross. And then he forgives and restores the relationship with God for those who repent. What we’re doing is exactly the same. We’re acting out the gospel. The only difference is that we don’t die for the sins ourselves. What we do is we point to Jesus. We remember what he’s done. And as we do this over and over again, we help each other grow in Christ. This is this is part of the process of growing in Christ, stepping forward in our relationship with him.

We are the opposite of tempters for each other. We’re restorers. We’re disciple makers. I want to challenge you this morning, especially if your inclination is to hide your own sin and to shy away from your duty to rebuke and restore other people. You’re not avoiding any pain by doing that. You’re not avoiding anything, really. You’re actually putting yourself and others in a very dangerous spot where you’re more susceptible to temptation. There’s a great description in Genesis chapter four on the strategy of sin. God is speaking to Cain, who just offered an inferior sacrifice to that of his brother Abel. And Cain is angry. He’s got sort of murderous thoughts beginning to swirl in his mind. And the Lord says to him, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. Its desire is to crush and destroy us. Church. That’s what sin wants to do. It wants to crush us. Its desires to take over our hearts, to rule over us. But God has given us His Holy Spirit. He has united his believers together as one body, the church, and he has given us the instruction to look out for each other. And that includes uncomfortable conversations. And sometimes it includes confrontations, and sometimes it even includes intercessions from leaders when our hearts are especially misled.

But it’s all good. It is all for our good that we would grow up in godliness and be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Our faith needs to be strengthened and bolstered through this. So let me encourage you. If you’re not in a small group where you are getting to know fellow believers, where they can know you and you’re investing in each other’s lives so that you can be real with one another. You need to get into one of those. Pastor Brian would be thrilled to hear from you. If you reach out to him, he’ll get you involved in a group. And if you’re in a group, you’ve been going there for a long time. But most of the time when you’re in your group, which you which you sort of do is you sort of just have these sort of little Bible chats and sort of talk about Scripture at arm’s length, and then you pray for people, but you never really get to the heart of your struggles. You never really open up. You never really talk about what’s really going on in your life and where you need to improve. I encourage you to go deeper this year. Groups go deeper. Be vulnerable. Be willing to receive the guidance of other people, and have the courage to provide that guidance, to say hard things in loving ways so that we truly address sin and we get back to righteousness and then forgive each other every single time. Lather. Rinse, repeat. Let’s pray.