You Shall Surely Rebuke Your Neighbour
Leviticus 19:15-18 & 1 Corinthians 5:1-13
Halifax: 23 April 2017, 10:30 am

The Bible commands us to love our neighbour, and one of the most important ways we are commanded to do that is by gently addressing those who sin (rebuking them). This is one of the most neglected duties in the church today. Too often, we stand by and watch while our brothers and sisters go astray and say nothing.
And because this duty is so often neglected, we do not see how valuable it can be, nor do we have many good examples of how to go about doing it. Too often the examples we see are the rebukes of those who are just irritated with their neighbour, or those who are proud and judgmental. The Biblical way is not like that at all.
For this reason, in our sermon tomorrow at our 10:30 worship service, we are going to look at how we are to go about rebuking each other in a helpful way, and we are going to look at how important it is to do this. And then, perhaps most importantly, we are going to look at the example of Jesus in rebuking us as the One who came to save us from our sins. He shows us our sin that we might look to Him to save us from our sin.
We will see that when we understand that we ourselves are but desperate sinners who are only kept from drowning in sin by Him, our rebukes will be in the spirit of those who want our neighbours to join (or rejoin) us in clinging to Him as Saviour. The Lord has called us to be lovingly involved in this process of rescuing each other. It is a privilege that we must stop neglecting if we want to truly be a healthy congregation.