I'm going to ask you this evening to take two covenants, your membership covenant, which I hope has been put into your hands this evening, and your new covenant, otherwise known as the New Testament. We're going to be looking at both of them, and really, in reality, they are the same thing. For the membership covenant is nothing more than lifting from the pages of Scripture and putting onto an 8 1⁄2 by 11 piece of paper so that we can have words to put in our mouths to express our commitment to Christ and to His bride. The last 15 weeks, we have had the privilege of looking at the marks of a healthy church in a video series. Very grateful for Jonathan Lehman and Mark Dever. I hope that you were blessed by that. But I do want to remind you, that series was on marks of the healthy church, and those marks were in the abstract. And what I mean by that very simply is They were describing what a healthy church looks like. But you could really plug into that slot, if you will, any given church. And so the elders have thought it the better part of wisdom to now look specifically at how these marks flesh themselves out in the life of Grace Covenant Church. Specifically, we want to look at and maybe remind ourselves of our covenant responsibilities as members of Grace Covenant Church. And we can think of no better way to do that than to look at our membership covenant. Now, I just want to remind you kind of from 30,000 feet here. When you became a Christian, you entered into a covenant. You entered into a covenant that is called the New Covenant. Christ brought you into that covenant by his life, death, burial and resurrection. And he didn't put you there alone. He put you in the midst of a people. And it is in the midst of that people that you have horizontal covenant obligations to carry out and the New Testament you see. The New Testament gives us the contours of what those covenant privileges and responsibilities look like. Now I want you to think for a moment of the basic definition of a covenant. A covenant is a mutual or contractual agreement between two parties and both parties have privileges and what? responsibilities, okay? Now, when you think of covenant in those terms, that is what we call a bilateral covenant. Bi, bicycle, two wills, bi, two people, two parties, enter into covenant. That is covenant at the horizontal level, and I just want to back up and say when we think of the covenant of grace between God and his people. We're thinking in terms of the vertical, and I want to remind you, that is not a bilateral covenant, that is a what? Unilateral covenant, unicycle, one will, one party. And we see the picture of that one party in Genesis chapter 15, where God took Abraham and said, I'm gonna make a covenant with you, Abraham, and this covenant is gonna be for all the peoples of the world. And Abraham thought he was gonna enter into this covenant with him. He said, take the animals, cut them in half, put the parts on each side, and in the middle is a path of blood. And this was common in ancient Near Eastern societies. And the two members of the covenant, ideally, would walk through that path. And the idea was, if I do not fulfill these responsibilities to my vassal, to my suzerain, then may I be as these dead animals on the ground. But what did God do? He put Abraham to sleep. And he walked in the symbol of the smoking oven through that path by himself, as if to say in an act of oath, if I do not fulfill this covenant, may I be like these dead animals on the ground. We have some boys and girls in here, teens, sorry. Can God die? Good answer. So he's going to have to fulfill that covenant. So what I want to say is when we talk about covenant responsibilities, we're thinking in terms of the horizontal. That doesn't mean that we don't have responsibilities to God. We do. But salvation is not contingent on these commitments. But our gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ happily complies with these commitments because this is who God has made us to be. So what we want to do is for the next 11 weeks, we'll be looking at our commitments to Christ and His bride within the context of covenant. By virtue of entering the church, we have entered into a covenant with one another under the headship of Christ. And what many of us may not know is the reformed tradition has a very long pedigree of membership covenanting. In fact, if you have a copy of the Free Presbyterian Press version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, anybody know what document is in the back of that, Michael? The National Covenant of Scotland, that's right. Now we would differ with them. We wouldn't make a national covenant because to talk about America being for Jesus is a whole nother topic that we're not going to get into. But what they were for and what is the hearty pedigree of the Reformed tradition is to have membership covenants because they recognize by virtue of the infrastructure of Reformed theology that Reformed theology is covenantal. And it is not just covenantal vertically, it is covenantal horizontally. That means that we make vows, we make promises, we make commitments, not based on extra-biblical or anti-biblical material, but what comes out naturally of the Bible itself. It calls us to covenant with one another. If I could sum everything up that I wanna say, not only tonight, but in these next 11 weeks, it's this. Commitment to Christ and his bride is not casual, but covenantal. Commitment to Christ and His bride is not casual, it's covenantal. Now bring that down from the big esoteric theological level and put it on Sunday morning. And you think of that statement in the context of Sunday morning and Sunday evening. It's always hard when I get to Sunday evening, because oftentimes the people that need to hear this the most are not here. But bless you for being here. Commitment to Christ and His bride is not casual, it's covenantal. It is commitment. And so what I want to do tonight is to serve as an introduction to our 11 weeks is we're not even going to get into the covenant tonight. I want to give something of a biblical rationale for a church covenant. And then hopefully we may have some time for Q&A. Now, why am I doing this? Because church covenanting has fallen on hard times. And obviously all of you who are here as members don't have a problem with it because you wouldn't be members unless you sign the church covenant. On the other hand, it may be the case that some of you signed a covenant and said, wow, I was bamboozled. I didn't think I actually had to commit to these things. Hopefully that's not the case, okay? So let's begin by asking a question. I'm gonna have three points tonight. By the way, I'm just curious, with a show of hands, who actually brought the notes that I sent out on the listserv? Don't be shy if you didn't bring them. All right, one, two. Okay, alright. If you've got them on your phone, that's fine too. I'm just, for my own purposes, want to know if it would be profitable to actually print those out. But in a day of smartphones, you can just follow along. I have three questions. The bulk is going to be what you see on the board. And the first point is this. I'm going to ask a question. What is a church membership covenant? I have a confession to make. When I was in college, it was a Christian liberal arts college, but it was a college nonetheless full of sinners and saints, I dated. I'm sorry I did, okay? I'm not promoting it, nor am I saying it's outside the realm of Christian liberty, but I'm just reporting that I dated. And in the world of dating, there is a phrase that was often kicked around. And I'm going to give it to you in acronyms, since this is an acronym community. All you military people are always thrown around acronyms. Like every fifth phrase, it's an acronym. I have to stop you and say, can you please articulate what that means? So the acronym that I would always hear is DTR. Can somebody tell me what that is in the dating world? Nobody knows? Noah. Define the relationship, that's right. Okay, so here's the scenario. Alright, here's the scenario. You've got a young man and a young woman and they have a platonic relationship. For those of you that don't know what platonic means, it means strictly friends, okay? The female wants to verge into the fields of romance and she's not sure if the male wants to cross that boundary as well. And so she has what's called a defining the relationship conversation to see like, what are we doing here? Are we just gonna be friends or are we gonna be more than friends, okay? Well, the counterpart to that in the ecclesiastical world is a church covenant. A church covenant is a defining of the relationship. It is meant as you come in at the front end of your relationship with the members of a church to define not only what your privileges are, but what the nature of your relationship is and what your responsibilities are. So I would submit to you that we define our relationship in the context of the church through membership and covenant. I want to give you just a working definition tonight of what I consider to be a membership covenant. There are many ways you can do this, but I would submit to you that It is a biblically-based promise and commitment made to God, to a local church, and to oneself, which summarizes our ethical pledge of holy living and life together within the body of Christ and the world. Now you will notice, if you look at this paper, There is nothing on here that does not come right out of the scriptures. Not that we literally cut and paste verses and put them in there, but we massage them into this covenant. All of these commands, all of these commitments come straight out of the Bible. So, these aren't extra biblical or anti-biblical, they are biblical, okay? And if you're one of those types, it's like, I don't do anything unless there's a book, chapter, and verse in the Bible, okay? Where was the book, chapter, and verse in the Bible that made up your marriage vows? There wasn't, right? It's not like the minister said, and now for your marriage vows, we're going to turn to Ephesians chapter five. No, he gave marriage vows, but the content of those vows were dripping with scriptural commands, were they not? And in the same way that a marriage vow is dripping with biblical imperatives and commitments, so also a membership covenant, and this is very apt, which you know, a membership covenant is really your marriage vow to the church. The analogy breaks down, but essentially you are marrying the church, okay? So that is a church membership covenant. Let's go on secondly to the bulk of our time tonight. I wanna look at what I call a three-pronged biblical rationale for church membership covenant. And before we get into it, I just want to say this. Why am I spending so much time at the beginning of our 11 week series giving you a biblical rationale for a membership covenant? I'll tell you very simply why. Because your elders are hypersensitive. We are hypersensitive to anything that has the whiff of extra biblical conscience bearing. Okay, let me put that another way. We are scared. of putting anything on your conscience that the Lord through the word does not put on the conscience of Christians. Okay? We never want to do that. And can I just remind you as a congregation that one of your roles as a member in this church is to make sure that likewise that never happens? If any man gets up in this pulpit and tells you, that you must, for example, wash his car on the second Friday of the month, and if you don't, you're in sin, you go have a talk with that man. Now, that would never happen. If it would, you would have to get in line behind me to talk to that man, okay? We want to make sure, and this is just the product of the Protestant Reformation, Because for the whole project of a thousand years that is called the medieval age, the Roman Catholic Church bound people's consciences with extra-biblical commands. And the whole reason we broke out of that and we protested is, as we said, our consciences will only be bound by the Word of God. And so when we come with a piece of paper that doesn't technically fit into Matthew or Mark or Luke or whatever, you may be asking the question, are they asking me to bind my conscience with something that the Lord hasn't? That's why I'm giving you a three-pronged biblical rationale for a membership covenant. So here's what I want to say tonight. This is the bulk of what we're going to spend our time on. A church membership covenant is the natural outgrowth of church membership. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give a simple argument for the legitimacy of church membership. And there's a church membership covenant. There's three steps, okay? And I put them up here because you're going to need to follow this argument, all right? For those of you that like to, you know, play in the highfalutin logic game, this is called a logical syllogism, okay? Premise one, premise two, conclusion, all right? But we'll just call it an argument, all right? Here we go. What are we doing? We're given a biblical rationale for a church membership covenant. A biblical rationale for why we as elders have a right and a legitimate place in requiring anyone who is going to be a member of this place that they commit to the things on this page, all right? Number one, certain commands concerning church life assume and require church membership for their proper function. We'll get to that. Secondly, once you establish church membership, church membership requires commitment to Christ and his bride. Okay, anybody disagree yet? I mean, this is just right out of scripture, right? Therefore, number three, Christians must, by the grace of God, commit themselves to Christ and his bride in order to become members. And let me just give you a very simple counterpart or analogy. Imagine a man and woman wanted to get married. They've been dating or courting or, you know, put in whatever verb you want. And they get to the point where they want to marry and the husband says, you know what? I agree that it's right to be faithful to you. I agree that it's right to provide for you. I believe that it's right to protect you. But I'm just not going to commit to that. I mean, because I mean, let's be honest, there's a lot of women in the world. And to just limit myself to just you, I can't promise you that I'm going to do that. Ladies, you want to marry that guy? I don't think so. OK, so the counterpart is in the context of the church, people saying, I agree that I should be there at church on Sunday. I agree that I submit to submit to elders. I agree that I should give. I agree that I should serve. But I don't commit to doing that. Do we want them as a member of our church? No, we don't. We don't. Okay, so here's the argument. And what I wanna do first is I wanna give you very quickly under this first heading, certain commands concerning church life, assume and require church membership for the proper function. I just wanna give you six commands in the New Testament that require church membership. Okay, now why am I doing this? Because there is no book, chapter and verse in the Bible that says you shall become a member of a church. It is just in the water in the New Testament. It's assumed in the New Testament, okay? So here's six things, very briefly, that assume church membership in order for them to work. Number one, the idea of the local church assumes an identifiable body of believing members. Now, because you guys know your Bible and know your theology, I won't spend a lot of time on this, but the Bible conceives of the church in two different ways. The universal church, Some people call it the invisible church. We like to use the term universal or lowercase c, Catholic. That's all the elect from all times, all peoples, and all places in heaven and on earth, all the elect, that is the universal church. All those who have believed in Jesus Christ. Now, the visible church is composed of visible saints. Now, what do we mean when we say visible? According to our confession, they are visible according to their confession of faith and their obedience to Jesus Christ, okay? And these two things, belief in Christ and obedience to Jesus Christ, walking in obedience to Jesus Christ, they congregate in assemblies, okay? Assemblies that have addresses. So the universal church will not have an address until Jesus comes back. and that'll be the whole heavens and the new earth, okay? But for now, local churches have physical addresses. So when somebody says, I'm a part of a church, you should ask them, where? Where? Where is your local body of believers? Now, when you think of these two ways to understand the church, universal and visible, I want you to listen to me very carefully. In the New Testament, listen to these numbers, the universal church is referenced 15 times. The visible church is referenced 92 times. Which one do you think has the priority? The visible church. The epistles are letters to actual churches. Revelation 1 and 2 are letters to seven real churches in Asia Minor. And so the focus in the New Testament is on the visible church. So I would say church hoppers, Lone Ranger Christians, and church vagabonds primarily think in terms of the universal church rather than a local church. Now, we're going to speed it up. What's a second thing that assumes church membership in order for it to function? Church discipline, Matthew 18. I won't go through the text. Matthew 18, 15-20. One, if somebody sins, go and ask them to repent. If he doesn't listen, take two or three. Don't listen, take them to the church. If they don't listen to the church, let them be to you as a tax collector or a Gentile, which is another way of saying, let them be to you as a what? An outsider. Now, before somebody can be put out, they must be what? Put in, okay? So church discipline assumes that there is an identifiable number of people who are accountable not only to leadership, but to the church, such that when they, after prolonged periods of hard-hearted sin, refuse to repent, are to be put outside. And in that, in 1 Corinthians 5, when Paul actually tells the Corinthians to put that man out of the church who was sleeping with his stepmom, it's interesting, he tells them to do it when they are gathered together in the name of Jesus with the power of the keys, put him out. But then later, I think in verse 12, he says, what do I have to do with judging outsiders? Is it not insiders, people in the church that we are to judge? Paul makes an inherent distinction between those who are out and those who are in. Okay, thirdly, the idea of joining a church goes beyond the universal church and distinguishes insiders from outsiders. I'm not gonna take the time, you can look in Acts 5, but what's interesting all throughout the book of Acts. is that whenever people believe, Luke constantly, it's like a constant refrain in a song throughout the book of Acts. He says either actively, they joined the church, or passively, they were added to the church. On the day of Pentecost, 3,000 people were saved and baptized, and he says that 3,000 souls were added to the church. Boy, it sounds like Luke had a conception of church roles, didn't it? He had church roles. He knew who was inside the church and who was not inside the church. And guess what? That's the whole history of Israel. You look in your Old Testament, if you read it, you read name after name, tribe after tribe, and how many people were in how many tribe at one time. They kept numbers. God bless Calvin Crawford for keeping the numbers, okay? He's just following the Bible. Number four, pastoral oversight assumes a particular group of people. Okay, I'll just, there's many examples. You heard a lot of them this morning, but let me make it simple. If the Bible says obey your leaders, then you need identifiable leaders whom you can obey, right? Let me ask you a question. If you have this idea that you're a member of simply the universal church and that's enough, then that would mean that every church leader in Virginia Beach you would have to give submission to. That's ludicrous. You submit and obey the leaders in a particular church. Five, fulfillment of one another passages of scripture implies membership in a particular local body of believers, love one another, care for one another, serve one another, be in harmony with one another. Is that everybody? It's, well, I mean, you should have a disposition to be that toward everybody, but specifically, and by the way, the New Testament, one of those one another passages is providing financially for the needs of one another. Are you obligated to do that to every single Christian in Virginia Beach? No. So you need to find an identifiable group of believers in a local body where you can carry that out. Finally, financially, number six, supporting shepherds and teachers, Galatians 6.6, implies that there are a particular group or body of elders whom you submit to. Otherwise, are you gonna support every single pastor in Virginia Beach? Again, that's ludicrous. Now, so that's number one, certain commands or ideas in scripture, New Testament, concerning church life, assume and require church membership for their proper function. Now secondly, church membership requires certain commitments to Christ and his bride. You don't need to turn there, but I can show you from scripture where Christians were committed or devoted to one another, Acts 2.42. Acts 2.42 it says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, that's the people, and to the breaking of bread, that's the sacraments, and to prayers, another means of grace. This word devote in the Greek has the idea of stickiness. Christians don't date the church, Christians marry the church. So we are to be committed in all these things, in our giving, in our serving, in our attendance on the Lord's day, in our encouragement, in our rebuking, in our sharpening, in our lifting the countenance of one another. There is a particular body to whom we owe these things that we are committed to. And I come back to my constant refrain, this commitment is not casual, it's covenantal. It's a vow. It also implies accountability. You know, we want people coming into the church to understand what they're getting into, because here's the thing, if people come into the church and then they start to stray from the Lord, they're not in their right mind, right? When we have to go after them, when we are the hands and the feet of Jesus and we have to go after our straying brother, they're not thinking logically, are they? They're thinking like Gollum, my precious, my precious, with their sin, right? And it messes up their mind and it messes up their heart. And so before they get in that state of Gollum-ness, if I can use that word, we want them coming in in a clear mind to commit to be chased after if they fall into sin, and that they might chase after others when others fall into sin. That's where church membership comes in incredibly helpful. So I submit to you then, Christians must, by the grace of God, commit themselves to Christ and his bride in order to become members. And on the basis of these requirements, a church has to have some process by which you examine whether somebody should be made a believer. Let me just ask a simple question. Should anybody who comes to Grace Covenant Church who desires to be a member, by virtue of that desire, become a member? Yes or no? No. There are people with some crazy ideas out there. You know, when I was a missionary in Mexico, I met all kinds of people, because I would go all around to all the different churches in our denomination and give talks and preach and counsel, and I met some crazy cats. I met a gal whose name was Veronica of the World. That was her name. And she talked about God as if she was a pantheist, which means that God is in everything. And I just, I had to get away. I thought lightning was gonna strike her dead. I'm dead serious, I had to get away from her. Those types of people come into the church, and not only that, guess what other, a little more close to home? Okay, pedophiles wanna become members of the church. We ordained Jim this morning. You know that one of, the scripture uses many names for what he is and is to be, but one of them is bishop, episkopos. You know what bishop means? Anybody know? It means a protector. It means a guardian. And as an elder of the church, not only are we to preach, not only are we to evangelize and to counsel and to lead, but we are to protect you. That's why we're actively, together with the deacons, developing an active shooter plan with all the shootings going on in these houses of worship. We need to protect you. And so we're developing that. It's our goal, it's our aim, it's our obligation. So just as we vet and guard the office of elder and the office of deacon, we also vet and guard the office of member. And that's why we have a church membership covenant. Let me move on to number three and try to wrap this up, okay? Let me just give you four reasons why I think, above and beyond all the things that I've already said, a church membership covenant is helpful. Number one, church membership covenants preclude the spirits of individualism, consumerism, and commitment phobia. all of which characterize modern day religious America. The reason why the importance of local church membership has been minimized and denigrated in America is because individualism, consumerism, and commitment phobia reign. Individualism says, I will determine the terms on which I join a church rather than being received by a church. Tonight, look at Acts 9, 28. Saul gets converted and he goes to Jerusalem and he tries to join the church. And do you remember what happened? You guys remember what happened? Somebody tell me. Yeah, this was the guy that was killing people. This is the guy that they laid down robes at his feet to kill Stephen. And now you wanna become a member of our church? No way, Jose. You can go to the first church of Antioch, but not here. Okay, and Barnabas, God bless his heart, he had to go in and do damage control and run interference and finally Saul got in, which is cool, because he's got a few letters in the New Testament after his name. But the church had to receive him. You don't just prance into a church and say, I want to become a member. Great, go through our process. And we'll decide as a congregation, with the veto power that we have as a congregational church, we'll decide whether we receive you or not. The spirit of consumerism says, what can I get out of church? I remember watching a commercial, it was probably some years back, but they were asking people, what do you want out of church? And a guy's like, I want Super Bowl tickets. And everybody laughed. And he's like, no, I'm serious. I want you to give me Super Bowl tickets or I'm not going to become a member of church. While, you know, that's an extreme state, I think a lot of people, what they want is they want the music ministry, they want the smokes and the fog machines and the lights and the guitar and solos and they want the youth ministry that's, you know, they're gonna have fun and games and all that kind of stuff. And they ask all those things before they ask or even if they ask, hey, what do you believe as a church? It's a spirit of consumerism. It's the same spirit that says, will I go to church on Sunday? I don't know, who's gonna be talking? If he interests me, maybe I'll go. Well, what about the first 30 minutes when we storm the throne of grace and you as a member lift up your prayers as incense to the Lord? You're a member. That's your covenant responsibility. The church is not a salad bar where you're like, oh, take a little Piper, take a little Keller, no. Church is a place where you serve. I have to say the JFK quote. Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church. Commitment phobia. Why do you think we live in an age where you have 28, 29-year-old males living in the basement of their mother's and father's home playing Xbox and they don't have a job? Commitment phobia. Why do we have the whole phenomenon and epidemic of shacking up? Commitment phobia. And they bring that into the church. Don't date the church, marry the church. So church covenants, secondly, exude integrity by telling prospective members up front what is expected of them. Parents, please go get your children if you have children, okay? I'm going to go long, and I want to love my neighbor as myself, meaning the Sunday school teachers, so please go get your children. I am going to go a little long. I think it warrants it, so please go get your children. There was a family that came here some time ago, and they casually started to talk about membership, but I can tell by every fourth word that came out of their mouth that they loved John MacArthur, and if they had their druthers, he would be the Protestant pope. They'd put the hat on him and give him the scepter and everything, and that they were dispensationalists. So you know what I did? I didn't say, well, You could be a member here, it'd be okay. I said, look, I'm just gonna tell you right now, we are not dispensationalists. We love our dispensationalist brothers and sisters, but I'm gonna tell you right now, if you're a hardcore dyed-in-the-wool dispensationalist, this is not the place for you. Can I recommend another church? Was I being a fool by doing that? No, you know what I was preserving? Unity. I was preserving unity. Because you know what that person's gonna come in and do? They're gonna come in and say, if you're not preaching the literal millennium and the rapture before seven years and tribulation and antichrist, then you're unbiblical. I love when people say that. And by love, I mean, I hate, okay? Because biblical means what I think the Bible means. Nevermind the confessions. I figure all that out on my own. Hey, look, I created this wheel. Nobody's ever seen it before. No, the wheel's been created before, okay? So we want to exude integrity in letting people know this is the kind of church that you're coming into and you need to come in with your eyes wide open. Number three, church covenants together with baptism and church discipline help safeguard and maintain regenerate church membership by guarding the front door of the church. What is regenerate church membership? We believe that the members of the church are those who confess Jesus Christ and walk in faith. And finally, church covenants protect the church from vindictive legal action. We don't like talking about this, but do you know that there are churches that have excommunicated a member for biblical and legitimate reasons, and that member went to legal courts, despite what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, went to legal courts and sued that church for excommunicating him. We were just reading, we're going through 1 Corinthians and family worship, and we read this the other night, and my kids were like, their eyes were glazing over, but I was just, I went off on a rant to my wife, in a good way, not in a bad way, but like, Paul is clearly saying, how could you go to legal courts outside of the church? This is a shame for you. But people do it, but on the other hand, if you have a church membership covenant, and somebody gets excommunicated, they go to the court, you just take this judge, say, hey, judge, that's their Herbie Hancock right there. John Hancock, Herbie Hancock, it's an inside joke. That's their John Hancock right there. He signed it, and the judge is gonna say, all right, I'm throwing this case out. It protects us legally, okay? So the promise laid out in the membership covenant is not a promise that you will do it perfectly. It's not even a promise that you will do it consistently. It's not a promise that you will do it in your flesh. What does the first line of our covenant say? We commit through the power of the Holy Spirit. The covenant is not asking for perfection because perfection has already been given to us through Christ. This covenant calls for the prevailing disposition of your heart to be committed to Christ and his bride, not by power nor by might, but by my Spirit says the Lord God of hosts. The orbit of power from which you draw the ability to carry out these commitments is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So when we talk about defining the relationship within the body of the Christ, we begin or we start by defining the relationship we have with Christ. And then we move out from that out of gratitude for what he has done for us. And we lift our eyes to our brethren and we serve them in love. All right. OK, questions, questions, comments. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Conscience is the barometer of the image of God. Conscience is, if the image of God is imprinted on us by virtue of Romans 2, 14 and 15, the conscience is that barometer that tells us you're in the danger zone or you're okay. So I would say conscience is not only sacred for Christians, it's sacred for everyone. It is through the medium of the conscience that hearts and souls get convicted of the law, which leads them as a tutor to the gospel. So I would say the conscience is the axis upon which law and gospel bring somebody to Christ. We often talk of first, second, and third use of the law. In the second use of the law, respect, where the law is meant to be a curb on society, to kind of preserve goodness. Even amongst pagans, Goodness is preserved through common grace by means of conscience. As they are convicted of wrongdoing through common grace, and I would even say the spirit does that, not in a saving way, but in a common grace way, it preserves goodness in society, okay? Any other questions? Yeah? Yeah. That is an incredibly complicated question. It would be easier to answer if you had a specific example. But I. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I would say in general, a church member should lovingly, humbly, and deferentially approach the leaders in private before they talk to anybody else, because that's gossip, and entreat them and endear themselves to them and ask them to consider soberly the seriousness of it and try to make a change at that point. And, you know, if they're just like, we're not listening to you, get out of here, you're a whack job, then, okay, maybe it's time to go. On the other hand, if they're like, we'll work with you, then I think you should be long-suffering and patient with them as much as you can. Where the breaking point comes, again, would require a specific situation with specific details, and that's really hard to answer. So I would say in general, if there's a doctrinal aberration or a moral failure that is not dealt with according to the instructions of Matthew 18, then it's time to bounce. Okay? There's a number of us here that came out of that situation and some of us left earlier, Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Those are hard situations. Amen. Amen. All right. If there's no other question, I'm going to leave you with one last thought and then I'll get you guys out of here. Okay. I'm going to wait five seconds. If you look around tonight, some of our brethren are not with us. There may be reasons that are legitimate. People have ox in the ditch. There are other reasons that are not so legitimate. One of the things I would like to convey to all of us, not only tonight, but in the next 11 weeks as we think about our covenant obligations to Christ and to his bride, is that it's not simply the responsibility of the elders to spur one another on toward love and good works, right? Good works is coming to Lord's Day worship. Good works is serving. Good works is giving. Good works is being a good testimony. Good works is confronting where you need to confront. So as we think about our confession, as we think about our membership covenant, our vows that we have made, just let me leave you with Hebrews 10, 23 and following. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promises faithful. And let us, not just the pastors, but everyone, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another in all the more as you see the day drawing near. Encourage your brethren in this place as we, the elders, continue to pray for them and pray for you and reach out to them and reach out to you that we have covenant obligations that are a privilege. They are a privilege to be a part of this body. They're privileged to be part of those who've been called out of darkness into light and try to stir one another up toward love and good deeds. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your benevolent grace that you have given to us. Lord, as we think of the words of this covenant, we are humbled. We are humbled because Father, we all confess that we fall far short of it. And Father, we know that you do not require perfection. You required it in your son and it was delivered. But Father, we want to give you perfection. Forgive us for when we don't want to give it to you. Father, aid us to be all that we can be in Christ. Aid us to be all that we can be through the power of the Spirit and by the help of grace to our brethren. And Father, may this place shine as a beacon of light of gospel grace to all who look upon it. And now, Father, send us out with your blessing. May you bless us and keep us. May you make your face to shine upon us and to be gracious to us. May you lift up your countenance upon us and give us peace. Amen. You are dismissed.