All right, well, why don't you grab your Bibles and turn to Matthew 16. We're gonna start tonight, Matthew 16, verse 19. We continue to work through our Covenant Life Together series, and I just wanna remind you of the roadmap here. I'm doing part two of the guardrails of church discipline tonight. And next week, Pastor Ken is gonna take paragraphs five and six and finish up for us. The following week, we will have communion, so we won't have the Lord's Supper. And then March 10th in the evening, we're going to have a time of Q&A. So I want to just remind you and encourage you to write down your questions, any question that you have about the membership covenant and bring that for March 10th. So with that said, we're continuing our study of paragraph four, the guardrails of church discipline. Last week, we looked at some of the cultural reasons why churches and even individual Christians have an aversion to church discipline. Now this week, we're just going to look at the foundation and the process and a real living, breathing example of church discipline from the scriptures. So what I'd like to do before we get to Matthew 16 is read in your hearing once again paragraph four from our membership covenant. We commit to submit to the teaching and leadership of the elders in as much as it accords in good conscience with the truth of scripture, to the governing of the church according to its constitution and bylaws, to the settlement of disputes by and or among the members of the church, without appeal to any outside civil court. To the word of God is our final authority to the church's discipline upon ourselves and lovingly assume our responsibility to participate in the discipline of other members as taught in scripture. So I have sent out notes for parts one and two. If you still have those notes, we're starting tonight on Roman numeral number three. And the heading for Roman numeral number three is the foundation of church discipline. And we see the foundation of church discipline in Matthew 16, where Jesus turns to Peter and he says this after Peter's confession, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now before we talk about what that means, let me just clear up one little niggling doubt that you may have, especially if you have a Roman Catholic background. The Roman Catholic Church has said, and they're right, In this passage, Jesus is speaking to Peter. And so the only application that we can draw from it is that it was for Peter and his successor, all the way down to the present successor of Peter, who is the Pope. Well, the way Protestants have always answered that, in other words, what they're saying is this is not for the church at large, it's not for individual congregations, this is for the Pope. He has the power to excommunicate and only he. But in John chapter 20, you don't need to turn there, you can if you like, John chapter 20 verse 23, Jesus speaks to all the apostles. And though he does not use the same word keys, he's talking about the exact same concept. He says in John 20, 23, if you forgive, you, second person plural, speaking to the apostles, if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. Now what do we have here? In both these passages what we see is that what Jesus is doing is he is bequeathing to the church, giving to the church, granting to the church the power and authority to exercise what are called the keys to either on the one hand loose which is to say open, which is to say grant forgiveness, grant participation, grant fellowship, or on the other hand, to bind, which is to close, to cut off, and to shut. What is being opened and what is being closed? Well, in Matthew 16, he mentions specifically forgiveness, but in the context of the whole Bible, what he's talking about is opening or closing the kingdom of God. Either somebody is coming in, being welcomed in with the exercise of the keys, or they are being shut out by the closing of the kingdom of God through the keys. Now, what does it mean furthermore then to open the kingdom of God with the keys? Well, in a nutshell, it's the preaching of the gospel, because how does somebody come into the kingdom of God? They come into the kingdom of God by hearing the gospel, repenting and believing. And so the principle way, we would say, in which the keys of the kingdom are used to open the kingdom is through the preaching of the gospel. In the ministry of the Word, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, that there's a sense in which you, as individual Christians, in your vocations, in your individual lives, as you preach the gospel, there's a sense in which if somebody responds in a believing manner to your proclamation of the gospel, you have opened the kingdom of heaven for them. So preaching the gospel is one way the keys of the kingdom are exercised to open the kingdom of God. What's another way? Baptism. Baptism and reception into the church, the way we would look at it today, church membership. Um, that is publicly bringing somebody in, listen to a local representation of the kingdom of God. Does that make sense? The local church is an outpost of the kingdom of God. And you know, that's why we make so much of membership because people are like, well, I'm part of the universal church. Great. What does that mean? Uh, how does that get fleshed out in your daily life? You have. passages in the New Testament about giving fiscally to people who have needs. You have passages in the New Testament about submitting to elders and praying for people in your congregation. If you're part of the universal church, but you're not part of the local church, how do you flesh those things out? And so, local church membership and baptism, which brings you into that membership, is another kind of manifestation of the opening of the keys. So that is how opening of the kingdom. So that is how the keys of the kingdom are exercised in opening the kingdom. How are the keys of the kingdom exercised in closing or binding the kingdom? Well, very simply in church discipline or excommunication. When we excommunicate somebody from the church or kingdom of God, we're exercising the keys and closing the door to the kingdom of God by declaring them to be a what? An unbeliever. And we are resolving to do what? To preach the gospel to them because they are now an unbeliever. Now some of you may have the question, Well, if we excommunicate somebody, does that mean that they can't come to church anymore? And what's the answer? No, of course they can come to church. In fact, we want them to come to church, right? Unless they're a pedophile or something like that. If they're a pedophile, then we're dealing with a different set of rules and we're gonna go a different direction. But if we excommunicate somebody, say, for adultery, ongoing, hard-hearted, unrepentant adultery, we want them to keep coming to church. Even if it's not our church, keep going to church so that they can hear what? The gospel, because we want them to be saved. So, here's my next question. How does excommunication manifest itself in the case of an unbeliever who's still coming to church? What can they not participate in? The Lord's Supper. That's right, the Lord's Supper. We bar them from the Lord's Supper because as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, 16, and 17, partaking of the bread and the cup is a sign of fellowship horizontally with Christ and, excuse me, vertically with Christ and horizontally with his people, okay? Now, let me just say a quick word. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this. There is, in some sense, a spectrum of church discipline when it comes to keeping people from the Lord's table. What do I mean by that? Well, in our tradition, especially on the Presbyterian side, they have carefully distinguished between barring people from the table in terms of excommunication, which means we have officially declared them as an unbeliever and they are not part of us, we preach the gospel to them, they cannot come to the table. But what do you do in the case, for example, of a brother who is struggling with pornography. OK, so a brother goes to him on Friday and says, hey, you shouldn't be doing pornography, brother, please repent. This is going to destroy you, your family, your witness. And the meeting was inconclusive. You know, there was a lot of smoke screens. There was a lot of blame shifting. At some points, it seems like he was repented. At some points, it wasn't. So the brother who confronted him walks away, and he's like I don't know I don't know if he confronted and he's already thinking towards the next step that you know take two or three with you and Then what happens is Saturday comes and this brother who's struggling with pornography he falls back into sin He calls his pastor, and they start to work through it and in the course of that conversation What comes out from the pastor's perspective is this guy? He's not there at repentance like he's really struggling to work through that and here's the problem Sunday is the Lord's Supper. What do you do? Well, our tradition has thought of another way of barring people from the table, not in an indefinite or long-term sense of excommunication, but another sense that we call church censure. And these are measures that even our church has taken at times where we would say, brother, you're still working through this repentance. It's clear that you're not repentant yet. So we're gonna charge you not to take the Lord's Supper on Sunday because we don't want you to drink or eat judgment to yourself. So what's the difference between those two? In excommunication, we're saying you can't come to the table because you're not a brother and because you're not a sister, we preach the gospel to you. In censure, we're saying we still see you as a brother. OK, but because of the situation in your life, because there has not been a break from sin and an exercise in repentance and faith, we're going to ask you to withhold from the table until you get there. OK, and if you want to read more about that, you can look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 30, paragraphs three and four. Now, the next thing we need to say about church discipline or church excommunication is this. When we exercise the keys of the kingdom, they are the penultimate word. Do you know what that word penultimate means? It means second to last, right? And what do we mean by that? Well, we do not know who's elect and who's not. We have kind of a rough idea by who professes faith and walks in truth and who is a hypocrite and who does not profess faith. But we don't, at the end of the day, have the concrete certainty that God does. So while on the one hand, we can go through the process of Matthew 18, which we're gonna get to in a minute, and we can come to a conclusion where we excommunicate somebody. On the other hand, we're not entirely certain if what we have declared on earth is necessarily, at the end of the day, true in heaven. We'll have to wait and see. But what does that mean? Some people have said, well, if we can't really know, we should not try to make conclusions and excommunicate people. Well, the problem with that is Jesus told us to do that very thing, and so we must do that. On the other hand, we should not fall into the pit of saying, if the church speaks, then that is the infallible word, and that is the error of Rome, right? So on the one hand, we don't speak infallibly. On the other hand, we speak according to the knowledge that we have. And so we shouldn't go to either one of these extremes, but what we should do is we should take church discipline seriously, okay? Now let's come now, fourthly, to the process of church discipline. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you to turn to Matthew 18. And we're just gonna look at verses 15 through 20. Now, if you have not either A, memorized Matthew 18, 15 through 20, which is the best case scenario, or B, at least know, hey, if I need to think through confronting a brother or sister in the whole subject of church discipline, I go to Matthew 18, 15 through 20. You need to do one of the two. You need to know where this is. Remember, as I said in the sermon two weeks ago, It's like comforting, you know, those who have lost babies. You know, we don't want to tell them something that God has not said. And in the same way, I have sat in my office at times with people who have incorrectly with a good heart, but incorrectly approached a brother out of step, out of turn, not according to Matthew 18. And I said, hey brother, hey sister, like I commend you for having the courage to do this so that we had more men and women like you in the church. But at the same time, the Lord has given us some steps for doing this and we need to do this correctly, okay? Like we need to make sure that we are approaching people and admonishing them according to how Jesus said to do it and not according to our own wisdom, okay? So let's look at Matthew 18, 15 through 20. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind, there's that keys language again, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. First thing I wanna say on a more lighthearted note, Whenever, when I was in Mexico, I was, I would often teach as part of a church, and sometimes on Sunday nights, we'd have like, we'd have like five people there. And the brother who was leading the service, you could almost always predict it. You knew exactly what he was gonna say when he'd get up to the pulpit. You know what he'd say? Well, brothers and sisters, where two or three are gathered together in the name of the Lord, there the Lord Jesus is among us. Now that's true, but in the context, what does that mean? It's talking about judgment. Not a very good call to worship, right? Brothers, we are here to be judged, okay? So anyways, the idea of two or three gathered together is legal language which talks about a binding decision. But let me just, I wanna work through some of the details on this. First off, what is an offense? If somebody offends you, You know, an offense is not simply like somebody offended me personally, but an offense is any outstanding sin that a Christian brother or sister is walking in that is a contradiction of their testimony, their profession, and their walk. It brings reproach upon Jesus. It brings reproach upon the church. So for example, I keep using this example of adultery. It's an easy one to pick on. But if I know that a brother is committing adultery against his wife, that's not a personal offense against me, but it is an offense to Christ. And so we need to make clear here that an offense doesn't necessarily have to be against me. It is any offense where somebody is walking out of step with their testimony of Jesus Christ. Secondly, what is the goal of going to your brother? The goal is not excommunication. Keep that in mind. The goal is not, let's get these steps going so we can get this guy out of here. No. What's the goal? Galatians 6.1. Restoration. The goal is that they repent of their sins and turn to Jesus Christ. If anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness and keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted. Now, thirdly, I wanna submit to you tonight that there are really, we often talk about three steps, I believe, and would submit to you there's four steps, and I would like to lay them out for you. Step number one, verse 15, you go to somebody one-on-one. If they don't listen, step number two, verse 16, you may take two or three other Christians. They have to be Christians, okay? Now, who should you take? Let me give you a few suggestions. Number one, it's not illegal, if I could put it that way, to take your pastor. In fact, bringing your pastor or one of your pastors into the equation early on is actually a really helpful thing to do. You don't have to do that, okay? But you should probably choose people that know this person well enough because look, here's the thing. When you're admonishing somebody, the person whom you are admonishing needs to trust you, right? They need to know that you love them. They need to know that you have their best interest in mind. If you're bringing, you know, James White, okay, and some other reformer, I mean, you know, James White, he could argue that guy into a corner and make him say uncle, but I don't know that he knows that James White loves him, okay? So you should take brothers who, or sisters who know them and love them, That being said, I have also heard, and I don't think it's out of place to say, I would like to choose a wise man or a wise woman to take with me who is a good mediator, okay? Somebody who can work through, serve as something of a mediator, that's fine. But I think the bottom line is you need to take, number one, two Christians, and number two, people who, as much as possible, can trust him. And why? Where is Jesus getting this two or three witnesses from? He's getting it from the Old Covenant. Because if a charge was brought against somebody, it could not be established or hold up in court unless there were two or three witnesses to corroborate it. Otherwise, it becomes a what? He said, she said. And then who are you going to trust? Now, step three, you take it to the church, verse 17a. Now, practically speaking, I would submit to you that this begins, if you have not already included the elders in step two, I would say that this begins with the elders, taking it to the elders of the church, who will then get involved with the restoration process. It's unhelpful. It is unhelpful and not the intention of Jesus here to say that you take it to the whole church and have the whole church work through the restoration process with him. The purpose of this third step is to formally bring it under the auspices of the church's realm, and if after the pastors have gotten involved and the man refuses to repent, Then in this third step, you take it to the whole congregation. And what would that look like? Very simply, after the elders have worked with this man or woman, and it's clear that there is no repentance, then they would either a bring it to the church in a in a worship service morning or evening, or B, they would call a special business meeting. and bring it before the church and what they would do in either context is they would present to the congregation the bare minimum facts that would lay before them the severity of the situation and then tell them to go after this person and call them to repent. and then a season would be given for the whole church to go to this person, and then if they do not listen to the church, you come to step number four, excommunicate, okay? And this is where I would submit to you, it's clear that the church and not the elders alone, I repeat, the church and not the elders alone are the ones who have the authority to excommunicate somebody, which means what? There needs to be a vote. In fact, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but in 1 Corinthians 5, you have the man that was sleeping with his stepmother, and Paul says, when you guys are all gathered together in the name of Jesus with the power of the keys, excommunicate this man. And then in 2 Corinthians 2, it seems like Paul is coming back to that subject because it seems as if that same man, if it's the same man that he's talking about, had repented and wanted to come back into the church after having been excommunicated, and the Corinthians being the extreme people that they are. At first, they're like, hey, he's our guy. Look, he's committing adultery. Look how much we love the Gospel. And then now, they weren't letting him back in. So it's like they're swinging from either extreme. So Paul says, affirm your love for him. And then he says in 2 Corinthians 2, I believe it's either 6 or 7, he says, the punishment by the majority was enough. What does that mean? The punishment by the majority, he was talking about excommunication, majority means that there was some type of vote undertaken by the church, not church elders, but by the church that determined that this man should be put out. So I do believe that those are the four steps. Now these instructions are a general rubric. They're not to be taken so wouldn'tly that you tick off all four steps in one day. And why is that? I'll tell you why. Because what are we looking for in every one of those steps? Somebody tell me what we're looking for. We're looking for repentance, that's right, for the goal of restoration. And you know what? Here's the thing, listen to me very carefully. As one who has been involved in the process of church discipline, both as a leader and just as a layman in the pews, repentance takes time. Repentance takes and what do I mean by that? Like oh, you've got to give him six months eight months Like there's some manual out there that says for this sin. It is three and a half months and for this No, there's not but here's the thing. I Was reading through Revelation the other day Revelation 2 in fact, we we heard the letter to Thyatira Jesus is writing these letters to the different churches and and In Revelation 2, 18 through 25, Jesus commends the church of Thyatira for their works, love, faith, service, and patient endurance, but he rebukes them for tolerating a false prophetess named Jezebel who was seducing them to practice sexual immorality and eat food sacrificed to idols. But what's interesting, listen to this, listen to this. He says in verse 21, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Isn't that interesting? I gave her time to repent. Why do people need time to repent? Because repentance is not simply, listen to me very carefully, okay, I won't do it anymore. What's wrong with that? If we just looked at somebody's words, what's the obvious problem with that? Yeah, I mean, you know, we'll see, we'll see. bear fruit in keeping with what? Repentance. So I've been in my office with people crying and tears coming down their face and saying, I repent, I repent, I repent. And on the one hand, my brother pastors and I, we're very grateful for that. God grants repentance, make no mistake. But on the other hand, seeing those same people run right back to their sins. So judging whether repentance is genuine or not takes time. You cannot force something like that. Does that make sense? Why am I stressing this? Because I've seen cases. I'm not necessarily talking in this church, but I've seen cases where layman in the church will come to the elders and say on any given issue and say this person is sinning. You need to kick them out yesterday. It's like, well, wait a minute, brother. This is the first I've heard of it. I need to get involved with this brother or sister. After all, I am their shepherd. I owe it to them to give them time to talk through this issue. And then we're gonna have to just wait and see if they repent. The focus is on the heart. And oftentimes it takes time for the heart to demonstrate whether repentance is real or not. And so, we need to wait for repentance to manifest itself. All right. The next part is an example of church discipline. There's just no way I'm gonna even start it tonight. So, it looks like we're pushing it back a little bit more, and that's fine. Next time, we're gonna look at a real life example from church discipline in 1 Corinthians 5. But right now, we've got about five minutes for questions, okay? All right. And listening to you talk, it sounds like the only way that that has any sort of ability I disagree, brother. The human nature is such that we're naturally gossips, right? And we cloak it. How do we cloak it? How do Christians cloak gossip? I got a prayer request for you, brother. Yeah, no, your point is well made. You're right. There are some people even in a small church who can become anonymous. It's easier to become anonymous and get lost in the shuffle in big churches. Even in a church like this, people can get lost. So to your point, you're exactly right. If we're going to care for one another as a church, we need to be involved in each other's lives. And that's why the elders have bent over backwards to create venues like home group where we can get smaller sections of the church together and get involved in one another's lives. And we have a time during home groups where, okay, prayer request time, how you doing brother? Last week you shared that you were struggling with pornography or last week you said that you were a jerk to your wife. How's that going? Are you doing better? Are you repenting? We talk about these things and it takes time. So yeah, that's a good point. That's good. Josh. All right, two part question. Yep, yep. It is acceptable, yep. Yeah, so that's a good question. So answer to part one is that there are some sins that are so heinous, that are so, so Paul, for example, says the sin of some, spreads like gangrene and it's so detrimental and so deleterious to the congregation that you need to amputate it right away. In fact, I happen to believe that the case we're going to look at next week in 1 Corinthians 5 where the man was sleeping with his stepmother and the Corinthians were bragging about it. Paul didn't even say, well, let's start at step one. One of you needs to go. No, he said, kick him out. By the way, Paul didn't say, kick him out on my authority. He said, when you guys are gathered together in the name of Jesus with the power of the keys, kick him out. So yes, there are some sins that are so heinous that need to be dealt with right away. Now, if you want me to go further and say, what is the authorized list? I can't give you that. I think that those are things that the church and the elders need to use wisdom to work through and figure out, is this so bad that we need to address it, okay? So for example, at church in San Diego, there was a guy who was a member of the church. He never came. But we were watching news one night, 5 p.m. news, and he was accused of murdering his ex-wife. She's dead, and he's the primary suspect. Okay? If, you know, and that's tough. I'm not going to go through everything that we did, but like murdering somebody, yeah, we probably need to kick that guy out. Okay? Second part of the question, or did I answer it? Yeah. Yeah. I would also say if somebody is going about telling people that God is not a trinity, that's not a Matthew 18. Some sins are more damaging than others, and they need to, Paul, I don't have the exact words, but in Paul's epistle to Timothy, he basically says, you need to make a spectacle of him in front of everybody so that the congregation may fear, okay? And I would say Ananias and Sapphira is another. Peter didn't say, you know, Ananias, Sapphira, can you guys come over here? I've got to have a private conference with you. No, he killed him in front of everybody. Well, the spirit did. OK. Brennan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so, and you know, we've actually done things like this. That is, let me put it this way. The scriptures, first off, nowhere in the New Testament do we have like the guidebook for calling a special business meeting. We don't know of any special, but we have special business meetings, and that's fine. We can do that. But it's clear to me that Paul named names and kicked people out in public worship services. In fact, the epistles were to be read in public, in congregations, where names were named by Paul to the congregation saying, kick this guy out. So that happened in a public worship service. So the church has the option to do that. We don't have to do that. So that is up to the wisdom of the elders. Now, I don't want to talk too long about this, but why would we do it in worship service? There's a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is just getting a quorum together for a business meeting is actually a really hard thing to do. You know, but if you know that the majority of the people are going to be there on a Sunday morning, then it's advantageous to do it that way. Now, the elders may choose to say, you know what, we're going to present this in the worship service on Sunday morning, but then we're going to, since everybody's here on Sunday, meet right afterwards to actually have a vote. We can do that too. The bottom line is there's liberty to do it in either setting. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, I think there's a few things there. Number one, You know, when Jesus says, if a brother comes to you and asks forgiveness, I mean, you have to give a lot of weight to that. I mean, I don't assume that that is just like, hey man, sorry. I assume that that's a heartfelt, genuine, convicted heart that's saying, I am deeply sorrowful for what I did. I recognize, you know, going through all the seven A's of confession, if you will. So if somebody is there, yeah, you forgive them. And you would never get to the next step because they would have genuine repentance. So I think in church discipline, we're talking about something different. We're talking about somebody who is not repenting and not asking for forgiveness. And in my experience, both as a pastor and as a layman who actually took these things seriously and would admonish people, what I would typically find when I would confront people is a few things. Number one, blame shifting. It's not my fault. Okay, so is that recognizing the sin and forgiving? Absolutely not. Smokescreens, which is similar to blame shifting. The biggest smokescreen I would always see is this. You know, you may be right, Josh, in what you're saying, but the fact of the matter is, the way you said it was just not loving, and so I think we need to talk about that. Now, I'm a sinner. Do I admit that I, and all of us, can say things in an unloving way? Absolutely. But is that an excuse for somebody to shift the focus off of them and put it on someone else? No, it's not, okay? So I think that the answer to the question is if there is genuine repentance, then no, we would not kick somebody out, okay? Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah. And I think. Well, I also think that it's it's intentional that Matthew put it in the same context, because I think that among other things, what he's trying to show is on the one hand, there's a place for this kind of personal forgiveness and reconciliation. On the other hand, there are things in the context of the church that are so serious that warrant as a result of the absence of true forgiveness granted and received and the absence of repentance that warrant church discipline. And so he's setting those things, he's juxtaposing them so that we could see that there's a place for both of these things, okay? All right, I know that there are other questions, but we're gonna have to stop. If you wanna stick around, I'd be happy to field some more questions. Let's end with a benediction, and please go get your children to relieve our Sunday school teachers. And next week, we will look at 1 Corinthians 5 and look at an actual living, breathing, real-life technicolor HD version, an example of church discipline, okay? The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen. You are dismissed.