Now to the ministry of God's holy and inspired word. So I'm going to ask you to bow your heads with me as we ask the Lord for help in the ministry of the word this morning. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for bringing us here. And we thank you, Father, that we have a great privilege to worship the triune God in spirit and in truth. Father, we now wish to hear the voice of your Son in the exposition of your Word. We pray that you would help your servant to lay things out clearly, answer the whys and the hows, and that you would lead your people like a shepherd to the task before us, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. So the last two Lord's Days, for those of you who have been here, I have unpacked the topic of division. Division in the local church. And two weeks ago, I addressed different varieties of divisions and their purposes. And I just want to draw to your attention one point made in that sermon two weeks ago, and that is the purpose of divisions, by and large, is to show forth who the genuine Christians are. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 19. For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. In other words, When divisions come, who will recognize false teachers and wicked men and women for who they are and stand shoulder to shoulder with the true people of God? Who will be taken captive by smooth words and flattery, and who will discern what the Word of God has to say about the matter? who will be taken up by the spirit of the age and emotionalism, and who will do what is right. One of the biggest tactics of the enemy is to make ambiguous what is sufficiently clear. And the purpose of this pulpit is to illumine, not to obfuscate. The purpose of this pulpit is to illumine and not to darken. The purpose of this pulpit is to engage the people of God with the very oracles of God and that we might together as a people have an experience with the living God, as the old divines would say, that we would live quorum deo, in the face of God. When God's word is opened, God is there and he is speaking to us. And so one of the purposes of divisions is to test the mettle of the people of God, but then last week we looked at how to discern division in the church. Things that we should be looking for, and I laid before you three things, gossip and slander, one. Secondly, grumbling, two. And then thirdly, a person's character. Remember that Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 5, 24, that the sins of some people are conspicuous, that means they're obvious. going before them to judgment, but sins of other people appear later. So also, good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden. So now this week, I want to address finally, and this is very important, and I call your attention to the Word of God. I want to deal this morning with how to deal with division. How do we deal with division in the church? And some of you already know, but others, especially you who are visiting, may be asking, what's all the kerfuffle about division? Well, the fact of the matter is, is that we have a member in our congregation who is straying from the path of the Lord. We have a member in our congregation who is walking in hard-hearted, unrepentant sin. We have a member in our congregation who is running away from the accountability of the elders of the church. and so we need to deal with it. Now, I do not come with my own opinions of how to do that. I come with the Word of God, and thankfully the Word of God is more than sufficiently clear to tell us how to deal with a strained brother. Now, some of you visitors may be asking, why in the world would it occur to you to be a good idea to preach on division on a Sunday that you know there's going to be a bunch of visitors? Well, here's the answer, because we're not fake. What you see is what you get. We are who we are. And as I've always said, whatever you draw a people into the church with is what you're going to need to continue to feed them to keep them there. You want to draw them in with a plastic Christianity, then you're going to have to keep them there with a plastic Christianity. Plastic Christianity says, come join this club. It's great. There's no problems. And if you join this club, everything will go well. Well, that's not what the Bible says. What the Bible says is that the church is filled with sinners. And if you decide to join us, then you will add to that number. We are a group of sinners saved by grace. And by the way, being sanctified by grace. Our namesake has the word grace in it, Grace Covenant Church, because we think so highly of that grace that God gives us through his word, through the sacraments, and through prayer. But still, one of you may be asking the question, yeah, but I mean, aren't we here to worship? Yes, we are here to worship, but sometimes the church's mission to worship turns into the church's mission to rescue. And sometimes the sanctuary, the room of the sanctuary turns into the situation room. And we've got to brief one another on what is going on. And we need to, like we're going to do tonight, those of you who are members in this place, going to be called by your elders to come with your boots on. And we're going to lay out before you what the situation is. And we're going to call you to go after our brother and call him to repentance. But there is attempts at division in the church, and we must know how to deal with it. And as Albert Martin would always say, when there is a wolf in the congregation, the job of the shepherds is to protect the sheep. And there's either gonna be a dead wolf or a dead shepherd, but ain't gonna be no dead sheep. And if you have elders and you have leaders that are worth their salt and don't need to grow a backbone because they have a backbone, they're gonna do the hard things. And with God's grace, we're going to try to do the hard things. But the thing is, is the responsibility does not stop with the elders. It does not stop with the deacons. It continues to every member of this congregation. Because you remember that parable that Jesus told? The shepherd is there in the field with his sheep, and he's got a hundred sheep. And 99 are there, but one is missing, one has gone astray. What does the shepherd do? He leaves the 99 and goes after the one. And if I could add to that with the rest of the revelation of God's Word, what he also does is he sends the 99 after the one to go after the sheep. Because when the full and symphonic voice of the church comes to an erring sinner, a straying sinner, if they are genuinely saved, they will repent. And if they are not genuinely saved, you know what they'll do? They'll stonewall you. They'll put their arm out. They'll refuse to talk to you. And the church must do the hard work of putting them out and treating them as a tax collector or a Gentile. So what I want to do this morning is I want to address how we deal with division in the church. And I want to submit to you four ways in which we do so. Four ways in which we deal with division in the church. Number one, We need to be shrewd as serpents and gentle as doves. We need to be shrewd as serpents and gentle as doves. I want you to turn in your Bibles to Titus, chapter three. Titus, chapter three. And we're gonna look at verse nine. Titus, chapter three, verse nine. I opened this text last week and I want to come back to it. Titus chapter 3 verse 9, the apostle says this, and I'm going to back up a little bit. Verse 8, the saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. So that's the positive side. And then in verse 90 says this, but avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. One of the things you need to mark in a person or persons who cause division is they play games. I repeat, they play games. What kind of games do they play? Well, they like to talk in word salads. They're saying a lot of things, but they ain't saying nothing. They may even have a robust vernacular. They may have great command of the English language or whatever language it is that they're speaking in, but they are not making sense. And I want you to understand, as he goes on to say in verse 9, but avoid foolish controversies, verse 10. Listen to me. When somebody has hardened their heart, over and over and over again. When they have seared their conscience so as to justify their sin and continue on the broad path to destruction, don't be surprised when the things that come out of their mouth don't make any sense. They've had to convince themselves of false narratives. They've had to convince themselves of the lies of Satan. And Satan is so cruel. Satan is so cruel. He's bent on your destruction. That's what he wants. And so one of the things that we can ask ourselves in the midst of going after those in the church that are causing division, going after those in the church who are straying from the path, is turning the guns on our own selves and asking ourselves, do I justify irrationality in my sin? Do I protect and guard the passions and desires of the flesh? Or am I open to brothers and sisters, one after another, as if they're lined up, coming up and saying, brother, sister, there's something in your eye, let us help you take it out. No, no, leave me alone. Brother, when the whole chorus of the people of God are coming and you do not listen, you are in sin. And so they play word games, word salads. They engage in dominating one-sided conversations. They refuse to hear your side. They insist on their own way. One of the biggest tactics that they use, and I've seen this over and over and over again in my ministry, is they refuse to talk to you. Did you hear that? They refuse to talk to you. This brother who is straying, some people have already put two and two together, they've sought to reach out to him, and he has refused to answer their calls, their texts, their overtures of grace. And I want you to make no mistake, this is a strategic tactic by people who are unwilling to answer the hard questions or acknowledge their own sins. Refusing to talk is refusing accountability. And all of this is obfuscation, attempts to confuse, attempts to put in a daze, attempts to befuddle. And typically, and I want you to hear me out, this is an attempt at control. This is an attempt at control. You can control the situation if you don't have to hear somebody, well, I didn't hear what you had to, I don't know, I didn't know you thought that. Yeah, you won't even let me talk to you. Isn't that convenient? But what else do they do? What are other games that people who are in hard-hearted, unrepentant sin play? Well, we've seen this time and time again. They attack the integrity and competency of the elders in an effort to discredit their counsels and judgments. My dear brothers and sisters, this is demonic, and the powers and principalities in the heavenly places revel in breaking down the unity of the church from the inside. Somebody once said, it was attributed to Socrates, I don't know if he actually said this, but somebody somewhere said, when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the losers. You can't argue. You can't reason. You can't convince somebody. Just start attacking their character, right? If you've studied logic, you know that this has another name. It's called the ad hominem argument. When you can't convince somebody of the argument, you give an argument against the man, against the person. You try to discredit them. You try to tear down people's view of them. And this is why Paul tells Timothy, who was dealing with such men, probably a group of them in his congregation in Ephesus, Paul tells Timothy in 1 Timothy 5.19, do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the testimony of two or three witnesses. And a testimony of two or three witnesses is not, here's three people whose feelings were hurt by the pastors. Brothers and sisters, if we're gonna play that game, then every pastor's gonna be disqualified. A pastor naturally engages in hurting people's feelings when he goes to try to pry the sin out of their fingers. it's going to offend them. It's just going to happen. I've been slandered multiple times in my ministry by going after people who were sinning. I've tried to approach a woman who was physically beating her husband, okay, multiple times to repent of her sin, and she rebuked me and said, you're not being loving. I said, well, wait, wait, not being loving? How does your husband feel about that? Because I'll bet, I'm willing to bet he thinks it's pretty loving that I'm here trying to get you to stop beating him. And by the way, the beating is not the issue. He's a pretty big dude. He's a marine. He can deal with it. That's not the issue. The issue is the hate and the bitterness and the rage that's in your heart. And I'm coming as an office bearer of the living God begging you, dear sister, to repent of your sins and love your husband. Now, when Paul says that in 1 Timothy 5.19, Calvin has a very insightful commentary on that, and I want you to listen. It's a longish quote, and we don't worship Calvin around here, but we do think that he got a few things right from time to time. This is what he says on 1 Timothy 5.19. After having commanded that salaries should be paid to pastors, he likewise instructs Timothy not to allow them to be assailed by slander or loaded with any accusation but what is supported by sufficient proof. But it may be thought strange that he represents as peculiar to elders a law which is common to all. God lays down authoritatively this law as applicable to all cases, that they shall be decided by the mouth of two or three witnesses. And he's thinking, of course, of Matthew chapter 18, and he's exactly right. This doesn't just apply to elders, this applies to everybody. You can't accuse anybody or convict anybody in the courts of the church by just some fool coming around and saying, he hurt my feelings, okay? You need corroboration with evidence and support. So why is Paul drawing this out in a peculiar way in application to the elders? Well Calvin goes on, I reply, For none are more liable to slanders and calumnies than godly teachers. Not only does it arise from the difficulty of their office that sometimes they either sink under it or stagger or halt or blunder, in consequence of which wicked men seize many occasions for finding fault with them. But there is this additional vexation that although they perform their duty correctly so as not to commit any error whatever, they never escape a thousand censures. And this is the craftiness of Satan to draw away the hearts of men from ministers that instruction may gradually fall into contempt. Thus, not only is wrong done to innocent persons in having their reputation unjustly wounded, which is exceedingly base in regard to those who hold so honorable a rank, but the authority of the sacred doctrine of God is diminished. And this is what Satan chiefly labors to accomplish. For not only is the saying of Plato true in this instance that, quote, the multitude are malicious and envy those who are above them, unquote, but the more earnestly any pastor strives. to advance the kingdom of Christ, so much the more is he loaded with envy, and so much the fiercer are the assaults made on him. Not only so, but as soon as any charge against the ministers of the word has gone abroad, it is believed as fully as if they already convicted him." This is not merely owing to the higher degree of moral excellence which is demanded from them, but because almost all are tempted by Satan to excessive credulity, so that without making any inquiry, they eagerly condemn their pastors, whose good name they ought rather to have defended. Many years ago, there was a church that went through a time of division. And those who were sowing seeds of division in the church were doing this exact thing. They wanted their ways. They were trying to hold the pastor's ransom to their demands. And one of them literally said, this is a true story, told the pastor, pastors, We need to stop the preaching, we need to stop the teaching, and you guys just need to hear us out. That's exactly what Satan wants. That's exactly what Satan wants. Let me explain something to you. You don't stop the preaching, you don't stop the teaching, you navigate in the word of God where the light of God through the word of God touches on that very issue, and you call the whole congregation to silence before the presence of the sovereign Lord. And you say, listen. You get all kinds of opinions in this congregation, but you know what? It's not ambiguous. The Lord has spoken on these matters, and we all must bow a knee to the word of God. So that's another tactic that they use in games that they play. And what's connected to this tactic, and I've talked about this many times, is the tendency to go around the Matthew 18 process because they know that they won't get their way. So what is the Matthew 18 process? You believe somebody's in sin, you go to them one-on-one. They don't listen, you take two or three. If they don't listen, you bring it to the church, which first means you're taking it to the elders so that the elders can administer the disciplinary process at the level of the church. When the charges come before the church, if the person is still not repentant after the church has gone after them, then the church is to judge in the name of Jesus Christ with the power of the keys and the presence of the combined and assembled congregation that this person is to be handed over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh so that their soul might be saved in the day of judgment. Some people that think church discipline is cruel, and as I always say, what's really cruel is giving somebody the impression that they're okay when they're not okay. That's the cruel thing. So there's a lot of churches in this land that will not practice church discipline because when they went to church growth 101 classes, what they were told is you shouldn't mess with this business of church discipline. That's gonna shrink your church quicker than anything. Well then maybe when it shrinks, it'll just be believers. And maybe that's what we should, not maybe, that is what we're aiming for. If you hold people's feet to the fire of Jesus' words, the genuine ones are going to come out as gold. But those who are fake will be burned up. Their testimony will reveal in time that they didn't come to this congregation for the right reasons. And beloved, there are every number of reasons why people come to church, and not all of them are good. And so I want you to notice that what divisive people will do is they will try to go around this Matthew 18 process, and what they end up doing is becoming mercenary. You see, they're not concerned with truth. They're not concerned with the process. They're not concerned with waiting for the voice of the church. They're concerned with getting their way. And the best way you as a congregation can combat that and push back on that is when these mercenary people come to you and want to talk around and about somebody, but not to them, you say, shut your mouth. I don't want to hear it. If you want me to go with you to go talk to this person, let's go. We'll get in the car right now. No, no, I don't want to do that. I just wanted to tear them down and slander them in your presence. Okay, then I'm not interested. Okay? Because, you know, we believe in the dignity of our brother and sister. We believe in upholding their pride. We must guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride. And you may think that they don't deserve, but you know what, beloved? We don't deserve it either. And one of the things that the church is committed to is fair and patient process. Fair and patient process. If you would have it that people would be obedient to the Word of God with you when they think you are in sin and you want the process to be followed through so that time can be had not only for the Lord to work on your heart, but maybe even work on their heart if they're giving a false accusation, how much more should you grant that to others? This is the way it works in the church. But not only be aware of the games that false teachers play and divisive people play, but I wanna say secondly under this head, avoid naivete. Please turn to Roman chapter 16. Roman chapter 16, and I want you to look at verses 17 and 18. Paul at the end of this magnificent epistle gives a warning, and it just reminds you, you know, there was divisions in the early church as well. But he says in Romans 16, 17, and 18, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own appetites. Watch this. And by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. Beloved, I want you to remember that John said of Jesus that He did not entrust Himself to men because He knew their hearts. Now, some people are like, yeah, well, He was God, so He knew. No, no, no, no, no. Jesus believed in total depravity. Jesus believed that our natures are naturally sinful. And in the church, some more than others. And in the church, we are reminded that not everybody that is in the church is a sheep. Some of them are goats and some of them are wolves. And it's naivete that assumes that everybody is there for the right reasons. The fact of the matter is that Satan revels in sending false professors, people who are not genuine Christians, into the church to sow seeds of division. And listen, prey upon the naivete of God's people. We have to be shrewd as serpents. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3.6, One of the biggest scams today is wicked men who swindle older people or weak-minded people who don't understand computers and credit cards. They're naive. And people prey upon them. So also false teachers and the vice of people prey upon the naivete of God's people. So beloved, as Paul says in Romans 16, don't engage them. Don't engage them if they insist upon another doctrine or refuse to acknowledge any wrongdoing or try to draw you into their one-sided and short-sighted narratives that have been crafted in their own echo chambers, hermetically sealed off from the rest of the story and concrete evidence. You need to discern whether or not a person is listening or not. And divisive people are not looking for light to illumine their ways, they are looking for fodder for their narrative. When you discern this, determine not to throw your pearls before swine, because they will only turn and trample you down. At that point, it is no longer your individual responsibility to try and talk sense into them. It is now the joint responsibility of the court of the church to adjudicate their standing in the congregation. So then secondly, second way to deal with division in the church, and these are going to go a lot quicker, and this one is so important. Number two, deal swiftly and forthrightly with the divisive person. I come back to Titus 3.10, and I want you to listen to what Paul says. As for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful, he is self-condemned. Beloved, listen to me. Not all church-disciplined cases are created equally. And not every heart of a person being confronted with their sin is equally soft. So let me just give you a sneak peek, if you will, into how elders deal with people who are confronted with sin. We come to them lovingly, graciously, but forthrightly, okay? Laying before them the clear evidence, laying before them the word of God, bathing in prayer, everything that we say and do. And that person responds with some soft-hearted repentance. It may not be perfect, it almost never is. But they begin to see in a mirror, dimly, their own sin. And they say, I will work with you elders toward restoration. Then the church discipline process slows down, you see. We keep things behind closed doors. We don't go public with that. Now, there are some exceptions if we're dealing with a scandalous sin. We're dealing with pedophilia or some sexual immorality that is going to get out. We've got to deal with that right away. It comes directly to the congregation, we deal with it. But in most cases, where there is a soft heart, we slow things down. And what are we doing? Somebody says, well, if the person says they're sorry for what they've done, it's over, right? No, it's not over. If you've got a man who is a serial adulterer and he comes and says, yeah, I'm sorry, okay, is it over? No. We've gotta work through trust issues, don't we? We've gotta work through accountability issues. We've gotta work through the damaged psyche of his wife. We've gotta deal with what's true and what's not because you're not able to be a serial adulterer by telling the truth all the time. So you probably have a lying problem. So we've got to sort through all the layers of that, and what that typically looks like from a pastoral perspective is we say, okay, look, we're going to put you on probation for six months. You may not come to the Lord's table. And over those six months, here are concrete marks of repentance that we want to see. And if you are working with us, if you're not fighting us, you don't fight us when we ask very invasive questions, because we have every right to do that. You don't fight your wife when she says, hey, can I see your phone? I wanna see who you're texting. You don't hide it, you don't try to buck from that accountability, but you do it. Okay, then we're gonna work with you. And then after those six months, if you have shown forth fruit bearing with repentance, then we're gonna lift church censure and you're gonna be good. On the other hand, somebody who does not receive the pastoral overtures of reconciliation and restoration of their pastors and instead fights or flees and maybe in their fighting starts lobbing bombs of slander, okay, you speed up the process. You bring it before the church and you say, this person is recalcitrant, and we need to go after them. We're going to give you six days, whatever the case may be, and then if they haven't repented, you come back and you vote for their excommunication. That is what you do. If you allow that kind of divisive behavior to stay, you know what's happening? You're allowing the disease to spread in the congregation. Because make no mistake, there are attitudes and actions that come with false teaching, and there are attitudes and actions that come with roots of bitterness, and there are attitudes and actions that come with every type of unrepentant sin. And even our congregation has been affected by this. And our elders, your elders, are not going to let it continue. So we need to deal swiftly with this. And I want you again to look at verse 11 in Titus 3. He says that such people are warped and sinful and self-condemned. Paul makes it clear that these people are not firing on all cylinders. And you know what the biggest temptation is for us, beloved? Listen to me right now. Our biggest temptation, when we come, like we're going to tonight, to a church discipline meeting, is to be more compassionate than Jesus. Well, let's just give them more time. Well, we've given them a lot of time. Well, have you tried? Yes, everything that you've thought of, we've thought of that and more, okay? This is our job, all right? We're shepherds, that's what we do, all right? We didn't just come to this person and say, read these two Bible verses and call me in the morning. No, it's a little more complicated than that. We're going after people's hearts, okay? So you're free to ask those questions, that's fine. But what you need to realize is that your pastors have done everything in their power and probably have waited too long, okay? Probably to a fault have we been patient. And now it's time to act. So don't be more compassionate than Jesus. If Jesus says one person, two or three people, take it to the church, cast them out, that's what we're supposed to do. And if we're going to show the love of Jesus, we should do what Jesus told us to do. Do you know psychologically what happens to somebody who has been ostracized by a community? It has the potential to hit you like a ton of bricks. It has the potential to come in the form of smelling salt and wake you up from your sinful stupor. Or, or, it has the potential to stand as one more evidence of your recalcitrant heart on the day of judgment. But either way, we do not have the option of doing nothing. We must take a stand. Thirdly, name names and avoid them. I've already read, and you're hearing Romans 16, 17, and 18. The King Jimmy, I think, brings out the nature of this Greek word a little bit better. In the King James, it says, mark them which cause division. Mark them which cause division. Now, this is looked down upon in our society, and as a minister in the Church of Christ, I don't care. We're going to do it anyway. I want you to read the New Testament and read with the lens or the filter of how many names Paul names. He's naming names all the time. So awkwardly that he writes the book of Philippians, which is gonna be read in the presence of the whole congregation, and he said, I urge Iodia and Syntyche, two old ladies that keep fighting, to stop fighting. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, the pastor gets up there, and he's reading it, and Iodia and Syntyche are right there, and everybody's like looking over at them. Yeah, he just went there, okay? So was Paul wrong and we're right? When our culture says, you don't want to do that. That's shameful. Maybe we need some of that. Maybe shame will wrestle the mask of self-deception off of a person's face, you see. But there again, it's the commandment that runs rampant in Big Eva and Big Evangelicalism. It's the 11th commandment. Thou shalt be nice. We gotta be nice. Well, I say that the nicest thing you could do is confront somebody with their sin and beg them to repent. So Paul constantly named people, and this is why in our care for unrepentant sinners who are put out of the church, excommunication is not enough. That declaration of excommunication, or in some cases church censure, is meant to be reported to the next church, to the pastor of the next church, so that they don't have to experience the same thing. Right? Okay. How cruel is it as a pastor who went through hell because of a divisive member, you know, six months down the road when that member goes to join another church and that pastor calls you and says, hey, this person wants to become a member. And you're like, they're great. Have a great time. You know? And you're just like, washing my hands of that guy. Well, it's going to work out for you. It's not going to work out for him. You say, well, they'll change. Really? Will they? More and more, the older I get, I've found that change is very rare. People act according to their natures unless the Lord wakes them up out of their stupor and reminds them of their new nature in Christ. And the Lord uses the church to remind them of that. Fourthly, trust the process. And I've already mentioned this, but I just want to reiterate. The process is Matthew 18. And many people in the church, specifically those who are not used to church discipline, don't have the patience to wait for the voice of the church. They would rather go around the process and get their way. And notice that this is manipulative. On more than one occasion, I've heard disgruntled people in the church say that they don't want to go public with their charges against somebody, according to Matthew 18, because that would be too painful. And instead, what they do is talk to everyone about that person behind their back. Let me be clear, it is much more painful to bypass Matthew 18 and gossip about people than to actually follow our Lord's instructions. But the reason we don't do it is because it's hard. You know what we have to do? We have to trust the judgment of the congregation. We have to trust the judgment of the congregation. And this, if I could, I beg you to hear what I'm about to say. We have, in any given church, all kinds of conflicts. And it's one of those things where, listen to me, we say, well, you know, there's just a disagreement here. No, I understand there's a disagreement, but you seem to be implying that it's an insurmountable disagreement that cannot be adjudicated by a body of believers. The fact of the matter is, it can and it should be adjudicated. I've had people tell me, well, Pastor, you're going to call this man up on charges. What if he just disagrees? Let me ask you something, friend. If you're dealing with an adulterer and you confront him with the sin, and he's like, I just disagree with you guys. Okay. So that's going to get the church discipline train off the rails because you disagree? Of course you disagree. So what we need is we need to lay out the evidence and let the congregation decide, and this is exactly what happened in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, when a man was sleeping with his stepmother, and Paul rebuked them and said, I want you guys to gather together in the name of Jesus Christ, in the power of His name, and execute a judgment on this person. Put them out. And in the name of Jesus Christ, they did. So we need to follow through. We need to trust the judgment of the congregation, and we need to follow through. What does it look like to follow through? If a member is put out of the congregation, and they come to you and they still want to have fellowship, they want to go on vacations together, and they want to go play golf together, You should not avoid the elephant in the room. You need to have the conversation with him. Dear friend, I beg you to repent. This is the most important comment. It's more important than 18 holes of golf. It's more important than going on vacation. It's more important than talking about the weather. The most important thing is that you repent. That's what it means to follow through. So beloved, have you ever seen a teenager who's out of control? Perhaps they treat their parents with contempt and dishonor and disrespect them and do not respond humbly and submissively to correction. Well, I would humbly maintain that in some cases it's because their parents refused to discipline them as they ought to have when they were young. They chose the easy way out. They just wanted the problem to go away, and so maybe they bribed their children. Maybe they ignored it. Maybe they laughed it off. Maybe they just didn't deal with it. And that is the equivalent of sweeping the problem under the rug. It doesn't go away. If you want your children to grow up to be humble, submissive, godly men and women, you have to discipline early and often. So also in the church. You are doing unrepentant sinners no favor by being nice to them and not disciplining them. Letting an unrepentant sinner leave the church without consequences is the equivalent of hiding dead bodies. They will be found and it will be a problem. So Jesus gave us a way to actually help both the unrepentant sinner and the church. We help the unrepentant sinner by handing them over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh so that their soul might be saved, and we safeguard the congregation from the toxic effect of this person's sins. How do we do that? We do it by listening to the voice of Christ in the adjudication of the church. This is why Jesus says at the end of Matthew 18, wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their presence. This is not a verse that we say when only two people show up to prayer meeting, we try to make ourselves feel good about one another. This is a verse about judgment. When the church speaks as a whole, Jesus is speaking in our midst. So may the Lord give us grace, dear congregation, to do what He has called us to do. And let's ask the Lord for help this morning. Father God, we are very sobered by this word this morning. And Lord, we understand that sometimes this is what you call us to do. You turn the sanctuary into the situation room and you call us to gather the ranks and to muster the troops and to go after a straying brother. Father, we pray for the repentance of our brother. We pray that you would save. We pray that you would act. We pray, O Father, that you would give every member in this congregation the discernment necessary to filter the things that they hear, to interpret the things that they don't hear, and to come together tonight ready to listen, ready to engage, and ultimately ready to go after a straying brother. We ask all these things in the strong and mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Let's stand this morning for the doxology.