Church Discipline

Well, I mentioned Sunday that we would be focusing for the next few weeks, possibly, on this part of our study of what the Bible teaches about the church, that we would be focusing on the subject of church discipline. But before we dive into that, we've got just a little bit to finish up on the nature of the church and those various word pictures and metaphors that are used throughout the scriptures. The seventh one, the one we did not get to last week, let me just touch on very briefly. I'm just going to say a couple of things about this because not too awful long ago, I preached through the gospel of John. And if you're really interested in digging into that a little deeper, I would suggest you get maybe the message on John 15 and talk about it in much more detail than I'm going to tonight. But it is one of the images of the church and the New Testament, that is the vine and the branches. And I just want to say three things that communicates to us real quickly, then we'll get to the church discipline. One of the things that the vine and the branches demonstrates to us there in John 15 is what I'm going to call the organic union of the vine and the branches. You see, a branch is not just tied to a vine, it's not just somehow loosely laid on the vine, it is a part of the vine and the life of the vine flows through the branches. And so it's a beautiful picture of our union with Christ. That's how God sees us as being one with Christ, in Christ. He sees us as being crucified with Christ, buried with Him, raised to walk in an unice of life with Him. And so that union with Christ is beautifully pictured in that metaphor. The second thing that the vine and the branches teaches us is about the abiding of the branches. And that passage talks a lot about branches abiding. And that's often seen as I need to stay in fellowship with God. But really when you get deeper into the metaphor and the union of the vine and the branches, abiding really is talking about the idea of our union and the fact that if you are a true believer, truly connected to Christ, you will persevere. You will stay with Him. It really has more to do with the perseverance of the believer and demonstrating the genuine nature of true faith because the branches that do not produce any fruit that do not have any character change or evidence of salvation are removed and taken away and thrown in the fire. So the abiding of the branches really has to do with our union with Christ. And then the fruit, the third thing that this shows us, this image shows us, is about the fruit of this union. He talks about the branches bear fruit. And again, a lot of times that scene is soul-winning. And soul-winning is very important. It's very important to be evangelistic, to lead others to Christ, to be a part of that chain of events or people that God uses in people's lives to bring them to a saving eyes of Christ. But that's not what John 15 is talking about. In fact, the Greek word fruit, Carpano, is used 79 times in the New Testament. Only one time is it used of witnessing. And that is in John 4. Here, the fruit, if a branch is going to win people to Christ, that's what it's talking about. It would be other branches, not fruit. The fruit is the evidence of life in the branch. And so the fruit really represents character qualities, like the fruit of the spirit, the character qualities that are really the evidence that there's life in the vine. You know, if you go by an apple tree and for a couple years there's no apples on it, you're thinking, okay, that tree didn't have any life in it. It's dead. Same thing with the vine. The fruit is the character that is produced by the life of the vine flowing through the branches and that fruit demonstrates their genuine life there in the vine. So that really has more to do with godly character qualities. So lots of good things that are taught in that image of the vine and the branches, but it's not one I want to spend a lot of time on tonight, okay. Are you good with that? You ready to move on? Good. I see one head nodding, so we're going. Okay, I do want to get into the whole concept of church discipline and before we jump into this study, which we'll take as much time as we need to. I'm thinking it will take at least three weeks, maybe four, but we'll take as much time as we need to, before we do this though, I'm just going to talk with you very transparently from a heart for a moment. My ministry is winding down here and I never have believed people that come to the end of something and say, I have no regrets. In fact, I was very interested to read an article that Billy Graham wrote. A lot of articles of his surface around his death and one of the articles he wrote after he moved away from full-time public ministry was things about my life and ministry I regret. And I was kind of drawn to that and he was very transparent about some things he felt he had not done well or mistakes he had made or things he wish he could go back and do over. Everybody has that. I'm working on four projects right now that I'm asking God to allow me to complete before I finish the end of June because they've been really on my heart and they need to be done and I'm very passionate about them. This is one of them, the whole idea of church discipline, but this goes beyond just something that I want the Lord to allow me to finish before I leave. This really goes to the issue of regret. This is such an important biblical issue to have not dealt with this diligently and purposefully and thoroughly in 26 years of ministry is something I regret because it should have been done long before now. I could give you about a half dozen reasons but that doesn't wash and I don't think the Lord would accept those. If this is important as we shall see that it is in the scriptures then it should have been dealt with long before now. So for that reason this is passionate on my heart to deal with this before I leave. This has nothing to do with Dan coming. This has everything to do with me feeling this is something that I should have done a long time ago. If I don't do it before I leave and get through this material and lead us in this endeavor to honor the holiness of God and the scriptures in this regard then I will feel like there's a part of my ministry that's been a failure. I feel that strongly about this. So you're ready to dive in with me? We're going to dive in the deep end. This is 10-12 foot. We're going to dive right in. This is an area of doctrine of the church or what the Bible teaches about the church that a lot of people are afraid to talk about. In fact few want to talk about this and quite frankly it's a very difficult subject to wrap your mind around and understand thoroughly enough to be able to present it in a coherent way. One of the reasons why it has always kind of stayed on the back burner for me. I think there are at least five reasons why people don't want to talk about church discipline. Let me give you those five reasons real quick and this is all the introduction. Reason number one is because of misinformation and misunderstanding about what church discipline is and how it's to be practiced. There's a lot of misunderstanding as to what church discipline means. In fact probably some of you have been thinking after the announcement on Sunday if you remember to that or you came in tonight and realized what we're going to be talking about. Some of you are probably thinking oh boy are we going to go back to burning people at the stake? Are we going to have witch hunts? What are we doing here? And so there's still a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding. It gets one reason why people shy away from the second reason. It kind of tags piggybacks onto that one and that is the abuses of discipline through the years. And the two I mentioned are two of them particularly at a period in time of time in church history where the dominant church in the world was burning people at the stake if they did things that offended the church. And it was not just the Catholic church. It was others including some reformers in Europe who I think abused this concept some. And so for that reason a lot of people say church discipline we don't want to go back to you know burning people to stake. So there's a lot of abuse that's happened through church history that has made people shy away from the whole concept. The third reason I think people don't want to talk about church discipline is because of the permissiveness of our society. Our society has a view of love that is so permissive that there is no room for correction or discipline. In some people's view of love it's the doctor's spot kind of love that you don't crack. You don't be careful about saying anything to hurt someone's self image. So you don't want to be dealing with sin and difficulty and that kind of thing. So the permissiveness in our society has led many to shy away and that has led to a fourth reason closely tied to the permissiveness in our society and that is the worldliness in the church. Now let me tie those two together. The two areas where society has become so permissive is in the area of what it understands about love and that love means you should never offend anybody. You should never cross anyone. You should never correct anyone or you're not showing love. That is a false view of love as we shall see as we get through this study. The other thing that society and because the church is adopting worldliness and by the way by worldliness I'm not talking about dancing and going to movies. That idea of worldliness is a veneer. It is just a cover for what often happens in the heart. That's not really necessarily a sign of worldliness. I'm talking about adopting the value system of the world. The philosophy, the world view, the mindset, the way of looking at life that the world has. It is summarized in 1 John 2, 16 by 3 things. Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. And those three things really are the three pillars of worldliness. And so when I say the church has become worldly in many regards it has adopted the same permissive view of love. But the second was also a permissive view of sin that we don't deal with sin. We hope people will get right with God but we don't feel like it's the church's place to deal with sin. Our society surely has gone to those extremes and the world or the church often adopts those same. The reasons for not wanting to deal with church discipline, misinformation, misunderstanding, the abuses at times through church history, permissiveness in society, then fourthly, the world ends of the church. And then here's the fifth one. I think this is a big one. And it has tied in to some of the others I've said, a misunderstanding of how love and discipline fit together. If I've heard this once I've heard it a hundred times and that is not an exaggeration. If you discipline people in the church you're not showing love, you're not being loving. If you excommunicate someone from the church, if you take them off the roll, if you do not allow them to participate in leadership in the church then you're not showing love in grace. My friend, nothing could be further from the truth. I want you to look at Hebrews 12. We're going to look at this kind of as an introduction to our study. Hebrews 12, that's certainly not God's view of love. Hebrews 12, if you have it, let's look at verse 5. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father, addresses his son, it says, my son, and he quotes me, Old Testament, my son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chasens every one he accepts as his son. So here's the challenge from that, verse 7, endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father. If you are not disciplined, talk about by the Lord now, and everyone undergoes discipline. If you're not disciplined, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. So God expresses His love in many ways, but one of those ways is in discipline. He disciplines us because He loves us. It is an expression of His love because He does not want us to ruin our lives. And the same thing is true of good parents. If we reflect the love of Christ, the love of God for His children, then we will be willing to discipline our children. In fact, isn't that what Proverbs 13, 24 says? Look at this verse on the screen. Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. Now, I'm not going to take the time tonight to deal with what the rod means. It's an Old Testament concept. It's not an iron or steel rod. It's not rebar. Okay? It's not what we're talking about. But it is an instrument that is used in punishment, in discipline. And the Bible says here, if you love your children, you're careful to discipline. Discipline is not the opposite of love. But there's an expression of love in the Bible. The two are not contradictory. The two fit beautifully hand in glove. So I think the misunderstanding of love, the permissiveness, a view of love in our society that's infiltrated the church has led us to misunderstand the linkage between discipline and love. And therefore, has caused many people to think church discipline is inappropriate. So what we see here is that God disciplines his children. What we're going to see throughout this study is that sometimes God delegates that discipline to the church in areas where the life and testimony of the church is at stake. Then God says church, you deal with this because you're here to reflect my glory and my holiness in this world. And so I'm delegating this responsibility to you. And we're going to see that quite clearly tonight and throughout the rest of this study. Okay, I'm going to stop talking for just a moment. We haven't even gotten to point one yet. That was all introduction. So questions or comments before we talk about the basis of discipline. Okay. I will say this. This is an incremental study. So I will raise some things tonight that will probably raise questions in your mind that we won't be able to get to tonight because we're going to be dealing with a lot of different issues. We're going to talk about the basis of church discipline. We'll talk about the scope of church discipline. In other words, what are the kinds of things that a church should discipline a member for? We'll talk about the procedure. Exactly how a church is to follow this. We'll talk about the forms of discipline. What kinds of things should the church do? We'll talk about the attitude, that the church and believers should have in disciplining its members and we'll talk about the goal and the effect. Those are the major areas we're going to do. So some of the things that you may be wondering and thinking, we will cover eventually. But having said that, I don't want to squabbed questions either. If you ask a question that I know we're going to get to next week, I'll tell you, why can't you be patient? Wait till next week. No, I will. I will do that. I will maybe put you off just a little bit and not answer it in full till we get because there's a sequence to the thought here and we need to build as we go through this study. Okay, the basis of church discipline, why should the church engage in church discipline? There are three truths that form the basis of church discipline. Number one is divine holiness. Divine holiness. The basis for all discipline is the holiness of God. And by the way, that's what he's seeking to produce in us through his discipline. Did you see that in Hebrews 12? I hope you still have your Bible open there. We finished in verse 8. Let's read on a little bit more, verse 9. More over, he says, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of Spirits and live? They, speaking of human fathers, disciplined us for a little while as they thought best. But God disciplines us for our good. Now notice this, in order that we may share in His holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Here on however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. So the basis for discipline is the holiness of God. He is a holy God and that is the end result he wants to see in us. The reason why he disciplines us. It is to produce holiness in us so that we may share the writer says in his holiness. Now think about it this way. Remember one of the images we use, we saw the church being compared to in recent weeks, was the temple. Remember that, the church is the temple of God. Now in the Old Testament, a temple was consecrated, set apart to be a holy place. There was a part of the temple. In fact, it was so considered so holy that only one of the priests could go in that room and only once a year. If he did anything in disobedience to God, he was immediately struck dead. In fact, the first two priests, it appears on the first day of their service, Aaron's sons, or they did not have to buy you. God was some strange incense that was not according to the way God told them to prepare it and God struck them dead immediately. It was catastrophic. But what God was communicating is this place is holy. You do not trifle with the holiness of God. So God is holy and the church is his holy place. He builds his sanctuary in us. Remember we saw in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, several passages which talk about the church. You are the temple plural, not just me individually, not just my body. That's in 1 verse and in 1 Corinthians. But most of the verses have to do with the church as a whole, form the habitation of God. He takes his dwelling place in us and he comes to us as the holy God. Look at these verses on the screen. 1 Peter, 1 or chapter 1, verses 15 and 16. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, be holy because I am holy. God is a holy God. He inhabits us as his temple, his holy place. And he expects that place to be consecrated and set apart to reflect the holiness of God. So we dare not have the same permissive, loose view of sin and dealing with sin that the world does because the church is different. The church is a holy place. It's the house, the habitation of a holy God. So for that reason Paul, using another figure of speech, says, don't let unholiness start spreading through the church. But he uses a different figure of speech. Look over if you will please at 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We'll come back to this passage several times in our study. It's a key passage. But just want to pull one nugget out of it at this point. 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8, where in the context of dealing with a church discipline issue, Paul has this to say to the church in Corinth. He says in verse 6, you're boasting and what they were doing is they were boasting about how much grace they were showing to this man. And we'll talk about his sin later. But he says, you're boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? In other words, if you tolerate a little bit of yeast, it's going to spread through the whole batch. So what did you say in verse 7? Get rid of the old yeast so that you may have new unleavened batch. As you really are for Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the festival not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The point there is that he wants the church to represent the holiness of God. We are not to let sin run rampant throughout the church and penetrate the whole church and thus be a temple of, he calls, malice and wickedness. Here he's talking about keeping the festival, the Passover, where you have unleavened bread. And he says, so you got to get rid of the leaven, so you have an unleavened batch. And again, speaking of the church reflecting the holiness of God. Often what the world thinks of God is what they see in the church. And that's why Peter says in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 12, this. He says, live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, in Roman times they spread all kinds of rumors about the church. Although they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. So in other words, your good deeds, your holy behavior that reflects the holiness of your God, should cause them to see God manifested in real life. That's what glorifying God means. It means to praise Him, yes, but it also means to recognize who God is. And so we represent Him and often the world is looking to see how we live, how the church operates and that's what they think about God. We better represent Him well. So I say all that to say this, the primary reason for church discipline is the holiness of God. Divine holiness. The second reason, the second basis, the truth is this, divine command. Divine command, not only divine holiness, church discipline is certainly implied in God's holiness, but it is also directly commanded by God. And numerous times, turn with me, please, in your Bible to Matthew chapter 18. We'll look at this passage a bit too throughout our study. But tonight, this wants you to see that Christ commanded that the church deal with discipline issues. In fact, he outlined a procedure that we shall see should be carried out in most instances, and all. There are some instances where the church is to act swiftly without this procedure. First Corinthians 5 was one of those. But Jesus outlined a procedure for common church discipline cases. Look at Matthew 18 verse 15. He says, if your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault just between the two of you, if they listen to you, you've won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church, and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would have pagan or a tax collector. Now that's exclusion from the church. That's church discipline. Now, the difficulty that we run up against with a passage like this, and this is what I think some of the abuse of church discipline has come from. Many people think this passage is talking about every sin that happens in any believer's life should result in church discipline. And that I don't believe is what the Bible is expecting of us. In fact, we'll see that more as we go along. I think Jesus is talking about not, well, I had a little disagreement with my friend, and we can't seem to get things straightened out. So if he doesn't come apologize to me, then the church has got to kick him out. I'm not sure that is the end result of every difficulty and every sin. In fact, we will see clearly in the scriptures it is not. Clearly it is not. But Jesus is speaking here of, in context of all of the church discipline cases represented in the New Testament, open public, shameful behavior that reflects poorly on the testimony of Christ in the church or in the community. But Jesus did lay out a procedure for excluding people from the church. But Jesus also commanded church discipline through the apostles numerous times. So we're just going to put these on the screen and move through them quickly, not discuss them in detail because we'll come back to them later. I just want you to see the commands, though. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 1 and 2. Now brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you which you received and on which you have taken your stand by this gospel you are sick. Sorry, that's 1 Corinthians 15. I was thinking where is the church discipline part? Open your Bible. 1 Corinthians 5. Sorry, I didn't catch that one. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 1 and 2. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you. Paul's writing to the printing church says, this has been reported to me that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that even pagans do not tolerate. A man is sleeping with his father's wife. Must have been his stepmother, the way he words it. Verse 2. And you are proud. Shouldn't you rather have gone into mourning and have put out of your fellowship, the man who's been doing this? So Paul commands that someone be put out of the church fellowship. Galatians 6 1 is the next verse. Galatians 6 1. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who lived by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves or you may also be tempted. I bring up this verse because although it doesn't sound like it first glance at church discipline verse, it does give us the end goal of discipline which is always restoration. The end goal is not exclusion. That's a means to an end. The goal is always restoration that a person be brought back into fellowship with Christ and the church. The next verse, 2nd Thessalonians 3, verse 6. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you brothers and sisters to keep away from every believer who is idle and disruptive and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. And we're going to get into that 2nd Thess passage more deeply later and we'll see exactly what the issue was there that Paul was commanding the church to withdraw fellowship from brothers who lived this way. 1st Timothy 5, verse 20. But those elders who are sinning you are to approve before everyone so that the others may take warning. Here is a public-censure public discipline of pastors who sin. And then one more, Titus 310. Warn a divisive person once and then warn them a second time after that have nothing to do with them. By the way, although we have not always been as good as we should have been in church discipline, there was, I can remember an occasion where I did pursue that one by a person who was trying to spread false teaching in our church. There was a number of years ago and he was passing out literature and catching people in the lobby and I warned him twice and then I wrote him a letter. He said, you're no longer welcome here. Don't show up again. We will not talk about this issue again. I still have a copy of that 2-page letter in case it would ever come back on me. But there is a clear command here when a person is creating division that you're to warn them twice and then tell them to take a hike. You don't need to be here. Have nothing to do with them. And so that's a command of the Lord. So divine holiness, divine command and then the third reason for discipline, the basis of discipline is the practice of the church. The New Testament records several instances where discipline was practiced all of those verses above that we just read our instances, very specific issues Paul was dealing with in a specific church, in Corinth, in Thessalonica, in Ephesus through Timothy, specific issues and specific churches. But there are also a couple of others I'd like to mention. One is a little bit of a hybrid if you will. It's not exactly church discipline, but it was the first real discipline case that got himself initiated in the early church. And that is in Acts 5 with Ananias and Sapphira. We're not going to turn there, but when Ananias and Sapphira lied about what they were giving to the church, making it look like they were doing what everybody else was doing to help the needs of the believers, God actually took both of their lives. Now Peter's the one who said something about that to Ananias' wife when she came in, but it was God who actually did that. But again, I think God was saying at the very beginning of the church, I'm still holy, I'm still holy God. The church is my holy habitation. Don't take my holiness lightly. Now thankfully God has not continued to take the lives of everyone who's been dishonest in the church, but I think that was an evidence where he was showing at the very beginning of the church. I take this seriously. I take this seriously. One other that you see practiced in the early church other than the ones we've mentioned is 1st Timothy 1 verses 19 and 20 where Paul says, Timothy holding onto faith in a good conscience which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith among them are Hymenas and Alexander and then notice what he says about them, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme. These two men were evidently bringing false teaching into the church and Paul says, I've turned them over to Satan. Now we're going to see that same expression in 1 Corinthians 5. I'm going to hang on to that and not going to try to explain it now. It would take too much time, but both of those have to do with putting someone back out of the church into the realm where Satan is operating for God to deal with them there. It's a phrase that indicates church discipline. So the basis of church discipline, the holiness of God, divine command and the practice of the early church. The inner comment before we talk a little bit about the scope. John, yeah, the divisiveness, and we're going to see this a little bit when we get into the scope of discipline. One of the issues that scriptures speak of in several places is divisiveness and it usually appears in the context of doctrine, trying to divide the church by bringing false doctrine into it. It's not just, I can't get along with my brother. If that goes to the extent that it becomes a public community issue, then it deserves to be a church discipline. But the divisiveness usually talked about it, and I think in Titus, it includes this, is bringing false doctrine into the church and divides the church. That kind of divisiveness. Okay, I do want to at least get started in the second point on your outline, the scope of discipline. What we're talking about there is, okay, how much, how far should we go with this? How much should the church treat as a discipline issue? What are the kinds of things that should be treated to discipline issues and what shouldn't be treated as discipline issues? And I'm going to say right up front, this is not an exact science. It really isn't. It is not an easy thing to nail down. It's one of the reasons why church discipline is so difficult to deal with. And I'm not going to have time to get to it, but it just wants you to know, and I'll bring it next week. There's a book I've been reading by Jonathan Lehman, who is on staff at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., Mark Devers, the senior pastor. There's written this book, probably the best book, at least anybody who has any name and Christian circle believes it is, probably the best book on church discipline and church membership. What membership means and what discipline means, it's called The Church and the Surprising Offence of God's Love. I'm going to read a quote from that next week, which indicates that even someone like him who moves in those circles of the highest level of strong Bible teachers says, this is not an exact science. This is a difficult issue. You can't always nail down specifically exactly what you should discipline for and what you shouldn't. So let me start this by saying, the scope of church discipline, it is a limited scope. It is a limited scope. While God is very concerned about the purity of the church, official public church discipline should be exercised with great care. Let me give you an example. Paul deals with a number of problems in the church at Corinth. I mean, this was a church that was just riddled with problems. You go through the book and you pick them out. The first four chapters, there was some divisiveness in the church over favorite preachers, favorite teachers. And Paul says, you're becoming divided because of saying, well, I like Peter, I like Paul, I like the Paulus. Then the real spiritual one said, I like Christ. I'm a little bit higher in the rest of you. And so they were actually bringing Christ down to the level of this dispute and this debate, which is the worst thing at all. There was that in the church, that kind of division and disunity over favorite preachers and teachers. And then in chapter five, there's this case of immorality, which we'll get back to. In chapter six, there's this issue of people suing each other, lawsuits. In chapter seven, there's an issue, several issues related to singleness and marriage and sexual purity in the church. There's eight through 10. There's an issue of Christian liberty and some of the abuses of Christian liberty in Corinth, which was a very sinful place. In chapter 11, there's the issue of abuses at the communion, where some people were bringing a bunch of food and getting drunk, even at the Lord's Supper that led the communion. And so that was a huge issue that Paul dealt with. Chapters 12 through 14 deal with the abuse of spiritual gifts in the church. There are 15 deals with some doctrinal problems about the resurrection. So there's a whole boatload of problems in Corinth, but only one of them did Paul recommend church discipline for. And that was the immorality that he said, even pagans know better than that. I mean, this is a scandal out in the community. So that's the kind of thing that deserves church discipline, not every issue that comes up in the church. Not every sin that a believer may commit. Based on that, Lehman and others who deal very deeply with this say that the same limited practice is evident throughout the New Testament and come to the conclusion that church discipline is reserved for public scandalous sins that are destroying the church testimony in the community. This is not an attempt to make the church sinless. Otherwise, if that were the case, all of us would be disciplined from the church, including me. This is not an attempt to make the church sinless through discipline of every sin. In no place does the Bible give us three easy steps to determine what the discipline for. However, this is public scandalous sin that is not repented of through the initial steps of a church trying to deal with individuals and then a church dealing with a person. If a person is guilty of the kinds of sin that are destroying the testimony of the church in the community and they are approached and dealt with and are not repentant, then the church must act and remove them from the fellowship of the church. That seems to be the tenor of all of these cases in the New Testament. It will come back to all of them later. So let me just stop there. A limited scope. This is not an attempt to make the church sinless. It's not an attempt to deal with every sin in every person's lives. We have responsibility to deal with every sin in our own lives. We have responsibilities as brothers and sisters to sharpen one another and challenge one another and help each other deal with sins. Yes, but not all of those become church discipline issues. Church discipline is reserved for the public scandalous sins that are not repented of. That seems to be the pattern throughout the New Testament. Okay, I would love to take other questions, but I'll take those at the door.