In verse 13, hear now God's very Word. And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses sat to judge the people. And the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto evening? And Moses said unto his father-in-law, Because the people come unto me, to inquire of God. When they have a matter, they come unto me, and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God and His laws. And Moses' father-in-law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou and this people that is with thee, for this thing is too heavy for thee. Thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken now unto my voice. I will give thee counsel. and God shall be with thee. Be thou for the people to Godward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God, and thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all seasons, and it shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge. So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people also shall go to their place in peace. So Moses hearkened unto the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said. And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons, the hard cases they brought unto Moses. But every small matter they judged themselves. And Moses let his father-in-law depart, And he went his way into his own land. May God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word. We've read this passage because we are still in our study of church government. We are distinguishing between civil magistracy and church authority. And there are some distinctions that are resonant in this passage that we need to see, one in particular. And so that's why we read this particular passage. Last week then we talked about ways that the magistracy differs from church authority. So let us let us proceed forward in that same vein. This week we talked that they that they differed in the efficient cause or authorship that the magistrates powers derived from God the creator and governor of all in Romans 13 and 14. That's the ordinance of God it's called. And it's called the creation of man in 1 Peter 2.13, right? Every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. But church power is from Christ the mediator in things about His redemptive office. And we saw that in Ephesians 1.22, Matthew 28.18, Isaiah 9.6, and 1 Corinthians 5.12 and 13. The second distinction that I'd like to show you between the civil magistracy and church authority is that they differ in their respective spheres. In their respective spheres. Ecclesiastical power consists in the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In the exercise of these keys, heaven is opened or shut by them. I know. I know that's difficult to us modern day folks. Historically, this is the teaching of Presbyterianism, that the keys of the kingdom of heaven are indeed possessed by those to whom Christ has given in his church, the officers of the church, and heaven is opened or shut based on those. And we'll talk about later on, we'll talk about how important that is. But just if you will transport your thinking with me to that understanding of the steward and the cabinet, the steward and the larder, if you will, or the pantry. That steward has a key. And if he doesn't open that door, nobody gets to eat. No one eats. All of the stock and store for the maintenance of the household is where? It's in that cupboard. It's in that cabinet, in that pantry. And it's locked up because it's a large and great house with lots of folks in it. And you never know who's going to wander in there and take food and get out of their rations, right? Or if the chef of the house who receives from the steward that food for preparation, if he has a particular meal plan and they've gone out and they've got everything they need for that meal, and then he goes to the cupboard and the cupboard is bare, it's like old Mother Hubbard, right? So then what do you find? Well, you find that there's a thief in the house and you search that out. But that won't happen as long as the steward is diligent and does his work. He has that lock and key and he keeps that closed. In the same way, Jesus calls the authority that He gives to His apostles and to the officers after them, the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now, I don't know how it could be much more plain than that. That the binding and loosing, the opening and shutting is based on the exercise, the operation of those keys. And we've talked about the key of discipline and the key of knowledge. That both are necessary. for heaven to be opened to someone. So what are those keys? What are the keys of the kingdom of heaven? Well, we've talked about them. They are preaching, the administration of the sacraments, church censures, admonitions, authoritative admonitions, excommunication, absolution, ordination, Those types of things. That's what the church does. That's how the church opens and shuts the gates of heaven. Now, do we understand that those are ordinary means? Yes. Yes, we do. There is such a thing as an extraordinary means of bringing sinners to Christ. And that's, you know, from time to time, that's off the map. We don't operate in the extraordinary means. We don't plan on using extraordinary means. We plan on using ordinary means. So, for instance, when Philip travels to Gaza in Acts chapter 8 and meets up with the Ethiopian eunuch, that is an extraordinary circumstance. There was no church, no established church. He was not sent back to an established church. That was extraordinary. More ordinary was the fact that the apostles traveled the countryside and planted churches and ordained elders in those churches, and people came to those churches for the opening of the doors of heaven. More ordinary. That's how it was ordinarily done. And so these are the operations then of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. The door of Heaven is opened by preaching in that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is preached. Again, men are saved by means of the preaching of the Gospel. If there is no preaching, what does Paul say? How can they believe upon Him of whom they have not heard? And so you understand how that is a key. that opens up the gates of heaven. The sacraments are also the same kind of grace, the same kind of tool that the preaching is, because the sacraments also teach us things. Again, word and sacraments going together. We understand that those holy analogies are there to continue to open to our understanding via the key of knowledge. Church censures. What is the church censure? A censure is an authoritative moving someone out of the mainstream of the church, warning them that continued recalcitrance and rebellion will end up in them being excommunicated and placed outside the pale of the church where it's raining fire and brimstone. So that is a key of the kingdom of heaven. Admonitions, that is warning. When the King James uses the word admonish, modern translations I think rightly translate that to warn one another. J. Adams translates it counsel one another, but much of counseling is indeed warning. I think warning is that stronger and better suited word to that Old English word admonition. and to the Greek word nuthateo. And again, admonitions. You remember what Paul told Titus when he was speaking of the Cretans. He said one of their prophets said, you know, Cretans are lazy, slow bellies, gluttonous, drunkards. That's true. One of their prophets did really say that. So, rebuke them sharply. Admonish them that they should be sound in the faith rather than being slow bellies. That is something that is done authoritatively. And that is part of the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Of course, we've talked about excommunication. That is that final sad event when someone is turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that the Spirit may be saved in the day of salvation. Keep in mind that excommunication is for the reclamation of the offender and not for the permanent putting out of the offender. The hope is always that when all process has been exhausted and one remains in their sins, that they will be put out of the church and get a belly full of it and come and repent. and turn back to Christ. Absolution. Not priestian, Roman absolution, where if you say a few little ditties, you can be free of your sins. I'm often grieved at the, of course, it's widely published by the Roman Catholic Church and by others in our society as well, that there were priests on the deck of the Titanic offering absolution to sinners. What a bag of holes to go into eternity with. True absolution is found in 2 Corinthians 2 and following when that poor man that was excommunicated in 1 Corinthians 5 repents of his sin and turns back to the church and is received into the church authoritatively by the session, by the elders, by the presbytery of the church. He is received back in. The doors of heaven once again are flung wide open to him. His penitence is recognized. His repentance and new obedience is authoritatively recognized. And of course, ordination also a church power and authority. One of the keys of the kingdom of heaven because how shall they preach except they be sent, Romans chapter 10. So those are the things that pertain to the ecclesiastical authority. Those are the keys of the kingdom of heaven. But the magistracy has nothing to do with any of those. Secular statutes, fines, imprisonments, confiscation, banishment, Torment, death, protection, all these things, physical protection of your temporal estate, those are the things that pertain to the civil magistrate. The civil magistrate has none of those keys of the kingdom of heaven in his belt. He doesn't shut up heaven or open wide the gates of heaven as a steward of God's house. Rather, what He does is He pursues the temporal good of those whom the Lord has given Him in charge. And He does so by promoting those who do good and by punishing those that do evil, by being a nursing father to the church, by supporting the true religion Yes, the magistrate does have some purview over the souls of his subjects, rightly so, but it ought to be considered within the sphere of what he has. He may not enter into the church and exercise the power of the keys. They are not given to him. We saw that last week in spades with Uzziah who desired piously, or he thought it was a pious desire. to go into the temple and to burn incense. And of course, the priests, there were 80 of them. They said, what? It appertaineth not unto thee, King Uzziah. They said it repeatedly to him. No, stop. Don't go in there. And he went. And so the Lord banished him from the church the rest of his life with leprosy in his forehead. So they differ in the spheres in which they are exercised. but they also differ in the residency of the authority. The church's authority is resident in Christ and in His officers, and the magistrate's authority can be in a monarch. It can be in the people. It can be in an oligarchy. It can be in a woman. It can be in a child. And yet, women and children have no sway in the church for its government. So, the people to whom the authority is committed. Also, in the exercise of that authority. Now, here is an interesting one. I want you to listen carefully to this and think with me. Put on your thinking caps and think with me on this. You ready for this? Okay, the magistrate can and should punish penitent persons. The magistrate can and should punish penitent persons, but the church never does because penitency is the goal of all church judgment. You see the difference there? It's a wide divide. You have heard of people that have committed crimes and they are, what, sorry for what they did. Perhaps they did their crime in a drug-induced stupor or a drug-induced craze. Perhaps they just allowed their own adrenaline to get the best of them and were violent against someone. And when they awoke out of their crazed state or out of their stupor and found out what they had done, they thought, oh my, what have I done? I am so sorry. Well, so the magistrates should then at that point simply turn his back on their judgment? No, magistrates do and should punish penitent persons because there is a rightful societal It's not vengeance, but it is a restitution that must be paid. You have heard often that criminals will get out of jail and they say they have paid their debt to society. Well, that is a true statement. There is a real debt, because as a society, we are, in a sense, in covenant one with another. I often talk to my children about their driving, or my own driving, or anyone's driving. You know, when we drive down the road, we are in an unspoken, unwritten covenant with everyone else that we drive with on the road. What's the agreement? What's the covenant between us? You won't come in my lane and I won't go in yours. Now, some people break that covenant from time to time. And you can see what happens when people break that covenant. Either they run into one another or they get everybody's anger up because they've broken the covenant. It is an unwritten promise, an agreement if you will, between all of those who are on the road. We depend on that covenant. We know that when we're going 50 miles an hour in a 50 mile an hour zone, we're all good law keeping folk here, and we're driving down the road and there's someone waiting to make a left turn over there. We are in covenant with Him, and the covenant says what? Well, you won't turn in front of me. You'll wait until I'm past to turn, or you'll be able to complete your turn long before I get into that intersection. And when that goes wrong, when that covenant is broken, the magistrate has a proper duty to search out to see if there was any criminal negligence there. and to punish it accordingly, no matter how sorry the offender is. But you see, sorrow and penitence is the goal of church judgment. And we ought to pursue until we receive penitence from the sinner. And then all judgment is suspended at that point, because we've accomplished our ends. It's a large and very important difference between magistratical authority and ecclesiastical authority. We even give criminals an opportunity. For instance, in our state, we have a custom, a tradition, where those whose loved one was put to death by a murderer can come and witness the murder sorry, the lawful killing of the murderer, right? It's not murder to put to death a murderer. It's lawful killing. In Texas, we just say he needed killing. But that's the point. The loved ones can come because there is a debt that is repaid to them because he has broken covenant. Now, watch this. This offender has an opportunity at that point to express his sorrow. for his crime. And you know, many of them do. And I praise God that they do. Perhaps that was the only way some of them could be saved in the first place, was to face death for so long a time, sitting on death row, that they contemplated that eternity for long enough to realize they didn't want to go there without Christ. And so, the man has an opportunity to express his penitence. And if he expresses his penitence, do we let him go? No. He expresses his penitence and he is then executed per order of the court. But if he expresses his penitence in some sort of ecclesiastical setting, all judgment stops against him. Because no matter how great a sinner he is, he can be forgiven in Christ. And when penitence is had, when repentance and faith are had, then all church judgment ends. What a great distinction between magistratical and ecclesiastical authority. And wouldn't you rather fall under the mercy of Christ? Okay, so the church punishes no penitent persons. Penitence is the highest aim of the church with regard to the offender. The church punishes all sorts of scandals. The magistrate only punishes some. Because the magistrate, this is another difference between the two, the magistrate punishes those things which pertain to the temporal well-being of his subjects. So, for instance, the magistrate doesn't punish gossip. Does the church punish gossip? You bet. You bet. If there is someone in this church or another that is gossiping and has been warned once and warned again and they continue to gossip, sooner or later there's going to be some sort of procedure by the church against that person. Sooner or later. But gossip will never be punished by the magistrate. until it begins to touch the temporal estate of the one about whom the gossip is said. But then we don't call it gossip anymore. We either call it slander or we call it libel. Because then we have moved into what? A striking against the temporal estate of the one who is the subject of the slander or libel. And we give it another name because it has moved beyond mere words into, you know, interfering with the livelihood, if you will, of another. Let me tell you how that works in my business. We have electricians that come and go in and out of companies. Most of them make the circuit around the various companies and they find the one that they're comfortable in and fit well with culturally and work-wise and so on. But there's often a flux of people. One of the big contractors in town will get a big job over here. And so a bunch of electricians will flock over there. And then another guy, when that one starts to tail down, there'll be another big job over here, another company, and they'll move over to there. And so we have a lot of this movement of electricians between companies. Then there are other trades and other businesses that also have the same sort of movement of employees. What we are not allowed to do any longer, is we are not allowed to speak to any prospective employer that would call us to inquire about a former employee. If we speak against him, well, now we are subject to a civil proceeding by the magistrate. You know why? Because we have interfered with his ability to make a living. So we have gone beyond being able to offer an honest assessment of the man's capabilities, because if that's a negative assessment and he's not hired, those suits have been brought and have been won in court. Now, we can argue about the rightness or wrongness of that, and we can argue also about maybe a vindictive employer slandering a former employee. But all of that to say this, that when it gets into his temporal estate, it's not gossip anymore. And so then the magistrate takes it up. But the magistrate doesn't punish gossip, but the church sure does or should. The church has a proper censure available for the incessant gossip. OK, so the church punishes all sorts of scandals, the magistrate only some. OK, the next difference. The magistratical authority can be delegated, church authority cannot be delegated, and this is why we read Exodus chapter 18, 13 and following, because Moses in his temporal judgment of the people between matter and matter, civil matters between people. What is Moses doing here? Well, all of the people are coming to him. They're all coming to him, and what's he doing? He's judging them, and what does Jethro tell him? This is not going to work. You're going to wear out. There's no such thing here as super Moses. You're just going to wear out. If you sit from morning until night before these people, day after day, how many people were there, do you remember? Millions of people, right? At that point, 600,000 foot soldiers minimum. So if you count the women, children, old, and young, the infirm, easily into the two million form. So two million people, 700, 800,000 families, and you have judgments, matters between people. And so Moses would sit from morning until night and judge them. And Jethro says, not a good idea. First time, I think, somebody said to Moses, this is not good. And Moses agreed. You're right, it's not good. And so what does Jethro say? Delegate your civil authority. And so he did. He delegated that civil authority. And we see this today, don't we? Our government is divided into several, well, first of all, we have different governments. We have governments upon governments, governments outside of governments, governments within governments. We have all sorts of governments. We have the federal government, the state government, the county government, the city government. We have, you know, government, government, government, government. OK, but we also have a delegation of authority. When you violate the law, the president doesn't come knocking at your house. The attorney general does not come knock. Well, maybe if you do something bad enough, he'll come. But generally speaking, the attorney general does not come. If it's a federal crime that you violate, you have a federal law enforcement official, a lesser magistrate, could be an FBI agent, could be an ATF agent, Could be all sorts of things, right? Could be all sorts of different lesser magistrates, and then you'll be taken before the courts and that will be judged. But that's a delegated authority. When he shows up at your doorstep and shows his badge and says, Mr. So-and-so, I'm from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and I'm here because I've heard that you have bought a lot of magnets lately, and I'm wondering why you want those. You don't tell him, really? I want to talk to your boss. Oh, that's the wrong thing to say at that point. He has all the authority he needs, doesn't he, to ask you about that. And he'll get all the authority he needs if he needs to search your house and rightly so. All right. But church authority cannot be delegated. As a matter of fact, we have seen the wicked and evil results of the delegation of church authorities in the building up of standing committees that have more power than the presbyteries they're supposed to represent. See, that's a deformed, illegitimate authority when we see those build up in churches. Really, the authority is vested in the church officers, and as they wield that authority, they do so rightly, and as they delegate that authority, they do so improperly. Jesus Christ, the king of the church, has never given his church leave to delegate authority. He has given it to his officers. But the authority of the magistracy is and should be delegated. We saw that in Genesis 18. You're going to wear out, Moses, if you don't. OK. And then finally, the last It's kind of a repetition. Magistratical authority has to do with the state and its temporal good. Ecclesiastical authority has to do with eternal matters, the good or profit of men's souls, which from time to time may tend either to their temporal woe or will. Right? Now think about that. The magistrate pursuing his calling correctly is going to protect your temporal will. Wealth. Right? Your wheel. Woe or wheel. That's where the word wealth comes from. Okay? So, woe is bad. Wheel is good. You want a wheel. W-E-A-L. You want wealth. W-E-L-T-H. You want to grow in your temporal estate. You want to be protected in your temporal estate. You want to flourish and advance in your temporal estate. And it's the magistrate's responsibility to give you a seed bed in which to do that. That's his calling. But you know, some of the advice that you get from the church, in fact, some of the commands that you receive from the Lord Jesus Christ, will diminish your temporal estate. In fact, in wicked days will cause your temporal estate to come to an end. And that, rightly so. The church is doing its job, in other words. Oh, those who take it or not, make no mistake. But it is the magistrate's purview. It is his calling to protect your temporal estate. But sometimes, The commands of Christ, and you pursuing them rightly, are going to diminish your temporal estate. As a matter of fact, many have lost their lives for their profession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Their temporal estate came to an end. But they did exactly what the church preached and told them to do. In other words, they believed the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and nothing else, and refused to back down from that faith. And that brought an end to their temporal estate. Now, it was the magistrate's responsibility to protect that temporal estate. He failed in his duty. But the church didn't fail in hers because the results of what she taught caused people to be martyred. You understand the difference there? There is a difference. The magistrate only has... Now, you know, I mean, it's not... We need to talk about the spreading out and the net effect and the one for the all and the all for the one, right? Because sometimes the magistrate is going to bring people's temporal estates to an end, perhaps in war, for the good of the country itself. You understand that? That there are times when you will be pleasantly invited to go into the armed forces. You may even be drafted into the armed forces. And you may, being drafted into the armed forces, go into conflict and die. Now you did rightly in doing that and the magistrate did rightly in the cause of a just war in commanding you to do that. Right? Because it was your, it was the sacrifice of the one for the good, for the temporal advancement of the whole. Okay, so individually it may mean woe, but universally it means will. But the church always tells people the truth, preaches Christ to the church and to all within the church. And then they turn and sometimes because of that preaching and because of their profession, they are put to death. The church has not done wrong because the church's primary responsibility is not your temporal estate, either considered individually or collectively. That's not the church's primary concern, not your temporal estate. The church's primary concern is your eternal state. And sometimes the Lord has required in the history of His people that in order to maintain their eternal estate, they give up their temporal estate. I know, difficult things to think about, but there's lots of things there to think about. But see, these are differences between magistratical authority and ecclesiastical authority. Ecclesiastical authority is never primarily for your temporal estate. Never primarily. Does that mean the church has no interest in your temporal estate? That's not what I said. I said no primary interest in your temporal estate. The primary interest of the church is in your eternal estate. The estate of your soul. And so sometimes the church may tell you things that will get you into hot water in your temporal estate. The church is not sinning by doing so, and you're not sinning by following those things. We have a couple of gentlemen in this assembly that work for a company that is largely a union company. And there are some very good biblical arguments against the entangling of yourself in a labor union like that. And there were times when men with that conviction suffered greatly for it. That's not a problem. That's not a sin on the church's part. That's teaching righteousness. And sometimes following righteousness has temporal consequences. And while we care when that happens, we don't change the doctrine to make our temporal lives any easier. That's the point. Okay. Well, we have a few minutes left. Let's go on then. to the next topic. And of course, it's a big topic. It's what I told you that we were going to do is we're going to talk about the civil magistrate, what his authority was, the differences between the church and the state. And then we're going to talk about the community of the faithful are not the immediate receptacle of church authority, the community of the faithful. In other words, a pure congregationalism, a pure congregationalism is not an OT, not the scriptural form of church government. And we're going to talk about why that is over the next couple of weeks. I just have a few minutes left today, so we'll barely have time to introduce the topic. Let's first of all spend a few moments talking about different kinds of congregationalism. Because there are different kinds. There are basically two kinds of congregationalism. We might say that there are two kinds of Presbyterianism. what the book that we're studying through in these series of sermons calls it is the people presbyterated or not presbyterated. You can tell what era in which they lived. But what that means is when we have a church that we call an independent church, it can be independent in a number of ways. It can be independent in that it has no officers at all. It can be independent in that it has officers. And then it can be independent in that it has officers and congregation that work in concert as far as church authority is concerned. Now, some of you know that I was a member of the Four C's, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference some. Man, it's 15 years ago now, at least 15 or 16, 17 years ago. I got religion after that, OK? It's all right. But yeah, there was a time that I was part of the Four C's. Now I found, I know this is going to go on the tape, but I found that they were not exactly conservative, somewhat conservative, but they were very congregational. So there is an understanding among the Four C's churches, some of them have elders and some of them don't. In the Four Seas churches, if there are elders, they are simply delegates of the congregation. They are that delegated church authority if the elders act at all. But the New England Congregational Way as it was known by the Congregationalists was a radical form of Congregationalism where the major aspects of church government were decided in what they called the Congregational Meeting. And in that congregational meeting, the entire congregation came together and these works are out there. You can read them if you like. You would read about these rocking and rolling congregational meetings when people are arguing and fussing and fighting about these issues. And people are standing up and pointing at people on the other side of the aisle. And those people are standing up and pointing back this way. And then at the end, they would unanimously make a decision. And they speak very winsomely about the way the Holy Ghost works in a congregational meeting. Well, if the Holy Ghost works in a congregational meeting, we will say that He does so extraordinarily and not ordinarily, because He has granted to us in His Word how churches ought to be governed, and that is not the way. And we'll see that as we go on. So that's one form of congregationalism where the major and even sometimes the minor directions of the church are decided in a congregational meeting where everybody comes. You have to have a quorum, a certain amount of membership in order for a vote to be binding. The issues are presented. They have the rock and roll and the argument and all of that. And then they get down the road with a decision. Sometimes those decisions are unanimous and sometimes they're not. And depending on the constitution of any particular congregational church, which was voted on by the congregation that founded it, by the way, you can have a supermajority for a decision or a simple majority as a supermajority, anything over two thirds, a standard majority or a simple majority, anything over 50 percent to make a decision. And that will be in the Constitution, the founding documents of a particular church. Then you can have a different kind of congregationalism. where you have actually the congregation elects elders. And those elders are in something of an authority in the church, but not that much authority. But they are delegated by the church to do certain things, but the big things are left to the church. For instance, Joanna and I went down to, oh, what's the name of that town? Carlsbad, California, when we lived in We live in the Antelope Valley. We drove down to Carlsbad to be part of what was called a vicinage. V-I-C-I-N-A-G-E. It comes from the same word we get vicinity. And what that is is when they're going to ordain a man for church office, who has the power of ordination in the church, in a congregational church? The congregation has that. And so, the congregation doesn't really examine the man. They delegate that authority to the elders and to other local congregationally governed churches. Hence the word, vicinage. So, they call elders from local churches in the vicinity. And these local elders come and they examine the man. to be ordained or not. And the order of the examination, the procedure, the method of procedure for the examination is held by the church that called the vicinage. Makes sense. So, of course, this particular man fared very poorly in his exam. I've never seen a candidate fare more poorly than that. But he was plugged in into the network and appreciated by the people that attended that church there. So they pushed him on through or they recommended him to the congregation for ordination in such a way that he would be ordained in the next congregational meeting, which was to be held that Sunday night. But notice that that body did not have power to ordain that man. He was ordained by the congregation meeting on a Sunday night at the recommendation of the Vicinage Council that was called. We don't do it that way. You say, well, yeah, you went to Florida. That's right. And we'll talk about that in due time. The other congregational setup is a church that is ruled by a set of elders independent of any other church. And it's not really a congregational view. It's an independent Presbyterian view. So that you have a church that is completely independent of ecclesiastical ties from greater courts, but is ruled by a session in that church. That's an independent Presbyterian church. People gathered, presbyterated in that case. And of course, many of the men that we look up to theologically believe that, by the way. I don't know if you knew that or not. But Jonathan Edwards, John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, and others even at Westminster were Congregationalists of this stripe. And it's not really a Congregational sort of rule. It's an independent sort of rule. so that there is no connectionalism between churches, only pious advice and conference. And when you think about that, it's pretty interesting. There are many Presbyterian denominations today that operate much under the same practical banner, although they don't operate that way on paper. But mostly, there is very little that comes down, if you will, from GA or from Presbytery or even from a regional synod that is binding on those churches. It's pious advice. The churches are ruled by elders. But the main difference there would be that it is a Presbytery that would ordain the minister of any particular church. So there is some remnant of Presbyterian authority, even in churches that don't operate like Presbyterian churches. So those are the three types of independent churches. The last sort we will not talk about right now because we will relegate that discussion to a later date when we talk about the biblical validity of graded courts, the biblical validity of broader courts, if you will, other than the local church. We're not going to do that today. And that's a different type of church. The other two churches, however, whether they are they are congregationally governed in that all the congregations got to come together all the time to vote or they're congregationally governed in that the congregation has elected elders and delegated some authority to them. Those are the ones that we're going to talk about here now over the next week or two. So. What time is it? It's four o'clock. I'll tell you what, why don't we wrap up here? There's a little bit of history there and a little bit of of comparison between the magistracy and the ministry and their spheres of authority and their exercise of authority that should give you some food for thought. Let's stand and call upon the Lord in prayer. Next week, then, we'll begin talking about the community of the faithful, that they are not the immediate receptacle of church authority. Let's pray.