If you have your Bible today, let's turn to Matthew 18. If you don't have a Bible, then get one of these black Bibles that's on the very ends of each pew. And in that Bible, it's page 823. And if you don't have a Bible for yourself at all, then just keep that Bible. There's a message from us to you on the very inside cover about the Gospel, about how you can be made right with God, and we would just like you to have that as a gift so you can have God's Word in your life. Let's read together as we are going verse by verse through the Gospel of Matthew. We have come to Matthew 18, verse 15, and let's read through verse 20. Jesus says, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. This is a passage that will launch us for the next few weeks into a number of other passages. So we are simply going through the book of Matthew, but we've come to a point in the book of Matthew that deals with the subject matter that is a pretty clear instruction for the churches of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not like advanced material for advanced Christians. This is just how Jesus set up the church, and yet it's something that's been neglected by the vast majority of churches in the United States of America for at least 100 years. Our church here practiced this very closely for about the first 50 years of its existence from 1850 onward. And there's just been a number of pulls in American culture and Christian culture that have kind of caused us when we get to passages like this to say, I don't know what that's all about. That's kind of weird. I don't get it. And just look at something else. This is not the gospel. This is not obey these instructions in order that you may be saved. And so God has continued to preserve the church of the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the gospel. But when we come to a place like this with pretty clear instructions that are probably unfamiliar to most of us, it's a good thing, I think, for us to stop and to kind of think about that. So we've come to this point in Matthew, and we'll take about the next three weeks after this also to go to some other scriptures that deal with similar things so that we can kind of try our best to put together what it is that God has called us to do in terms of the function of the church that we call discipline, or you might call it accountability. And we seek that accountability. We long for that accountability. We talk about accountability partners, and we've sought all kinds of ways to try to do accountability. And the great thing is that God has built it into one of the primary functions of the church, and it's right here for us. And he knows what we need. It's good for us. It's good for us. But as we get into this, there is a confusion. The confusion that the world has. I want to think about the confusion of the world before I think about any confusion within the church. The confusion of the world is looking at Christianity. What is the deal with sin? How is sin supposed to be dealt with? I think most of the unbelieving world has some sense of the idea of sin, of the existence of sin, of the existence of evil, that there are actions that should not be taken. Many would even recognize that there are intentions of the heart that should not be there, that there is such a thing as outward and inward sin. But the question is, well, how does the world then think that Christianity ought to be dealing with sin? Because on the one hand, the world looks at Christianity and sees that Christianity involves the forgiveness of sin. And that is an appealing idea if you're talking about your own sin that you want to have forgiven, right? But then what about other people's sins? What about that guy's sins that I think are too bad to be forgiven? And so it can be both appealing in that there is the forgiveness of sin and off-putting in that there is the forgiveness of that guy's sin. And then on the other hand, there are some who would say, well, Christianity is all about the forgiveness of sins, and so why are Christians going around pointing out sins? How does that go together? How can you say that you're loving and forgiving, and then go around saying that there is sin and throwing what they would call judgments? How can you judge? if you say that God is a loving God and forgives. Now, what we know as believers in Christ, if you're a believer in Christ, you know this. This comes to the heart of the Gospel. If you don't know this, you need to listen very, very carefully. We have found the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God is a God who at the same time both takes sin very, very seriously, and offers complete and free forgiveness of sins. How could those two things go together? That's what the unbelieving world doesn't understand, but that's what God has shown us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay, so when we look to Jesus, we see that God became flesh, He dwelt among us, He lived a sinless life as a man, both God and man in one person, and that what He did as a sinless man who deserved no punishment, had never committed any sin, He went all the way to the point of being punished, not just being punished, being executed as a criminal. That He hung on a wooden cross, nailed to that cross, and He bled and He suffocated and He died on the cross. And when he did that, he was showing those two concepts together in that one action that God takes sin deadly seriously. That the wages of sin is death and that God is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, slow to anger, that He forgives sin freely. And that came together at the cross of Jesus where He bore the punishment for our sin And He offers us free and complete forgiveness and life. Forgiveness of sins and justification and the fullness of the riches of God, not for anything we have done, but simply by believing in Him and what He has done. So we see at the cross, we see in the heart of what we call the Gospel, that God both takes sin very seriously, deadly seriously, and completely forgives it. And He did that in the one action of the cross. If you don't know about that, right now is the time to give your life to Christ. To see, yes, my sin is that serious, and God offers full and free and complete forgiveness of my sins by faith in this Jesus. Now here's where we sometimes run into some confusion as Christians though. It's when we start to look around at our own churches and our own lives and we start to wonder, well then how should I view the sins of others? How should I view the sins of others? I know that in my own life, I have to take sin very seriously and also count myself as freely forgiven in Jesus Christ, but what about if someone sins against me? Or maybe not even against me, but I just see that they're walking away into this path, down the wrong path, down the path of sin. What should I do? If I confront their sin, on the one hand, maybe there's going to be this idea that I'm judgy, that I'm just mean, that I don't understand the forgiveness of God, that they should say, get off my back, God is my judge, you have nothing to do with this, God loves me, God forgives me. So there's that fear on the one hand, but then on the other hand, there's also the other fear. Well, what if we don't take sin seriously? Are we just gonna let people go down the path of destruction? And so there's this great thing where God has given us a way on the ground, in our daily lives, in our church, to say let's look at what God has done in taking sin seriously and offering full and complete and loving forgiveness. And let's have a path where we can offer that same kind of attitude toward each other, where we both take sin very seriously and are seeking love and forgiveness and restoration. And so that's what Jesus has given us today. I want to point out the confusing setup to this statement that we just read of Jesus, this teaching of Jesus. We were in this last week, earlier in chapter 18, where Jesus said that in order to enter the kingdom of heaven you must become like a little child. He meant we're not here to climb ladders. We want to become little kids. You have to be born again. You've got to be a spiritual infant before God, not a spiritual giant. You must be born again. And so we approach God not as those who have something to offer God, not as saying, I deserve to climb the ladder in your kingdom, but saying, I'm coming to you as a little baby. And then we come together as little babies. We are a church full of babies in some sense, okay? Even though we're growing up into mature manhood in Christ, we're still little children before God. And so then he says that as we deal with each other as little children, first of all, he said that there is a deadly seriousness about sin in the church, about the possibility of leading our fellow little children into sin through our own sin. He says in v. 6, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. And then he goes on and he says if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. And in the context of where he's stating this right here, he's talking about it is that serious, not just for yourself, but for what your sin may do to your fellow church members. That sin within the church is deadly serious and can so easily just drag the whole church down and lead others into sin. But then, verse 10, He goes on and He confuses us because He says this, "'See that you do not despise one of these little ones.'" Well, what if one of these little ones sins? What if one of these little ones is straying off the path? You just said that that sin is deadly serious, so shouldn't I write that person off and just let them go? And just say, see you later, sinner? And Jesus says, no, do not despise one of these little ones. And He talks about how God loves to leave the 99 sheep and go after the one who is straying and bring them back. He says, it is not the will of My Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Wow. So Jesus sets us up with some confusion where He's told us two things right next to each other that in a worldly man-centered sense would not seem to make sense. Where He says sin in the church is deadly serious. It must be dealt with. It is so serious you'd be better off to go to heaven without a hand or an eye. That you've got to take extreme measures not to lead your brothers and sisters into sin to avoid sinning as a church member. But then he says, but I love to bring sinners back. I love those sinners. And he calls us to be part with him of the work of bringing sinners back. And how does that work? How do we put this confusion together? Well, by God's grace, He has given us a path to do it. And we have agreed, actually, as church members of First Baptist Church of Madawan, if you are a member, you have agreed in writing to obey what Jesus says here. Let me read you one of the paragraphs from our church covenant. It says, We further engage to watch over one another in brotherly love, to remember each other in prayer, to aid each other in sickness and distress, to cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling, I could talk about that for a while, but that's not the point. Sympathy and feeling. Courtesy and speech. To be slow to take offense. but always ready for reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior to secure it without delay." When it says rules of our Savior, that is 1800s language that every Christian in the 1800s would have understood to refer to Matthew 18, verses 15-17. We have agreed explicitly we will follow these verses when we have conflicts or when we find our fellow church members in sin. So we've agreed to it, and we've agreed that it's a path of reconciliation. It's a path of love toward each other. It's the path that Jesus has prescribed. And it's the path that clears up the confusion of how can it be that looking around in the church, we both love each other and love each other when we are sinners, and take sin seriously and call each other out of it at the same time. So here's Jesus' instructions. Here is the path for restoring a straying sheep that Jesus has prescribed for us. First, He says in v. 15, if your brother sins, or sins against you. I want to pause there for a second. We have ESV pew Bibles. In the ESV there is no footnote on the words against you and I don't know why. In the New American Standard Version the words against you are absent altogether and I think they made the right call. In other translations the words are there but they're footnoted and they say some manuscripts omit. This is a tricky spot to try to figure out which words were and were not here in the original Greek. There are not very many tricky spots relative to the totality of the number of words that we have in the New Testament, but this is a tricky spot. And as best I can tell, the words against you were probably not there in the original. So this is not just, I don't think this is just if your brother sins against you, but if your brother is in sin. If you see your brother or your sister in Christ to be evidencing themselves to be one of these strange sheep that it just talked about. To be walking down the wrong path. with their sin. Then he says, here's what to do. He says, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And I want to say, first of all, remember, we're talking about a brother or sister in Christ. We're talking about a person that we've already agreed to together, that we love each other. This is not a system that Jesus has set up where you can go after your enemies in the church and show everybody what bad people they are because you knew it all along and now there's a chance to show everybody else too. No, Jesus is saying that this is the path of love. This is your brother. This is your sister. And some, when they read these instructions of Jesus, it's easy to get it in this abstract mindset like, this is for some hypothetical brother or sister in Christ whose name I don't know or who I don't like. You know, this is the way I can take care of them. This is talking about our brother, our sister. These are the real people with real names and real faces that you see sitting right around you that you might be married to, that might be your children or your uncle. that you might have known for decades, that you love. We're not saying this is how you treat people in the church that you don't love. We're saying this is how you treat people in the church that you do love. This is the course of love when we see someone in sin that we don't say, I'm just going to let you go off into your own destruction. We say, this is my brother. This is my sister. This is the chorus of love. And by God's grace, we ought to be cultivating that sense of love. This is kind of the background to this. We need to be consistently cultivating a sense of love toward each other. And part of that is if I'm consistently cultivating a sense of love toward my brothers and sisters in Christ here, I'm going to be so much more likely to listen to them when they come and show me my sin. than to just say, oh, you've always hated me. I'm out of here. We have to love each other. This is love, alright? And if you haven't done a very good job of establishing that relationship of brotherly love with the person, you know, the command is still there, but you better start praying for your heart to change toward them right now. You cannot approach this with a feeling of, I am going after the person that I don't like. We need to, as our church covenant said, cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling. That we want to actually feel love toward each other, and that's part of the basis for this. One thing to consider before you begin to take these steps, when you see your brother in sin, is this a real tangible sin that can and should be confronted? Or is it just a matter that ought to be overlooked? Why do I say that? It's because of verses like this, Ephesians 4.32, Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. See, the Bible says that our knee-jerk reaction as those who are brothers and sisters in Christ and love each other, our knee-jerk reaction to sin ought to be to overlook it and simply forgive as God and Christ forgave us. Here's Proverbs 19.11, Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is His glory to overlook an offense. Now, in general, if it's a sin that has to do with feelings or heart attitudes, that's one that these steps are going to fall apart on. If you're approaching your brother or sister in Christ and you're saying, we need to deal with the pride of your heart, Okay, now it's possible that they have the sin of pride in their heart, that that needs to be dealt with, but that's not the kind of thing where you're going to be able to gather witnesses together, where you're going to be able to bring it to the church and say, look, I sense that he is prideful. Do you guys agree? No, that's the kind of thing where that's more of a matter of discipleship. And that's more of a matter of personal relationships, growing together, studying the Bible together. So if it's something like, I see pride in your heart, or if it's something like, well, she must not like me because she didn't say hello to me when I walked in the room. Again, that's the kind of thing you're not going to prove sin there. That's the kind of thing you need to let go of and love your brother, love your sister in Christ. That is an offense to just purely forgive off the bat and let go of. What we're talking about, what Jesus is talking about is the kinds of outward sinful actions or outward false teachings that can be pointed to concretely. So, she vandalized my property. He is looking at pornography. She is abusing alcohol. He committed adultery. She is saying that Jesus did not bodily rise from the dead, or one that I have personally dealt with in another state at a different church. He started a competing Bible study on the same night as ours to try to draw people away. This is the kind of thing that we have to say, this is a very clear thing that this person is walking astray and we need to deal with this. And others are going to be able to see this too. So think it through to the end of the steps and say, is this the kind of thing where if I bring in two or three witnesses, they'll be able to see what's going on. And that's where we should begin these steps. A third thing to think about, I can't remember if I said first and second, but I'll say another thing to think about. If this is not someone who is part of your church, I would imagine being here in the worship service of First Baptist Church of Matawan, we are primarily speaking to members of the First Baptist Church of Matawan. some who are visitors from other churches too. If this is your Christian friend who is part of another church, just remember this is a function that God has given to the church that that person is a member of. So this is not just a function between friends, this is a church matter. And so if you see your friend who is a member of another church who is straying, the proper course is to go to that church. and to say to them, I see that this is something, will you as his church family look into this and help him? Because you can't go through all these steps with someone who's part of a different church from yours. But let's look at the steps that Jesus gave us. He said, first of all, that we should tell him his fault alone, go to the brother who is in sin, tell him his fault alone, so that he can repent and be restored. See, that's the goal here. The goal here is not, I'm going to get you. The goal here is, I want to see you brought back. I want to see you brought back in such a way that you are no longer straying down the path of darkness, into the darkness, away from the Lord. I want to see you brought back into the fold of God. I want to see you repent, and I want to see you restored. I want to see you walking faithfully with God." So Jesus says, here's what you do, go and tell Him His fault between you and Him alone. That telling him his fault, it's a tricky word. It has to do with exposing the sin. It could be something that the person didn't even realize was going on. That happens sometimes. We can't see our own lives as well as other people can see our lives sometimes. And we need other people to show us what's going on that we might not even know. To kind of uncover it and to do it in a way where there's going to be conviction. This is the idea that the Holy Spirit does a work of convicting of sin, and he may do that lovingly through you as a brother or sister in Christ. And he says to do this alone. Now, think of it this way, okay? We go not as an angry confrontation, but to help someone. So if you live in an apartment and you have someone upstairs from you, and their bathtub starts leaking, and it starts coming in through your ceiling, That's going to have to be dealt with. One thing that you could do to deal with it is you could start banging on their door and screaming at them and saying do something about this or You could walk upstairs with a set of tools and say, I don't know if you realize what's going on with your bathtub. It started up again. Let's fix it. That's what Jesus is talking about here. He's not talking about the angry, banging, screaming. He's talking about going to your brother or sister and saying, I don't know if you realize this, but let's fix this. Let's see you restored in love together. Now notice here that gossip is not even a possibility. Jesus does not say begin by seeking wisdom from ten other people in the church and telling them about this person's sin. Let's go and find out what everybody else thinks and then we'll talk to them. No, gossip is not possible here because Jesus said first step, step number one, go to them in private, just you and them alone. and talk to them about their sin. Now here's what will happen a large percentage of the time. When we are dealing with a brother or sister in Christ, it says if he listens to you, that's what is primarily going to happen in this. If we are talking about brothers in Christ, those who have been born again, who possess the Holy Spirit, then when we hear conviction of sin, it's going to click with us. And we're going to say you are right. This is the reason why you don't hear about this very much. Church discipline happens much more often than you think. But it rarely gets to the level of coming to that last step of coming before the whole church. Because most of the time, we're talking about brothers or sisters in Christ who follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit that God has provided through their fellow church members and who repent in that early step or those couple of early steps. And you never hear about it on a bigger level because God dealt with it through those loving friends, those loving fellow church members on that level. And now some who are confronted in this way, they're not going to listen. They're not going to repent. They may even think to themselves, I've never heard of this happening in a church. Why are you singling me out? Because they don't realize that it really does happen. But most people repent and are restored. But in that situation where there's a sin and they're confronted and they don't listen, he says, we hope that he listens and you have gained your brother. But, verse 16, if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. And that second half of the verse is a quote from Deuteronomy. So the idea here is, well, if he won't listen then, then take two or three others with you. Maybe the reason they didn't repent the first time is because they didn't like you. I hate to tell you that, but that's possible. But now, if there are others there, they can say, well, this is not just a matter of that guy's out to get me, or I don't like that guy, but these other brothers and sisters in Christ, they see this too. This is a serious matter. Now in some cases, when you take two or three others with you, you're going to find out that you were wrong, that the whole thing was a misunderstanding. I've seen this happen a couple of times before, where a brother had confronted a brother one-on-one, the brother didn't repent, and then he takes two or three with him, and the two or three can say, Brother who did the confronting, you are misunderstanding what's going on here. You guys just had a miscommunication. Sometimes that will happen. Sometimes the charge will not be established by the two or three witnesses. And that's a good thing where you can clear up confusion instead of going and spreading gossip and getting in an attitude of hatred toward each other or something like that. You bring others in because God has given the gift of the Holy Spirit to others in the church too to help each other out. But if it's a real sin, And this is a person who doesn't want to repent. You know, the hope in that step is they'll repent, they'll be restored, and that'll be the end of it. But then he says, if they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. Tell it to the church. Now, a very large number of times when I hear people talking about this passage, they get the wording wrong right there. They'll say, tell it to the elders. or appeal to a higher authority, which is kind of right. What Jesus actually says, He says tell it to the church. Do you know what the church is? It's this. It's the congregation. God has invested this responsibility not ultimately in the senior pastor, or in other elders, or in the deacons, or in a special discipline committee, or whatever else you could think up. Jesus has said this is the responsibility of us together. Of you, average, regular church member. We together. have this responsibility to help each other to repent of sin and to return. Now usually the way that it's going to be brought to the church is not going to be that someone unexpectedly stands up and makes an announcement in the front of the church during the worship service. It's usually going to come through the path of telling the pastor or the elders or in our case perhaps the deacons about it so that we can then deal with it together as a church. But what Jesus is ultimately resting the authority in here is the congregation itself. This is not a decision that's to be made by pastors or elders, but by the congregation, by a congregational vote. This is a congregational church government, is what we call this, and it's what Jesus is teaching right here. So, when it comes to the point of coming before the church, now some, by God's grace, will listen. That will finally be what God will use to get a hold of them, get their attention to say, I need to repent. I need to walk rightly with Christ. And in that case, the whole church gets to just rejoice together. This brother has been gained. This lost sheep has been brought back. And sadly, in a lot of cases, they will not do that. They'll run. They'll refuse to show up to the meeting where their sin is going to be discussed because it's embarrassing. And yeah, it is. And they will try to join another church. All kinds of things that can happen here. They'll go and they'll spread slander about the church that they're coming from. Can you believe that that church kicked me out? without noticing that Jesus said to. But here's the goal here. The goal is to restore this brother. If they won't listen to the church, Jesus says this, Jesus says, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. That's the last step that Jesus prescribes is to remove them from church membership. What does he mean by a Gentile or a tax collector? He means an unrepentant, unbelieving person. He says if someone refuses to listen even to the church when the church recognizes that they are straying down the path of sin, refuses to repent, then we see no evidence in that person that they were ever saved in the first place. And we have to behave as though that's the case. We can't allow them to remain on the membership role. We can't pretend that they are a Christian when every outward evidence is that they're not. Jesus loves Gentiles. Jesus loves tax collectors. Jesus pursued them. Jesus saved them by His grace. But it was when they repented and believed, that He counted them as one of His own. So the idea here is not to say we are going to write you off forever. The idea here is so that you might repent and believe and be restored, we have to take you off of our church role and not pretend that you seem to be a Christian. Because we want to call you to repentance and faith in Christ. That's what Jesus prescribes. Now, every single step of this way, every single step has to do with love. It has to do with, I want to see this brother right with God. I want to see them walking with Christ. But it's going to take courage. Jesus knew that this would be a frightening thing to do. Now some of us would hear this and we would say, well, but who are we to try to judge someone's heart? Who are we as mere human beings to say this person is not really a believer in Christ? And so Jesus gives us some encouragement about this. He says you are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who you are. It's part of the charge that God has given His people, the church, is to look into other people's lives and to say is this person someone who evidences that they have been born again, that they are a child of God, or are they not? So here's what he says in v. 18, "'Truly I say to you,' he has to give us encouragement about this, "'Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.'" There is a footnote in the ESV on this, and I like it. "...shall have been bound, shall have been loosed." in heaven. I say, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven." Here's what Jesus is getting across. The church, the local church, even if it's just two or three gathered in my name, says Jesus, the local church is an embassy on earth of the kingdom of heaven. and He has given us authority to say who it is that we recognize as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. Who is it that has been bound to Jesus Christ through the preaching and believing of the Gospel? And who is it that is loosed from Jesus Christ? Who has been bound? Who has been loosed? He has given us the authority and the responsibility to put our stamp of approval or not put our stamp of approval upon individuals who either do or do not show evidence of being a believer in Christ. That's what he's getting across here. What does an embassy do? Well, the embassy doesn't make someone a citizen, right? But the embassy determines, does this person have evidence of being a citizen? If you go overseas and you lose your passport, you may have to go to the embassy and you're going to have to prove to them, yeah, I really am a citizen. When they recognize that, they'll grant you a passport. That didn't make you a citizen. You were a citizen before, but they have the responsibility to show that. Or think of it this way. You may be a member of a sports team and not have a jersey yet. but it's the responsibility of the team to grant you the jersey to show that you are on the team. I had a friend when I lived in Kentucky, he wrote for the Louisville Courier Journal and he would cover a lot of sports events, high school events, but his favorite thing to do was minor league baseball. And so he would go into, he'd go to the game, sit in the press box, and then after the game, he'd go down to the locker room and he'd be interviewing these players, and he said that all the time on these minor league sports teams, you'd be standing in the locker room, and this guy would just show up that nobody's ever seen before, you know, just some guy with an athletic build, and he would say, hey, I got sent down from the AA team, and I'm here, and I'm here to play. And they'd just say, all right, and they'd throw him a jersey. And my friend told me, you know what? I could just play for that. I could just walk in any day and say, I got sent down. Give me a jersey. They'd give me one. But you know what? Eventually, they would be found out. that jersey would be taken away. You don't join the team or not join, you're not officially part of the team based on your jersey, but that is something that is recognized. And that's what church membership is. Church membership is saying, it's not saying we have the right to declare someone, or we have the right to make someone a Christian, kick them out of heaven, but Jesus has given us both the right and the responsibility to look at people's lives, to ask them where they are in Christ, to see how they are walking with Christ, to see if they are repentant believers in Jesus, and to either have them on our church roll as Christians and stating to the world, this is someone we believe is a citizen of heaven, or not to. Now here's what Jesus does. He gives us encouragement about this. He knows that that can be a frightening thing. And so here's what he says in verse 20, where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. That verse gets brought up almost every time we have a poorly attended prayer meeting. Okay? But that's not what the verse is about. The verse is saying who are we to say who is in and out of the Kingdom of Heaven? Who are we to discipline members? Who are we to remove someone from the church role? And Jesus says, I have given you this command and this responsibility, and where two or three are there, I am with you. Be encouraged. Obey. Because Jesus is with us. Jesus is with the congregation, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to grant that passport, grant that jersey, or to say we need to call this person repentance by taking them out of membership. But just remember this, this whole thing has to do with love. I want to ask first of all, do we love God? If we love God, we need to obey God. And like I said at the beginning, this is not advanced stuff. This is pretty plain. If we love God, we need to obey. Do we love our brother and our sister in Christ? If we do, then we don't just let them walk off in the path of destruction. We love them. And we obey what Jesus said, which is the path of love. And do we love our neighbor? Do we love our community? If we love our community, then we want to have a church where we where we don't have, when the community says that's a church full of hypocrites, that they're wrong, okay? Jesus is basically saying you are not allowed to be a member of a church and be a hypocrite. And if we love our community, then we want to show the face of Jesus to our community in the church as part of our winning the lost. So this is about loving God. It's about loving our brother. It's about loving our neighbor. And by God's grace, I hope that we'll see how Jesus has dealt with our sin. That He both took it seriously and offers free forgiveness. And I hope that we, as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, will have that same attitude as we deal with each other to both take sin seriously and to offer free and full and complete forgiveness to each other through the path that Jesus has prescribed for us. I want to just let you know one last thing about this. If you see what's coming up after this, it says, then Peter came up and said to Him, Lord, how often will I forgive my brother in sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. With this set of instructions that Jesus gave being kind of foreign and not often followed among American churches, people often see it as harsh, but Peter saw it as way, way too forgiving. He said, Jesus, I am such a forgiving person, I am willing to do that up to seven times for the same individual. But then no more. And Jesus said, not 7 times, 70 times 7. You don't stop. You don't stop. This is the path of forgiveness. This is the path Jesus gave us. It's the path of love. Let's pray. God, thank You for loving us in Jesus. Thank You that while we were yet sinners that You loved us and sent Christ to die for us. Lord, I pray that you would give us the grace to embrace Jesus. I pray that you give us the grace to embrace each other and to show that same kind of love toward each other. God, I pray that if there are brothers or sisters who are straying right now, that you would bring them back, that you bring them to repentance and to walking in faith in Jesus. God, I pray that if there are those who are here who are not believers, God, I pray that You would take hold of their hearts, bring them conviction of their sin, and bring them an attitude of love and joy over the cross of Jesus. Bring them to faith in Jesus and save them. And it's in Jesus' name I pray, Amen.