We'll get underway with today's lesson by having a word of prayer together. Let's pray. Father, we ask you to take this time that we have, limited though it may be, and and use it fully for the advancement of your kingdom, the exposition of your word, the benefit of your people. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Last week in our church membership class, we began to look at the government and the discipline of the church. And in the five-page handout that I've given you today, basically we covered the first page and a half where I look at the different forms of church government. Actually, I begin by saying it's impossible to get away from the question of church government. Every church is governed in some way. And the real question is, how would Jesus have the church to be governed? That's what we want to answer biblically. And then I pointed out that in the history of the church, there are three basic patterns of church government. A kind of top-down government, where you have bishops and monarchical elders who rule from the top down. And then you have church government from the bottom up, a kind of democratic approach where every member has the same authority as every other, and officers have no special place, and every decision in theory should be decided by the whole congregation. And then thirdly, we have what's called the Presbyterian form of government, the rule of the congregation by plurality of elders in a system of graded courts. I turn then to the biblical pattern and attempted to show that in scripture, the Presbyterian form of church government is the one that was followed, endorsed, and authorized in the New Testament. The church is governed by elders and always a plurality of them. One-man rule is not allowed in the Presbyterian system, and the elders are helped in the work that they are called to do and in their ministry by the deacons who give attention to the ministry of mercy in particular. How do men come to be shepherds in the church of Jesus Christ? Well, they are nominated by the fellow sheep, by the fellow believers around them who say, we have confidence in this person. We would be willing to submit to his rule. However, the orthodoxy, the doctrinal competence of an officer must be verified and confirmed by the ruling board of elders. In a congregation, that's the session. In a presbytery, that's the presbytery itself. And so we have a combination of the people giving their warrant or affirming their trust and confidence in an individual, and then the overseer saying this person is qualified for office as well. within a Presbyterian church. The decisions made by the elders are subject to review by the Presbytery, and when disputes cannot be resolved at the congregational level, they may be appealed to the Presbytery level, which is the regional, is the governing body of the regional church, and then beyond it to the General Assembly. Now, that's all I'm going to say by way of review. Those of you who are not in the class can read the first page and a half and catch up with us, but I want to pick up where I left off last week now with the necessity of church discipline. or what is sometimes called censures. This first long paragraph that you find at the bottom of page two under the necessity of discipline talks about Christ giving directions to us for dealing with a sinning brother. In Matthew 18, Jesus says, if you see a brother who sins, here's what you're supposed to do. Now, I hope it's obvious from those directions that we are not as Christians to turn a blind eye to sin in our midst. It is generally accepted in Christian churches today to have a live and let live attitude and it's really nobody else's business and we just kind of go about our own lives. But that really isn't Jesus' attitude. Other people are horrified at the idea of confronting a person regarding sin in his life or her life. And they'll say, you know, the Bible says judge not. There are other people horrified at the idea of the church confronting a person. Not only is it bad that an individual go to another individual, that the whole church should take up an issue, that they'll say, well, that's going to offend people. That'll drive them away. However, both of those attitudes are contrary to the directions of the head of the church, Jesus Christ. And I want to suggest that as wise as they may seem to us as human beings to let it live, you know, live and let live and don't bet in people's lives and judge not and Don't drive people away and offend them. As wise as that may seem, it really impugns Jesus' greater wisdom and righteousness because he says we're not to do that. He does say we're not to judge hypocritically with a double standard. Don't go to a person criticizing him for something he's doing when you've got a beam in your own eye that's ten times or a hundred times worse than what that person's doing. Jesus says that. But he also teaches us that when a brother is caught in sin, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself lest you also be tempted, Galatians 6.1. So this effort, whether in one or more discussions to bring about repentance on the part of a sinning brother, should be in private. And when he does not heed you, You are to approach him again, Jesus says, now with two or three other believers who can help bring about reconciliation and be a witness to the situation. But if the brother still refuses to repent, then listen to this. He says, quote, tell it to the church for resolution. And we must do this for the good of the offender as well as for the good of the church. When we say, oh no, we don't want to get involved in church discipline, what we're really saying is we don't love the church and we don't love our sinning brother enough to do what Jesus tells us to do. And so I ask, will this process offend some people? Probably so. I don't doubt that it will. I've seen that it does. But then again, there's a lot in Christianity that offends our natural feelings. I don't know why offending people all of a sudden becomes a reason to not do what Jesus says. But failing to deal with the unrepentant sin will offend others. That is, a church that doesn't deal with sin in its midst does offend others, and above all, more importantly, it offends God Himself. If the church is true to its Savior and Lord, the church of Jesus Christ may not choose to disregard His instructions for dealing with unrepentant sin. The biblical common sense of all this is evident to you, and I've brought you along and you agree with me. But if I have, if you really are with me in this lesson, I need to tell you, you are out of step with the vast majority of Christendom today, certainly American Christianity. The idea of church, I mean, government seems to be an obscure enough question in most churches, but that the government should discipline people is just really a horrendous thing. If you don't believe me, get into a conversation with people who go to other churches and say, you know, in our church we rebuke and excommunicate. They go, what? How can you do that? And yet it's so clear in the pages of the Bible. I feel somewhat like in my sermon this morning, we are so set by tradition in our views of Christianity that when we open the Bible, it's just kind of like a slap in the face. Discipline is called for. And I think this matter is biblically and persuasively set forth in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 30, of church censure. And before I read that, let me tell you that the word censure, not common parlance among us, the word censure stands for a judgment against the person involving some kind of condemnation. Church censures are not civil penalties. Don't read them that way. Don't treat them as though they were. And they have binding authority only within the church. So when the session rules something within the church, that isn't a civil penalty, and it doesn't apply to anybody except in the church. They are ministerial and declarative in nature, carrying moral and spiritual power. That doesn't mean, oh, they're not all that important. Now what it means is they have a lot more importance in civil judgments. You know why? Because Jesus says in Matthew 18, which you bind on earth or loose on earth has been bound or loosed in heaven. So it may not have civil thrust, but it does have eternal thrust. That makes it very important Censures are to be public, according to 1 Timothy 5, and all the congregation is to give them support. When the session rules and the person's been found guilty and a censure is pronounced, the congregation say, well, we might agree, we might not. It is your obligation. to support that. And the goal of church censures is always reconciliation and the restoration of the offender, even in the case of excommunication. Even when we say this person is not deemed a believer, we do that in hopes that they will come to their senses, confess their sins, and become a believer for the sake of reconciliation and restoration. Now, let me read the chapter real quickly in the confession. Chapter 30 The Lord Jesus, as king and head of his church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate. To these officers the keys of the kingdom of heaven are committed, by virtue whereof they, the officers, have power, respectively, to retain and remit sins, to shut that kingdom against the impenitent, both by the word and censures, and to open it unto penitent sinners by the ministry of the gospel, and by absolution from censures as occasion shall require. Church censures are necessary for the reclaiming and gaining of offending brethren. for deterring of others from the like offenses, for purging out of that leaven which might infect the whole lump, for vindicating the honor of Christ and the holy profession of the gospel, and for preventing the wrath of God which might justly fall upon the Church, if they should suffer His covenant and the seals thereof, to be profaned by notorious and obstinate offenders. For the better attaining of these ends, the officers of the church are to proceed by admonition, suspension from the sacrament of the Lord's Supper for a season, and, finally, by excommunication from the church according to the nature of the crime and demerit of the person. The Bible teaches us the necessity of these church censures that we've been talking about being carried out by the governing authority of the church, whom we've already seen to be the elders. Lack of discipline threatens the offender with eternal consequences. If the church doesn't stand up and say, you will not get away with this, person goes through his life or her life thinking, I'm perfectly all right in the sight of God. It is an act of love to say, no, you mustn't do that. Lack of discipline infects the whole congregation, a whole series of passages there. And I think you know that's true. You know of churches, maybe you've been in churches, where because they don't discipline certain sins, everybody thinks it's all right. Or at least they lower their guard about it. And the whole lump, then, you see, is leavened by that sin. The Bible says the elders are supposed to try to keep that from happening. Moreover, judgment comes upon the church. It's not just that you might ethically be infected by an unrepentant sinner that the church doesn't deal with, but God will judge the church that allows unrepentant sinners to come to the Lord's supper and doesn't deal with them. And then finally, and I think probably this gets through to our hearts more than any of those other biblical considerations, they are biblical, but the one that really gets us is when we don't discipline the body of Christ, we bring dishonor upon the name of our Savior. And that dishonor is suffered repeatedly. When we hear the world look at Christianity and say, oh yeah, well look at them, look at those hypocrites. I won't mention any names. We've recently had some sex scandals with notorious evangelistic TV guys, right? But you see, if the church were doing its job, the world, you know, and those people have been dealt with, the church wouldn't be saying, oh, yeah, look, they've got their religious testimony, but look at those hypocrites. What they'd have to say is, boy, they really disciplined people there. They take this stuff seriously. Now, they may not agree with our standards. We still have to fight that battle. But the point is, church discipline, when there is no church discipline, the world freely criticizes this. They don't mean it anyway. Brings disgrace upon Jesus. And that's why we believe in this congregation that censures are necessary. They're not easy. They're not fun. I guarantee you that. But when Jesus calls us, we can't look back. We can't say, well, I don't want this cross. We have to carry it day by day. There are different degrees of censure, and I want to explain that real quickly and then get on to the next part of our lesson. Not all censure is the same. If you go to a brother, as the church goes to a brother who has not repented of something, it may be that the wisdom of the elders is to give an admonition or, more severely, a rebuke to a person, hoping that that will be enough to turn them around. And so number one listed here is admonition or rebuke, and there's some biblical passages supporting that form of censure. That's a verbal reproof, an exhortation that is given publicly from the pulpit. But then another form of censure, sometimes following rebuke, sometimes you go directly to this because rebuke is not enough, another form is called shunning in the Bible. And most Presbyterians, if you ask them today, wouldn't be able to explain that to you. They'll say, oh, that's what the Mennonites do, right? They shun. The Bible says we're supposed to shun people, 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. Shunning is the withdrawing of social fellowship from a professing believer, except for purposes of exhorting him or her to repent. Now, how does the church indicate that it's shunning an individual? Well, you don't tell them not to come in and sit down and listen to the preaching of the word. That's what you want them to hear. Paul says we are to exhort people as brothers, you know, to turn. But the way we show that we're shunning someone is we bar them from the Lord's Supper for a season, suspending them from the sacrament. So they will not be served the Lord's Supper unless they come around and repent. That is not the same as excommunication, because at the time of shunning, you consider this person a brother, and you're using this as a method to try to reclaim your brother and get him or her to come to their senses and repent. But then if they will not do that, after rebuke, after shunning, one or the other or both, then excommunication is the highest form of censure, supported in 1 Corinthians 5 and Matthew 18, It's the most severe form of censure being the solemn declaration that a person is no longer considered a member of the body of Christ. Excommunication is not the declaration this person may never under any circumstances go to heaven. A lot of people are scared off from it because they think that's what the church is saying, and maybe the Roman Catholic Church tends to say something like that. But in the Bible, excommunication is saying it's the church's declaration that you're not considered a Christian, not a member of the body of Christ. That doesn't mean you never can be. It just means at this point you're not. We will not give you the privileges or treat you as though you are. And this censure is to be inflicted only with sorrow and after earnest efforts are made for the restoration of the sinner. See, we're not back to the Inquisition and the Dark Ages and so forth. And we've done this in our congregation, not a lot, but enough that it breaks our hearts. When we inflict the censure of excommunication, we do it because we know Jesus would have us do that to warn the sinner. We want to see this person restored, but we don't do it with any sense of, boy, here's some power we exercise, or isn't this fun? You excommunicate people with broken hearts. Notice that ultimately it's the sin of impenitence, failing to repent, that brings excommunication. Some people say, oh, you only excommunicate for sexual sins or for this or that. Oh, no. Excommunication is not for any particular kind of sin except ultimately failure to repent. Any sin will be forgiven if you repent of it, but failure to repent will eventually call for you being put out of the body. Okay, so that's what we mean by church censures. That's what we mean by the discipline of the church. Ultimately, these things can be declared when a sinning brother will not come around, or a sinning sister. I have three sections. Eventually, I'm going to publish a little book on membership in the church, and that's why you see it the way it is. I only have a note to myself on these next three sections of what to elaborate on. I want to talk about the importance of shepherding oversight, the limits of shepherding authority, and submission to the authority of shepherds, especially for those of you who are contemplating membership in our congregation. First, the importance of shepherding oversight. You say, well, why don't I go to church where they don't have shepherds? Don't have to worry about all this. Well, first of all, you shouldn't do that because then you're going to a church that's not as fully as it should following the teaching of Jesus. As I already taught you, you should be looking for a church that wants to obey the Bible in its fullness. Churches that don't have a government and don't have censures are not doing that. And don't think that you're free of guilt if you say, well, I'll just choose one of them because God will hold you accountable for going contrary to his word and doing that. But there's another importance to shepherding oversight that isn't just this formal matter of disobeying the command. In Hebrews 13, 17, we read, obey them that have the rule over you and submit to them For they watch in behalf of your souls, as they that shall give account, that they may do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. The Bible says obey your leaders because God's put them in a position to care for you, to oversee your life, to watch in behalf of your soul. You know, watching in behalf of someone's soul isn't always a matter of going and saying, hey brother, hey sister, you're out of line, be careful. Now that can be done gently and it must be done biblically when it's called for. But you see, the shepherds do more than just call for you to stop sinning. The shepherds also come when you're weeping. They come when you're brokenhearted. They come when you're confused and you don't know what the Bible would have you to do. The shepherds are there to help keep the sheep as a flock together and working with one another in the service of God and reconciliation with personal relationships. The shepherds do a lot of things, all of which amounts to looking out for your souls, being your spiritual doctors, if you will. And we all need that. Now what would you think of a person who had tuberculosis or some other disease who said, you know, the way I'll take care of that, I just won't ever go to the doctor. Won't even have to deal with it. You say, well, what a fool. And the problem's there, it's just you're not addressing it. You're not getting the help that you could from the experts. In the same way, all of us as sinners, unless you've been glorified and you're still walking on earth somehow, You've still got sin. You still have problems in your life. You do get depressed. You do get confused. You do get out of step with the rest of the church, and you need a surgeon of souls. You need someone who has some expertise and greater maturity, hopefully, and insight to God's Word to help you. That's why shepherding oversight is important. That's why you should think long and hard before you join a church. Say, do I trust these people? Will they look out for my soul? Are they competent? And I'm not going to be a Pollyanna. There are some churches where I wouldn't say yes. I wouldn't trust the shepherds of that church, even though I think they're Christians, and even though I think they mean well. I just don't think they're competent shepherds. And that's what you should look at when you look at this congregation or any other. Now, what's the limits of shepherding authority? Now that I've argued so strongly for the authority of the shepherds, there are going to be some people who say, well, how's this different from, you know, some cultic groups where, you know, you can't even go to the store and buy something without calling your shepherd and saying, is it alright to do this? Well, we don't believe in that kind of thing in the Presbyterian Church, and the Word of God doesn't support that, though that's sometimes called shepherding, I know that. In the Westminster Confession, chapter 20, section 2, we have a definition of Christian liberty that is worth reading, I think, in answer to this worry that some people have about shepherding. Chapter 20, Section 2 God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in anything contrary to his word, or beside it if matters of faith or worship. So that to believe such doctrines or to obey such commands out of conscience is to betray true liberty of conscience. And the requiring of an implicit faith and an absolute and blind obedience is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also. You see, in our constitutional document, in our confession of faith, you're told you will be protected against people trying to bind your conscience. So, let's say you join this congregation and the session decides, when you come to church, everyone has to wear a green shirt. Oh yeah, you must. Jesus wants you to do that and you're really sinning against God if you don't. You say, well, that's what I'm afraid of. It might be some kind of arbitrary law laid down. Yeah, but you see, if your session does that, you come in your red shirt, your white shirt, your blue shirt, whatever you want. And as you come in, you read this to us. God alone is Lord of the conscience. And unless you can show this to me from the Bible, I don't have to do it. And so what's your protection against tyranny in a Presbyterian system? First, the word of God. And then, of course, if the session says, oh, well, of course, you don't know the Greek and Hebrew, and we know better. You are supposed to wear a green shirt at the church. Then you say, well, maybe we better ask the Presbytery about this. We're not so sure you got it right. And then you appeal to the Presbytery. And if the Presbytery is so out of whack as to not have figured that out, then you appeal to the General Assembly. And now, if the whole General Assembly says, well, green shirt sounds good to us, of course, lay it on them. Then what do you do? Well, I know I'm being lighthearted, and I'm using a facetious illustration. But in principle, what you say is, well, this is not a true church then. And if they are that far out of line with the Word of God that the whole church can't correct that mistake, then this is not the church. They may be good people, green-shirted idiots, but they are not the church of Jesus Christ. Okay. Now, submission to the authority of shepherds. Once you do join the church, you have to understand that you are making a vow that you will submit to the shepherds. Some people have it in their mind that, um, I join the church voluntarily, I leave voluntarily. And if the shepherds say something I don't like, don't have to do it. It's kind of like every man for himself. Well, of course, if that's true, then I don't know what it means to have shepherds or elders or overseers. There is no authority at all. But you have to understand, you don't join the church voluntarily. Well, you do, but that's not the whole story, is it? Does a person come to church some Sunday morning and say, okay, I'm joining. Boy, you're a church member. No, it doesn't work that way. Now, the person must voluntarily wish to join the church. But what must happen when a person joins the church? Well, they're interviewed by the session to hear their confession of faith, to make sure it's a credible one, that they're willing to lead the Christian life and be living in peace and harmony. And then with the permission and acceptance of the elders, then you become a church member. So yes, it's voluntary, but it's with oversight. Now, when you're ready to leave a church, please remember that too. You may voluntarily choose to leave a church, but it's with oversight. In Psalm 15, verse 4, we read that the person who dwells with Jehovah swears to his own hurt and changes not. Sometimes it happens that we have people join our congregation who later say, oh, I wish I hadn't done that. And those of you who are looking at the membership class may say, well, that's what makes me a little fearful, too. Maybe I'll join this church and find out, lo and behold, you got some skeletons in your closet, or you didn't tell us everything, but this is really kind of a bum deal. Okay. There are appropriate ways to leave church. However, you mustn't think that you just decide, oh, I don't like this, so I up and leave. You didn't join that way and you don't leave that way. You leave a church with oversight. And that sounds kind of funny. But the session will help you to leave the church. Sometimes we'll help people who don't want to leave the church because we excommunicate them. But those who want to leave the church, the session helps them too. And the help doesn't always mean helping you to stay here. although that should be our goal and our hope in every case. But sometimes where it isn't possible, we still want to exercise oversight until you have another set of elders to take over the oversight of your life and help you. And so remember that once you submit to the authority of shepherds, you've sworn to do something, and when you later don't want to do it, you must still do it. And even when you want to leave the church, you must continue to abide by the oversight of your shepherds. And so I have a whole section here on leaving the church. We have a lot of grief sometimes when people want to leave the church, not because it's impossible, but because they act in a way that is somewhat impossible. And I'm going to, for the sake of time, jump down a third of the page and note, we may not leave a church without cause. And I tell you, I teach you this lesson with a heavy heart, because I have brothers in my own denomination that haven't learned this lesson yet. We have congregations withdrawing from our church without cause and without reforming the church the way they should. And I'm sorry, they set a bad example for you, but I'm going to teach you what I believe in all good conscience is God's Word. You and congregations are not to leave the church of Jesus Christ without cause. Scripture calls upon us to pursue and preserve the unity of the church, and I have numerous passages They really push hard too, you know, give diligence to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. Consequently, this unity may not be disrupted by departure from the church without cause. Sometimes you have to. Luther had to. Machen had to. In fact, in both cases, they were put out of the church. But you don't disrupt the unity of the church unless it's necessary. When you find some reason for wishing to leave a church, you are morally obligated to seek to reform the church by the scriptures. To fail to make that effort is not simply to change from one car manufacturer to another. It's disloyalty in the midst of battle, disloyalty to one's fellow believers who are in the battle with you, and disloyalty to the high command of Jesus Christ, the head of the church. If the congregation or the denomination of which you are a member refuses, or in some cases is simply not interested, to be reformed, when efforts at improving and or correcting the church have failed, then you are free to seek a new fellowship and to place yourself under new elders. Remember, of course, you are not free to become autonomous. That is to be a Christian without church affiliation or oversight. Now, apart from leaving the church when reform efforts have failed, in what ways do people have their names removed from the role of the church? And I put down three here. Removal by death. And I'm not going to read it for you because time is short, but obviously, When your name is transferred from this congregation to the church in heaven, we all rejoice. That's wonderful. That's transfer with great approval. Secondly, there's removal by providential circumstances. Sometimes people move out of the geographical region of a congregation or become part of a new work closer to their own residence. And that's fine, and we give a letter of transfer when that sort of thing happens. I have a note here, if you should move out of the geographical region of this church and into a place where there are no congregations of your denomination or a fraternal denomination, a denomination of like faith and practice, then you'll need to choose the best evangelical church that will advance your spiritual and a letter of standing is provided so that they'll know that you came from a church and were in good relations with it. Then finally, some people are removed by discipline, which we've already talked about. Ultimately, excommunication removes the name of a person from the church. But short of excommunication, a form of discipline is erasure. You don't find that in the Bible, and I have a little bit of qualm about that. But in our congregation, in our denomination, when a person will not be subject to the oversight of the church and leave in a peaceful and appropriate way, then we may erase their name and record the circumstances in the minutes, even though we don't have a trial and excommunicate them. Okay, so this completes our lesson then on church government and discipline and the oversight of the elders and what you should be thinking about if you want to join the church. I'm going to take just one or two minutes for questions on this lesson and then we'll change tapes and we'll talk about this morning's sermon. Kent. What was their standing? Right. Well, actually, we had a family a number of years ago where that happened. They came to a charismatic understanding of things and they wanted to leave the church for one that practiced the speaking in tongues. And so we asked that they would allow us to bring them some material and talk to them and try to educate them and see if we could agree on this point eventually. And they were very pliable and very submissive. And they allowed us to go out as a session and talk to them. That's one of the cases where we didn't persuade them. And I still think we were right and they were wrong in that matter, but they had done the responsible thing. They studied the issue and in their own conscience felt tongues was for them. And so we gave them a letter of standing, even though we cannot approve of the church that we're going to. However, if someone had said, oh, I've become charismatic, I'm going to go someplace where they speak tongues, and we said, well, will you allow us to give you some material and will you talk to us about this? No, we're just going to go. We would not have provided a letter of standing because that is not a submissive way and a peaceful way to leave a church. That's an unteachable and self-centered way to leave a church. And to be honest with you, statistically, that's the way the vast majority of people leave a congregation. They get it into their mind that they want to go somewhere. They won't do it with oversight. They won't deal with the elders. They just decide they're going to go. We can't respect that. You know, it hurts us, but it's not because it hurts us that we have to discipline it. It's because it offends the head of the church. Cindy? When I was in church, I had to work through my charismatic background, because if I hadn't worked through that, Yes, the question is, can you join the church even though you differ with its doctrinal stance on some points? And the answer is yes, you can. In a previous lesson in the membership class, that's okay, I've instructed people that you may not want to join a church if there's a major doctrinal difference. I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense. However, the only thing we require for church membership is a credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ. And I believe that Baptists and Charismatics, you know, credibly follow Jesus Christ, and I do believe they need education to change certain things, and hopefully we'll provide that here. And it probably is wisest to get as much of that taken care of before you join the church as you can, but it's not prerequisite. You may join the church even though you differ with some of its doctrinal positions. Leanne. If one of the churches are under the headship of the elders, who are the elders? Okay, the question is if we put ourselves under the headship of the elders, of the oversight of the elders, who's over the elders? Well, the elders in this particular congregation are governed by, their actions are reviewed by, and can be corrected by the Presbytery, which is the governing body of the regional church. And then all those elders are governed by the General Assembly. And so we have a system of graded courts. And no one escapes review from others until you finally get the whole church speaking. And one more question, Tim. Want to choose which one you want to ask? What is the uniqueness of the limitation upon the elders' authority? and all walks of life are governed by the Word of God. And whenever someone tells you to do something contrary to the Word of God, you don't have to obey them. Now, it so happens that your employer may ask you to wear a green shirt to work as a condition of employment, and he can't prove that from the Word of God, but he has the right to do that. There is a uniqueness here in that the elders of the church cannot require anything of you that God does not require. That is to say, God doesn't require green shirts in worship, so we may not do so. However, an employer may require you to wear a McDonald's outfit, or a green shirt, or whatever you want. So I guess the way in which that limitation applies does have some uniqueness in the case of the church as well. I follow up with a positive sense of, in what sense is a segregation from the elders what they're going to judge them? Which it is informing the sort of God Now, we can talk about that, and that's a very good point to make, that an exhortation or admonition from the elders does carry greater weight than any other member. But the question that you started out on is, is there a uniqueness to the limitation on the authority of the elders? And that's what I was trying to answer. Now, the uniqueness of the authority of the elders is that it carries greater weight because Christ has ordained these people to rule in the church, and you have submitted yourself to them. They are supposed to have greater maturity. They are answerable in ways other believers are not. And therefore, you should take it with a great deal more solemnity and seriousness when an elder comes and admonishes you about something. Okay, I'm going to conclude this section of our membership class and promise you that we will finish the membership lessons next Lord's Day. I have to say that Lord willing, if I'm well and everything gets done. And we'll be dealing with the sacraments and service in the church. This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute. Duplication, sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, www.bonsoninstitute.com, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.