The title of this address is simply a question that I hope to answer in the hour that I have and the question is this how should church members treat the disciplined? So now the discipline has happened, past tense. Now what? Sunday's coming and we're all going to meet and we're all going to worship and some things are going to be different than they were. This address is attempting to answer the now what.

And these are hard things. So let's pray. Our God, I pray that you would help us to be a tender hearted people. People who are full of love, who are quick to forgive, quick to overlook offenses, and who are so aware of our own sins, and it's made us humble. We need your spirit for this work.

God, I pray in the rest of our time that you would help us to think rightly about these things. Help me to speak clearly in Jesus' name, Amen. I want to preface my remarks by laying out some realities about the aftermath of church discipline and I want to give you three of them. Number one, If we let this take its natural course, we won't be happy with what we get and God won't be honored. That is so certain of a truth.

If we just drift down the river, we're not going to like where we go because there's a falls at the end of the river and the current will take us there and God will not be honored where the flow of the river will naturally take us. The aftermath of church discipline is hard and it requires proactive measures. We have to instruct if we just let things happen after discipline is complete and we don't instruct. We are dead. We don't do discipline often and we're not practiced at it and we're not naturally good at it we're bad at it and so floating down the river is a recipe for disaster that's reality number one.

Reality number two is this. After discipline, things are by nature awkward. They just are. There's no way around it. There's No magic formula to be applied that will keep it from being awkward.

Perceptions get totally out of whack. Every look takes on a mountain of meaning after discipline And every non-look takes on a mountain of meaning after discipline as we misinterpret things that are said, looks that are given or not given. And we're looking to divine the tea leaves and the answers we need aren't in the tea leaves. We should acknowledge this. When discipline has happened we should acknowledge this as a reality and just address it at the start.

Just tell the truth about it. It's going to be awkward for a little while. As a result of the things that we all know just happened, it's going to be awkward, sometimes tense, and we're not going to feel like we know what to do, what to say, we're better served to just look that in the face right away, right on the first Sunday, so that we all acknowledge together that things have to be done to counteract that. So we have to say to everyone, press through the awkwardness. Church, pastors need to take to the pulpit and say, church, things are going to be awkward because of the things that just happened and we all are under obligation to press through the awkwardness.

And to not read too much into looks or non-looks and to not assume we know that the inflection of a sentence means something that it may not mean. Here's the third reality number three. Discipline absolutely must be honored. Elders in a church must see to it that discipline is honored. If not, you have a disaster on your hands.

Here's what's in view. The case at hand and all future cases. If an elder team, if a leadership team in a church allows discipline to be ignored and dishonored, a discipline enacted by the church to be ignored and dishonored, Not only does the case at hand fall apart, the future cases fall apart until you expend a tremendous amount of energy to restore that. I'm headed there. So this is true.

To disregard discipline imposed by the church is itself a disciplinable offense. That must be true in your church to disregard the discipline that has been enacted by the church persistently is in itself a discipline ole offense it may have been done the dishonor the disregard may have been done on purpose or it may have been done unwittingly but it needs to be addressed whenever it's dishonored or disregarded and confronted and leadership teams and the brethren in the church must insist that the church's discipline be regarded and honored. No one is guaranteed to get their way in church discipline. If you've ever been through it, you know that's true. You don't enter the process with a guarantee.

But when the church has spoken, when you get to the end of the process, and the church says, this is the answer, we honor it in unity. We all honor it in unity. In the process, you advance your arguments passionately, forcefully, you bring the best text that you know to bear, but when that's over if you end up on the other side of what the church advances as the disciplinary action then you honor it to do otherwise is to harm the discipline to do otherwise is to harm the church do you understand that you are no friend of the disciplined of the person who's received the disciplinary action you are no friend of that person if you dishonor and disregard the action that the church has advanced. So with those three realities in place, if we let it take its natural course we won't be happy with what we get and God won't be honored. After discipline things are always awkward and discipline absolutely must be honored when you come to the end of the process.

Now How should church members be treated? I think the answer to that question, how church members should treat the disciplined, excuse me that's that's what I mean to say. How should the church members treat the disciplined person? I believe the answer is based on one principle and two questions. That's where I'm headed.

Here's the one principle, it's the overriding principle, love. It's always the overriding principle. In Romans 13 verse 10 Paul says love is the fulfillment of the law and he's just teaching what his Lord taught. In Matthew 22 Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God with everything you have. The second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And then he says that on these two great laws of love hang all the law and the prophets. Love is the overriding principle for how church members should treat the disciplined. If love is lost, the church really hasn't been helped very much by discipline. Do you understand that? In other words, you can do the process without love.

You can do it without love. It can be mechanical. It can be sterile. It can be lifeless. And what should have been a blessing to the disciplined and to the church in helping us to fear God and to hate sin turns into something that actually sucks life out of the church and brings ongoing conflict into the church.

So treatment of the disciplined person must be from a heart of love. The action is governed by the Word of God. But the motive is love. So we are letting the Word of God define love. That's the safest place to be.

If we let ourselves define love we will end up off the tracks almost always. We think wrongly about it, The Word of God thinks rightly about it. We should conform to the Word of God. So the actions will be governed by the Word of God. It's the only safe course, but the motive must always be loved.

The motive never varies. The actions will vary based on the nature of the sin, based on the response of the sinner, based on what happens in the process. The motive can never vary. It must be love. This is easy to preach and hard to do.

It's easier said than done. A disciplined person has put the church through a lot. Anyone who's ever been through the process knows that it puts pressures on a church and the relationships in the church. It puts pressures on the eldership team and on the relationships with the eldership team. In the best of circumstances, with the greatest amount of unity, the pressures can create fault lines in the church.

And at the root of that is someone who has brought this into the church and it's really easy to be mad at them at the end. It's hard to love them after the disciplinary actions have been enacted. So everyone, everyone, everyone, the elders, the deacons, everyone in the church, the person disciplined needs to be careful to keep love in view and to cultivate it. This is another area where just floating down the river with the current is not going to take you where you need to be. You have to cultivate love not just go with the flow.

You have to cultivate it like you would cultivate a garden. You plant and you water and you fertilize and you pull out the weeds you're going to have to do that in the aftermath of church discipline. All of that to make sure that you're cultivating love because it's not going to come naturally after discipline. And so the elders have to be teaching we're not doing this because we're mad and then they have to teach it again and then they have to teach it again and they have to keep repeating it to themselves we're not doing this because we're mad. Here's a personal testimony I told you in the last session my last session that we we've been through seven instances of church discipline in the last four years.

Here's my look back on my own personal part in that I wish I had gone an extra mile to cultivate love in every case. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. In every case, I wish I had gone an extra mile to cultivate love. I wish I had gone an extra mile to resist exasperation and sometimes disdain. Because you get into the process and there are excuses and there are unacceptable responses and there is sinful responses both from the person who's in the process being disciplined and from members of the congregation and it's easy to just come away with disdain.

That's wrong. You have to fight it. I wish I had fought it harder. I wish I had cultivated love more faithfully. That's the overriding principle is love.

Here are the two questions that I think that govern how church members should treat the discipline. Here's the first question. What was the discipline? Again the New Testament testimony has a gradation of discipline. It's not all or nothing.

It's not we excommunicate or we just act like nothing happened. There are different disciplines that can be enacted. I want to begin with excommunication and I want to draw the language from Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5 the text that we've been using for excommunication. Matthew 18 verse 17, Let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. 1 Corinthians 5, 5, Deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

Verse 7, Purge out the old leaven. Verse 11, not to keep company, not even to eat with such a person. So the church is not to regard an excommunicated person as a brother or sister in Christ. They may be but they're not to be regarded as such. They're to be to us like a heathen and a tax collector.

And that means they're to be met with healthy skepticism. An excommunicated person has lost the benefit of the doubt and now they're to be met with healthy skepticism. That's how a heathen and a tax collector is met with a healthy skepticism. So no one who's excommunicated can ever talk their way back into the church or at least that's how it should be. We're fools if we let an excommunicated person talk their way back into the church.

And we have a duty to them not to be a source of false comfort. This is such an important thing that should be said about how church members treat an excommunicated person. You are not to be a source of false comfort. You only harm them by being a source of false comfort, of premature comfort. That's not allowed.

And so the focus of our relationship has shifted from brotherhood and all the entanglements that come to that to one thing, a focus on repentance and faith. It's evangelism. They are now to be a target of evangelism because the church has no reasonable grounds to be confident that they're in Christ. And so they have become a target of the good news. They've become a target of evangelism.

So the focus of our interactions with them is on repenting and believing the gospel, repentance and faith. Now I want you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 7. Matthew chapter 7. A very important distinction that has a bearing on how church members should treat the excommunicated is made in the early verses of Matthew chapter 7. I'll be reading verses 1 through 6 and then making comments.

Matthew chapter 7 verse 1, judge not that you be not judged for with what judgment you judge you will be judged and with the measure you use it will be measured back to you And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye and look a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite. First remove the plank from your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Do not give what is holy to the dogs nor cast your pearls before swine lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces.

At first blush one through five looks like it has nothing to do with five and six. Excuse me, one through four looks like it has nothing to do. Is that right? One through five looks like it has nothing to do with six. But they're actually very related and a very important contrast is made here.

The first section 1 through 5 has to do with how you deal with sin in the life of a brother. It's so explicit. It says it over and over again in the text, brother, brother, brother. And so you don't deal with him in hypocrisy you check yourself first and you make sure that your sins have been dealt with before you go to your brother but then you do go to your brother and you help him with your sin with his sins in humility because you've just dealt with your own sins but then there's a shift to dogs and swine. Dogs and swine are universally the unclean in scripture that's what they are in the Old Testament that's what they are in Revelation It means those who are outside of Christ Okay So you deal with sins very differently in the lives of brothers and in the lives of unbelievers who are outside of Christ You help your brothers with their sins.

You preach the gospel to those who are outside of Christ because their problem isn't that they need to shine up a little. Their problem is that they're dogs and swine. They have to fundamentally become something different than they are. So to help your brother with his sin through coming in humility, having dealt with your own sin, to help him see the speck in his eye and help him remove that speck is a blessing to him but it's a curse to an unbeliever because it puffs him up in self-righteousness that's the only way the unbelievers view advancements in morality in their life. They get puffed up in unrighteousness.

Or they just turn and they trample your pearls and tear you to pieces. So you fundamentally deal differently with your brothers than you do with those that are outside. Those who are outside of Christ are targets of evangelism because what they really need isn't to clean up a little bit. It's to change their state, to not be a dog or not be a swine. How do we treat the excommunicated?

Well, no one is at liberty to chum around with them. They're targets of the gospel, and all your interactions have to be focused and intentional. This includes eating with them. They're not to be allowed to participate in the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is for the Lord's people and only the Lord's people.

They're not welcome there. What about the meetings of the church? Here's a helpful question. I don't think it's a definitive question, meaning I don't think you can say when you get the answer that you're 100% there, but I think it's a useful question. Here's the question, would I bring my unbelieving neighbor, your neighbor who you know is not a believer, not even professing, he embraces his unbelief, would you bring him to that meeting?

Here's how we answer that question in the life of our church corporate worship yes my unbelieving neighbor would be welcome to corporate worship and I trust when he gets there that he'll come face to face with the righteous standard of God's law, which is a reflection of his perfectly holy character, and that being stripped of pride and awakened to his sin, he would be offered the only way out, which is the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. I want my unbelieving neighbor who embraces his unbelief there to hear that. After our service we like every church on the planet, has fellowship. Everyone stays around to talk and catch up and greet each other warmly. No, he can't be there for that.

We have a fellowship meal. No, he can't be there for that. On a weekday morning, early in the morning, we have a men's Bible study to prepare ourselves so that we can prepare our families for the text that would be preached on Sunday it's primarily about discipleship no he can't be there for that on a weeknight we gather to pray that is for the Lord's people no he can't be there for that so that as best as we understand it the excommunicated person is excluded from much but not all of the life of the church and it just has to do with does it serve the purposes of evangelism or is it primarily for the people of God and the discipleship of his people? So with the excommunicated person the members of the church should be friendly but very intentional And the excommunicated person's status can never fade from view. This is a useful way to think about it.

In my interactions with the excommunicated person, can they sort of forget that they're excommunicated? If they can, you're off track in your interactions with that person? If there was ever a time for frankness and truth, it is now in the life of the excommunicated person. And you're looking for evidence. And I'm not talking about words.

You're looking for evidence, new patterns of life. It might include words, should include words, but words aren't enough. We want new patterns of life that indicate this person is in Christ, this person is not mastered by sin. What about when we're withdrawing from a brother? So it's not excommunication, but someone has had a disorderly and an unruly life so we're withdrawing from them we're not keeping company with them according to 2nd Thessalonians chapter 3.

It has similarities to an excommunicated person but it has big differences. The similarities are that we're not at liberty to chum around with them and that our time should be very focused and that it includes that we don't eat with them and that they're not welcome to the Lord's Supper because our most familiar communion happens at the Lord's table. But we are to regard this person as a brother or sister so we can participate in discipleship with them. We're to admonish them as a brother. So there are encouragements and warnings and admonishments that should be given to them.

We can pray with them because they still wear the name of brother. So that's question number one. What was the discipline? There are different ways that we interact with people, members interact with the disciplined person. Here's question number two, it's a very important question.

What is the relationship with the person who was disciplined? What's the relationship? For most of us, we'll have the same answer. It's simple. I've shared membership with this person in a local church.

And so how I interact with them going forward is straightforward and governed by the things that we've been talking about all day. But for a few people the answer will be I'm his wife, I'm her husband, I'm his son, I'm her son, I'm his daughter, I'm her daughter. Does that make a difference? We believe it does. On what basis?

Okay, let's think this through the church is one sphere one jurisdiction one institution of God the family is another they're related but they're not the same and it's church discipline and that changes the church relationship with the person. Excommunication for instance totally dissolves that relationship it isn't what it was but it doesn't dissolve the marriage relationship and it doesn't dissolve the parent-child relationship when a man is excommunicated from a church he doesn't cease to be the husband of his wife. He doesn't cease to be the father of his children. And the same with the wife and mother. Let's use marriage as an example and go to the extreme.

So with an excommunicated person, we're to withdraw and to not keep company. Do you think in a marriage that includes physical intimacy? Okay we've had an excommunication we'll no longer have physical intimacy until the person has been restored to the church. If not, why not? And I know the passages I go to about the dangers of breaking physical intimacy between a husband and a wife I go to those texts that's when the question gets asked if not why not those are the texts I go to okay so I'm satisfied that that can't be because of these texts first Corinthians tax 1st Corinthians 7 for instance.

So now the dinner table. Okay physical intimacy stays intact but you can't have dinner. That's going to be hard to substantiate. I've totally lost my place. I'll get it back.

Dinner. Yes. Dinner. Yes. So as we've grappled with this, here is what we've concluded.

Not even appropriate lawful action of a local church nullifies the reciprocal obligations within a household. I'll say that again that's a mouthful but the words are carefully chosen. Not even the appropriate lawful action of a local church, the disciplining of a member, nullifies the reciprocal obligations within a household. In other words, the husband continues to have obligations towards his wife and his children even if he's been excommunicated. The wife continues to have obligations towards her husband and her children even after she's been excommunicated and likewise the children towards their parents.

This includes spouses and this includes children who are members of that household but you must account for Genesis 2 24 listen to Genesis 2 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. The Bible teaches leaving and cleaving. It teaches that A young person leaves their household and cleaves to their spouse, and they become a household. So that they're no longer part of the reciprocal obligations of the household. The children will continue to maintain the obligation to honor their parents, but they're no longer under the authority of their parents, certainly not in the same way.

And so that a child in the household maintains their reciprocal responsibilities with their parents, even if they're excommunicated. But a child out of the house who has a spouse and is a member of their own household is much like the rest of the church and has the restrictions that the rest of the church has on the fellowship. You might do something different, but have you thought through these things yet? You have to decide what you're going to do about each one of these instances and why. At least I'm probably ahead of you in thinking through it.

Might come to a different answer but we have to face these things. These things have to be answered. Here's a final point and it's a very very important point. When a person is excommunicated, it is easy but incredibly sinful to excommunicate the rest of their family by default. When you execute, I keep wanting to say that.

Sometimes I want to do that. When you ex-communicate a family member, it is easy but very sinful to excommunicate the rest of the family by default, meaning that because of the awkwardness of asking the rest to come without that other member, you don't ask them to come at all. And you haven't meant to cut off fellowship with the rest of the family, but by default you sort of do. And they end up feeling disciplined just like the one who's actually guilty of the sin, only they're not guilty of the sin it's sinful for a church to do that a church has to make sure that they don't do that okay I'm going to ask and try to answer three questions about discipline and other churches. Question number one, how should we relate to other churches who have taken disciplinary actions?

This one's easy, For our part we should honor the disciplinary actions of other true churches. Simple. And we should extend to them the benefit of the doubt And we should be very slow to receive sob stories about someone who was done wrong. The true church that has taken a disciplinary action gets the benefit of the doubt and so we don't invite that disciplined person to the Lord's Supper and we don't bring them into membership unless we have done the laborious work to know for sure without doubt that it was wrongful and sinful discipline and that's a lot of work. We cannot just hear one side of the story and bring them to the Lord's table at our church and bring them into membership.

So we should have a strong bias to honor the disciplines of other churches and it should take a lot to move that mountain okay the bar to prove that they were wrongfully and sinfully disciplined is very high not insurmountable it should not be insurmountable I think Jeff's gonna help us with that tonight but it should be very high and what we should be doing is appealing to the disciplined person to go back and seek reconciliation that's what we should do if we're for friends to them we should send them back in humility to seek reconciliation. Is it possible that they've been wrongly and sinfully disciplined and that they'll be rebuffed even if they go back in humility yes but they should go back and they should go back and they should go back and try before we take any measures and we should be directly engaged with that church absolutely number two second question how should the disciplining Church relate to other churches so we've taken disciplinary action against a member how should we relate to other churches? Some other churches should be proactively brought into the loop. They should be notified. We should get out in front of this with churches that know the member who's been disciplined.

It's closely connected so that we eliminate confusion. When we were publicly rebuked a former elder we notified a number of churches who needed to not view him as a pastor anymore. Okay, we had a duty to do that. Do we have to take out a full-page ad in the New York Times? No we do not.

But we do have a duty. We are members of one another and we don't just wipe our hands off when we discipline someone and let them be another church's problem. Do you know how sinful that is? Just send them on to the next church. You know it's going to happen there too, but you don't say anything because you're just happy that it's over where you are.

That's not right. Number three. How should other churches relate to the disciplined person? So you've taken disciplinary action on a member and now there's another church involved. How should they relate to that person?

Let me start with the obvious. Ultimately you don't have control over that. Nobody made us king of the universe. You don't ultimately have control over how they relate to the person that you discipline. You can notify them.

You can clarify anything that they have questions about. You can appeal to them, but if they reject your appeals, you should not pick up your pitchforks and your torches and head to their church building. You should entrust it into the hands of a sovereign God who knows how to take care of his business. They should honor it. They should honor your disciplinary actions, but you should be prepared to substantiate it.

They should be like you. They should have a bias to honor your disciplinary actions but we're not popes. It cannot be our story that because we said so, okay, if brothers in Christ who are in leadership at other churches come and ask the circumstances because they're trying to make a determination, we can't just say that's none of your business, That's an internal matter here. We have an obligation and a duty to substantiate that what we did and why we did it, and to engage with them in hopes of a good outcome. What should you do if they don't honor your disciplinary actions?

You should make an appeal. You should appeal based on the purity of the church and based on the good of the disciplined. Again, any church who takes up your excommunicated member without any restoration with you is no friend to that person. You should appeal to them on that basis. They're probably short-circuiting what could have been a good outcome.

What if the church doesn't know? In other words, you excommunicated, and they're three states away, and they have no way to know or they haven't thought to ask. If you know where they went you should fix that. You should contact that church. You have a limited responsibility.

You don't have to chase them to the ends of the earth, but you do have a responsibility. We are members of one another. Here are a few final thoughts. Church discipline is no bed of roses. That sounded really obvious when I said it, almost like I shouldn't have said it.

When church discipline happens, especially something that could lead to excommunication, Someone has handed the church a pile of dung with a hope that there's a gem in there somewhere, that there's something worth salvaging in there somewhere. And a lot of that dung is in the hands of the elders but really the whole church is holding it together And when you get to the end, someone is going to say, and maybe many someones are going to say, I don't like how you unpacked this part of the pile of dung. It's just going to happen. You could have done it this way, and it would have been better. And the aftermath of the discipline is going to be awkward and difficult.

There's no way around that. It's going to be awkward and difficult. Brothers and sisters, this is all part of the deal. You cannot escape any of that. It is a price to pay to be faithful.

Faithful to the Lord, faithful to the local church, faithful to the one caught in sin and requiring discipline, but if we pay the price, if we are faithful, God will bless us. That is so true. That's always true about obedience. If we pay the price to be faithful, God will bless us. Let's pray.

God, just help us to be faithful. You know we try sometimes and we fall short, we see through a glass darkly, we did the wrong thing, please forgive us for our sins and our short-sightedness and our lack of wisdom. I pray that you would give us more wisdom going forward than we had in the past. Make us wise. Be able to handle all these things with more grace, more love, more patience.

God, I pray that you would help us. You would give us insight and clarity on these matters. Help us Serve among your people with such love and tenderness because you have loved us and been so tender with us. May we draw from this deep reservoir that we have received from our Lord Jesus Christ and offer it to your people. Pray in Jesus' name, Amen.