Sunday, July 23, 2023 AM

Psalm 89 and the Servant Who Answers for Zion

39, 38 through 41. Would you read with me? But now you have cast off and rejected. You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant. You have defiled his crown in the dust.

You have breached all his walls. You have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him. He has become the scorn of his neighbors. We'll be singing Psalm 89 F in your hymnal. Today, we're gonna try something a little bit different.

In order to facilitate learning the tune, we'll sing through the first verse one time while the congregation listens and kind of get a grasp of the tune. And then we'll start with verse one again. So we'll sing verse one, and then we'll start verses one, or it's 21 through 24.

Pointed you have spun in anger, casting down your servant's cover in dust.

Verse 21.

Pointed you have.

Our hymn of praise will be in your hymnal. 97, all hail the power of Jesus' name.

As you turn to Isaiah chapter 50 with me, allow me to give a brief overview. Back in Isaiah chapter 49 in verse 14, Zion makes the claim, the Lord has forsaken me and my Lord has forgotten me. And here in chapter 50, God continues to address Zion's concern and pinpoints the root of her distress in that when God came to his people, there was no man found to answer.

But there is hope as we see in verse four. The voice of the servant enters, and we see that the Lord will raise up for himself a man, his servant with a capital S, who is able to stand in for the people and give an answer to God.

Would you read with me? Thus says the Lord, where is the certificate of your mother's divorce whom I have put away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities, you have sold yourselves and for your transgressions, your mother has been put away.

Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Indeed, with my rebuke, I dry up the sea.

I make the rivers a wilderness. Their fish stink because there is no water and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness and I make sackcloth their covering. Verse four. The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary.

He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the learned. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious. Nor did I turn away. I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who plucked out the beard.

I did not hide my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me. Therefore, I will not be disgraced. Therefore, I have set my face like a flint and I know that I will not be ashamed. He is near who justifies me.

Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near me. Surely the Lord God will help me. Who is he who will condemn me? Indeed, they will all grow old like a garment.

The moth will eat them up. Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of his servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God. Look, all you who kindle a fire, who encircle yourselves with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks you have kindled.

This you shall have from my hand. You shall lie down in torment. Would you pray with me? Lord God Almighty, we thank you and we praise you for your word. We thank you and we praise you for our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is the light of the world. He is the hope of nations. And in his name, Gentiles shall trust. Lord God, what an affront it is to our Lord Jesus when the true light of the world has come and men rather prefer the darkness of their own smoldering little fires, basking in the dim glow of dying embers and flickering sparks.

But it is not so with your people. Lord, we rejoice in the light and the truth of our Redeemer. He must increase and we must decrease. And in his increase is the fullness of our joy. Lord, for what a comfort it is that when you come to your people, we have a man of your own choosing, a servant king who is able to lead your people in a faithful response.

He is worthy of all praise and honor and glory. And in him, your soul delights. Lord, thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for the peace that he brings us with you. Thank you for the peace that he brings us with each other.

May his name be praised in our midst today. And it's in his name we pray, amen.

You may be seated. If you'll turn in your hymnal, the 259, breathe on me breath of God. We'll sing all four verses.

Father, we thank you for your amazing provision in our lives. You have given us your son. You have proven your love toward us. You have shown that you work all things together for the good of those who love you, who are called according to your purpose.

And having given us your son, we know that you will freely, generously give us all that we need. We come to you as your children, asking our perfect heavenly father for grace today to hear your word, to hear the truths of it, and to say amen to it.

Help us with that, father. Help us to enjoy and be nourished by the meal you give to us. We pray that you would so bless us by your Holy Spirit as we look to your son with whom you are well pleased. Amen.

Church Discipline as Restoration, Not Retaliation

Well, you can ignore the screen. It's a preview, Lord willing for some time ahead. Keep up, you can keep the handout, that's fine. It'll also give you a bit of a preview of the next section in the book of Acts that we're gonna look at.

So hopefully that'll be a blessing to you. But this morning we have a change, I trust, by the leading of the spirit. So we are going to open up our Bibles to Matthew chapter 18. The elders have sent you a letter by way of email.

Now some of you, some of you are not really good with email. It's just the truth, and we love you. We love you dearly. And so we recognize that not everybody is so inclined to check their emails. And so I've got copies of the letter that we've sent to you.

If you need a copy, that's fine. It's for our church members. But it's a letter about a process of church discipline that we are now currently involved in. And this is something that requires something of you.

It is a calling to you to act in love and in hope, to act by faith, and to seek the good of those with whom you are in church covenant. And with that in mind, I wanted to spend some time together in God's Word to see the good that God has put here in His Word about how we're to proceed in love for one another.

So that's our goal here this morning. So we're going to look in Matthew chapter 18. I invite you to stand with me as we read, beginning in verse 15, Matthew chapter 18. Oh, let's back up to verse 12. Matthew 18, beginning in verse 12.

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the 99 and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, surely I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the 99 that did not go astray.

Even so, it is the will of your father who was in heaven that one of these little ones, it is not the will of your father who was in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.

But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Surely I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Again, I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my father in heaven for where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in the midst of them.

This is the word of the Lord, you may be seated. My father was in pastoral ministry for about 40 years. And I've been a pastor for about 15. And whenever there's some kind of conflict in the church, it always takes the shape of a Western.

It truly does. There's some issue, something goes awry. And one of four things happen. And you've seen this in every Western that you've ever watched. They will have never watched one. Well, they come in different forms, but here's how it happens.

There's an offense, there's a problem. Option one is to shoot back. High noon, main street, time to shoot back. Somebody has wronged me, I will wrong them back. Somebody has spoken evil of me to me, I shall do the same.

Time to shoot it out, option one. Option two is get out of dodge. Somebody has leveled their sights at me, they're against me, I'm gone. Get out of dodge. You're already cataloging situations you know of in your experience in church.

Option three, gather a posse. Go about the town and the local farms and let them know how wronged you have been. Tell first one family, then the next, then the next, and so that you have a crew of people on your side in the conflict, and only then are you ready to have it out on main street.

Options one, two, and three are not what our Lord has for us. There is option number four. Option four is to go to the one who has offended you, work things out, and shake hands. That doesn't make for an exciting Western, but it is what our Lord has called us to do.

And Matthew 18 is given to us as an essential outline, the essential nature of the process to which we are called as brothers and sisters in Christ, as those who are called to love one another, and you know how Cain treated his brother.

He said, am I my brother's keeper? Not like that, not like Cain, but we are to be brothers and sisters when we say, yes, I am my brother's keeper, yes, I am my sister's keeper, I am for their spiritual good, I am for them.

And Jesus gives us a process, an essential process here in Matthew 18. Now, it's not exhaustive. It's a little known fact that every book in the New Testament, with the exception of Mark, and I don't know why, but every book in the New Testament with the exception of Mark has some positive instruction about corrective church discipline.

Seems to me that it's a theme that our Lord Jesus knew that we would need to reflect on and be ready to use for each other's good. So let's think about some of those together, and I would like to talk about some passages in the Scripture that we are currently following, that we are currently in obedience, and what it has to do with you as the members of the church and how you can be for one another, how you can be for those who are the focus of intense shepherding on the part of the elders.

That's our goal here this morning, okay? So in Matthew 18, we see that there are some basic stages, but there is one thing throughout the whole that we need to focus on, and that is restoration. In the parable, Jesus tells about the sheep, about the shepherd who leaves the 99 and goes for the one.

You know, the action of the shepherd in that moment may seem kind of extreme. How would the other 99 sheep feel if all of a sudden the shepherd started acting that way? That is not the normal action of a shepherd.

The shepherd doesn't do that kind of thing. What are you doing, shepherd? This seems really disruptive, and yet, what is he doing? The shepherd is leaving the 99 to go for the one, and Jesus says, that is pleasing to the Father.

Sometimes, the shepherds, the under-shepherds in a flock, in a church, may have to do something from time to time that is not the norm. It is not the ordinary, and it may seem to the 99 that what is going on feels a little extreme, a little bit out there, and yet, the desire, of course, is to recover, to restore, to win, to bring back, and there are responsibilities for everybody in the church, as we see here in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 17.

In verse 15, we have shots fired. If your brother sins against you, something happens. Shots fired. We're not gonna do options one, two, or three. We're gonna go for option four, and in this case, the one offended goes to the one who offended.

The one sinned against goes to the one who did the sinning, and tells that person, that brother, that sister in Christ, the fault between you and him alone. Now, look at the goal. If he hears you, if he understands and welcomes what was said, if he agrees with what was said, so that he confesses his sin to you, that he's in agreement with God, you're right, I'm wrong, let's be reconciled, then you have gained your brother.

Look at the aim of that, that you're trying to win your brother, trying to gain your brother. Now, when somebody sins against you, not only are you having to deal with the fact that somebody sinned against you, but now, an additional responsibility has been laid upon you.

You didn't ask for that. You didn't ask for somebody to be rude to you. You didn't ask for somebody to lie to you. You didn't ask for that, did you? And you certainly didn't ask for additional responsibilities in the church because of it, that make you queasy and uncomfortable and lose sleep at night.

And yet, there it is, Jesus lays it on you, and he's the good shepherd, and he knows what is good for you and good for others in the church. So first step is simply to go tell him his fault between you and him alone.

In other words, you are not going to go sin against him and bring a fault against him as well. You are not going to go and leave your brother alone, and you're not going to bring a posse with you, but you're going to have a conversation with that person, just you and him, or if it's sisters, between you both.

Now, if he hears you, you've gained your brother. Now, this should be more common than it is. It is true that love covers a multitude of sins. It is true that we often can simply cover over offenses with love and move on, and we should, but this should probably happen more often than it does.

We should not allow offenses and sins against us to fester in our hearts and to be left where we are not truly being loving and concerned for the good of our brother or our sister, a fellow church member, because if they're acting in sin towards us, it's probably true that they're acting in sin towards others, and if we care about their souls, if we care about them and we want them to know the joy of true abiding in Christ and fellowship with one another, then we need to be for them, and we should probably be going to them a little more often than we are, if we're being honest.

And then there's the second step. But if you will not hear, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. The conversation may go sideways, as is often the case.

That's not a failure. That's just part of the process. And now it's time to bring one or two with you. We recommend that you bring an elder into the picture to help the process. See, what happens is you might be grievously offended by somebody because they looked at you cross-eyed, and you go to them to show them their fault, and they don't know what you're talking about, and you say, well, then I'm gonna get an elder involved.

And you bring an elder to the situation, and they say, well, they looked at me cross-eyed. And then the elder says, well, dear brother, don't you know that your brother's blind? And you say, oh, it appears that I'm the one who was in sin, you see.

That's why bringing somebody else along will help show the truth of the situation. It might be that you are overreacting, or it might be that you're the one who's being too sensitive. And by bringing in someone else, well, by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word will be established, you see.

But if he refuses to hear them, then tell it to the church. Tell it to the church. We've told it to the church. We've sent you a letter, and we've told it to you. And communication still ensues. And it's your opportunity to warmly, lovingly compel any member under church discipline to repent and to embrace the shepherding efforts of the elders to be in agreement to come together in reconciliation by the way that the elders are attempting to proceed.

But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Now, Jesus ate with heathens and tax collectors, so that's not what he's talking about. He's using it as a metaphor of those with whom you don't associate, and everybody would understand the metaphor.

Now, that is the ultimate stage. But even then, it's not over. When we read in other passages in the scripture, when we read about this severe mercy, it is still for the sake of showing to this person what it's like to be disfellowshipped and to be out on their own, and them to desire and crave reconciliation and the love of the church being absent in their life will draw them back to the life of the church, showing them their need to reconcile.

Now, Jesus says,.

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. The New American Standard gets at the tense of the verb, which is a very interesting one. And the best way to read it is, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

And whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven, you see. The church is not dictating what happens in heaven. We are echoing what has been declared in heaven. We are giving the amen to it.

And we act as the pillar and the ground of the truth, as Paul describes the church. And we are to do so in communion and in agreement with Christ, and thereby we have his authority. So there's the essential walkthrough of church discipline.

Now, it is a rare thing in the life of the church that we would ever see the latter stages of what we see here. There's a couple of reasons for that. One, when we think about church membership, anybody who is a member of the church ought to be born again, professing Christ, trusting in Christ, alive in Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, and baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, bringing the entirety of their life under the authority of the triune God, claiming themselves in the identity of who God is, not living their own way to their own ends.

This is why, for church membership, we seek to hear someone's profession of faith in Christ, that they're alive in Christ today by his blood, by his resurrection, and that they have been baptized, that they have been publicly consecrated to tell the world, to tell everyone, I don't belong to me.

I belong to God, who has saved me by his Son, Jesus Christ. And so it is that when we walk through this process, that we implicitly and then explicitly are reminding one another of our profession of faith, of our baptism, that, hey, we're under the authority of Christ here.

We're under the authority of his word, and we really need to be in agreement in light of who he is. And so it is a rare thing for a church to come to any of the latter stages of this church discipline, because of what is prioritized from the very beginning, and how the body life is built up in Christ.

And after all, Jesus says, by this, all men will know that you are my disciples by the love that you have for one another. Love is the theme. Love is the theme. That is what we are laboring for in one another's good, is that we would love one another as Christ has loved us.

And moving to the latter stages of this church discipline is still in love. The goal is still to win. The goal is still to restore. The goal is still to see that we would come into agreement in the name of Christ, and we would look at each other and say the same thing in agreement with the light of God's word.

Well, as I said before, Matthew 18, 15 through 17, extremely helpful. It's an essential outline of the church discipline process, but it is not exhaustive. It is not exhaustive. Imagine, imagine how many people will be excommunicated from the church over the course of a day or two if we just use this outline as a bare set of instructions,.

And we just went. Step one, step two, step three, step four,.

We're done. No, it's an essential instruction, but it's not exhaustive. And again, as we see that the Lord dealt with various people in different ways, so also as elders, we are going to be laboring for the good of the members according to their needs.

Each situation is different. And so there's going to be some long-term, slow processes, and sometimes it'll have to be very swift. You know, Paul the apostle was talking with the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians chapter five about a very egregious situation of sin.

And when he had heard that this was going on in their midst and nobody had done anything about it, there was a brother in sin that he had married his father's wife, the sin of incest, such a gross sin that not even Corinth, it was known for its sexual immorality, not even Corinth approved of what this church member had done.

And Paul wrote to them and he didn't say, now one of you needs to go to this church member alone by yourself and see if he'll hear you. And if that doesn't work, then you should take one other with you.

Do you know what Paul says in 1 Corinthians five? He says, put him out of the church. Let's get to the end of the process right away. Why is that? Because that was the need in the situation. That was the best thing for the members of the church and it was the very best thing for that man.

To be confronted with the reality of his sin that it was entirely incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. He must not continue in sin that grace may abound, God forbid, you see. So there is a flexibility in the use of Christ's instructions when it comes to church discipline.

Sometimes things will move very slow with great deal of long suffering and patience and sometimes things will move a little swifter. But all for the sake of the good of the members of the church and the good of the one who is the focus of this church discipline, this extra shepherding.

Now, the good news is that this outline, this essential outline may be preceded and interspersed with variety of gracious interactions. Do you remember the story of Philemon and Onesimus? Philemon was a church leader, a church met in his home and was a dear friend of the Apostle Paul.

And there was a servant in the house of Philemon who had wronged him and ran away. A slave wronged his master, had caused or took some sort of, caused physical damage or caused some sort of financial loss to Philemon and he left, he ran away.

And you know, he ended up with Paul the Apostle and Paul was able to shepherd Onesimus. He confessed his sins to Paul about what he had done to his master Philemon. And Paul wrote to Philemon, we have that little book in our Bible, it's just one chapter long, and he did not instruct Philemon, you must, let's see what Matthew 18 says, go and tell Onesimus his fault between you and him alone.

Pack up, don't tell anybody what you're doing, get on your donkey, get down to the port city, get on a ship, sail over here, talk to Philemon, or talk to Onesimus.

He didn't say that, did he?

What did he do? He said, I am sending Onesimus to you. See? We're not to read Matthew 18 verses 15 through 17 as some sort of prohibitive dogma, it is here for our good. What was Paul doing? He was playing peacemaker.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they are called the sons of God. And so what he did was, in this situation, the best thing to do to get this initial meeting going is I'm going to send Onesimus to you, Philemon.

And when he comes, I want you to receive him as you would receive me. I would like you to love him as you would love me as your brother in Christ, so that things can get reconciled and sorted out between you and the one who offended you.

Do you see that? Paul is still working with this essential outline, but you see that there are steps that may proceed or be interspersed within the church discipline. This is something that we have also taken advantage of in our most recent situation, as we have explained a little bit in our letter.

Additionally, throughout this process, it is important to be patient. It is important to have hope. Hope is the essential spouse of patience. Oh, we are so impatient when we don't have hope. If we lose hope, we lose patience.

And sometimes we have to move a little bit more slowly, gradually, always holding on to hope, being patient with the process. When we're impatient, then sin is not lacking. Paul instructed Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 24 -26.

He said, a servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition. Now, we get in quarrels when we get in a hurry, because I've got to say my point and you've got to agree with me now, because I don't want to wait.

That's when we get in quarrels. That's when we get in arguments. Pride plus speed equals argument. That's just the way it goes. But a servant of the Lord must be humble and patient. So sometimes this correcting of those who are in opposition is a rather slow process.

But what's the hope? Notice the hope in the text. Hope is married to patience. If God perhaps will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth. Not a single member of our church can be granted repentance by the elders, even if all combined, we sit there with our Bibles open and share with you.

That is the gift of God. That is the gift of God. That is our hope. That is our desire that God would grant repentance so that they may know the truth and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

What does the devil do?

Comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He comes to cause division and separation. He comes as the accuser of the brethren. And a church member may be overtaken in a transgression in line with one of those aims of the enemy.

But notice there is a long, patient, hopeful, good process that has been given to us as a church seeking to win and to reconcile and see the repentance and the good of the one who has been taken captive.

Corrective Church Discipline in Titus, Thessalonians, Galatians, Hebrews, and 1 John

Now, we also are reflecting in our church discipline process on Titus chapter three. Titus chapter three, verses nine through 11. I remember that all the books of the New Testament, with the exception of Mark, contains positive instruction about corrective church discipline in Titus three, verses nine through 11.

Hold some of that for us. And again, Paul is writing to Titus and trying to instruct him and exhort him for a very difficult ministry as he is overseeing the planting of churches on the Isle of Crete, where we get the word Cretans from.

So every church, imagine this, every church was full of a bunch of Cretans. So you may imagine that the church discipline process might be used a little more often than in other situations. But notice what Paul says to Titus, verse nine, Titus three, but avoid foolish disputes, genealogies, contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and useless.

In other words, there's no reason to get caught up in these seemingly important, but actually unimportant controversies that will only cause further dissension in the church. Don't fight about everything, but verse 10, reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition, knowing that such a person is warped in sinning, being self-condemned.

Why only after the first and second admonition?

Why so soon?

Why accelerate the corrective church discipline process.

In this case?

Because of the effect that it has on the church, because of how soon there needs to be a correction of this type of sin for the good of the church. Now, if you have someone who is very often lazy, staying up late at night on Saturday, and just failing to assemble together with the believers as we should in rejoicing in Christ, they're just absent a lot because they're prioritizing rather selfish and mundane things.

It doesn't say reject such a person after the first and second admonition, but if there's a divisive person, somebody who is spreading dissension and doing that work of Satan in dividing and accusing the brethren.

Some things have to be accelerated, other things do not. Do you see the flexibility being given to the members and the elders of a church in terms of corrective church discipline? This is something that we actually have listed in our bylaws of our church.

Now, when we think about how to proceed in hope, hope plus patience, some steps may be accelerated, some steps might be interspersed, but everything at all times is for the winning of the brother or the sister, the restoration of the one who is out of fellowship, the recovery of the one who has wandered away.

And this expression we can also find in 2 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians chapter three. You know, when you read Matthew chapter 18, verses 15 through 17, there doesn't seem to be any kind of disfellowship with any church members until the very, very end.

As the fourth step in the corrective discipline, the most extreme case of the severe mercy. But remember, it's an essential outline, not an exhaustive outline. And then we find an interspersed step, an intermediary step in 2 Thessalonians chapter three.

Now look here at verses five and six. 2 Thessalonians three, five and six. Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ. Now that's a good memory verse. Verse six, but we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from every brother who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition which he received from us.

So first of all, while the Lord is directing our hearts into the love of God and the patience of Christ, along with that, there may be the need to withdraw from a church member who walks disorderly. Do you see that word, disorderly?

The term simply means to walk in disagreement with, to depart from, to break away from that code that we all hold together in common. In our case, in our church documents, it's called our church covenant.

Now we have done this. We have withdrawn from a sister who walks disorderly and not according to the tradition received by the Lord. Further, verses 14 and 15, and well, let's start with verse 13. But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good.

Now it may not seem that we're doing much good, but again, who gets to define what that is, right? Who gets to define what the good is? Christ is defining that for us, and in the processes of this, so don't grow weary.

Continue in patience and in hope. Do not grow weary in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him that he may be ashamed, that he may be ashamed.

Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. This is where we are at, brothers and sisters. We have withdrawn for the goal of shame. Now, shame that God administers is not a lasting, broken disaster.

This shame is curative. You know that the word of God is sharp as a two-edged sword, and it cuts right to the heart of things, lays us open before the God with whom we all have to do, but you also know that the word is also called a balm, healing to us, you see.

The purpose of the shame is to draw attention to the need for repentance from the sin, and is such a person an enemy? Not at all. Do you see how this is a different tone than the final stage of Matthew 18?

We're not counting this person as a tax collector or as a Gentile, but as a brother. One of our members, somebody whom we love, and so we admonish him as a brother. And this is exactly what the elders have done.

We are compelling opportunities for admonishment, for teaching, for instruction, for reconciliation, for love to continue. And so I think it's important for us to see in these scriptures that there is a, there is, and this is just a sampling, a good sampling, but this is a sampling of the various instructions in the New Testament concerning corrective church discipline.

It's not just Matthew 18, 15 through 17. That's the essential beginning point, but it's not exhaustive. And we have a lot of other instructions that are in harmony with that passage. And please know that your elders, we have been praying and praying and praying and laboring for weeks to move forward in a way that would be for the best of all of our members, even those, anyone who would be under church discipline, including our current situation.