The church is the highest court, and so all church discipline occurs within the community of believing people. It can be large.
It can be very small. It might be on a mission field, three or four missionaries who don't even have a church yet. They become an assembly of God's redeemed people in which the enforcement of God's principles for holiness must be carried out. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
As you may know, John MacArthur has pastored Grace Community Church in the Los Angeles area for more than 55 years, and it's in that capacity as pastor that John has seen the practical outworking of the theme he'll focus on today. John calls his series, My Brother's Keeper. John, when you hear that title, the familiar rhetorical question comes to mind, am I my brother's keeper? In other words, am I really somehow responsible for how my brother or sister lives his or her personal life? Most people's impulse today would be an instant, no, that's not my job. That's not my business.
That's wrong. Of course, we're responsible to be our brother's keeper. As believers, especially, if you see that your brother has need and you close up your compassion to him, how can you even say you're a Christian? writes the Apostle John. We are known by our love. Jesus said, they'll know you by your love. That's how men will know you're my disciples because you love one another. If there's anything true about believers, it is that they are their brother's keepers.
That really comes out clearly. In a couple of passages of scripture, Matthew 18 in particular, and then Galatians 5, we want you to understand how important it is that you fulfill that responsibility from God to be the keeper of your brothers and sisters in Christ. So we're going to have a series beginning today, and it's called My Brother's Keeper.
That's it. If you've been concerned or confused about how you're supposed to react to other people's issues, other people's iniquities, other people's sins, other people's failures, if you're not sure whether you should confront someone in sin or to what degree you should restore someone who's in repentance or what responsibility you should have for someone who is in need, this series will answer your queries and your questions. You'll see a working model of what it means for a believer to take full responsibility as much as possible to care for a fellow believer who is in need, and in particular, who is caught in sin.
You're going to learn what are the steps of restoration, how it works, why it's important. And, of course, all of this is going to convey to you the essence of what it means to love one another. Don't miss a lesson.
That's right. Thank you, John. Friend, if you tend to think of church discipline as merely punishment, I urge you to tune in these next three weeks, starting right now, to see why correction is actually an act of love and healing. And so with today's lesson, here is John to launch his series called My Brother's Keeper. Open your Bible, if you will, now to the 18th chapter of Matthew, verses 15 through 20. Looking at verse 15, Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his sin between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a tax collector. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Now this passage deals with the discipline of a sinning Christian, a sinning brother or sister. It is thus a very, very important text and one to which we must heed. It is the very word of our Lord.
It demands our response. Purity of life is the goal which God has in bringing us to Himself. You cannot read the Scripture Old or New Testament without being overwhelmingly convinced that God seeks the holiness of His people, that God is not content with disobedience of any kind. Peter sums it up so wonderfully in 1 Peter 1.16 where it says, Be ye holy, for I am holy.
That's the desire of God for His people. And so if God is so greatly concerned about the holiness of His people and the holiness of His church for the sake of His holy reputation and for the sake of the blessedness of His people, if He's so concerned about that, then I must be equally concerned about that as His representative. And no church can preach a message it doesn't live and have any integrity at all before God, or for that matter before the world. And I was aware because of my own life experiences in many places and many churches that a lot of people preach against sin and do absolutely nothing about it. Many, many churches, most churches would speak very clearly about the fact that certain things were wrong and certain things were sinful and call people to a certain lifestyle but never really move out to enforce that message.
And so while there was no tolerance at all in the pulpit, there was a great tolerance in the reality of the life of the people. And what happened through the years I think in the church is that preaching got separated from living and preaching became this exercise where you stand up and harangue about something but in reality you're not that concerned about it. And as soon as people believe that preaching is unrelated to life, it's devastating. You cannot call people to a certain thing and not enforce its reality in their lives.
And that's what our Lord is saying here. We cannot have a church wherein the proclamation of holiness is made and wherein sin is denounced but nothing is ever done to enforce those things. There are too many people who separate preaching out from reality because they've for years been involved in churches where nobody ever really seemed to care whether they sinned or didn't sin, no matter what they said from the pulpit. And then people get the idea that the Bible is nice and we all believe it and we'd fight for its authority and inerrancy, we just aren't concerned about implementing it. And that to me is the ultimate hypocrisy. And so I believe that in the church today in general, churches all across our country and perhaps in other countries as well, there is a tremendous lack of integrity in the matter of holiness. While they will affirm the Bible and while they will affirm what is sinful, they just do not enforce that affirmation in life.
And that's compromise of the worst sort. In fact, the disciplining of sinning members in a church body or a church family is almost unheard of in our society. Now in recent years, it's become more and more discussed. I know because people have really come to us very often for such a discussion. But I can think back to early in the ministry here when I had a man say to me, a very dear man of God who had traversed this country for years and preached in all kinds of churches and places as a Bible conference speaker and evangelist, say to me, I know of not one single church in the United States of America that is involved in disciplining sinning members.
Not one. And I said to him, well, you're going to meet one because we're committed to that. I studied Matthew 18 then. I studied Acts 5. I studied 1 Corinthians 5.
I studied 2 Thessalonians chapter 3. Every part of the Scripture where I could find anything about this idea of enforcing the standard of holiness. In other words, how do you get a people to be holy? You can't just preach it and then be indifferent to what they're doing in response to that. There's got to be more than just saying it. There's got to be a way to pressure people to conform to it in a wholesome kind of godly pressure. And then the passage that really set my thinking in concrete was the fifth chapter of Acts.
Look at it for a moment with me. In those days when they took the offering in the church, everybody brought their money and laid it at the apostles' feet. And that's what they were doing. People were coming to give to the Lord and it says in verse 1 of Acts 5, a certain man named Ananias with Sapphira his wife sold a possession and kept back part of the price. His wife also knowing of it and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles' feet.
Now let me tell you what happened. They had vowed to the Lord to give it all and got into probably an economic situation. They said, look, Lord, we've got this piece of property and we'd like to sell it. If you'll help us sell it, we'll give it all to you – all the proceeds. They got a lot of proceeds for it. They sold it. They looked at all of that and they said, let's just keep some for us. The sin here has not to do with giving.
The sin here has to do with lying to God. So Peter says to them, here they come up to give their offering. Oh, they're feeling magnanimous. They're feeling generous. Here's this large amount that we're going to give to the Lord.
So Peter greets them, Ananias. Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land? Now, I don't know why we don't take offerings like that anymore, where the elders all line up and watch what everybody gives and says, say, why are you giving that when you promise this? While it remained, he says in verse 4, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not still in your power? In other words, you didn't even have to make the promise to God. It was your own to control. But once you made the promise, you conceived evil in your heart to defraud God and you didn't lie to men, you lied to God.
Now, would you say that's confrontation? Dead in the middle of the service when the guy's coming by thinking how great it is to give all this money? Peter stops him in his tracks and confronts him with that and says, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and died. God killed him on the spot. And great fear came on all them that heard these things.
You can only imagine what the next offering was like. And the young men came and wrapped him up. And carried him out and buried him. He's dead and buried and his wife doesn't even know it. Three hours later, his wife came in. By the way, that might say something about how long services lasted.
I don't want to get into that. Verse 8, Peter answered her, tell me whether you sold the land for so much. And she said, yes, for so much. And Peter said unto her, how is it that you've agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold the feet of them who have buried thy husband are at the door and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down immediately at his feet and died. And the young men came in and found her dead and carrying her forth, buried her by her husband. And great fear came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things.
Well, you can imagine that, can't you? That would shape up a congregation very fast. You see, God was dealing very firmly with sin, wasn't He? Very firmly in that early primitive time of the church, God was conveying His attitude towards sin. And they dropped dead in front of the church. By the way, it kept unbelievers from joining, verse 13 says. Nobody wanted to join that organization.
I mean, it was really scary. They were serious about sin. Well, as I studied that passage, the Lord impressed upon my heart this thought. This is still His church, right? He is still the head of His church. He hasn't changed His attitude towards sin and He hasn't changed the desire to see the church pure. But He has taken the authority and He has put it in the hands of the godly men who lead the church. And in essence, He has said, you represent me in that church and you be to that church what I would be to that church.
And so we must confront that sin. And while I'm not sure that God does things like that in all cases, I'm sure in some He does, I'm sure there are some people who die, some Christians who die as a discipline of God. We see that in 1 Corinthians chapter 11. We see it in 1 John 5 as well. And so God is concerned about the holiness of His church and He may still take some lives now and then, but basically what He's called us to do is to deal with sin in His assembly.
Paul did it continuously. So did John, even naming names such as diatrophes. And we see in our passage in Matthew 18 the same thing. God through Christ calling His people to purity.
Heaven may still act in a very supernatural way to purge the church, but mostly the church purges itself through the ministry of the Spirit of God among its people. But the point that you want to see in introduction is just that sin has to be dealt with. It isn't enough to make announcements. It isn't enough to post rules. It isn't enough to give commands.
There has to be an enforcing of those. And here we learn that that's exactly what has to happen in the family of God. This is made abundantly clear for us I think back in Proverbs chapter 3 verse 11 where it says, "'My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of His correction, for whom the Lord loveth, He correcteth.'"
Here's the point. "'Even as a father the son in whom He delighteth.'" There's the same analogy. As a father must discipline, correct a child, so the Lord must discipline, correct His children. We're like children and we need to be made to obey. We need to be taught to obey. And basically the way we learn to obey is to find out the consequences to disobedience, right? If there is no consequence manifest to disobedience, there's no change. In other words, God disciplines us to conform us by external consequences or internal consequences, either one.
Sometimes the pain of guilt, sometimes pain that comes on the outside, but God disciplines us to force us into the track of obedience that we may conform to the standard of His absolute holiness. So we're children. And you cannot, it is an illusion people to think that you can just preach against sin and preach against sin and teach against sin and never do anything about it in the lives of the people and expect them to conform to the pattern of holiness.
Children don't do that. And like children who have a bent to disobedience in life, we have a bent to disobedience in spiritual life because sin is still in us, isn't it? So we have that problem and we have the tendency to drift that way unless there is a sense in which we are pressured into the line of obedience. And that is why there must be an enforcement. And that sounds like a very strong word, but that in fact is a good word to use. There must be an enforcement of that principle which is articulated from the pulpit or from the teaching of the church. We have to move ourselves in to implement the message. And I really guess I believe it.
People have asked me this a lot. Why is the church in America, even the church that's evangelical, so unholy? And the issue may be it isn't that we have preached the wrong message always. It is that we have never been obedient in its implementation in the lives of the people.
And so we have said in effect, as long as the sermon is right and as long as it's orthodox, we really don't care what you do. And you can't say that to children. Children aren't gonna handle that. I would hate to spend a day with your children if you had just told them what to do all their life and never disciplined them.
You know what it would be like. So we are called in this passage to implementation of discipline in the church, to deal with sin in order that we might see the church follow the pattern of holiness. First of all, let's look at the place for discipline, the place. And I want to take you to verse 17 for that because you need to pick it up there and then it'll run all the way through the passage. Twice in that verse he mentions the church, the church. Now that's the place.
That's the place. Ekklesia, the called out ones, the assembly. Listen carefully. This is the third time this word is used in Matthew. That is the second use of it in verse 17 is the third use in the book, the first one being in chapter 16.
It's only used three times. It is non-technical in Matthew. It does not refer to the church born at Pentecost. It was a word simply meaning an assembly.
Nothing more than that. It is used in that way elsewhere in the New Testament to speak of the church in the wilderness, referring to Israel as the assembled people of God in the wilderness. It was used in extra biblical Greek culture to speak of a town meeting, any group of assembled people.
And that's exactly its use in this text. It anticipates the church of Pentecost. It anticipates the church of today. It anticipates the official church that born by the baptism of the Spirit of God in Acts 2.
It anticipates that for sure. But here, the root idea is simply the collection of the redeemed community, the assembly of the redeemed. And it doesn't have to wait for Pentecost to be applied.
It can be immediately applied in the assembly of the disciples who are gathered in the house at Capernaum on the day Jesus taught it. It simply means the collection of God's assembled people. And as I said, it anticipates the church in its official character, its official reality from Pentecost on, but it is applied to any assembly of believers.
Certainly the anticipated church will be a great part of it. Some commentators have felt that it refers to the Jewish synagogue, but that isn't true at all. Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus ever give rules for conduct in the Jewish synagogue. He's not interested in revising the synagogues.
He's interested in establishing His own redeemed people and His own redeemed church. And furthermore, verses 18 to 20 could in no way, shape or form ever be related to a synagogue because in no synagogue could it be said that they are gathered in my name and there am I in the midst of them. And so it isn't a reference to a synagogue and it isn't a reference to the technical post-Pentecost church.
It is simply a general usage consistent with Matthew and consistent with the time period early in the New Testament era to refer to the assembly of God's redeemed people. Now I want you to note further that there's no organizational structure given here. When it says tell it to the church and it doesn't really say how the church is to be organized, doesn't describe the church, doesn't say tell it to the guy who's in charge and have him pick eight people and start a committee and send out the investigators. It doesn't have any of that. It just says tell it to the assembly of God's redeemed people.
It doesn't give us any how-tos or any particular steps or any processes. It leaves that to each individual assembly of believers in each individual era and country and time and place with all of the various gifts that come together with the various kinds of leadership styles that might be used. It's simply the church, God's assembled redeemed people.
That's where discipline is to take place. And after all, isn't it there that God wants the purifying? Isn't it what Paul said when he said that he wanted to do what Christ wanted done and that was to espouse to Christ a chaste virgin? Isn't that what he had in mind in Ephesians chapter 5 when he says that just as a bride and a groom come together, so does Christ come together with His church, which church He desires should be holy and blameless and without spot and without blemish? It's His redeemed people that He wants to see holy and pure and spotless and without blemish. And so it's in that context that this goes on.
I say that to say this. There's no higher authority. There's no exterior court. We don't need to establish a national church court. If you go beyond to establish some bishop or some synod or some group of people or individual person who is unrelated to the local assembly of believers, you have created a court beyond that which the Word of God creates because the redeemed people and their assembly is the vortex of where this occurs. To go beyond that is to go beyond the Word of Christ and the teaching of His apostles.
So we have very general things here. We don't have some kind of hierarchical structure. We don't kind of have some kind of a design for the church. We don't kind of have some kind of upper division category of ruling people who sit as judges. It happens in the assembly of the redeemed. Along that line, a footnote that may help you in terms of illustrating this is in 1 Corinthians 6 where Paul indicts the Corinthians in confronting them about the sin of suing each other. He says, having a matter against another, dare any of you go to law before the unjust?
What are you doing taking your grievances and your problems before the unjust? That is, the courts of unregenerate men and not before the saints. You see, the saints. It doesn't say the court that's been appointed by the saints. It says the saints. The context of the Christian fellowship and family is the highest court there is. And he proves it in the next line. He says, do you not know that the saints will judge the world?
And then in verse 3, know you not that we shall judge angels? How much more things that pertain to this life. In other words, the church is the highest court. And so all church discipline occurs within the community of believing people. It can be large.
It can be very small. It might be on a mission field, three or four missionaries who don't even have a church yet established among the native people. They become an assembly of God's redeemed people in which the enforcement of God's principles for holiness must be carried out.
It may be in your family. That's a unit of God's redeemed people that constitutes His church. It may be in your Bible study or your fellowship group. It's among God's redeemed people and there's no higher court than that. That is not to say that the spiritual leadership of that assembly don't get involved because that would be obvious.
Surely they do. But the place is the church. We don't go beyond that.
We're not interested in forming an inquisition committee. Just the church. It's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today on Grace To You, John began a series that spells out the clear biblical steps to help Christians who are sinning. John's study is called My Brother's Keeper.
Now, it's quite possible that this topic is new to you. In fact, you may not recall ever hearing a message like today's to help you understand why confronting sin in the church is important and how to put Matthew 18 into practice. Download My Brother's Keeper when you contact us today. Just go to our website, gty.org, and all seven messages for My Brother's Keeper, MP3s and transcripts are available free of charge.
Our web address again, gty.org. And keep in mind that Grace To You offers many resources to help you grow in your spiritual walk. You can read articles on topics that affect the life of the church. Go to the Grace To You blog for that. You can read daily devotionals from John. You can follow along with the reading plan from the MacArthur Daily Bible. And you can download more than 3,600 sermons by John. And if you're not sure where to dive in, log on to Grace Stream. That's a continuous broadcast of John's teaching. We start it in Matthew and go all the way through Revelation verse by verse. And again, the sermon archive, Grace Stream, and much more are available free of charge at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question for you. Children in the home need loving discipline to keep them safe. But what about God's children in a church?
What do they need? Consider that when John returns tomorrow with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.
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