Now the willingness to confront sin is born out of this zeal for God's name and God's reputation and God's glory. You see, Jesus says, I can't let you make his house a den of thieves. I can't tolerate sin in his house. I must drive it out. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Imagine leaving a wide-awake three-year-old home alone for even a few minutes. Think about the mess you could expect, not to mention the dangerous chemicals and electrical appliances within reach of curious hands. Well, just as a child left without the loving, watchful care of a parent can wreak havoc on himself and those around him, a child of God can do the same if sinful behavior is not confronted. And sometimes that means it's up to you to do the confronting. John MacArthur explains that today as he continues a study he began yesterday based on Matthew 18, some people call that the church discipline chapter, the title of John's series, My Brother's Keeper. And now here's John with today's lesson. Open your Bible, if you will, now to the 18th chapter of Matthew, verses 15 through 20. 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. 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 it will 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. Second point, very, very important. Not only the place of discipline is given here but the purpose of discipline, the purpose of it. Look at verse 15, the end of the verse. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
There's the purpose. Listen, the purpose of discipline is restoration, restoring back to holiness. God has always been concerned with restoration. Proverbs 11, 30, he that win his souls is wise. Maybe the ultimate wisdom of all is to win men back to God. In Galatians 6, Paul says, if a brother be overtaken in a peraptima, if he fall into sin, ye that are spiritual do what? Restore such a one. Restore him. In James chapter 5, the end of the epistle, verses 19 and 20, brethren, if any of you do err from the truth and one convert him or restore him or bring him back, let him know that he who converts the sinner from the air of his way shall save a soul from death.
You save a soul from death when you restore. Now this is always the goal of discipline. The goal of discipline in the church is not to throw people out. It's not to embarrass them. It's not to be self-righteous as over against their unrighteousness. It's not to play God. It's not to exercise authority and power in some unbiblical manner. The purpose of discipline isn't to throw people out. It's to bring them in.
It's to bring them back. Now notice in verse 15 there's an interesting word, gained. It's a word from the commercial world. It's a word of the marketplace.
It is a word used, for example, to talk about accumulating wealth, gain in the sense of treasure, gain in the sense of money or goods, commodities. And used in this connection it sees a sinning brother then as a loss of treasure, as a loss of something valuable. And I would just point out to you that this is in fact the heart of God, that God cannot let one soul go because each is to him a treasure.
And the church has to have that same sense as well that we can't allow one to just float away and say, well, I don't know where they are but I just really can't get involved. I think they fell into sin. There's a loss to us. There's a treasure that's gone from us. And when restored, we regain that wealth. So there's something lost to us of value. No son of God, no daughter of God is valueless, and so when a brother or a sister sins, we've lost them as a treasure that's lost to us. And we need to bring them back and we need to work diligently to bring them back to restore them because they are of value to us. You say, how so? Well, I can illustrate it this way. There have been people in my life who have sinned and been lost to me and I have lost a treasure.
I'll tell you how. Because when they were in the place of obedience and the place of walking in God's will and harmony with His Spirit, the Spirit of God worked through them in my life. God blessed me with their ministry. God blessed me through their spiritual gifts.
God enriched me through their fellowship. And as soon as they were gone, it was a loss to me. A loss, by the way, that no one else really fills because no one else is who they are.
You understand that? And there is a loss. It is as the loss of a child which another child does not make up because each child is irreproducible. And so when one goes into sin, there's a loss. None of us can be content with that loss if we perceive the value of that soul to God and the value of that soul to us as an instrument of the Spirit of God to minister. Go back to verse 12 with me for a moment and let me give you the heart of God in this. He's saying, think along with me now. If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek that which has gone astray?
The answer, of course, is yes. And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more over that sheep than over the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so, it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should become useless. That's what it means.
Should be rendered of no value to you because they are a treasure lost and need to be regained. Oh, men go to tremendous lengths to regain the wealth they've lost, monetarily and to less lengths, by far, to regain the loss of a human life which is of infinite value. In 2 Timothy 2, Paul gives a word to young Timothy that I think is applicable here. He says, and the servant of the Lord must not strive, don't be argumentative, be gentle to everyone, apt to teach, so you're gentle, you're teaching, you're patient. Be meek, instructing those that oppose Him. There are always going to be those that oppose. I have that in my life all the time.
But I need to be not argumentative, but gentle, straightforward in my teaching, patient, humble. And if I go after the person like that, God perhaps will give him repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken captive by Him at His will. You know what happened to those people that drifted off? Guess who got them? The enemy got them. And we need to go and recover them. In Galatians 6, 1, it says, ye their spiritual restore. And that word restore, katartizo, is a very interesting word. It has the idea basically of repairing something to bring it back to its original condition. It talks about mending fractured bones, replacing dislocated bones.
It is used of mending fishing nets. It is to restore to the former condition. That's the goal of discipline. It's to see a person as a treasure, to see the people the way God, the good shepherd sees them, who leaves the ones that are there in the fold and goes out and finds that one and brings it back because one, just one of a hundred is a loss. And there's something to be given to me and to you through the love and the ministry of that person that can never be given through another. So we're in the business of recovery.
The idea is that we have a tremendous hunger for the fact that God wants His church holy and we also put a very high value on the worth of a soul that belongs to God and one of His sheep and we have the heart of the shepherd. And we want not to let them go. We want to bring them back for their sake and our sake and God's sake first and foremost of all. We're not content with letting them go. You say, well, you know, so and so, I'm not going to say anything to them.
Who am I to say anything? You know, they chose their way and there's almost a certain kind of relishing in our spirit that they fell because it makes us feel better. That's really a sickness.
It's called pride. If you feel yourself more spiritual than your sinning brother and you can smugly remain in indifference to his sin with the idea that you're better than he is, isn't that good, then you really are far afield from the heart of the shepherd. And you're in sin as much as he. And I really believe that, you know, we talk a lot about holiness and I've preached a lot on this in our church, but I don't think it's ever really going to happen until we get personally concerned with the people who fall into sin enough that instead of sort of relishing their fall or instead of indifferently letting it all happen, instead of saying which our culture wants us to say, don't get involved, don't invade his life. He's his own thing.
He's got his private deal. Don't tell him what to do. Instead of doing that, we really pursue that kind of person to pull them back into the fold. We're never going to know the holiness that we keep preaching about. Let me give you a third principle. The place is the church.
The purpose is restoration. The person. You say, now who's supposed to be doing this? The pastor? Oh yeah, the pastor. We have a discipline committee. We have to form some people to do this.
Well, let's find out who's supposed to do it, okay? I didn't really see this in the passage until I studied it just the other day and I just read verse 15 over and over and over and over to see what stood out in my mind. I often do that. To see what stood out...to see what stands out in your mind. Moreover, if your brother shall trespass against you, you go and tell him his fault between you and him.
If he shall hear you, you have gained your brother. Who's the star of verse 15? You. You got it.
It's no discipline committee. It's you. You say, me? Why, you do...I just can't do that. I'm not a confrontive type person. I'm too loving.
It's wonderful. This is all about you folks, not about me, not about some committee, not about some CIA, spiritual CIA or whatever. This is you. Discipline is not for church officials. It's for everybody, including those who lead in the church. In fact, in Galatians 6, it tells you exactly who it's for. If a brother be taken in a fault, you who are spiritual, you who are walking in the Spirit, you who are walking in obedience, you who are in the fellowship, restore him.
Listen. In a spirit of meekness, humility and love, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. You don't do it with spiritual superiority dripping all over you. You do it in meekness and loving humility. It starts with you.
That's right. You're the key. This is all about you. Beloved, we must be concerned with bringing back sinners to God.
We can't let them go. And if you're not concerned, then you're not concerned with the things that God's concerned about. If you allow yourself false pity, indifference, smug, contented self-righteousness, contempt for someone, disdain for them because maybe their sin was against you and you're kind of glad they're gone, or pride, or sentimentality, or cowardice, or busyness, or whatever it is that you allow to prevent you from being faithful in the work of Christ to confront a sinning brother, you have failed.
So have I. If I ignore the restoration of the wandering sheep, I become, in a sense, a wanderer too, don't I? Disobedient. Now in order to do this, you need three things, and we'll bring it right down to practical points. Three things. Number one, willingness, willingness.
You've got to be willing to do it. Main verb there, go. Go and tell him. You've got to go and tell him.
You say, well, if I see a brother in sin, what am I supposed to do? Go and tell him. You mean just go and tell him? That's what it says, go and tell him. Go and tell him what? Just go and tell him he's in sin.
Look at verse 16. If he doesn't hear you, take. First you go and tell, then you take. If he still doesn't hear you, verse 17, you tell again to the whole church. Go, tell, take, tell. Now every one of those commands implies a response, and they each imply that you could respond, right? Because God doesn't give commands to people who have any capacity to respond to them.
So they indicate that there must be a willingness on our part. God says go and tell him. If he doesn't hear, take some people and tell them again. If he doesn't hear, tell it to the whole church and have the whole church go and tell him.
That's right. In other words, it's dependent on you responding willfully to act. And we have a lot of people in the church say, oh, I wish I could teach in the church. Oh, I'd like to be a minister of holiness. And they want to know if they can get a podium and get a group and be up there and teach.
That's a great ministry. We have a lot of people and we train people to be teachers in the church. And other people say, I want to preach. I don't just want to teach.
I want to do like you, John. I want to teach but scream now and then and yell and do whatever you do. I want to preach and I want to call people to repentance and call people to holiness and all of this stuff. Other people say, oh, I want to be involved in evangelism.
Boy, I want to go out and win the loss and so forth. And others want to be involved in ministering to the needs of people or praying or whatever. You know, there's a ministry in the church that's just been totally lost.
And I don't think in my entire life I've ever heard a message on this, read an article on it or a book, ever. And that is what I would call the ministers of holiness whose task it is as seen through the eyes of Jesus Christ to confront the sin of the church to call it back to purity. Now what we need is not only a whole church full of preachers and teachers, that's fine, but that's just the outstanding articulation of the facts. We don't only need a whole bunch of people who are praying and a whole bunch of people who are training, we need a whole bunch of people who are out there enforcing. Really, ministers of holiness who become awesome weapons in the hand of God. And this doesn't mean that you do it with spiritual pride, it means you do it with a heart of concern and compassion and love, and that's up to you.
You've got to be willing. This isn't anything new, by the way. I'll take you back to Moses, Pentateuch, the first set of books in the Bible.
Let's see if I can find it here. I think Leviticus 19, yes. Verse 16, listen to this, thou shalt not go up and down as a tale bearer among thy people.
I like that. Don't go around just bad mouthing people and gossiping. And thou shalt not stand against the blood of thy neighbor. In other words, don't join in on the condemnation of somebody. And then he says, I am the Lord. And what it means is, in case you're wondering if this is serious, I'm the one that said it and I'm the Lord. So don't do this. Then he says this, thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart.
You say, oh, I wouldn't think of it. I just have so much love, I wouldn't hate anybody. Thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor and not allow sin upon him.
What does that mean? Listen again. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart, but rather thou shalt rebuke thy neighbor and not allow sin upon him. In other words, if you hate your brother, it'll be manifest in the fact that you'll never bother to rebuke him for his sin. You say, oh, I'm too loving to rebuke.
Don't tell me that. You're too uncaring to rebuke. You know, you see a parent who never, ever, ever disciplines a child. That parent doesn't love that child. That parent doesn't care at all about that child. You hate your child if you don't discipline your child and conform your child.
Same thing is true in the spiritual dimension. He's saying, don't you hate your neighbor in your heart by never rebuking him of his sin and confronting him with his evil? Why?
If you loved him, you'd want to restrain him from the consequence of sin and you'd want to restore him to the place of blessedness, right? It's obvious. It's obvious. So there has to be a willingness, people. Now, I believe this willingness is born out of a second thing, and these are progressive. Willingness is born out of zeal for God. Look at John 2, and I'll give you an illustration of this. Willingness to confront about sin is born out of zeal for God. In John 2 13, Jesus came to the Passover in Jerusalem and found in the temple the people selling oxen, sheep, doves, and the money changers who were ripping off the people.
They were all sitting there doing their business. Now, this is a lot of sin, and it's really very flagrant. It's going right on in the temple. And so He made a whip, took some small pieces of rope and wove the rope to make a thick whip and literally drove them all out of the temple. And you know they didn't leave easily. He drove them out with the sheep and the oxen, poured out all the money all over the place and flipped over the tables and said to them that sold doves, take these things from here, make not My Father's house and house of merchandise. Now, what in the world made Him do this? Why did He have such a reaction to sin? Why did He have such a tremendous desire for the holiness of the house of God? Verse 17, His disciples remembered that it was written, Psalm 69, 9, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. And the rest of the verse says the reproach that falls on thee falls on me. In other words, God, when you're dishonored, I have such a zeal in my heart, such a longing for your glory that when you are dishonored, I feel the pain.
Now, the willingness to confront sin is born out of the zeal for God's name and God's reputation and God's glory. You see, Jesus says, I can't let you make His house a den of thieves. I can't tolerate sin in His house.
I must drive it out. The temple is not the house anymore. You are the house of God, right? The assembly of the believers is a holy habitation in which God dwells and we should have the heart of Christ who can no more tolerate unholiness in this His temple than He could tolerate it in His Father's temple in Jerusalem. Zeal for God. You can't have willingness to confront sin in a vacuum. It is born out of zeal for God.
Where does zeal for God come from? That's the third point. In order to be engaged as a minister of holiness for the sake of the purity of the church, there must be personal purity. That's the third point.
Three things necessary. Willingness, zeal for God, personal purity. You're not going to be filled with zeal for God's house. You're not going to be consumed with a desire for the holiness of His name unless you are walking in that holiness. Look with me at Matthew chapter 7. Although this passage comes in a somewhat different context, initially its principle bears repeating in our text.
Verse 3, and why beholdest thou the mote? That means a splinter, small splinter. In your brother's eye, but consider not the beam, that means a two by four or something to that effect, in your own eye. How will you say to your brother, let me pull the splinter out of your eye and behold, you have a two by four in your own eye. You hypocrite.
First cast the beam out of your own eye and then you'll be able to see clear enough to cast the splinter out of your brother's eye. Now what do we learn here? Before you can go to confront anybody else about their sin, what do you have to take care of?
Your own. Now listen people, I'm going to tell you this is a very important principle. When a church moves out to enforce holiness and enforce purity, when a church moves out to confront sin, by very virtue of that direction, it will be in the process of self-purification and the end result will be there will be less discipline necessary, though the church is more committed to doing it.
You understand that? Because when you begin to move in that direction, the demand that it makes on you is to purify yourself. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of John's current study here on Grace to You is My Brother's Keeper. Well John, it's fair to say that the principles of church discipline are not comfortable ones to apply. So on the one hand you can understand why a local church would shy away from applying church discipline, but on the other hand your church has followed this process spelled out in Matthew 18 for many decades.
Tell us what effect has that had on the life and unity of the congregation you pastor? Well you know in Matthew 18 the first instruction our Lord ever gave to the church was that if somebody sins you go to that person. If they don't hear and repent you go with two or three witnesses. If they still don't hear and repent you tell the church and you're telling the church to call them back from sin to righteousness.
This is unmistakably important, crucial in the life of the church. All those 50 some years ago when I came to Grace I never knew of one church that actually did that. Never heard of a church that did that.
And I remember talking to some older pastors and saying we have to do this because Matthew 18 is crystal clear. And they said to me you'll empty the church. You'll empty the church if you do that. You can't be identifying people's sins publicly and confronting them.
People won't come they'll run. And even in more modern days from the early years 50 years ago this is unacceptable in the sort of the seeker friendly church mentality. Why would you do anything like this in a church if all you're trying to do is make church feel good even to the worst sinner. But it was biblical so we started it and early in that ministry right really when I first came and when somebody was confronted and didn't repent didn't listen to the two or three witnesses we would tell the church at a communion service. And guess what it didn't empty the church. It was part of the reason the church grew and grew and grew why because God's people seek accountability because the church is dealing with sin and it's pursuing righteousness and it's confronting sin in love.
I mean you have to do it in love because Jesus said you can't do this with somebody else if there's something wrong in your life. So it has a self purifying impact on the church. Half a century Grace Church has applied Matthew 18 and it has been a massive blessing and a very direct reason for the sanctification of our congregation. I'm so grateful the Lord led me in that direction in those early years because it has made our church in large measure what it really has become. Thanks John and friend if John's teaching has made a difference in your life or the life of your church we'd love to hear about it. Write us a note today.
Our email address here letters at gty.org. One more time that's letters at gty.org or you can also send your letter to Grace to You Post Office Box 4000 Panorama City California 91412. Well as we've been saying our current study My Brother's Keeper comes from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 18. In addition to the practical instruction on church discipline Matthew has practical teaching on genuine faith, discipleship, freedom from anxiety and much more. To help you glean all that you can from this gospel John MacArthur has written a four volume commentary on Matthew. It's part of the MacArthur New Testament commentary series and it's a great resource for personal Bible study or family devotions or sermon preparation.
Each volume is affordably priced and shipping is free. You can place your order by calling 800-55-GRACE or you can order online at gty.org. That's our website gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day. Be back tomorrow as John looks at how your obedience or your lack of obedience affects everyone else in your local church. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
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