The Discipline of God's Children, Part 3 B

Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. When a Hollywood celebrity's angry voicemail to his young daughter got worldwide attention several years ago, how did the media respond? Actually, many people said it was nobody's business. Other people's private affairs should be off limits.

That's basically how the world thinks. What's personal should be nobody else's concern. But is that true for Christians? When a believer sins, whether or not it's an obvious public sin, is it your business?

And if so, what gives you the authority to confront that person? Well today, John MacArthur will show you the loving biblical way to respond when someone you know is disobeying God's Word. Here's John to continue his study called My Brother's Keeper. Now this particular passage speaks of the Lord's command for the holiness of His church. I believe that Jesus Christ desires that the church be pure. And herein is His instruction as to our part in that purity.

Now let's find out how again. The place of discipline, let's go back to the text. The place of discipline in verse 17. The church, it says it there. Tell it to the church. Hear the church. The church is the place.

What does that mean? The assembly of God's redeemed people. That's the place of discipline. That's where the Lord is moving to cleanse. Second, the purpose, the end of verse 15. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.

Restoration. One who sins is lost to the fellowship. He's lost to the ministry there and he needs to be regained as a treasure that was lost. The person of discipline, who's to be involved?

Verse 15 again. Your brother trespasses against you. You go, you tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he hears you, you've gained your brother. It's you. It's you and me and all believers.

We're all responsible. We are all to be ministers of holiness. Galatians 6, 1, you that are spiritual, go and restore such in one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be tempted. Hebrews 10, you come together to stimulate love and good works among the brothers and sisters. So we need those who are willing to be obedient to that, who have a holy zeal for God's name and who have purified their own hearts so they can do this work. We need ministers of holiness.

And I made a big point of that. I just want to emphasize it without belaboring it. We need in the church ministers of holiness who do the work of Christ, which is the work of keeping the church pure, which means to confront and deal with sin. So the place of discipline in the church, the purpose to gain your brother, the person you, the provocation of discipline, when do we do it? Verse 15, if your brother trespasses. And every sin is a sin against us, either directly or indirectly, as we saw in our prior studies. So whenever there's an unconfessed, unrepented sin, whenever there's a continuing sin, whatever the sin, that's a provocation for discipline. The process of discipline then we saw in verses 15 to 17, four steps. Step one, go and tell him his sin alone, privately.

If he responds, that's the end of the process. If he doesn't, step two, verse 16, take one or two with you that his attitude and his response might be confirmed by two or three witnesses, which according to Deuteronomic law was the standard of legality. Now if he doesn't respond in that setting, then three, verse 17, tell the whole church. And that means the whole church then goes to try to restore him. The whole church then goes to try to draw him back. One has been unsuccessful.

Two and three have been unsuccessful. Now everybody goes. Now the extent to which the church has been told may vary. You may want to tell the whole church. You may want to tell a group of the church or the church has constituted in its leaders. But in other words, you're to widen the circle of people who are pursuing this sinning brother or sister to bring them back, to bring them to repentance, confession, turning from sin back to purity. And if they still do not hear, then step four, treat them as a heathen or a tax collector.

And we pointed out that those were two people who identified or symbolized the idea of being an outcast. Treat them like you would somebody on the outside of your group. Put them out.

We went through some Scripture on that. Put them out. Don't let them join the fellowship. Don't let them associate. Don't let them feel at home. Make them miserable. Turn them over to Satan, as Paul called it.

But the second point was what? Put them out. Call them back.

Call them back. So the place of discipline, the church, the purpose to gain your brother, the person, you, the provocation, any sin, the process, four steps. Now we come to just the last part, the power of discipline, the power.

If you want to use another word, use the word authority. You know, when you come to the end of verse 17, you always sort of face the fact that there's a sense of inadequacy about this. And if you're like I am, you say, well who in the world am I to go to somebody else and confront them with their sin? I mean, this is a private world.

Everybody is a sort of a private person. You just can't go blasting into someone's life and saying you are sinning. I mean, what right do we have? I'm not an apostle.

I'm not perfect. And then people want to misinterpret Matthew 7, judge not lest you be judged. What right do we have to do that? How can we possibly publicize people's sin to the whole church and send everybody out after them? And how can we put people out of the church publicly?

I mean, doesn't this seem like we're going way beyond the bounds that would be permissible to us who are ourselves weak and failing sinners? What is our authority? By what power do we do this?

By what right do we do this? And that we find in verses 18 to 20 and this is the...this is the absolute climax of this text. It's hard to do this. It's a difficult work to do, but it must be done. And beloved, it must be done if ever the church is to know real revival and real renewal and all the effort to have renewal without ever confronting sin and without ever proclaiming the holiness and the fear of God is just absolutely wasted effort.

We must do this, though it's difficult. Well, what is our authority? Two reasons why we have authority. Two reasons. Number one, the Father in heaven acts with us.

Did you get that? You ought to write that in the margin of your Bible somewhere. The Father in heaven acts with us. I just sat back when I came to this part of my study and just thought on this. I know I can't put into words what my heart feels. It is beyond conception that I could be acting in concert with the infinite holy God.

But that's what it's saying. Look at verse 18. Truly I say to you...it's a good thing you put the word truly there because it's so hard to believe. Truly, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

These are rabbinical terms, very familiar to the Jewish audience, very familiar to the Jewish audience, very common terms to Matthew and to our Lord living in that time. They simply refer to the rabbis either binding someone's sins on them or loosing their sins from them. And it basically is the idea that you're either saying to someone your sins are bound on you or your sins are loosed from you. In other words, you're still under the bondage of sin or you're free from sin. And the verse says that whatever you bind on earth...in other words, when on earth you say to someone, you are still bound with sin. When you say that on earth, it will already have been bound in heaven. Now on earth when you say to someone, your sins are loosed...in other words, you're freed from them, heaven will already have done that as well. That's a perfect passive form which means it's already been done with continuing results. In other words, when the church finally gets around to saying your sins are bound on you or your sins are loosed from you, the church is then beginning to act in accord with the Father who's in heaven, who's already said either they're loosed or they're bound based upon whether the person responded to the conviction of sin or not.

Now the point is this, a very simple point. Heaven ratifies what is done on earth when the church follows this process of discipline. That's exactly what it means.

Now that's authority. Listen, if you're a sinning person in the church and somebody goes to you and you don't repent, and two or three go to you and you don't repent, and the whole church is pursuing you and you don't repent, we can say your sins are bound on you and we can say that because we've gone through the process to determine that based upon the revelation of the Word of God. And when we say that, we are simply saying what the Father has already said in heaven. In other words, the church is bound on you. In other words, the church is acting in the behalf of the will of God. The Father in heaven is acting with us.

What a tremendous thought. On the other hand, if you're in sin and we go to you and say you don't repent the first time and two or three go and you do repent and your heart is broken and you grieve and you turn from your sin, and we say your sins are loosed, welcome into the fullness of the fellowship we are merely doing on earth what has already been done in heaven. So the authority then is that we are acting in behalf of the Father in heaven who has already done what is right to do in your case. We say in the church we want to do the will of God.

We pray how many churches get up on Sundays and people all stand up and say, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And never do what this passage says. You want to do His will on earth as it is in heaven? Then you do this and heaven will have already done what you did here. This is an answer to that prayer in Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 to 12, the disciples' prayer. And so I say it again, never...never is the church more like Jesus Christ. Never does the church more fulfill the will of God than when it acts out the principles of this passage. This is taking the kingdom in heaven and bringing it to earth. That's our authority.

Heaven stands with us. You say, well how can it be our authority? Because we follow the biblical pattern. When I go to a person and say your sins are bound to you, you say, MacArthur, what right do you have to say that to a person? Because the person has not repented. On the other hand, if I say to a person your sins are loosed from you, or if you say it to a person, what right do you have to say that?

Because they have repented, right? Recently I met a man and he said to me, well you see, I believe that this is what you're supposed to do to get to heaven. And he described this very bizarre thing. And he said, you know, I've been in this quote-unquote Christian organization for years and so forth. I just put my finger to him as gently as I could and I said, my friend, you are lost in your sin. You say, who do you think you are? Now I had the authority to bind his sins on him because he didn't meet the biblical conditions of repentance, right?

I said, you're lost. You don't know God. You don't have forgiveness of sins. You don't know Jesus Christ, my friend. And I explained the gospel to him. And you have the right to say to a sinning Christian, you, my friend, are bound in your sin and the Father in heaven is acting with you when you say that.

Isn't that a marvelous thing? I mean, you become the ambassador of heaven on earth. This is why the church must do this. If the will of God in its extremity could be condensed into one thing, be ye holy for I am holy, then never are we fulfilling the will of God anymore than when we are pursuing the holiness of His people, right? That's what the verse means. God will be doing the same thing. That's very comforting to me because a lot of times people think, you know, if you go out after this and you try to be aggressive and you try to attack sin and you try to confront sin and call it what it is that you're being unloving and all these other things, then what you're really doing is you're really fighting God's battle. You're really lining up with heaven. So hard to convince people of that in this day because whatever the sentimental squashy kind of love thing is has gotten completely out of hand.

There's a second reason. But before we get to that, we have to go to verse 19. And verse 19 basically sort of repeats what it said in verse 18 because they're hard to believe. So hard to believe that the Father in heaven is acting with us. So He says, Again I say to you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything, well what things are we talking about here? What things are we talking about? Discipline, sin.

Well what two are these? Well that's the lowest number of people who can confirm a person in a sin. So when you've gone and you've confirmed the person and you agree and you seek God's will on it, it'll be done for them by my Father who's in heaven. In other words, God's acting with you. The two here are the two witnesses who confirm the unrepentant heart or who on the other hand confirm the repentant heart.

He starts with the lowest possible number. If two of you on up agree, in other words you confirm the fact that this indeed is true, then God is acting in heaven in accord with that. That's great authority. We are ambassadors of heaven on earth. Just a glorious, glorious, incomprehensible thought. The word agree there is worth noting.

Sum funeo, from which we get the word symphony, it means to produce a sound together. When all of you who are looking into this person's life agree that his sin is still there or his sin is repented of, whatever it is, covering anything, the Father will be in agreement with you. I don't think this verse is talking about a blank check for prayer and it's been utterly misused, just ripped out of its context. And these two people just have...most people think just mean any two people and if you can just get two people to agree, God has to give you what you're agreeing for. I've heard that said so many times.

That isn't the point. The two here are the two witnesses in a case of church discipline, a sinning person, and they really want God's will done and they really want what's right. But if they agree over this issue and they follow the biblical pattern, they can be confident that in their seeking for God's will, they will receive it and God will do what's right.

And that's a very important confidence because when you move into discipline, you can second guess yourself and say, boy, I hope I'm doing what's right. Boy, I just worry...maybe I'm doing wrong things, maybe I'm judging. And I've had that feeling.

I've gone into a situation with a Christian who's sinning and you say, you know, in fact, I've talked to Patricia like this sometimes and I've said, you know, maybe I'm just being too harsh, maybe I'm not being sensitive, maybe this isn't right, but I just don't see the repentance there, I don't see the brokenness there, I don't see the contrition there. And in her simple wisdom she says, well, you know what the Scripture says. And I say, yeah, that if it's been confirmed and we all are in symphony and we're all reading the same signs the same way and we're asking for God's wisdom, we can know the Father is acting in accord with us. Isn't that a marvelous confidence? So we don't fear to do that because we're carrying out the will of the Father that His people be holy.

Second reason. Not only does the Father in heaven act with us, but the Son on earth acts with us. This is a dual divine authority. The Son on earth acts with us. Verse 20, and here's another verse that gets terribly misapplied, for where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them. Now you've probably heard that with a dozen prayer meetings you've been at. If we can just get two or three people together, God will be there. Listen, if you've just got one person, God's there, right? I used to worry about that when I was a kid because I heard some people preach on that sermon where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst. And I thought, well, what happens when one person prays?

See, that isn't what that's talking about. What are the two or three in this context? Two or three what? Two or three witnesses in a discipline. You see, that's why it's so important to teach the flow of the Scripture.

Two or three witnesses. When you gather in My name, what does that mean? To do My work, Jesus says.

What's your work? I'm moving among the church. And when you gather together in My name to reflect My character and My will, there am I in the midst of that.

Isn't that a great confidence? Not only is heaven acting...is the Father acting in heaven with us, but the Son is there on earth with us. Never are you more fulfilling the will of God and the work of the Son than when you're acting in the purging and the purifying of His own church. We all have to be a part of that, beloved, ministers of holiness.

In closing, just a word about the victim in this. We really need to bring that brother back or that sister back, don't we? You can't just let them go. You can't.

They need to be brought back. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian of rather liberal persuasion, lived through some of the terrors of Nazi Germany, wrote a little book that I read many years ago as a seminary student called Life Together. In it are some very profound thoughts that might help us with what we're looking at. Listen to what he says. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him.

And the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed, it poisons the whole being of a person. This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession, the light of the gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin is brought into the light. The unexpressed is openly spoken and acknowledged.

All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted, but God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron. Psalm 107 16.

Listen to this. Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders. He gives up all his evil.

He gives his heart to God. He finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother. The expressed, acknowledged sin has lost all its power. It has been revealed and judged as sin.

It can no longer tear the fellowship asunder. Now the fellowship bears the sin of the brother. He is no longer alone with his evil for he has cast off his sin in confession and handed it over to God.

It has been taken away from him. Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the cross of Jesus Christ. The sin concealed, separated him from the fellowship, made all his apparent fellowship a sham.

The sin confessed has helped him to find true fellowship with the brethren in Jesus Christ. What a ministry, the ministry of restoring the sinning brother. It is the key to the purity of the church. It is the key to the revival of the church, the renewal of the church and the reaching of the world through a renewed church. We must hear these words of our Lord.

Let's bow in prayer. Father, we ask that You would revive Your church. O God, we would seek a renewal, a true restoration of the holy power of Your people. We know that it comes through the message of Your holiness and our sinfulness. May the church be committed to that and may in seeing the holy God and the sinful man, the church want to be the instruments of holiness. May we be the body of Christ moving among the candlesticks, the lampstands, allowing the Spirit of Christ and the Word of Christ to purge the church through us. Make us instruments of righteousness that we may that we may do the will of the Father, that the people of God may be holy as He is holy.

Amen. That's John MacArthur, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John calls his current study here on grace to you, My Brother's Keeper. Now John, a point you've made in this study is that when churches follow Christ's order for church discipline found in Matthew 18, they are united with God.

They are reflecting His power here on earth. And with that in mind, would it be an overstatement to say that if a church doesn't practice church discipline, then it doesn't have the power of God? Well, certainly at that point, because in the passage of Matthew 18, as you know, the Lord Himself says, what you do on earth will be done in heaven. In other words, when you follow the pattern of church discipline, heaven is unleashed on earth. That's bound up in the disciples prayer, where we say, I want the Lord to do on earth what is done in heaven. If you want to bring heaven down to earth, then one of the things you have to do is confront sin and bring righteousness to bear on the lives of people who are sinful. This is part of the church being pure, being the heavenly holy institution on earth that Christ endeavors to make it. The Spirit of God designs to accomplish in the lives of believers. It's not an overstatement to say if a church doesn't practice church discipline, it doesn't have the power of God, because it's as simple as when you do that, you literally bring heaven down. Heaven is acting in your church in that discipline. That is the true power of God.

Let me remind you of a free gift we have for you. It's a booklet titled Your Local Church and Why It Matters. How do you evaluate a church?

What do you need to look for? What should stand out most in a church that you want to join? These and other questions are answered in the booklet Your Local Church and Why It Matters. Listen, being part of a church isn't as simple as the music, the popularity, or the facility. If you're a Christian, you've got to look beyond that. How does this church respond to the word of God at every point? And discipline is one of those critical aspects for church growth and church health. It's not only an obedience issue, it's a significant issue of blessing. Again, let me remind you that we can help you to understand this by sending you a free booklet, Your Local Church and Why It Matters. That's right, free of charge.

Just let us know you want one when you contact us today. Thanks, John. And friend, the reasons you and every believer need to be part of a church are far greater than you may realize. This booklet will help you see that. Ask for your free copy of Your Local Church and Why It Matters. Call 800-55-GRACE Monday through Friday, 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific time, or you can go to our website anytime, gty.org. Your Local Church and Why It Matters is quick but helpful reading.

And again, we'll send it to you free of charge. Request your copy when you call 800-55-GRACE or when you go to gty.org. And if you're looking for more resources on God's design for the church or many other topics like the substance of faith or God's plan for the family or the life of Christ, you'll find thousands of resources at our website. You can read blog articles and daily devotionals. You can download any of John's more than 3600 sermons.

And all of those resources and more are yours free of charge at gty.org. Well, John MacArthur has been showing you the biblical process of confronting a Christian who is sinning. So what if that person listens to you and turns from his or her sin? What do you do then? We'll consider that next time. For John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you to join us for another 30 minutes of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Tomorrow's Grace to You.