For the Health of the Body Matthew 18:15-20

We live in a day where very few churches operate according to Scripture. I know that sounds very blunt, but I think that's an accurate statement. I remember reading an article recently that said we need to be kinder to the wider church.

In the midst of all of its problems, we need to talk well of the church that Jesus bought with His own blood. And yes, that is true. We do need to talk well about the church. Every church is flawed. Every church has growing to do.

But the problem is that some believe we should just look the other way when there is a serious problem. If a church is not operating according to Scripture, it is either an unfaithful church or it is no church at all.

We get our definition of what a church should look like from Scripture. There are lots of places that have the name church attached to it, but they are not true churches. It is true that we should be gracious with other churches, especially those who are trying to follow what the New Testament says a church should be.

But what if a church isn't even trying to be a New Testament church? What if a church is doing its best to attract unbelievers through manipulative methods and not winning people to Christ, but rather winning people to a perverted version of Christianity?

It is these churches that we should oppose because if they are a church at all, they are not doing what the Lord Jesus has told them to do. For a church to be a true and healthy church, there are certain marks that need to be there.

Marks of a True and Healthy Church

One of those marks is biblical preaching. What this means, as my old pastor used to say, is that if you take the Scripture out of the sermon, the whole sermon collapses. So a sermon is not built on how good of stories someone can tell.

It is not built on entertainment from the speaker. It is built on the Bible. A true church is also marked by having elders who look after the souls of the people in the church and also deacons who serve the church in different ways.

And I would argue deaconesses who serve under the leadership of those deacons. True churches do evangelism. They have a great heart for the lost to be saved. True churches believe in the power of prayer that apart from God's help, our plans will fail.

True churches also have church membership. By becoming a member of a church, a person is committing him or herself to the elders and also to the other people in the church to live in that harmony with one another as a local body.

While all of these are essential, there is another mark that often separates faithful churches from unfaithful ones, and that is church discipline. This is probably the least popular mark of a healthy church in our society.

The reason it is so unpopular is because if you are trying to get as many people as possible in the door, church discipline is unattractive to the world and it will drive people away. But church discipline is given by God for the purity of the church and for the good of the individual who is confronted for a certain sin.

The Text of Matthew 18:15-20

So this morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew, we are going to talk about this controversial topic. One of the reasons it is important to preach through whole books of the Bible is that you can't dodge certain topics.

So we're going through Matthew and this is where we are. So this is what we're going to look at today and we're going to hear what the Lord Jesus wants us to hear. So at this time, I encourage you to turn the Bible with me to Matthew chapter 18.

We're looking at verses 15 through 20. And if you're using a red Bible, it's on page 979. This sermon is titled, For the Health of the Body. And I will begin by reading the text. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, wherever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whenever you loose on earth should be loosed in heaven.

Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Here's our big idea.

What this message is calling you to do. Understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church. Understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church. And we will see four practices how in this text.

But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of where we were one Sunday ago. We looked at the passage where we see the heart of heaven for believers on earth. And we saw three different parties in heaven who are concerned about the saints as we go through this dangerous journey on earth.

The first party are angels. Angels are servants of God sent out to care for believers on earth. Secondly, we saw the chief shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, who looks after his sheep and he loses none of his sheep.

Thirdly, we saw the Father in heaven who desires to see that none of his sheep are harmed while they're on earth. So it's wonderful to see this picture of heaven looking after us while we are here in our journey on earth.

Confronting a Brother Who Sins

Now this leads us to our text this morning that we've already read, but now we'll zero in on. I'm going to begin by looking at verse 15 where Jesus says here, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.

What we learn right away is that Jesus is not talking about conflict between two random people, but more specifically conflict between two believers. Now in verse 17, we learn that this is the conflict between two people in a local church.

This is a good time to answer the question, what is a church? And I've already explained that a little bit in the introduction. But a church is a place where God's believers meet to worship the Lord together and to love one another in unity.

It is a place where the people in the church submit themselves to the shepherds of the church. I am a pastor and the term pastor and elder are interchangeable. So Mark Brooks is also a shepherd at this church.

Once you become a member of this church, you are submitting yourself to the leadership and that's for any church out there. We have been given the responsibility of looking after your souls. This means preaching, teaching, shepherding, and helping you in any way we can.

Our goal is to build an environment as we look after you where you can grow. Our goal is that the people in this church would grow in Christ together. That's our mission statement, to grow in Christ together.

So what I described to you is a church. The conflict described in this text is described between two people within this church and specifically two members. I say members because the only way you can officially be removed from a church is if you tell your elders that you want to be a member and then the elders and congregation admit that person into membership.

And I know that the line between member and non-member can be blurry as some who attend regularly are more involved than members, but that's not the way it's supposed to work. But sometimes it does work that way.

Church membership is a good thing. It is something that officially communicates to the leadership that you desire to be under their care and you are communicating to the other church members that this is my church.

I understand that it takes time to make that decision, but membership is an important step to take at some point. The one and others of Romans 12, there's several one and others in Romans 12, they're designed to take place within the local fellowship.

God wants us to love all people and especially your fellow believers within the local body of the church. Every healthy church has a high view of church membership. Without church membership, you cannot do church discipline as Matthew 18 commands a church to do.

So with that background, what we see in this text is conflict between two members. As verse 15 says, one member sins against another. As this member sins against another member, the person sinned against follows these steps and the first step is to confront the person who sins against you.

Now you might be asking the question, don't we sin against each other throughout the year? Yes, of course this happens. Does this mean that we always need to confront a person? And the answer is no. First Peter 4 .8 says, above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins.

In your marriage, you see this the most. One spouse sins against the other spouse. It's inevitable. It happens more than we like to admit, right? It happens weekly, probably at least, where one spouse sins against the other spouse.

Does one spouse confront the other spouse every time? The answer is no. Sometimes you just overlook the offense. In 1 Corinthians 13 .7, we learn that to love someone means that one bears all things and endures all things.

So sometimes the approach is, okay, I'm just going to overlook that. I don't need to tell this person about it. I'm just going to overlook it and just forgive. With this in mind, when is it appropriate to confront someone?

It might be that you have noticed a pattern and you don't want that pattern to continue because it hurts you and others when this person sins in this way. It may be that a sin rises to a certain level.

There's an egregious nature to it that means it must be confronted. Sometimes it is obvious when a sin needs to be confronted. Other times it's not as obvious. And we need to ask the Lord for wisdom about when to confront a sinner.

But in this passage, Jesus is telling you what to do when it comes time to confront someone who has sinned against you. By the way, sometimes we might be the one who sinned and when someone confronts us, as long as it is legitimate, we should repent immediately.

But in this passage, we are going to look from the perspective of what if someone sins against you? Because that's where Jesus takes it. And as you go to the person, tell the person his or her fault against you.

And the best scenario that comes out of this is what Jesus says at the end of verse 15. He says, you have gained your brother. You tell the sin. The person says, you know what? I did that. And I'm so sorry.

Would you please forgive me? Jesus says, if that happens, you've gained your brother. You are at peace with one another and no further steps need to be taken. And what you will notice about this first step is that we do not go to other people when we are sinned against.

We go to the person. This is not popular, especially in our culture that is passive aggressive. We don't live in New York where people just say what's on their mind and they confront people. A passive aggressive culture like we have in the Midwest is prone to gossip.

If someone does something against you, it is common not to go to the offender, but tell someone else what this person did. Minnesota nice or Wisconsin nice. I'm not even sure. Did they ever call it Wisconsin nice?

I know they call it Minnesota nice. It's not so Minnesota nice. I remember when I was coaching track back where I'm from, one of the other coaches was an enormous gossip. And every time I was around this coach, it seemed like she was talking behind someone's back.

And I'm thinking, OK, if she's doing that with other people, I'm sure she's doing that about me. She's probably talking about me. And one time I overheard her talking about me. What this passage is telling you is do not air your grievances to other people.

Go to the person who has wronged you, or if it is not big enough, just overlook it and move on. Since love covers a multitude of sins, the goal is for the person to confess the sin committed, whatever that sin is.

And if there is repentance, how wonderful it is that there is peace between you and the one who sinned against you. So understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church. And the first practice, how is by confronting the one who sinned against you.

Bringing Witnesses to Confront the Offender

The second practice, how we are to understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of the church is by bringing one or two others to confront the offender. We'll see this in verse 16. Now, if the first step of church discipline works, it's wonderful.

And I know that you in this room have experienced the joy of confronting someone's sin and seeing the person agree with you and then repent. I'm sure that you've done that before. But sadly, there are many times when this does not happen.

Sometimes when a sin is confronted, the person doubles down and does not acknowledge the sin. In this case, step two is performed. Verse 16, if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be a established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

What Jesus says is that the person who is sinned against needs to find one or two others to confront the person. The one or two others are witnesses to the sin. So these aren't random people. These are eyewitnesses to what this person did against you.

The Bible takes false accusations very seriously. We live in a world where people have no problem making false accusations against someone else in order to bury that person. The people who make false accusations think that nothing will happen to them for making the false charge.

But in the Old Testament, if whatever you accuse someone of and whatever the penalty for that crime was, that would come upon you if you were found to be making a false accusation. In America, over the past several years, we've had the Me Too movement.

And it hasn't been all bad since. If a man has abused a woman sexually, we want that person, of course, to be brought to justice. But this movement has opened up the door for false accusations as well.

If one person makes an accusation and then the mob gets behind that person without looking at the evidence, then the person being accused has no chance. We've heard stories about this where someone is falsely accused and instead of going through the due process, is there evidence for this charge?

It is guilty. That's injustice. That's wrong. What the Bible tells us is only believe the accuser if the evidence lines up with the accusation. But in a post-truth world, which we live in, evidence doesn't hold as much weight, right, that it once did.

To prevent false accusations, Scripture sets the standard that any crime must be established on the evidence of two or three witnesses. This comes from Deuteronomy 17, verse 6, where that verse says, on the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, the one who is to die shall be put to death.

A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. In the same way things in the Old Covenant, they're done in the New Covenant. As Jesus says here in verse 16, take one or two others along with you.

When more than one person goes to the offender, then this gives a second opportunity for this person to confess their sin. This can happen. Someone might not see his or her sin the first time. Sin has a tendency to blind people.

If one person points out a sin and another doesn't see it, if one or two more come and point out the same sin, a person who has character will confess. One we all must understand is that every one of us still sins.

And when someone points out a sin, we should not be shocked. We should not be alarmed saying, what? We should be saying, you know what, there probably is something here to what you are saying. Instead of denying the sin, the best thing to do is to acknowledge it.

Say you are sorry, you committed it, and then you're at peace with God and with the person who confronted you. People who have the Holy Spirit dwelling within them will repent when confronted. And the softer one's heart is, the more likely the person will confess.

What Jesus tells us here is to bring the other witnesses in to confront the person's sin. The goal is to win your brother or sister, and sometimes being confronted a second time with more than one witness makes the difference.

And the person is brought to repentance. And once repentance takes place, no further action is needed. Understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church. And the second practice how is by bringing one or two others to confront the offender.

Bringing the Whole Church to Confront the Offender

The third practice how we are to understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of the church is by bringing in the whole church to confront the offender. And we'll see this in verse 17.

As I just mentioned, sometimes it takes a second effort for someone to see the sin that one committed. If one's heart is softer as he or she walks with the Lord, this is the result you will see. But sadly, there are cases in a local church when a person has a very hard heart.

What we must understand is that within a local church there are mature believers, there are immature believers, and there are even unbelievers that can and oftentimes are present. To reach the third step when confronting an offender means that you are dealing with a very hard heart.

It can be a hard heart of an immature believer or an unbeliever who is a phony Christian whose true colors are coming out, not only through the sin itself, but the lack of repentance. This is a very important point to make.

I remember when I was in college, my pastor preached a sermon from Hosea about the marks of an unbeliever. One of the clear marks of an unbeliever was being a sin denier. At this time I was walking with Christ, but the sermon terrified me because only a couple years earlier, every mark of an unbeliever he described matched me in some sense.

It was like an autobiography. It was like me. It was terrifying. I was a believer, but I was a young believer who needed to turn from those sins because a young believer can look like an unbeliever until further growth comes.

One thing my old pastor once told me is this, it's not the presence of sin that is the biggest problem. It's the absence of repentance that's the problem. Not the presence of sin, but the absence of repentance.

1 John 1 .9 says, if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's a verse for believers. 1 John 1 .9. True believers recognize their sin and want to turn from it.

It is a struggle. I've heard it said that believers fall into sin. They do not look forward to sinning. Big difference. Hebrews says that. The sin which so easily entangles us. Believers fall into sin.

They don't plan it. They don't look forward to it. When they're caught, they're not super quick to deny it. They're like, you know what, I did sin. That's a mark of a believer. The more repentant one is, the more God is working in that person's life.

But as we look at the third step in church discipline, once you get to this stage, you are dealing with a very hard heart. Let's read the beginning of verse 17. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

So the offender does not listen to the two or three witnesses. And so this last step is to tell it to the church. Once you reach this point, the whole church is told to call this person to repent of his or her offense.

Now, how does this look? It does not necessarily mean that the person is brought to a membership meeting and given an opportunity to repent. This can be done, but it doesn't need to be that way. But what needs to be done is that the people in the church are informed about it.

And you're supposed to say, you know what, when you see this person, tell him about the sin that he or she committed. And this person needs to be brought to repentance. So the people in the church are encouraged to pursue that person with the hope that repentance will follow.

And by the way, this is loving the person. You don't want this person to continue down this path. You're loving the person by calling them to repent. But you can see why most churches don't do church discipline, can't you?

Once you reach this stage, our society will call it spiritual abuse. If your goal as a church is to get as many people in the door as possible, and to have the world love you, then church discipline is not an option.

It's too strict. It's too judgmental, whatever words they will use. But it is a command from the Lord Jesus. Remember, the reason Jesus tells the church to do this is for the health of his church. He does not want unrepentant sinners to remain in the body.

The church is for sinners, yes, but it is for repentant sinners. It is for people who want to go in the right direction following Jesus. To be a member of Eureka Baptist, what we need to know is that you are a sinner who has trusted Christ's finished work for your salvation, and that you continue in repentance, desiring to grow.

This is the criteria to be a member. Jesus does not want a church of weeds. I'm afraid that many churches are a church full of weeds, and one of the many reasons is they do not practice these steps of church discipline.

Several years back, we knew people who belonged to a mega church that did not have church membership. And Bree and I knew the two parties who were in conflict with one another. We reached out to a pastor in this church who was not interested in getting involved in this ongoing unresolved conflict.

He said getting involved would cause more harm than good. This pastor should have tried to do what he could to reconcile these two parties, but he nor any of the other pastors were interested in that.

They were more interested in, forgive me for my frankness, they were more interested in getting ready for their rock concert on Sunday. Okay, I mean that's, no, it sounds very blunt. It's true, okay. It was a rock concert on Sunday.

But this is how many churches in our day operate. We will follow the Bible part of the way, but not the whole way. Churches that are liberal, they really pick and choose, right? But there's evangelical churches.

They very much pick and choose with what they want in the Bible. I remember sitting next to a pastor who said he would be okay having a female pastor serve at his church. But the Bible does not allow that.

It is the responsibility of qualified men to shepherd the flock. God has given many roles to women in the church, but this is not one of them. For a pastor to compromise in this way shows me that he is only willing to follow the Bible so far.

And by the way, if you took away the women in this church, our church would fall apart. I mean, we'd be done in a week. We're so blessed to have women in this church, all the things that they do. And you know, women are every bit as important as men.

I want to be very clear on that. I think more important than a lot of times. But God has given certain roles to men, certain roles to women, and we need to follow those roles. Churches want to follow the Bible as long as it doesn't get too controversial.

That is not very far, by the way, because it gets very controversial very quick in a secularized society. What we must understand is that when you do things the right way, God's blessing is upon you. All three of these steps need to be followed when sin arises in a local church where it needs to be confronted.

Removing the Unrepentant from Fellowship

Now, what we see in the second half of verse 17 is the fourth and final step of church discipline. And this is one that often gets forgotten but is important. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

The final step of church discipline is removing the offender from your fellowship. And what Jesus says is that you treat this person as a Gentile and tax collector. In other words, you treat this person as an unbeliever.

Historically, in the Jewish community, most of the Gentiles weren't saved. So to be treated like a Gentile was to be treated like an unbeliever. Tax collectors had a horrible reputation. They were, you know, you think of a profession today that has a horrible reputation.

That was the tax collectors in the first century. They were considered unbelievers. The person who refuses to repent is considered this. Jesus compares the unrepentant sinner to the ungodly Gentile and tax collector.

The one removed from the fellowship is to be treated in this way. This person may indeed be an unbeliever or it could even be a young Christian who just needs to repent. And by God's grace, these measures taken to the fullest extent will bring this person back to the fellowship.

And that's the ultimate goal, the restoration of this person. Remember, this is love too. This is tough love, but it's love. Now, this is not the only passage in the Bible on church discipline. The other is 1 Corinthians 5.

In 1 Corinthians 5, an egregious sin was committed by a man in the Corinthian church. A man slept with his father's wife, so his stepmother. And what Paul says is to remove this unrepentant sinner from among the assembly.

In 1 Corinthians 5, he says you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Those are strong words by Paul, but they mean the same thing that Jesus is saying.

You treat the person like an unbeliever. You hand the person over to Satan because Satan is the one who rules over unbelievers. The goal of church discipline is not only the health of the church, where the church is full of unrepentant sinners, but it's also for the restoration of the person who has been removed.

What you are telling the person is he or she needs to repent. One true mark of a believer is repentance. 2 Corinthians 7 .10 says God, the grief, produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret.

Repentant people are saved people while unrepentant are not. This person who is treated as an unbeliever is told that he or she is behaving as an unbeliever, and the call is to repent, to be restored to your fellowship with God, to be restored to your fellowship with the people of God, the local church.

This person should take this very seriously, because if this person continues in unrepentance, it is right to assume this person is not saved. That's what Matthew 18 says. That's what 1 Corinthians 5 says.

Understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church. The third practice, how, is by bringing in the whole church to confront the offender. The fourth and final practice, how, we are to understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church, is by taking comfort that heaven approves of your actions.

Heaven Approves of Church Discipline

Heaven approves of your actions when a church does this. As we see in this text, the Lord gives a big responsibility to his people in the church. It's not just the shepherds. This is a whole church practice, church discipline.

You're all involved if it reaches that point. The Lord gives this stewardship to the church, and as his people care for his church, he looks on and he approves. Let me read these verses again. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Whenever you see the words, truly I say to you, the reader needs to listen very closely. The statement that he says following that is something that we have heard before.

When Peter made the confession before Jesus, when he says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, in chapter 16, Jesus said to him, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

There Jesus was telling Peter and the apostles to manage the church. Be careful who you let in. Let in believers, and do not let in unbelievers. This is so counter-cultural. Jesus is not impressed with crowds.

Crowds followed him, but he was more than willing to send them packing when they came to follow him, because he was more concerned with telling the truth, and people left him. It's amazing to see how counter-cultural Jesus and scripture is from our world.

When we receive people into membership at our church, we want to make sure that each person is a believer, and the goal is never to admit anyone who does not have a sincere relationship with Christ, but sometimes this can happen.

We can have a hard time seeing someone's heart, and if troubling sins come to light with a person that is followed with unrepentance, that person cannot remain within the fellowship according to scripture.

What Jesus is saying is that the Father in heaven and he look on, and they want you to make accurate decisions about these people within the church who are rebellious. I had a pastor friend a while back discipline someone out of his church, and this was a person who became very rebellious.

One person approached this person, and that didn't work. A few people approached this person, and that didn't work. Finally, it was opened up to people for the church to approach this person, and that didn't work, and so this person was disciplined from the church.

Most of the church saw that what they did was biblical, and supported what the leadership did, but there was a small group that were not happy that this person was removed. There were others on the outside who were not happy also, but do you know who was happy?

The only one that matters. Jesus was pleased, and his opinion along with the opinion of his Father and the Holy Spirit is the only one that matters. Church discipline will never be popular with the world, and even the evangelical church, it won't be popular, but the Lord has given this instruction to the church, and so it is not optional for churches to do this.

We've been told what a church is supposed to look like. We've been told what a church is supposed to do. We can't become creative. We can't use our own methods. We need to do what God tells us to do. The Lord Jesus Christ is the pastor of this church.

I am his under shepherd. Mark is his under shepherd. We better not mess it up. James 3 1 says, not many of you should be teachers. For those who teach will be judged more strictly, and we know if we look at the world we live in, it's coming close.

I mean, we don't know how long it'll be, but this world will come to an end, and we will stand before the judge, and everyone's going to have to give an account, and the people that Jesus is going to be hardest on are shepherds, because he's going to say, you know what?

I told you what a church is supposed to look like. How did you do? And so, shepherds should tremble at those words, and what God promises is that if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father who is in heaven, and then Jesus says, for two or three are gathered in my name.

There I am among them. By the way, that verse is taken out of context by so many people. It's talking about church discipline. What he's saying is that if you do what I tell you to do, if you follow these steps in church discipline, I approve of what you're doing.

That's what he's saying here. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. If you do this on earth, heaven agrees with you. God cares about genuine believers being in the flock, and he gives us the responsibility as shepherds, as the body of Christ, to make sure that our church is pure.

We don't want to have a church of goats, a church of weeds. We want to have a church of sheep, where people are moving in the right direction. This is all about the purity of the church, and it's for the good of the person involved.

This is love. I hope you see that come on here. This is true love. We live in a world that doesn't understand what love is. To confront a person in this way, for them to be restored, for them to be in a much better place, is love.

Understand that our Lord uses church discipline for the health of his church, and we see in four practices how in this text. By confronting the one who has sinned against you, by bringing one or two others, by bringing in the whole church, and taking comfort that heaven approves of your actions.

God cares about the health of his church. We live in a world where outward metrics are the chief concerns of churches, but that should not be our chief concern. Our concern should be what Christ's chief concern is.

He wants his church to be holy. He wants people to be aware of their sin, and instead of denying it, repenting of it, and becoming more like him in his power. A church full of people like that is a church that is pleasing in his sight.

You know, when Christ returns to the earth, he said, when I return, will I find faith on earth? Will I find faithful churches on earth? That's our desire. That's our hope. May we be that. Now this morning, we have looked at one who remains unrepentant, and what we do when that happens.

But next Sunday, we will look at one who is unforgiving, and what Jesus has to say about that person. So we'll focus on forgiveness next Sunday. But this time, let's bow our heads in prayer. Father in heaven, what a wonderful God you are, and what a big responsibility you've given us, Lord, to pursue you through the power of your Spirit, to be a part of a church, Lord, that is pleasing in your sight, that is pure.

Lord, we know we have gunk in our lives. We have sin that we want to get rid of. But I pray that we would be aware of that sin and desire to turn from it, and over time, see growth in our lives. Help us to be a church, Lord, that does the hard things.