Inigo Montoya Series: Where Two or Three Are Gathered Together

He didn't fall? Inconceivable!

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

The Misuse of Matthew 18:20 in Prayer Meetings

For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst. You keep using that verse. I do not think it means what you think it means. Welcome to this video, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is Justin Peters. I hope that you and your family are doing well today. And I want to thank you very much for watching. Let me begin real quickly by saying I must apologize for there being quite a gap here between this video and my last one.

It's been over two weeks, I believe. And so I do apologize for that. It's just been a busy stretch for me. I've been traveling and preaching. I just returned from Texas. I was preaching at Heritage Grace Church in Frisco, Texas, pastored by my friend Emilio Ramos.

Just a wonderful, wonderful guy. Good, good brother in the Lord. And we had a great time together. And we're working on a project, and Lord willing, there'll be some news about that coming up in the not-too-distant future.

So really excited about that, and I'll keep you posted as developments warrant on that. So, all right. Well, let us get back to the matter at hand. For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard this verse quoted and cited yet taken out of context. I heard it most often growing up in a Southern Baptist church, I suppose probably in the context of a Wednesday night prayer meeting.

You know, we would have services on Sunday morning, Sunday night, of course, and then Wednesday night midweek service was our prayer meeting. And we would get together and have a meal, and then the pastor or preacher would get up, and he would ask for a prayer request.

And I heard this verse quoted a lot. And as people would offer in their prayer requests, and we would pray, and before the prayer, the preacher would say, Well, we know that Jesus is here with us tonight because he promised that where two or three have gathered together in his name, he is there in their midst.

And we have more than two or three gathered here tonight, so we know that Jesus is here with us. And I can remember hearing that as a boy and wondering, What about when I'm by myself? You know, is Jesus not with me when I'm by myself?

Do I have to have one or two gathered together around me to make the two or three to know that Jesus is there? You know, what about when I'm by myself? And if you have ever had that same question, well, the reason for that is that this verse has been taken out of context.

This verse has absolutely nothing to do with Wednesday night prayer meeting. It has everything to do with church discipline. Church discipline, what in the world is that? Do you know that church discipline per Matthew chapter 18, 15 through 20, which we'll read here.

This is the very first command that Jesus gave to his church. Just as much a command as is the Lord's Supper and Believer's Baptism. And we'll circle around to that point here in just a minute. So keep that in mind as we read this.

Matthew 18, 15 through 20. Jesus says, If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every fact may be confirmed.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let it be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who is in heaven.

For where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst. You might have to pardon me. I know I probably sound a little funny. I'm getting over a cold. So please bear with me.

The Steps and Purpose of Church Discipline

So this has nothing to do with Wednesday night prayer meeting. What this is, Jesus outlines the steps of church discipline. So in other words, if you know of a professing believer in your local church, not somebody that's out in, you know, you're in Colorado and you hear about this going on in New Hampshire.

But, you know, if someone is in your local church, is in some habitual, serious, unrepentant sin, then you need to go to that person in private and confront that person. Lovingly, but nonetheless firmly confront that person in his sin.

And if he listens to you, wonderful. Praise the Lord. You have won your brother. Don't talk about it anymore. Don't go to church the next Sunday morning. And the Sunday school, say the Sunday, you go to Sunday school the next Sunday morning and the Sunday school teacher says, well, does anybody have any prayer requests or praise reports?

And you raise your hand. Ooh, me, I have a praise report. I went and I confronted Billy Bob in his sin this week and Billy Bob repented. Let me tell you what he repented of. No, no, it's over, done, finished.

Don't talk about it anymore. But if he does not repent, then you take one or two more with you and you go back to Billy Bob and you confront him again. And if he listens to you, in other words, if he repents, wonderful.

Praise the Lord. Don't talk about it anymore. It's over, done. But if he does not listen to you, then you get up on Sunday morning and you tell it to the church. You mean you on Sunday morning, you get up, you tell the whole church what Billy Bob has been doing?

That's right. You don't necessarily have to go in every graphic detail, but you need to get up and tell it to the church. And after a season of having the entire church body informed of what Billy Bob is doing and the members of that local church, they have a season of confronting Billy Bob themselves.

If he refuses to listen even to the church, then let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, you treat him as an outsider. Because, dear friends, a genuine Christian can be in sin for a season, even serious sin for a season.

But if that person is truly regenerate, truly indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, and that person is confronted in his sin, then you would expect that that person will repent. He may not repent on the spot, may not repent that day, may not repent on step one.

But that's why there are two more steps in church discipline. You may have to go back with one or two. You may even have to tell it to the entire church. But if Billy Bob does not repent even after all of these steps are followed, then you treat him as a Gentile and a tax collector.

You treat him as an outsider because that is what he has proven himself to be. If a person who professes to be a Christian does not repent of this sin even after all of these steps are followed, then he proves himself to be a false convert.

And church discipline is designed to bring a genuine Christian who is in serious sin to a place of genuine repentance. That's the hope. That is what you desire. That's what you want to have happen. But in the absence of that, if that person does not repent, then you put him outside of the church.

You discipline him out of the church. And in this outcome, the purpose of church discipline is to protect the purity of the body. To protect the purity of the body. So hopefully, prayerfully, the person repents.

But if he does not, then you put him outside of the church. And this is to protect the purity of the local body of believers. Church discipline is the very first command that Jesus gives to the church.

Just as much a command as is the Lord's Supper and Believer's Baptism. And yet, hardly any churches do this. Every evangelical church would say, Oh, we believe the Bible. We believe the Bible is the Word of God.

It's our authority. It's inerrant. It's infallible. But if you want to get an idea of just how seriously a church really takes the Word of God, then ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew 18?

What do you do with church discipline? Because this is hard. This is not something that you enjoy having to do as a church. And yet it is a command. It's a command because there is a need for this. From time to time.

And you follow these steps. If the person repents, wonderful, praise the Lord. He is loosed from his sin. Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. If he does not, that person remains bound.

Whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. So in other words, if he repents, he is loosed. He is restored to fellowship with the local body of Christ. If he does not repent, he remains bound.

Whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound. Notice the tense there. Not that heaven will bind. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound. That's not the right tense in the Greek. The New American Standard here gets it right.

Whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. In other words, whether he is loosed or bound, heaven has already taken that position. Heaven agrees with you. It's already been loosed. It's already been bound.

You can know with 100 certainty, whatever action you take, heaven agrees with you.

Why?

Because you followed the steps of church discipline. In fact, this binding and loosing is also often taken out of context. I've heard many Word of Faith preachers say that if you're sick, you just need to bind your sickness, because whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

In fact, not only have I heard Word of Faith preachers talk about that, I've also heard Beth Moore say this. She was in a Twitter exchange, apparently, with a lady here about four or so years ago. And this lady had some back pain.

And Beth Moore responded to her, and she said this, I don't take your prayers lightly, praying blessing back on you. P .S. I often deal with serious pain up and down my spine. Bind it in Jesus' name. That is straight-up Word of Faith theology.

Straight-up Word of Faith theology. Beth Moore has been hanging around Word of Faith preachers, and it's pretty obvious that their theology is rubbing off on her. So just another example of how, in this one passage, there's a number of things that are taken out of context.

And when Jesus says, for where two or three have gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst, that two or three that he is referencing references the one or two that you take back with you on step two of church discipline.

It has nothing to do with Wednesday night prayer meeting. And so if you're wanting to know if a church really does take the Word of God seriously or how seriously they take it, then ask the leadership, what do you do with Matthew chapter 18?

I know people who have been in churches for years and years and years, the same church for years and years. I know some people who have been in the same church for decades, literally 40 going on 50 years.

And I've asked them, have you ever seen church discipline done? As described in Matthew chapter 18. And they've told me, no, no. Friends, if you've been in a church for years and years and years, and you've never seen the church do church discipline.

And when I say church discipline, I'm not talking about simply taking care of some issue in the church privately that it never gets up to step three. In other words of telling it to the church. If you've never seen that done in your church, you know something seriously is wrong.

Because this is here for a reason. From time to time, that need is going to come up. It's going to arise in a church. When Kathy and I first got married, we've been married for just a hair over 10 years now, 10 years and a couple months.

But we went to a church in Oklahoma for the three years that we lived there. And church discipline was done at that church. When we moved to Idaho, Kootenai Community Church in Sandpoint, when we got there, church discipline, there was a church discipline issue that had been taken care of right before we.

Moved there.

Church Discipline as a Test of a Church's Faithfulness

So it comes up there. In the early years of our marriage, I took Kathy to hear, Kathy and I went down to Mobile, Alabama, to hear Steve Lawson preach a couple of times. And we saw church discipline done there.

I have been to Grace Community Church out in California, John MacArthur's church. And I've been there, I don't know, for a Sunday service maybe, I don't know, 12, 13, 14, 15 times, something like that.

I guess if I added up all the Sundays that I've been there. So let's call it maybe 15 times over the last maybe 15 years or something like that. So I'm not there a lot.

But you know what?

In that handful of times that I've been to church there, I've seen Grace Community Church do church discipline twice. Our church here in Bozeman, Montana, Grace Bible Church, they have done church discipline.

So in other words, what I'm saying is it's going to happen. The need will arise from time to time. Now, the more solid a church is and the more a church does this, and does it when it's necessary, over time you would expect probably it would be needed less frequently.

Because if a church does church discipline per Matthew 18, word's going to get around. And the very fact that a church does it and is known for doing it, that will have an effect kind of in and of itself, kind of a natural purifying effect, a natural guarding against people wanting to join that church who aren't really serious about the things of the Lord.

Because if you're just a pretender and you don't really take the word of God seriously, you just kind of want to scratch your religious itch and find a church to go to every once in a while. So if you know a church does church discipline, it's been done before and you know that, you're probably not going to join that church.

You're probably going to look for a happy, clappy church that you can just kind of go and kind of disappear into the crowd and not ever be held accountable. So the very fact that a church is willing to do it in and of itself has a natural guarding effect for the purity of the body.

Why Churches Must Practice Church Discipline

So as we conclude, ask your leadership. If you're wondering about how seriously your church really does take God's word, ask them, what do you do with Matthew 18? Have you and are you willing to go all the way up to step three and tell it to the church?

And if you realize the church that you're going to has never done that or does not do it, then you need to find another church. If we were to see an evangelical church that calls itself evangelical and, oh, we believe the Bible, but they don't do the Lord's Supper or they don't do believers' baptism, oh, but we're evangelical.

No, we don't do the Lord's Supper. We don't baptize believers. No, we don't do that. Would you say, hey, wait a minute, you don't do Lord's Supper? You don't do believers' baptism? Then you're not really a church.

And you know what? With good grounds would you say that? So you would rightly say that that's not a real church. So my question is, why is it any different for church discipline? This is just as much a command as is the Lord's Supper and believers' baptism, and yet very, very few evangelical churches do it.

So where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there in their midst, not talking about Wednesday night prayer meeting, dear friends. So, all right. Well, I hope that this has been helpful for you, encouraging our second installment of the Inigo Montoya series.

And until our next time together, dear ones, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all.