A Disciplined Church

The Worthiness of Christ and the Need for a Healthy Church

Every now and then I sit in the back of the church and it's a blessing. Not only do I get to hear Connell sing, I get to see everyone else. Well, you can hear Connell sing from up here, just to be honest.

But I get to see everybody singing and worshipping. It's very, very encouraging. Alright, I've switched over now. Listen, we talk about this all the time, but it really must be more than a catchphrase for our church.

And that is, Christ is worthy of a healthy church. And we want to see Christ continue to build a healthy church. I'm going to say some things this morning that I want to make clear. It is not my desire to disparage another church.

It's not my desire to point fingers or anything like that. I want to just continually be pointing our fingers at ourselves, drawing our eyes to the Scriptures and say, we're going to do everything that we can do as a church to be the type of church that brings Christ the greatest honor and glory.

And that's what we want to do. I want you to turn in your Bibles. This is going to sound surprising to you. I want you to turn in your Bibles to Matthew. There are other books in the Bible besides Ephesians.

I want you to turn your Bibles to the book of Matthew chapter 18. We've been talking about in Ephesians the shield of faith. And as we have this shield of faith, the reason that we have a shield of faith, the reason that God has supplied the church, has equipped the church, has given the church sufficient armor with something like a shield of faith, is because we have a great enemy.

And that enemy, of course, is ultimately the evil one. That's what Paul is reminding us in Ephesians. It's not our ultimate... You have to remember, and I know that we get really, really fired up in a political season.

You have to remember this morning that our greatest enemy is ultimately not politicians, as easy as they are to pick on. And I'm willing to pick on them, you know that. But our greatest enemy is the evil one and the spiritual forces of darkness that we wrestle against in the heavenly places.

And so the Bible teaches us, Paul teaches us, God teaches us in His Word that He's given us a shield of faith to withstand and quench the fiery darts of the evil one. With that in mind, as you turn to Matthew 18, what I want to talk about this morning is a disciplined church.

A disciplined church. This morning from our text, we'll approach verses that for some of you perhaps, hopefully not for most of you, but maybe for some of you, you didn't even really know that they were in the Bible.

Or if you did, you don't really understand their purpose and how it is that they are to really be administrated and walk through in the local church. But I submit to you this morning that what we're going to talk about is so important to the nature of the church, it's so important in protecting the church from spiritual warfare, it's so important that many people in the history of the church, and I agree with them, have said that a church that just refuses this is ultimately not a church at all.

It may be called a number of things, but in the Lord's eyes, it cannot be called a local church. So I seek to preach to you this morning from Matthew 18, 15 -20, and I just want to preach to you about a disciplined church.

Would you stand with me as we honor the reading of God's Word? 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, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed on heaven.

And 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 I am among them. Let's pray.

Father, I thank you for your Word. Would you bless it? Would you bless the preaching of your Word? Would you bless our church? Oh, help us to always strive and believe in the worthiness of Christ that we would strive to be the church that would bring him the most glory.

And seek to be healthy, protect us from the enemy. Let us know what it is to walk with our brothers and sisters in real time, to love them, to bear one another's burdens, to confront one another with repentance, to help one another in our struggles.

We pray that Christ would be honored. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. Listen, saints, if you think it's a little unusual that we broke rank from Ephesians to the book of Matthew, there's one person in this church you can blame, and that's Monty White.

And that's because during his prayer for the offering, he prayed about the sermon being changed. And this morning, I'll tell you the story real quick, I shared with some brothers. And by the way, you'd be invited to this.

This is not an exclusive secret club or whatever. But every morning at 845, or every Sunday morning, sorry, at 845, we gather with a group of men and we pray. We just pray for our church. We pray for God to be honored.

We pray for the music. We pray for the offering. We pray for the scripture reading, the confession of catechism. We just, we pray for it all. We want God to be honored. And so I shared with some of those brothers, hey, I've been wrestling, and I think I might preach something different this morning, which is really different for me to do.

Like, this is my page of notes, okay? So usually, I get up here with a, you know, a binder and all that. But it's a little bit different this morning. I'm kind of wrestling with this. And so Alex asked me, because he's in charge of our putting sermons online and all that.

So Alex asked me, I think during handshaking time, are you going to change the sermon? And I was like, well, I haven't decided yet. I'm praying, like during a service. I'm asking my wife. I'm like, you know, what do you think?

I'm praying. And we sing that last song, Sing, O Sing of My Redeemer. And I'm just like, Lord, I don't know. Would you just help me? And sure enough, when we take offering, Monty prays like the sermon had already been changed.

And so I decided, okay, that's enough. I'm going to be preaching the different sermons. So thank you, Monty, for that. And this is where we're at this morning. But I think that you'll find this morning that this is an important subject for churches today.

I do have three points. And they are, by God's grace, alliterated. So the first is this, the rarity of church discipline. So let me read this again. Number one, the rarity of church discipline. 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. In other words, let him be to you as an unbeliever. Now, I would be interested. Maybe we should do this, but we're not actually going to do it.

So don't raise your hand. But I would be interested to know, within our body, how many people have been in a church that has had to deal with or has walked through church discipline. This first point, I'm talking about the rarity of church discipline.

And I'm afraid today, in many churches, that this has become obsolete. We don't want to do it. Actually, I can prove it to you. In the Southern Baptist Convention, and this trajectory has only been worse and worse and worse, but in the Southern Baptist Convention, the ratio used to be two-thirds to one-third.

In other words, two-thirds of the people on any given church's church roll were not there on a Sunday morning. You understand? So let's do the math real quick. Two-thirds is a hard percentage. But let's say you've got a hundred people on your church roll.

On average, one-third of them would show up. That is 33 .3. So I don't know who the .3 guy is, but you can pray for him. But 33 .3 people, average, showing up on a Sunday morning if you have a hundred people on your church roll.

Now, that's across the SBC. That's—it gets worse if you have a church with a thousand people on your roll. You understand? That holds true. But that was a number of years ago. It's worse now. Now it's more like a fourth.

People on your church roll will show up on any given Sunday. Now, I understand. This is not talking about, there's situations that we miss church. I understand. There's sickness, or your kids are sick, or you've taken a family vacation and you're down the road.

Okay, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about just on average, though, only 25 of a church is showing up on Sunday morning. I just say to you this morning to speak to the rarity of church discipline in our day.

So let me give you three points under this heading of the rarity of church discipline. The first is the missing of the message. Number one, the missing of the message. I think that churches today get church discipline wrong ultimately because they don't understand the fullness of the gospel, they don't understand the definition of Christianity, and they don't understand what is meant by discipline.

Okay, so first, they don't understand, this is sub points within sub points. We're in the matrix or whatever. What is the gospel? The gospel is this. Jesus Christ came to redeem a people from their sins.

We don't even have to remove ourselves from the book of Matthew to get that. Turn over, if you will, all the way to the first chapter of Matthew. The gospel writer of Matthew is telling us very early on what it is that Jesus came to do.

Matthew chapter 1 and verse 21. We see this at Christmas, but we need to be reminded of it even today. Matthew 1 .21, the angel says this to Joseph. She, that is Mary, will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.

Here is the gospel, friends, and I'm going to press it, I think, to its natural outcome. First of all, the gospel is the good news that God has determined to not leave us in our sins. We were made in the image of God.

We were made to, created to, enjoy God and glorify Him forever, and yet we have gone astray. We have fallen in Adam, our first representative. If you think that that's unfair, we do this stuff all the time.

For example, if you watch a football game, and you see one person go crazy and get a personal foul, who's punished? Not just them, the entire team. We understand the idea of representation. Adam is the representative of humanity, and we've fallen in Adam.

But what's worse is, or is equally as bad, is that we choose to go astray in and of ourselves. We have rebelled against God, and we've gone our own way. There is no fear of God, Romans 3, 18 says. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

That is an indictment upon American culture today, the biggest indictment. There is no fear of God. Why does Joe Biden do the things that he does? There's no fear of God before his eyes. Why are there parades like there are?

There is no fear of God before their eyes. Why are people shouting their abortions or living with one another outside of marriage? Why are these things happening in our world today? There is no fear of God before their eyes.

But God, two of the greatest words in scripture, in his love and his mercy and his grace and his kindness, sent forth his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who is truly God and truly man, born of the Virgin Mary.

He came to set right what went wrong in Adam. Adam disobeyed in the garden. Jesus obeyed in a fallen world. Jesus fulfilled all righteousness. He kept the law down to the least jot and tittle. And that didn't just keep it, but kept it with the proper motivations, full love of God in his heart, in his mind, his soul and his strength.

And then he died for sinners. On the cross he is our propitiation, wrath, satisfying, sacrifice. The Father laid our sins upon Christ and punished Christ in our place. Jesus did the time because we did the crime, if you want to think of it that way.

And then he was laid in a borrowed tomb, he was really dead, he was buried, and he rose again on the third day. Now you should all understand that message and we should probably all in this room, I would imagine, even those who are not believers, I would imagine, would be able to recite that message.

You would be able to say, I understand this is what the Gospel is. But let me push it a little bit further this morning to this is what the Gospel does. Jesus came to save not individuals from their sins, the text says in Matthew 1 .21, but to save his people from their sins.

And so as the blood of Christ flows from the cross of Calvary, it flows into Jerusalem, it flows into Judea, it flows into Samaria, it flows into the uttermost parts of the world, and what springs up from the blood of Jesus?

Local churches. People. God is saving his people. The Gospel, I'm telling you friends this morning, we don't understand the purpose and outflow of the Gospel if we separate it from the local church. God is saving a people from their sins.

And so this comes into what is Christianity? We don't have to turn out of Matthew for this either. I'm going to go to Matthew 16. You want to know what Christianity is? There's many verses we could use to summarize it, but what if I gave you Matthew 16 .18?

Jesus says, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I bet you've never heard of a definition of Christianity like this, but I'm going to give it to you.

Christianity is the outworking of Christ building His church in the world today. That is Christianity. You cannot separate Christianity from the church. We live in a world today, especially in the Bible Belt, especially in central Arkansas, we live in a society today that wants to understand Christianity separated from the local church.

But I'm telling you, in the New Testament, you can't separate the two. To be a Christian is literally to be part of the church. And to be part of the church, if you want to call it the universal church, is to show yourself attached to, a part of, committed to the local church.

So we're talking about the rarity of church discipline today, and one of the reasons that we have the rarity of church discipline today is because we don't understand the Gospel. We don't understand Christianity.

And then thirdly, we don't understand discipline. We are probably the most undisciplined society ever. I don't want to pick on younger generations. I don't want to pick on younger generations, but it just seems to get worse and worse and worse.

And that is, younger generations come in, they see the older generations have this, this, this, and this. The younger generation comes in and they demand, I want this, this, this, and this. You have this, this, and this.

You have the truck. You have the home. You have all these things. I want these things. I deserve these things. Give me these things or I'm going to cry. Well, what happens is, we have created a society, again, I'm not trying to be punchy here, I'm really not, but just the word snowflakes is rattling around my head.

And we've created a society that they don't want to work for anything. We don't want to be disciplined. We don't want to have to earn something. We don't want to have to grow or whatever. If the young lady has a college degree, she wants to be the CEO and get as paid as much as whoever's been there for 40 years.

We're an undisciplined society. But when it comes to the church, we don't understand that God has given discipline to the church for our good. There's a man, he's a, I can't even pronounce his last name.

Jocko, I don't remember his last name. Anyway, he has a little saying called, discipline equals freedom. When our lives are disciplined before the Lord, when we're disciplined in our Bible reading, in our prayer time, I'm using a secular concept to apply.

There's freedom in that. So too when it comes to the church. A disciplined church is a healthy church. We'll talk more about that later. Let's move on. So first of all, the missing of the message. Secondly, I want to talk about the marks of a true church.

Now I say secondly, but remember, we're still under the first heading. The rarity of church discipline. I want to talk about the marks of a true church. Now we like verse 20 in our text. In fact, I've heard Matthew 18, 20 quoted a gazillion times.

More times than our national debt, if that's even possible. Verse 20, For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them. Have you ever heard that quoted? Has anyone ever quoted that to you?

Has anyone ever said to you, well you know what, I can't be gathered with the church today, but I'll be at deer camp and you know what the Bible says, where two or three are gathered in my name. Four.

We need to understand what a church is. Now historically, I'm not really going to defend this from the scriptures this morning just because we have to get moving on, but historically, let me just give you three marks of a church.

Not a healthy church, of a church period. So the first mark of a church is that a church has to have the right preaching of the word of God. So if you go to a place and they're breaking out, you know, whatever the case may be, Joyce Meyer books, or Reader's Digest, or whatever, and you may laugh at that, but there are places you could go today called churches, you could walk in and they will preach to you from a Reader's Digest.

Okay, that's not a church. Because a church has to have the right preaching. We must be preaching the word of God in accordance to the word of God. That means we ought to be exalting Christ from the scriptures because from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is about this one main thing, namely Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

So we have Christ, the right preaching. Without the right preaching of the word of God, a church is not a church. Secondly, there must be the right administration of the ordinances. Now we're going to be careful here because I ultimately, even though I would completely disagree with Presbyterians, I'm not willing to say well, they're not even a church.

But what I really would mainly be talking about here in the right administration of the ordinances, which are what? There's only two. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. We understand that the ordinances are signs and symbols.

They are not means by which we are brought into the kingdom. You understand? The ordinances, so if you go to a place and they say these are the means by which redemption is applied to you. These are the means by which you are justified.

These are the means by which you are regenerated. Well, you're not a church. A church rightly understands and administers the ordinances. And do you know what the third mark is? Historically that has been said about a church.

Right preaching, and I would include in right preaching a well-ordered church, you know, ordered rightly. Right administration of the ordinances. Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Historically, the third mark of a church is rightly practicing church discipline.

That is a church that does not care about its membership. A church that lets membership just wander off into sin and doesn't love one another well enough to confront that. A church that sees a man or a woman repent of sin and just kind of dismisses them and doesn't care about helping them or bear their burdens or walk along the pathway of restoration together.

Ultimately, they're not a church. So we're not talking about a healthy church versus an unhealthy church. We're talking about a church versus a non-church. Gospel preaching, right understanding of the ordinances, and then church discipline in what our text here.

I mean, for example, can you imagine a place, call itself, a following of Jesus that does not follow what Jesus' words say? Neither can I. Thirdly, then, under this heading, the missing of the message, the marks of a true church.

Thirdly, I want to just touch briefly on the meaning of membership. Now we're a Baptist church, and we're not ashamed about being a Baptist church. But one of the things that we believe about a Baptist church is we believe that the doctrine is called regenerate church membership.

And so what does that mean? Regenerate church membership means we believe only people who are born again can be members of the church. Now that sounds self-explanatory, but there's a lot of weight in there, right?

And that is, if we believe that only believers are part of the church, then we treat one another like what? Like believers. Even Jesus says it this way, verse 15, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault.

And I'm going to expound on that in just a minute. Or let me give you another place. I'm going to flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Now you're going to have to hear me well on this, because you could take this and run with it.

But in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul says something that I think would literally cause the brains of people in our day to just collapse on themselves. Paul commands the church at Corinth to judge. What?

What? Let's see what the Bible says. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 12. This is what Paul says to the church at Corinth. Now this is with a very serious and public scandal. A man, and I'm going to say it as PG as I can, but a man essentially was having an immoral relationship with at best his stepmother.

Maybe his mother, but with at best his stepmother. And Paul's addressing this, and he says in 1 Corinthians 5, verse 12, For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to, what's your translation say?

Judge. To judge. This is not to be judgmental in the sense of casting people like, we're not talking about, well, I'm going to pick on Connell because I know I can and because he's just standing right there in front of me.

But I'm not going to look at Connell and be like, oh, you're wearing jeans today, Connell? Well, phew. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about that. We're talking about judging with right judgment because we expect that one another is what?

Are what? Believers. So we interact with one another as though we are what? Born again. As though the Holy Spirit of God is residing within us. As though we desire to live a holy and proper life before God.

As though we love Jesus and love his word and love the church. That's the way we look at one another is because we have an expectation that we're believers. Why? Because we believe only believers are part of the church.

So, this is some of the reasons for the rarity of church discipline. Now let's move to point two. The responsibility of church discipline. Now let's walk through our text. I'm just going to tell you when Jesus says this, here's one of the greatest ways to interpret the Bible.

When the Bible says something, it's what it means. So when Jesus says this, there's no code here. There's no like, well I wonder what he really meant. No, no. This is what he means. 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. Okay, first and foremost, I want to say, number one, that this is a command of Christ. Now we're going to walk through these verses.

Jesus understands that when his church is gathered, that even though it's going to be composed of regenerate people, it's going to be composed of people who are still sinful. I'll give you an example.

You want me to tell you the number one problem in your marriage? It's the wife. Right? No, it's obviously not. It's the husband now, right? The number one problem in your marriage is that your marriage is composed of two people who still need more sanctification.

Each person still needs to grow in the Lord. And each person still wrestles with sin every day. Whether that's a blatant sin or a misplaced motivation, a misplaced thought, not doing what you're supposed to be doing or spending your time with the Word, whatever the case may be, both parties are undergoing sanctification and they need to grow in Christ.

Now friends, if that's true in the marriage relationship, can you not see how much truer that is also in the local church relationship? Your brothers and sisters in the local church are not yet glorified.

Did you know that? They haven't arrived. They need to grow in grace. Each one of them, including your pastors, need to grow, need to be more and more conformed into the image of Christ. And so our God is so good to us, so kind to us, that He tells us these commands here that when this happens, here's how you handle it.

Number one, if your brother sins against you, post it on Facebook. Subtly, subtly. But you post it on social media and that will get his attention. No, that's not what our Lord says. This is one of the most important things that has to happen.

This ought to be happening actually regularly. If your brother sins against you, what do you do? You don't get a posse. You don't even... Now there can be serious issues, exceptions, you may need to come talk to your pastors.

But you don't even get your pastor. This is between two people. Who is that? The offender and the offended. In fact, it's so beautiful, we're not even leaving Matthew right now in a lot of this, go to Matthew chapter 5 for just a second.

And notice too, I'm giving you the ideal situation, but you understand that we live in a fallen world. So in Matthew chapter 5, verse 23. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

First, be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. So here's the ideal situation. You've been offended by your brother. But then your brother is convicted by the Holy Spirit and he realizes that his brother, that is you, has something against you.

Or has something against him. In other words, the offender and the one who are offended both realize they need to go to talk to one another and they're out heading to each other's house. They show up at the other one's house and they're not even there.

Why? Because they went to the other house, right? They passed each other on the way because they both realized there's been sin and there needs to be reconciliation. Now that's the most beautiful and perfect and best scenario.

But the idea is, someone has offended me, I'm going to go tell them privately, secretly, not on social media, not together with a group of people in the church. Let me see if he's asleep. That had to be public because it's public.

Sorry. But you go to your brother alone. One on one. Now hopefully it ends there. Hopefully it's done there. Hopefully it's, you know what I did, I said that and I shouldn't have said it. You know what, I was rude to you at church.

I shouldn't have done that. And you forgive, you reconcile, and look at what Jesus says. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Praise God. This should be happening, by the way, a lot. As the steps get further and further and further, like the ones that are at the beginning, they should be happening more and more and more.

The later ones should be happening, you know, more rarely, but they still should be happening. But let's say that doesn't work. Well, okay, so what do I do? This person sinned against me, and they have done something wrong to me.

They've sinned. Now, the Bible does say love covers a multitude of sins, so it doesn't mean all the time, you know, so and so didn't wave at you at harps. It doesn't mean it's like, okay, we got to get this started.

Okay, you can overlook that, right? Like there are things that we can overlook, and that we should overlook, but there are things that we can't overlook, that we've been sinning against, we need to deal with.

We go to the person. Hey, you've sinned against me. No, I didn't. I'm not changing. Yes, you did. Look at the Bible. You've done this. You were wrong. You need to repent. No, I'm not repenting. Okay, well, I guess it's just over then.

We tried Jesus, right? Nope. Look at verse 16. Verse 16, 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.

So let me say a couple of things here. First of all, this isn't like the next hour, right? So like he didn't repent. All right, it's posse time. Call him up. Here we go. We're getting him. That's not what we're talking about.

We're not even talking about the next day or the next week. You need to search your own heart. You need to pray. You need to, to take it before the Lord. But then when it is time and that we don't have a specific time, but when it is time you Take with you another faithful brother.

Two or three faithful brothers with you and then you approach the brother again. Now I've been told before that these must be witnesses to the sin. That's foolish. To two reasons that's foolish. Number one, there are a lot of things that happen one-on-one that you don't have any witnesses.

Number two, it's foolish because it's not the context of the the passage. What Jesus is saying is you take two or three others along with you. You talk to this brother or sister who has sinned and and that way they can hear the case.

You understand they may side with the person that's why you need to get unbiased like you don't take like your Absolute best friend in the church or whatever. That's a little bias you understand that these witnesses may hear the case and say II I know you said you're sinned against but It was really okay that they were chewing gum next to you.

That's you shouldn't that's not a big deal. Right, you understand I'm being silly, but they may side with the other person. That's why you want to take godly unbiased witnesses however. 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.

That is if these people say, okay, this is warranted brother. You need to repent now. You've got a still small group. The church doesn't know Facebook doesn't know you're not Broadcasting this you're keeping this in a very small group and you're taking this To this man and or this woman and you're saying we want you to repent you understand the goal of this, right?

The goal of this is not the Spanish Inquisition. We're not trying to burn anybody at the stake. What is the goal. The goal is? Godliness for the glory of God. The goal is that we love each other enough to help if I see if I go by your house and it's on fire.

And I walk by saying I don't want to get in their business. I'm a wicked man. Because I've let your house burn. With you in it. And I didn't want to take the time to get in your business. How much worse is sin in?

One another's lives. We want to help one another. So now you have these two or three witnesses. But he still or she still refuses to repent. Verse 17. He refuses to listen to them. Now we bring the local church into it.

Tell it to the church. Yet, it's still not over yet. You tell it to the church. Why what's getting? No, you tell it to the church so that the church can talk with this brother sister. Well, who is the church?

Oh, it's the elders. No. The elders, I don't know. I keep putting air quotes around. Are not I don't know air quotes around me. They're not the church. The elders are not the church. The church is the people now the elders obviously have to be leading this be involved in this.

God gives pastors to oversee things even like this. But but the reality is when you say you tell it to the church. It's so that the members of the church can plead with this brother. They could or sister.

They can take them out to lunch. They can go over to their house. They can say hey, look you've got these things going on. Explain this to me. You need to repent and Hopefully at each one of these cases at each one of these steps, I should say they're repenting.

Hopefully one-on-one they're repenting, but if not you go to step two. Okay, hopefully you got the witnesses. They're repenting. But if not, you take it to the church. Hopefully now that the whole church is involved.

They're repenting. But Jesus gives a stipulation. Even there if they don't and if he refuses to listen even to the church, you know the idea here is like This guy has or girl has been lit has not listened to one has not listened to a group and he won't even listen to the whole church.

Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In other words, it is the church's responsibility. That's what verse 18 means. Let me read it first truly I say to you whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall 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 their Father in Heaven you understand this is all in the context here of discipline for where two or three are gathered in my name there I am among them when the church gathers together and a person refuses to repent.

It is the church's Responsibility To now treat that person as though they are an unbelief that may seem hard to some of you. It may seem foreign to some of you. Well what I'm trying to encourage us with this morning is that Christ is worthy of a healthy church.