WWUTT 2053 Church Duty (Matthew 18:18-20)

The process of church discipline has been given not just to the leadership of the church, but every member of the church has a responsibility to know this process and follow these steps as given by Christ when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Matthew, we've been looking this week at what

Jesus says about church discipline in Matthew 18, verses 15 to 20.

So I'm going to read that section again as we get started here from the Legacy Standard Bible. Hear the word of the

Lord. Now, if your brother sins, go and show him his fault between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained 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.

And 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 the

Gentile and the tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven and 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. So on Monday and Tuesday, we looked at all four steps of this four -step discipline process.

It begins with if your brother sins and specifically sins against you, then you go and you confront him in his sin between the two of you.

And if he listens to you, then you've won your brother. Then that's the end of the matter. It's been taken care of.

If he does not listen to you, then it says you bring two or three more with you.

And Jesus goes back to the law with this. The same law, same standard that was set down for Israel should be the case in the church as well that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If it's just one person's word against another, then you can't admit the charge. But if two or three witnesses are able to verify this man is in sin and he won't repent of it, then you move on to that third step.

And the third step is if he refuses to listen to them, you tell it to the church. And then the fourth step, if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the

Gentile and the tax collector. I had somebody ask me, on what grounds might you need three witnesses?

It says two or three witnesses. If two doesn't suffice, why would you need a third?

Now I think one of the reasons why it's two or three witnesses is so you put a cap on it that you don't involve a dozen people in this thing, because you'll notice as you go through these steps of church discipline, more people keep getting added to it.

So at this step, it's just to be two or three witnesses, which means there's four now because you have the one who's been offended.

And then if you have three witnesses, four, that's the maximum. So it kind of puts a cap on it in that way. But when would be a case where two witnesses might not be enough and you'd have to include a third?

I think one such circumstance would be if the two witnesses are a husband and a wife.

I think you need to get a third witness because a husband and wife are one flesh. I think they still count as two witnesses, but it would be a good idea to add a third so that there's more credibility to the accusation or the charge that's being made.

Or if you have two witnesses and those two people seem to be of the same mind about everything, like they always agree on everything, well, maybe you need a third witness to come in that would add again some credibility to the accusation that's being made against the offending brother.

So those would be circumstances in which you would need a third witness rather than just two.

Yesterday, as we were talking about church polity, when you get to that third step of telling it to the church, your polity or the bylaws in your church need to define what that means.

You need to have like an outline of how church discipline is going to be handled here. It needs to be modeled, of course, after Christ's instructions in what we have in Matthew 18.

And it's not the only place where we have an instruction concerning church discipline, as I had shared with you on Monday.

Paul gives another process in 1 Corinthians 5 and even names specific sins that need to be handled in this way.

And then he gives a process in Titus 3 with regards to how to deal with false teachers or those who are teaching things that are sowing division in the church.

So there are other processes of discipline that are given in the New Testament. This is not the only one, but this is going to be the most common because you have one brother sinning against another.

How do you handle this? And that's the process of discipline that we have been given here.

When we come to reading, you tell it to the church. The church could simply be the elders.

It could be a committee, a disciplinary committee. Maybe it's all of the officers. It's elders and deacons together.

However, you outline that in your church bylaws, you need to clarify. But as I said yesterday, this does not have to mean that you take this matter before every single person that's in the congregation.

I have been involved in disciplinary processes that have been so complicated in the drama that has unfolded that there's no possible way to stand before the congregation and catch them up on everything that has gone on in this particular process.

Now that we've come to this place where we have to tell it to the church. The elders have been in this every step of the way.

So the church needs to be able to trust its elders when the elders stand before the body and say, this man is being disciplined for this.

You do need to name the sin. Here's what it is that he's guilty of, and here's what he's being removed for.

And we have determined that he is unrepentant and does not want to be in fellowship with this body any longer, just by his actions.

Maybe he's still trying to be there and cause a ruckus, but by his actions, he's demonstrating that he's no longer part of the body of Christ and he won't listen to reason.

He won't repent. So we're bringing this to the church that you may know about it and vote to remove him.

And so the church needs to be able to trust its elders. If that's the scenario, if that's the way that things are going to be presented, not every single detail of every single case needs to be given to the entire body, because you might have other people that are involved in this.

They're embarrassed to be part of this situation. They don't even want to have their names included. And so you have to weigh those kinds of things as well.

This person doesn't need to be involved when we bring this before the congregation. We had a matter one time where we had to remove a man who was very belligerent and was even planning on standing before the congregation and hurling a whole bunch of accusations.

He thought that the disciplinary process was going to allow him to stand before the voting body and make a case for himself, which was going to be full of lies and false accusations, and he was going to try to win people to his side.

We knew he was going to do that. He said he was going to do that. And so we prevented him from doing it.

We said, no, you're not going to be allowed to do this. I mean, essentially, we would be allowing a false teacher to stand before the congregation and sow division, try to win them to his side.

And so we really banned him from the property and then brought it to the congregation. And the entire eldership was of one mind about this and able to say that we have tested this brother.

We have called him multiple times to repent. He refuses to repent. And so now we're bringing it to you to remove him from the body.

And if that's the kind of scenario that a church is facing, you need to be able to trust your elders.

But I think it's also a benefit to them. It guards the elders and even protects the church to have these things outlined in some sort of a polity, whether it would be in your bylaws or the church disciplinary process or some sort of policy or something like that.

All of those things, very, very important when it comes to discipline. It's not enough to have church bylaws in which you say, well, we're going to follow the disciplinary process in Matthew 18 and first Corinthians five and Titus chapter three.

That's good. That should be the process that you're following, but you still need to define your terms. So what is meant and under what scenarios would you come into that third step of tell it to the church?

And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as the Gentile and the tax collector.

Now, like I said, with regard to those terms, the Gentile was one who was not a Jew. The tax collector was a traitor to the

Jews. So that's why Jesus uses those two terms with the Jews. He would be to you as one who is not of you.

He's not one of you. He's either a pagan or he's a traitor. And that's the way that you consider him.

You can't be disciplining people out of your church and then inviting them over to your barbecue at your house.

That does not help that person. And it doesn't help keep the church pure, which once again, that's the purpose for church discipline is the purity of the body to maintain the purity of Christ bride.

And so when a person has been disciplined out of the body, but you're still welcoming them over for dinner and things like that, how much are they going to understand that they've done something truly wrong that separates them from the body, that they are no longer in fellowship with members of Christ's body?

One of the other things that I've seen that do in a church is where you have a person who's been disciplined out, but there's a few members and they're like, oh, we're still friends, you know, and we still hang out.

Well, that causes that person to resent the elders or whoever it is, is in leadership, those who are in charge.

See, it's really the people in charge who are behind this. We can still be friends with everybody else that's in the body.

It's the leadership. That's the problem. And that causes division that can sow factions as well. Consider what

Paul said to the Thessalonians and second Thessalonians chapter three. And this is concerning a brother who is not willing to work.

Second Thessalonians three, six, we command you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you keep away from every brother who walks in an unruly manner and not according to the tradition which they have received from us.

For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us because we did not act in an unruly manner among you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it.

But with labor and hardship, we kept working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you, not because we don't have the authority, but in order to offer ourselves as a model for you so that you would imitate us.

For even when we were with you, we used to command you this, if anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat.

For we hear that some among you are walking in an unruly manner, doing no work at all, but acting like busy bodies.

Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ that working with quietness, they eat their own bread.

But as for you brothers, do not lose heart in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our letter, take special note of that person and do not associate with him so that he will be put to shame.

And yet do not regard him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.

Do not even associate with him, Paul says, so that he will be put to shame. And you'll notice here that in this process, as he's talking about removing a brother from the body, you remove a person and the removal of them is not necessarily a statement that they are a

Gentile or a tax collector, because he says you're removing them from the body. You're not fellowshipping with them and you don't treat him as an enemy, but you admonish him as a brother.

So he may need to be removed from the body that maintains the purity of the body and also communicates to him that his sin is so great, it separates him from the body of Christ so that he will realize the seriousness of the sin that he's done.

He's still being regarded as a brother at that point. And then if he repents, then you bring him back into the church.

You've not yet gone to that fourth step of treating him as a Gentile or a tax collector.

That fourth step is not the step where you can take somebody out of the church. You can take someone out of the church at the third step.

But it's that fourth step where you declare that that person is really not a

Christian. It's not declaring that they're going to hell, but really as a church you're saying, we are not able to give testimony to this man's faith.

We don't see in him that he has a relationship with Jesus Christ. And Jesus assurance to us, if that's the kind of decision that we have to make, is that whatever we agree on in the name of Christ, he is there in the midst of us.

That's the section we're getting to today then as we finish up these instructions on church discipline in verses 18 to 20.

But anyway, wrapping up the thoughts that I'm sharing with regards to that instruction in 2

Thessalonians 3, Paul is saying there that if a person will not regard what we've said in this letter, you're not to associate with him.

So really, if he's disobeying scripture, if he will not be obedient to the word of God, then he is to be removed from you.

You come to that third step of church discipline. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church and the church now comes to this decision that he needs to be removed from our fellowship.

He's still a brother. At that point, he's not declared a Gentile or a tax collector.

But in that third step, you can remove him from the body that he would not be allowed to be part of the fellowship as he's undergoing this disciplinary process.

And then it's in the fourth step. If he refuses to repent, then you're going to you're going to follow that fourth step to declare and ensure the body understands he's not a member of this church anymore.

We as a church cannot verify that this is a man who is walking with the Lord. There was a friend of mine a number of years ago who got in trouble with drug use.

He was addicted to drugs, and it was actually his wife that turned him in to the elders of the church.

She came before the elders and said, my husband is addicted to drugs. This was not a church that I was a part of this.

So this happened to a friend in another church. But she said that he's addicted. There's nothing I can do.

I've tried everything. And he's even had a couple of friends that have tried to warn him about his addiction and what it's doing to him and what it's doing to his family.

And he won't listen to reason. Those friends came to the elders and they verified. We have tried to get this man to repent of his his drug habit, and he won't do it.

So here's what happened. The elders go to that man at his home and they confront him.

And they say to him, brother, you're out like you can't come back to church here anymore while you're still in this place and you're addicted to these drugs.

Then you were at the third step of church discipline where you have to be removed from the fellowship of the body.

And you need to recognize how serious this sin is. And you have to repent of this or something worse is going to happen to you.

In the meantime, the elder said, we're going to get you help and we're going to take you a place to get you cleaned up, to get you sobered up, to get you off of this addiction.

And then when you have cleaned up and you have shown and demonstrated a repentant heart, you can be restored back to the body again.

The elders go before the church and they tell the church, here's what's going on. And here's what it is that we have done.

There's no need for that man to have to stand before the body. And now he's put on trial by everybody in that church.

But the church knows the situation. They know what's happened. And now they're all in agreement together.

This man is not in a place right now where he can be in fellowship with us. He's removed from the body, but hopefully seeing the seriousness of his sin, he will repent.

He can be restored back to this body. And then we don't have to go to that fourth step of declaring that he is not really walking with the

Lord. And that's what ended up happening with this friend of mine while he was getting sober and cleaned up.

He was mad at his wife at first. He was mad at the elders. But while he was in that process of cleaning himself up, he was convicted of heart.

He repented of his sin. He came back to the elders and repented. Then they brought him before the church and he repented before the body.

And that was a great example of church discipline working not only to purify the body, but even to restore a man back into fellowship with that body.

So let's consider these last three verses that we have here in the church discipline section of Matthew 18.

Jesus says in verse 18, truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

This is the same thing that Jesus told Peter back in Matthew chapter 16, right? Now Jesus is saying that it applies to all the disciples and really he's applying it to the entire church because that was the subject back in 17.

If he refuses to listen to the witnesses, you tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, then he is declared to be a

Gentile or a tax collector. So this is the whole church now that have been given the keys of the kingdom that Jesus described back in Matthew 16, where he told

Peter, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

Now he gives it to the entire church. So it's not something the Catholic church can't say that it's a set of keys that's been given specifically to Peter and the apostolic see in that succession from Peter down to the present

Pope. Only the Pope has the authority to do that. That is reading into the text. The text doesn't say anything of the sort.

Those same instructions that Jesus gave to Peter in chapter 16, he now gives to the whole church in chapter 18.

Peter did not have some super authority to order the affairs of the church. Rather, the whole church has been given a responsibility to order the affairs of the church.

That's really what's being meant there by whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.

Whatever you shall do in the discipline of the church, it is approved by God who is in heaven.

Therefore, this is to be understood to be extended to all members of the church, all

Christians, not just Peter, not just the apostles, but the church is the word that's used here.

So it is everyone that is in the church who binds on earth and looses on earth that it may be done in heaven also.

Whatever is handled in the matter of church discipline has eternal ramifications to it.

That's the way that we need to consider the importance of this process. And so lastly, verses 19 and 20,

Jesus says, 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.

So notice here again that Jesus says, if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it's going to be done by my father who is in heaven.

This is Jesus repeating once again, any two of you, it's not just Peter. I don't know that that was necessarily what he was implying there, but again, it's not just Peter.

Any two of you are responsible to handle these things for the church.

Church discipline is something that every single member of the church needs to understand what it is.

And you need to know what your own church's policies are concerning discipline. And if there's something in there that looks unbiblical, bring it up so that the policy can be changed.

But we all have a responsibility to one another. This is that process of sanctification that we're growing each other in.

Sometimes we encourage, sometimes we admonish. And so as we understand the responsibility we have to one another, therefore, we see that every member of the church has a duty to know church discipline and how it must be exercised among this particular body.

And so the Lord says in verse 20, where two or three have gathered together in my name,

I am there in their midst, where a determination has to be made in the body to remove somebody from the body.

Understand that Christ is with those who are on the side of righteousness, who are doing right according to his word.

Christ is there in our midst. When we're practicing this process of church discipline, if heaven forbid we do have to remove somebody and declare that this person is not actually a believer, they're not walking with the

Lord, we need not fear because Christ is on our side. And that's the assurance, that's the promise that he gives to his disciples in this passage.

Listen to what Matthew Henry says about this section. If a professed

Christian is wronged by another, he ought not to complain of it to others as is often done merely upon report.

But to go to the offender privately, state the matter kindly and show him his conduct.

This would generally have all the desired effect with a true Christian and the parties would be reconciled.

The principles of these rules may be practiced everywhere and under all circumstances, though they are too much neglected by all.

But how few try the method which Christ has expressly enjoined to all his disciples.

In all our proceedings, we should seek direction in prayer. We cannot too highly prize the promises of God.

Wherever and whenever we meet in the name of Christ, we should consider him as present in the midst of us.

And I think that's a great place to end these three days that we've spent talking about church polity, church discipline, our church duty.

If you have any questions about this or thoughts that you would like to add, send me an email when we understand the text at gmail .com.

I'd love to hear from you and maybe even respond to a few of those questions on our Q &A, which we do on Friday.

Let me finish here with prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what has been given to us by our

Lord. And I pray that we would be diligent to follow these things in the interest of the body of Christ.

We want to glorify the head who is Christ, and we desire that his body would be sanctified.

And so these rules regarding discipline have been given to us for that purpose, that we may build one another up in love.

And may it be in love, not just lording these things over people because we want to be able to exercise some kind of authority, but because we love the body and we desire that it would be matured into Christ Jesus until that day that we will be joined together with you in glory.

Forgive us our sins and help us to forgive those who sin against us, which is that next section there of Matthew chapter 18, we're going to consider next week.

Help us to remember that we are guilty of much against God and yet you have shown mercy and compassion to us so that we likewise would show compassion to others in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a

New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.