The Discipline of God's Children, Part 2
Matthew 18:15-17
We're returning our study of Matthew's gospel to Chapter 18; Matthew Chapter 18. Last week we began to examine verses 15-20 and we want to return to that passage for our study again this morning. Let me read it to you so that you have it in mind as we approach the word. Beginning in Matthew 18 at verse 15. "Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more in order that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established.
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a tax collector. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall have been found in heaven. And whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall have been loosed in heaven. Again, I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them by my Father who's in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
As I shared with you last week, this is a passage that deals with discipline among God's people. Now when I use the word discipline I want simply to remind you that discipline is not a negative word. It is a positive word. It is a word about training. It is a word not unrelated to the word discipling. To discipline is to conform someone to a standard. And when we talk about discipline in the church, we are talking about bringing people into line with God's standard.
That is for the glory of God, the ongoing of His kingdom and the blessedness of the individual as well. So discipline is a good word. It's a word about training and that is it's intent as I use it. Now this passage helps us to understand that there are basically two ways people are trained or two ways people are disciplined. This is definitely true of children. And since this entire chapter deals with the childlikeness of the believer, we should draw our analogy from childhood.
Remember that in this teaching setting in Matthew 18, Jesus has a child in His arm, an infant. And with that infant as His living illustration, He talks about His kingdom. And His point is that the people in His kingdom are like children. They enter like children. That's in verses 3 and 4. They are to be protected like children. That's in verses 5-9. They are to be cared for like children. That's in verses 10-14. And now in 15-20, they are to be disciplined like children. And then in verses 21-35, He'll remind us that they're to be forgiven like children.
We are children. And children need to be disciplined and basically they're disciplined two ways. By what we call positive enforcement and by negative enforcement. Now positive enforcement simply says if you do this I'll reward you. If you behave in this manner, I'll give you this or give you that. And we use that all the time with our children, don't we? Clean up your room and I'll take you to McDonald's or whatever. You want that new bicycle you've been asking for? Well, let me see you fulfill this particular obligation, get your grades up or whatever is. In other words, we use positive re-enforcement with our children and we also use negative re-enforcement.
And the scriptures have told us that if we spare the rod, we spoil the child. And so there is also that kind of re-enforcement that says if you don't do this, here are the consequences. Now we find the same thing is true in God's family. There is positive affirmation in the Bible where God says if you do, I'll bless you. If you do this, I'll reward you. If you do this, I'll fulfill your life with joy and peace and all the things that anyone could ever wish.
And then there's that negative re-enforcement that comes along (TAPE STOPS 4:46) if you don't do this there will be chastening. For every son the Lord loves He scourges and chastens. And so we have both of those kinds of re-enforcement and at various points in the scripture, one or the other might under discussion. In this particular text our Lord is telling us the importance of the place of the negative re-enforcement. That where you have people who are sinning against God it becomes the responsibility of the assembly of God's people to bring them into line. To bring to bear upon their lives certain consequences to draw them back to where God wants them to be.
Now, I mentioned also last week to you that for the most part the church has neglected this area. Now that is not to say there haven't been churches that have done it in all periods of time, even our own. For there are churches, but they seem to be in the minority. But this is not a new thing. When you introduce a thought, as Jesus does in this particular passage to us to this generation, people sort of are shocked and they say well, we can't get involved in confronting people about their sin. And we can't be telling the whole church that they've done evil and we can't be putting them out. After all we want to be loving and accepting and so forth and we find this very difficult to handle in our particular mindset.
But it's nonetheless the word of Christ to His church. And it's a word which the church has found difficult to accept for a long time. I was reading this week the writings of Jonathan Edwards. He preached a sermon in the 1700's and in it he said this. "If you tolerate visible wickedness in your members, you will greatly dishonor God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the religion which you profess, the church in general and yourselves in particular. As those members of the church who practice wickedness bring dishonor upon the whole body so do those who tolerate them in it."
And then he went on to say this, "If strict discipline and thereby strict moral laws were maintained in the church it would be one of the most powerful means of conviction and conversion towards those who are without." And then he asked this ultimate question, "How can you be the true disciples of Christ if you live in the neglect of these plain, positive commands." So this is not a new word for the church. The great man of the church in the 1700's, Jonathan Edwards, faced the same neglect as we face today. It is an essential ministry to be about ministering to the Lord's church on the behalf of its purity and its holiness.
Now the whole Chapter, as I said, deals with the childlikeness of the believer and you and I both know very well that children must be conformed to obedience by some kind of discipline, some kind of enforced rule. Some kind of consequences for their misbehavior. The same is true spiritually. The neglect of dealing with sin not only allows the person sinning to drift away further and further, but it sets a standard that allows others to walk in the same path of sin feeling no consequence will be forthcoming.
But where you act against sin you not only pull the person sinning back, but you re-establish the right kind of model of virtue. In the Old Testament when God set out to punish the people of Israel for their disobedience to His word, He said in Deuteronomy 13:11, "And all Israel shall hear and fear and shall do no more such wickedness as this among you." In other words, you punish a few, and the others get the message. And so there is then to be discipline. The church must be pure.
Now we started into the text and you can look at it now for a moment, and we said there are several elements of discipline that come out of this text. First is the place of discipline. And if you'll notice verse 17, it is in the ekklesia, the church. The word is used twice there. The ekklesia, it does not have a technical meaning here, not the Baptist church or the Presbyterian church or any other denomination. Not even the post-Pentecost church as we know it, but any assembly of God's redeemed people. In this case, Jesus is speaking to the apostles who are collected around Him sitting as His feet in a house in Capernaum. And even though the church, as we know it today, has not been born and will not be till after His resurrection, in its official character, what we see here is the assembly of God's redeemed people and in that context, discipline is to occur. And of course, He anticipates the church of which we're apart as well.
But wherever God's redeemed people come together there is to be a dealing with sin. Secondly, we see the purpose of discipline and it's indicated to us at the end of verse 15. "Thou hast gained thy brother." The intention of discipline is not to put people out, it's to keep people in. The idea as we saw last time is that when a person goes into sin and disobedience to God, they are lost to the fellowship. They are lost to the intimacy. They are lost to the ministry. They are lost to the communion of God's people. And it is that we wish to gain them back and the word there is a commercial word. It has to do with losing a treasure and wanting to recover it, and not being happy about the loss, because of its value.
So we are endeavoring to gain back a valued brother. That's the purpose. Always keep it in mind folks. Church discipline is not to put people out, it's to bring people back. Thirdly, we noted last week the person in discipline. The place and the purpose and then the person. Who is the person? Well, if you look at verse 15, "Moreover if your brother shall trespass against you, you go and you tell him his fault between you and him alone. For he shall hear you, you gained your brother." Now it's fairly clear who the person is, it's you and me. It's an individual thing. There are no spiritual SS. There are no CIA members in the church. There's no particular search and seizure committee. There's no commando units. This is everybody.
We are all involved in going out to seek one another to restore one another to gain back the sinning brother who's drifted away from the community of God's people. By the way, I suggested to you last time that there are some prerequisites. First is willingness. You have to be willing to go, and these commands imply that you have to act on your will. Jesus is saying you go and you tell him. And that indicates that you need a responding will to that.
Secondly, there must be a zeal for God. David said in Psalm 69:9, "Zeal for thine house has eaten me up. The reproaches that are fallen on thee are fallen on me." David had such a tremendous sense of God's glory that when God was wounded, David felt the pain. And we need that same kind of response so that when God is dishonored, we feel the pain. Our heart is so knit with God's heart.
And the third thing is personal holiness. You can't go, as Jesus said in Matthew 7, to take a splinter out of somebody else's eye if you've got a two by four in your own. So willingness, a zeal for God, and personal holiness. Paul sums it up wonderfully in Galatians 6 when he says, "If a brother is overtaken in fault, ye that are spiritual restore such a one." And so you're the person, I'm the person, we're all to be involved in this. And I've thought about this so often in these recent days how marvelous it would be if all of the assembly of God's people were totally committed to the recovery of every sinning brother and sister.
We would become ministers of holiness. And as I said last week, we've got ministers of this and ministers of that and ministers of the other. And everybody wants to be trained to teach and preach and disciple and evangelize and so forth, but where are the ministers of holiness who pursue for the purity of the church? Well, that takes me to a fourth point. Now we'll get into our study for today. The provocation in discipline. What sets it off? How do you know when to do this? How do you know when to approach someone?
Verse 15, "Moreover," it starts with the word moreover. It basically means now. In other words, having said all that we've just said about the care and protection of God's people, having established all of that, that they're like children and they have to be protected and they have to be cared for and sometimes they have to be sought after when they go away as verses 12-14 point out. The good shepherd seeking the lost sheep. Having said all of that, now specifically what do we do if thy brother shall sin against thee?
Now what are we going to do? Now notice what it says. Here's the provocation. "If thy brother shall sin," hamartano. The basic New Testament word for sin. It means to miss the mark. God sets the mark, men miss it. It is to violate His law. It is the word hamartano from which we get our theological word hamartiology, which is the study of sin. And so what do we do if thy brother sins against thee? That's the issue. Now we asked the question because it's so very important, it says here "If thy brother shall sin, go and tell him." The question is, what constitutes a sin that needs discipline?
What's the answer? What sins need to be corrected? Which ones? All of them, that's why the text is general. All of them. You know, there are good sins and bad sins. And there's not sort of a scale in the middle with poles on each end. Sin is sin and it is the antithesis of the utter holiness of God. And the sin, any sin, puts a stain on the fellowship. It mars the communion. And so any sin is a sin that ought to be corrected. If any member of the Christian fellowship sins in violating God's standard in any way, the process immediately goes into action. That's God's desire.
And it should be immediate. The issue is holiness, any sin. Now look further at this text. You'll notice it says "If thy brother shall sin against thee." Now this is an interesting little thing, this against thee. Some manuscripts have it and some don't. And so I spent some time this week, because it seemed that nobody could agree on whether it was in or out and I'd read as much as I could on the subject of whether this belongs in the text or out of the text and my conclusion is that nobody knows. Some ancient manuscripts, trustworthy as they are, have it. Other ancient manuscripts, equally trustworthy, do not have it.
And so we cannot tell in terms of looking at what's called lower criticism, analyzing texts, whether it belongs in or belongs out. You say, well, what do you think we ought to do? Leave it in. I mean, if there's any question at all, leave it in. And I really don't think there's any question at all in spite of what the manuscripts say. If you'll notice verse 21, I think it might help you to clear up the issue. Peter here responds to what Jesus says. And he says, "Lord how often shall my brother sin," what, "against me and I shall forgive him?" And by the fact then, there's no...by the way, no manuscript problems on that one. And so by the fact that Peter picks up the against me, I'm assuming that that's what he picked up from Jesus.
The comparative passage in Luke 17 and verse 3 where Luke records our Lord teaching on the same subject says, "Take heed to yourselves if thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him. And if he repent, forgive him." So in Luke's word there to us quoting Jesus it is against thee. So I like to think that it belongs in the text. Now some people immediately say if its there, it's a problem. Because what it means then is that the only person responsible to go out and seek this person is the one against whom he sinned. You see that? In other words, that's the debate. If you say if your brother sins against you go, then I'm only responsible for somebody if they've sinned against me.
You want to know something? That's right. That is exactly right. If they don't sin against you, you're not responsible. But let me tell you what that means. There are two ways you can be sinned against, direct and indirect. Let's talk about the direct way. The direct way that you might be sinned against would be if somebody punched you in the nose because they were mad at you. If somebody stole from you. If somebody deceived you. Somebody lied to you. Somebody abused you. Someone slandered you. Someone committed a crime of immorality against you taking your purity.
These are sins directly against you. And the text says if such a person sins a sin against you, go and tell him. Why? In order to gain your brother. It isn't that you go and say you dirty, I want to tell you what you did to me and man, I'm going to work the rest of my life to make sure you don't survive. That's not it. This is a marvelous thought. When you get sinned against, deceived against, lied against, slandered, abused, whatever the sin is, and this is a brother, we're talking about in the family now folks, a Christian does this, you go and tell him the sin and get him to confess and repent that you may gain him back as a brother or gain them back as a sister in Jesus Christ. In other words, you are showing the most magnanimous heart attitude that says you have sinned against me, but that is not the issue. The issue is I've lost you as my brother and I've lost you as my sister and my heart longs to restore you to that. I mean, that'll blow the mind of somebody who is waiting for your retaliation. Who's waiting for your bitterness.
But our tendency is somebody does something we don't like, somebody touches us in our life some way and wounds us or sins against us or commits an act of disobedience to God which affects us directly and we put them on our grudge list, don't we? And we let bitterness cultivate in our hearts and resentment and anger. And Jesus said, if you get sinned against, go and gain your brother back with an attitude of forgiveness. And if you compare Luke's passage, he says that. Go to him, rebuke him, and if he repents forgive him. Marvelous.
How many people can you think of in your mind that you've got a grudge against that you just won't speak to. You have nothing to do with. Every time they come up in conversation your mouth curls a funny way. Do you have anger toward them, bitterness? Because they've done something to you. Listen, Ephesians 4:32, "Forgive one another as God, for Christ's sake, forgave you." Who do you think you are to hold a grudge when God's forgiven you so much. So you go and you confront to seek to gaining your brother.
But what if it's indirect? And this is very important. Not all sins against me are directly against me. They could be indirectly against me. Now listen carefully this is a very important point. Any sin in the assembly of God's people is against any of God's people, because it stains all of us. I remember Sam Erickson, when he was here before he went to the Christian Legal Society in Washington, said to me one day, "I just had a shocking experience." He said, "I invited an attorney down in the city of Los Angeles, a fellow attorney, to come with me to church." And he said, "Well, what church do you go to?" He said, "I go to Grace Community Church." He said, "Oh," he said, "I know that church, the most crooked attorney in the city goes there. I wouldn't go to that place."
Now sin was not directly sinned against Sam by that attorney, but it affected him and it affected me and it affected our whole church. It affected everybody because we had some attorney who was living an ungodly life and saying he went to Grace Community Church. All of us were affected by that. Christ's body was stained. I remember the next Sunday, I got up and told that story and said I don't know who you are out there, but I wish you'd either get your life straightened up or leave because you're not making a very good witness for our church.
You see, when anyone sins, they're lost to our fellowship and it touches all of us. When anyone is living a disobedient life, they bring reproach on Christ and we are Christ and we bear His reproach so that indirectly all of that sin is against us. If I know about it, it's against me, because I'm willing to stand for the holiness of God's name and the zeal for His glory. To look at it the other way would be if, for example, we are only then to react to sins directly against us. Then does that mean we have no responsibility when someone lies to an unsaved person outside the church? Or goes to a harlot? Or slanders somebody else? Or abuses somebody else? In other words, if you narrow this thing that we are only suppose to respond to those who sin directly to us, then people could be sinning on the outside with people in the world who aren't apart of the assembly and have absolutely nobody to go to them. See, that doesn't make sense.
The point is that any sin is a sin that stains the fellowship, whether it's direct or indirect. And it's summed up in the words of the apostle Paul. He said it twice, once in 1 Corinthians 5 and once in Galatians 5. "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." You can't isolate sin. It leavens. And leaven is the illustration in the Bible always of influence; of influence. That's why they had to take unleavened bread out of Egypt. Don't take the little starter that came from the last dough that you baked in Egypt. Don't take any remnant of Egypt out to penetrate your new life. No influence. You cut the cord. You cross the sea. That's over. You don't bring a soured starter for your new bread. You have unleavened bread with nothing of the past in it.
And so leaven is influence, and a little sin will influence everybody. So we're called to discipline any sin. In our church we have dealt with doctrinal error. I'm thinking of some of the discipline that we've been involved in. We've dealt with immorality, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, divorce, dishonesty, lack of submission, cruelty, divisiveness, gossip, blasphemy, slander, profanity, and I suppose even more; any sin for God's glory and the purity of the fellowship, and any sin anywhere will touch you. So if you know about it, that should provoke the process.
Now that brings us to point five, the process in discipline. What do you do? You know what's to happen in God's redeemed assembly? You know you're the person. You know the purpose is to gain your brother back. You know any sin qualifies. Now what do you do? How do you go about it? Four steps, four steps, very clearly delineating and outlined. Step one, verse 15, "Go and tell him his sin between thee and him alone." That's simple enough isn't it? Go and tell him his sin. Go, present imperative. Get in motion. Get going. Pursue, the idea of the present imperative is the idea of you continue to go. Pursue this thing. Don't be distracted. Pursue. And then it says, "tell him," and that is an errest imperative which has the idea of make your point, be convincing, get the point across.
The verb, elencho, means to expose to the light. In other words, hang in there and until he really sees it. You don't just go and say hey, you know, I haven't seen you at church and I was just wondering are you drifting around. No, just go and confront and make it clear and open up the sin and help them to see that sin, expose it. That's the idea of that errest imperative there. Show it to him so there's escaping it. Take the time and the effort that is needed. It's a difficult task. It's a delicate task. It's difficult with the people you know, because they know you and when you go and start talking about their sin, they may have something to say to you.
It's difficult with the people you don't know, because you're going to say who am I to do that? I don't know them. We tend to be fearful over the people we know. We