SPEAKER_00: I have a trivia question to start off with.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to relate to what we're talking about later on.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the trivia question for you.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: What is the one thing that cannot be restrained, stuck, limited, chained, tied up, or made a prisoner?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I like that.
SPEAKER_00: That was not my answer, but but yeah.
SPEAKER_00: The power of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's good.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: What's another one?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Seven.
SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit, yeah, he can't be restrained.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
unknown: Perseverance.
SPEAKER_00: Perseverance, okay.
SPEAKER_00: The one that I'm thinking about is the verse in the Bible that says that the word of God cannot be restrained.
SPEAKER_00: It can't be nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can take and limit the power of God's word.
SPEAKER_00: So what we're doing, what we're doing is we are taking God's word and we're letting it impact us.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we can resist what God wants to do in our life, but that's our loss.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's going to restrain what God wants to do.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody can bind the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: So in Matthew 18, we find Jesus teaching his disciples about life in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: We've been talking about that.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're new to the Bible, you're new to kind of like what it means to be a Christian or to read the Bible, what you need to understand is that God made you, he loves you, and humanity is in rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_00: So while he loves you, we're born in the state of rebellion against God, and it causes all this destruction.
SPEAKER_00: And he's inviting you to be restored, to leave that place of destruction and to experience his restoration in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And what he calls this thing that you're invited into is this new society.
SPEAKER_00: He calls it a kingdom, where he's the king.
SPEAKER_00: And his kingdom is described beautifully.
SPEAKER_00: If we just went and walked out the door here and just talked to somebody, kind of walking through Fell's Point, and we we described the kingdom, they would be like, yeah, I want love.
SPEAKER_00: I want peace.
SPEAKER_00: I want a setting where there's a welcoming atmosphere and there's provision.
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I want all those things.
SPEAKER_00: But then you say, well, you can't have the kingdom without the king.
SPEAKER_00: That's the sticking point.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the sticking point during the time of Jesus, as he's coming and he's teaching all about his kingdom, and he's inviting people into his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He's inviting you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, follow me into my kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The sticking point for you is that in order for him to be king, you can't be.
SPEAKER_00: You have to relinquish the government of your own life, and you have to say, Jesus, I'm ready for you to rule and reign in your life, to bring your kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It's a good thing that he wants for you, but you have to be willing to receive that kingdom from him.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been talking through Matthew 18, we talked about humility like a child.
SPEAKER_00: He used this term of, hey, what does it mean to be great in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: You need to be like this child in its humility, its humble dependence.
SPEAKER_00: And then he talked about the seriousness of sin in your own life, that the society that you're welcomed into, his kingdom, that sin itself is so serious that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off.
SPEAKER_00: Not literally, but you need to have this disposition towards your own rebellion against God, where you're just like, I'm dealing with that.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just like, oh, you know, Jesus died, rose again, like, you know, it's going to be okay in the end.
SPEAKER_00: He gets me.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The things that we're doing wrong that don't line up with his kingdom, we cut them off because we want to experience all the life that he has for us.
SPEAKER_00: And what he wants for us is good.
SPEAKER_00: And then he talked about the seriousness of causing other people to stumble, where we're living in a way where it hinders and disrupts the closeness that the people around us feel to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's things that we may do where it's not just us privately sinning against God, but it's behaviors towards others where we're stumbling them.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, they're walking along, enjoying their relationship with God, but then they come across us.
SPEAKER_00: And when they come across us and what we're doing, it causes them to all of a sudden stumble and feel separated from God.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, look, if that's you, it'd be better off if you had a millstone tongue hung around your neck and you were cast into the sea.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that you're not necessarily saved, but this society, this kingdom that he's welcoming you and I into, is a sacred space where you know the God of the universe and your life is flowing from what he's pouring into you.
SPEAKER_00: And so if there's other people around that are getting in the way of that closeness to God, Jesus uses some of the most strong language to say those people ought to be basically killed in a judgmental way.
SPEAKER_00: He turns to a topic that now affects all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And it is how do you handle the repeated rebellion of another Christian?
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about being welcomed into this kingdom, this society, and um what do you do when you have somebody that you're with who is a Christian who's just saying, hey, I'm a Christian, but the thing in their life is continuing to be just open rebellion to God.
SPEAKER_00: We call that sin.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do when somebody else around us is continuing to sin?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is gonna give us a step-by-step process in how do we how do we help other people in that setting?
SPEAKER_00: And then we're gonna talk about a related um theme of the authority as we're making those determinations.
SPEAKER_00: So let me read the text to you.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put it up on the screen so you can see it.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 18, 15 through 20 says this if your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone.
SPEAKER_00: If he listens to you, you have won your brother.
SPEAKER_00: But if he won't listen, take one or two others with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses, every fact may be established.
SPEAKER_00: If he doesn't pay attention to them, tell the church, and if he doesn't pay attention even to the church, let him be like a gentile and a tax collector to you.
SPEAKER_00: Truly, I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Again, truly I tell you, if two of you on earth agree about any matter that you pray for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: For where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there amongst them.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Father, thank you for your word, and that we get to um read it and then integrate it into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We ask that you would teach us from this text, and that the wisdom here would be useful as we do our own lives, the lives that you've given to us, that you've called us to.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to be obedient and receive all that you would say to us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So there's two sections here that are related to one another.
SPEAKER_00: The first is this brother of yours, this Christian sibling, somebody, not just like your physical sibling, but somebody who identifies as a follower of Jesus, sinning against you.
SPEAKER_00: What do you do?
SPEAKER_00: And then from there, it goes on to talk about the church agreeing and binding and loosing.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about those two things this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We'll walk through the text as we do on most Sundays, starting with this verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, if your brother sins against you.
SPEAKER_00: So this is sin.
SPEAKER_00: This is not, hey, I don't like how my Christian friend um drives their car, or I don't like how they dress, or I don't like the kind of music they listen to, or I don't, I don't think that they should eat that kind of food over there.
SPEAKER_00: That's not, those are all um called Christian liberties.
SPEAKER_00: Those are things that we make decisions on that are not governed by Scripture, they're governed by our conscience and our relationship with God by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So we're not talking about um matters of conscience or Christian liberties.
SPEAKER_00: What we're talking about things that the Bible clearly articulates.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the line: don't lie.
SPEAKER_00: And you have a brother who you've known now for you know a year or so, and in your relationship with them, you see them as they're speaking, they're constantly lying.
SPEAKER_00: You know they're being dishonest with you.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's this, you know, don't slander or don't gossip.
SPEAKER_00: And every time you're hanging out with them, they're over the line here, um, gossiping and slandering, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or it could be any other.
SPEAKER_00: So, first of all, in order to do what this passage is teaching, you got to know your Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And what does the Bible say are the lines, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now, you may know what the lines are for society, you may know what the rules you know are for living in America or living in Baltimore City, you may know your culture that you grew up in, you may know the things that your parents told you are right or wrong, but this passage requires that you understand what is sin.
SPEAKER_00: And the only way that we know what is sin is from God.
SPEAKER_00: He is the authority, he's what we call the moral authority.
SPEAKER_00: He decides our ethics.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first thing you need to understand.
SPEAKER_00: And the sin then is directed at you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So this is an ongoing repeated rebellion by this other person against God, but hurting you.
SPEAKER_00: They're doing something that is injuring you, that is a violation of God's law against you.
SPEAKER_00: And so what do you do?
SPEAKER_00: You go and you tell him his fault between you and him alone.
SPEAKER_00: So you're going privately to this person.
SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe they did something in a public setting.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they've done it repeatedly, but the instruction here that Jesus gives to his disciples, he says, Listen, what you're supposed to do is you need to go to them and you need to tell them their fault.
SPEAKER_00: Now, notice he doesn't say, go to them and explode all over them in a heated rage.
SPEAKER_00: No, he says you need to articulate for them the fault.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to say, here is what I'm identifying as an ongoing sin in your life.
SPEAKER_00: So this doesn't happen a lot, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So in 1 Peter, one of the things that it says is that love covers a multitude of sins.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like we're taking every sin that's done against us and we are telling those faults to our brothers.
SPEAKER_00: No, generally, just in life and in family, we're letting love cover over a multitude of sins.
SPEAKER_00: We're trusting that the Holy Spirit is at work in the church.
SPEAKER_00: So this would have to be something that got to an elevated point where it can't be ignored.
SPEAKER_00: Love can't just cover over it, it needs to be addressed.
SPEAKER_00: And normally, the way that you're able to identify those things is that there is a just a sense in your heart that this is an open wound.
SPEAKER_00: It continues to get in the way of the relationship that you want to have with that person, and there may be, there may be a concern that this thing they've done to you is also affecting other people.
SPEAKER_00: And so you care about them because when people are crossing that line, it's not just hurting you, but it's a demonstration that that person is not living in that way in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: They're living in a way that is just beneath their heavenly calling.
SPEAKER_00: God's designed you.
SPEAKER_00: We know from Genesis 1 and 2 that you have this beautiful mandate to be this fruitful person.
SPEAKER_00: The person that's doing this sin against you, let's use the example of lying or slandering or gossip.
SPEAKER_00: That thing that they're doing with their mouth ought to be being fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: That God gave you and I a mouth so we can bear the fruit of God's kingdom with our mouth.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, what's going on?
SPEAKER_00: What's coming out of their mouth is garbage, poisonous fruit, and it's not the life that God intended.
SPEAKER_00: And so we we want to identify those things because we love one another and we want to go and tell them their fault, but it's between you and him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's missing from this?
SPEAKER_00: This doesn't say you go and you talk to everybody else around them.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say that you go and have a pow-wow, it just says you go to them alone.
SPEAKER_00: Now you're gonna see there's three steps in the process.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're gonna see is that it's a graduated process that is not about limiting you in terms of how to handle a problem.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why it's between you and him alone is to, it's this graduated prophecy, uh process of um privacy to openness.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you love a person, you don't go take their fault and share it with everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: You what?
SPEAKER_00: You don't put them on blast, you don't put them on blast in front of everybody else, right?
SPEAKER_00: What we're doing because we love people is that we're handling the matter first privately.
SPEAKER_00: So there's so much care and love that's demonstrated here.
SPEAKER_00: And you'll see here, if he listens, this is the if-then statement.
SPEAKER_00: And it's repeated in each stage.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this word here, if he listens, we're gonna see it three times.
SPEAKER_00: How many times?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see it three times.
SPEAKER_00: This is the objective.
SPEAKER_00: You're not just sharing an opinion.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of those things where you can go, hey, this is the pattern in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You said this, here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: Your life doesn't line up with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: It's clearly sin, and your the objective is for them to listen.
SPEAKER_00: And if he does listen, you've won your brother.
SPEAKER_00: You've not won the argument, you've won this brotherhood, their kingdom status.
SPEAKER_00: You you've won a victory in their life.
SPEAKER_00: You the Holy Spirit used you in their in their life to help them not to be dominated by this sin.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: It is.
SPEAKER_00: So the so we we care about the person, we're handling it privately, we're making sure it meets this criteria of it's really disrupting their fruitfulness, and we're only hoping that we can win them.
SPEAKER_00: But that's if they listen.
SPEAKER_00: But what if they don't listen?
SPEAKER_00: We go to the next step, which is with two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: Two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: And um what we see here is he won't listen.
SPEAKER_00: So there's that word again.
SPEAKER_00: If he won't listen, take one or two others with you, so that by the testimony of two or three witnesses, every fact may be established.
SPEAKER_00: So at this stage, what we're doing is we are um uh we are trying to establish that, hey, it's not just me coming to you and saying, I think this is sin, but we're um getting we're saying, hey, let's just create a little courtroom.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the the language here, what Jesus is doing is he's borrowing from the Old Testament law that if in society, in Jewish society, if there was a um a court case that arose, in order for the um elders to determine the guilt of the person, there needed to be two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't just come and accuse somebody of something in the courts, uh, in the court of law in Jewish society.
SPEAKER_00: There needed to be two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: God told the nation of Israel that.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: And so the goal here is again, we're keeping it relatively private, but we're involving some other people just to verify what we're saying, again, hoping that we can restore this person.
SPEAKER_00: God's standards for justice remain consistent.
SPEAKER_00: We've we're using this wisdom from the Mosaic Law, it's still guiding the church practices, and we're using multiple witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they'll find their phone.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
SPEAKER_00: We don't get them in church.
SPEAKER_00: We just we just give announcements and we the the witnesses serve multiple purposes, right?
SPEAKER_00: So here's these two or three people.
SPEAKER_00: So there's four things that the two or three because so because so you may be called upon, you may be called upon to participate in this process to verify, like um, to somebody like, and so this is just life.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I some of us like me, like we don't like conflict.
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to go through life without conflict, but there are times where we're called upon to participate in helping some brother who's not living up to their kingdom potential.
SPEAKER_00: And yes.
SPEAKER_00: This was teaching happened after John the Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So John was very bold, he was willing.
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So I think Johnny I think so.
SPEAKER_00: I think you could.
SPEAKER_00: I think if you take John as an example of boldness, Jesus is calling upon his followers to be bold, not play games, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now you gotta create a you gotta create a a climate in a church.
SPEAKER_00: So so here's what it takes to be a church like this, right?
SPEAKER_00: We we've got to agree that we wanna be a kingdom people.
SPEAKER_00: That we're not we don't want to play games.
SPEAKER_00: We also have to agree that we hate sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that we recognize that our own sin is getting in the way of our fruit fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this, there becomes an open invitation of like, hey, look, if you see me in the way I talk, in the way that I act, like not living up to my fruitfulness that God's called me to, call me out on it.
SPEAKER_00: So so that so that becomes that that's something where it's like, wow, we we've spent some time together, right?
SPEAKER_00: We trust one another.
SPEAKER_00: This breaks down once you have a church where people don't really know each other and there's not close relationships and and um there's open hypocrisy because it then it becomes like, well, why are you picking on me?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you go pick on the five other people that are over there screwing up, you know?
SPEAKER_00: So there's a there's a a high relational nature, right?
SPEAKER_00: The fabric of the society has to really value the kingdom, personal growth, leaning forward, have an opposition to sin.
SPEAKER_00: And then you can the one way this doesn't apply to John is that um Herod, who John called out, Herod was not a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So he's just saying in society what you're doing violates God's law, which is fine and is very bold, but there's no path for um it falls kind of in another category where we may see, like in society, like um the govern, the governor or the the mayor may do something where it's just like that's wrong, that that violates God's law.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna publicly speak about it, but I'm not trying to go through this these steps to restore the brother, right?
SPEAKER_00: So there's there is uh all throughout scripture this value on bold, like speaking the truth.
SPEAKER_00: But this is this loving, like, hey, I want to restore a brother back to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The problem that Christians have, like with the John the Baptist scene, is that if our disposition towards modern-day Herods that are screwing up and all we're doing is like sin sniffing and like saying, you know, you are a horrible person, then what we're doing is we're kind of highlighting a morality and not the redemptive work of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So what we want to be able to communicate to somebody who's completely, let's say there's somebody, like like I I have um friendships with the guys that deal drugs up in um Douglas because I teach I've taught a Bible study up there, right?
SPEAKER_00: So my my work with um those guys up there that are actively involved in the drug market is to say to them, you're killing society.
SPEAKER_00: What you're doing is wrong, and God has designed you for so much more to live this beautiful, flourishing life.
SPEAKER_00: And so rather than feeling like I'm condemning them and saying they're without hope, I'm trying to invite them into God's great purpose for them.
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, I'm saying what you're doing is in total violation of how God's designed society.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So in this second step, we're establishing it with two or three witnesses, and again, the hope is that they will listen.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you four purposes for the two or three witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, they verify the facts of the situation.
SPEAKER_00: Second, having them there provides godly wisdom and counsel.
SPEAKER_00: Third, it establishes legal testimony if necessary.
SPEAKER_00: So let's say, heaven forbid, we find out that there's like a kid that's been messed with by a parent or a sibling or an uncle, and it's like, hey, this is happening in the church.
SPEAKER_00: Well, man, having another couple of adults there in that conversation, that's really important because we're gonna establish it.
SPEAKER_00: It's on record, here's two or three people that are there.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if that ever happens, we're calling the police.
SPEAKER_00: We'll skip some of these steps.
SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna go to the police, but we will also work for their restoration.
SPEAKER_00: But the police get called as soon as I find out.
SPEAKER_00: There's no like hoping to win a brother early on.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, we'll win you after you're doing your prison time.
SPEAKER_00: I'll come visit you, and we'll get we'll get you into fellowship in the prison there.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then they help mediate towards restoration.
SPEAKER_00: So there's a wisdom in bringing in those two or three witnesses, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so he doesn't listen.
SPEAKER_00: And so we got to move to verse 17, and here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: If he doesn't pay attention, if he doesn't listen to the two or three witnesses, tell it to the church.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where it becomes like a church matter, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And this is where we just we we come before the church.
SPEAKER_00: I've we've done this, I think, only on one occasion when the when the guy was screaming at me out front.
SPEAKER_00: Um and I I and because of the nature of it and his refusing to receive correction, I said, look, at this guy has open wounds with people in the church.
SPEAKER_00: He's violated, he's living in sin in the way that he treats other people.
SPEAKER_00: He is not a part of our church, and we do not fellowship with him.
SPEAKER_00: We but we do, the second half of this, it says, if he doesn't pay attention even to the church, let him be like a gentile and tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: We put him, this is the idea of excommunication, the person's put out of the church.
SPEAKER_00: But then what does it mean to treat somebody like a gentile?
SPEAKER_00: How does Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors?
SPEAKER_00: Answer my question, then I'll get to your question.
unknown: The last part of it about the Gentile and the tax collectors.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay, how does Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But how how did he treat Gentiles and taxes?
SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm going.
SPEAKER_00: How did Jesus treat Gentiles and tax collectors?
unknown: He was a Jew, of course, but he did like Gentiles and it's like.
SPEAKER_00: He recruited a tax collector to be one of his disciples once they repented.
SPEAKER_00: Zacchaeus, who was a wee little man, and a wee little man was he.
SPEAKER_00: What?
unknown: Matthew was one, they hated him.
SPEAKER_00: They hated him, but the way that Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors was he was evangelistic.
SPEAKER_00: So what Jesus is saying is you look at them, you look at them, and they're the ones that are um violating society, the tax collectors are violating society.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' stance was, look, you repent, I'm ready to welcome you back in.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to your house.
SPEAKER_00: And then with Gentiles, he's having relationships with them, giving them a vision for the kingdom in an attempt, come and be in the kingdom, come and follow me.
SPEAKER_00: So what Jesus is saying is there's this clear relational break.
SPEAKER_00: I don't look at you and you're going to want to hold on to your sin, you don't want to listen.
SPEAKER_00: Then I'm going to say, I'm going to put you into a new category.
SPEAKER_00: It's this category where you're still an enemy of God, but I'm going to want for every time I see you, I'm going to be like, hey, are you ready to follow Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to let him restore his work in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to let him unleash his fruitfulness in your life?
SPEAKER_00: We love you.
SPEAKER_00: We miss you.
SPEAKER_00: We want you back at church.
SPEAKER_00: But until you get this sin figured out, it's until you're ready to let go of it, you got it, you can't, I can't hang out with you.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So you want to know how this worked.
SPEAKER_00: With in the church in Corinth, there was a uh there was a man that was a part of the church every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: He was there, he would come to the potluck meals, and everybody at church knew that he had taken and was sleeping with his dad's wife, so his stepmom.
SPEAKER_00: And it was just this known thing that this is this is what this guy's doing.
SPEAKER_00: And the church was patting itself on the back for being so accommodating.
SPEAKER_00: Like, look how, look how gracious, look how loving we are, that we're still letting him come to church.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, listen, I've heard about this story, and when you gather together, I'm there in spirit with you.
SPEAKER_00: You need to put this person out of the church and you need to turn him over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: So he moves from being a brother in our midst and getting all the benefits of church.
SPEAKER_00: Like for our church, what are the benefits?
SPEAKER_00: He was an outcast everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: He's an outcast.
SPEAKER_00: What are the benefits for being in our church?
SPEAKER_00: You get food after church.
SPEAKER_00: But other than that, you get some new, you get some new friendships, right?
SPEAKER_00: You got people, there's a bit of a safety net that forms.
SPEAKER_00: Like we I've helped out people with rent and with their electrical.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's these like cl this closeness, this friendship that we develop with one another, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and what Paul's saying is, look, you don't get that benefit anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You need to be put outside of the church.
SPEAKER_00: You don't get all the benefits of church and get to hold on to your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting, he says, when you're put outside, you're turned over to Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Satan gets to destroy your flesh, not your soul, but you're exposed to the destructive work of Satan because you're outside of the church covering.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But that's more on the back end.
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, kind of.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of.
SPEAKER_00: So we've got some principles here.
SPEAKER_00: We've we're moving from privacy to a more public addressing of the sin.
SPEAKER_00: And then um the other core here, the the other core principle is um that the severity, so the severity of it increases.
SPEAKER_00: Um what is my last, the third one here?
SPEAKER_00: So and then the third is that it relentlessly, it shows the relentless pursuit of God.
SPEAKER_00: Like we don't give up on people because God doesn't give up on people, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so um there is this, it's not that we're mean, right?
SPEAKER_00: It'd be easy to do this in a mean way, but but we don't do this because we're mean, it's because we love people.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus loves people, he doesn't give up on people, and he's not okay with you or me just sitting in open rebellion, coming to church on Sunday, and then just openly rebelling against him.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what he wants for us.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to identify that sin and cut it off in the most severe way.
SPEAKER_00: That's how we're supposed to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, in the last few minutes here, let's move to this next section about authority, binding and loosing.
SPEAKER_00: So he says in verse 18, truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth.
SPEAKER_00: So this is all a part of this section.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So if you go and look up this word binding, it's used when um people are thrown into prison, put into jail, and then it's used in terms of um Satan bound a woman spiritually, and she was um uh disabled because of uh this something spiritually going on in her life.
SPEAKER_00: And then we also have um the idea in Romans 7 that if a woman is married, she's bound under the law to her marriage.
SPEAKER_00: So it is this idea, the word literally means um to restrain, or it can mean to obligate somebody with a duty.
SPEAKER_00: Um when Jesus brings this up, he's borrowing heavily from the rabbinic the rabbinic tradition, where authority, authority is described as declaring here's what's forbidden and here's what's permitted.
SPEAKER_00: So in this context, Jesus is saying the church is speaking authoritatively, based on God's word, to say, this is the things that are forbidden, and then these are the things that are permitted.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the idea here behind a binding and loosing.
SPEAKER_00: There is this interesting, like what you do, uh what is bound in uh on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you lose.
SPEAKER_00: So do you see the parallel?
SPEAKER_00: That as we are acting, as we're working and doing life, doing church, there is this correlation between on earth as it is in heaven, right?
SPEAKER_00: So that's Jesus' prayer, right?
SPEAKER_00: Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So there are things where we just decide as a church, like this is this is what we're for what's forbidden.
SPEAKER_00: This is what is out of bounds for us.
SPEAKER_00: These are the things that are permitted.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is saying, hey, there's this shared authority that you have.
SPEAKER_00: This goes um really well with this idea out of Genesis 1, 26 through 28.
SPEAKER_00: When God made humans, he said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
SPEAKER_00: They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, the creatures that crawl on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So when God made the heavens and the earth, we're created in his image, and with these first humans, he's saying, here's the the designated role for humans, to take this authoritative position within creation that you're going to govern on behalf of God over earth.
SPEAKER_00: So God created man in his own image, he created him in the image of God, he created them male and female.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
SPEAKER_00: God blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, but subdue it and rule.
SPEAKER_00: Subdue rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So from the very beginning of the Bible, God is saying to humans, I'm giving you a designated role.
SPEAKER_00: You bear my image, and I want you to act authoritatively within the world.
SPEAKER_00: Here's Jesus saying to the church, You're now a part of my kingdom, and what I want you to do is I want you to bind on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to loose on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: This is this cannot be done unless you have a vibrant spirituality, which is what he talks about in verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will give you, or this is what he told Peter rather.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first time we see this going on.
SPEAKER_00: Peter was told that he would be given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever is bound on earth will have been bound in heaven, whatever is loosed will be on earth will be loosed in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen this before.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is repeating it in our text.
SPEAKER_00: Here's verse 19.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I tell you, if two of you on earth agree about any matter that you pray, you pray for it, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So here's it being, here's it practically being out.
SPEAKER_00: When we're praying together about the things, um we are agreeing together in prayer, and God's acting upon it in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He says, It will be done for you by my Father.
SPEAKER_00: This is not like you're just entrusted with the ability to do like hocus pocus magic, like Harry Potter.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is the followers of Jesus who are in the kingdom, understanding more and more, getting a vision for kingdom society, kingdom life, and we're agreeing on earth, and Jesus is like, I'm gonna do that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take more of heaven, bring it to earth.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take more of heaven and bring it to earth.
SPEAKER_00: So something comes up in your life where there is an issue of sin that's going on, somebody stumbled, limited in their fruitfulness, and we're praying, God, set this person free.
SPEAKER_00: Turn them loose so that they can be fruitful.
SPEAKER_00: That's the dynamic here that Jesus is talking about.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get to verse 20, and he says, where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.
SPEAKER_00: Many of you know this verse, right?
SPEAKER_00: You've seen this verse.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you start your prayer with this verse.
SPEAKER_00: Just remember that when Jesus says this, he's talking about the discipline season of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's a reality that Jesus is in our midst, but Jesus is the reality is that Jesus is gonna go with you out that door, not because two or three are with you.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says, where two or three are gathered together in my name, I'm there with my authority as you are putting people out of the church because of their sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm there with you.
SPEAKER_00: I am putting people out of the church because of that sin.
SPEAKER_00: Um here's the little part you need to know about in how this worked out in Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: So the guy is, he's sleeping with his stepmom.
SPEAKER_00: The church obeys Paul, says, Hey, you can't be in church anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put you out.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, they're they're trying to turn it off.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying.
SPEAKER_00: Um the what happens to that guy?
SPEAKER_00: That guy has his deep sense of remorse to the point where Satan's eaten him up and he's upset, and he's just like, I he feels so condemned about what he's done.
SPEAKER_00: Paul has to write in his second letter.
SPEAKER_00: He has to write in his second letter, he has to say, welcome him back in.
SPEAKER_00: Bring him back.
SPEAKER_00: He's demonstrated repentance in his life, he's cleared his life entirely of this matter.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want him to be swallowed up by sorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Bring him back, restore him back into the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: To forgive him because he's there at that place where it's like, look, you've turned away from that sin.
SPEAKER_00: So again, please don't go and do this with a mean heart or evil intentions, or I got you.
SPEAKER_00: All of this is with this heart of like, I'm so deeply sorrowful.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's what Paul told the church.
SPEAKER_00: You ought to be upset, sorrowing that this person has this ongoing sin in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm longing for you to be back.
SPEAKER_00: But the kingdom of God is special, and we don't get to just tolerate and just keep going in open rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_00: The church has a mandate from God to deal with those things.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: God, we pray that you would help us to lean in and to really root out the sins in our own life where we're just like, I want to put it away.
SPEAKER_00: I want to get rid of it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Lord, we just ask that you would um work in us to give us just that victory over sin.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to love one another so much that we could with deep care and concern talk to somebody that has sinned against us.
SPEAKER_00: That we could help restore them to win a brother.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that you would accomplish these things in our life, that we would just be so, so loving.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.