"Throwing Stones, Protecting Sheep" Matthew 18 Sunday Evening Worship Service

In Greek, there's two different words that are used to describe a synagogue.

The first would just be the word synagogue.

That's the building, and that's where the structure, and that's where Jews would meet for worship on the Sabbath.

Ten families would constitute a synagogue.

When a synagogue grew and grew, it could split and make another synagogue if it wanted.

Most of the towns in Galilee, with the part of Israel where Jesus did most of his ministry, where Jesus was from, most of those towns up there had one synagogue each.

For a town to be big enough to support a synagogue, it would have to have, as I said, ten families.

But some larger cities, like obviously Jerusalem, would have more, but most of the villages just had one synagogue.

When the people were gathered together for worship on the Sabbath, or when the people gathered together for some kind of function.

If the priests were there, maybe a priest was there to teach, or there'd be a sacrifice there, or there would be some kind of even community function.

These synagogues had lots of roles to play in the Jewish world.

When the people were gathered there, it would be called an ecclesia.

And the ecclesia wasn't a reference to the building or the structure.

Ecclesia is the word for the people who were gathered there themselves.

And so in the Jewish mind, you would have both of those words could be used almost interchangeably.

While there are some examples in Greek literature of the word ecclesia being used for like secular gatherings or like, you know, a town meeting or whatever, most of the use of both of those words were religious in nature.

The synagogue is where the building and the ecclesia is where is when people gathered there.

But what is interesting in the New Testament, despite how much of Jesus' ministry takes place in synagogues, the New Testament never refers to the gathering of the people in the synagogue as an ecclesia.

It never uses that word to describe the people in the synagogue.

It saves that word for a particular use.

It saves that word, Jesus does.

The first time he uses it is in Matthew 16, where he says he will build his ecclesia.

He will build his, and it's translated into English, church.

That's where the word church starts to get its origins in English, this idea that Jesus says he's going to build something new, something different than the world is seen, something different than the synagogues, and it's going to be an ecclesia.

And if you think about the two different words, synagogue and ecclesia, Jesus saying that he's going to build his ecclesia would be a confusing way to say it to the Jews, because you don't build the ecclesia, you build the synagogue.

The synagogue is the building.

It would make no sense to say you're going to build an ecclesia, because the ecclesia is the people.

But Jesus doesn't use the word synagogue.

Christians, even though we believe in the Old Testament, we believe that we are children of Abraham by faith, we don't meet for worship in the synagogue.

Perhaps that's because we meet on the Lord's Day instead of the Sabbath, which is Saturday, and the synagogue has kind of a sabbatarian feel to it.

But the real reason is, you know, we we don't know God's all of what God was thinking and using the word ecclesia for to describe us, but the real truth is that what Jesus starts in the New Testament is different than the synagogue.

It is organized differently, it has different structure.

An ecclesia, a church is going to be led by elders and have deacons and have members, and everybody who's converted into Christ is going to be part of the ecclesia is going to be part of the church.

And the gathering together of the people is the church.

It is the ecclesia.

The word itself means that we're called out of the world and we are gathered together into a new entity that Jesus himself builds.

And again, it's worth reiterating that in the Jewish minds, it would be ridiculous to say you're going to build an ecclesia.

You'd build the synagogue, of course.

You have to build the structure, but you would never say you'd build the ecclesia.

And yet that's exactly what Jesus says in Matthew 16.

In Matthew 16, Peter confesses Jesus is the Christ.

Jesus asks him, Who do people say that I am?

And Peter gives lots of various wrong answers.

And Peter says, Who do you say that I am?

Or Jesus says, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter says, You're the Christ.

You're the Savior, the Messiah, the sent one from God.

And Jesus says, You're speaking the truth.

And upon this confession, Peter, upon this confession, Peter, I changed your name to rock.

Remember, I'm going to change your name, Simon, to Peter Petros, Rock, which would be something you would use to build a synagogue.

Upon this confession, this confession of faith that I'm the Messiah, on that rock, Peter, I will build my ecclesia, my church, my gathering of people will be built in the confession of Christ as a savior through the preaching of Peter, as you see in the book of Acts.

Gets renamed the rock.

It's his sermons that launch this whole thing.

He takes the gospel global, and the church is built out of his preaching on the foundation of Christ as the Savior.

That's the church.

It's the first discovery of the church in the New Testament, Matthew 16, the first use of the word ecclesia, and it's something that would be unusual for the Jewish years.

Jesus is going to build it.

And then Jesus circles back to this in Matthew 18.

Matthew 18 is a whole chapter devoted by Jesus really to how life in the church is going to function.

This is new teaching.

Although Jesus had said it frequently in out his ministry, when I say new, this is a New Testament structure.

This is a the church is going to begin at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So in many ways, what you see in Matthew 18 is prophetic, pointing forward to Acts chapter 2, where the Holy Spirit comes and seals believers through faith and builds them together in the church.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

So this is looking forward, it's forward-looking.

The New Testament epistles are all built in light of the church, with the exception of the book of Revelation.

The rest of the New Testament epistles all exist to show you how to live in the church.

Acts describes the birth of the church, but then Romans, all the way through Jude, is describing what life is going to be like in the church.

How we're going to live in the church.

What God is going to do with us.

And then Revelation, of course, is looking back, church removed from the earth, what happens in the earth when the church is removed.

But Matthew 18 is an entire chapter looking forward to the church.

I want to work our way through this chapter tonight because as I mentioned, next week we're going to start a series in 2 Corinthians 7 here on Sunday nights.

I'm looking forward to that.

It's a passage of scripture that I have never heard preached before and have never preached myself before, and I'm looking forward to it.

But as I was been reading it the past few weeks and looking at it, it's just the Lord has just impressed on me the importance of understanding Matthew 18 in order to get into 2 Corinthians 7.

So I'm going to spend tonight going through Matthew 18 and looking at about how Jesus describes life in the church in this passage.

It begins in verse 1.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

The disciples have had this conversation before and they will have it again.

Matthew 18 parallels Mark chapter 9.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Mark chapter 10, of course, comes after Mark chapter 9.

Mark 10 · chapter mention Mark 9 · chapter mention

And in Mark chapter 10, the disciples return to this question.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

They ask Jesus another time.

They take a different run at him.

The disciples are angling to be known as great in the kingdom of heaven.

Even notice the Jewish language they're using, the Jewish mindset.

They're still looking forward to the Savior coming.

This is happening after Matthew 16, of course.

So Jesus has already been identified as the Savior.

He said he's going to build the church.

The disciples, that hasn't sunk into them yet.

Three of the disciples have seen the transfiguration that takes place in Matthew 17.

So they've seen Jesus transfigured.

They've seen him in his glory.

And yet they've come back down from the mountain.

They're working back down from the border of Lebanon there, the northern part of Israel.

They're working back down.

They're on their way back towards Jerusalem.

They're stopped in Capernaum, which is the city where they've done most of their ministry.

This is where this takes place.

You see that in chapter 7, verse 24, they're back in Capernaum, and this is where Peter's family is from, and they're back there, and this is where Jesus has already told them he's going to build a church, but they've circled back to this question.

When the kingdom of heaven comes, who's going to be the greatest?

And they don't let go of this question, by the way.

Even after the death and resurrection of Christ, they're still stuck on this question.

Acts chapter 1, Jesus resurrects from the grave.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

A resurrected person has just taught them for 40 days.

And their first question when he's done is, when is the kingdom then?

So they're stuck on this question.

They're looking for the kingdom.

And here the question is, who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Perhaps they're angling for greatness themselves.

We know that for sure from Mark chapter 10.

Mark 10 · chapter mention

Here the question is more ambiguous.

Maybe the Savior would be the greatest in heaven.

They're kind of looking for that.

If Jesus is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, they would like to know that because they're with him.

They've been with him for three years now.

And Jesus answers this question in an unusual way.

He calls a child to himself.

And he put the child in the midst of them.

That's a very directive action here.

Mark, when Mark describes a story in Mark chapter 9, Mark uses the language of props him up, that Jesus takes the child and props him up in the middle of the room.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

Which is a crazy scene.

You picture them gathered in a house in Capernaum, and they're asked, who's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

And Jesus snags a child who's passing by.

Can I borrow your child as a prop real quick?

He takes the child and puts them in the middle of them.

And he we don't get the full scene of this here, but Mark lets you know that the disciples had already been chasing away children.

They'd already been shooing away children from Jesus for crowding him out.

Earlier in Matthew 17, Jesus came down from the transfiguration.

There was a child that couldn't be, he was demon-possessed and he couldn't be woken up.

And so the disciples have a tracker here of chasing away children, trying to keep children away from Jesus.

Jesus showing them that he actually does want the children brought near to himself.

So here he grabs a child, puts them in front of the disciples, and says, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

And this is going to be our heading for the evening.

The church is for children only.

Jesus begins Matthew 18 by saying, You want to understand the church?

Here's a principle for you.

It's only for kids.

It's only for children.

This is so opposite what the disciples were expecting to hear.

Remember, the disciples are in a hierarchical society.

Everybody knew how important they were compared to those around them.

It's hard for Americans to understand the Jewish society like that because American society is somewhat, you know, equal.

There's different differentiation in wealth, of course, and in the size of your house and the kind of car you have and all the kind of things that distinguish ourselves from each other, but it's kind of a foundational principle of American living.

That stuff doesn't really matter.

You know, every one vote, one person kind of idea.

Americans have that in our society.

That is not the Jewish thinking.

That's not the Jewish.

In the Jewish world, justice is totally allowed to take off the blindfold and show some people favor and not other people.

Everything from seating charts showed how important you were to, I mean, 10,000 things all over their world.

And the disciples fancied themselves as important.

They certainly were going to be, if Jesus is the Savior, the disciples are right next to him.

So the disciples are important people.

The Pharisees are not important people, although in the Jewish world they are, but in the disciples might know they're false teachers.

So the disciples are kind of replacing the Pharisees in the flowchart kind of here.

They have no room for kids on that chart.

It's kind of an Americana part of our worldview where we elevate children and we, you know, celebrate their birthdays and give them gifts and take vacations and go to Disney World, and we want to show them how important they are.

And children are special and precious, and you know, crimes are, you get more time if you do a crime against a child than just a crime against a normal person kind of thing.

So we're a very, you know, equal society.

Except when it comes to kids, they get more protections from the laws, as they should, but that's the American worldview.

That is certainly not the Greek or the Jewish worldview.

In the Greek world, kids were expendable, kids could be exploited for sure.

In the Jewish worldview, kids shouldn't be exploited, but they basically existed to pass down property rights.

Sons more important than daughters, of course.

And, you know, that was their mindset.

The kids weren't supposed to be honored, certainly not.

They were supposed to be seen and not heard.

And here, Jesus snags a child, uses a child as a prop to answer the question who the greatest in the kingdom of heaven is.

This is a pretty outrageous way to answer the question.

Well, Jesus goes on to say, if you're not like a child, you don't get to enter the kingdom of heaven.

You will never enter the kingdom of heaven, he says.

You will never experience eternal life unless you become like this child.

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

So this turns the whole concept of what the, we're gonna get to the church in a few verses here, but this turns the whole concept of the way the church will be structured on its head from the way the world structures things.

The world structures things based on wealth, based upon importance, etc., etc.

Not so in the church.

The only way to get into the church is to be low, to be humble, to be like a child.

Children are often viewed as an inconvenience, even in the American world, an obstacle to living your life how you want to live.

You hear people say, I don't want to have children because then I can't go on vacation when I want, and I can't go out to the nicest restaurants, and I can't basically have my life revolve around me if I have a child, and so they wouldn't say it quite like that.

That's me interpreting.

And that's even more exaggerated in the Jewish or the Greek world.

And yet Jesus takes children who many would see as an inconvenience and puts them at the center and says, Look, if you want to go to heaven, you've got to be like the child.

What does that mean to be like a child as it relates to heaven?

And you know, people say children just believe whatever they're told and that's how you should believe the Bible.

I don't think so.

I don't think that's the model of I would be very much against the r what the rest of the New Testament teaches.

The rest of the New Testament doesn't teach, you know, just be quiet and believe whatever you're you're told.

I think there's lots of examples that are filled out in the New Testament of what childlike faith is supposed to look like.

I mean, children, first of all, understand they're incomplete, they're by definition immature, they're weak, they're undeveloped.

Children lack authority in and of themselves.

A child doesn't have authority.

A child who acts like he has authority is borrowing his parents' authority, isn't it?

You might say, Do you know who my dad is?

Don't mess with me.

Don't you know who my dad is?

I mean, that's just a confession that the child has no authority in and of himself.

Children are vulnerable, as I said, incomplete, immature.

That's the picture that for you to become a Christian, for you to put your faith, for you to become part of the church, for you to put your faith in Jesus Christ, you have to recognize that that's a description of you.

That you're immature.

You haven't begun your new life yet.

When you come to faith in Christ, you'll be a spiritual child.

You're dependent upon the Lord, you are needy, you don't have any authority in and of your yourself.

This is going to be huge for the disciples to realize as we go through Matthew 18.

That is believers, you have zero authority in and of yourself.

All of your authority is borrowed authority in the church, borrowed from Jesus, borrowed from your heavenly father.

That's Jesus' point here.

That you have to recognize your unworthiness, you have to recognize your incompleteness, you have to recognize you have listen, you have no independence, you have no strength, you have no authority in and of yourself.

That's what it means to be a child.

Specifically, you have no you have no works.

Look at what Jesus says here at the end of verse 4.

Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

You have to go down in order to go up, the kingdom of heaven is upside down.

A child has no works.

One of my daughters is in a wanda right now, has a birthday tomorrow.

She turns eight years old.

She's gonna get birthday gifts, I'm told.

I can guarantee you what this conversation is not gonna happen tomorrow when she receives her gifts.

She's not gonna say, no, no, no, no, no.

I need to do something to earn these.

I can't receive this kind of mercy or handout.

Let me go do something.

Like, can I mow the grass real quick and then earn my gift?

No, no child would ever respond to a gift that way with, no, I don't deserve this, I'm so sorry.

You know, let me go earn it first.

Never, never, never, never.

And this becomes the image of salvation.

That you recognize your immaturity, you recognize your neediness, you recognize that you don't deserve what God is giving you, nor can you.

You wouldn't tell God, I need to go earn that.

Thank you for the offer of salvation, God.

Hold that, please.

I'm going to do some religious works to earn my salvation.

I'll come back when I'm worthy.

Certainly how much, not all Jews, but certainly how much of the Jewish religion functioned in the time of Christ.

Not the way Jesus describes the church.

And so the heading for all of Matthew 18 is going to be basically that the church is for children only.

You understand that point.

The rest of Matthew 18 flows pretty naturally out of that.

And the first place Jesus goes in light of that fact is that the church is supposed to guard each other as children.

The church is supposed to guard each other as children.

He picks this up in verse 5.

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

He's using this image of receiving Christ now.

This is very parallel to what Jesus says in Matthew 16, that you can't enter the church unless you confess Christ is the Lord.

He's using this image of receiving Christ.

This is picked up in John chapter 1, that you receive the Lord.

John 1 · chapter mention

All who receive him will receive eternal life.

Romans chapter 10, same kind of language.

Romans 10 · chapter mention

Confess in the Lord, and you confess him with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that he was raised from the dead and your sins can be forgiven.

There's this idea that you're receiving something.

The Holy Spirit brings you truth.

The Holy Spirit brings you faith.

You receive eternal life.

That's the example Jesus is using here.

You receive one of these children.

That's like receiving him.

And now here's where that's a hinge here.

We're leaving the child behind.

Child can exit stage left.

Child can walk off the stage.

The child was a prop for a purpose here.

That you want to become a Christian like this child.

Now you receive other children when you receive other Christians.

So the the swing here for the rest of Matthew 18 is going to be that children represent Christians.

So if you miss that point, Matthew 18 is going to be a little bit of gibberish for you.

But if you get that point, things will start to build together here.

That the children represent Christians.

So when you see children in the rest of Matthew 18, we're not talking about actual children.

The rest of Matthew 18, children are talking about believers.

They represent believers here.

And so Jesus' teaching goes on.

But whoever causes one of these little ones who believes in me, speaking obviously of Christians here, who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

So this is where teaching in the church begins.

You have to come in the church like a child.

Also, if you cause harm to children, you deserve to have a millstone tied around you and plunged into the sea.

Capernaum is on the Sea of Galilee, by the way.

And, you know, not all of Israel is really designed for tourists, but this part is.

When you go there to Israel, you go to Capernaum and you can see the different houses and villages there.

And then there's a giant millstone right next to the ocean, right next to the Sea of Galilee.

If you go and look at it, and every time I've gone to the few times I've gone to Israel, I've read this passage at the that spot of the Sea of Galilee, just so you get the image that Jesus is talking with the see at his back, and there probably was a huge millstone there.

I mean they were uh everywhere, everywhere that they made grain, and Jesus is saying, if you cause another Christian to sin, that thing, this a millstone is like the drum set over there, should be tied around your neck and you should be thrown into this.

You can't throw a millstone.

So obviously this is hyperbole.

You can't 20 people could not throw a millstone.

But the image is something huge and massive should be tied around your neck and you should be hurled into a sea.

That would be a bad ending for you.

The point is that Christians are supposed to guard each other.

They view each other as children.

Children, of course, are needy and need protection.

So you protect other believers.

You protect them specifically from sin.

Verse 7 Woe to the world for temptations to sin.

It's necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes.

By the way, Judas is in this group, twelve disciples here.

Judas is listening to this.

He's going to hear this a second time on the Thursday night before he betrays Jesus, and Jesus is betrayed to the Romans and executed.

Remember, Jesus says, Son of man is going to be betrayed.

The Son of Man's going to the cross tomorrow morning.

Son of man is going to be betrayed, but woe to the person who does it.

Not the first time Judas would have heard this.

He heard it here.

The temptations to sin are going to be in the world.

But woe to the one who causes other believers to sin.

Think of the purity of the church Jesus is after here.

Sin should not be tolerated in the church.

A believer who provokes another believer to sin is doing something that is incredibly offensive to God.

Jesus compares it to a crime against a child.

Causing another Christian to sin is like committing a crime against a child, Jesus says.

And some people will justify tempting other believers to sin.

They're like, hey, they gotta learn about it somewhere.

Yeah, but yes, there's sin in the world.

Believers are gonna be tempted to sin.

We live in a world with sin.

Believers will be tempted to sin.

It just shouldn't be Christians that cause that temptation.

I was on a flight with my family maybe a year or two ago, and uh it was pre-COVID, and Lady T Rose in front of us just had like a she was freaking out.

The guy behind her was playing chess on her whatever, a batgam on the back of her seat, uh, literally playing batgam on the screen, and she lost it.

She stands up and starts screaming and cussing, and flight attendants come in and you know, telling her they're gonna restrain her, and they holler to the back of the airplane, and you know, nothing ended up happening to her.

Once the flight attendants, you know, got the zip ties out, she like chilled out.

And uh we get off the plane, and you know, she doesn't get arrested or anything.

She de-planes with the rest of us, and we're in in the jetway, and she's talking to her friends, and somebody says to her, you know, you shouldn't have been cussing like that around the kids, and they're pointing at my kids.

And she says, I remember that she's like, Well, they're gonna hear it growing up in this world, they're gonna hear it in the world.

Like, that was her defense of having a screaming, cussing fit on an airplane, is that there is cussing in the world somewhere, so it's okay for me to talk like that in front of kids.

It's ridiculous logic.

And I just looked at her and I don't even know what to.

I'm gonna take my kids this way.

They're believers that use that same logic.

It's okay for me to tempt another Christian to sin because there's sin in the world.

Isn't there sin in the world?

So you're gonna have to be exposed to it from somewhere.

May as well be from somebody you know.

Jesus says, It'd be better to be tied around a stone and cast in the sea.

Or better, here's another hyperbole.

If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off.

Throw it away, verse 8 says.

It's better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.

That's how Jesus responded to the hey, there's sin in the world.

They're gonna hear about it somewhere.

It's like, okay.

There's people with no hands and feet in the world.

You want to be one of them?

Gouge your eye out, he says in Matthew 5, and then here again in verse 9.

If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out, throw it away.

It's better for you to inner life with one eye, inner eternal life, meaning, you know, go to heaven with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown in the fire of hell.

Now, people misunderstand this, what Jesus is saying, and think that, you know, if you're if you're looking, if you're sinning by lusting after somebody, you should gouge out your eye.

Or, you know, there's even been you know monks in early church history that that taught that or would cut off appendages in order to guard themselves from sin.

But recognize that your hands and your feet and your eye don't actually cause you to sin.

They're all operating out of the overflow of the heart.

So gouging out your eye or cutting off your hand or your foot is not actually going to sanctify your life.

These are metonyms here.

Your eye stands for what's the desire in your heart.

What do you desire in your heart?

That's the eye.

What do you want to do with your life?

That's your hand.

Where do you want to go with your life?

That's your foot.

And if you want to go to places that cause you to sin, it's better for you not to go anywhere at all.

If you want to do things that cause you to sin, it's better for you not to do anything at all.

If you want to look at things that cause you to sin, it's better for you not to look at anything at all.

That's Jesus' point.

And when you connect it to the larger theme in Matthew 18 here, if you want to cause somebody else to sin with you, because you want to look at stuff or you want to do stuff or you want to go to places, it's better for you, first of all, not to go anywhere or do anything or look at anything rather than go to hell.

But secondly, it's better for you not to do that with somebody else so that you don't get thrown into a lake with a stone around your neck.

It's another way of saying there's no little sins when it comes to causing believers to sin.

When I taught high school in Los Angeles, there was a school, I taught at a Christian school that was K through 12.

And, you know, our school, we were up in the foothills of LA.

We did not have uh we had fire drills, but we our school actually never did earthquake drills, we never did active shooter drills, but we did do mountain lion drills.

So it was a tone that came over the intercom, it was a mountain lion drill, and this was it really was an active shooter drill, but it was a mountain lion drill.

We called it a mountain lion drill because the response, the protocol was the same.

You close the doors, you close the blinds, and but our campus had mountain lions.

And so not every mountain lion drill was a drill.

And you respond by getting the kids off the playgrounds, you know, you close the doors and close the blinds, and teachers go sweep the playgrounds and whatever.

You would never say there's only like two or three mountain lions.

So it's okay to go to recess.

I mean, how many kids can a mountain lion actually eat?

Like, probably not more than a few.

So why would we clear the whole soccer field just because there's a few mountain lions?

There's no small sins.

It'd be ridiculous for that kind of thinking to enter in.

You know, it's a it's a joke.

When we went to King's Dominion with the junior high and high school kids, we come back and people ask, you know, how is the trip?

And you know, Ryan makes the joke, oh, we brought most of the same kids back.

Only lost a few kids, and everybody laughs.

It's obviously a joke.

It wouldn't be an acceptable loss threshold with a youth group retreat, right?

We only lost three kids, you know.

We had a hundred of them.

What do you want?

It's 97%.

That's great.

That's Jesus' attitude towards sin in the church.

It's not acceptable.

It's not acceptable.

So, first, you're supposed to guard each other.

You help each other stay away from sin.

This leads to the second point.

You value each other as children.

Jesus picks this up in verse 10.

See that you don't despise one of these little ones.

I tell you in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.

What do you think?

Jesus says, you treat other Christians well and respectfully, and specifically, this is flowing out of here.

You're guarding them, you're protecting them, because you don't want bad things to happen to them.

And now he shifts from this world up into heaven and he says, there's angels in heaven.

You have seen angels in heaven in Ezekiel, you've seen angels in heaven in Revelation.

They're not cued up there reading magazines waiting for an assignment.

I mean, the angels in heaven are eager to serve God.

They have expectation on their faces.

They are ready to go.

They have wings and they can go anywhere in the world fast and they have strength like oxen.

They can do anything.

And they are wanting to serve God.

And the main function of angels, if you recall from Psalm 8 and Hebrews chapter 2, the main function of angels is to serve believers.

Hebrews 2 · chapter mention

That's their job.

And so you picture angels around the throne room of God eager to serve God by serving believers, and we're going to even judge angels for how they served us, by the way.

Paul will tell the Corinthians that.

We get to judge angels for how well they served us.

So now there's angels in the throne room of God eager to be dispatched, to do anything for any believer anywhere.

The angels want to go serve God by serving believers.

What a contrast between that eagerness and people who are okay causing other believers to sin.

Angelic beings would go anywhere and do anything to help the smallest and weakest believer.

And there are some so-called believers that will lead other believers to sin.

Incredible dichotomy.

And I could spend more time on it, but Jesus' main point here is you should value other believers as children.

That's the image here.

Like your own children, what do you think?

If a man has a hundred sheep, one of them has gone astray, doesn't he leave the 99 on the mountains?

And go in search of the one that went astray?

The guy has a hundred sheep.

He just lost one.

Of course he's gonna leave the 99 and go search for the one.

Isn't he?

He would be eager to do so.

If you have more kids, do you care about losing one of them less?

Veraclose have four, Azers five, anyone with six?

I mean, you can keep going up the if you have six kids and you only lost one of them at the mall, do you go back for them, or you're like, we got five others?

Well, there's some days, maybe, you might think that.

We can go get them tomorrow.

I mean, come on.

You've got a hundred sheep, you lose one, you go look for the sheep, Jesus says.

And of course the guy's gonna go look for the sheep, and when he finds the sheep, verse 13, he's gonna rejoice over it more than the nine he would ever want astray.

He's gonna find the lost sheep stuck in the mud, he's gonna rescue him, he's gonna bring him back to the others, and he's gonna be so excited, and that sheep's gonna be licking his face.

I don't know if sheep actually do that, but in my mind, the sheep will like lick his face and be so thankful, or maybe bite them.

I don't know how sheep act, but the I imagine the shepherd's gonna be stoked about this turn of events here, and the 99 other sheep are still grazing, they're still doing their thing.

Jesus says, verse 14, so it's not the will of my father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

So God does not want a single Christian lost.

They're more important than sheep.

So, first, you understand the church is for children only.

So you guard each other as children, you value each other as children, knowing that the angels and God our Father care for us.

Thirdly, you discipline each other as children.

You discipline each other as children.

If your brother sins against you, Jesus says.

You go and you tell him his faults between you and him alone, or that's the ESV, some translations say you go and tell him his fault privately.

I like that.

It's just an economy of words there, but it makes the sense stronger.

If somebody sins against you, you go confront that person privately.

You don't text 20 of your friends and say, hey, I've got to go confront Jesse, he sinned.

I want you to be praying for me.

I'm just telling you so you can pray for me.

That's a prayer request.

Sending it up the chain.

I gotta go confront him, pray that he receives my confrontation well.

No, wrong.

If you want to come confront me, just come confront me, okay?

I can take it.

You go and you confront him alone, privately.

You tell him his sin.

It's between you and him.

And if he listens to you, great, Jesus says.

You've gained your brother.

You've rescued him from his sin.

So the whole flow in this whole chapter, remember, you receive each other as children.

Children are immature, they do do foolish things.

So you're protecting them from foolish things, you're valuing them like children, but sometimes children do do foolish things, and you do need to discipline them, of course.

And you understand this is a if you have kids, you recognize your love for your kids is not contradictory to your discipline for your children.

Their love for them fuels your discipline for them.

That's why you want to correct them so they don't grow up obnoxious, because you love them.

You can even picture telling your kids, like, I love you too much, let you get away with this, you know?

Hebrews, uh Paul says the same thing in the Hebrews.

The Lord disciplines those whom he loves.

It's an evidence of being a child of God in Hebrews 12 that he does discipline you.

And so, your brother sins, you really do view him as a brother, you really do view him as somebody that you've loved, and so you go and you confront him.

You don't confront somebody for every sin, of course.

You know, your first step would probably see does love cover this kind of sin?

And again, the child analogy is so appropriate.

You don't correct every time your child sins.

Or that would be your like nonstop activity as a parent, just all day correcting.

And if you have multiple kids, there's not enough hours in the day to do all the correcting.

So you recognize there's a triage and you correct important things, you discipline important things, and you have a strategy about it.

Same principle as here.

If a brother, brother or sister sins against you in the church, you know, you first see can love cover this sin?

That's going to be taught, Peter's gonna teach that later.

But, you know, setting that aside for now, let's assume it's a sin that needs to be confronted.

It can't, love can't let you just tolerate it.

So you first make sure you have the log out of your own eye, right?

You know, don't go confront your brother about a speck in his eye when you have a giant log in yours.

That does not mean, by the way, people will turn to that, Matthew 7, that does not mean that you should never confront people for their sin, because the whole teaching was get the log out of your eye so that you can go deal with the speck.

You know, your child comes to you crying with a splinter, and you're like, I can't help you.

I've had way bigger splinters than that.

No.

You still have to help him.

Even though you've had bigger things happen to you, you still got to help him.

He's got the little splinter.

The same principle is here true, you is true here as well.

Somebody sins against you, you have to confront them.

If love can't cover it, if it's becoming a pattern, if it's significant enough, it needs to be confronted.

You deal with yourself, you search your own heart, you can remove your log from your own eye, and then you go and you try to gain your brother.

If he doesn't listen, verse 16, take one or two others along with you so that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

Now, these witnesses ideally would be witnesses of the sin.

If the sin was happened in front of a group of people, you confront him, and you know, if he doesn't respond, you bring a couple other people that saw it.

But in a lot of cases, these aren't witnesses of the sin.

Practically, in many cases, these would be witnesses of the confrontation.

Do you understand that?

It's not people that necessarily saw the sin, although that would be ideal, but it's people that are witnessing the confrontation because, you know, it helps to have a neutral witness to some kind of these sometimes in these confrontations because sometimes you don't see things the right way when they involve you, you know.

When it involves you, you see things very poorly.

Have you learned that?

When you're one of the characters in the confrontation, you don't have a right, you're not a good judge of it.

I'm a terrible judge of things that involve me.

I just don't think rightly about them.

And so witnesses help those kinds of conversations.

So you confront the person in the sin, you know.

If if I say I'm confronting Alex, I'm looking at him right now, and so I confront Alex about a sin, Alex's like, I don't really think that's a sin.

And you know, I might go get a couple witnesses, and the witnesses are of the of the confrontation between me and Alex.

And if I confront Alex in front of witnesses, and afterwards the witnesses tell me, I think you're wrong, Jesse.

I don't think what he did was sinful, and I think he's actually responding pretty well to your confrontation anyway.

That I need to take that.

Because the witnesses are telling me, hey, chill out.

Let it go, man.

All right.

I have to listen to the witnesses.

That's this Jesus' teaching here.

But if the witnesses say, you know, the person is in sin.

He is in sin and he's not listening, well then, verse 17, it's now been established according to the testimony of two or three witnesses.

This is uh Deuteronomy 19, is where that principle is from, by the way.

The two witnesses, by the mouth of two witnesses, every fact will be established.

Now the witnesses agree that the person is stuck in sin, the person is refusing to repent.

But that happens, verse 17.

Go and tell it to the church.

This is the word ecclesia.

This is the second use of this in the New Testament, coming after Matthew 18 was the first, or 16 was the first, where Jesus says he will build it.

That's why this chapter, Matthew 18, is so important.

Jesus is gonna build this group of people, they're gonna be like children, they will protect each other, they will guard each other, and the next use of the word ecclesia is right here.

You're gonna rebuke people in front of the ecclesia.

The whole church will know about it.

The whole gathering, all of the believers that Jesus himself is building will all hear about the sin.

You think that's not loving.

That's embarrassing.

Well, sort of.

I guess it is embarrassing, which is kind of how it's designed to do.

But it's designed to provoke repentance.

It's designed to get you to see your sin.

Because that's the most loving thing to do.

If he refuses to listen even to the church, then let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.

Now, you guys are, most of you are gentiles, so that's kind of offensive, right?

If he refuses to repent of all of his sin, treat him like you.

But here, Gentile just means somebody who's outside of God's covenant promises, somebody who's a stranger to the promises, stranger to the forgiveness that comes through God that is just isolated from it.

If that happens, treat him as somebody who's outside of the gospel, outside of the church, treat him like a non-believer.

Paul repeats this in 1 Corinthians 5.

If we had time, we could go there.

But 1 Corinthians 5 says, the person who refuses to repent of their sin, put them out of the church.

Let the one who refuses to repent be removed from among you.

And then he closes out 1 Corinthians 5 with purge the evil person from your midst.

That's what it means.

See, you're treating them like a non-believer, you're putting him out of the church.

This is how the church is sanctified, because if you let somebody who's causing other people to sin to stay in the church without confronting them, without putting them out, it ends up eroding the testimony of Christ in the church.

It ends up causing more and more people to sin as they get sucked into that vortex of depravity there.

And so you rescue other believers from this person's influence by putting the person out of the church.

And when you do that, don't feel like you're doing something totally irrational or illogical.

Because the Lord is with us.

Look at verse 18.

Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loosen on earth will be loose in heaven.

So, in other words, whenever you put somebody out of the church or wherever you say, you know, this person is repentant, you're saying something that is reflected in heaven.

Again, I say to you, if two or three, 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.

The context of this, of course, is church discipline, where the elders are agreeing to put somebody out of the church.

I know we often claim this at Starbucks, you know.

You got a Bible study with three people meeting at Starbucks, where two or three are gathered, the Lord is with us.

It's just me and Jesus, and I can't even say that anymore.

It's not talking, of course, about your Bible study.

Jesus is everywhere.

You can have a Bible study by yourself or with a friend or with two friends.

That's not what this is a reference to.

It's a reference to church discipline.

It's the testimony of two or three witnesses that are validating the person who's been confronted and has not repented, by the testimony of those two or three witnesses, every fact is established, and it is if Jesus is establishing that fact himself.

Jesus is right there in his church.

Remember, this whole thing began with in verse 5.

If you receive me, if you receive this child, it's like you receive me.

And now when you put out this child from the church, don't feel like you're also putting Jesus out from the church.

He's with the people that are doing the putting out.

That's the point.

You received him into the church, and now you're putting out this other person, but Jesus remains in the church.

This is according to his will.

James 5, verse 19.

James 5:19

If anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save his soul from death.

This is the command.

2 Thessalonians 3, verse 6.

2 Thessalonians 3:6

We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who's walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition you receive from us.

Notice that command.

We command you to keep away from people who won't work.

Well, how would you know?

How would you know who's not working and just leeching off of the church?

You'd have to be told.

It implies this church discipline approach.

Now, a couple comments on this before we keep going through this passage.

We got a few minutes here.

When Jesus is saying this, first of all, he's only talking about people inside the church.

You don't discipline people that aren't part of your church.

You understand that?

You know, if there's a politician that does something wicked, I've had people say, you know, you should publicly rebuke that politician and put them out of the church.

Yeah, they're not part of the church, though.

You can't throw somebody out of a club they never belong to.

Does that make sense?

You can't no trespass somebody who was never there.

Um that's the idea.

The church discipline applies only to members of the church because it's a it's a privilege of membership, honestly.

The fact that other believers will go after you and the elders will invest the energy and the effort that church discipline cases require, it's a privilege for membership.

So that's the first point about this.

Secondly, I mentioned this a couple Sunday mornings.

Ago, but it's normally church discipline normally happens with the big sins in life, you know?

It's like divorce or adultery.

Those are the kind of sins that are usually church disciplines.

And the reason is because in other kinds of sins, people generally do repent.

You know, if you confronted me on pride or on some other kind of sin in my life, I would repent.

I would confess.

Even if I didn't necessarily see it the same way you did.

I'd just say it's not worth it.

I am sin sinning in a whole bunch of different ways, and this conversation goes on longer, it'll be in more ways.

So I repent.

You know, and if witnesses are with you, if you bring a couple elders, I would repent so fast.

And that's the way that most Christians would respond, isn't it?

You would repent.

I'm sure you would.

But some sins are so appealing to people that they dig in and they don't want to repent.

They're so positive it will make them happy, and it's what they want in life.

They end up finding themselves put out of the church.

And when that happens, know that Jesus not only predicted it, but demanded it before the church even the church isn't gonna start for another year here.

And Jesus is already describing, before the first person has been added to it, Jesus is already describing how people are gonna get put out of it.

That's his very first instruction on the church.

So church discipline is not something minor that only like you know the fundamentalist churches do.

This is a major component of what it means to be a church as described by Jesus in his longest personal teaching on the church.

Right here.

So you discipline each other as children.

You know, if you if you ever taught, uh if you ever babysat a lot of kids or worked at a daycare or something like that, or were a teacher, you understand the importance of discipline in the classroom.

It's the most loving thing for the kids so that they can learn.

The same is true in church.

And finally, fourthly, you forgive each other as children.

In light of that teaching, before you read what comes next, I'm sure you have lots of questions about church discipline.

Lots of questions about how practically it would play out, or lots of questions about what kinds of sin, lots of questions about it.

Is it fair?

Is it just?

What about the person in your pencilator?

All kinds of questions I'm sure you'd have.

Peter had a question too, and I just want you to marvel about how Peter's question is not at all like any of your questions, because Peter is a very unusual individual.

Look at Peter's question.

Verse 21.

Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

I mean, that's hilarious.

You would probably ask, like, is it really right to put the person out in front of the whole church or some question like that?

No, Peter's fine throwing the guy out in front of the whole church.

Peter's stuck on what if the guy actually repents?

That's what he has more questions about.

Like, if the guy actually repented, are you saying I have to forgive him?

Let's go back.

Forget step three and two.

I'm fine with those.

Step one, I have questions about that.

So he says he's sorry and I have to forgive him?

No way.

I love Peter.

And notice he he's like choosing some like super high number.

Like, what if the same person sinned against me seven times?

I know Peter was married, but that's kind of a single-person question, isn't it?

Like the same, you can sin against the same person multiple times?

Wow.

Teacher, have I sinned against you seven times?

Today.

Jesus says to him, I don't say seven times, but seventy times seven.

Like just throw a factor of ten on that.

You can picture Peter's jaw hitting the floor.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants, he began to settle when was brought to him of him 10,000 talents.

10,000 talents is a comically ridiculous amount of money.

10 gazillion trillion dollars kind of amount of money.

Since he couldn't pay, his master ordered him to be sold along with his wife, his children, and all that he had, so payment could be made.

And the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, have patience with me, I'll pay you everything.

Out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

When that same servant found out, went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred deneri.

100 deneri would be three months' wages for day labor, so I don't know what a day laborer makes, you know.

A couple hundred bucks a day, or we're talking about a couple thousand bucks.

So this dude was just for given forgiven, you know, ten gazillion quatrillion dollars, and he finds somebody who owes him four grand, and seizing him, he begins to choke him.

The other guy didn't even do that.

Begins to choke him, saying, pay what you owe.

So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, have patience with me, I'll pay you.

And he refused and went out and put him in prison until he could pay his debt, which is not logical, right?

You owe me ten grand, so you're gonna spend time in prison until you come up with the money.

It's a lot of license plates to make.

When his fellow servant saw, so there's a front of witnesses here.

This is obviously an exaggerated story.

Nothing like this.

This is so extreme.

This it's out of the realm of possibility.

Again, it's a super exaggerated, this is a parable.

It didn't really happen.

Nobody really owed somebody$10 quadrillion dollars, then beat somebody near death and threw them in the clink for a few grand.

So this is an exaggerated story.

But in the exaggerated make-believe story, it's happening in front of witnesses.

Fellow servants saw what took place, they were greatly distressed, they went and reported to their master all that took place.

The master, of course, summoned him and said, You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.

Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had mercy on you.

So this whole parable hinges on you seeing everybody involved as slaves.

Everybody involved is a slave.

Everybody involved has been forgiven by the master of an infinite amount of money, and everybody involved owes each other small amounts of money.

That's what makes this parable work here.

And Jesus closes out his teaching on the church with that, which is very humbling.

I mean, this this teaching on the church started with us all being children, and it ends with us all being slaves and owing each other lots of money.

And so, what's the right way to work in a church where somebody else owes you thousands of dollars and you owe somebody else thousands of dollars?

And again, we're not talking about money here.

We're talking about, you know, currency of sinning against people.

People in church sin against you, you sin against other people, everybody sins against each other, and yet we're all servants, we're all slaves of a master who has forgiven us an infinite amount.

So his master gave him over to the jailers, verse 34, until he could pay all his debt, which of course is never going to happen.

Remember, the guy owes a gazillion dollars.

So also, my heavenly father will do to every one of you if you don't forgive your brother from your heart.

Well, that got serious fast.

You have no place in the kingdom of heaven if you don't enter like a child, a needy child who is bankrupt, of course.

A child doesn't have a wallet.

You have no way to pay your for your debt or your sin.

And it ends, it's book-ended, with you not as a child, but as a slave who has sinned against other people and needs forgiveness from God and needs forgiveness from other slaves.

Notice the whole chapter is about forgiveness.

What makes the church work?

Forgiveness.

What makes the church function well?

Forgiveness.

You sin against other people, you forgive them.

They forgive you.

Other people sin against you, you forgive them.

It's just, we're a forgiving group of people.

You're never more like God than when you forgive.

You're never more living out his purpose for the church than when you forgive.

This is how Jesus teaches about the church that you want to guard each other, you want to protect each other, you want to keep other children from falling in the wave pool, and when they do fall in, you want to rescue them out, you look out for each other, you show people their sin, you warn them for danger.

If people don't want to be helped, if they want to reject and they just want to live in their sin, they have not turned from their sin and they need to be put out of the church.

And if people don't forgive each other, they refuse to forgive, they're demonstrating that God hasn't forgiven them.

Because that's how the story ends.

I mean, this teaching about the church ends with Jesus saying, My Heavenly Father is not going to forgive you of your sin, then.

Fine.

You don't want to forgive people, then you will not be forgiven.

You have no place in the life of the church.

And this can be very abstract.

Very abstract.

You want to have a church together, know that we're all children, we all care for each other, we all look out for each other, we all forgive each other, and we go after people in sin and we put them out of the church hoping that they one day repent.

Next Lord's Day we'll look at 2 Corinthians 7 and we'll see an actual case where this happens and see how Paul responded.

Lord, we're thankful for this uh powerful picture of what life in the church is like.

We'd be remiss if in our prayers we didn't pause here and just thank you for forgiveness.

What an image of a person being thrown into jail for an impossible amount of money.

And we see ourselves in that.

We are the ones that deserve jail.

We deserve a lifetime behind bars with no possibility of parole.

We deserve eternity apart from you because of our sin.

We could never atone for our sin.

We have no even means.

We don't even have the right currency.

And yet you and your kindness forgave us.

We don't deserve it, but you you forgave us because you loved us.

So Lord, help us forgive others who have sinned against us if for no other reason than because you forgave us.

We don't have currency to merit forgiveness, but we do have forgiveness.

Help us share that with others.

Lord, we pray for grace and mercy as we treat each other like children.

We act like children, we have childlike faith, we are needy, we're dependent.

We cannot earn anything.

Certainly, we offend other people as children say offensive things.

Surely we sin against other people as children sin all the time.

That's us.

So we just pray for grace and mercy from each other as we lead our Christian lives together, just trying to be forgiving and trying to be pleasing to you.

In a sense, easy to do.

As we learned this morning in Ephesians 5, we want to be disciplined to pursue the will of the Lord, which is pleasing to you.

And your word describes that.

So help us walk in the light as you are light and lead a life that glorifies you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and church information are on our website at ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.