Dennis Tuuri

Having been brought into the presence of the king to give him worship, he gives us a command word from his scriptures. The sermon scripture for today is Matthew 18:20. Matthew 18:20. Please stand for the reading of the law of our king. Matthew 18:20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. May be seated. This time the young children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools.

Their parents desire that for them. Okay, we really are kind of interrupting our First Thessalonians study for a talk on Matthew 18, but in a way it isn’t really interrupting it because if you remember correctly, the last verse we talked about in First Thessalonians was to admonish the unruly. And in a way, this passage is tied to that admonishing counseling. We’re coming alongside of with the word of God and calling for change in a person’s life when there’s sin involved is what admonishing them really is all about.

Matthew 18 tells us some very important things about this process and the way it works out. It’s very important we have a common base of understanding of the scriptures on this as we move ahead as a church here at Reformation Covenant.

And so really it is right in line with that although it isn’t specifically from the text of First Thessalonians.

What I want to do basically is expand or unpack the context for verse 20 that I just read. There’s an old saw that says a text without a context is a pretext. And you’ve heard me talk about Jay Adams’ comments about context plaques. He wishes to have it be a good idea to take these verses that people take and put on plaques to get the context verses around it to make a context plaque to go around the plaque with the individual verse on it.

So you remember what that verse really means. And nowhere is probably well, I shouldn’t say that, but the passage I just read is taken out of context readily and almost universally in the church of Jesus Christ in America in the 1980s and 1990s specifically.

And so it’s very important here we’ll see by the end of the talk, I think, that it means really just about the reverse of what some people sort of think it is meant to be given as. We read in verse 20, for two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. And we’re going to look at the context for this and then at the end of the talk after looking at the entire context of the entire chapter of Matthew 18, then we’ll draw some specific applications in terms of our life as a church and we’ll apply it that way as well. That’s another part of the context when we hear command words from our King of Kings is to apply it to our particular situation.

Now, this verse is frequently used as a way to feel good about ourselves when we have a small church or a small prayer group meeting etc. etc. Well, you know, verse 19 does talk about asking something of the Savior and so you could make a prayer application out of it, I suppose, and it is definitely true where two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name his presence is with us of course that’s also true there is just one of us alone right we teach our children you don’t have to be afraid if you get alone someplace because God is with you and Jesus is with them through the Holy Spirit the scriptures are real clear about that so we don’t need that verse to tell us that Christ is in our presence we don’t need that verse to tell us that Christ will answer prayer answered prayer does not require two or three people for it to happen in our lives this verse is talking about something completely different than that.

One of the ways to understand a particular verse of scripture, one of the things you’d want to do as you study your Bible is to try to look for distinctive phrases or words that are used in the context of it and say, “What does that mean in the scriptures generally?” In verse 20, we read the phrase “two or three.” Two or three people is being referred to. What does that mean?

Well, with today’s general lack of knowledge of the scriptures in our culture today—okay, we compare ourselves to the 1600s, the 1700s, and the Puritans—we know virtually nothing about the word of God. They would have, perhaps because of their great exposure to and continual reading of the word of God, recognized “two or three” for what it was, understood the various other passages where that phrase is used and made some connections that we don’t.

On the other hand, we have technology. We have computer Bibles. And probably half the people in this church have a computer. Good. Many of you I know have computer Bibles. And you can look up the phrase “two or three” and say, “Where other places in the scriptures in your particular version does that English phrase occur?” And what you’ll find is the first occurrence is in Deuteronomy 17:6.

On the testimony of two or three witnesses, a man shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.

Deuteronomy 19:15, one witness is not enough. A matter established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.

I could go on. We go into the New Testament passages. 1 Timothy 5:19, do not even hear an accusation against an elder unless it be brought by two or three witnesses. Now, this isn’t conviction. This is simply even hearing a charge. You don’t hear a charge against a sitting judge, for instance, Judge Thomas, on the basis of one witness. To even hear the charge, the Senate panel should have insisted on two or three witnesses.

Hebrews 10:28, anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.

Two or three witnesses throughout the scriptures is a requirement in terms of a judicial procedure. And so we read that in this particular verse in verse 20. Even if we haven’t looked at the surrounding verses, we should perhaps think there may be some application to a court process at work here.

But this particular passage of scripture is even easier than that. Because in verse 16, we read, “Our savior said, if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” Our savior himself gives us the proper context. The first immediate context of verse 20 is a court process—a court process where he’s saying that we are trying to legally establish a person’s guilt relative to a transgression of holy scripture.

And so this text is very easy to understand the context and what its first application or interpretation is because it is so easy for it to be regularly used by the church of Jesus Christ to mean something totally different is really unforgivable.

Now let’s look at this first context then, and that of church court.

And we’ll be talking about this process and we’ll first be talking about the immediate context of church court, and we’ll talk about the corrective actions that accompany church court proceedings and the protective aspects of it as well. And first a little bit about the process verses 15 and following.

If a brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church. And if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

So we have a process here for resolution of conflicts and dealing with sin within the context of the body of Jesus Christ. We have here a process described that is regularly ignored on all sides. Very rarely does this process ever find itself being used and practiced in the churches in America in 1990.

And that’s not because there isn’t a lot of trespassing going on. It’s for other reasons. What does this process tell us? Very important aspects. We’re going to have to work through this real fast because I want to get to the application. We’re dealing with the entire chapter here. But just a couple of things as we move through this.

This process first of all presupposes when you have a brother who sins or trespasses or does something in terms of you presuppose his electness, his Christianity. You do not doubt your brother’s Christianity because he sins. Because it says, “If thy brother shall trespass against thee.” You’re instructed, I think, by way of implication to treat a trespassing member of the body of Jesus Christ as a brother. Very important because that’s going to change here as we go through this process.

Secondly, notice that when you do this, it doesn’t say if thy brother gets you upset or somehow makes you angry or irritated. Doesn’t say if he challenges your understanding of conventions relative to interaction with people. Doesn’t say any of that stuff. What it says is if he trespasses against thee. The word “trespass” has two important implications.

One, it gives us a standard. When do we go to another person in this process? When they offend us? No. When they actually sin. That’s what the word means. It’s a falling short of the righteous requirements of God’s law. So it’s sin as defined not by our personal feelings but as defined by the law word of God that we’re talking about here in this matter. Okay.

Secondly, the important thing about this word is it is not antinomianism. It is not the rejection of God’s law. This verse talks about people that fall short of the mark. And again, that is a presupposition of the person’s Christian standing. He’s trying for the mark. He’s fallen short. So you’re going to admonish him. You’re going to come alongside him and try to help him correct.

So the process tells us some important things in terms of how we deal with this person. We deal with him as a brother in love and it deals with an actual transgression. And then third, it tells us to deal with him personally, to personally admonish him and go to him. It doesn’t say go get an attitude check from other people using his name and saying, “Well, Joe Blow did this sin. Do you think it’s really serious enough for me to go to him?” No, no, no. It doesn’t say, you know, get three or four people together and then go talk to the person about his difficulty. It says you go to him first of all. Okay.

So normally the process deals with a personal admonishment from one to one going to this person and of course the context is he’s sinned against you. Okay. Now the application of this can extend to other sins as well but the immediate context is a sin that somehow has involved you personally and so you go to him about it.

So the first step of the process is you go. The second step of the process is you establish what has happened. Okay? If he won’t hear you then you go with two or three. Okay? One or two more. So you have two or three that you may establish the facts.

Now, why would you want to establish the facts? Well, one, you want to make sure you understand that you’re moving toward a legal process with this believer. If he continues in terms of his rebellion against the word of God, then you’ve got to establish that fact for church court action.

But secondly, you may be wrong. You know, he may be right. He may argue with you and say, “I haven’t sinned at all, buddy. What are you talking about?” And you may think he really has sinned. So if you go back with two or three, you can resolve those sorts of difficulties. You can do self-correcting as well. You could be the one with the problem.

But if the two or three confirm the fact that this is indeed sin and the person is rebellious and won’t come to amends for that sin, then the third step of the process is to publicize in the church in terms of the church.

If he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he neglects to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

So it’s only in the third part of the process where the church institutionally gets involved. And at this part of the process we are dealing with a very serious matter. And as I said the references to two or three establish this as a church court procedure.

How do you tell it to the church? Well, you could make a general announcement of course but the scriptures are clear in other places that elders are given as judges to discern and to make judicial decisions in the context of the church court. They state that elders make decisions in terms of civil courts and criminal courts. So in church matters in terms of transgression against God’s law, church elders are involved representing the church.

But there’s the other side to this as well. And the other side is that you have a two-fold witness being talked about here. The church is represented not simply by the elders but if the man won’t hear the elders on the matter and if he remains unrepentant, then a description is, I think, by application, the entire church, the membership of the church is informed.

So you have a two-fold witness to the church here represented both by the leadership and also by the congregation. Now that is not just idle information that’s passed to the congregation. At this point, the elders are admonishing a person to come to correction. The church as a congregation of people are also called, I think, in light of these verses to admonish the person to come to correction.

So they also are calling the person up, getting together and saying, “Gosh, you know, I know it’s tough, but you got to repent on this stuff. You can’t let sin do this to you. You really have to try to come along.” You see, it’s an absolute part of the process.

But if all this fails at the end of all this, Our savior acknowledges that though there will be some—maybe not a preponderance, certainly not a great preponderance—there will be some who go all the way through this process and refuse to hear the church and then the next step all of a sudden things change. Because then it says if you neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.

Now the presupposition of electness is removed. The actions are changed. The person now becomes excommunicate. He becomes declared by the church court and affirmed by the congregation. He is declared to be outside of the visible body of Jesus Christ and presumptively outside of the invisible body of Christ as well.

Now, we don’t know and we have no more idea of your heart in terms of whether you’re elect or non-elect than we have certainty as to that. What I’m trying to say is we have presumptions that God tells us we must make. And if a person is a communicant member of this church, you must presume him to be elect. And if he becomes excommunicate, you must change that presupposition. But acknowledging the fact that we could still be wrong.

And indeed, Paul says that there are some who are through this process turned over to Satan for the destruction of their flesh that their soul might be saved. They are elect, some of them. And this process still can be seen corrective in their lives. The excommunication itself can be seen as part of the mechanism whereby God brings them back to a position of grace again.

And so we don’t know. We do make a presuppositional shift at that particular point in time and it is a very important one.

John Owen in his commentary on this passage said that assuming that the person doesn’t come to repentance, Owen said the following: declaring him liable under the displeasure of Christ and everlasting punishment—that is what we plead for and the power of it with the exercise is here plainly granted by Christ and ordained in the church.

Owen said that this verse teaches that the church has the power and the duty and obligation to so consign a person to the displeasure of Jesus Christ and everlasting punishment. And that is what this text argues for. That is what people who are fair with these texts and the related texts relative to excommunication must see the scriptures teach.

And while it may seem like an incredibly weighty responsibility to give to a group of men, God gives such weighty things to men. In terms of the state system, he gives the power of the sword, death itself, to judges who also must sit and execute judgment. This same process of evidence and some of the same actual processes are involved in criminal cases as well.

Indeed, we see here a very important and yet a very solemn exercise the church is called to engage in and for a very important reason. This text of scripture while telling us how to correct and how normally it will be to the end of correcting people back from their sins and bringing them back to right standing in the body of Christ—the scriptures here speak against titanism. Titanism, the idea that we can somehow in and of our efforts bring people into the kingdom of God and correct every fault in the world around us.

And we can somehow plead, reason, and with our logic and great persuasion bring men to a position of repentance. Can’t be done. We’re not God. We’re not titans. We’re not men who become gods. We’re men. And God and his Holy Spirit are the one who determines the eternal fate of all mankind.

Psalm 1, that we just read and affirmed with our mouths, speaks about the efficacy and the sureness. It says there are two paths and there are two groups of men. And all try as we might, we cannot bring the unelect into a position of grace before God. It’s not our job. It’s not our calling. And this verse tells us forget it—don’t waste time doing what God has not called you to do. You take the secondary means that he has given you to accomplish a person’s repentance, but then leave the result to God.

Two paths are described here.

In addition to this, however, a two-fold assurance of efficacy is given to us in the next few verses. Jesus goes on to say, and this is the immediate context of verse 20.

I say unto you, whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And I say to you, if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Verse 20 is part of the assurance that Jesus Christ gives to an obedient church that if they follow this process, recognizing that they’re fallible and they’re never going to do everything perfect, but if they follow this process and make this as their blueprint for church court actions, that the end result is the result that God in heaven has ordained. It is the correct antitype response to God’s judgment throne in heaven.

See, we don’t change what God’s decisions in heaven are. Our whole pattern—we’ve talked about this afternoon—we respond correctly to God’s judgments. He speaks, he initiates, we respond. And so when he says, “Whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” many texts have that in the past tense—shall have been loosed in heaven.

And I think that while I don’t know about the particular grammatical structure, there’s differences of opinion on that, the fact is that God initiates these things in heaven and we simply confirm, as we do in so much of our lives, what God has already declared. He has either put this person under judicial punishment or he has not.

And if the church court behaves itself correctly, then Jesus Christ is in the midst of that court establishing judgment in the context of the local church.

Revelation 2 and 3 gives us a picture of Jesus in the midst of two or three. And that picture is not an assurance that it’s okay. Revelation 2 and 3, in the letters to the churches, are a call to exercise judgment. And Jesus tells us in Revelation 2 and 3 that he in the midst of the lampstands—he in the midst of the churches—will remove the lampstand from the church that fails to accurately press forward in terms of church court and remove people from membership who are causing dissension and who are moving actually in opposition to the work of Jesus Christ in his kingdom.

Revelation 2 and 3 and Matthew 18:20 are of one piece. Jesus assures us that as we move forward in obedience to his word in terms of church court, he is in the midst sifting out the hearts of men. And if we refuse to do it, we are sifted out by the great king of kings.

So that’s the immediate context.

Secondly, now let’s move on to the corrective side of Matthew 18. The attitude bookends.

Well, look, we looked at 15-20. Now we’ll spread it out. We’ll look at 21-34. What follows this teaching? Well, I can’t—I don’t have time to read through the whole thing. We have here the need, our savior states, for forgiveness, the need for forgiveness to those who are repentant.

And of course in this story, the master forgives the one who has a tremendous debt and who acknowledges that debt and says that he will indeed pay it all. In verse 26, the servant falls down and worships him saying, “Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all.” He acknowledged his debt to the master. As a result of that, verse 27, then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him the debt.

Obvious picture of our relationship to God. God gives us the Holy Spirit so that we acknowledge our sinfulness and the need to own up to the responsibilities that our sin has produced. And God then moves with great compassion, realizing we can never pay the debt for our sins, and he looses us and forgives us our debt.

But then the same servant goes out and a man who owes him comparatively almost nothing—he refuses to be gracious toward that man when that man acknowledges his debt to the servant who had his debt forgiven. And Jesus said that if that servant then fails to forgive the way that he has been forgiven, then his forgiveness is removed as it were by the Lord.

Verse 34, his lord was wroth with the one who failed to forgive and delivered him unto the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly father do so unto you, if ye from your heart forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

The question was seven times should we forgive him? That seems real tough. And Jesus said 70 times 7—that is your requirement in terms of the correct attitude toward church court process. You must be willing to forgive.

Now again I don’t want to put a lot of time into this, but you recognize of course this doesn’t mean cheap grace and it doesn’t mean you forgive people autonomously from God’s command word. The whole point of this passage is correlating our forgiveness to God’s forgiveness. He forgives us. And we must forgive in like manner.

Like manner means to forgive those who acknowledge their debt before God, who make confession of their sin. See, and so this verse doesn’t teach, these set of verses, this context does not mean that church court means you always forgive people. What it means is a willingness to forgive people no matter how much their debt may be. No matter how much you may be personally offended or damaged or hurt or your reputation or your life threatened by this other individual—maybe he’s killed your wife.

Jesus said it doesn’t make any difference if he—you must be willing to forgive him if he comes to forgiveness through the savior. If he repents of his sins, if he goes to God and acknowledges those debts and demonstrates his acknowledgement of those debts by a willingness to try to show fruits of repentance.

So one of the proper contexts for church court action is a willingness to extend forgiveness, that actively seeks to minister grace to those who are sinning so that they might not reach the final terrible end process of church court excommunication and even there to have a heart that is willing to forgive the person should they after being punished through Satan as Paul says come to salvation for their souls.

See, so one of the important bookends for this verse for the church court process and the two or three is to be willing to forgive.

But secondly, a willingness to forgive results in action. It doesn’t just mean an attitude on our parts in terms of “yeah, we’ll wait and see if they’re going to be forgiven or not. And I guess we’ll forgive them if we have to.”

Because the front end of this set of context bookends for 15-20 are verses 11-14 where we read that the son of man has come to save that which was lost.

How think you if a man have 100 sheep, one of them be gone astray, then does he not leave the 99 and goeth into the mountain and seeketh that which has gone astray? And if so be that he shall find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoices more of that sheep than of the 99 which went not astray. Even so, it is not the will of our father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

Jesus says later, not only must we be willing to forgive, we must be willing to work toward affecting that repentance of that lost sheep. You must care enough about another person to seek him out when he’s straying and not simply to let him go his own way and think, well, the wolves will take care of that sheep. No, you presume he’s a sheep. You go after him.

You have to. If you must leave the 99 and go after that one person—for me, in terms of direct application it means that there are times in my ministry that I have to spend less time with the entire congregation for the sake of one or two or three who are straying at the edges of the fold. And God tells me and instructs me Dennis, you must have the attitude of saying that’s a good thing to do. That’s what God has called you to do as a pastor is to spend time with those people.

In the same way, by application, you may have to put your family on hold for a while. You go after a straying brother and spend some time trying to work with him. Now, normally that’s not going to be the case and normally you’re not going to leave the flock for the sake of the one. But it does mean you should be willing to go to that end for that person if it’s needed. And you must be willing to make sacrifices in your own life to try to affect the reclaiming of those who have strayed from the flock.

In other words, church court is not a search and destroy mission. It’s a search and save mission. Okay, we don’t want to be too quick to cut off. Rather, we want to be quick to recover the brother.

Let’s go a little further into the context. That’s the corrective side. Church court is surrounded by our savior with those terrible proclamations that a church must make at some point in time—that the person is to be treated as a heathen or publican to be cast to the displeasure of Jesus Christ and unless he repents, eternal punishment.

The context for that is of great willingness apart to want to forgive people that are repentant and a great amount of labor on the other side to work to reclaim sinning brothers. That is the corrective part of it.

[I broke the mic. Oh, well, you can still hear me, right? Okay.]

Now, let’s move to the protective side of Matthew 18 because we’re still not done with the context.

Verses 6-10. Child abuse and the worst kind.

Whoso shall offend—now, that word “offend” does not mean get personal offense to. It means to cause to be tripped up. Okay? To cause to fall into a transgression of God’s law.

Who so shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me? It were better for him that a millstone were hanged around his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut him off, cast them from thee. It’s better for thee to enter into life halt or lame, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if the eye offend thee, pluck it out. Cast it from thee. Better to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hellfire.

Take heed that you despise—that word means disesteem. Take heed you despise not one of these little ones. For I say unto you that in heaven there are angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven.

There is a corrective side which we’ve talked about to Matthew 18 and the church court process. But there’s also a protective side to it—to the rest of the flock.

The sheep you go to seek may not be a sheep. And the sheep you try to cut off from the sheepfold until they turn around and repent may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It may not be a strayer. It could be a slayer. Okay? Could be a sheep killer.

There are times when for the sake of the body, for the sake of the little ones that are under your jurisdiction and control and pastoral responsibilities as a church or in terms of my specific ministry as a pastor, for the sake of those you must follow through with Matthew 18 to exclude them from the body of Jesus Christ that the body not be infected with that particular sin.

If you’ve got a man committing adultery in the context of the congregation, to allow that man to sit in the context of that congregation unpunished means to allow and cause little ones in the context of the church to be tempted to fall into that very sin. Now, they’re still responsible. There’s responsibility all the way around here. The little ones are still responsible if they sin. Jesus says offenses must come. But woe to the ones by whom they come.

Woe to that adulterous man and woe to that man-fearing church authorities who refuse to deal with the man according to the pure and clear word of God relative to church court action because then they cause little ones to stumble. And that is true child abuse of a tremendous type here.

And Jesus makes it clear how bad this thing is when he talks about the great punishment to come upon those who do this. Better than a millstone wrapped around their neck and drowned in the sea—like Babylon cast into the sea—like a wicked Abimelech killed 70 brothers, killed by a millstone in the Old Testament, thrown from a window by a woman, head crushed like Satan.

See, it’s a bad deal to cause little ones to stumble. And it’s a bad deal for a church court to allow people in the context of the church to cause others to stumble. And so Matthew 18 has a corrective aspect to it by the exclusion of child abusers from the context of the righteous.

And again, Psalm 1, the wicked shall not stand in the congregation of the righteous. Okay. There are responsibilities all the way around. And by the way, Psalm 119:165 says, “They that love God’s law have great peace, and nothing shall offend them.” So we’re talking about little ones being offended here. They’re little in terms of their understanding of their love, their maturation in the faith.

That maturation means they become increasingly able to resist offense by people in the context of the church. They have their own responsibilities. By the way, I should just real quickly too, it says “don’t disdain these little ones.” That means we all have a positive obligation in the context of a local congregation to esteem those who are less mature in the faith and in their knowledge and love of the law of God to esteem them highly and to be very careful what we say in their context.

Okay? You want to temper your speech, no matter where it occurs in the context of the church, very carefully in the context remembering that you’re supposed to esteem highly the little ones who been brought into the flock because God esteems them very highly.

Ultimately I think these little ones are a picture—really, as the entire flock is of course—covenantally identified with Jesus Christ. Because in Matthew 26:24 we read the son of man goeth as it is written of him. But woe unto that man by whom the son of man is betrayed. It had been good for that man if he had not been born.

See, same kind of thing going on. Same a lot of parallels between that and the person that causes the little ones to stumble.

See, Jesus must go the path that God had ordained for him, that he chose volitionally to follow in terms of the sacrifice of his life for the sake of the church. But woe to the man who betrayed him. Betraying little ones, causing little ones to stumble is analogous to doing something to the person of Jesus Christ. It is to resacrifice him almost.

You see? Jesus said on the contrary of that if you help little ones, if you give a cup of cold water, if you visit brothers in prison, you’re ministering to the body of Jesus Christ. You’re ministering to Jesus. You see, that’s the seriousness of the way we interact with one another and the way it means we should bring great caution to causing each other to stumble in terms of the word of God.

We have here also, I think, for one of a better term, a prolleptic excommunication. Probably a terrible phrase, but basically in verse 8, when it talks about the hand or the foot offending you, better to walk into life without a hand than to go with both hands into hell.

I think we can see here some correlations, at least by way of application, to the body of Christ, which is described throughout the scriptures—by the way, not just New Testament, but old and New Testament—as a physical body. Some are eyes, some are ears, some are hands.

And there are members of that visible body of Jesus Christ that Matthew 18 says you must eventually excommunicate, cut off from the body. Cut off the hand. Because if you don’t—if you let Jezebel continue to teach in the context of the church—the church itself is removed by God. The whole body of the church of that local manifestation of Christ is thrown into hell.

And so it can be as painful as that. It can be as painful of people that you’ve come to enjoy and know and love. And yet when they become rebellious against God and stiff-necked and demonstrate they never were elect (at least presumptively) to have to excommunicate them can be extremely painful because there’s emotional attachments that are formed in the context of that body. It can be just like cutting off your hand.

But God says it’s required because the options that we’re talking about are life and death. Okay.

So there’s a protective aspect of it. And this child abuse by the way goes on by the gifted.

Again, I won’t read the verses. Verses 1 through 5 point out that the child abusers, I think, that Jesus is primarily rebuking here and warning not to be child abusers are the apostles themselves—greatly gifted by God.

And what do they end up doing with that gifting? Who’s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus brings out a child and brings out the image of the child. Luke 9, same thing. They argue about who’s the greatest. And he perceives the thoughts of their hearts and he’s upset about it and he brings to him a child and says here’s what’s really going on. You have to have the faith of a child. That’s the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

It is their own pride, I think, in Matthew 18 that is being rebuked by the savior here and being told that pride can cause a stumbling block to other people, that pride must be dealt with, etc., etc.

Gifting brings with it a propensity to pride. And humility is the answer to true repentance and establishment of grace in God. Okay.

Now some words about our context as a church. That’s the basic process that I think Matthew 18 discusses our context.

And first of all I want to talk about church court as a normative procedure.

I think this is right. I believe that excommunication in the life of the church should not be seen as something that is really almost never occurs. Rather, I think excommunications, church court actions, certainly and eventually even excommunications are, I think, according to our savior here, normative in the life of the church.

The church is the visible manifestation of the body of Christ. It is the visible church. It is not a one-for-one correlation between the visible church and the invisible church. That means there going to be people in the context of the visible church who are not members of the invisible church and who will, if the church is doing its job, over time move further and further away from the word of God.

Most churches let people float in neutral ground. And that’s why you don’t see excommunications in America anymore. But a church that self-consciously looks for, encourages, and develops people to not stay in neutral ground, but move closer to God or move further away from God, you’re going to see people. Some few, of course, not as many as the most, but some few will become evident that they were not elect.

Revelation 2 and 3 are written to churches—real churches—and they also probably give us a process or warnings to churches throughout history. And those passages of scripture say that judgment is an essential element of what is going on in terms of those churches.

Church court should be normative because it wasn’t. The savior wrote to those churches and said, “Make it normative. Get moving on people who teach heresy or have moral problems.”

There are, of course, warnings in scripture against gentile leadership and people clubbing other believers and being over heavy-handed in their approach toward church court or other matters. But the propensity, it seems to me, the propensity of instructions in terms of these things are to make sure that people don’t love other people so much that they fail to honor the God who causes us to discern between sheep and goats, strayers and slayers.

So I think church court is normative. Can we deny that in America today our problem is not the absence of church discipline? Can we really deny that their problem is simply the absence of church discipline? We can’t deny that, can we?

Do you know churches that discipline too many members? Do you know churches that have big long lists of excommunicants? I don’t know one. I know all kinds of churches that have never practiced excommunication in the life of the church and have tried to worked with sin by way of so-called counseling instead of calling people to responsibility, giving him excuses for irresponsibility.

I know lots of churches like that. I think the church courts in America, particularly in the context in which we live, should be seen as normative, not some kind of strange thing happening.

If we think that people should enter into covenants with local churches and those covenants should be taken seriously and people should be held accountable for their actions and responsible, we can expect over the life of this church to see many instances of church court. Now, not, you know, a great preponderance, but certainly we’re going to see them. It’s normative.

Our savior has given us procedures to do it. And there is indication in 1 Corinthians 3 where he talks about those whose found who build upon the foundation with wood, hay, stubble as opposed to those who build with silver and gold that God actually puts people in the context of the local church.

One of the reasons for this whole process is that we might be strengthened. When the fire comes, the wood, hay, stubble burn up. They trip at the offenses that God lays, as it were, at the tests and evaluations that God has in place for his people as they move through history. They trip at those things, the stumbling blocks. They burn up. But as we go through that fire, those who are elect according to Jesus Christ, they become purified through the process.

There’s indication from 1 Corinthians 3 that church court is normative. Excommunication is normative to life in the church and it actually is there for a really good purpose—that it purifies the body of Jesus Christ.

Secondly, church court by way of application to our context here in love.

First John, where is love demonstrated? Not that we loved him, that he loved us and sent his son to die for us.

Church court normally ends in the recapturing of the brother. Normally ends with him confessing his sin and coming back to correction. It’s the whole point of it. And God says if you love your brother, the test of that love is: are you willing to go after him, after the one sheep again, and to seek him out?

Well, there are people right now this church is working with in terms of church court. You people that are members should recognize you have a responsibility. If you love these people, to help them come to correction in the areas that they’re having trouble with, that is love. Church court is a demonstration of God’s love to those who are through the process corrected. And that’s the great responsibility—that’s the great bulk of the people that we’ll deal with—and that becomes your responsibility as well as mine.

And third, very importantly, church court is necessary for dominion life.

Jesus said that it’s better to enter into life without one of those hands than to go to everlasting punishment. Life in the savior is characterized by dominion life.

I read an article in the Sunday Oregonian and I got it here from a couple weeks ago. Front page of the Sunday Oregonian about some guy who was thrown in jail for 4½ years for rape. He got out and three weeks later he raped another girl. He put in—they put him in jail for 31 years. It says “offense under treatment, the last hope.” And the point of the article is, boy, you know, they throw these guys in jail, but what good does that do? They don’t get treatment in jail. They don’t get psychological evaluation. They don’t get the drugs they need, etc., etc., etc.

I don’t have time to develop this fully, but I am convinced that we are shifting from an orthodoxy based upon a penitentiary model and Quaker theology in terms of criminal action to an orthodoxy based upon the couch and Freud and psychology.

Now, the old model wasn’t right. What’s the biblical solution to rape? It’s the death penalty. Pure and simple. The old model wasn’t right. But at least it kept people away from our homes. At least it kept people off the streets and kept us—it gave us a degree of guarding until they get out and then they do the same thing again.

But at least they’re locked up for a while. But the new orthodoxy that the criminal justice system is moving toward won’t even give us that, folks. It is so wrong that it won’t even guard you while it attempts to work out its theories in terms of counseling and psychology. Your daughters are subject to exposure to these sorts of fellas as they get more and more treated in terms of the community rather than going to penal institutions.

Both are wrong. And the church of Jesus Christ is no more prepared to deal with the new orthodoxy of counseling than it was to deal with the old heresy of the penitentiary because they’ve rejected God’s law.

And in fact, the churches today have already moved into the new orthodoxy. They’re not even the tailing indicator anymore. They’re a leading indicator. Churches all across this state, even, and certainly across America, good Bible-believing churches at one time have 12-step programs, codependency groups, secular psychological counseling referrals, etc., etc., etc. They bought into this thing already.

So it’s going to go quick.

Now, why do I bring this up? Because this church, again, the context for Matthew 18 for us, our church context, we’ve got some work to do.

God has graciously given us an understanding of some of these things that we can move forward as we did in terms of education and political action and we can press this agenda in terms of the heresy of this sort of counseling and the true model of biblical counseling based upon the scriptures, based upon bringing people to responsibility and based upon church courts as part of that counseling procedure as well.

We have a unique understanding of all this and as a result, we’ve got an accountability from God. Knowledge according to the scriptures brings responsibility to act and we have responsibility to act.

I think God has prepared us not just in this area but in other areas as well for a great many good profitable dominion tasks. But if we’re going to do those things, if I’m understanding some of these indicators from Matthew 18 correctly, if we want to enter into dominion life as a body of Jesus Christ, there will at times be the need to excommunicate those who would be a drag on that body as it pursues its dominion calling, because they’re working the other way. They’re working for the other guy right now.

We pray to God they will be converted. We pray to God they’re just simply stiff-necked. We don’t know that. We do know if it comes to excommunication, we treat them as if they’re not elect. They need to be converted. But we pray for all that.

But having said that, we recognize too that there are two types of people: the good and the bad, the called and the uncalled. Those who are in Christ and those who reject Christ. No matter what their profession says, if their lives live out a radical rejection of God’s word and responsibilities and covenants, we must cut them off for the sake of our dominion calling.

It’s interesting that Abimelech was killed with a millstone, as I said earlier, and the millstone is what’s used here. Abimelech—that millstone was thrown by women at the top of a tower. Later, by the way, it was an important thing in the life of Israel because Joab remembered it when he talked about the death of Uriah and brought up this incident in the conversation with some people.

In similar fashion, Jael, a woman, crushed Sisera’s head with a tent peg. The church, the bride, crushes Satan under foot. It’s a head wound that Satan receives from the savior and the savior, in terms of the covenantal identification of the church of Jesus Christ with Christ, the church marches forward crushing the serpent’s head.

And that millstone is an interesting thing because the millstone is productive work. It’s a dominion task at work. It mills stuff. It becomes food. See, that’s why the wise women—that’s why the women were using it back there in the Abimelech time. It’s why they had that thing out.

You see, there’s a connection here between the millstone and dominion and between the punishment being dealt out in terms of church court to the exercise and extension of the dominion task and the life of dominion that God has called us to do.

Revelation 2 and 3, I’ve talked about the correlations. Jesus in the midst of the church is judging, but also Jesus in the midst of the church is establishing. He doesn’t want him to kick people out of the church in terms of heretics or idolaters or whatnot just because he wants that to see that as the end result of the process. No, he’s establishing the true church of Christ that it might proceed in its dominion calling.

Okay? So while he is in the midst of the churches in judgment, he’s also in the midst of the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 and Matthew 18:20 in terms of establishment.

Ultimately, the message of all this is holiness.

Ultimately, Matthew 18 correctly understood, as I think it is fairly clearly understood, sticks in the craw of too many churches today for one very important reason. And that reason is that far too many of us—all of us essentially—were raised in the public schools, were raised essentially as good humanists.

We see the value of mankind. We see that man—we wouldn’t want to admit it, but we’ve been trained to think of man as the measure of all things. And we hate to say it, but there might be some person that we give up on. Somehow we just didn’t do something right. Somehow we didn’t extend enough grace. Somehow we should have tried something else with this or that person.

But see, that’s titanism again. That’s saying that somehow we are the ones who can determine what’s good and bad. And it also, I think, is implicit humanism because it says that the purpose of God is to glorify man and enjoy him forever.

See, but that’s not the purpose of God. The purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And the scriptures make it real clear—whether you like it or not—that God sends people to hell.

God isn’t a humanist. And if we’re not humanists, we won’t hold back after we’ve done everything we can to seek and save the lost and had a willingness to forgive and done all those processes correctly. If we don’t—if we move rather in terms of theism, belief in Jesus…