The sermon 'Gaining Your Brother' by Jason Dohm focuses on Matthew 18:15-20, outlining a biblical process for addressing sin within the church community. The process includes four steps: private confrontation, involving one or two witnesses, bringing the issue before the church, and treating the unrepentant as outsiders. Dohm emphasizes the role of love, suggesting that this process is not just about correction but about reconciliation and freeing individuals from sin. The sermon also highlights the importance of humility, gentleness, and a spirit of love in these interactions, reflecting Jesus' teachings on greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven. The sermon stresses that this process is a gift from God to help maintain holiness and unity within the church. Additionally, Dohm discusses the authority of the church in binding and loosing, as granted by Christ, and the special presence of God when believers gather in His name.

Our sermon text for this morning is Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 20. Moreover, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.

But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Assuredly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name I Am there in the midst of them? Let's pray Father we thank you for the amazing blessing of your word for the fact that you Saw fit not just to save us but also to Give us your instructions and your wisdom for how we should live our lives.

And we pray now that you would help us to have that wisdom, that you would give us that wisdom, that we would understand rightly the things that you have for us this morning, and that you would be with Jason and help him to speak clearly, that you would give him a message from you and that you would anoint this time. In Jesus' name, amen. Gaining your brother is the title of the sermon. It comes right out of the text, words directly out of the text. And it's just the heart of what I believe these six verses are about.

God wants His people to be free. To be free from their sins, and He wants his people to be reconciled. He wants all the relational turbulence that happens when we live life in close quarters as we ought to in a local church. We ought to be living life in close quarters and that's going to cause relational turbulence from time to time. And God wants to give us tools to deal with that relational turbulence, and he wants us to be set free from the sinful tendencies that bubble up in life from time to time.

And so that is what this text is about. Last week, the text was about greatness in the kingdom of heaven. And Jesus needs to teach us about that, because it's not like greatness in any other sphere. In any other realm, we would define greatness differently. But Jesus, when he talks about his kingdom, and he talks about what it means to be great in his kingdom, paints a different kind of picture than we get in the workplace, than we get in almost any other sphere of life.

And it begins with becoming like a little child, with being humiliated, being without our own resources to give ourselves what we need. But being completely dependent upon, being completely humbled and reliant on someone else and that other person is God. So someone who is great in the Kingdom of God is actually laid low. Doesn't think too much of themselves, but thinks a lot of God and is satisfied in God. That's what it means to be great in the Kingdom of Heaven.

And so they're receiving others in the name of Jesus, not because there's any particular worth in the other people, but for the sake of Jesus they're receiving others and they're being really careful not to lead other people into sin. So that's how Jesus, in last week's text, defined greatness in his kingdom. Really what shined through in the text was not so much greatness in the kingdom, but greatness of the king. When we look at last week's text, We just see this beautiful picture of what our king is like. He identifies with his people so that when you receive a little one who believes in him, in his name, you're receiving him.

He's so identified with his people that the friends of his people are his friends. He's so identified with his people that the friends of his people are his friends. He's so identified with his people that the enemies of his people are his enemies, so much so that he says it'd be better off for you to strap one of those big millstones around your neck and to be cast into the depths of the sea than to mess with one of his people. Because he identifies with his people and he's protecting his people because he loves his people and he keeps them. So we ended last week with the parable of the one sheep of the flock that wanders away into the mountains and Jesus the son of man goes and gets that one sheep.

He'd leave the 99 to go and get that one. And that is the heart of God towards his people. And that's really where we pick up this week, is that though the Son of Man is really the one who preserves his people, protects his people, goes out into the mountains and gets that strange sheep that oftentimes he doesn't do that mystically, but he actually does it through his people. He acts through his people to take a wandering sheep and bring it back into the fold. And so we see an example of this in our text.

So I'm going to break the text into two bytes, two equal bytes. Verses 15, 16, and 17 will be our first byte. And we'll look at it in detail and then verse 18, 19, and 20 will be the second section that we'll look at. In these first three verses we have a four step process for dealing with the brother who sins against you. How should you deal with the brother who sins against you?

Well in these three verses, Jesus tells us exactly how we ought to deal with that brother who has sinned against you. It's three verses. Three. Just three. Only three.

We have this massive category, this massive topic. What should I do when my brother sins against me? And Jesus gives us three verses. Only three verses. Just three verses.

From time to time as we're preaching through Matthew, I'll bring a tract of the Jewish Mishnah up here with me. It's ten pages or fifty pages or something where a little section of what Jesus has talked about, the Jews have just commented on at length. And they've sliced it from every angle. And they've taken this category and exploded it out and drawn 100 different lines to tell you, imagine every different circumstance and tell you what you should do and how you should apply it in every single circumstance. This is one of those categories where we'd like to have our own Mishnah, where We draw a hundred different lines.

What if my brother does this? What if my brother says this? But this isn't what God gives us. God in His wisdom gives us three verses that tell us how to deal with our brother when he sins against us. Here's what we should learn from that.

A tract of the Mishnah is a lousy substitute for love. These are commands about love, about how you actually love your brother. Not despise your brother, not think little of your brother, not dismiss your brother, not let your brother wander away and not care anything for him but how you love your brother. So here we're hitting another instance in Matthew where God isn't instructing slaves. He's training sons and daughters to have his heart and to act in love.

So rather than giving us a tract of the Mishnah, which is 80 pages long, which draws the lines a hundred different ways across every imaginable circumstance, he gives us three verses that give us the principles of love, which we ought to operate by when our brother sins against us. A document that draws the lines a hundred different ways is a lousy substitute for love. And so God doesn't want to give us the answer to every scenario that we might face. He wants to train us as sons and daughters how to love Him and consequently how to love our brothers and sisters when they sin against us. Paul says in Romans 13 verse 10, love is the fulfillment of the law.

Jesus says in Matthew 22, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. And those two commandments are loving God and loving our neighbor. Love is always behind the law. So when God here gives us laws, gives us commands as he is, as to how we're to deal with our brothers when they're within sin, we gotta see through the commands to what's on the other side. And love is always on the other side.

And so we're having to discipline our minds and train ourselves. Not to wonder about how exactly we draw the 100 lines to cover every scenario. But how we see through the commandment to what God is really getting at, which is love. How do we love our brother? So we've been given by God in these three verses a four step process.

Here's step one. In each step there's going to be a condition and then there's going to be a call to faithful action. In step one, here in this first verse, the condition is that your brother sins against you. This is for when your brother sins against you. Not if looked at you askance or something like that.

But it needs to be an actual sin against you. And that's the condition. And then the call to the faithful action is this. Go, tell him his fault between you and him alone. That's what you ought to do.

Be faithful to your brother when he sins against you. You ought to go to him and you ought to tell him his fault and you ought to do it between you and him alone. Now there is a parallel text to this and it's found in Luke. It's found in Luke 17 verses 3 and 4. Luke only gives us two verses on this occasion, but here's what Luke records.

Jesus says in Luke 17 verses 3 and 4, take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in a day and seven times in a day, returns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.

So Here's what I want you to notice from the parallel text in Luke. Luke begins and ends with step one. Now Matthew gives us step two, step three, and step four, but Luke doesn't even bother to record that in his gospels. It's pretty clear from looking at the Luke text that it's the same circumstances. It falls in sequence right along where Matthew's been tracking.

So I'm pretty sure it's exactly the same circumstance. Luke doesn't even give us step two, three, or four. Luke just starts with step one. And we should know how vital step one is. In fact, I'm going to purposefully try to neglect the other three steps by comparison.

Because I think that's what we see in the gospels is that so much emphasis ought to be put in our practice on this one step that we would go to our brother when he sins against us, that we would tell him his fault to his face, now write him an email, Send him a flammogram about his errors and nuke him over the internet, but actually go to him and to his face, tell him his fault, and to do it between you and him alone, to do it privately. So Luke begins and ends with one step. And I want to say this, in a church that's growing in grace, and in a church that's growing in holiness, all the action should be in step one. All the actions should be in step one. Well, almost all of the actions should be in step one.

It's not that there aren't other steps in the escalating process that God gives us, but God wants us to be so faithful and tender hearted one towards another in step one that hardly anything ever gets out of step one. Things are successfully resolved. Brothers are set free from their sin in step one And brothers and sisters are reconciled together in step one. And that brothers and sisters are gained in step one. So that step two becomes irrelevant.

Step three becomes irrelevant. Step four becomes irrelevant. We want to be a church that's growing in grace. We want to be a church that's growing in holiness, so that we have these fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. Did I miss any?

I think I got them. We have a growth, which interests us, I'm missing one. And I don't know which one it is, but I won't stop here. We'll keep pressing on even though I missed a fruit of the spirit. But these things are on the increase in our hearts to such an extent that there's a tender-hearted brother on the other end of the personal rebuke.

And there's a tender hearted brother or sister who's coming with the personal rebuke. And that's so, we're growing so much in grace, we're growing so much in holiness that step one is where things begin and where they end. Now, there's such a clear foundation for step one, for going to your brother personally and in private and telling him his fault face to face in Leviticus 19. So please return to Leviticus 19. Leviticus 19 is such a powerful text for step one.

And it's where Jesus is pulling it from. So we're going to look at Leviticus 19 and we're going to look particularly at verses 16 through 18. Here's Leviticus 19 verses 16 through 18 You shall not go about as a tail bearer among your people Nor shall you take a stand against the life of your neighbor. I am the Lord You shall not hate your brother in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him.

You shall not take vengeance nor bear any grudge against the children of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord." Now, there's a context to Leviticus 19. The context is this. See how the whole chapter starts in verses 1 and 2. This is verses 1 and 2.

And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them, you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. That's the context of Leviticus 19, That we have a calling to be holy and it's rooted in the holiness of God because God is holy he wants his people to be holy and so He says in verse 3 I am the Lord and he says in verse 4 I am the Lord and he says in verse 10 I am the Lord And he says in verse 18, I am the Lord. And the whole chapter is about God being the Lord and having a holy people who understand that because God is holy, they can't just be like everybody else. And so he just keeps saying, he starts the chapter that way in verse 1 and 2, I'm a holy God so you should be a holy people. And then he says, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord.

And he tells us how to live like he's the Lord. This is a way that we live declaring that he is the Lord. That we're a different kind of people, that we're a peculiar people, that we're not like the rest the world. We're a holy people because he's a holy God. And so he says this over and over again and then we arrive at this particular section that talks about how you deal with your brother who sinned against you.

And the text says you'll surely rebuke him. It's the mark of a holy people that we don't just let Our brothers and sisters drift off into never-never land, but we'll surely rebuke them. So four things I want you to notice about verses 16 through 18, four really important things here, important for the life of our church. The first is this. This practice of going to your brother and telling him his fault to his face is a gossip killer.

It's a gossip killer. We see this in verse 16. You shall not go about as a tale bearer. And then everything that is said after that is set in contrast to that. Don't be a tale bearer.

Don't be a gossip. The exact opposite of going to your brother when he's sinned against you and telling him his fault privately to his face. The exact opposite of that is to be a tail bearer, is to tell everybody else about the offense of your brother against you. And Instead of talking to the person who's offended to you, you whisper to other people. That is the nature of being a tail bearer.

So what God has given us in Leviticus 19 and what Jesus is teaching us about in Matthew 18 is a gossip killer. And we need gossip to be killed because it harms our brother and it harms everyone else around us when we refuse to be courageous enough to go tell our brother his fault in private to his face. And instead we whisper it to someone else. It's a gossip killer when we heed the commands of God. Secondly, it's a sin not to do it.

To know that your brother is in sin has sinned against you and is struggling and is straying and is wandering off into the weeds and not to tell him his fault is to sin. We see this in verse 17. You shall not hate your brother in your heart. This is the argument that is being made here by God. To not confront your brother over his sin is to hate him in your heart.

Love actually requires that when you know your brother is wandering off into the weeds, is harming his own soul through a sin that you see in him, and not to do something about that is to hate him in your heart. You shall surely rebuke your neighbor and not bear sin because of him. So the only way you can get out from under this sin when you know about it, when you know that he's wandering into the weeds, is to go and to rebuke your neighbor. It's not hatred to rebuke your neighbor. It's love.

It's actually hatred to leave him alone and just let whatever happens, happens, and to leave him bound up into his sin. These are laws of love. On the other side of the command to go to your brother in secret and tell him his fault to his face is love. It's not hatred. And this is counterintuitive.

You think, well, I don't want to stir. I don't want him to think I don't like him, anything like that. No, it's exactly the opposite is true. Love actually requires that you go to your brother. So the first thing was that it's a gossip killer.

The second thing was that it's a sin not to do it. The third thing is that it's all wrapped up in your own temptations to sin. When your brother sins against you, there are all these temptations for you yourself to counter sin, we'll call it that, to sin in response to their sin. These temptations are looming over you. Leviticus 19 names them, first of all, in verse 16, It talked about being a tail bearer.

That's a temptation to sin. When your brother sins against you, the counter is for you to become a gossip and to engage in sin because your brother sinned against you. Here's another one, taking vengeance. That's what we see in verse 18. We can't just go take personal vengeance.

And so when your brother has sinned against you, there's a counter sin that is crouching at the door and it wants to master you and that is you waiting for the opportunity to even the score and to get vengeance. This puts to death when you're willing to obey the commands here, it puts to death this temptation to wait for the right moment and even the score. How about bearing a grudge? Bearing a grudge, verse 18, is a temptation that's crouching at the door when your brother or your sister sins against you. That not only will we not address it or not forgive them, but that we would just bear the grudge and we can just stew in our juices.

Stewing in our juices is a favorite pastime, isn't it? God wants us to be free of that. And this is a way to be free so that we're not bearing a grudge. Now, is it legitimate sometimes to overlook a transgression? Yes.

Proverbs 19, verse 11 says that A man of discretion is slow to anger, and it's his glory to overlook a transgression. So I don't believe that what's being required here is that if you ever see a sin of any magnitude in your brother that you go and rebuke him to his face. I think we'd be very busy people. How would we ever make a living? How would we ever have time to make a living if we rebuked everyone for everything that we observed in their lives?

So sometimes it's right to acknowledge that God has my brother on the sanctification curve at some point and he's dealing with him. I don't have to be God on his sanctification curve and sometimes it will just be the glory of a man to overlook a transgression. But we should be very careful about this. Jesus is actually putting this commandment in front of us for the good of our brother. And so we should be slow to say, well, that's God's territory.

It is God's territory, but perhaps he wants to engage us in his own territory for the good for the blessing of our brother. So number one it was a gossip killer. Number two it was a sin not to do it. Number three it's There are temptations for you to sin in response to their sin that is all wrapped up and this is a way to be free of it. And then lastly, this is just the second greatest commandment.

This is just the second greatest commandment. That's where it comes from. Right here, this text. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. When you go to your brother to help him with a sin, you're loving your neighbor as yourself.

Do you want to be left in your sin? I don't want to be left in my sin. I need help dealing with my sin and I consider it a kindness when someone comes to me not leaving me to wallow in it But to come alongside me as a brother or as a sister to help me with my sin. This is the essence of loving your neighbor as yourself. It's the second greatest commandment.

It's the golden rule being played out when someone will think enough of you, will love you enough, not to just let you sin against them and just never address it because of fear of man or any of the other things, any of the other reasons that we use to justify ourselves and just letting it go, but will actually love you enough to Come and talk to you about it. Can you see how love requires this? Can you see how love requires that we override all the natural tendencies which lobby against this and tell us in our heart of hearts why it's not really necessary to obey the commandment. But there's a hundred good reasons why we shouldn't. Can you see why love actually requires this?

What kind of church would we have if instead of gossiping, instead of being a tail bearer when we're sinned against, we would go to our brother in secret and tell him his fault. What kind of a church would we have instead of biding our time for the right moment to even the score, we would go to our brother in secret and tell him his fault? What kind of a church would we have when instead of bearing a grudge for a long time and stewing in our juices, we would go to our brother in secret and tell him his fault? We would have the kind of church that we want to have, that we desire to have. We'd be more free from sin.

We'd be more reconciled to our brothers and sisters. Isn't this what we want? Jesus is telling us how to have it. In Matthew 18, He's telling us how to have it. In Matthew 18, he's telling us how to have it.

Now, how do we go about this? Again, three verses, big subject, a lot of things that could be said haven't been said by Jesus here, but maybe they've been said in other places. So how do we go about this? Well first, we don't even have to get outside of Matthew 18. The first thing I want to say is right here in the text, we do it very quietly.

We do it very quietly. That's the first way in which we should go about this is quietly is keeping a matter small, is going to our brother in secret and telling him his fault. Because you're doing it to gain your brother. Our objective in all of these steps is to gain our brother. What does that mean?

Well it means that you help him be free from his sin and it means that you end up being reconciled. I think those two things are wrapped up so tight that you could never get them out of what it means to gain your brother. To help him be free from his sin and to be reconciled with him or her. And so you go very quietly. And that is an atmosphere in which you can actually deal honestly and frankly about sin, but you've demonstrated that you love them.

Because Nobody knows this meeting's happening. And you've gone to them in private, rather than to start an internet site or make posters and put them up. You've gone to them in private. So you've proven that your objective isn't to expose them for their frailties and their sins, but it's actually to deal with them in a brotherly or a sisterly way with their sin for their blessing. It's 100 miles away from giving them a piece of your mind.

This is not what step one is about. This is not show up to deliver the mail and give them a piece of your mind. No, you're actually, you have a very clear objective and it is gaining your brother or gaining your sister. And so you're going quietly to promote an atmosphere where sin can be dealt with outside of a very charged environment. Secondly, in a spirit of gentleness.

You should do it quietly and you should do it in a spirit of gentleness. Listen to Galatians 6 verses 1 and 2. Galatians 6 verses 1 and 2. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. If you have a brother who is overtaken in a trespass, any trespass, Paul says in Galatians 6.

And you go to him in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted, so you're mindful of your own condition. And then verse 2 says, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Paul in Galatians 6 actually puts this in the context of bearing one another's burdens. You're not going to decimate your brother for his sins, but you're going to bear his burden. That's why you're going to him.

And you're fulfilling the law of Christ, which is what? Which is the law of love, which explodes out to a lot of other laws, but behind them all is love. Now, Galatians 6 is broader than Matthew 18. Galatians 6 is a man caught in any trespass, in any sin. Matthew 18 has a more defined scope, which is when your brother sins against you.

But the principle from Galatians 6, of course, applies into Matthew 18 as we begin to consider, okay, we've only got three verses. Is there anything else that would have a bearing other than these three verses? Yes. You ought to go to him in a spirit of gentleness because you're not looking for a pound of flesh You're not looking for vengeance. You're not looking to expose your brother You want to deal with him about his sin to be a blessing to your brother?

And so you go in a spirit of gentleness. Finally, so we've gone to him quietly, we've gone to your brother or sister in a spirit of gentleness and lastly you're going in humility. Maybe that's part of a spirit of gentleness but we'll make a sub item. You're going in humility. Now just flip over a couple of pages to Matthew 7.

We've already dealt in this. Jesus has spoken about this in Matthew 7. We go to our brother or our sister in humility. In Matthew 7 verses 3 through 6, the topic at hand is the same topic. How do you deal with your brother in sin?

How do you do it? Matthew 7, Jesus has already told us some things about that. Matthew 7 verses 3 through 6. Matthew 7 verse 3. And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye?

But do not consider the plank in your own eye. Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye? And look, a plank is in your own eye. Hypocrite. First, remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

Do not give what is holy to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn and tear you in pieces." To the extent that when we go to our brother or sister who sinned against us, that we have Matthew 7 and what Jesus has taught us in Matthew 7 in mind, to that extent, we're going to that person having considered that my biggest problem is my own sin. We've got something very specific in mind as we go to our brother or sister. And it's this, Your sin against me is not my big problem. I've got bigger fish to fry than your sin against me, namely my sin in this category, in that category, in that category, in that category, in that category. I'm being damaged by sin, but predominantly it's not your sin against me, it's my sin.

And so, I've got plenty of my own to deal with. Now, I'm here out of faithfulness because God has commanded me to deal in a certain way with a brother or a sister who has sinned against you But I know that's not my big problem. You're sinning against me and so there's been a dealing on that level before you go to your brother or sister to acknowledge that there needs to be a removal of the plank from my own eye before I can come help with the tweezers to get the speck out of your eye. So we go in humility, really having a right view of who we are. The last thing you want to do is to go confront a brother or a sister not having a right view of yourself, being all puffed up and thinking that the largest problem in your world is their sin against you.

How much further from the truth could that ever be? Finally in Matthew 7 there's a distinction made. Verse 6 seems out of place because you've been talking about dealing with a brother and making sure that you've dealt with the plank before you deal with the speck. And then it turns to dogs and swine. You think, what in the world is this doing here?

But Jesus is drawing a distinction between how you deal with a brother or sister in Christ, someone whose Lord is also Jesus Christ, and how you would deal with an unregenerate person. This is going to matter in our study of Matthew 18 because when we get to the end of the process, you're going to realize at the very end of the process, I don't think I'm dealing with a brother or sister here. I think we're down to just casting pearls before swine. I think we're down to just giving what's holy to the dog. So there has to be a disengagement here.

Matthew 7 lines up so closely with Matthew 18. And in Matthew 7, Jesus is drawing the distinction between dealing faithfully with a brother and trying to deal on the individual sin level with an unregenerate person. With an unregenerate person, you don't need to help them be sanctified from a sin. You need to help them be justified from all their sins, which is why we don't deal the same with brothers as we do with the unregenerable. Here's what J.C.

Ryle says, and it's great because J.C. Ryle said it. This friendly, faithful, straightforward way of dealing is the most likely course to win a brother if he is to be won. If your brother is to be won, this is the way to do it. It's a friendly way to do it.

It's a faithful way to do it. It's a straightforward way to do it because you're going to him in secret, you're going to him in private, and you're telling him his fault to his face. So he knows that you love him if you go quietly, if you go in a spirit of gentleness, if you go in humility. Now how long does step one last? Text doesn't say.

Text doesn't say a lot of things as we've been noticing. It doesn't say how long it lasts. But it does say that you have to know whether you've been heard or not. Can't exit step one until you know whether you've been heard or not, because That becomes the prerequisite for step two. Has your brother heard you?

You know what? In that first conversation, your brother might want to chew on it. Your sister might want to chew on it. Might not have thought about it in the terms that you've tabled with them. And so on Monday morning I think I had said, you know, this is not step one on Thursday, step two on Friday, step three on Saturday, and then step four, get them out of there on Sunday.

And I think Gary Orr had said, yeah, but it's also not step one 2009, step two 2010, step three 2011. So it's something in between. There's no reason to rush the steps, but you want to keep moving forward. And when you know that you haven't been heard, then you know that step one has not been successful in gaining your brother. Now here's an interesting question completely outside the text, But an interesting question that makes a beautiful point about what God is leading us to.

Here's the question. So this is when your brother sins against you. You go to him. James Lundquist sinned against me, so I go to him. That's just an example, you're all looking at me.

He probably has, but I don't know in what way. So I'm to go to him, that's the command. What about if I've sinned against him? What about if I've sinned against him? What about if I've sinned against him?

Well Jesus has addressed that in the Sermon on the Mount too. Listen to Matthew 5 verses 23 and 24. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you. Leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift.

So if James is sinned against me, then I'm to go to James. But if I've sinned against James and I have any inkling of it, I'm to go to James. And what God is doing here is that through His commandments, He's driving us together from both directions in order for us to be reconciled. You see that? In other words, To the extent that both people are being obedient to scripture, they ought to collide on the way to each other.

Because I'm going to you because you sinned against me, but you have an inkling of it, so you're coming to me to make it right. And there ought to be a midstream collision between these people who are in a hurry to be reconciled. That's the picture that we have in the Gospel of Matthew. That from both directions there's haste to be reconciled to our brothers. So that both people are told to come to the other to be together for the purpose of reconciliation.

This is what God is calling us to. Is that we find our brother so tender hearted when we go to him, or that he might even preempt us by going to him first and say, brother, I know I sinned against you. I desire to be reconciled. I want to be reconciled. So God is pushing us from both ends He's pushing us together so that we would be reconciled with one another Okay step two luckily step one was the long one.

We're okay Step two The condition for step two is that he will not hear you. You went to your brother in private, you told him his fault to his face, and he wouldn't hear you. So then there's another call to faithful action, which is take one or two witnesses, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. So there's another action that is required of you to be faithful. It wasn't enough that you went to your brother in private, told him his fault.

But because he wouldn't hear you, God requires further action. It's that you get another brother or another couple of brothers or another couple of sisters. This works across all genders, so I'm trying to include everybody in the language. But you get more and you go back and you try again. And what's being quoted here by Jesus is Deuteronomy 19.15.

Deuteronomy 19.15 says, one witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits. By the mouth of two or three witnesses, the matter shall be established. So Jesus is taking Deuteronomy 19.15 and he's including it in his instructions to his people in Matthew 18. Now does this have to be eyewitnesses of the sin? Sure helps.

Sure is nice. Sure makes things expeditious if they're eyewitnesses to the sin. They don't have to be. They're actually going to be witnesses of you telling your brother. They're witnesses of the interchange.

And they bring accountability to the communication that's happening. Is it happening gently, humbly? Are the right principles being advanced? Is the person really in sin? So they're bringing accountability to the communication and to the process.

And here's something that's not in our three verses which is important and of course you'll want to give thought to this when you take one or two along with you is that you choose carefully. Are my choices of witnesses helping or hurting? What kind of witnesses should I choose? Well, there's probably a lot of criteria that you could use, but we could draw from Exodus 1821 and Exodus 1821. Jethro, Moses' father in law, is telling him the kinds of men that he should select in order to help him with the judging of Israel.

And these are people who are actually participating in a judicial process. We're in step two of judicial process, aren't we? So this applies. And in Exodus 18, 21, we see it said, Select able men such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness. Well, that's a good list.

You might have other reasons to put other things on the list, but you want to go to your brother who sinned against you with people that he has a predisposition to trust for being fair minded, for knowing the scriptures, for being mature in the faith. You want to take mature people alongside you who will also go in humility, go in a spirit of gentleness, but can witness and weigh in and help you appeal to this brother who's trapped in a sin. You want to take people who will help you appeal to this brother who's caught up in a sin and who started to dig his heels in a little bit because he wouldn't hear you. So you want to take the mature along with you. You've got the same objective, gaining your brother, but there's more people who are coming alongside you to labor towards this objective.

So they're going to come with you and appeal to this brother. Brother, repent of this sin. Step three. Again, we have a condition. He refuses to hear them.

So in step two, the condition was he didn't hear you. One person went and he didn't hear him. Now the language here is escalating. You notice that? Now he refuses to hear you.

That's not what it said at the end of step one. But now that's what it's saying at the beginning of step three. He's refused to hear not one person, maybe not two people, but three people. And it indicates, the language here indicates there's a hardening going on, which is why you find yourself at step three of a four-step process. Again, there's a call to faithful action.

If you're going to be faithful to this brother, it wasn't enough that you went in person, it wasn't enough that you went back with one or two other witnesses to continue the appeal to this brother, but further action is required of you by God. And it's that you tell it to the church. You tell it to the church. So you can see the pattern is escalating really fast. Now it's told to the church.

Question. Where are the elders? Where in the world are the elders in this text? As an elder, I want some elders in these three verses. It gives me, it tells me exactly what I should be doing, where I should be standing as these steps are going on.

Where are the elders here? Well, they're not in the text. But in Acts 20, in 1 Peter 5, elders are called overseers. So they're not the main characters in everything that happens in the church. Lots of things happen in the church that the elders aren't doing, but they're overseers.

They're overseeing things. They're overseeing processes in the church. So I think that's what elders are doing here. They're overseeing, Particularly as we get into the later stages here, they have a role to play to keep the train on the tracks and to oversee the process that God has given to us. And we see that there's an escalation to wider and wider circles.

It started with just one person, just one person, going to one other person. It started at such a tight circle, just two people in that circle. And then it widened out a little bit. It was two or three people going back the second time. And now it's widened out a lot.

It's being told to the church. And so it's getting bigger. This matter is getting bigger. And there's more pressure. There's more pressure now.

It wasn't very much pressure when it was two people over coffee. Me telling James his sin against me. But it was some more pressure when Jim Samples and I went back to talk to you because you in here and Now when we're telling it to the church, there's a lot more pressure and there's actually shame Being brought to bear to bring this man to To repentance it was not in my notes by the way to accuse you And as this example gets further developed, I'm sorry that I started down the track, but I'm having a hard time getting away from it. So there's more pressure and there's shame, but it's not to destroy, it's to reclaim this brother. The objective is still the same.

It's still the same. And step one is to gain your brother. And step two is to gain your brother. And step three is to gain your brother. So the pressure is not to destroy your brother, but it's to reclaim him.

And the shame that he's feeling before the church is not to destroy your brother but is to reclaim your brother. And you've been telling him, wake up, there's sin, and he's not been hearing, and this is the bucket of cold water that says wake up You're in sin And you've not heard one and you've not heard two or three and now it's had to be been told to the whole church wake up and turn around This brings us to step four and Again, there's a condition He refuses even to hear the church. So there's another refusal to hear. He will not hear the church. And then there's a call to faithful action.

Something is still required of you. And now it's required of many people. And that's, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Let him be like a heathen and a tax collector to you. Now the NASV and the ESV instead of heathen renders it a Gentile.

In other words, it doesn't look like you're serving the same God. He needs to be to you like a heathen. He needs to be to you like a tax collector, because you don't look like you have the same Lord. It looks like you've been giving what's holy to the dogs. It looks like you've been rolling out those pearls and they're getting trampled on by a swine.

So don't keep doing that. Don't keep rolling out the holy things to the dogs. Don't keep rolling out the pearls to the swine. But treat them like what he's acting like, a heathen or a gentile and a tax collector. Interesting that Matthew the tax collector is the only one to record this.

Matthew knew what he was. He's humble about what he was. He was a tax collector. He knows what that means. He knows how people view tax collectors.

Jesus even speaks of it repeatedly as someone who's hardened in being impenitent, not repenting. What does it mean to treat someone like a heathen and a tax collector? MacArthur has the notes in his study Bible, and I found them very helpful. He says, step four means that the offender must be excommunicated, regarded by the church as a gentile and a tax collector. The idea is not merely to punish the offender or to shun him completely, but to remove him as a detrimental influence from the fellowship of the church.

And henceforth, to regard him as an evangelistic prospect rather than as a brother. So you've shifted him out of one category, out of a brother who needs to be helped with sanctification of a sin and you've said Wrong category. I cannot deal with this man for the sanctification of a sin. He won't hear me. So he belongs in another category.

He needs justification for all of his sins, not just sanctification in this one category in which he sinned against me. MacArthur ends by saying, ultimately the sin for which he has excommunicated is hard-hearted impenitence. He wouldn't hear. He wouldn't hear. He wouldn't hear.

He wouldn't hear. And so you treat him like a dog. You treat him like a swine. You treat him like a tax collector. You treat him like a heathen.

And he becomes an evangelistic prospect. He needs to be justified from all his sins, not just sanctified from one of them. So you change your patterns towards him. You no longer have Christian fellowship with him. In fact, in some ways, you would be more free to do things with someone who never claimed to be a Christian.

You could eat with someone who never claimed to be a Christian, but was caught up with these sins. But in 1 Corinthians 5, it's clear that someone who names themselves with a brother, but will not forsake these sins, then you're not even at liberty to eat with them. So as it turns out, heathen and tax collectors get treated pretty well by Christians. Christians aren't rude to heathen and tax collectors. And they don't shun them.

They don't go out of their way to be disrespectful to them. But they look at them in a certain way and they relate to them in a certain way and they desire for them to be justified from their sins. And So those are the things that they're speaking of. Now let's shift. Those are the four steps that Jesus has given us in these three verses.

Now let's shift to the second section, beginning in Matthew 18, verse 18. Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name I am there in the midst of them." Matthew 18 verse 18 uses identical words to Matthew 16 verse 19.

Jesus says it with Peter. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Jesus said it to Peter in chapter 16. He's saying it to the church in chapter 18.

So this isn't confined to Peter, people with apostolic authority, it's actually authority that has been given to the church. We see that here in Matthew 18. Now, the NASB is best on precision of translating the verb tense. They're best on precision of translating the verb tense, better than New King James. Here's how the NASB renders it.

Whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven. And whatever you lose shall have been loosed in heaven. In other words, you're not determining what gets constrained or released, bound or loosed. But you're declaring it. The revealed will of God says this is to be bound, and so you declare it bound.

The revealed will of God says this is to be loosed, and so you declare it to be loosed. So it's not us imposing on heaven what will be bound or what will be loosed, but it's heaven declaring through the revealed will of God and then the church acting with the authority that has been delegated to it by God. Where did God delegate it? Here in Matthew 18. It says put him out.

Bind that. And then if he repents, the revealed will of God, in 2 Corinthians, and probably also other places, but at least 2 Corinthians is going to say, bring him back in. Loose that. Bring him back into the people of God. Not because we think it's wise, not according to our own criteria, but because the revealed will of God has told us to do things.

So that authority has been delegated to us and we do it because he's told us to do it, and we declare the judgments that God has given us. So it's an exercise of great commission authority on behalf of Jesus Christ. Did you catch that? It's an exercise of great commission authority. That's where we find it.

One of the places we find it. On behalf of Jesus Christ. Listen to Matthew 28, 18-20. This is a great commission. And Jesus came and spoke to them saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I command you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. Jesus has been given all authority in heaven and on earth and He's going to be with His people to the end of the age. So His ministry is going to continue to the end of the age and he's going to be with his people and he's going to be exercising his authority through his people. Not exclusively through his people, but largely through his people.

He's been given all authority and he's exercising it through his people. Because he's been given all authority in heaven on earth, he says, go therefore. Because I've been given all authority, go. Baptize, make disciples, teach them to observe all that I've commanded you. And so there's an authority that the church has given, but it's delegated authority.

It doesn't derive from ourselves. We don't have authority just because. We have authority because Jesus has been given all authority and he's told us to do things. So we act with delegated authority. Matthew Henry says, it's not legislative authority, it's judicial authority.

We don't make the laws but We apply them because Jesus our Lord has told us to apply them. So we're not the law giver, but we implement his laws because he told us to. That's where the authority to bind and to lose comes from. And then verses 19 and 20 speaks of agreeing together on a request. We come together, we agree together on a request, having gathered together in the name of Jesus.

So under his banner, under his authority, under his revealed will, we're meeting together in the name of Jesus and we're agreeing together on a request. That's what verses 19 and 20 are talking about. Now listen to 1 Corinthians 5, which is speaking of excommunication and using almost exactly the same language as we see here in this second half of the text in Matthew 18. 1 Corinthians 5 verses 4 and 5. Look how remarkably similar the language is.

1 Corinthians 5 verse 4. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together along with my spirit, Paul is writing, along with Paul's spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." It's almost exactly what is said in Matthew 18. Gathering together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to do on his behalf what has been commanded by the Word of God. Clearly this is not men doing whatever they want and God rubber stamping it with his approval. As the church we'll just do whatever seems right to us and then we know that God is going to approve of that.

Clearly that is not what's being said in Matthew 18 and it's not what's being said in 1 Corinthians 5. Here's what Matthew Poole said about this. It helped me. Matthew Poole. Christ assures these persons that such censors ought not to be slighted.

In other words, unrepentant person, be very careful that you don't just set this aside and say, this is only man doing this, I don't have to obey it, God has a different opinion. Matthew Poole says that these sentures ought not to be slighted. In other words, you shouldn't set it aside lightly. You should be very careful, for God would confirm them in heaven. As also, their readmissions of such persons into their communion upon their true repentance and acknowledgment of their errors.

Meaning that a person put out of the church should be very slow to say that's not God that's just men doing that to me. Now that almost always happens when somebody's put out of the church they say that's just men and they did it wrongly And I don't have to abide by this, God thinks differently. These verses tell us to be very careful about that kind of thinking. And the other side of that is true as well. That a readmission into the church, A person shouldn't wring their hands about whether they've really been brought back in, but that God really does want his church to speak in that way.

Matthew Poole picks up here. Not that our Lord by this intended to confirm all sentences of excommunication, or to patronize any cheat or hypocrisy and any to gain restoration to the church. But only to assure stubborn and impenitent sinners that he would ratify what his church did according to the rule he had given to them to act by. Now, I realized as I read that how probably impossible that was to listen to. I should have just said it in my own words.

Here's what Matthew Poole is saying. Is it possible to wrongly excommunicate a person? You better believe it. Now does that mean that they're really cast out of the Kingdom of God if they're wrongly excommunicated? Nope, that's not what this text is teaching.

And is it possible on the flip side that a person having been excommunicated could fake their way back into the church? Absolutely. You might be fooled. You might think it's real repentance, but it's not real repentance and they would fake their way back into the church. But the thrust of the text isn't that.

The thrust of the text is for the person in sin who's being dealt with by the church to be very careful in setting aside the judgment and to say, as almost all excommunicated persons say, that's wrong. For these five reasons, these five mistakes in the process, that's wrong, and I don't have to abide by it, and that's wrong. God thinks differently than that. In the mind of the excommunicated, God almost always thinks differently than what the church did, because there's 10 different reasons why it was wrong, and it's just self-justification. And it's hardness of heart, which the process itself has demonstrated was there in the first place.

And so God gives us these verses for the unrepented to think very, very seriously and carefully when the church acts on behalf of Jesus Christ with the delegated authority that he has given. Friends, this is just the Lord's prayer being answered. Listen to Matthew 6, 10. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Heaven says what ought to happen, and then the church is to act according to what heaven has said and bring the will of heaven down to earth. That's what's being said by these verses. When the church exercises its authority, that's what's happening. Heaven has said it and the church declares it and implements it. Now, I've taught these last three verses as a very narrow application which is closely tied to the preceding verses.

I've just hooked these last three verses to church discipline in the four steps that were given there. Almost always when these last three verses are preached, they're preached by themselves and they're given broad application. This is our comfort that when two Christians are together, that God is in their midst. And this is our comfort that our prayers are answered. And I just want to say, that's legitimate.

That's legitimate. These are principles that can be very broad in application. I believe that they're positioned here to teach us more things that We need to know about these four steps that God has given us and to think about them in a particular way. But it doesn't have to be restricted in application to that. Let me ask a couple of questions.

Is God omnipresent? Is he present everywhere all at the same time? Well, yes. Of course he is. Well, that doesn't negate this, though, when it says that when two or three gather in his name, that he's there in the midst of him.

Does God answer prayers of the individual? For your prayers to be answered, do you have to have somebody at your elbow? Yes. God answers the prayers of the individual, but that doesn't negate what's being said here. Even so, even though God is present everywhere it wants, Even though God answers the prayers of the individual, God has a particular care for the occasions where His people gather in His name in one heart, in one mind to make requests.

That's special to God. That's different than Him just being everywhere all the time, which of course He is. That's different than us lifting up our individual prayers, which of course he can answer as well, but it is special to God when his people gather together in his name under his banner and They come together in one heart in one mind under his authority to ask things of him that is special to God. These verses teach that. We ought to keep this in mind.

I'm going to close with a quote by J.C. Ryle and a quote by Matthew Henry. J.C. Ryle says this, surely men are not wise when they speak contemptuously of any gathering where Christ is present. May we all ponder these things.

If we have met together with God's people for spiritual purposes in times past, let us persevere and not be ashamed. If we have hitherto despised such meetings, let us consider our ways and learn wisdom." These verses, and J.C. Ryle's comments on these verses, ought to teach us to think differently about our gatherings. That God thinks it's special when his people gather together under his authority, under his banner, with one heart and one mind to make requests of him. God treats that in a special way.

He delights to answer those prayers. He delights it when his people gather together in his name and share a heart and a mind. Finally, Matthew Henry says this, for it is not the multitude, but the faith and sincere devotion of the worshipers that invites the presence of Christ. It's not the number. It's the faith and the sincere devotion that invites the presence of Christ.

It's not the number. It's not the number. It's the faith and the sincere devotion that invites the presence of Christ. And though there be but two or three, the smallest number that can be. Yet, if Christ make one among them, who is the principal one, their meeting is as honorable and comfortable as if they were two or three thousand." It's true.

It's true. When worshippers will come together in faith, in sincere devotion, it's like you have two or three thousand. God is just as happy if just a couple of his people will bind themselves together in love of God and in love of neighbor and come together in his name and ask things of him as if there were thousands. Okay a few concluding remarks. Just a couple.

Number one, this is a million miles away from being a calloused method of evening the score. A million miles away. This is not about you striking back at your brother. Of course it's not. It's the most tender hearted command of love for gaining your brother, for going to your brother and in tenderness, with a gentle spirit and humility and quietness, going him to help him with his sin.

It's for the blessing of your brother. And so you'll be free from all the temptations that you'll face when your brother has sinned against him. But it's to go and be a blessing to his brother. This is not about evening the score. This is not about giving a piece of your own mind.

This is about blessing your brother. This is about demonstrating love for your brother. This will pull us out of our comfort zones. It's more comfortable not to go to your brother, to pretend that it hasn't happened. God commands us to go, to gain our brother, to help him with his sin and to be reconciled with Him.

God forbid that we would honor our own comforts above being a blessing to our brother. Leviticus 19 is right. It is to hate your brother to do that. It's to hate your brother, to let him wander away. Number two.

This is the ministry of Jesus Christ towards us for identifying and dealing with our sin. God has given this to the church as a gift. He's handed it as a gift to help us with our sin. So when we wander away from the 99, This is one of the ways that Jesus Christ will come and get us. He'll send us a brother who loves us enough to come and help us with our sin, to put his arm around us and help us be free from our sin and to be reconciled with our brothers.

This is the kindness of God towards us. And we get the privilege to participate. Could God deal with our sin without us? Of course he can deal with our sin without us in a thousand different ways, but he's decided to allow us to participate to be a blessing to our brothers. Praise the Lord.

He's given us a place in this. He's given us a way to demonstrate that we love our neighbor as ourselves. Finally, when we meet together, let's be more conscious of God's special care for our meetings. Let's take these last three verses to heart that it is special to God. It is lovely to God.

God rejoices when his people come together in his name with one heart and one mind. Let's do it with all our hearts. Let's squeeze the last drop of benefit out of these meetings because God cares that we meet in His name. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this text.

Help us to be faithful. God, we need to be faithful to you in this. This would be such a blessing to our church to the extent that we would radically commit ourselves to obeying you in it. Help us, Lord, help us. Send your spirit among us to press these things on our hearts and help us not to be hearers of the word only but also to be doers of your word to honor you Lord not to be self-righteous in any way but to honor you to live thankful lives before you.

We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.