September 20, 2020 - Matthew 18:15-20 Sermon - Grace-Vail and Grace-Benson Is it worth the trouble, or not? We’re constantly answering that question by what we’re willing to invest energy and time and attention into, and what we’re not. Is it worth it to point out to a loved one that their behavior is not right with God? Or is it easier to just not go there? Save yourself the potential fight, the probable relational damage, the interruption of what could be a peaceful day. Often, for selfish reasons, we decide it’s not worth it to try to turn a person from a path of walking away from God, and try to get them on a path of walking toward God. Jesus says, that’s more than laziness, it’s failing in a crucial part of the calling he has given you. You are meant to care about the people around you and impact them for good. You won’t do it perfectly, but you are called to show up. When you do, there is a reward, maybe not right away, but a reward all the same when you do the tough work of confronting someone in their sin to turn them back to God. We need the encouragement, resources, and trust to interact with others in this way. We look to Matthew 18 for what we need. To care for people as Jesus desires, you need to start by seeing the people around you as your brother, your sister. Despite the foolish and harmful things people do, which Jesus sees better than you do, he still places an incredibly high value on them. Earlier in this conversation with his disciples recorded in Matthew 18 he gave a powerful reason not to despise anyone that God has put in your life. Jesus said in Matthew 18:10, “Their angels always see the face of the heavenly Father.” How much value does the Father place on people if he assigns his angels to constantly watch over them? If someone had a super-tough bodyguard who was also super-smart and had all the latest tech at his disposal, you’d say, “that kid has someone who cares about them.” That’s how God views everyone around you. He cares about them enough to assign angels. He wants you to care about them enough to confront them when they sin. Notice how it says, “If your brother sins,” not “if you notice that your brother sins.” This implies that you are paying enough attention to your brother to know if and when he is sinning. You’re not so disconnected from your brother that you don’t even notice. Instead, you are so attuned to the word of God on the one hand, and attuned with the people around you on the other hand that you notice when they sin and respond to spiritual danger to protect and help them. You see value in the people around you, and value in their relationship to God. You also need to see sin not just a minor thing, but as a path of destruction. The word for sin means to miss the mark. Sin is failing to live up to the glory of your maker, failing to live as you were designed to live. Sin is acting against your nature. If you put diesel in a gas engine, it will not run well. If you do not pay your electric bill, they will turn off the electricity, probably not all at once, but eventually, you will not have a life in which all the possibilities of electricity in your home are available to you. Sin acts against your own nature, and it harms the nature of others as well, and can become an eternally permanent condition. Jesus showed how serious he is about sin earlier in this conversation when he mentioned if you cause someone else to sin; it’d be better to have a millstone around your neck and jump into the sea. He said that if your hand causes you to sin, you’d be better off cutting it off. Same things with a foot or an eye. Jesus spoke this way because he knew: your sin is able to lead you to hell forever.
That’s the seriousness. And it is able to affect other people’s relation to God as well in that terrible direction. God doesn’t want to see that happen to anyone, though he will not force them not to sin. God does not want sin to cause anyone to be lost, so he puts you in their life to help, as he has put people in your life to help you. You are invited to see yourself as an agent whom God has placed in the position you find yourself for just a time as this. Once there was on orphan girl, who was taken care of by her uncle, and eventually she became queen of Persia. Her name was Esther. When a man in the royal court tried to exterminate her people, she had the position to try to stop it, but it was dangerous for her. She contemplated what to do, her uncle told her, “For such a time as this, God has put you where you are.” For such a time as this, Esther endangered herself to care for her people in danger. When you see the destruction of sin about to come on your loved one, you can have the same attitude. You can say, “For such a time as this, God put me here to help them stay away from sin and close to him.” In Esther’s story, God could have come down and handled it, but he let Esther do it. And though Jesus could appear every time someone is walking a path of sin and say, “stop it,” he far more often puts someone like you there instead. He wants you to be his agent in this world. Armed with that attitude toward your brothers and sisters, he tells you what to do. If your brother sins, go and “show him his sin.” This is more than just a casual neutral pointing something out, the idea is to express strong disapproval. Rebuke, scrutinize, expose, convict of wrongdoing, correct him. You make it clear to them, “What you are doing is wrong and dangerous and needs to be corrected for your own good.” Our culture says, “if you tell someone they are wrong, it will tear down their self esteem.” What do you think? In the times when someone been stern in warning you about your actions, did you feel a lack of self esteem? That’s not my experience. I remember being 14 years old, I had just started high school, and I had been making some dump choices in my life. And my brother who was 18 at the time, heard about it. And they were some of the same kinds of dump choices that I knew he had made. But he came up to me and talked a little, and then I remember the feeling of his hand smacking me hard on the head. Almost right away I thought, “He actually cares about me enough to confront me?” Sometimes care needs to be firm. Now, a smack on the head isn’t always what’s called for. And the care doesn’t always get noticed. So go and rebuke humbly, but go and rebuke, Jesus says. First go just the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. To know whether or not he listened to you implies a follow up. This is not a one and done short talk; but a conversation, then a follow up. The desired goal is to win your brother or sister over, not win the argument, but win the person. To win them nt to your opinion, but to live in alignment with their Father. Think of being in a family, and you know things are not right between your brother or sister and mom or dad. It’s hard. I can remember being the youngest in my family and having older teen siblings; when they were not getting along, it was hard on all of us, because we care about each other. If you have a heavenly father and you see your brother or sister not right with him, you want to see that repaired, because you know it is good for your brother, sister. That’s all. That’s the only agenda. It goes on, if he does not listen, you don’t throw up your hands and say, “I tried, you’re on your own.” Don’t give up. Be persistent. This is important. Take with you 2 or 3 others so that on the
mouths of 2-3 witnesses the matter can be established. You want to make your case compelling. You desire their well being. So you tell them, “Listen to another brother or sister, not just me.” If they still do not listen, tell it to the group, the assembly, the church. Get a bigger group involved. If appropriate, a church, but maybe its a circle of friends or other family. Be persistent. Try to convince them. If also the assembly they do not listen to, let him be to you the same as a pagan or a tax collector; an outsider. Let them know that you do not approve of their continuing sin, and their failure to respond, that by their persistent attitude they are cutting themselves off from their Father. A church may choose to exclude from certain actions and events, like Lord’s Supper or others. You want to in some way make it obvious, things are not as they should be; they’re not as they once were between us, because you’re not right with our father. There is an extreme progression from brother to pagan. God does not want to cut us out of his family, but at a certain point, we put ourselves outside his family with persistent sin. The driving away from the group is not a desire to get rid of sinners, but to send a clear message - “You are not right with God and you need to know it and I'm trying my best to communicate that to you. By your persistent behavior, you are displaying evidence that you do not believe in, functionally trust in Jesus as savior, lord. You are in some way saying, I’m the master, I’m in charge, and that is a harmful attitude to have. So I will treat you in a way that tries to point out the harm.” A tax collector was someone who had functionally betrayed his group identity. At what point of being a tax collector are you no longer an Israelite? Just imagine an American citizen joining an Islamic terrorist group in the middle east. At what point do they cease to be an American? There is a point where someone could prefer sin attitudes or sin patterns or sin behaviors so that they are no longer a member of God’s family. We all need to be aware of this, because we all have it in us. Take care not to get to that point yourself, and care about others not getting there either. Now, just to make clear; any time a person sins, they do not every time automatically put themselves outside the family of God. God’s grace is there for a person even when they sin. But the persistent choosing to sin can cause a person to abandon the grace God would give them, that’s the danger. And as we correct others, we do so humbly, knowing that we need others to stand between us and a path of walking away from God. We accept this kind of conversation when it’s needed for ourselves as well. Another reason this is so important, look at what’s possible when you treat others with this amount of care. Jesus said, “Amen I tell you, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever is loosed on earth is loosed in heaven.” Heaven and earth were always meant to inter-relate and overlap. And though we by our rebellion sever the heaven-earth connection; Jesus again makes them inter-relate and overlap. God wants the activities of heaven and earth to be joined. He doesn’t force it on earth, but he desires to lead people to be involved in his activities while on earth. Even the work of binding, closing the door of heaven is important. God tells people that they are on the outside in the hopes that he can then bring them to the inside of a relationship with him. He wants any locking of the door to lead to a reopening of the door to life with him. There is power in doing this, not only as individuals, but also as a group. “If 2 or 3 of you on earth agree about any matter, and you make the request to the one who has the keys to the life of heaven, it will be given you from the Father, the one in the heavens.”
Amazing things happen because of Jesus’ family relation to the father. You get to claim status as a family member, not because you have perfectly lived as a child, but because Jesus did. You have been adopted as a child because brother Jesus pleads your case, and gives you his status to be your own. You are adopted because brother Jesus took your place under the Father’s disapproval. He experienced undeserved separation from his Father, so you could be brought in and get approval from the father. Jesus is the reverse prodigal. He got the expected treatment so we could get the unexpected. He got the thorns so we could get the robe and the ring. He got the cross and thirst, so that we could get the feast of welcome. He got rejection so we could get approval by the father. Not only did he die for you, but he also lives. If a blood-brother died for you, you might carry around a weight of guilt, “I caused my brother’s death.” What keeps you from feeling guilty about Jesus’ death is that he isn’t dead anymore. He is alive. You still have the brother who died for you, he still lives. No guilt, no pressure, just an invitation to care about the people around you like brother Jesus cares about you. The father and the son once again enjoy one another in perfect unity. So come in and be an agent of change for other brothers and sisters. It’s a big family and you have the ability to remind others of who the son is and what he’s done to bring them to their father. He promises, “Where 2 or 3 are in my name, there I am with them.” Though invisible, and often forgotten, Jesus is able to be among people. His presence is not just here for our comfort and worship and prayer answering. His presence is among us so that we can become powerful agents of connecting people on earth to the father on heaven. Right where you are, Jesus is with you. When you care for and invest in other people, Jesus is in your midst. When you seek first his kingdom and righteousness, everything else will be added to you. Including: the relationship damage that may come when you confront someone about their sin. He can pay that back. Including the time and energy it takes to walk through this with people. You will grow closer to Christ as you do this. What you need is trust. Jesus taught about trust earlier in this conversation. His disciples asked, “Who is the greatest?” Jesus took a child and put him in front of them all. Have you ever had a child point out your mistake? Can be annoying, but also can be endearing. There is such authenticity. They are convinced you did something wrong, and that it’d be better if you did it right, so they point it out to you. They are convinced you need correcting and that they are the one to do it. Can you regain that simple care of a child? As an adult you should be more accurate in your deciding when that kind of correction needs to be given. But you need the willingness of a child to confront. You need to regain that child-like greatness. The power to live with child-like greatness is not just something Jesus taught, he also lived it. Jesus retained child-like confidence in his heavenly father throughout his earthly life. He said in effect, “Father, if I see a person sinning and harming their relationship to you; and you have placed me in a position to act on your behalf, I will do that. And even if they kill me because I point out their sin, I’ll keep doing it, trusting that you will raise me up and reunite me to yourself.” Jesus once said, John 7:7, “The world hates me because I testify that its works are evil.” He knew that hatred would lead them to nail him on a stake to die, and he went there willingly. He had child-like greatness, even as God in human flesh. Jesus showed that there are 2 ways to interact with others: You say either: “your life for mine”; or, “my life for yours.” Jesus came and said, “my life for yours.” Now he invites
you to give your life for others, and one way is a willingness to call them away from sin and back to the Father. May Jesus make you into a person who willingly and freely invests in others in this way.Â