Matthew 18

I'd like to read with you in Matthew chapter 18, please. And we're going to read the bulk of this chapter, Matthew chapter 18, starting at verse 1. At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Then Jesus called a little child to him and set him in the midst of them and said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, or more literally to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes.

If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into the everlasting fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you.

It is better for you to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost.

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go into the mountains to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find it, assuredly I say to you he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so, it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. 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 you, take with you one or two others, 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.

Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times? And then the Lord carries on with the parable of the wealthy king and his servant who was so unforgiving, and we will not read that portion. I may allude to it later in the gospel portion of the meeting. But what we have just done is read the fourth, or at least most of the fourth, of five major discourses in the Gospel of Matthew.

Maybe it's just worthwhile going over a little bit about the Gospel of Matthew so that we can understand where this particular piece fits in. Matthew, of course, has five great discourses followed by five narrative sections. So if you have an opening and you have a conclusion at the beginning and the end respectively, in the middle you can divide Matthew's material into five major sections, each one beginning with what we call a discourse and then having a narrative section.

Now this differs from the Gospel of Mark, which lacks these narrative sections, excuse me, that lacks these discourses. Mark is much more about action and about doing. Matthew is much more about speaking and prophesying.

So let's just remind ourselves, this is good exercise for our minds, what are the five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew? Well, of course, we start out with the first one, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, which is the longest of all of them. And that, of course, is what we call the Sermon on the Mount. And in that sermon, if you want to call it a sermon, the Lord Jesus gives the principles of the kingdom of heaven, principles that apply to us today, although they are given, of course, to the nation of Israel originally.

They will be principles that obtain in a millennial age to come. They will certainly obtain in the tribulation, but you know what? They apply right now. And that truth is for you and me.

And I'd like to emphasize that, lest you think I'm a hyper-dispensationalist. I am not. After that very valuable discourse, the first of them, we come to the second one, which is in Matthew chapter 10.

And the second discourse is when he takes his disciples, who have now received the principles of the kingdom of heaven, and he commissions them to go out to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and they go out to preach the principles of the kingdom of heaven. And he gives them instructions. That's a wonderful piece there, Matthew chapter 10, the commissioning of the twelve.

Then we have another narrative piece. And by the way, the key phrase after each one of these discourses that marks the mount as a discourse is this little phrase, and when Jesus had finished these sayings. You look for that.

There's five of them. The third section, the third major sermon, if we want to call it that, in the Gospel of Matthew is chapter 13, the parables of the kingdom of heaven. So if we've seen the principles and we've seen the preaching, we now have the parables.

I hate to tell you this, but I've run out of Ps. I don't have Ps for the last two, but I've got Ps for the first three. Now, if you think about what happened at the end of the narrative in Matthew 12, they've attributed the works of Christ to Beelzebub.

They have rejected him as king. They have disowned him. They have not listened to his voice, nor heeded the miracles that he has done.

And he is now going to exercise judgment on the nation by giving the parables of the kingdom of heaven, which show that the mystery aspect of the kingdom of heaven would apply to those who believed among them and to those who would follow them in the church age, but the nation itself would be set aside. It's a very pivotal part of the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, the parables of the kingdom of heaven. Then we come to chapter 18, which is before us today.

Now, chapter 18 is different from the other ones. It's a bit of a parenthesis, really, because as Israel has been set aside in chapter 13, Israel will be taken up again in chapters 24 and chapter 25. And so the question is, what's occurring historically between the setting aside of Israel here and the taking up of the nation again here? And the answer is Matthew 18.

So Matthew 18 is unique in the Gospel because it's teaching us about conditions that are yet future, not all the way to the end of the time, but in that parenthesis that we call the dispensation of grace or the church age. This is the piece in Matthew that talks most about today, directly. These are principles and they are conditions that will exist after Christ goes back to heaven.

And when he goes back to heaven, his people will be gathered together in something called an assembly or a church. That would be anachronistic for the Gospel of Matthew. That is, it would be out of place temporarily unless we understand that this piece here is talking about an age that would only come after Christ went back to heaven.

Interestingly, the other worst use of the word church in Matthew in chapter 16, talking about the church, his body, was truth that was given outside of Israel in Gentile territory, telling us that this was going to be a message primarily for Gentiles, although Jews would be most welcome. The Jew, the Gentile, coming together to create one new man, the Church of God. But in Matthew 18, our section today, it's about the local assembly and relations among believers in the period of time after Christ goes back to heaven.

And just to finish out the discussion here, we have the fifth, which is so-called Olivet Discourse. It's the Sermon on the Mount in which Christ talks about end times and about the regathering of Israel, the tribulation, and finally the coming of Christ. Very interesting.

Five. Where do you get the word, where do you get the number, rather, five in the Old Testament? Well, of course, you have the five books of Moses. And some people have compared the first book of the New Testament with its five discourses to the opening five books of the Old Testament.

In fact, if you look for it, you see many more parallels. Matthew is showing Christ as the true Israelite. He is born, and then he has to descend into Egypt, just as the children of Israel went into Egypt.

He is fleeing from a king who would desire to have his life. It's also reminiscent of the Babylonian captivity, because Jeremiah is quoted, chapter 31, a voice is heard in Ramah. Where is Ramah? Ramah was the place where the Babylonians staged the departure of Jews in waves, and where many of the Jewish children were killed.

And so Herod, who is the new Pharaoh, in a sense, and a new Babylon, in a sense, is now persecuting Christ. And Christ goes down to Egypt, so that God can say, of Christ out of Egypt I have called my son. So Christ is recapitulating now the experience of the nation, except he, as the true Israelite, will always succeed where they have failed.

He enters his baptism, which reminds us of the crossing of the Red Sea, and he enters into a wilderness, as Israel entered into a wilderness. But now, instead of failing and grumbling and complaining and slipping into idolatry, Christ triumphs in the most austere and difficult circumstances in the wilderness. And then we see Christ coming to a mountain, and on the mountain he begins to proclaim the law of God, the new Moses.

But now, instead of just being an intermediary, receiving it from angels and giving it to men, he himself is the lawgiver, who is giving us the full meaning of the law and its relevance for us today. He comes in chapter 11 to tell us that not only is he the true Israelite, and not only is he the one who is the lawgiver, the true Moses, but he is more than that, because he is the true Sabbath. You say, where's the Sabbath in Matthew? Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you Sabbath rest.

Christ is seen as the true Sabbath. Now why am I telling you all this when we've read Matthew 18? Because I'm building up to something. In Matthew 18, Christ is the true Shekinah glory.

Where does that truth get taught in Matthew 18? In verse 20, there am I in the midst of them. Although I'm jumping ahead, and that's really where I'm heading in the chapter, you must recognize that for the Jewish people, in synagogue now, after they had returned from Babylon, they believed that if Jews came together to read Torah and submitted themselves to God, that God himself would promise to be with them spiritually, and they expected the Shekinah cloud, now spiritually, to be with every set of Jews who gathered to read and to submit to the law of God. That's the background understanding.

So this idea of two or three coming together would have been a familiar ring to people trained in Judaism. And what Matthew 18 and 20 is telling us, I'm giving you the punchline ahead of time, is that Christ today dwells among his gathered people in his glory, answering spiritually to the Shekinah cloud that occupied that space above the tabernacle in which guided the children of Israel and resided in their midst. Now, this isn't just Gospel Hall-isms here.

The first person I ever read who taught this from Matthew 18 is an unbeliever Jesuit who happens to be an expert in the Gospels. Now, why do I mention that? Because this is not some truth that we have spiritualized to some level that other Christians can't follow. Rather, this is, I think, the first and primary understanding of this chapter.

So let's understand that this is where we're heading, the Shekinah glory in our midst. But we've got a ways to go before we get to verse 20, right? We have to talk about the wonderful sections before that. So let us look for a few minutes at where, well, where Matthew 18 and 20 lives.

What's its context and what is the meaning of this discourse? Well, the disciples come to the Lord and they say, who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And their definition of greatness would probably be something like yours and mine. Great people are very talented people. Great people are people who have been successful.

They have accomplishments. Great people have money. They have wealth.

They've made it in life. But the Lord has to first, before he can even answer their question, he needs to adjust their thinking about what true greatness is. Because all the things I've just mentioned have nothing to do with the worth of that person.

If that person is talented, God gave the talents. If that person has made accomplishments, God allowed them and enabled them. If that person is wealthy, God gave them the wealth.

They have a great God, maybe, but that doesn't make them great. So what does constitute greatness? What constitutes greatness is humility and dependence on God and serving God and others in humility and in love. Those are choices that we make.

Those are not things that are given to us so much, but they're things that we give to others. And if we can take a Christ-like attitude that we would serve God first and others second and put ourselves always last and understand that our reason for being is to worship and to serve, then we would be great. So we need to understand that we need to understand that.

So how do you illustrate that? You bring a child now into the midst and you say, you see this child. Greatness can be learned from a child. A child is very willing to believe.

A child is simple. A child is dependent. A child cannot do things on his own.

He needs parental guidance. She needs to have parental help to do things. If you understand how children are in their simplicity and in their dependence and in their willingness to believe, then you'll understand how the childlike believer ought to be.

And now when he talks about children and little ones throughout the rest of the chapter, he's no longer talking about the child in the midst. He's talking about you and me. He's talking about the childlike nature of the believer.

We need to be like children when we're saved. We need to remain like children in our dependence and in our frankness and our openness to God and in our willingness to ask God for help to do things for him. So who is the greatest? Christ takes a little child and sets them en meso, in the midst.

This is very interesting because we have in the midst in Matthew 18 and 20. There am I in the midst, en meso in Greek. Well we don't have it for the first time in verse 20.

The first time occurs up here at the top of the chapter in verse 2. And I'm mentioning this because it helps us. Because what did Christ do? He took the child and he put him right in the middle and all the disciples are gathered around. And he says, do you see this child? Who occupied the central place? The child.

The child was in the midst. And therefore, if the child in the midst in verse 2 means the child is the center of attention and the child is occupying a central place in the discussion, then when we come to verse 20, there am I in the midst of them, it would mean the same thing. Christ is in the center and everybody is gathered around him and focused upon him, right? So these hints are very useful in the early part of the chapter.

He says, Assuredly, I say to you, we're now at verse number three, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will know by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. So we've already mentioned that. We know that that faith initially in Christ and salvation depend upon childlike faith.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. There's your answer. You want to know who's the greatest? It's one who humbles himself as this little child.

So true greatness, according to Christ, is humility and dependence. That's not the definition of greatness in the today. We could go back to Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and atheist who felt that the greatest thing a person could be would be a dominator, an übermensch, someone who would control others and who would gain power over them.

And it was the lust for power and for being the top dog, as we would say, that drove Nietzsche's philosophy. And naturally, Hitler latched on to that and attempted to bring it to pass in real life. Well, we don't have Hitler today, but we have people with the same mentality.

The late Christopher Hitchens was very much a believer in the übermensch. He believed that people would never be ennobled or great in any sense by becoming dependent on a deity. They were their own people, the Invictus spirit, right? I'm master of my fate.

I'm captain of my ship. Get out of my way. I'm great because I'm pushing my agenda.

You read this, it just drips out of the mouths of these atheists who debate people like William Lane Craig. You see the arrogance of a Peter Atkins. You see the graciousness of a William Lane Craig.

And even though we believe in Craig's arguments and applaud him for standing up for Christianity, the first thing that strikes you in the debate is not what they're saying, but it's their demeanor. Arrogance versus graciousness. So this is very relevant for us today.

We need to say to ourselves, how am I to be great? I'm to be great by becoming humble and dependent like a little child. Then he brings up the subject of offenses. But before he does that, there's a very important little expression I would like to draw from verse number five.

Whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me. That's epito-anamitimu in Greek. You say, why are you telling us that? Because just as we saw enmeso in verse 2 and we have it again in verse 20 and they're the same, now we have a contrast.

This expression, in my name, in verse number five, is not the same as the expression in verse 20. This is the usual expression, which means, in my name, that is to act as my proxy, to do it for me. Or perhaps it may also mean to do it by my authority, because I ask because of who I am.

And there are many things we do in Christian lives, in our Christian lives, in his name, in that sense. By his authority, if we're doing something that he has commanded, or as his proxy. In other words, if I am kind to you because you're a believer, my kindness, you can you can receive that from me as if it came from Christ himself.

Christianity, after all, is Christians. And Christians means little Christs. And little Christ running around is what God wants in the world today.

Obviously we're not the Lord himself, but we are to be like Christ. And when people receive from our hands, they need to receive what we're giving them as if it were from our Savior. We are doing it in his name, just as this little child receives a cup of cold water in his name.

That's a great truth, but that's not the truth of Matthew 18 and 20. In my name there means something entirely different. We'll get to that.

I have to give you some things to suspend here, lest you all fall asleep. Because that was a very nice meal. And I was starting to drift off as I was waiting for the meeting to start.

So I anticipate you will have the same problem. Now let's talk about offenses for a minute. Things that cause people to stumble.

And we'll look at verse number six. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me. Again, he's not talking about children.

He's talking about childlike believers, children or not. He's talking about adults as well, who have become childlike in their faith, in their dependence. If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a donkey stone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Now that's extremely drastic. A donkey stone literally means a stone that was so large it took a donkey to turn it. It's the upper millstone in the double stone setup that they use, where they pour the grain down the middle and then it runs between the stones and comes out as flour.

And the top stone is turned by a donkey. I suppose the mafia equivalent to this would be cement shoes, right? You have someone who has a millstone tied around his neck and thrown into the sea. He goes right to the bottom.

It's a very... the Gentiles did this. The Jews thought it was abhorrent, as we would as well. And yet, that fate would not be worse than the fate of someone who causes a believer to stumble.

That's a very searching thing for us, isn't it? We are not to cause each other to stumble, to sin, to be drawn into things that are against our consciences, or to be drawn into things that everyone's conscious should be against. You take care not only with what you do, but with what you allow others to do or encourage them to do. We need to protect each other.

Are we our brother's keeper? Indeed, we all are our brother's keeper. That's what Cain asked, as you know, when Abel died. How will I know? Am I my brother's keeper? Is he my responsibility? And the answer is, yes, he's your responsibility, just as you're all my responsibility, and I'm your responsibility.

We are our brother's keeper, and we need to be careful that we don't cause each other to stumble or to sin. Now, he says in verse 7, woe to the world because of offenses. I mean, enticements to sin and opportunities to stumble are very abundant out there.

The world is big into this. They're going to try to cause us to stumble and to fall, but how tragic it would be if a fellow believer were the one who caused somebody else to stumble. So let's wake up and take notice of this, because the Lord thinks this is very serious.

In fact, look what he says next. If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. This is hyperbolic language.

This is so extreme that it's almost farcical to think about it, and yet the Lord wants us to take it right to the max. This is an extreme statement. There is no price that is high enough, that is too high, rather, to pay in order to keep yourself pure, to keep yourself from sinning.

If you're going to help others and keep them from sinning, first of all, you need to take heed unto thyself, as the Apostle said to Timothy, right? And make sure that you, first of all, have the root of the matter, and you're really saved, and that you don't enter into Gehenna fire because you have never been saved and never been childlike in your acceptance of the Lord. And once you've been saved, it's very important that you continue in life not to allow things in your life that will cause you to stumble. I could give examples of this, but I don't want to digress too far on this subject.

In fact, I'm not going to digress at all when I look at the clock, all right? We need to move on. You can understand. If you have an open flame here, like a Bunsen burner in a laboratory, and you have a bottle of ether, and you're waving it above the flame, seeing what will happen, there's a great probability that you're going to explode, all right? So don't play near an open flame and don't carry ether, all right? Those would be two good lab principles.

And in life, a man takes fire into his bosom and his clothes are burned, right? We need to keep away from things that cause ourselves to sin, and certainly things that cause others to sin. Let us move on to the parable of the lost sheep. What do you think? This is verse number 12.

Well, maybe I should say in verse number 10 and 11, another really interesting thing from this chapter is that angels are very involved in the care and protection, we might say the care and feeding, of Christians. They're answering to God. They are right before his face, and they're right with us.

They're ministering spirits sent to be assisters or helpers of those who are heirs of salvation, according to Hebrews 2, right? So do you have a guardian angel? Well, the Bible doesn't say you have one assigned to you that you, you know, like a body guard. But what it does say is angels in general are with the people of God to help and protect them. And God and the angels are in direct communication.

They are right before the face of God. And this raises the seriousness now of offending or hurting another believer. You're going against something God is expending, if I can put it this way, an enormous amount of effort and resources into the care and protection of his people.

So we should have the same attitude toward them, to care for them and to protect them. And that's illustrated by the lost sheep. Verse number 12.

What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine? Now you say, this is a familiar, this has a real familiar ring to it. I believe this is the first parable in Luke chapter 15, where we have a lost sheep. And the answer is yes, but no.

Because in Luke chapter 15, the sheep is seen to be an unbeliever and he is said to be lost. It's a condition. This sheep here, in context, is a believer who is not lost but straying.

He's the brother, farther down the chapter by the way, who has offended another brother. He has committed a trespass. He has sinned.

He needs to be sought after and found and recovered. So this message is to shepherds. If the Good Shepherd seeks these people, then we as shepherds, whether you're an official, and it isn't an official thing, but whether you are working as a shepherd in the assembly as an overseer, or whether you're not doing that, you still ought to be having a shepherd's heart.

Going after people who are perilously close to the edge, who have actually sinned, who are straying away from the truth, straying away from the path of righteousness. We don't just ignore them. We don't say good riddance.

We go after them and try to recover them. And so that's what Christ does. That's what we do.

And he says, if you find it, I tell you, there's a great joy in bringing somebody back from wandering in the fields. There's a great joy when someone is recovered. This chapter anticipates recovery and forgiveness.

It's not about expelling people. It's about recovering people. And the joy of bringing someone back who has gone astray is immeasurable.

It's wonderful. It's not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Now let us talk for a few minutes about the offended brother in Matthew chapter 18 verses 15 through 20.

So far we've had the expression little child, children, little ones, but now we have a new word. Did you notice that? If your brother sins against you. So we understand now that in addition to the little ones is God sees them.

That's the vertical relationship. There's a horizontal relationship. Now these ones are my brothers and sisters.

So if your brother sins, some manuscripts don't have against you, but it's clearly implied by that. And if you look down to verse 21, Peter says in response to all of this, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? So clearly I believe in verse number 15 this is a sin against you. So we'll retain the King James reading in this case.

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. Now what does this say? It says if somebody has sinned against you, it is your responsibility to mend the problem, to fix the breach that has occurred.

It's not his responsibility. It's your responsibility. You say, why is it my responsibility? I'm the innocent party here.

I didn't do anything to deserve this. He's been ignoring me for weeks now. He doesn't return my calls anyway, so why should I even try to go after him? It's not my problem.

No, the Lord says it is your problem. It's your responsibility. Now interestingly in Matthew 5 and the Sermon on the Mount, if you're the one who has offended someone else, guess what? It's also your responsibility.

So you can't duck from this. Whether you're the one who's offending or the one who's been offended, it's on your shoulders. It's in your lap.

God always says it's your responsibility to make this right. So you go to the brother privately. You might say, well, I have thick skin.

If people offend me, I don't care. You know, let him do what he wants to do. I'm not going to go to him.

I'm fine. From my point of view, there's nothing wrong with our relationship. If he wants to be that way, that's fine.

But that's not right. It's not right. You really can't offer true forgiveness unless there's repentance.

God doesn't do that. You say, doesn't love cover a multitude of sins? Yes, it does. Love will always look the other way.

Love will never take offense. Love always believes the best. But there are times when it goes past that and there's clearly something that needs to be righted.

And for that person to recover, for him to be right with the Lord, never mind right with you, that can't be left hanging. So we need to go and try to repair it. And so you go alone.

Nobody else needs to know about this. And if you repair that breach, you've gained your brother. You've found the straying sheep.

You're rejoicing more than over the 99. This is wonderful Christian relationships for our current age. But of course, life isn't like that all the time and sometimes the person doesn't respond.

So he says, if he will not hear you, take with you one or two more that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. Where's that from? That's a stock phrase. Where's that stock phrase from? Deuteronomy 19.

That expression two or three witnesses or two or three simply means the number of witness or the number of testimony. So we need to have one or two more so that with you, one plus two, that would make two. With one rather.

One plus one is one, I believe, last time I checked. And then one plus two is three. So you take one or two others to make two or three.

Alright, so you've got the number two or three. And you go to the man. This is still a very small group, right? And they remonstrate with the man as well as you.

You say, how do you know that? Because it says, if he will not hear them. So they're not merely there as witnesses to your speaking to him, although they are that, but they are also coming to bear witness to what is right in the circumstance. And so the two or three people are trying to bring this brother to recognize his fault and to ask for forgiveness.

Those two or three did not witness the original crime, if I can call it that, but rather they are witnesses to the attempt to make it right. But life, of course, being what it is, people being who they are, this doesn't always work either. So we go to the third level of appeal.

We've gone from the individual to the group of believers to heaven. You say, to heaven? Well, to heaven's outpost on earth. We have gone to the place where God makes the decision.

He has bound or loosed this matter in heaven, and we, of course, on our part, are to act for him on earth. The two or three people are no longer seen as private individuals, but the two or three are now seen as a body called the ecclesia, the church. The two or three who go as witnesses to the attempt to correct the man, in verse number 16, are not the same as the two or three in Matthew 18 and 20.

Let me repeat that, and let me repeat that. The two or three who come with the original person to try to make this matter right before it is appealed to the church are not the same as the two or three gathered in Matthew 18 and 20. You say, that's preposterous.

How can you have the expression two or three, only two or three verses apart, and have it not mean the same thing? Well, it does mean the same thing. It means exactly the same thing. It means witness.

You have to recognize this is a formulaic statement. It's a programmed statement. It is what I call a stock phrase, and it has a specific meaning, and that meaning is the meaning of witness.

The witness at the second level is not the same as the witness at the third level. In fact, the people who constitute the two or three at the second level are seen to be different from the two or three at the third level. Now, you can work with that in your mind.

I don't want to make it more complicated than it is on the surface, but I want to make that point. Tell it unto the church, and if he refuses even to hear the church, let him to be to you a heathen man and a publican or a tax collector. You say, what does that mean? Does that mean I'm to regard him as a worthless person, somebody I hate, somebody I say good riddance? No.

A heathen and a publican, a heathen being a Gentile, a publican in this setting being a Jew, are both people who are living in disobedience to the Word of God. We don't hate them. We love them.

We don't despise them. We seek them out. We try to recover them, but we recognize them for being what they are or doing what they have done, which is to disobey the Word of God.

Incidentally, the sin that is mentioned here is not an excommunicable sin. What I'm doing now is comparing this and contrasting it with 1 Corinthians 5. There are people who will tell us, if a person commits fornication, the first thing you should do is go as a private person to him and tell him to repent, and if he repents, the matter is over. Nothing more needs to be done.

That's absolutely incorrect. That is not what is being taught here. That sin needs to be dealt with in a different way, according to 1 Corinthians 5. This sin is just an offense between two people that would never reach the level of excommunication, and yet excommunication occurs.

Why? Not because of the original sin, but because the man is intransigent and will not repent and refuses to listen to Christians who are pleading with him, and ultimately because he's refused to listen to God's outpost on earth, the house of God. He's refused to listen to divine authority. Therefore, the best thing for him is to have him excluded so that he may learn in the realm of Satan to bring 1 Corinthians truth back to our passage, what it means to be outside of fellowship, and if he's a true believer, he'll wish to come back.

Enough said. This isn't a meeting so much on discipline, but I want to get that point across and talk now for the next five minutes, which is all I have on the verse that lies before us here, verses 19 and 20. Again, I say to you that if two or three of you on earth agree, sorry, if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

This is an assembly prayer meeting, of course, being referred to here. So what the assembly does is not to make an arbitrary decision in cases like this, but whatever you bind on earth or elucidate on earth is what heaven is already bound or already loosed. We call these perfect passive participles.

They're very hard to translate into clear English. But whatsoever you loose will have been loosed in heaven, and whatever you bind will have been bound in heaven. Loosing, binding, what's this all about? Well, the rabbis use these expressions, loose and bind, to refer to the application of scripture.

So we're applying heaven's decisions as they are spelled out in the Word of God. The decisions the assembly makes in this case are scriptural decisions. We have God's mind on the matter and we act for God.

Now I wish I could say more about that, but I will not take more time because I want to spend the rest of the time I have on verse number 20, which we finally arrived at after 40 minutes. Where two or three are gathered together to my name, I am there in the midst of them. This expression, gathered to me, is going to be illustrated by the first word, where.

Because the word where in verse 20 occurs three times in the Gospels, in the Gospel, one in chapter 2, one in chapter 18, one in chapter 28, and it means the same thing. This helps us very much to understand Matthew 18 and 20. The first where is where the young child was in chapter 2. So, now watch this.

We have divine light, a star. It is directing three men toward, we think they're three wise men, toward a place. That place is where the young child is.

And they come to that place, again, guided by divine light. And when they arrive there, Christ is in the midst and they worship him. This is the wise men, so called, coming to the house in Matthew chapter 2. Now you say, well that's great, I know the story.

No, do you get it? Do you get it? That's Matthew 18 and 20. Guided by scripture, divine light, they come to a place where the young child is. And they gather around him and they worship him.

Now go to the other end of the Gospel. The only other occurrence of this word where, not the English word where, the Greek word here where, is in Matthew 28. Guided by his words, they go to a place that he has appointed where he already is.

And they gather around him and they hear his words. Now we come back to Matthew 18 and 20. Guided by divine light, they come to the place where he is in the midst and they gather around him and hear his words and worship him.

So Matthew consistently is showing us that that is what he means by this expression. Now I only have a minute or so left, but let me now talk briefly about what it means to gather to my name. I pointed out that gathering in my name could simply mean gathering by my authority, because I'm telling you to do it, do it.

That's not what it means here. The expression to gather to someone means that that person is a magnet and you are being drawn by centripetal force of the Holy Spirit to come to the center where he is and to latch yourself onto him. There are three instances where the Bible uses this preposition ace.

One of them we saw already in the chapter, I didn't point it out, these little ones who believe to me, literally in the Greek. So we believe to Christ. You say, well why doesn't the English say that? Because it doesn't make sense in English.

You have to explain it. When we are believing Christ for salvation, we say believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, believe the Lord Jesus Christ. That could mean that we either accept his words, which we do, or we accept him for who he is as a person, which we do.

So both parts are included. But very often to believe, and this includes our famous John 3 and 16, we believe into him in the sense that we are attracted to him as Savior and we, by faith, latch onto him. We're united with him.

Baptism is the other time this is used, the only other of the three occurrences where we have to Christ being used. We are baptized into his name. We are in union with Christ in baptism.

We come to him and latch onto him. We are united with him. So therefore in Matthew 18 and 20 must mean the same thing, that when we come to his name, we are coming to who he is as the scripture teaches him.

It is divine truth regarding the person of Christ that we are drawn to, and we latch onto it and united with it. And when that happens, we have the Shekinah cloud appear. The promise is, there am I in the midst of them.

So does that apply to this meeting right now? Well, if we have gathered to his name, as we have, and we believe that the scripture does not err and tells only the truth, and if we believe we can accept it by simple faith, then the only possible conclusion we can come to is that Christ is with us in this meeting, which makes the speaker wish he would stop speaking. If Christ is here, what am I doing up here? Well, what I'm doing up here is, I guess, obeying the word of God because he wants the word of God to be publicly taught. But as a speaker, I'm humbled to stand here and understand that the Lord Jesus is in this room with us.

You say, you take it that literally? I absolutely do. You say, well, he's everywhere. He's omnipresent.

Yes, he is. You say, he's in my heart. He's in your heart.

He's in all of our hearts. That's how he's here. He's in all of our hearts.

Well, he's in our hearts, but that's not how he's here. He's here in a third way, the Shekinah way. He's here in a way that only can be true of gathered people, not of individuals.

That can only be true of an assembly where his name is the central feature and where the people have been habitually gathering to that name. In that setting, he comes in a third way. And this is the reason why I never want to miss a meeting, because I can experience Christ in the assembly meetings in a way I cannot experience him at home.

Don't try this at home, they say. He's here. I wish I could expand on that, but I don't have time, but I've made enough of the points, I think, to get us thinking again about Matthew 18 and 20.

What a wonderful thing to think that just as the Shekinah cloud of glory came and dwelt in the tabernacle in the midst of the Israelite community, so in a way no less real, Christ comes and occupies the central glorious place among his simple believers, childlike people who are coming and simply bowing to his word. May the Lord bless his word.