Transcribed by Beluga AI.
If not, let’s turn to Matthew 18. We’re going to wrap up this chapter. We started it last week. Actually, we’re not going to cover the whole chapter, but we’re going to cover one more section, starting in verse 15.
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” (Matthew 18:15-20, ESV)
Okay, let’s pray. Father, we pray that you would send revelation from above about what this text means, specifically binding and loosing. This is a difficult truth to understand, but we pray that you would help us so that we can live properly as a community of believers. We need you, Lord. Help us.
We pray that you would show up, and I surrender this time to you. We open up our hearts. We pray that you meet us, Lord Jesus. Thank you, Lord.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
It says in verse 19, again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. And then it says, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
If you take that last verse out of its context, then when you’re praying by yourself, Jesus is not there. And only when you knock on your neighbor’s door who is a brother or sister in Christ, then Jesus is there because that’s a believer.
Now two or three have gathered in Jesus’ Name, and now there is that encounter with Jesus. Obviously, that’s not the meaning because Jesus is everywhere. Jesus will meet you by yourself, in your prayer closet.
So why is he highlighting two or three? I think the verse earlier about establishing witnesses is the reason why he mentions two or three. He’s making a legal case. Because when you’re establishing sin, when you’re establishing wrongdoing, it’s not the same strength if somebody saw it.
And it’s just that person’s eyewitness testimony is a lot stronger when you bring two or three witnesses. So I think that’s what he’s bringing up here.
So, you know, we quote two or three gathered in my name a little bit out of context. In my opinion, we should be praying when there is agreement between two or three, and especially when there’s agreement about sin. That is what he’s talking about here.
The problem here is you can be. You can have agreement. I mean, you can find somebody out there to agree with you virtually about any topic. So if the only point is agreement, then that can get you in trouble. Because I can find somebody who can agree with me on any number of topics. But there’s somebody out there who disagrees with me. And that person can also find somebody who agrees with them.
And so how do we find this proper agreement? Because I disagree with Jehovah’s Witness, but they have two or three who agree with them that they’re right and I’m wrong. So it has to be a little bit more than just finding somebody who agrees with you.
If you are in a bad church, if you’re under a false teacher, that person has assembled around themselves people who agree with them. And so simply having unity cannot be the point here.
And so binding and loosing in this context is about forbidding or allowing. That’s one level of meaning of binding and loosing. We allow this. We do not allow this. This is sinful. This is appropriate. This is binding and loosing at a surface level.
And if you are from certain flavors in the body of Christ, you may say this passage in binding and loosing only applies to church discipline.
And they have very rigid guidelines of what is appropriate, what is not appropriate. It’s almost like the reincarnation of the Pharisee. There’s hundreds of regulations and rules, and there’s an enforcement of them which seems a little bit suffocating.
And they will say, that’s all there is. This is all about behavior and proper membership. And this is church discipline. We need to kick people out of the church.
And is that all there is? And there’s the other side. If you read Matthew 16, which we will read in a second, that’s talking about evil in the gates of Hades and binding and loosing.
There is binding evil in accordance with whatever is already bound in heaven, is bound here on earth, and whatever is loosed in heaven, whatever is, whatever is allowed and allowed to prosper in heaven. That also the kingdom of God is loosed and the kingdom of Satan is bound.
So that level of. That’s another definition of binding and loosing.
And if you’re the Charismatic, you’re binding and loosing Satan left and right. And there’s a criticism on the other side. Well, if you bound Satan, why is he still loose on the earth? Because you just bound him. Why don’t you keep him bound?
So that has its place, that type of definition. But let’s bring it all together. So before we go back to these two texts, I want to read a third text which helps us to understand a little bit more.
1 Corinthians 5. This is a sin that is occurring in the Corinthian church. It is a grotesque sin. It is a shocking sin. It is a son having a sexual relation with his stepmother. And the Corinthians are tolerating it.
And remember last week I said we should be ferocious like a lion when it comes to our sin, and we should be gentle like a lamb when it comes to other people’s sin. But there are cases where we have to deal with sin in the community.
And these Corinthians, maybe they were so gentle, they were so permissive, so tolerant. They know this is happening and they’re just praying for them. They’re not dealing with it properly.
And Paul is making the case: I am not there, but I pronounce judgment upon this brother. And he says in verse five,
5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Corinthians 5:5, ESV)
And so, if somebody is committing blatant sin, they are unrepentant. It is a job of the church to bring it up. It is a job of the church to bring this situation to that brother instead of just leaving sin alone.
And he says, if you leave it alone, this person may just continue this way in sin and die in his sin and end up in hell.
And we have, we would have done as a body of Christ, we would have missed out on an opportunity to save this brother because this brother needed to repent of his sin and be restored spiritually and make it to heaven. So, this one, if you ignore unrepentant sin that’s blatant, you risk losing this brother for all of eternity.
So, Paul is saying, why don’t you judge him now to give him a chance? You deliver him over to Satan, he feels the full weight of the consequences of his sin that he may recognize. Well, maybe I’m in the wrong. Maybe what I’m doing is not right for a believer. And the fact that everybody is treating me a certain way, maybe it will awaken this brother toward repentance and salvation.
And Paul goes on to say in verse seven.
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, ESV)
And then he goes on to the application in verse nine.
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13, ESV)
And so, as a body of Christ, we need to wrestle with what it means to deal with sin in the community.
Paul says you need to purge this leaven. You cannot allow it to exist. Because if somebody is in unrepentant sin and other members know about this, they too will feel like it’s okay for them to sin as well. Because look at this brother who is in sin. Nobody’s bringing up anything. He’s a member in good standing. He still attends all the meetings.
And so, this is just promoting this idea that you can be in sin and God is okay with it. And Paul says some shocking things. He says, don’t even, don’t even associate with this person. Don’t even share a meal with this person. Purge this person.
I don’t know what that means exactly. Like, okay, I can understand maybe not fellowshipping with the person, but they’re gathering in their home. So if this brother knocks on the door of the house church, do they say, well, you can’t come? I don’t understand exactly how they did it.
But we need to wrestle with the principle. If there is unrepentant sin, we need to deal with it in a very, what seems like an unloving way. So what if you have leadership who is in blatant sin, who is unrepentant, and people have gone to them over and over and tried to point out the sin, but they are not repenting? What do you do as a member of that church?
Like, if I am in unrepentant sin, I fully expect that the members of this church will come and gather me into a room and say, Ray, what’s wrong with you? That is your job to make sure that I am not blind, that I’m not committing blatant sin. That is for the protection of the church.
That you would pull me aside and say, why are you getting drunk? Why are you acting this way? Why are you doing this? That is the job of the brothers and sisters to have accountability before God and before one another.
We will have. We will have to give an account. Especially the leadership of a church will have to give an account.
How did you shepherd the flock as an under shepherd? How did you deal with sin that popped up in the community? And the goal is the leaders should be the first ones to be looking in the mirror and asking, am I blind?
And that’s why he says,
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. (Mark 9:43, ESV)
It’s that type of serious dealing with personal sin for a leader. So that if there’s a case where he or she is blind, somebody comes. But they are naturally humble. And of course, they would repent.
If they are always the pattern of their life is repentance, and a situation arises, they would repent. But if the pattern of their life is they don’t repent, and you make the mistake of trying to call out the leader in that person’s sin, watch out, they’re going to trample over you. They will not hear you.
And so what do you do as a member of a church where the leadership doesn’t know how to repent? Even when you bring up issues, they do not repent. How can you purge out the leader? You can’t, because they’ve assembled around them two or three who agree with them. You can’t purge out the leader.
So what must we do? We must leave that place.
Going back to our text, Matthew. Actually, let’s do Matthew 16 first. The other chapter about binding and loosing, it says in verse 13.
13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. (Matthew 16:13-20, ESV)
And I just want to point out verse 23, verse 22. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen to you.
22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” (Matthew 16:22, ESV)
When he’s talking about his death.
And Jesus responds.
23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (Matthew 16:23, ESV)
I think it’s appropriate we talk about this text because we have a new pope that has just been appointed as the leader of the Catholic Church.
So is it Peter the person? Is it Peter the personality? Is Peter the apostle? Is that the focus of this text? And he himself holds the keys of the kingdom. And he is the one who determines what is bound and what is loosed, what is appropriate, what is inappropriate. And he is infallible in this position as a pope-like figure.
Is that the Peter that we are seeing in this text? If so, then we. We already have a, we already are in trouble because right after Peter is commended and praised, Peter is rebuked by Jesus and called Satan.
So I don’t think it is Peter the person that is being highlighted here. It’s a play on words. Peter is Petros, a little stone. Whereas the rock on which Jesus built his church is no Petra. I might be reversing it. One of them is Petros, one of them is Petra. One of them is a little stone, Peter.
But the rock on which Jesus builds his church is not a little stone, not a little rock. It is a mountainous range, a mountain range. On this tremendous confession. And that’s where Catholics and Protestants diverge. We don’t focus on a single person, a single leader. If you do, you get in trouble, as I gave an example of a false teacher. They will gather around themselves, two or three who agree. And you can have a good pope, you can have a terrible pope.
But if you put all the emphasis on a Pope or a Peter, then for decades, if it’s a bad Pope, then the whole church will fall.
But here I think the emphasis is on the statement that Peter made, which is not his statement. Peter cannot take credit for this statement. This statement was a revelation from the Father, from heaven above.
And he says, you are the Christ. And on that confession, Peter is saying, don’t look to me, I’m nobody. Look to Jesus.
On that confession, I will build a church, and the gates of Hades will not be able to prevail. And it’s a church that is victorious, a church that overcomes. It’s the confession that you are the Christ and we bind and loose.
And here I think it’s not simply talking about behavior or sin, he’s talking about binding Satan and all the unclean spirits from the gates of Hades.
That if you bind, the actual translation, it says, it shall, it shall have been bound in heaven, and if you loose it, it shall have been loosed in heaven, meaning it’s already done in heaven.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:19, ESV)
And so that’s a little bit difficult for us to understand because it’s already done in heaven. And are we discerning it? And so, we’re just aligning ourselves with whatever God is already determined in a very unique situation. Satan is bound in this case, and we will loose the kingdom of God. Is that what it is?
And we just need to discern whatever has already been ordained by heaven, and we are just aligning ourselves. Is that the focus of this text? Or is he saying it’s already done in heaven, but for you to see it in action, actualize on earth, you need to do it. I think it is the latter.
We are doing our best on the proclamation, the confession that Jesus is the Christ and knowing the principles of heaven that Satan can be bound in this situation, we exercise our free will. It’s already done in heaven, and now we get to see it on earth. As we utter our prayers aloud and we bind Satan, we loose the kingdom.
So I think it is, as the Charismatics say, it is talking at times, binding and loose. And it is appropriate to link it to evil and to the advance of the kingdom of God. That is appropriate.
But the other definition that I want to spend just the last few moments looking at is the other side in Matthew 18 about sin in the Church.
When there is sin in the church, we deal with it, first of all, privately. Somebody sinned against you. Hopefully, that person who sinned against you has already been practicing what Jesus is saying earlier in this chapter.
Already they’ve turned and become like a little child. Already they’ve humbled themselves. And so they’re not the kind of person to rage at you and say, who do you think you are for trying to correct me? Hopefully, they’ve turned and become a little child.
Hopefully, in their prayer closet, they’re not pointing out everybody else’s sin and being a lion about it, but they’ve really looked in the mirror and said, I’ve sinned so many times this week.
They are quick to repent when somebody points it out because already their posture is, if my hand causes me to sin, I’m going to cut it off. They’ve struggled with the sin to the point of shedding blood. They’re this type of humble person who is readily repenting on his face, her face before the Lord.
And so when somebody says, actually, you sinned to me this way, that person will say, I am so sorry. Do you see the connection?
If you’re the kind of person who readily repents, unlike the Pharisees who need no repentance, if you’re humble like a child, you know when you messed up, you know what you don’t know. And when you sin, somebody brings it up to you, you say, I’m so sorry, then you’ve just won that brother.
Hopefully if I sin and somebody in this church brings it up to me, hopefully because I’m on my face throughout the week, you bring it up to me, and hopefully I would readily, quickly say sorry to you.
If I go through a season where I’m not praying much, I’m not humble. And so I’ve become very proud, very hardened toward the Lord. And then I sin against you because I’m in a bad state, and you bring it up to me, chances are I will not receive it well, which happens to me all the time.
If I’m not doing well, somebody says, you sinned against me, I’m going to say, well, what about you? I will. I will rattle off 10 other sins that you committed, and I’m not coming to you. Why are you coming to me?
And I can have all this type of response and I can trample over you, and I could ram over you and be that type of a Christian in your life. And that’s why Jesus says, don’t give pearls to swine. Don’t just speak to anybody.
If you cannot just go to a Pharisee, knock on their door and say you sinned against me, that conversation is not going to go well.
But if you’re dealing with a humble person, hopefully you bring up their sin. If it doesn’t work, you bring a second person. Now you’re establishing legal evidence as a witness.
And for the Lord, it’s important. He wants to make sure that you’re not blind or you’re not exaggerating or you’re not just calling something sin which isn’t a sin. He wants to make sure legally that what you’re saying is true.
Bring a witness. Someone has to have seen it. So if it’s a public thing that happened, someone else would have seen it. And so you talk to that other person who was there, who witnessed it.
You know, Ray was really just out of line, and he was really rude. And why don’t, why don’t we talk to him? Let’s go together. Yeah, we, we really, let’s pray on this. Let’s go to, let’s go to Ray.
Hopefully, now that a second person has said it, it’s harder for me to wiggle out of it because they witnessed something, they saw something, they heard something.
The hope would be, if I’m a humble person, maybe I could try to fend off the person privately. But now a second person has come alongside of them and they brought it to me, hopefully, I would repent.
If I harden my heart and say, no, that didn’t happen. No, that’s not my intention. No, you got it all wrong. And I shut down the conversation.
You bring it to the church, and Jesus says, after he says, verse 17,
17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:17, ESV)
And I wrestle with, what does this mean? How do we carry this out in a church? Is this kicking someone out of a church? I don’t want to understand Paul in 1 Corinthians 5. He actually seemed to kick somebody out because the sin was so egregious.
And we need to ask the Lord, what does it mean? How do we as a community deal with sin that comes up? What does it mean to look at them, okay, they’re no longer my brother, they’re no longer my sister?
The Holy Spirit, that should convict that person who is in sin, it’s not functioning properly because it’s a no brainer. They should be repenting and yet they are not.
Perhaps the Spirit is not present. Perhaps I can’t even vouch that this person is saved anymore. Is that what Jesus is saying? I’m not quite sure. But he just says treat them differently than you did before.
They were your brother and sister before they this sin arose, but now you need to treat them differently. I don’t know what that looks like as a church, but I want us to wrestle with it as members of Hill community. When a sin comes up in our membership, how do we deal with it?
When a sin happens in the leadership, how do we deal with it? I think it’s the same. We should, we should, they’re the brother or sister, we should deal with it. We should go to that person. And as long as they’re not a Pharisee, they should repent.
Hopefully I will repent. But if they’re a Pharisee, that conversation will go nowhere. And your only choice, well, you can’t. Cause you can’t tell the leader to leave, so you have to leave. And now we get into binding and loosing.
18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:18, ESV)
If you’re in a very legalistic church, then many things might be considered inappropriate, prohibited, disallowed. Very few things are allowed. Like if you, like if you, you’re showed up late. Some churches, they’re really upset with that.
They will make it a big point to know that they’re upset with you because you’re late or if you don’t go to a mission trip. If you don’t attend a retreat, they will go, they will go to you.
And I did this once and I’m so sorry to the Lord. I’m so sorry to the brother because I, I pressured him to go to a retreat when I, when I didn’t know anything. And that person left the church and I hope and pray he did not leave the faith. But that’s how serious it is.
If you take a church environment and an atmosphere and you turn it into pressure and it’s not even a sin, but you make it a sin, they’re not attending a retreat, no big deal. There’s going to be many retreats.
I made it a big deal because that was the culture, and that person left church and perhaps left the Lord, and it’s on me. That’s a serious sin that I committed. A serious sin I committed.
I should be drowned in the depths of the sea if I don’t understand the severity of stumbling a little one. And so, what do we determine? What is permissible? What is not permissible? May it not be a matter of preference. May it not be an arbitrary rule. May it be clear black and white sin, and somebody is clearly unrepentant of sin.
And may we raise the bar on what it means to be a Christian. We are not like the world. The world will be the world. God is going to judge them. We cannot judge them. There’s nothing we can say to the world. They’re just acting out of their nature.
But for a saved person who’s being sanctified by the blood of Jesus, who is following Jesus, there’s such a higher standard for us.
People say all the time we all sin. It’s true. But in that statement, they’re lowering the bar. They’re saying everybody lies, everybody cheats. When a pastor has a scandal, they almost think like it’s expected. It’s not a big deal because every pastor must have a skeleton in their closet. Simply not true.
We are the kind of people, we are held to a higher standard. We are not the kind of people who sin blatantly. And when the sin is brought to us and the sin is exposed, we excuse ourselves and we say, no, that’s not a sin.
No, it is. Because now there’s a legal case. Two or three have come to me. The whole church is saying, pastor, repent, you’re in sin. So binding and loosing, it does apply to evil, to Satan.
We must come in the power and authority of Jesus Christ. Whatever has already been done in heaven, we exercise our authority on earth, and we bind Satan and unclean spirits over any given situation. We loose the kingdom of God. Jesus comes, the kingdom advances, and the gates of Hades will not prevail over the church that is advancing with this understanding of binding and loosing.
That’s one definition that the Charismatics understand. The other side that the conservatives understand is church discipline dealing with sin in the church. Both definitions we must come and wrestle with.
What does it mean to exercise that in our church, exercise that in our, in our personal lives, in our community? When there is sin, how do we bind and loose what is permittable, permissible, what is prohibited?
This type of behavior cannot be condoned in our church. And not saying anything to a member in sin is condoning sin. That is a little leaven that if you, if you allow that leaven to spread, you possibly will lose the whole church in the end because they’ve, they’ve become entangled with sin.
And that’s the best I can do with binding and loosen on this Sunday. May the Lord give us more revelation. It is a very difficult truth to understand.
Okay, let’s pray.
Father, this truth of binding and loosing and agreeing two or three. We understand that you’re focusing on Peter’s confession. First of all, in Matthew 16, he proclaimed you are the Christ.
And wherever a Christian proclaims that the King, kingdom of God has been established on a solid foundation and that church, that Christian, will not be easily toppled by Satan and the advances of forces of evil in this world.
We understand that you’re not focusing on Peter the person, you’re focusing on his rock-like mountainous proclamation of, you are the Christ, you are the Messiah. You are the one we look to. And on that confession, you’ve been building the church for 2,000 years.
Father, we also understand in Matthew 18 there’s another application in the context of sin and the church among its members, among believers. Lord, forgive us if we’ve been too loose when it comes to sin in the community, if we’ve been silent and we’ve condoned it, if we have not purged evil from within our midst because we’ve been too passive when it comes to sin.
Lord, help us to understand what it means to practice this type of church discipline. Prohibiting things, allowing things, forbidding things and allowing things to come to pass.
So, Lord, we pray that you would help us. We are our brother’s keeper. We want to point out sins as they come up, if they are legitimate sins, establishing it from a legal perspective with two or three witnesses.
That is why we gather in church. We are gathering public witnesses for how we conduct ourselves in a public setting. Are we proper? Do we love? Are we compassionate? Do we forgive? you’re giving us a chance to display to one another how we live out our Christian lives and our discipleship of Christ.
Thank you, Lord. We pray for the body that was broken and our bloodshed. Jesus, we pray that you minister to us as we bring all of our brokenness to you.
Pray that you bring wholeness to us as we repent and as we ask for your forgiveness. To thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.