SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/30/2022 10:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-3 “Intro to Matthew 18:15-20”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
18:15-20
Message of the verses: “15 "And if
your brother sins, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you
have won your brother. 16 "But if
he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that BY THE
MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. 17 “And 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-gatherer. 18 "Truly
I say to you, whatever you shall 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,
that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be
done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 20 “For where two or three have
gathered together in My name, there I am in their midst.’”
I have to begin by saying that this whole section
covered in the 18th chapter of Matthew has been informative to me
but also difficult for me as in some ways it is stepping on my toes a lot, but
then when the Lord steps on your toes I think that He is about to lift you up,
and to that I look forward to.
We
can look through the history of both the Old and New Testament and find that
the Lord has always disciplined His people, and He has always instructed His
people to discipline themselves. The Old
Testament believers were told not to “reject the discipline of the Lord, or
loathe His reproof, for whom the Lord loves He reproves, even as a father, the
son in whom he delights” (Pr. 3:11-12). Human fathers are to discipline their children
in order to make them better, in a similar way, a better way, the Lord does
with His children. Now a human parent
can tell his child not to do something a hundred times, but if he does not
discipline that child when he fails to do it then the rule is all in vain. They need instruction, and then enforcement,
and that enforcement is the discipline given to them when they fail to do the
instruction. Proverbs 13:34 says “He who
spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.” Our country has fallen way back with this
process and the results can be seen in what is happening to our country. Notice
Proverbs 3:12: “For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects
the son in whom he delights.
John
MacArthur writes “After quoting proverbs (3:11-12) mentioned above, the writer
of Hebrews says,
“7 It is for discipline that you endure; God
deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does
not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become
partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we
had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much
rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they disciplined
us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our
good, so that we may share
His holiness. 11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful,
but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields
the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
While
listening to the many sermons from Matthew 18 that MacArthur has preached one
of the things that is mentioned more than once and that is that it takes more
than preaching in church to get people to do the right things, as it takes
discipline from the church to get the job done, and the problem is that
disciplining in a church in our country today does not happen very often if at
all. Doing the discipline in church is
not easy, it is difficult at best to do it, but it is necessary to do when a
person or persons does not repent from sin or sins that they are doing. I suppose an example could be that a wife or
husband is not getting along with each other and one of them begins to befriend
a person of the opposite sex and it goes too far. Confronted with the sin by a person in the
church the spouse will say that they are now happy for the first time in a long
time and so they don’t want anything to change, they don’t care and keep on
sinning. The outcome of all discipline
is restoration, but sometimes that will not happen. When one person goes and noting happens then
two go, and if they make no headway, then the church has to get involved, and
if that still does not cause repentance then the person is to be treated like a
tax collector, and people did not respect tax-collectors at this time in
history from Israel.
As
seen in this paragraph above we can see that it is the churches responsibility
to keep the church pure. MacArthur
writes, and we will conclude with these two last paragraphs in this section of
his commentary: “It is with the church’s
responsibility to keep itself pure that Jesus deals in Matthew 18:15-20. He is still teaching about the childlikeness
of believers, illustrated by the young child He had called to Himself and set
before the Twelve (v. 2). He had
declared that a person enters and is considered great in the kingdom by
becoming like a little child (vv. 3-4) and that, once in the kingdom, believers
are to be protected like little children (vv. 5-9) and cared for like little
children (vv. 10-14). He now declares that
they must also be disciplined like little children.
“In
verses 15-20 Jesus presents five elements involved in godly discipline of
sinning believers: the person who
receives discipline, the person who initiates it, the purpose of it, the
process and place for it, and the authority for it.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: Discipline is not fun for me or anyone else,
but it is necessary. I think of my Lord
taking my punishment on the cross, something that He did not have to do, but
because of His great love for me He did it.
My Steps of Faith for Today: To live, with the help of the Spirit of God,
a holy life before my God.
12/30/2022 11:25 AM
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