Good morning. I heard a story and I'm gonna, I heard it from another preacher, although someone in the first service told me it's from a movie. But I heard this story from someone and I just thought it was great, so I'm gonna tell it to you. There's an old lady, she's in her car and she's driving throughout this parking lot trying to find a place to park.
Okay, so she's going up and down the aisles trying to find a parking space and this particular day it's really busy, so all the parking spaces are full. So she's going along, going along, and then finally she comes across this one parking space where the person's about to pull out. You know how the brake lights come on and you realize, oh, this person's about to back out. So she did what we all do at this point, right? And she like tried to indicate to all of the other people in the parking lot,
like this is my, this is my slot. So she like points her car toward the spot, puts her blinker on, lets everybody know I got here first. I'm going to take this spot as soon as it's empty. So she's waiting and the person slowly backs out of the spot and then drives off. And then before she gets a chance to get into it, this like 20-year-old in a sports car like scoots in and takes the spot from her. So she's upset about this. You know, it was obviously her spot.
She rolls her window down and she yells at the guy and says, hey, young man, you can't do that. And he says to her, oh, yes, you can when you're young and fast. So she did not like that at all. So she put her car in reverse and then she put it in drive and she just slammed it into the back of his car and then put her car in reverse again and then put it in drive and slammed it in the back of her car again. And so he had started to walk off, but he ran back and he said,
lady, you can't do that. And she said, oh, yes, you can when you're old and rich. So today we continue our series on relational drama. The story that I just opened with is fictional. The drama that is in our lives is not fictional. The story that I opened with is funny. The conflict that is in our lives is not funny. Sometimes it's funny to other people. And in rare instances, it's funny to us later, but as you're going through relational conflict, it's not funny at all, it's painful.
For that reason, we began this series two weeks ago as a way of learning some divine guidance on how to handle the sin and the conflict that will inevitably come up in our lives. Last week, we mentioned that when somebody offends you, the two primary options that you have are what? Anybody remember? Yeah, confront it and overlook it, right? Those are the two options. I mean, I suppose there are other ones, but most everything kind of falls into that category, okay?
When someone offends you, you can confront it, you can overlook it. And we talked a little bit last week about how to decide between the occasions when you ought to confront it and the occasions where you ought to overlook it. But we mostly focused last week on the whys and the hows of overlooking offenses. Why would you overlook an offense? How do you do it? Like, why would we be people who are not easily outraged? How can we be people who are difficult to offend?
However, we also said last week, you can't overlook every problem. Do you remember that? You remember that? You can't overlook every problem. There are times when people break God's law and it is bad for them and it is bad for you and it's bad for the people around us and it's bad for their relationship with God and it must be addressed. So what do you do in those cases, right? There is a sin that has happened and it must be addressed.
Well, it turns out the Bible contains a wonderful verse on this topic. And that verse is going to be the focus of my sermon. We'll talk a little bit about another verse, but for the most part, I really just wanna focus on one verse this morning and it is Matthew 18, verse 15. I'm gonna read it to you now. The Bible addresses this issue in multiple places, but like this is, I think probably the best. This is incredible. This is it. This is the verse for this morning.
Matthew 18, 15 says, if your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. That is going to be the focus of this sermon. There is one other verse that I wanna bring up later on at the end of the sermon. And so I'm gonna go ahead and just read it now so that when we get to that point, you'll go, oh yeah, that was the one that you brought up at the beginning of the sermon.
So I'm gonna just read you one other verse that I think is also on the topic of how to deal with sin among God's people. And it's Galatians 6.1. This is a companion verse. Galatians 6.1, it says, Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves, so you also won't be tempted. So kind of keep that verse in the back of your mind because I want to bring it up later.
But for now, the verse that I really want to focus on for this sermon is Matthew 18.15. So we'll go back to that. I'm going to read it to you one more time. If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. It. If he listens to you, you have won your brother. This is one of my very favorite Bible verses. It is so practical. There are so many times where like this happens. And so it applies to so many different situations.
I have quoted this verse so many times in my life. Feels like a thousand times. I've probably quoted this Bible verse. Jesus is the one who said it, right? If you read, if you read the rest of the verses of Matthew 18, you'll see this was a time where Jesus was speaking. And Jesus is the one who said, if your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you've won your brother.
And you can tell, well, first of all, if you were to read the verses that come after it, which we're not going to do today, but I would like to do, like I would like to get to that later on in this series. If you read the rest of the verses, you would be able to tell that this is Jesus's prescription for handling sin within the church. Okay. But even if you didn't read the rest of it, if all you had were this verse, you could probably figure it out because look how it begins.
It says, if your who? If your brother sins against you. In other words, this is not Jesus' instruction for dealing with everyone in the whole world, right? This is how believers are supposed to handle sin within the family of God, right? This is the policy. This is the system. Now, I will point out that this method that Jesus gives in this verse and even some of the following ones, the method that Jesus gives is sometimes helpful, even for relationships with people who are not Christians.
There are times where like bringing something up to someone, drawing their attention to it, talking to them about it in private to win them over. There are times where this works even outside of the church and even with people who are not Christians. But the design of the verse, the thing that Jesus, the topic he was on was really talking about the church.
In fact, if you read the next two verses after this one, which I hope we will get to later on in this series, you will see that Jesus assumes that there is a congregation of people that these people have in common, right? This guy and his brother and he's sinned against him. He assumes that there is a group of believers that they have in common that can be called upon to help them if they cannot work it out just between the two of them, okay?
But for today, I'm going to focus on this verse because this is the first step. Before you call upon anybody to help, the first thing Jesus says to do is if your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. And if he listens to you, you've won your brother. So this is what I'm going to do for this sermon. Got three points, okay? I'm breaking the sermon down into three points and here they are. Will you put them up on the screen?
My points for this morning are go and rebuke him in private to win your brother, restore them gently. Okay. Point one is go rebuke him. Point two is in private and point three is to win your brother. And if you're wondering, where did you get this outline from, Mario? I hope you will know. I hope you will notice that I got these from the phrases that are in the verse and I even did it in the order that it appears in the verse, right? We're just working through it phrase by phrase.
So let's start with point number one. Okay. Go and rebuke him, right? If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him. I think in order to address this, we probably need to first address the word rebuke and what it means. Because I would imagine there are probably some of you in this room who you think the word rebuke means, like, deal harshly with them, right? That's just, that's the only way you've ever used the word rebuke.
That's the only way you've ever heard it, right? Like, oh, she really rebuked him, right? Or, oh, don't you rebuke me, right? And you just use the word to mean like, like a verbal attack. Okay. Have you, have you, is that any of you, right? It just sounds like that. So rebuke, rebuke, right? It just sounds like, it just sounds like sort of an attacky deal with them harshly sort of word. I don't think that that's what the word means.
When Jesus said, go and rebuke him, the word that's the Greek word that's in the original that is then translated into English for us. When we read an English translation of Matthew, it's a word that can be translated into the word reprove. Okay. Some Bible translations say, go and reprove him. You can even be translated into the phrase, show him his fault. Okay. In fact, there are Bible translations that translate it that way.
That Jesus said, if your brother sins against you, go and instead of using one word, they use this phrase, go and show him his fault. Because apparently what the word means is, it's a verb that means expose this thing so that it can be corrected, right? That's what the word means. It's not, go and rebuke him does not mean go and punish him, right? It does not mean go and attack her, right? It is shedding light on the situation. It is exposing a sin so that it can be corrected.
You might have been able to figure that out anyway, because if you just read the rest of the verses, you can kind of tell. Like if you're doing it in private, you're not trying to humiliate the person, right? You're not trying to embarrass them. And if you're doing it to win your brother, then that is something that's very different than to punish, right? Or to harm your brother. You can sort of tell when you look at the whole verse, what the idea here is.
Once we understand that, once we understand that the word rebuke here is meaning go and show him his fault. We have come to one of the big points that I want to share with you. This is one of the most underused strategies in conflict resolution. Are you ready for it? Jesus is saying that the person who sinned against you. Go talk to them. That's what he's saying. Go talk to them. You might go, well, I mean, that seems kind of simple. Like, did we really need to be told to do that?
Yes. Yes. Because for many of us, this is the exact opposite of what we want to do. When someone sins against us, what's natural for us is not to go talk to them, but rather to stop talking to them. In fact, in some of us, it's very extreme. Someone sins against us. And not only do we not think I'll go talk to them, a lot of times we think the extreme opposite. I will never talk to her again, right?
So what Jesus is telling us to do here is the exact opposite of what we want to do much of the time. Well, why do we do it? I think we do it because avoidance is much easier than working to fix an issue. It's much easier to avoid it. It's also, avoidance is also much more judgmental. Did you know that? See, I think a lot of times we don't think that.
See, avoidance is judgmental, but to me, that truth is ironic because one of the big objections to Matthew 18, 15 that I've noticed in my life is that people say, no, I can't do that. That's judgmental. If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. No, that's judging. What are you saying? Rebuke? Goodness. Wait, you're telling me this person, it's already not going well, right? They already sinned against me.
And then you're telling me I have to go tell her that she's wrong about something. I couldn't possibly do that. Like that's so judgy. Go and rebuke him is so judgmental. And I guess what I want to say to you, for those of you that that's your personality type, I couldn't possibly, it's judgmental. I want to say to you, okay, well, what's your plan? Because if your alternative is to avoid them forever, I want you to consider which option is really more judgmental.
Like, which is more judgmental? For you to sort of hate them and cross them off your mental friends list and never speak to them again, or get in the same room with them and try to fix the problem. Which one of those is more judgmental? When you think about it, can you think about it? Ghosting is way more judgmental than confronting for the purpose of reconciliation. All right, let's move to point number two. In private, this is an important detail.
We've already said that the goal is not to embarrass them, right? It's not to humiliate them. And you should not drag a bunch of other people into it if that can be avoided. There sometimes become occasions where other people must be brought in. But if it can be avoided, you do not want to drag in a bunch of other people. You just keep it between you and them. Now, you might hear that and go, okay, again, this just seems like real simple. Yes, it is simple, but it is counterintuitive, okay?
Just like point one is simple, and yet it's the opposite of what we wanna do. Point two is the same way. It's very simple, but it's the opposite of what we wanna do. In private, no, this is what, when someone sins against you, usually you do not want to go talk to that jerk in private. What you want to do is you want to go talk to seven other people about how big of a jerk they are. Can you relate to this, right? They sin against you and you go, no, I don't want to talk to them.
I want to talk to everyone else, right? That's what feels right. And it's from the dark side of us. It is wrong. It is unhelpful. So if the goal is to rebuke someone in private, which is what Jesus says to do, at least at this point, before we're bringing in other people, before we're saying, well, we couldn't handle it just between the two of us.
If the goal is to rebuke them in private, to show them their fault for the purpose of reconciliation, just between the two of us, then you don't bring it up when other people are around. And you don't address it in a reply to all email and you don't gossip about the person as you're waiting to go talk to them. Now that may be some of you go, I don't gossip. I'm a Christian. I share prayer requests, okay? And I just want you to know, sometimes that's the same exact thing. Beware.
All right, number three, to win your brother, to restore them gently, right? This is the motivation. This is the thing you're trying to accomplish. So let's go back to Matthew 18, 15. Notice how it ends. If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, which is what you're hoping for, right? Then you have won your brother. That's the goal, right? Not you have properly punished your brother, right? No, you have, and the word won here means to gain the person.
You have gained them back onto your team. You have restored the relationship. Now, the other thing that I wrote in point number three is I said to win your brother and to restore them gently, okay? Can we put the three points back up? And some of you might go, wait, restore them gently is not in Matthew 18, 15. I agree. How astute of you to notice. It is not. It is from another verse in the Bible that I think is on a related topic.
And so I'm purposely teaching them together because I think they're parallel. To win your brother comes from Matthew 18, 15. But Paul, when he talks about dealing with sin within the church, uses a different phrase in Galatians, and I wanted you to see it. So we're going to go back now to that verse I told you about at the beginning. Galatians chapter six, verse one.
Brothers, if someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves. So you won't also be tempted. It seems to me Jesus in Matthew chapter 18 is telling us what to do. And what we have in this verse is Paul's kind of telling us how to do it, isn't he? This affects like the tone, the attitude that you have as you're dealing with the exposed sin.
So let me give you an example of correcting someone harshly versus correcting someone gently. Let's say that I want to confront my wife about the way that she handles cereal in our pantry. Okay. This is a real example. All right. I got her blessing on telling this story today. Okay. This story is not perfect because it's really not a sin issue.
There's not a whole lot of sins that revolve around cereal. Um, but, This, so honestly, this is one of those things that like could, like it could have fallen under last week's sermon is like one of those things that is overlooked. It could have been. And yet I didn't. And so, so I'm going to use this anyway as an illustration because I think it's still going to work for this week. So my wife and I grew up in two different families, right?
And we got married, which is the ideal, just so you know. Ideally, you want to marry someone from a totally different family. And, but, but here's what, here's what happens. If you do that, okay, if you marry someone from a totally different family, okay? And assuming you didn't live with them before you got married, which you're really not supposed to do. You really thought the order should be marry them and then move in together. And then you, so you marry them and then you move in together.
And then what happens those first few, those first few months or that first year is you start to notice stuff. Okay. There is stuff that you grew up with in your family that feels totally normal to you, right? It seems normal to you because that's the way you've done it. That's the way everybody around you did it. And they grew up in a family doing stuff that feels totally normal to them because that's how their family did it. And then you're both in the same house doing things, right?
And they're not all the same things. And so you're sitting there during that first year, noticing stuff that the other person does. And you're like, hmm, that's interesting. That's what you say. That's interesting. You think that's stupid, but you say, you say that's interesting. But over time you start to notice, well, why in the world would you do it? And it seems perfectly normal to them.
And so what I noticed is early on in my marriage, apparently my family's way, like my family's philosophy on how to handle cereal is apparently drastically different than the one that Heidi grew up with, okay? I grew up in a family where you go to pour yourself a bowl of cereal, okay? And I'm just assuming standard packaging here, okay? So the cereal's in a bag, and the bag is in a cardboard box, right? And you're shaking the box, and the cereal comes out into the bowl.
And then when you are done, okay, and you go to put Put the cereal box back into the pantry. What must you do first before you put it in? Yes, roll the bag down, right? So you guys grew up in what I think is a normal family, right? So we would always roll the bag down, and then we'd not even just roll the bag down, then we'd put a chip clip on top of that. And see, yeah, the right way, that is. And so that's what we did.
So my wife grew up apparently very different, some sort of like freedom-loving libertarian cereal family where her parents must have said, let the cereal breathe. Let it do whatever it wants, okay? Because she would go and she'd pour a bowl of cereal, and then this is what she does. She takes the box and takes her hand and puts it in the box like this. Okay. No rolling. Okay.
Just shoving it in the pantry. And if all you do is just shove your hand in the box and put it in the pantry, it unfurls and it goes bad. So let's just say this bothers me. Okay. What if that, what if it happens? And what if I realize that I need to restore her gently? Like, what if I think the goal is to, like, win her back, right, onto my side? Then that's going to affect my whole attitude with the way I talk to her, right? It cannot be something like this. Hey, what's your problem?
Is it so hard to roll the bag down? Like, is it really hard to roll the bag down? Do I need to, like, host a class on how to roll the bag down? Right? What did cereal ever do to you that you feel you have to destroy every box we buy, you cereal killer? No, that would not be the right way to handle it. That's not going to win her back. That's not to restore her gently. If I'm going to try to restore her gently, I've got to say something more like, Heidi, I love you. And I love cereal.
And I want us to love cereal together, like for as long as possible. Like I want to preserve the cereal as long as possible for us to love it together. So could we roll the bag down, right? That would be a much better way to handle it. Would it not? Okay. So that was a humorous example. Let's get more serious with this because the principle in that story applies to the sinful, painful situations in your life as well.
When we see a sin or a hurt in our life, something that has like damaged the relationship, it needs to be exposed. It needs to be discussed. It's the same principle. The tone should not be, you're a moron. I'm better than you. I don't want good for you. Like I want revenge on you. That can't be the tone. The tone has got to be, I love you. I care about you. I have done this same kind of thing before. Now, how can we work toward repentance and restoration? Now, here's a question I have for you.
Isn't this the way you want to be treated? Remember a couple of weeks ago when we talked about how Jesus said, do unto others. As you would have them do unto you, right? Just as you would have other people treat you, that is the way that you should do for them. If you had to be confronted on something, isn't this the way you would want to be confronted?
Like not ghosted, not gossiped about, not humiliated, but won over and gently restored with direct and honest confrontation from someone who cares, right? So let me restate the three points. Here they are. You go and rebuke him in private to win your brother, restore them gently. As we close, I want you to think through some applications. Like how might this apply in your life? So some of you in this room are angry at someone and you've never told them.
Like you never, you got really offended and you never talked to them about it. And they don't know. I mean, they might know, they might know that you're offended. Like they might know there was a day you started being cold toward them, but they don't really know what it's all about because you didn't say anything. There may be some of you in this room and there's someone that you're offended at.
And if you're being 100% honest, you would have to admit, you don't even know for sure that they did it. You just know that someone said they did it. And then you took offense and then you wrote them off, but you never checked and got their side of the story. There's some of you probably in this room who you're offended at someone and you are 100% sure they did it, okay?
But you've never confronted them about it in the sense that like, you've never sort of created an opportunity for there to be a discussion and an apology and forgiveness. Like that hasn't happened. Some of you rebuked someone and it was like a kind of thing that ought to be said and you did that, but you did it in front of a bunch of people.
Or you gossiped about them to a bunch of people before it happened and it went from being like a private matter to this big complex thing where people felt like they had to take sides and they couldn't be friends with both. Some of you have confronted someone and honestly, the thing that you confronted them on was right and the thing that you said was true. And yet you were not doing it for restoration, right? I've done this one.
Maybe I've done all of these, but I think I've done this where you confronted them and the words you said were true, but you lashed out at them and you tore into them so hard. There wasn't a chance at reconciliation. Like as dumb as they were, they were smart enough to know that restoration wasn't your goal on that day in that conversation. And so today is an opportunity for us to repent. Matthew 18, 15 and Galatians 6, 1, they are good reminders for us.
If your brother sins against you, go and rebuke him in private. If he listens to you, you've won your brother. Brothers, if someone who's caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourself so you also won't be tempted. Maybe there's some of you here who you need to go tell that person why you have been so cold for so long. In fact, maybe you could, and it's not that they've done anything wrong.
They probably owe you an apology. But one thing you could do is you could talk to them. Let's say it's been like six months. You could go talk to them and you could actually start off by apologizing for your bitterness for that it's it's been six months that you've been bitter about it and you've said nothing. And then bring up the issue and I'm just, this is just me. It seems like you might even get an apology back from them because you started with one.
And sometimes that's the way it works when you don't confront someone from above. For some of you, there's probably someone out there that you don't need to rebuke them at all. You literally just need to go and check and see their side of the story. Like there's literally like, you do not need to rebuke, you need to research and find out what happened.
For some of you, the thing was a real problem, but maybe you need to apologize for the extra people you dragged into it that shouldn't have been involved. Maybe there are some of you who you can go back and attempt like a second conversation with the person, but this time, like the motive in your mind for the conversation is restoration rather than punishment. And maybe it'll go different this time. One last thing. what if, what if we made this official Good News Church policy?
Okay. Can you put them up here? What if we made that this, the way that at this church, we're going to handle each other when we sin against each other is go and rebuke him in private to win your brother, to restore them gently. I guess I want to ask you who's with me. Can like, should we take a vote right now? I would like you to raise your hand if you will vote right now to make this the official policy of Good News church. All right. That's a majority. The ayes have it.
You want to hear something cool? It was already the official church policy, but you need to know why. Okay. You want to know why it was the official church policy? Because this is not our church. It's Jesus's church and he's the one that set that policy. That's why it was the policy whether we voted on it or not whether we like it or not that's the policy of the Christian church because that's what the Lord of the Christian church said the policy is let's pray.
Lord we thank you for your wisdom we thank you for revealing yourself and your ways to us, I pray for us as a congregation. I pray that we would treat each other this way. I also would imagine, that with this many people in the room, there are a bunch of conversations probably that need to happen. Somebody needs to go look into something and someone else needs to say they're sorry. And someone else needs to bring up something they've never brought up before.
And someone else needs to bring up something in a totally different way than last time. So I just, I ask for your grace and your strength, like your clarity and your help with all of the conversations that need to happen over these next few days. I pray that we would follow you not only for the next few days, but for the rest of our lives and what you have said. So I ask your blessing upon all of this and we love you and we thank you for
the gospel. Jesus, we thank you for saving us while we were yet sinners. Thank you for qualifying us. Thank you for making us good enough, like by Jesus living on our behalf. Thank you for forgiveness. We love you and we worship you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let me end with these good words from God's word. This is from Ephesians chapter five.
It says, therefore be imitators of God as dearly loved children and walk in love as the Messiah also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. That is good news.