me again. As you know by now, I love your pastor and his family very much, and so it's always an honor for me to be able to fill in for him when he's not here and to spend some time worshiping with you guys. And so Chad, Ron, thank you for having me back, inviting me back. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. It's where we're going to camp out this morning. And if I were to look through the entirety of chapter 18 of Matthew with you, I think Jesus here in this chapter gives us some really good handles for how to deal with sin. In the first part of chapter 18, the first several verses there, we see this warning about causing others to sin. In the second section, verses 7 through around verse 9, we see how to deal with our own sin. In verses 10 through 20, which is really where we're going to camp out at, we see handles on how to rescue people who are being deceived by the deceitfulness of sin. And then in 21 through the remaining of the chapter, We get handles on how to forgive those who have sinned against us. And so, if you're ever looking for handles on how to deal with sin in your life and in the lives of those in the body, Matthew chapter 18 is a great place to spend some time working through. But like I said, we're going to look at verses 10 through verse 20 this morning, and I want to examine God's purpose regarding confrontation. It's no secret we live in a culture that doesn't handle conflict very well. And I'm afraid that the church isn't leading the conversation in how to deal with conflict, or how to have confrontational conversations. And so we're going to look at the Scripture this morning and get some handles to see what God's purpose is for us in regards to conflict and confrontation. Most people don't like confrontation, with the exception of a few that I've met in my life, and maybe you've met some in your life that it seems like they do like confrontation. But the reason why I don't think we like confrontation is we tend to rehearse confrontational conversations in our head, right? And we roll them over and over. We play the worst case scenario in our head. And by the time we get to the actual confrontation, we're so worked up that we're paralyzed. We're so worked up that we're not even clear when we're having a conversation. And so the alternative to being worked up, the alternative to having some sort of confrontational conversation is we just fall silent. And that silence leads to us leaving. We leave our spouse. We leave our churches. We leave our jobs. We leave our neighborhoods. We don't deal with conflict well. And we even see conflict a lot of times as a distraction from what the Lord is doing. And so we do absolutely everything in our power to avoid it. And the problem is we can't avoid it. God's called us to embrace it. Now Matthew chapter 18 verses 10 through 20 is dealing, particularly verses 15 through 20, is dealing primarily with what you've probably heard of as church discipline. And there's a bit of this passage I'm going to neglect this morning and leave to your elders and the scope of my sermon isn't to deal with chapter 17 through 20 where this final judgment is passed on a professing believer and there's this excommunication from church membership by which the church begins to engage this former member as an evangelist. I don't want to spend time on that. But what I want to look at this morning is threefold. I said this already. I want to look at God's purpose behind confrontation. first and foremost. Secondly, I want to look at what our posture should be as we approach confrontation and conflict. And third, I want to give some tangible just how-tos that I believe we can pull from our passage this morning. And so, as I said, if you have your Bibles, Matthew 18, we're going to start with verse 10 here. You know it as the parable of the lost sheep. This is the word of the Lord. See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who's in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds fault, if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it's not the will of my Father who's in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Now notice Jesus goes right into verse 15 here. and addresses this issue of confrontation. He says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. 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. 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. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 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. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them." This is the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word that You have preserved for us. And we thank You that You do have a purpose behind confrontation. And You've given Your church handles on how to deal with conflict, Lord, how to deal with sin. And so I pray that over the next few moments that Your Holy Spirit would grant us humility and that You would use Your Word to build Your church up, Lord, to conform us more into the image of Your Son, Jesus Christ. And so thank You for this time that we have together, Lord. Thank You for this Lord's Day. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. If you're taking notes, the first thing that I would have you see in this passage of Scripture, starting with verse 10 here, is that biblical confrontation brings glory to God and demonstrates the value and the worth of every believer. Biblical confrontation brings glory to God and demonstrates the worth and value of every single believer. One pastor says this about the parable of the lost sheep. He says, the Father's concern for sinners and the shepherd's rescue of those who've wandered from the fold are now to be the church's concern. The church confronts because we value each and every sheep, even and especially the strange sheep. And this is why it's crucial for us to look at in a passage dealing with confrontation, to make sure that we don't just skip down to verse 15 where it's traditionally known as church discipline, but we look at the passage before that, this parable of the lost sheep, and examine in order to gather what the purpose is for biblical confrontation. And we see in this parable Jesus demonstrating that God the Father through the person of Jesus seeks and reconciles to himself every single one of his sheep, of his elect. Think about that picture for a moment of sheep that Jesus is giving us here in this passage. None of them perish. Not a one of them. That's what the Lord's teaching. Now, I haven't experienced or I haven't had any experience in raising sheep. I don't know if any of you have had any experience in raising sheep, but from what I know about sheep, what I've learned about them is that they eat. all the time. They're constantly eating and they're so preoccupied with eating that they rarely look up to see their surroundings. And so it's not uncommon for sheep to wander away from the flock. It's not uncommon for them to even wander off of a cliff and plummet to their death. It's not uncommon for them to not notice predators that have snuck in to cause them harm. And not only are sheep preoccupied with eating, but they eat so much all the time that they have to lie down in order to digest all the food, and they can't lie down on their own, they need the shepherd to help them lie down so that they can digest their food. And sometimes those sheep get turned upside down and sheep need gravity in order to survive. And when they get turned upside down, they can't digest food the way that they need to digest food. All the blood rushes to all the wrong places and they can actually end up suffocating if they don't have a shepherd to turn them right side up. Needless to say, sheep need the constant attention and care of their shepherd. And Jesus is intentional about calling us sheep. Sheep need a patient shepherd. Sheep need an attentive shepherd. Jesus is that ultimate shepherd. And He says that none of His sheep perish. And this is what Christ has done for us. And He sought us, He saves us, He continues to seek us and to save us and to provide care, to provide attention for us. And Jesus, He gives this visual in His parable to demonstrate the quality of care that He provides And then he moves right into this dialogue about confrontation. And it seems to me from this text that the Lord considers this seeking out ministry that he's talking about in this parable as a ministry that the church is to continue after His ascension. In other words, the church should be like the Savior. Not only do we have this careful shepherd that gives us attention, that's patient with us, but we should also emulate His shepherding work and become under-shepherds as He's seated at the right hand of God the Father. And so, Christians should pursue those who claim the name of Jesus that are living in rebellion to their profession because of their love for their Savior, love for God's church, because Jesus expects us to continue this seeking and this pursuing ministry that He emulated for us. So what is this seeking out ministry concerned with? I would submit it's concerned with one thing primarily, which is family restoration. Family restoration. First and foremost, it's concerned with restoration to God. Verse 14 in our passage says, So it's not the will of my Father who's in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Again, God's sheep, they won't perish. That's what this passage is saying. It's God's will that none of His sheep will perish, so none will perish. Job declared in chapter 42 verse 2, he said, I know that you, speaking of God, can do all things, and that no plan of yours can be thwarted. And God uses His church as a means to persevere the flock within the church. If you have your Bibles, thumb over with me to Hebrews chapter 3 for a moment. Hebrews chapter 3. We can see how the Lord uses His church as this means of perseverance, this seeking out type of ministry. Verses 12 through 14. We'll flip back over to Matthew 18 in a moment. that the author of Hebrews instructs the Hebraic church, take care brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God. And get this, he says, but exhort one another every day. as long as it's called today, then none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end." So there's this exhorting, there's this encouraging that the author of Hebrews is calling the church to do for the purpose that God's people won't be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. So God uses the people of His church to keep us from wandering, to keep us from drifting, to keep us from constantly looking down, unaware of the cliffs, unaware of the predators, unaware of the dangers. So we're called to link arms with other believers inside this local body and to lovingly and truthfully and even patiently warn of the deceitfulness of sin this side of eternity so that our brothers and sisters persevere in fellowship with God. So family restoration is concerned first and foremost with restoration with God. The second thing that family restoration is concerned about is restoration to the local church. Restoration to the local church. Verse 15 in Matthew 18, if you thumb back there, it says, if your brother sins against you, and some translations omit sins against you and just say, if your brother sins, go tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you've gained your brother. The word brother used in this passage and elsewhere in scripture has in view every single believer. Brothers, sisters, and Jesus is using familial language in this passage. That's the basis by which we interact with one another on. In Christ, we're all a part of the same family. You should be seeing that as you're going through the book of 1 Corinthians together When Pastor Ryan's back, I don't know how far you guys are into it, I think you're in some of the latter chapters, but one of the things that should be clear to you is that the basis, even by which Paul calls believers to repent at the Church of Corinth, he calls them, he reminds them of their unity of Christ, or their union with Christ, and then he uses that as the basis by which he communicates their unity with one another as the body of Christ. Jesus is using familial language here. We're all a part of the same family. And out of love and compassion that we have for one another, that flows from our union of Christ, we should run after those who are in danger of sin's deceitfulness. The unloving thing for us to do would be to say, well, that's on them. Or, that's none of my business. When you become a part of a local church, when you submit yourself to the authority of the local church, you're making a confession. You're making a confession that you need Christ Jesus. And you're making a confession that you need his bride, you need the body. We should want people in our business as people that are a part of a local church. It's not about being nosy. It's about caring for one another. It's about this family connectedness that our union with Christ creates. So the aim, the purpose of biblical confrontation is family restoration. Restore this relationship to the Lord, to God, restore the relationship to the local church. And certainly addresses non-believers in the passage that we're not primarily addressing, but we confront non-believers as evangelists, right? That's our role. Not imposing on them some Christian standard of morality apart from them being in Christ, but we interact with them on the basis of an evangelist. If the aim of the purpose of biblical confrontation is family restoration, both to God and to the local church, that means that there's a posture in which we are to confront. There's a certain posture. And what I want to do for a few minutes is I want to pull in some assumptions that Matthew 18 makes. Matthew 18 isn't some book that's detached, it's not a chapter that's detached from the rest of Scripture. We need to read this with other passages of Scripture in mind. You know, I think other passages bringing that in together can give us a posture on how we should approach confrontation. First, we need to approach it prayerfully. and approach confrontation prayerfully. We shouldn't do anything apart from having this prayerful posture. And I know we all agree on that as Christians, but does the discipline of our life When we kind of zoom out and look at how we deal with confrontation, or how we deal with anything for that matter, does it demonstrate that we value prayer? Does it demonstrate that we're entrusting our lives to the Lord? Is it demonstrating that we're needy? The act of prayer is this admission that we're completely dependent on the Lord and that we're trusting the Lord. It's also a confession for God's will to be accomplished. 1 John 5.14, the Apostle Johnny says, And this is the confidence that we have toward Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. We do know that it's God's will for us to confront, biblically, believers who are being deceived by sin's deceitfulness. So it's appropriate for us to approach any sort of conflict or confrontation prayerfully. Humbly and gently. You should approach confrontation humbly and gently. That's where the log speck discourse a few chapters earlier in Matthew chapter 7 is relevant for us. Jesus says, why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye, but you don't notice the log that's in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take that speck out of your eye when there's a log in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye and then you'll see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. Last year my wife and I were reading a devotional and the devotional at some point got to this passage and dealt a little bit with how to interact with people who were deceived by sin's deceitfulness. And this dialogue is fascinating for me because what Jesus is saying is that when we're approaching confrontation, we're trying to confront someone on their sin, we need to think of ourselves primarily as the chief of sinners. If not the chief of sinners, if Paul is the only one who has rights to that claim, best case scenario, we're all the second worst sinners who ever lived, right? We need to think of ourselves as the chief of sinners. It's healthy for us to see our own sin as bigger and worse than the sin of the brother and sister or sister that we're confronting. That fosters humility. That fosters a gentle approach, a gentle attitude. And we see the sin of our brother, the sin of our sister as a speck, is what Jesus is calling it. When we see it as a speck, that means that we can delicately remove it. For those of you who have kids, if your kid has something in their eye, how do you get whatever it is in their eye out? You usually kind of hold their eye open gently, give it a soft blow. You're very gentle about getting whatever sort of debris that's in their eye out of there. Certainly, we should approach confronting someone in sin with that same type of gentleness. You should have a truthful posture. Being gentle and humble doesn't mean that we're unclear or that we beat around the bush. Being unclear or beating around the bush is unloving. It actually showcases that we fear man more than we fear God, right? We have to be truthful, we have to be clear. I think the prophet Nathan gives us handles on this when he confronts David, right? You can just listen to this, 2 Samuel 12, the first seven verses there, it says, sent Nathan to David. He came to him and said to him, there were two men in a certain city, one rich, the other poor, and the rich man had very many flocks and herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb which he had bought. And he brought it up, and he grew it up with him and with his children, and he used to eat of his morsel and drink from his cup and lie on his arms, and it was like a daughter to him. And now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the guest who would come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb and prepared it for the man who would come to him. And then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man. And he said to Nathan, as the Lord lives, this man, the man who has done this deserves to die. And he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and because he had no pity. And then Nathan says to David, you are the man. We know that David is broken by God. through this rebuke from Nathan, he confesses a sin. You can turn to Psalm 51 to kind of see this template of authentic godly sorrow that leads to repentance, that leads to life. And the Lord restores David. So we're to be truthful. We should also warn of the deceitfulness of sin in an urgent manner. We should urgently warn. Proverbs 28, 13, whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. We want the people, we want our brothers and sisters in Christ to obtain mercy. Revelation 3.19, those whom I love I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Confronting in an urgent manner, not delaying, communicates the seriousness of sin. It communicates the seriousness of sin. We shouldn't call for believers to repent of sin tomorrow. Tomorrow is not promised. Yesterday is gone. We're stewards of today. We're called by God to call our brothers and sisters to their joy, which is to repent. and embrace their Savior, Jesus Christ. So what are the handles in Matthew 18, if we get back there, what are some handles that Jesus gives us in how we should approach this issue of confrontation, or rather even we could call it this ministry of confrontation? According to Matthew 18, the spiritually mature believer goes to the stumbling, professing believer who sinned against them and tells them their fault privately first. Verse 15 says that if your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone. And if he listens to you, you've gained your brother. Most confrontations, they begin and end at this level. But our issue in the local church oftentimes is that we talk to everyone else about the issue except for the person that you have the issue with, right? Best case scenario, that's gossip, it's the sin of gossip. And if we love the church as Jesus loves the church, we'll grow quickly to those who are trapped in sin and work. And notice I said work, it's tedious, it's time-consuming, it takes some effort, but we'll work through the issue together, one-on-one. And as a side note, there may be more than one confrontational conversation, right? I think sometimes we can be shocked if we have this conversation with someone and they've maybe been trapped by sin for an extended period of time. We think that one conversation, one confrontation is going to do it, and it doesn't do it. We may even be shocked that when we do confront them, maybe that brother or sister, because they're being deceived by sin's deceitfulness, maybe they lash out against us, which can be where some of the fear of man comes into play for us. It could be healthy for us before we have those types of conversations to even memorize Ephesians 6.12, right? Ephesians 6.12, we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The person that you're confronting isn't your enemy, isn't your opponent. They're a sheep that strayed. And the Lord has called you and has sovereignly put you in their path so that you can pursue them and call them back to fidelity. And look at verse 16 with me. If he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you. that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses." So verse 16 says that if the sin persists, include one to two other spiritually mature Christians and establish evidence. And that's where you begin to bring in other folks that are connected to this individual that you're confronting. I'm sure here that the elders of this church would be those people for you, but you're doing this so that you can plead with the person trapped in sin again to repent of their sin and turn their gaze toward Christ Jesus. When I've confronted at this level, there's a few practical things that I've tried to do. The first is I meet with those spiritually mature brothers and sisters and we come up with a plan and we pray. We come up with a plan and we pray. We need to be on the same page when we're trying to warn someone of sin's deceitfulness, and we want to make sure that we don't cause the believer to stumble further by provoking that brother or sister to anger. So I meet with the spiritually mature Christians to come up with a plan and to spend time in prayer. Second thing that can be helpful for us to do is to write a clear document to utilize in the confrontation. I've actually written documents with the sin or sins that persist in a fellow believer's life and research and write what the scripture says about a particular sin or sin in general, and I find that this brings clarity to the confrontation. And I always include this at the top of the document, 1 John 1, 6 through 10. It says this. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He's in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And if we say we have not sinned, we make Him, speaking of God, a liar, and His Word is not in us. The person that you're confronting needs to see the blasphemous nature of their sin. They need to see that for them to say that they're without sin is the equivalent of calling God a liar. This is serious. Brothers and sisters, deceived by sin's deceitfulness need to feel the weight of their unrepentance. Next thing we should do as we're taking two or three others with us to confront this brother or sister who's trapped in sin is we need to include steps of repentance for them. We need to include steps of repentance. We need clear steps for our brothers and sisters who are trapped in sin. The goal isn't confrontation. The goal is restoration. If you don't have tangible steps of repentance for a believer, they may find it difficult to actually repent, get discouraged and become paralyzed, right? include clear, tangible breakaway steps to mortify sin, it can include Bible studies, it can include faithful corporate worship, Sunday school, small group ministry, God-centered books. But action, steps of action, repentant action can help an individual reorient their heart toward the Lord and His gospel. So we can see that the work's only beginning when we initially confront. And we're not confronting from a godly place if we don't offer to walk with a brother or sister as they seek to pursue the Lord and habitually repent of sin. So we need to assure them that we love them, that we're committed to them, that we're committed to getting them help. And one final thing that we need to do as we confront Our brothers and sisters in Christ, we need to continually direct them toward Jesus Christ. We need to continually direct them toward Jesus. We aren't little-ass saviors, right? And we see believers that are trapped in sin, right? This idol that's clouding their love for God and the gospel. And you have a faithful brother or sister that seeks to do this under-shepherding work that the Lord's called us to do, come into their life, call them to forsake sin, and by God's grace they forsake sin. But what can oftentimes happen is instead of placing their trust in Jesus, they begin to place their trust in you, their substitute Savior. So we need to faithfully present, consistently present the only Savior, Jesus Christ, to them. He's the one who saves. He's the one who perseveres believers. He's the one using you to redirect wandering brothers and sisters back to Him. Christians are called, this local church is called, to be a gospel-centric people. It's the gospel that drives repentance. It's the gospel that drives obedience, turns rebellious sheep into obedient sheep. It's the gospel that brings us home. 1 John 2, 1 through 2 says, My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I thank you that your word is sufficient to call straying sheep back into fellowship with you and with the local church, and you use your local church as a means to persevere your elect. And so, Lord, we thank you for the promise that none of your sheep will perish, Lord, and we thank you that not only do you save us, God, but you commission your church to be your hands and feet of rescuing wandering sheep. And so, Lord, help us to lead the conversation on this issue, this ministry of confrontation. Lord, help us to not look to the culture for how to deal with confrontation, Lord, but to look to Your Word and to see it as a redeeming task. And so, Lord, I pray for this local church. God, I pray for the relationships here. God, I pray that if there are any relationships, if there's members here at this local church that are deceived by sin's deceitfulness, Lord, I pray that you would grant them repentance. Lord, I pray that you would give wisdom and discernment to the other members of this church to love the brothers and sisters that may be trapped by sin's deceitfulness. And God, I pray that you would Humble us and remind us that we're not above being deceived by sin. So thank you for community. Thank you for this local church, Lord. Thank you for what you're doing in this local church. And Lord, we thank you that Jesus came to seek and save the lost. We give you the praise and the glory in Jesus name alone. Amen.