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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
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.
Prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, send us your Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to
all of us that we may hear well. Amen.
In our
reading today, Jesus teaches many amazing things, and so many practical lessons
for our everyday life. He teaches us about how to go about reconciling with
others, he teaches us about how we receive the forgiveness of sins on this earth,
and also he also promises to be present in the church and to be with
us.
Let’s
come to our first part today, where Jesus teaches us about
I.
Reconciliation.
Today, in our reading, Jesus gives us
some very helpful words of wisdom that have to do with the eighth commandment,
which is: You shall not give false testimony against your neighbour.
In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther
wrote something about this eighth commandment. He says:
What
is the Eighth Commandment? You shall not give false testimony against your
neighbour. What does this mean? We should fear and love God, so that we
do not tell lies about our neighbour, betray him, slander him or hurt his reputation,
but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest way.
I’d like us to think about a couple of
things about this as we read our Gospel reading for today: In the church, one
of the ways that we stir up conflicts, and can often break this commandment
very badly, is through gossip. Gossip is a very terrible thing anywhere, but
especially in the church. We have so many good things to say in the church—the
church has been given the good news of salvation to speak to the whole creation.
That’s why it’s such a terrible shame when we use our God-given mouths for the
wrong purposeKing David in Psalm 120 knew what this was like, and he groaned
and prayed strongly against this, and said: Deliver me, O Lord, from lying
lips, from a deceitful tongue. The apostle James has a lot to say about
taming the tongue in his letter, chapter 3. He says: How great a forest is
set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of
unrighteousness…It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
We should take these words very
seriously to heart, and realise just what damage we do in the world, and to the
church, when we use our tongues for evil. Thank God that Jesus uses his
tongue to forgive us—and don’t we so desperately need to hear that
forgiveness spoken constantly!
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus
shows us that in this world—and even among his own people in the church—there
are going to be conflicts. People are going to disagree, people
are going to sin against each other. And so Jesus says: 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.
In Australia, people have a really
difficult time reconciling with each other. There are lot of people who
have a falling out, there are a lot of families who don’t talk to
each other, and there are many people who then go around and talk about people
they don’t like behind their back.
Instead of talking behind people’s
back, Jesus wants us to talk to them to their face. He says: If your
brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone.
How simple this advice is, and yet how difficult it can be! It puts us in a
vulnerable position, and it might require us to have a difficult conversation,
but when we do this, we know we have the blessing of Jesus in doing it. Especially
here, Jesus is speaking about if someone sins, not just in general, but against
you. You might have hurt someone yourself, in which case it’s a
wonderful privilege to go to another person as a Christian and confess it to
them. But someone also might have hurt you, and Jesus encourages us to go and
clear the air, and bring the matter out of the darkness into the light.
Many people don’t like to be told what
to do. Many people think that what they do is their private business,
even if it affects other people. This is not the case—it’s not you, or
anyone else, who invents the standards for morality, ethics, or for holiness.
That’s God’s job—he sets the standard. And so, it means that the way we
behave and act as Christians does not come from our own ideas or feelings
or minds, but it comes from God’s word. And if it comes from God’s word,
it means that we often don’t know it all, and we need to learn it. We
Christians are therefore called by Jesus here to teach and encourage each
other. Jesus says: If your brother sins against you [or your sister!], go
and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you
have gained your brother.
Sometimes, we might think: there’s no
point in going and doing that, because they won’t listen anyway. But listen to
what Jesus says: If he listens. If… You can’t make a
person listen. Only God can change the person’s heart, but it is your
job to tell him his fault.
You might know the story of Queen
Esther. She wanted to the go to the King to plead for the Jewish people. But
she knew that if she went into the king’s presence, that she could be killed
for doing so. But her Uncle Mordecai says to her: Who knows whether you have
not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? And Esther says: I will
go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish. And
it is a special miracle from God, that the king does listen, and Esther doesn’t
die after all!
The same should go for us if we have it
on our mind to go and tell someone their fault, as Jesus says here. This is a
wonderful thing that Jesus is calling us to do, but it is his work to
open their ears so that they hear, not ours. Paul writes to Timothy: God
may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they
may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being
captured by him to do his will. When we are called upon to do this, let’s
pray to Jesus that the person’s ears may be opened to hear, so that they
repent. And if someone needs to come and tell us our fault, let’s pray
that Jesus may open our ears too! Jesus says: If he listens to you,
you have gained your brother.
Now, Jesus gives us some further
advice, if the person doesn’t listen. He says: 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. Jesus encourages us to bring
someone (or a couple of people) along with us, so that you can talk to the
person together. Notice, also that Jesus always wants us to deal with the
person, not behind their back, but to their face again. If someone has
sinned against us, the right thing to do is to deal with the matter in their
presence, and to deal with the person personally.
Then Jesus says: 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 collector. Here Jesus
says, only when you have tried to convince the person in private and
repeatedly, do you then make the matter public. And the church can speak as a
whole to the person publicly and in some official way. If they still don’t
listen, Jesus says: Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. In
other words, treat the person like an unbeliever, they have lost the faith.
Now, how do we treat unbelievers?
Do we walk on the opposite side of the street, and treat them like lepers?
No—of course not! As soon as the person shows the slightest sign of remorse and
repentance, then we welcome them with open arms, just as the father did to his
wayward son, and runs to meet him down the road, and just as the Jesus did with
the thief on the cross who asked to be remembered by Jesus when he entered his
kingdom.
We learn here that we Christians need
to watch ourselves, and not get lazy, as if it’s not important what we do
or how we act. We need to persevere in the faith, and make every effort
to lead a Christian life, and not harden our hearts when someone points out to
us our faults. It’s not enough for us to stand for a moment in faith,
but to walk in faith every step of our lives.
We now come to the centre of our
reading, where Jesus teaches us about
II.
The forgiveness of sins in the church on earth.
Jesus says: 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.
A couple of weeks ago, we read where
Jesus said these words to Peter. But in our reading today, we see that Jesus
never intended for these keys to be given only to one person, but he
sent out all of his apostles with the same keys, and with the same
task, with the same message, to do the same thing. Jesus doesn’t
want us to put our trust in a person—such as Peter—but to put our trust in the
word they speak, which is God’s word.
Jesus has given us an example of a
situation where a person’s sin may be bound upon them, when their heart has
been hardened by all correction and encouragement. This is what it means when
Jesus says: Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
But then, he says: And whatever you
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. What does he mean by “loosing”?
Loosing means setting a person free by forgiving them their sins. “Loosing”
means “forgiving”, and Jesus wants his church not just to talk about forgiveness,
but to give it to people, and actually to loose their sins free
from them. Being loosed means not just having one sin forgiven, but the entire
library, our whole debt, completely forgiven. We are set free,
completely freely. It's as if we were expecting an enormous bill from
God, that we knew we couldn’t pay. But Jesus wants you to know that it is paid
in full, and you are completely wiped clean. Jesus doesn’t charge anything
to your account, so that you can live in peace with him. When God the Father
looks at you, all he sees is his perfect Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus says: Truly,
truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has
eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to
life.
Now, the other thing we learn from this
passage is that we need the forgiveness of sins on this earth. Jesus says: Whatever
you loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. This is the reason why
we exist as the Christian Church on this earth, so that people can hear the good
news that their sins are forgiven. And we can say this confidently,
because we know that Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. This
also means, that God will judge us on the basis of this earthly life that we
live now. There is no second chance after we die. The time of
hearing God’s word is now, so listen to it while you have the chance! But
then also, we learn here that as Christians we are called to persevere in the
faith, and keep going, to be sustained in faith, to keep our confidence
right to the end, to be faithful unto death.
And so, how does Jesus want our faith
to be sustained? He doesn’t want you to sit in your room and wait for God to
send you a feeling or an angel. He wants to you to go and hear
the forgiveness of sins spoken to you on earth in his church. He wants
us to receive the forgiveness of sins again and again. On one hand, he sends
pastors to speak this forgiveness constantly. Pastors speak it every Sunday in
the absolution, and sometimes we might go to a pastor and ask them privately to
speak the forgiveness for something that’s particularly burdening us, or has
cut us to the heart. And a pastor’s job is to speak that forgiveness, and to
speak it freely, because Christ died for all. And God calls you to believe it.
But also, we learn from our reading
today, that it’s not just the absolution of pastors that is valid in heaven,
but also the reconciliation of everyday Christians. Jesus says: If he
listens to you, you have gained a brother. Jesus recognises this,
and blesses it. If only we knew the wonderful treasures of this teaching
in relating to people here in our own congregation, or in our own homes and
families. Sometimes we sons and daughters need to admit our wrongs to our
parents, but also, what a wonderful example of Christian life it is for we
parents to admit our wrongs to our children and to ask them for the forgiveness
of sins.
This
brings us to the last part of our reading where Jesus talks about”
III.
The community of the church.
Jesus says: 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. Hear we see the wonderful fruit that comes from the
forgiveness of sins and from faith—agreement, harmony, unity. And it’s not just
like we just sit around and look at this agreement among us, but we can do
something. Jesus says that we can even go to our heavenly Father and ask
something, not as enemies, but as friends, as fellow believers: If two of
you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my
Father in heaven.
Look at what happened on the first day
of Pentecost. After 3000 people had been baptised, and had received the
forgiveness of sins, then we start to see the wonderful fruits. It says: And
they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the
breaking of bread and the prayers. Can you see the agreement and the unity
they had? They were united in learning from the apostles, they were united in
fellowship, in helping each other and sharing each other’s burdens—burdens of
body and of soul--, they were in agreement as they broke bread and celebrated
the Lord’s Supper, and they were united in prayer, just as Jesus talks about in
the reading.
It is a wonderful privilege—and a
strong weapon against the devil—when we pray together with other Christians,
because when we agree on earth about anything we ask, it has such
a wonderful promise: it will done for them by my Father in heaven. And
so when we come together in church, we pray. And we can also pray at home with
our families. And we can also pray with our fellow Christians whenever we like.
But there is one last thing that Jesus
says, which is one of the most amazing things of all in our reading. Jesus
says: For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
This is such a wonderful encouragement to us as Christians in a time when
churches are becoming smaller. Jesus does not say: two or three hundred, but
simply two or three. Let those word sink in!
But then also notice, Jesus does not
say where two or three are gathered in my name, the Holy Spirit will be
among them. If Jesus had said that, it would be true, but it’s not
what he said. He said: there am I among them. We also know that
Jesus is always God and man in one person. He is never one or the
other. And so just as Jesus was there among his disciples teaching them,
so also Jesus is among us teaching us, and blessing us. The
difference is not that Jesus was there with them, but is absent
from us. The difference is not that Jesus was with them on earth, but
now he is in heaven. Yes, he is in heaven, but he visits
us, and makes heaven and earth overlap for us. The only difference is
that the disciples could see Jesus, but we can’t. For them he was with
them and he was visible; for us he is still with us but he is invisible,
in the flesh, in his glorified body, giving us life with his true
body and his true blood, and even blessing us with the light his true human
face.
And so when we are gathered together in
his name, Jesus says: there I am among them. King David looked forward
to this wonderful presence of Jesus in the church when he said: Even though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you
are with me. This is the same thing which he says at the end of
Matthew’s Gospel: Behold, I am with you always
to the very end of the age.
Amen.
Dear Jesus, search us out and show us
where we are at fault, and where it is needed, use people around us to show us.
Give us the ears to hear! But we also pray that you would strengthen us in your
forgiveness, and loose us from our bondage. Be with us, as you have promised,
and never leave us. Amen.
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