NIV Application Bible Podcast: Episode 19 (Matthew 18)

• If we could say honestly like Paul, I’m the chief of all sinners and instead of giving me what I deserve, Jesus lavished me with forgiveness. [Music] Welcome back to the NIV Application Bible podcast. We are in the very first book in the New Testament cannon, the Gospel according to Matthew. And you probably know Matthew.
• Oh, I love Matthew’s story. He worked for an ancient version of the IRS before he became a disciple of Christ. And he tells stories. He tells them from a Jewish perspective. As a matter of fact, his his gospel account is divided into five sections much like the the Hebrew scriptures, but he usually tells stories in a way that you can just almost imagine that first century Jewish audience going, I hadn’t thought about it that way.
• I hadn’t looked at it from that angle. because of course they know a lot of rabbitical stories, but he weaves this redemptive theme into the his stories because of of course the Messiah they’ve been been looking for for centuries is Jesus, the one that changes Matthew’s life. And Matthew tells a story. It is really compelling because I’ve heard this exact story Matthew tells so many times.
• Um, and I heard it from a different angle when I heard it. As a matter of fact, I think the first time I heard it, it scarred me for life. I was at a youth conference when I was in middle school. I grew up in Central Florida. So, this was at a an arena in Central Florida, probably 20,000 junior high, high school kids.
• And there was a youth pastor and he was preaching on this particular passage we’re about to look at in Matthew 18. And he was swinging his Bible around. I used to think I needed to swing my Bible around when when I was teaching to be effective. And one time I was teaching in a church and Genesis flew out of my Bible and hit a woman on the front row.
• It’s wonder I wasn’t sued. But anyway, he was swinging his Bible around. The veins were poking out of his neck. And he was teaching from this passage in Matthew 18. And I’ll tell you the verse he emphasized. The verse is if they still refuse to listen, this is talking about someone that you confront who’s fallen into sin. Tell it to the church.
• and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. And I thought, I don’t want to be treated as a pagan or tax collector. So, I ran to the front of the arena along with, I don’t know, five or six hundred other kids. And I cried and I prayed and I asked God to forgive me because he had talked about heavy petting and how we weren’t supposed to be involved in heavy petting.
• And I actually didn’t know what heavy petting was a euphemism for. When I was 13, all I knew was when I watched Little House in the Prairie with my mom, I used to pet my dog Smokey. And I thought, maybe I’ve pet her too hard, unwittingly. And so that was the sin I confessed. And so I just remember from the time I was 13 thinking, I never want this passage in Matthew 18 to apply to me.
• I never want to be unrepentant. I never want to be a pagan or a tax collector. Now, I want you to read the whole passage. This is Christ himself speaking in Matthew 18. If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.
• But if they will not listen, take one or two others along so that every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses. If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church. And if they refuse to listen, even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan. In the original Greek, that’s gentile.
• just means a non-Jew or a tax collector. Truly, I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Jesus goes on to talk about forgiveness in this chapter. It’s like we’ve always taken that out of context. We’ve always made that if somebody doesn’t repent right away, treat them as a pagan or have you ever thought about who is recording this gospel? Matthew.