Matthew 18:15-18 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. But if he 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 he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

Here Jesus lays out the process he wants us to follow when confronting sin. There are three things to note. First, when the Christian family confronts sin, he wants to involve as few people as possible. If there is a confession and apology, you can forgive your friend and the process ends. There is nothing else to say about it, no need to go the pastor about the issue, no one more to tell.

If a guilty brother or sister continues to defend the sin, then you bring more people to the conversation, but no more than needed. Maybe additional voices will help convince a sinner of his guilt. But at first we keep it to one or two. We don’t go to the press about what has happened. We don’t start a campaign against the guilty with a whole team of people we have recruited for our side. One or two may be all that is needed to show the issue is not just a matter of your personal opinion.

If that does not work, eventually we may have to involve the whole church. The intent is not to shame, or pressure, or intimidate. We are trying to keep this person as a cherished member of the family. All those voices are meant to communicate and convince. And if we can convince this member of the Christian family who has strayed off the path, then we forgive, reclaim, and restore.

The second thing to note about this process is that it is not a legal process. We aren’t following a set of policies, going through the motions, checking all the boxes so that we don’t get into legal trouble. This is an evangelical, gospel process intended to win people. It’s okay if we talk to the person who has sinned against us a number of times alone, or if we go with one or two other people more than once, or if the whole church takes some time as it puts together its appeal to repent. Patience, gentleness, and love are always acceptable when we are seeking to rescue someone’s soul.

Third, Jesus is not giving us permission to be mean when he says, “If he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.” In the past, some people have objected to this whole process of church discipline and excommunication because it seemed at odds with the great commandment to love your neighbor. Some thought treating someone like a pagan or tax collector meant pretending like you didn’t see him if you met him in the store, or acting as though he was sick with Ebola, and you might catch it from him if you got too close.

No, pagans and tax collectors were two classes of people who were clearly faithless for the Jews of Jesus’ day. They were outside the family of God. They needed to be saved. On the one hand, then, Jesus is saying that you can’t treat people who have persistently refused to repent of their sins as though they were members of the church in good standing. You wouldn’t make them your leaders, or have them teaching your children, or let them have a part in the decision making process of the congregation. You wouldn’t invite atheists to do those things, either. Such people lack the spiritual qualifications and capacity for this.

But you don’t tell such people that they can’t attend, that they can’t come and learn. That is exactly what they need. To the end, everything is meant to win them back if possible. When the process works the way we want, even if it goes all the way to excommunication, and we terminate the rights and privileges of membership, the person comes to his senses, comes back, and asks for forgiveness, like the prodigal son. I could tell you stories about people I know who got that far in the process before waking up and repenting. Those stories end with happy endings. There would be no happy ending, however, if Christ’s family had not confronted the sin.

Matthew 18:15 “If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”

Standards are a good thing. They can be misused. Sometimes they can even be misguided. But in general we need them. I live in a neighborhood with “covenants” that govern many of the things you can or can’t do with your property. They are much more restrictive than the ordinances the city has and enforces.

The board elected by our home owner’s association faced a crisis recently. Past boards failed to enforce many of the standards. As a result, more and more people were ignoring them. This resulted in more complaints from other neighbors. Some neighbors became quite cross with each other. It negatively affected relationships.

Many of the standards in our neighborhood covenants are matters of personal chosen by the developers many years ago. I personally don’t care if my neighbor’s shingles are brown instead of gray. The Church also has a set of standards governing member behaviors. They are a reflection of God’s personal opinions. But these are not arbitrary. In each case he has chosen his standards to prevent real harm and suffering to his people. Ignore his standards, and relationships, families, health, civilization, and most of all, faith, all start to fall apart.

Christians have often had mistaken ideas about why a Christian would dare to point out a fellow Christian’s sin. It is not about the external appearances. “What would people think if they found out this family of faith has sinners in it?” I guarantee you, they already know. If a visitor to our church had any questions, we let the cat out of the bag when we confess our sins together at the beginning of the service. “I am by nature sinful and have disobeyed you in my thoughts, words, and actions.” We aren’t trying to preserve some sort of spiritual “property value” for our group, keep up the appearances of this “neighborhood” of faith. Where you have sinners gathered, you always have something of a spiritual slum.

It is not about getting “justice” when I have been hurt. Christ’s family doesn’t confront sin because I get the satisfaction of watching a brother or sister grovel in front of me for a few moments. Jesus does not want this to become a sick and twisted way to feel better about myself.

This is about a restored relationship. “If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.” By “winning your brother or sister over” Jesus isn’t saying, “You win the debate.” He is saying, “You keep them as a member of your family. You have preserved or added to the people who love you as Christian family, and that you love in return.”

There is a sense of two people who will go on together happy, trusting, full of respect and genuine concern. There is forgiveness, just as Christ has forgiven us. Unless we keep in mind this purpose, there will be something wrong about the way Christ’s family confronts sin.

Romans 8:20-21 “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

The whole world around us is broken, just like we are, and it doesn’t like it. It is a kind of slavery, a kind of bondage, in which it has been forced to live. The storm clouds don’t want to dump a foot of rain on some unsuspecting town and destroy thousands of homes with flooding. They don’t want to keep running over Moore, Oklahoma with tornadoes and wiping out the place. The earth’s mantle, its crust, doesn’t want to scrape and grind against itself until the earth quakes, homes collapse, and hundreds of people die in the rubble. It’s not what the created world was made to do.

All of this has been imposed upon the world and the people who live in it by our Creator in response to our sin. It is a severe mercy. Once we became estranged from him by our sin, separated by our self-willed rebellion, he couldn’t let us go on thinking everything was okay in this new state of affairs, not if he loved us. He couldn’t let us comfortably walk down the wide road of life as though our selfish choices and godless habits were just a happy alternative, until we were so far down that road that there was no coming home, and hell was the final destination.

So he messed with the universe. He tinkered with his creation. The story of the fall in Genesis 3 warns of painful childbirth, loveless marriages, and frustrated farming, but you know that it goes far beyond that. Literally nothing in all the universe works the way it is supposed to. It may work well enough to get buy. Sometimes it may perform admirably by our current standards. But it all fails eventually, much of it sooner than later. It is all subject to decay.

And God is saying, “Hello! Something is wrong! Something should be telling you this is not the way it is supposed to be! You’re having a hard time getting through all this by yourself, aren’t you? You are having to see that your way isn’t working. This mess is bigger than you can fix yourselves. Why don’t you turn around and come home? Why don’t you come back to me?”

And once he has gotten his last son or daughter home, then his purpose for having a broken world held together by celestial duct tape and bailor twine will be over. Things like pain and tragedy, failure and frustration, decay and death will have completed their work. Then our Lord will be able to release the universe from its bondage.

A new era of freedom will begin. An eternal age of liberty, an endless day of love will be all we know. We will serve, not like slaves, but like free men and women: unafraid of death, untempted by sin, fully living out the gifts and purpose for which we were made.

And the creation in which we live will serve us, not like a slave, but like an artist finally given brushes and a canvas, like craftsmen finally given tools, set free to do what they are able to do, because they have been “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

This world in which we live is broken. We are living among the ruins of a once great universe. But still hope for freedom, because Christ is the hope of a broken world.

Romans 8:18 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.”

This isn’t a wishful thought. Paul has done the spiritual math. The word behind “I consider” is a word often used with ancient balance sheets. It could be translated “reckon,” as in “day of reckoning.” They didn’t have the computerized spread sheets we have today, but they still had to track income and expenses, debits and credits, to run a successful business. In Paul’s picture, suffering stands in the expenses or debits column. Glory stands in the income or credits column. He does some reckoning to see how they compare, to see if you can balance the budget.

Both Paul and his audience understood that the entries in the “sufferings” column were real and severe. In a later verse he reminds us that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth.” He may have been an unmarried, childless male, but he understood that the pain of labor and delivery ranks extremely high on the scale of human suffering. And he knew that suffering was personal for each of us. Our bodies are broken. Our relationships don’t work right. Strained friendships, stressed marriages, unruly children and pushy parents–do you know anyone who gets along with everyone all the time? Our jobs are a pain–too much work, too little pay, unreasonable expectations, office politics. The suffering column on the human balance sheet goes on for pages with these and 10,000 more liabilities I haven’t mentioned.

Now here is the astounding part. Paul tells us, “Take all of this together, add it up, and the sum total is a tiny decimal point so insignificant that there is nothing to compare with the riches of glory that our lives are destined to become.” We have so much more to look forward to than just a “better place.” A “better place” could be the subdivision just to the east of mine where the homes are bigger and better built; or it could be a private island in the tropics with a multi-million-dollar mansion and a place to dock my yacht. But is “better” good enough–a place with less sickness, less stress, less confrontation, and less frustration?

We are destined for glory, not just a beautiful and light filled place with good neighbors and the perfect climate all year round. This is glory “that will be revealed in us.” This glory marks a change in you and me. Paul goes on to explain, “The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” Today you and I look relatively ordinary. We aren’t glowing. Stick me in a police line-up because some male committed a crime, and the victim isn’t automatically going to say of me, “Well, obviously it can’t be him, all shiny and holy like that.” I look pretty much like other 60 year-old, five feet ten inch men. We don’t behave so differently. Put us under stress and we just might show our darker sides, short temper, not very nice things to say. Ask my wife sometime how I am when a home improvement project isn’t going my way.

But we are more than we appear. What you can’t see now is that we are sons of God. Even if you are a woman you are son of God in this sense. He has adopted us as full-fledged members of his family with all the rights and privileges of ancient sonship. He did it when he called us to faith and baptized us as his own. Adoptions can be expensive. Our adoption as God’s sons cost the life of the one and only Son who had been a member of the family from eternity. Jesus’ blood paid to remove every sin that disqualified us from a place in the family of God. This makes us so much more than we appear.            

And the day is coming when God will strip away the shell that hides our glory as the sons of God. He is planning a big reveal: “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever,” (Daniel 12:3). This body that is planted in the ground perishable, like the rotting fruits and vegetables in my compost pile, will be raised in power and glory: imperishable, immortal, and spiritual. “He (Jesus) will transform our lowly bodies, so that they will be like his glorious body,” Paul writes the Philippians. And why shouldn’t he? He is the Son of God, and by his death and sacrifice that is what he has made us, too: the very sons and daughters of God. That is glory for those who suffer in our broken world.

Ephesians 2:19-20 “Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.”

Do you know what drives me crazy? People who quote the Bible as though they know the Bible against the Bible. A New York Times editorialist said that Christians believe Jesus is buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Well, no, we believe that Jesus rose from the dead and his tomb is empty. It is sort of the point of our whole religion.

A CNN panelist and Washington Post editorialist criticized a political candidate for saying the time had come for the body of Christ to rise up and vote its values. They thought he meant that Jesus should come back from the dead and involve himself in the election. Well, no, you can like the candidate or dislike the candidate, but the “body of Christ” is a way of referring to the collective group known as “Christians” or “the Church.”

From sources like these that you get all kinds of nonsense. They claim the God of the Old Testament is mean and vengeful, but Jesus came to introduce us to love in the New Testament. Essentially, they claim the Bible presents these two fundamentally different religions. Or some spout the nonsense that the Bible is a disjointed collection of contradictory ideas and lacks a cohesive message. They say even in the New Testament, Paul, Peter, Jesus, and John had fundamentally different theologies.

That’s not the way Paul sees it in these words to the Ephesians, is it. He says that this family of God is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” That foundation would be in need of serious repairs if the apostles, prophets, and Jesus all taught something different. It makes sense for Paul to write this only if the apostles, prophets, and Jesus teach essentially the same thing.

That’s the beauty of our Christian faith. From Genesis to Revelation, from Old Testament to New Testament, for 1500 years God had everyone, prophets and apostles, writing about Christ. “You diligently study the Scriptures,” Jesus once said, referring to 1400 years of writing before his day, “because by them you think you have eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me.” They either tell the history preparing for his coming, or promises predicting his coming. And once he came, the apostles further explained the meaning of his coming. That’s why he is the chief cornerstone. It all revolves around Jesus.

That old, old foundation is a double assurance for our place among God’s people. We aren’t built on shaky human goodness and our own weak performance. We aren’t built on human philosophies and religious theories. We are built on Jesus Christ–his perfect life in place of our sinful one, his death on the cross to spare us the death our sins deserved, and his resurrection from the dead as the deposit guaranteeing that one day we will walk away from our graves as well.

And this is not just one religious fanatic’s isolated fantasy. God had men spread over 1500 years preaching about this and writing it down, from one generation to another, all beating the same drum. God is sending you a Savior because you can’t pay for sin on your own. He makes you his own by calling you to faith. Build your hope of salvation on this foundation.

Ephesians 2:19 “Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household.”

We are “Members of God’s household.” Several years ago my wife and I looked after two little girls whose mother had lost the ability to walk and had to spend several months in a rehabilitation hospital. While they lived in our home, they enjoyed all the privileges of family. They ate at our table. They had their own room. We took them shopping. We took them to their activities. They were like family…until their mother came home. Then they went home. While they remain dear to us to this day, it’s not the same as when they lived in our home as part of our family.

As members of God’s household, we aren’t like family. We are family. We have been fully adopted, and he will never send us back where we came from. The process going forward will always be drawing us closer, giving us more. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

As family members, there are long lists of privileges we possess. God has also given us many responsibilities that come along with the privilege. For the moment, let’s take a few moments just to let our new identity sink in.

All of us long to be somebody. We want to be notable, important, special. Maybe you have seen the Disney cartoon The Incredibles. A family of superheroes has to hide their identity. The superheroes have fallen out of favor due to a number of accidents and mishaps. The public doesn’t want them to come to the rescue anymore. They have these special powers, every one of them, but for a while they have to become ordinary, and blend in, and to go work and go to school just like everybody else. Eventually a new super villain comes along and forces them to come out of retirement. The public learns to appreciate their special powers again. But along the way the Incredibles learn that what truly makes them special is the family that loves them: mom, dad, brother, sister, son, daughter, husband, or wife.

You and I are part of God’s family. You are a son or daughter of the King. He died for the privilege of having you. He handpicked you for himself. No Hollywood celebrity is better connected. No powerful politician is more respected. No person on earth is more treasured and loved than you are. You are a… I am a…child of God. We are somebody to him. It is hard to imagine being something more.

Ephesians 2:19 “Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people…”

You have been asked to introduce yourself to a group. You tell them your name. Then your next sentence begins, “I am a…” How does the sentence end? Do you tell them what you do for a living? “I am a computer programmer.” Do you lead with your family relationships? “I am the mother of three children.” “I am Allyson’s husband.” Do you go to some lifelong allegiance to team or state? “I am a life-long Sooner fan. I am a native Oklahoman.” All of these, of course, are expressions of your identity.

Paul gives us another identity, one far greater than any other: “fellow citizens with God’s people.” If citizens, then we are “no longer foreigners and aliens.” Whatever your politics might be about immigration in our country, you have to admit that citizenship in the United States of America is a privilege highly prized by people all around the world. Most of our own ancestors risked a very dangerous voyage across an ocean to come here and get it.

Like those who come to our country with the dream of becoming citizens, we didn’t begin life as “fellow citizens with God’s people.” For those born outside the United States, it is an accident of where they were born. For citizens of God’s Kingdom, it was a matter of how they were born. We are infected with sin we inherited from our parents. We are disqualified by behavior that is inappropriate and shameful for people of God. We are more or less content with our original citizenship under whatever false gods we find to serve. We don’t know any better and we don’t want any better, so long as we are more or less left alone to do what we want for ourselves.

Then something extraordinary happened. In the case of our human ancestors, they made a dangerous journey to come and become American citizens. But for “fellow citizens with God’s people,” it is our Ruler, our King, who made the dangerous journey from heaven to earth. He came in search of people who didn’t want to be his citizens at all. The journey cost him his life, but his death on a cross removed all the disqualifications that stood in the way of our citizenship. More than that, it unleashed a power, the power of grace and love, that changes the people who hear it. It draws them, woos them, wins them, until they renounce their old allegiances to sin, self, and Satan.

This love of God that came, and died, and searched and claimed me for his own makes me a loyal citizen of God’s kingdom, and a fellow citizen with God’s people. It’s my new identity. It’s who I am.

1 Kings 19: 13b-18 “Then a voice said to him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ He replied, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.’ The Lord said to him, ‘Go back the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you get there, anoint Hazael king over Aram. Also, anoint Jehu son of Nimshi king over Israel, and Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel Meholah to succeed you as prophet. Jehu will put to death any who escape the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death any who escape the sword of Jehu”

Anything sound familiar here? Elijah and the Lord traded the same question and answer before the Lord spoke to him on the mountain. The prophet still doesn’t completely get it. He is still stuck in self-pity. It is still about him. Maybe there was less difference between Elijah and the people he was trying to reach than he thought. Elijah could be a thick-headed, too, it appears.

But the Lord didn’t abandon him. He didn’t fire him either. The Lord doesn’t wait for us to get it all together, to get it all straight, before he puts us to work. He understands the material he has to work with. Imperfect as it is, he makes use of the broken, confused, morally struggling people that he has called to faith and redeemed for himself in whatever condition he finds them today.

So God sent Elijah back to his work, his calling, as prophet to Israel and the world. He was saying this to Elijah: “Maybe you have given up on your work. Maybe you have given up on my people. Maybe you have given up on this situation. But I haven’t, just like I haven’t given up on you. Go and do what you are supposed to do, and know that I will use it to do what I am supposed to do.”

My job, my calling as pastor, is a little bit like Elijah’s. Your callings as employees, students, parents, children, spouses, etc., may not be much like his at all. But God has still called each of us to serve him. And the more we pour ourselves into that work, the more our Lord will get done for the people he loves, and the people he saves, and the less time we will have to sit around wondering if we might be the last ones left.

The Lord left Elijah with this promise: “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.” Bible-believing Christians are becoming a rarer species in our country today. But tens of millions of Christians still confess with their mouth that Jesus is Lord. They believe in their hearts that God has raised him from the dead. If that is the case, Paul says in Romans 10, then they will be saved. We may be many things in a culture that has less and less tolerance for Christians, but we are not the only believers. And God still has work for us to do.

1 Kings 19: 11-13 “The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave”

Do you ever have daydreams of the Lord coming down and shutting up the skeptics and the scoffers, the deceivers and perverters of our world with an act of power? What we really need, we think, is for God to rain down brimstone like he brought on Sodom, or plagues like he brought on Egypt. If the Lord would only unveil his power and judgment, then maybe people would start to shape up.

You know the problem with that. God’s mighty judgments don’t really change people. They may finish off the trouble-makers. They may bring some temporary relief to the faithful. But they don’t really change anyone. God does not live in his acts of power in the way that he lives in his message of grace.

No doubt Elijah thought that it was time for the Lord to turn up the heat on the nation of Israel. He had already sent a three-year drought, and that didn’t help. He had sent fire from heaven to burn up a sacrifice, and that didn’t solve the problem. Elijah wanted more. He wanted the nation to hear God thunder and roar, but he was listening for the wrong thing. So God let him experience a rock-shattering wind storm, and an earthquake, and a fire. They were all impressive demonstrations of power. But one thing was missing in the wind, the earthquake, and the fire. The Lord was not in them. And without the Lord, how were they supposed to help?

In this way the Lord was tuning Elijah’s ears, and ours, to hear his voice. He is helping us to hear him speak where he truly speaks: in the gentle whisper of his grace. You know what people in the Bible do when they find themselves in God’s presence? Lift up their hands and start reaching for him? No, they start covering themselves, or they bow down with their faces to the ground. Abraham, Moses, the angels in Isaiah’s vision, the wise men, Peter, and Paul, to name a few. Here Elijah hears the voice of God, and it moves him to pull his cloak over his face.

But it is just a gentle whisper. Think about this for a moment: when do you use a whisper? You whisper when you are trying to keep a secret and you don’t want anyone to hear. But the Lord was not trying to keep his message a secret.

You also whisper when your words have something kind, and tender, and comforting to say. Young lovers whisper their affection in each other’s ears. A young mother uses whispers to calm her crying baby or reassure her frightened toddler. The Lord speaks softly to his people when his message is, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have summoned you by name; you are mine. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

We could go on. We don’t know the exact words Elijah heard in the whisper. But we know the kind of words they were. They were words of grace. They were words that promise, “I am not the kind of God who tolerates or approves of sin. But I am a God who bears with his people because I want to save them, not destroy them. I want to forgive them, not condemn them. I would give up anything for them, even my one and only Son, to rescue them from the hell they have made for themselves.”

That’s the voice that changes people. That’s the voice that changes me. We need to hear that voice we think we are all alone against the world.