Am I? My brother's keeper? I got to be honest with you this morning. I don't like this passage. I don't like it because every time Matthew 18 comes up as a pastor, it means something bad has happened. Either I've wronged somebody, somebody's wronged me, or both. And now we've got to go to the procedures. Jesus, Jesus procedures, procedures for fixing a broken relationship. So as you turn to Matthew 18, it's page 823 in your Pew Bible. Many of you I know have already heard this formula many times before. Maybe you know it backwards and forwards. I want you to think about two things then. Notice on the one hand, what Jesus says right before and right after this. And secondly, Jesus seems to be speaking directly to the church. Even though technically it doesn't exist yet, as we know it, he anticipated that this would be hard for us, that we would struggle and fight with one another, he anticipated that. And even though it's hard, he calls to do this anyway. Why? What's he up to? Let's turn to God's Word. Matthew 18, beginning at verse 12. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them is going astray, does he not leave the 99 on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the 99 that never went astray. So it is not the will of my father who's in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. 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 tax collector. 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. 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. The Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times, Jesus said to him, I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. This is God's word. Let's pray. Lord, show us your love this morning that we would begin to love the way that you do in your name. Let's break this passage down. Three things. The problem was sheep, the heart of the shepherd, the brother's rebuke. Number one, the problem was sheep. Isaiah 53 says, and we all like sheep have gone astray. Now for many of you, that's enough. For some of you, you want a little more proof. So let me ask you, do you have kids? Have you been a kid? My son is only nine months old and already my mother's curse is working its way through him. You're going to have a boy just like you one day. If you're going to understand what she said that, imagine Russ age five in my Papa's house. Now you didn't know, my Papa was my hero. He had raised motorcycles and he had been nationally ranked before he got injured. So he was a very athletic man, pretty agile. He was about forty seven at this time. And I mean, I didn't know until as much older that not everybody else's Papa had a basement full of huge motorcycle trophies. This was cool. Now go down and play with it, but it wasn't just the trophies. We would hang out together. And his job, he had the shop where there were tractors. And if you're five years old, you don't get any better tractors. But not only that, he would let me sit in his lap and ride on these tractors. I know that's got to be illegal today, but I enjoyed it. He was my hero. I love my Papa. And he loved me despite that. You know, I would do things. One day I decided we were going to have a little experiment at Papa's house. See my aunt, my youngest aunt still lived at the house and she had a gray Persian cat named Twiggy. And if you're not familiar with Persian cats, they're the ones that look like a giant fur ball and real fluffy. And you know, animals in general and five-year-old Russ were sworn enemies. My grandfather had to go take a shower after work which left me unattended with Twiggy. And I cornered this poor beast. And I had an idea. I was five years old. I knew full well what I was doing. I knew better. But I thought, Twiggy needs a bath too. So I bring that cat into the bathroom. I'm sneaking up. You know, it would have been easy enough if my grandparents had just a shower curtain. I could have slipped Twiggy under and had run. But they didn't. The terrain was a little different. They had the plexiglass sliding door, you know, the one that seals it off. So I had two options. I could open the door and throw Twiggy in and run, which would probably result in my plan being foiled because it gave my grandfather easy access. He was pretty quick. So I did the only logical thing that any five-year-old would come up with. And I chunked that cat over the top of that. And I knew what I was doing was wrong. I mean, I was out the door before the splash. But I heard screeching and cursing. And then my name. I knew I had to seek refuge. And I found it in the hall closet deep within the recesses of coats. I was down in there cowering within 90 seconds. My grandfather is scouring the house with a towel in one hand and is belt in the other screaming my name. There was no way. I was coming out of that closet. There was no way I was going to be caught out in the open. Because I knew. That wasn't love behind my name. See, we're not all that different than sheep. Sheep, sometimes they do things that are just dumb. Sometimes they're willfully bad. Sometimes they're just stubborn. Or like me, sometimes they're all three. That's what our passage is about. See, it's interesting, the sheep. There's almost an unspoken dialogue between the sheep and the shepherd. For whatever reason he decides, he's leaving. He's going off on his own, at his own peril. As though he looked at the shepherd and said, you know, I don't think I need you. I think I can get by on my own. I can get my own food and I don't need you. That's the heart of a wayward sheep. That's my heart. That's ours. When you think about that, one of the main images God uses in Scripture for us is sheep. Sheep. Not frogs, not cows, not lions. Sheep. Most animals, you take them and you leave them alone in the wild. And that's exactly what they become. They survive. They go wild. You leave a sheep alone, and it dies. That's what's going on with these shepherds. They seek out the sheep. Because they know, I mean the terrain in the Judean countryside, it was sort of a narrow plateau that ran. It was a couple miles wide. But if the sheep wandered, they could get near one of the edges, a precipice. They could find their way out onto a ledge and couldn't get back off. They could fall into a goalie or ravine. And they just stayed there until either they starved to death or a predator came and ate them. So the shepherd would track these sheep from miles, would hunt them down, sometimes risking his own life across a cliff's edge, or facing the predator that's looking for them to get the sheep and bring it back. Why? Number two, the heart of the shepherd. Why would a shepherd do that? It's not like a sheep's throwing a cat in his shower. Why is he ardently pursuing the sheep? You know, you read this passage and it's kind of hard. It sounds like Jesus is saying the one sheep is more important than the 99. It's almost like Jesus is saying, all right, here's the deal. Rebell, go straight, wander. You know what? Because then God will come hunt you down and He'll love you even more. That's not what's going on here. But we are learning something important about God's heart. Let's come at it from a different angle. Let's imagine a social Darwinist talking to the shepherd. The sheep's wandered off. The Darwinist says, you know, the sheep was dumb enough to wander off. Good riddance. Let him go. I mean, he's not worthy of your time. It's a good thing. He's no longer in the gene pool. Aren't you glad God doesn't think of us that way? The shepherd leaves the 99 to go after the wand. How does that work? This might be easier for us to conceive of if we think in terms of family. It doesn't matter if you have one kid, two kids, 15 kids. If one of your children goes missing, you're going to go find them. Or you're going to exhaust all possible means, every possible avenue to hunt them down. And it's not as though the other kids are sitting back saying, I always knew dad loved him the most. They look and they say, man, if dad hunts like that, if I went missing, it's a first hand account of the love of the father. This is shepherding. This is what shepherding is. Earlier this year, I had the privilege of hearing from an elder who had worked with the youth ministry a long time ago in this church. And he shared a story with the staff. He told us about one time being with the youth and going hiking in the mountains. And they were going up this trail in the mountains. And along the side of the mountain, there was pretty much a ravine and a cliff edge on one side and then a cliff wall going up on the other. It was relatively wide, but not enormous. And they're walking up in their group up this trail and all the normal carrying on is going laugh and talking. And he's near the front and all of a sudden he looks up and sees, there's a bear coming down the path toward them. They scramble the youth into defensible positions. They're moving over to the side and wedging themselves into crevices in the cliff's edge. They're all moving and hoping that if they're very still and they move inside, the bear will just walk straight down the path and leave them alone. And there's one guy who squeezed into this crevice and his backpack is what's exposed behind him. And unfortunately for him, there was a candy bar in that backpack. And that bear smelled it and came after. With one swipe shredded the backpack, starts to rummage through it, still on his back. Now this elder had seen potential trouble coming and had pulled out a hatchet. And when that bear swiped the backpack. He did something that, I don't be honest to use a youth pastor, I don't know if I could have done it. I mean if it was my own son, I'd like to think I definitely do this. But if it's yours, I don't know. Let's hope we never have to find out. He comes out and he takes that hatchet and he swings across the rear end of that bear. And it wheels around and they are face to face. Now don't you want to know what happens next? He left us hanging for five minutes on that part before he finished the story. But there's a reason he did. This is the gospel people. This is shepherding. Jesus says in John 10, I'm the good shepherd and I lay down my life for the sheep. A good shepherd is willing, if necessary, to trade situations with the sheep. He trades. There's punishment coming to you. I'm going to give you my life and take that for you. We're going to trade situations. Whatever kind of hell you're about to go through, let's trade. And he gives us his life, his riches. That's the gospel. That's what shepherding is. Now I bet you're wondering what happened with that bear. The bear is looking at him in the face and he takes the hatchet and swings as hard as he can right across that bear's nose.
And by the grace of God, instead of mauling him, the bear takes off down the trail and leaves them all alone. Now I'll leave it to you to guess which one of your elders is the bear tamer. Go around asking, save some of my response. This is incredible to me. This is the picture of how God shepherds us that he comes and wants to trade. That Christ comes, I'm a sheep and I wander off mocking him and he lovingly hunts me down and at his own expense trades places. That's the love of Christ. The same thing with my grandfather. Sometimes I think a sheep. We still don't understand. We still don't get what God's about. Even though he's showing us this kind of love, we question what's going on. Think about the experience of the sheep here. Tim Keller quotes a shepherd. Listen to this. It's a hard thing to go after a lost sheep because even when you find the sheep, the sheep runs to and fro and loses its direction. And when you finally corner it, it's difficult to round it up unless you have a dog to scare it. The lost sheep runs to and fro. And when you find it, you must seize it, cast it down, tie its front legs together, tie a tie and legs together, put it over your shoulders and carry it home. Keller says, it's such a sweet picture, isn't it? Shepherd with a sheep over his shoulders. I'm a little sheep and he loves me. He seizes it. He casts it down. He ties its legs up and throws it over his shoulder. The shepherd, he's going home with a lot of joy in his heart. But for the sheep, his eyes are spinning around. His world just got ransacked. God, what are you doing? I understand your plan. I mean, I'm in on it. I understand how it works. I know what you do. What are you doing right now? God comes and he says, I'm a shepherd. I love you. Sometimes, sometimes this is what needs to happen to the sheep. I love you. Do you know that? It's an interesting thing. The sheep doesn't want to come home. This is a scary kind of love. This is scary. God comes and gets me. When I don't want to be taken, as Roman says, God demonstrated His love in this. While we were still sinners, He died for us. This is the difference between Christianity and every other religion in the world. Every other religion has their God, their power, whatever. Hear the rules. You abide by the rules. Maybe we'll be friends. Maybe you'll get in. The living God says, I know you can't do that. I know your heart. I'm coming for you. I'm going to do it since you can't. Until we understand how and why God loves, we're not going to begin to want what He wants. And that leads us to our third point. The brothers' rebuke. Look at verses 15 to 17 with me. This is the famous formula. It does not make sense without the cross. It will not work without the cross. Let me unpack this with you. Let's imagine, after the service, after the congregational meeting, you meander into the connector and somebody comes up to you, looks at you, and just pow, sucks you right in the face. What are you going to do? Well, Russ, let me give you the Sunday school answer. You just said that Jesus takes it in the face for me sometimes because I'm the one hitting to show me His love. So if I get His love, I guess I'm supposed to take it in the face too. Great. Now for most of you, that ain't going to happen. For the five of you, for whom it will, what happens when they hit you again, and again, and again? Because it's not always physical, is it? The other kind of hits we can take. One of my liberal friends at Seminary loved to mock Bible-believing Christians with this story. He knew high school football star in the state of Colorado when he was growing up who was, he was well known for both his abilities on the field and his Christian faith. And one night he decided to take a stand for his faith by going with the team to a party, and he was going to be a witness at that party. And he comes in and he's walking around and people are coming up and mocking him. And this one student's intoxicated, and he comes up, says, you believe the Bible's true? Yeah, I do. He leans back and boom, he pops up right in the face. He said, this chiseled young athlete kind of gathers himself, he hasn't been expecting it. He kind of stares him down and looks at him and then literally turns the other cheek. This drunk guy leans back again and he pops him again. And this time he was ready for it. So he just kind of turns back and looks at him and he said, Bible doesn't say anything after that, and he pummels him. If that's how you read this passage. I mean, there's a reason we'd sit around and laugh about that. That's purposefully missing the point. This list of things to do isn't going to be your end all, fix all. If you don't understand the heart behind it, what is the heart of the shepherd to bring the sheep home? What is the heart of the brother who has to bring a rebuke? To bring his brother home. The goal is not to win the argument. It's to gain your brother back. Sure, you show him his fault, but you want to win his heart. I can talk about this all day from the pulpit, but what good does it do us? If you go to meet up with somebody and you are angry at them because it's something they've done to you. If you go into that situation to follow the rules and you haven't forgiven them, somebody's got to pay. And at that moment you want it to be them. Whether if you guilt through manipulation, you want to watch them suffer, you want to see them pay for what they've done. Maybe even you'd laugh if you see them suffer because of somebody else. Comes around, goes around, if we haven't forgiven. You recognize what that is? That's choosing to pay down their debt. That means when I see somebody who's wronged me instead of saying, man, I hate that guy, or gossiping to other people about slandering them, or even just avoiding them, keeping them in arms length. You know what, silent treatment. I'm not going to let you in emotionally, see how you like that. All kinds of ways we make people pay. Instead, to the degree that I understand how Christ was willing to pay for what I did to Him, that love begins to turn it inside out for me. Where I began to want to discover the depth of how Christ forgives me. I mean, it's hands on. Jesus knew what He was doing when He gave us this project. You will learn the depth of His love by trying to forgive other people. Because if you come into a situation where you cannot forgive somebody, you need to look in the mirror and say, okay, Jesus, where am I not getting it? Where am I not getting your love? I mean, we don't have time to go into it, but you go home and read the next parable. Jesus drops a spiritual anvil on our heads. It is a wake-up call. We've been given infinite mercy. How can we not extend a little bit? That seems real cheap, so let me push on that a little bit. One of my students came to my office once and shared an incredibly awful thing that had happened, and I said, after listening for a while, until you're willing to forgive them, you'll never have freedom from this. And before I had finished the sentence, there's no way, Russ, there's no way I can ever, ever forgive them for that. Hear me clearly, I'm not putting a guilt trip on you. You must forgive? Yeah, but that's the wrong way to go about it. The problem here is how deep is our well in Christ. How deep are the waters running? Do you know that he goes all the way down? All the way down? That his love is deeper than the nasty all the way down? Until we get that, we're not going to be set free to rejoice, like the shepherd rejoices. We're not going to be set free to rejoice in the face of mistreatment. Philip Yancy writes about the transformation in South Africa after apartheid. He said Nelson Mandela had been imprisoned for 27 years, wrongfully imprisoned. He gets out, he's elected president, and do you know who he has on his inaugural stage with him? He brings out the man who had wrongfully imprisoned him to join him. So he had sat in that jail in Africa, and instead of rotting with hatred, he had watched as other countries in Africa saw oppressed people groups rise up and avenge what had happened and perpetuate the cycle. Evil just proliferating. He wanted it to stop with his generation. He wanted to pay down the debt of what had been done to him. So he appointed Desmond Tutu, the head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to have hearings. And for two and a half years, incredible atrocities are brought into the public eye as people come forward to confess what they've done, because the rules were simple. It didn't matter who you were, you could be a police officer, you could be a soldier. If you came forward and confessed everything and admitted your guilt that you were wrong, you would never be tried for it, you would never be punished for what you did. I want you to think with me two and a half years of people coming forward and saying incredibly awful things. Some of the people in the land started to rise up and say there has to be justice. We can't let these criminals go unpunished, but Nelson New and Nelson Mandela knew he was looking for a different kind of justice. He knew his country needed healing, needed mercy, more than simply vindictive justice. The punishment they would take on themselves to pay it down. One particular hearing officer Vanderbrook and his cohorts started sharing about a particular incident they had gone to this house and taken this 18 year old boy and shot him. And they took his body and they put it on a stick and to cover the evidence they turned it over a fire like a piece of barbecue meat. Eight years later they went back to the same house. They took the father and mother out with them. They had a wood pile built and they tied the father onto it and made the mother watch as they poured gasoline over his body and ignited it. You can imagine the silence in that courtroom when a judge turned to this elderly woman and said, what do you want from Mr. Vanderbrook? She said three things. First of all, I want the officer to take me to the spot where my husband was burned and collect his ashes so I can give him a proper burial. The officer nodded his head in agreement. She said number two, Mr. Vanderbrook took away my family and I still have a lot of love to give. So twice a month I want him to come down to the ghetto and spend the day with me so I can be a mother to him. And thirdly, I want him to know that God has forgiven him and I forgive him too and to prove that that's real. I want to come embrace him right now and as she got up to walk across that courtroom, some in the courtroom broke out spontaneously singing amazing grace but Vanderbrook never heard it because he'd fainted. He was overwhelmed. She loved him all the way home. This is the project brothers and sisters. This is Matthew 18. Go find your brother. Show him his fault and love him all the way home because that's what our elder brother did for us. We'll talk more about that next week. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you know full well. I don't want to pay down the debt for others in my life. You know we struggle as your body of believers or show us your love. Show us your love that we would want that opportunity that we would rejoice in it. Lord, that we would come running home and we would bring others with us. We pray this in your name. Amen.