Matthew 18:15-20
15 “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.
16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.
17 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.
18 Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
19 “Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. 20 For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”
For as long as I can remember believers, including myself believed that verse 20 was the indication that we should always be gathered with others to pray or worship. I cannot count the number of times I have read these verses and missed that the two ideas were one. I had separated the "gathered together", verse 20, from the message of church discipline. And, many have separated verse 20 from the statement that "whatever you ask in My name it shall be done for them", from the church discipline.
And, yet, we see from these passages that the Lord was telling us that we should come together to evaluate sin in the body and agree on what is to be done. These verses are not speaking of coming together to worship, rather coming together to handle a sin matter. They also are telling us that whatever our decision about the sin matter, will be in the Lord's will sense we are seeking Him for what is to be done.
The statement "whatever we ask in His name", has nothing to do with getting whatever we want from God as long as we use the name of Christ. All these verses that we have taken out of context are directly related to church discipline.
It is no wonder that we have missed this, since almost all our lives we have heard the verses alone out of context. Our minds are programmed to see those verses alone. WE HAVE BEEN WRONG!
These verses separated from one another seem to indicate that there is no power in our prayer unless we are gathered together. We know this can't be true because Christ prayed alone, and so did the prophets. Some of my best times in prayer have been alone with God. There are no distractions by the words of others, that sometimes we may not even agree with. I take comfort in knowing that God prays on our behalf, since we really don't know how we should pray. It is good to pray with others from time to time, but that does not mean that we should always pray with others.
Romans 8:26 "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;"
This mini study because of the challenge of another believer, has motivated me to look more closely at the context of any verse, guess what...I thought I was doing that, until I encounter a verse that was ingrained in my head from the beginning of my new birth in Christ, seen a particular way. The grooves in our brains, formed by continual repetition are nearly solidified, if we do not heed the challenges by fellow brothers and sisters, we remain in our ignorance.
Some of the grooves in our head that are nearly solidified from constant use and indoctrination by our culture might be as follows:
Christmas
Easter
Don't Judge
Self esteem teachings
one man pastorship in churches
worship teams
forgiving others for our own sake
let the Holy Spirit expose sin rather than speaking to people.
Giving ten percent of our "tithes" to God
Eating meat is a sin
It is kind to tell bereaved family at funerals that their deceased family member went to heaven.
The church is the new Israel
We must reform the church
We must make sure our delivery in witnessing is palatable to the hearer so they will receive it.
It is inappropriate to witness at funerals, weddings, birthdays or any other gathering where people are wanting to just enjoy their time.
There are many more of these grooves in our heads that need to be cleared out in order to more fully honor God.
Can any of you name some that are not listed here? This might be a great time to begin asking questions, the first one being, "what am I believing that is not Biblical?"
