Justifying Grace

9/6/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Opening Prayer:

Heavenly Father, we open this gathering in your name. Come and fill this place with your presence. Quiet our hearts and focus our minds on your goodness. Lead every word, every song, and every heart back to you. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen

Call to Worship:

Leader: Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, His praise in the assembly of the faithful.​

People: Let the faithful exult in glory and sing for joy.

​Leader: Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”​

People: We come to worship the one who calls us to love and unity.​

Leader: Come, let us lift our voices to the Lord of grace.​

All: Alleluia! We rejoice in God’s presence among us!

Scripture: Matthew 18:15-20

Matthew 18:15–20 NIV

15 “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. 16 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.’ 17 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 or a tax collector. 18 “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. 19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”

Justifying Grace

The Shepherd Goes First

Forgiveness is not our right. It’s our choice, and Jesus died to put that choice in our hands.

Last week, Jesus showed the disciples what it meant to follow him as he described the sacrifice he was going to make on the cross in Jerusalem. He invited them to pick up their crosses and come with him. They didn’t get to be his disciples because they were better than everybody else. Jesus gave that invitation to everyone. He gave them the choice to follow him or not.

Just a few passages before the scripture you heard this morning, Jesus shared about the heart of a good shepherd—one who constantly seeks after the lost sheep. Our farmers can spend a lot of time out in the tall grass, looking for those vulnerable little ones who often get themselves into trouble and can’t get out. Sometimes there are older ones who get injured, get lost, and get stuck, and need their shepherd to come and find them.

We don’t always stay found, firmly connected in the family of God. We may be brothers and sisters together in Christ, but we have rough edges. Those rough edges wear against each other. Sometimes they hurt, and sometimes we get pushed out or push others out and end up lost again. As we live in community, God works through those rough edges to shape us in His image. Sometimes we see that come out in our small-group fellowship, but it only works when our relationships with each other are filled with the grace of Jesus.

Going to Them

You can find sin everywhere in our world, and we find it too often in our lives as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Jesus gave us these instructions, and he also lived them out as an example for us. God didn’t wait for us to come to Him; even though He was the one we sinned against, He was the innocent one. He came to us first to tell us what we had done. Jesus had no problem confronting the sin around him, but he did so with the heart of a shepherd. In our scripture today, Jesus teaches that the first act of grace is going to the person who sinned against you.

Our normal reaction when asked to go to someone who has already hurt us and tell them they hurt us is fear. We are afraid they will just hurt us again or disbelieve us. We may also be afraid of the social consequences. Word travels fast, and we may not want others to know what happened. Sometimes those consequences are real, and it is ok to reach out to pastor Bekah or myself for help if you have concerns about your situation. But Jesus went there for us, and so when we reach out to those who’ve sinned against us, we go in his strength. His sacrifice makes it possible for our relationships to be restored.

Going to others and telling them they hurt us is part of living into our call to be peacemakers. You may remember back in Matthew chapter five, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” When we go to those who’ve sinned against us and let them know what they did, we open a door to peacemaking. When we think about it as opening a door for peace, we begin to see many more ways to make peace with others. Some are small ways. Some are too small for us to notice while we are worried about the big hurts in our lives. Some of those small places are the best places to start.

The truth is, often, the people we confront didn’t even know they did anything. Put yourself in the sinner’s shoes. If you hurt someone and didn’t even know it, how would you want to find out? What would you say to the person knocking on your door asking about that casserole dish you borrowed four Christmases ago, and you’ve been sitting just three pews away all that time?

We need to go to them and give them the chance because they might be lost and not even know it. But sometimes the people we confront who have hurt us won’t listen to us. Sometimes they are lost in their sin, and we don’t have the power to get them out on our own.

Two or Three

Jesus says if we can’t restore them one-on-one, we don’t give up on them. We come back with help. We return with two or three others, and with their help, we go to them again and see if they will listen to us. Bringing in two or three others is more than just turning up the temperature. On the surface, it might look like bringing in your bodyguards, but this practice goes back to Deuteronomy, where, in the law, God said that the truth of matters is always to be determined by two or three witnesses. These extra people we bring are meant to be witnesses of the truth.

In Galatians 6:1, Paul says, “You who are spiritual, restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Watch yourself, lest you too be tempted.” It’s important for us to remember that just because someone has sinned against us and hurt us does not mean we are immune from becoming sinners ourselves. Too often, this act of confronting someone, even with the goal of mending relationships, can pull us into further conflict and spiral into greater sin against each other.

If we cannot open a channel for peacemaking ourselves, we bring two or three others with us. That way, if we start to get pulled into the mess ourselves, there’s someone on both sides with their feet on solid ground who can pull us and the one we’re confronting back. Those others give the victim support and a voice and keep them from creating a new victim as well.

The Church is a Family

Jesus teaches us to do this soul-shaping work, confronting sin and seeking restoration, within close relationships: Brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s a bit like family time together. Confronting sin may not sound like family time, but that is exactly what it was intended to be. John Wesley’s mother raised ten children to adulthood and homeschooled them all. Part of their training was that each of them had a set time each week to share with their mom how it was with their soul. I wonder if she helped them figure it out if they were having trouble remembering the sins they may have committed. Wesley latched onto that idea, though, and made it a regular practice among the small groups he started, called Class Meetings, to make a space for that kind of family time, where brothers and sisters could talk to each other openly and honestly about the sins they committed or that were committed against them. They lived this passage out by making it part of their weekly life together.

Jesus taught that if a person would not listen when confronted one-on-one or with two or three witnesses, you should tell the church. The church Jesus describes is a family, not an institution. The early Methodists lived this out in their small groups. If they were church members, they were expected to be part of a group where they would share their sins with one another and seek to do better. They weren’t worried about the worship service; they knew family time was coming, and they wanted to make sure they got right with their brothers and sisters before it came up in front of the whole group. The small groups here at Bethel don’t look exactly like the early Methodists, but they come from the same place.

Then Jesus gives us the most important act of mercy. He says that if the person who sinned refuses to listen to the Church, they are to be regarded as an outsider or a tax collector. Not, ‘They are kicked out for good.’ They are to be regarded as someone who is lost and in need of saving grace. Notice, Matthew puts himself in there with the tax collector reference. If they refuse to listen to the church family, they are like everyone was before they met Jesus. A lost sheep in need of the Good Shepherd.

Where Two or Three Are Gathered

Jesus tells us that these instructions are not just emergency procedures to be hung in our churches by our fire extinguishers. They are how we continue to fulfill our mission within the Body of Christ. He knows sheep get lost every day. Jesus knows that we can wander off without even knowing it, and so we need to keep an eye out for each other. And he knows that if we don’t keep his grace as our guide and our strength, we will get into trouble trying to fix things by ourselves.

We are not fixing things ourselves. We are joining in with Jesus as he works among us. We are binding and loosing the things that Jesus shows us make or break our relationships. We celebrate in the church the ways we see God’s grace showing up everywhere, and we carry it to those who may not recognize it in their own lives, knocking on their door. You’d be amazed at what Jesus can do with a casserole dish.

So start today. Start small. Start with the smallest thing someone has done to you and go to them and tell them what happened. God has given you the grace and strength to face those who have done things to you, and those who are going to knock on your door, too. When someone comes to your door, listen to them. Then ask if you can try again. Open the door and let the peace of God come through.

Forgiveness is not our right. It’s our choice, and Jesus died to put that choice in our hands.

Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am with them,” and this is not in a passage about a worship service or a prayer meeting. It’s about two people with sin sitting in between them, trying to figure out what they are going to do with it. Jesus says, I’m there with you. Give it to me.

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus,

Set us free from the snares of sin

Bind us together with You in love.

Make us one with You,

one with each other,

and one as we share Your grace with the world.

In Your Holy Name, Amen.