Where Two or Three Gather: Why Jesus’ Words Bring the Lost Back Home

Posted on September 22, 2026 by Pastor Foley

The Epistle of James mentions Jesus by name only twice. Yet it contains more than 180 possible references to his teachings. Paul’s letters are similar, echoing Jesus’ words and instruction again and again. Why would the New Testament writers refer so often to Jesus’ teachings, but comparatively rarely refer to his name? They did so because they expected their hearers and readers to recognize the voice behind the words.

Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15–16)

Jesus directly taught the twelve apostles who were with him from his baptism through his resurrection. He taught them his words and they memorized his teachings.

I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. (2 Peter 3:2)

Modern readers often imagine the twelve apostles as sincere but bumbling doofuses, while the “real” authors of the Bible were figures like Mark and Luke, who interviewed the apostles and recorded their memories before anyone forgot them. But that assumption says more about us than about them. We are modern people who often misunderstand oral societies. The early church understood that the oral teaching handed down from the apostles had priority over the written record.

The purpose of the written Gospel was not to replace oral memory but to assist in its faithful reproduction. This is probably why John Mark traveled with Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey.

When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the Jewish synagogues. John was with them as their helper. (Acts 13:5)

The word translated “helper” in Acts 13:5 is the same Greek word Luke uses at the beginning of his Gospel, where it is translated “servants.”

Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. (Luke 1:1–2)

Mark was most likely a “servant of the word,” not simply a person who carried Paul and Barnabas’ bags. His role would have been to teach the direct words of Jesus, which, according to church tradition, he learned from Peter.

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)

When New Testament writers speak of “the word of God” or “the word of the Lord,” they are often referring quite literally to the Lord’s own words. That conviction is central to why the New Testament was compiled. The church believed that Jesus is God, and therefore his words are the words of God. Just as Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus were recorded and compiled to preserve the direct words of God, so also was the New Testament. Both served as memory aids, helping God’s people remember and faithfully repeat the word of God.

But how accurate is the Gospel memory of Jesus’ words? Were his words changed or redacted in order to support later theological developments in the early church?

One of the strongest proofs that the Gospels convey the actual words of Jesus is that Jesus uses different vocabulary depending on the audience he is addressing. He teaches different subjects and gives different content to different audiences. When he speaks with his disciples, he uses certain words that he does not use when he speaks to the crowds or to his opponents. Even when the wording varies slightly across the Gospels, his word choice for each audience is recorded with remarkable consistency.

As the great J.Arthur Baird noted, Jesus uses nineteen words only when speaking to his disciples and to no other audience. Of these, four appear with especially high frequency: “disciple,” “brother,” “slave,” and “little one.” All four appear in Matthew 18, our Scripture for this week, where Jesus is privately addressing the disciples.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who, then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to stumble! Such things must come, but woe to the person through whom they come! If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.“See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. “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 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. “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. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:1–20)

Matthew 18 is not primarily a procedural manual for church discipline, nor is it merely advice about what to do when someone sins against us. Jesus is answering a deeper question from his disciples: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

If we want to be great in the kingdom of heaven, we must always be working to restore wayward believers to the sheepfold.

Notice that Jesus does not say, “Get people to come back to church.” Jesus preaches the kingdom of God, not the church. Jesus uses the word “church” only twice in Matthew. For Jesus, the church and the kingdom of God are not identical.

The kingdom of God comes into existence when Jesus comes. It is permanently and completely established through Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. Even if everyone rejected Jesus, the kingdom of God would still exist. Jesus is King whether anyone accepts it or not.

The church consists of those who have welcomed the kingdom and the King. The church is not the King. It does not bring the kingdom into existence; Jesus does. It does not control the kingdom; Jesus does. It holds no power in the kingdom apart from him; Jesus holds all power and authority there. The church is not the mediator of the kingdom. There is only one mediator between God and humanity: the man Christ Jesus.

This is why Jesus does not tell us to go to the pastor or the elder when somebody sins. The goal is not to bring the sinning person to pastors or elders, but to bring that person to Jesus. In the New Testament, there is no hierarchy among believers. There are only brothers and sisters. A family may have older children or children with particular responsibilities. But in Jesus’ church, there is only one leader, one shepherd, one master, one teacher, one Father, and one Lord.

Because we start with our own modern understanding of “church” when we read Jesus’ references to the “church” in the gospels, we think that in Matthew 18:17, Jesus saying “tell it to the church” means “go and tell the pastor”.

We think of church as a hierarchy, so we think of Jesus’ instructions in Matthew 18 as escalating a conflict up the ranks. We think Jesus is telling us to try dealing with a conflict by ourselves before we report it to somebody with more authority.

But when we recognize that the word “church” in the New Testament means “the assembly”, not “institutional leadership”, we get a different escalation related to number of Christians. It starts with one brother, then two to three brothers, and finally the assembly of all the brothers.

Dealing with the conflict of another brother is not about calling the police when they don’t listen to you. It’s about lovingly bringing more brothers to get a brother back on the right track, like a body recruits more antibodies for the maintenance of the health of the body.

We can see Paul putting Jesus’ instructions into practice (like usual) in 1 Corinthians 5 when he instructs the Corinthians to hand the sinner over to Satan when they are all gathered together in the name of the Lord. This is not an example of church leadership exercising its authority to carry out church discipline, but instead a carrying out of the command of the only church authority, Jesus Christ.

The church is never entrusted to the elders as though the Lord were absent. The church belongs only and always to the Lord. This is why Jesus is present even when two people gather in his name, and why, if even two agree, it is done for them by Jesus’ Father in heaven.

The language of “binding” in Matthew 18:18 relates to teaching. That is, it concerns which teachings are binding and which are loosed. Wayward brothers and sisters are brought back by applying the teaching of Jesus. What restores people from sin is showing them where they have departed from the words of Jesus.

That is the heart of today’s Scripture. Jesus teaches us to win back sinning brothers and sisters to the Lord as two or three fellow believers apply the teachings of Christ to them. Restoration is not mainly about proving that we are right or persuading someone to behave differently. It is about bringing the Lord’s own words to bear on a wandering life. His words are what bring the lost back home.

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“He will reward each person according to what he has done” (Mt 16:27)

Posted on September 9, 2026 by Pastor Foley

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:27)

The Last Judgement by the Armenian manuscript illuminator Toros Roslin, 1262

In the scripture just before this one, Jesus and the disciples withdrew to Caesarea Philippi after many in Galilee rejected the gospel they had proclaimed. There, Jesus asked who the people said he was, and then who the disciples said he was. When Peter answered that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, Jesus told him that this knowledge could only be revealed by God. This is the confession that saves.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

However, Jesus says that simply calling him “Lord” does not save us.

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

These scriptures show three factors that must agree for us to be saved.

The first is the public outward confession that Jesus is Lord (or Christ or Messiah).

According to Jesus, this confession comes from God. It cannot remain only in our hearts. If someone knows in their heart that Jesus is Lord but refuses to confess him to avoid rejection by family or community, that is not a saving confession.

The second is a correct understanding of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord.

This understanding comes through the gospel, which comes from Christ himself. If we confess that Jesus is Lord but do not know what that means, our confession is not a saving confession.

At Caesarea, Peter got the first factor right but the second wrong.

From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:21-23)

Peter rightly confessed that Jesus is the Christ, but his understanding of what that meant came from human thinking and was ultimately twisted by Satan.

By explaining that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and be raised on the third day, Jesus was preaching the gospel. When Peter said, “Never, Lord!” he was rejecting that gospel.

Jesus does not suffer and die in spite of being the Christ. He must suffer and die because he is the Christ. To be saved, we must understand what it truly means for him to be the Christ.

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25–27)

Like Peter, many people say, “Jesus died for my sins,” without understanding what that means. For the confession “Jesus is Lord” to be saving, our understanding of it must be according to Scripture.

Jesus teaches the gospel clearly in Matthew 16:21–27. In verse 21, he speaks of his death and resurrection; in verse 27, he speaks of his return.

For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. (Matthew 16:27)

The third is our deeds. Christ teaches this in Matthew 16:27, and every New Testament writer is clear that Christ will judge us by our deeds.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10)

And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. (Revelation 20:12–13)

Many pastors dismiss this by quoting John 6:28–29, saying that God judges only the beliefs in our hearts, not our deeds.

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” (John 6:28–29)

But this is not a tricky riddle requiring additional theological explanation. It means our confession, beliefs, and actions must align for salvation. God judges our confession, our heart, and our actions. But when people base their understanding of God’s judgment on human thinking rather than Christ’s teaching, they misunderstand his judgment.

This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (Romans 2:16)

Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven. (Matthew 10:32–33)

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Matthew 16:24–26)

At the judgment, Christ will ask: “Were your deeds in agreement with what you confessed about me and understood in your heart about me?” These deeds are a life of denying ourselves rather than denying him. Just as we confess or deny Christ with our mouths, we also confess or deny him with our deeds. Salvation cannot be separated from following Jesus. For Jesus, to be saved, we must deny ourselves.

This does not mean Christ is calling us to an ascetic lifestyle. He is calling us to stop serving ourselves and the things we think will satisfy us, and instead to serve Christ, who meets all our needs. He says this whenever he speaks about salvation: whoever seeks to save their life will lose it.

Anyone who comes to Jesus for their own benefit will lose their life, and their deeds will be judged as evil. Coming to Jesus to save yourself is like Peter confessing that Jesus is the Christ while denying what it means for Jesus to be the Christ.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Living for God does not mean accomplishing things for God. It means depending completely on Christ for all things. Your actions are no longer focused on your own interests but on serving Christ. It means saying no to your own goals, values, and plans—and to the goals, values, and plans the world has for you. It means binding yourself to Christ alone. This is not advanced Christianity; it is basic Christianity, and it is the meaning of baptism.

Christians depend on Christ for all things. The deeds that save are not things we do for God but complete reliance on God in all things. He does not judge us by how well or perfectly we do them, how eloquently we confess him in public, or how impressive and deep our theology is. Christ knows the intentions of our hearts and is sympathetic to our weaknesses.

When our actions deny him, he convicts us through the Holy Spirit. When we confess our sins, he forgives and restores us. In the kingdom, confession and repentance are received as deeds of righteousness. This is why we affirm that salvation is by grace, not works.

The deeds Jesus is looking for are deeds of complete reliance on him as we serve him alone. He is looking for our trust that he is who he says he is, and for actions that show we know he will shepherd, teach, and provide for us just as he promised.

These are the three witnesses that must agree: we confess with our mouths, believe in our hearts, and reveal through our actions that Jesus is the all-powerful Lord on whom we depend for everything. Scripture is clear that when Jesus returns, he will judge us by the agreement of these witnesses. Those who sought to save their own lives will be punished, and those who lost their lives for Christ will receive the reward of eternal life—God’s own life—as their inheritance.

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Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand (Mt. 14:13-21)

Posted on August 25, 2026 by Pastor Foley

In Matthew 13, Jesus’ first parable is the parable of the four types of soil. After the parables, Matthew shows Jesus encountering these four types of soil in sequence.

The first type Jesus encounters is the “path” soil–those whom the word essentially “bounces off” of. At the end of Matthew 13, the “path” people in Jesus’ hometown do not receive his word and in fact take offense at him. At the beginning of Matthew 14, when John the Baptist opposes Herod’s illegitimate marriage, Herod—the worst soil in the New Testament—likewise refuses the word and instead imprisons John the Baptist, ultimately having him beheaded.

After this, we see the “rocky soil” of the crowds, who receive healing and bread from Jesus. Unlike the people of his hometown, they initially receive Jesus’ word with great joy, like little children. But after that?

It’s worth some discussion.

An early third-century painting of the bread and the fish from the Catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eucharistic_bread_and_fish.jpg)

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels. It is not told by any of the Gospel writers as a story about Jesus wandering around, finding hungry people, and feeding them. It is told as a story about Jesus directly providing for all who follow him. This difference matters because the Kingdom of God is about God in Christ providing for, teaching, and leading his people directly, without middlemen.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus withdraws from the crowds after feeding them because he knows they will try to make him king. They want to place him at the top of their existing hierarchy and have him run their nation. But Jesus did not come to reform existing hierarchies. He came to bring a new Kingdom. So, when the crowd follows him and finds him again, he rebukes them:

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. (John 6:26-27)

Notice that Jesus does not rebuke the people for coming to him with their material needs. He rebukes them for living lives focused on meeting those needs. He teaches the same truth in the Sermon on the Mount:

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:25-33)

Jesus delights to provide everything we need. But he does not provide all things so that we can live a good life by the standards of this age. Instead, he provides everything we need so that, with confidence, we can leave everything behind and follow him. The order is: first, serve Jesus; second, do not worry whether he will provide along the way. Jesus did not come to improve our present lives. He came to call us to leave those lives behind.

If the crowds are the rocky soil, does that mean that the disciples are the good soil in this story?

No, they are the thorny soil:

The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)

The disciples hear Jesus’ word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth make them unfruitful in today’s passage:

As evening approached, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food.”Jesus replied, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”“We have here only five loaves of bread and two fish,” they answered. (Matthew 14:15-17)

Notice that the disciples do not look to Jesus to act. Instead, because they are preoccupied with the cares of this world, they tell him what to do.

The deceitfulness of wealth does not only affect the rich. Poor people are deceived by the value of wealth, too. Both rich churches and poor churches often assume that the more money they have, the more ministry they can do, and the less money they have, the less ministry they can do.

But this is not how the Kingdom of God works. In the Kingdom, Jesus provides for people directly. That is why he tells the disciples to bring the food and the crowds to him. As the king, he provides for his people directly:

“Bring them here to me,” he said. And he directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 14:18-21)

If even the disciples are thorny soil, who is the good soil?

That’s the point of one of Jesus’ other parables from Matthew 13: The parable of the wheat and the tares. The point of that parable is: Until the end, the wheat and the tares—or the thorny ground and the good soil—look alike. That’s why the owner of the field says the tares shouldn’t be removed until the harvest: Some of the wheat might be removed by accident.

The same thing is true with the thorny soil: Sometimes, in the end, it proves to be good soil after all. Peter was continually an unfruitful disciple, all the way through Galatians 2! But the one thing he never did was to walk away from Jesus. As he told Jesus in John 6:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)

In the end, the only qualification for good soil is that it ultimately never rejects the seed.

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