A look at how easy it is to twist what God says...

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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." - Matthew 18: 19-20 (ESV)

The power of agreement. We live in a society that rarely agrees about anything. Where strife and disagreement are celebrated. It was not meant to be so amongst believers however. The New Testament is filled with passages about unity. God wants His body unified. He desires agreement. One of the things He hates is discord amongst the brethren. Yet we look out across Christendom today and see it is more divided than ever. It seems sometimes we spend more time seeking what we disagree with than what we all can agree on. Certainly we can all agree on the power contained in the key verses today. Words right from the mouth of Jesus Himself. Timeless truths for us to wield as Christians today.

The first thing we see is agreement requires plurality. We were not meant to be loners in our faith. We were meant to be in agreement with each other when seeking God's answer in prayer. Look at the definitive nature of these verses. If two or three of us agree - it will be done for them! Not it might be done. Not we have a good chance of it being done. Not it will be done if we are obeying the very law Christ set us free from! No beloved. God makes it very clear and very plain. Agree and it will be done. Agree about what? Read that verse again! Agree about anything they ask! It is time to take the limits off of the God we serve! It is time to stop trying to place Him in a box! It is time we take hold of the promises of God in Scripture:

The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down - Deuteronomy 28: 12-13a (ESV)

We have too many Christians walking around today like they are the tail! Like they have to pass some test before they can expect blessings from a God who has already said His answers are always yes and amen! Go back to the key verses! Where we gather in His name - He is there in our midst. We are not beggars! We are co-heirs of the promise. We are sons and daughters of the King! It is time to stop acting like paupers. The key verses contain so much power for us as followers of Jesus Christ. We need to come into agreement when we ask Him for anything and it will be done. You need a miracle healing? Come into agreement! You need a new job? Come into agreement! You need that financial breakthrough to make you the head and not the tail? Come into agreement! It is time to lay claim of the power in Scripture as God intended"

STOP.

What you have just read is simply untrue. Now, there are some truths mixed in throughout it but the overall message is a lie. It is not what these verses mean. It is not what God is saying to us as His people. What it is however is the exact type of preaching you hear in the majority of pulpits today. It is feel good, sugar coated, purpose driven nonsense. It is achieved by strip mining the Bible to get it to say what you want it to say instead of what God wants to say. It has become so bad in modern Christianity that many unaware Christians honestly believe that every interpretation of Scripture is correct. That there is not "correct" interpretation of Scripture. That is absolute rubbish. There is what the author intended to say while being divinely inspired by God. There may be multiple applications to our lives but there is only one correct interpretation of Scripture.

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. - 2Peter 1: 19-21 (ESV)

We need to stop following men who use the Scriptures to confirm what they want to say instead of those who exposit the Word to hear what the Lord wants to say. Just look at the opening of this devotional. There were plenty of truths contained within to draw the reader into a false belief that everything being said was righteous. Strife and disagreement are celebrated in society. The New Testament is filled with passages about unity but the Bible actually teaches that the true source of disunity is not disagreement but rather false teaching. The key verses are right from the mouth of Jesus. We are not meant to be loners in our faith, although these verses have nothing to do with that. Yet despite these truths, look at the leaven running throughout. The thing that God hates is not discord but one who sows discord amongst the brethren and as already pointed out, false teaching is what sows discord. Look at the rest of the silliness of the teaching though. Do we honestly think that it doesn't matter what we are praying for as long as we agree? Believe it or not - a lot of Christians would answer yes because this is what they are taught. The Deuteronomy verses come from the end of the Torah and without the context, one might think these are promises for us but they are not. They were promises for Israel if they kept the Mosaic Law! The final 53 verses of that chapter outline all of the curses for disobedience but you'll never hear anyone preach on that! Do we honestly think God is some genie in a bottle who is bound to answer our wishes if we merely agree? Sadly, many treat Him as such. I see and hear it all the time from Christians citing this verse and "claiming it"; which is another unbiblical form of prayer.

So what's the big deal preacher? I hear this argument all the time. This is the type of teaching you will hear from Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and any number of false teachers today and people ask me - what's the big deal? They are just trying to be positive! They are just trying to be encouraging! Beloved. First of all, they are lying about what God actually says. Quite frankly that should be enough but if we want to look at practicality, fine. What happens to the person who agreed with two or three and his wife was not healed? Who does he end up blaming when she dies? What happens to the single mom of three who "stood in agreement" but never found that job? What does she end up thinking about God? What about the poor family who gets evicted even though they agreed with two or three? Do they ever come back to church? Do they ever believe again? Do they ever get saved? Lost amidst the hoopla and glitz of the mega-pastors are the real lives they destroy. The people they told were the head but life keeps treating them like the tail. To make matters worse, some of these snake oil salesmen will turn around at that point and blame the sheep.

"You must not have had enough faith!"

"Maybe there's a secret sin you're not confessing!"

"You must be harboring unforgiveness!"

Wait a minute. When you were screaming from the pulpit it was all about simple agreement but now there are legal codes that must be adhered to as well? You cannot do this to people beloved. Wait a minute preacher! Are you saying it is not true to believe that where two or three are gathered He is in their midst? Are you saying that when two or three agree God will not answer their prayer? Yes. That is exactly what I am saying because that is exactly what God is saying. First of all, let us deal with the lunacy of these ultimatum statements. Why do we need two or three for Jesus to be in our midst if we all have the Holy Spirit inside of us as believers? Are we so shallow as to believe that God must answer in the affirmative about anything we ask if we simply agree? Seriously? Who is God in that equation? Us or Him? No beloved. If we want to find out what these verses mean we must go back to the context in which they were written:

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have 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 a 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." - Matthew 18: 15-20 (ESV)

Oh that pesky context. What subject is Jesus teaching about here? Is it about prayer? Is it about the power of agreement? Not at all! He is teaching about church discipline. About what to do if your brother has sinned against you. The first and preferred method is you work it out between the two of you. If that does not work, take one or two others - which would make two or three in agreement - and try and convince him. Why does Jesus teach this? Because it is what was taught in the Old Testament. There always needed to be one or two witnesses. Here is the Commentary from Matthew Henry:

If a professed Christian is wronged by another, he ought not to complain of it to others, as is often done merely upon report, but to go to the offender privately, state the matter kindly, and show him his conduct. This would generally have all the desired effect with a true Christian, and the parties would be reconciled. The principles of these rules may be practised every where, and under all circumstances, though they are too much neglected by all. But how few try the method which Christ has expressly enjoined to all his disciples! In all our proceedings we should seek direction in prayer; we cannot too highly prize the promises of God. Wherever and whenever we meet in the name of Christ, we should consider him as present in the midst of us.

Remember, Jesus is teaching His disciples. The very same who would start His church. The agreement was in relation to keeping sin out of the yet formed church. How to engage a brother who was or has sinned against you. Not some mystical incantation or secret code to always get God to agree with you. Well preacher, can't it mean both? No it cannot. God wrote these verses through Matthew for a purpose. Using the context it is clear to see that purpose is in relation to a sinning brother, not a universal principle about agreement and prayer. If it was a universal principle then it would appear in other places in Scripture. Always remember that Scripture interprets Scripture. Here is another example that might upset some:

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. - Jeremiah 29: 11 (ESV)

This one little Scripture is one of the top ten misused Bible verses. It comes from a letter to the Jewish exiles in Babylon from the Prophet Jeremiah. Do we get that? It is part of an actual letter Jeremiah wrote to the exiles so unless you were one of those exiles it was not written to you. It was not written for you. It was not written about you. However, one can read the entire canon of Scripture and correctly say that God does have a plan for our good. As long as we are talking about His plan for salvation through Jesus Christ. That is our blessed hope. He is our future in eternity. The problem is Jeremiah 29:11 is often used to support the notion of earthly prosperity or that God is somehow bound to deliver us from whatever our lives have become and that is simply not true. Let God be true and every man a liar. One more example:

Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. - 3John 1: 2 (NKJV)

Many a prosperity sermon has used this verse as its foundation. It seems pretty clear doesn't it? I pray that you may prosper in all things! The problem is twofold. First of all the word prosper only appears in the NKJV and secondly it is taken out of context:

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul. For I rejoiced greatly when the brothers came and testified to your truth, as indeed you are walking in the truth.I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. - 3John 1: 1-4 (ESV)

This is the opening of a letter to an elder named Gaius. His opening greeting was not meant to become doctrine for all believers. That said however, the word prosper does not even mean what the hucksters want you to think it means. John is just saying that he prays all goes well with him. This case also highlights why it is important to not use things like the Message Bible, which is not a translation of the Scripture. Why we should not used things like the Amplified Bible, which mixes in every possible definition a word has instead of hermeneutically determining what the author and God intended.

Beloved, I hope that we all take this as seriously as God wants us to. He did not write the entire Bible for us to stumble around in the dark about what it means. Go back and read the opening to this devotional and realize how easy it is to take a verse or two out of context and abuse it to serve your own purposes. Jesus did not teach Matthew 18: 19-20 so that believers today could write on their Facebook walls that they are standing in agreement for something their apostate church is undertaking. It does not work that way. God had an important message He was delivering in the key verses. Honestly, it is a subject that we have largely abandoned today, church discipline. That does not give someone the right to mangle the verses to fit their pre conceived heresy of word faith and positive confession. What we tell people God says does matter. In many cases the very lives of our listeners is at stake:

Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. - 1Timothy 4: 16 (ESV)

What we teach saves those that we teach. When you truly seek what God is trying to say you can never go wrong but if you approach His Word with an agenda, then it does not matter how many "stand in agreement"; you will answer for it.

Reverend Anthony Wade - November 29, 2014

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.