Amen, and please be seated. And if you have a Bible, let me invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 18. This morning we're in verses 5 through 9. Matthew 18 verses 5 through 9.
This is another passage about our relationships, as are all the passages in Matthew 18. Last week we read of Jesus confronting the pride of his disciples. Well at least some of them wanted to be the greatest, certainly greater than the others in the Kingdom of Heaven. Now next week we're going to see in verse 10 Jesus will command us not to despise one another.
And how our good shepherd doesn't despise but rather pursues even the strain sheet. Later in verses 15 to 20 Jesus will tell us how to seek reconciliation with one another, as even as we sin against one another, how to be reconciled. Then at the end, beginning of verse 21, he's going to tell a long parable in answer to the question and it's parable about mercy, showing mercy to one another, forgiving one another from the heart. So the whole chapter is about our relationships adhered here, likewise, in verses 5 through 9.
This morning we'll see the concern of Jesus that we, his people, not cause others to stumble. Let me invite you to consider this from Matthew chapter 18 verses 5 through 9. Hear the word of God. Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.
But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Woe to the world for temptations to sin, for it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes. And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Amen. This is God's holy and inspired word. Make He write it on our hearts. Let's look at Him in prayer.
Father, drive this home to us for our own good and then grant that the fruit born would be for the good of others. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen. A quick note, some of you have a reference heading in your Bible that's been added by translators and those are often very useful when you're trying to find a passage you're familiar with very quickly, but here if your reference heading is between verse 6 and verse 7, well, it may have gotten in the way of the natural connection of the material. The connection of course is the key word found in verse 6 and verse 8 and verse 9 and it's related word in verse 7.
In other words, it's in four of the five verses. It's the word we heard Jesus use a couple weeks ago in Matthew 17, verse 27 where it was translated there, offense. That was in the context you remember where Jesus told Peter, now not to give offense, let's go ahead and pay the temple tax. Not to put up a stumbling block to these temple tax collectors, let's go ahead and pay it.
In other words, let's not put up barriers to their future faith in me by hardening their heart in rejection of me here over a two-drachima temple tax. Well that same word for offense is also translated stumbling block. You can also be translated sin. It's the same word that's found in verse 7.
Woe to the world for stumbling blocks or woe to the world for as the ESV has its temptations to sin. Woe to the world for things that get in the way of saving faith, the things that hinder people from believing in Jesus. The related word is found in verse 6, verse 8, verse 9 where it's translated to sin and I would argue it means to stumble which is its natural use. Stumble there is of course a kind of sin, but it's a particular sin, the sin of unbelief, the sin of not trusting in Jesus to be your savior, the sin of tripping over him and not believing in him.
It's a word that's a metaphor. Its origins are in the Old Testament law in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 14 which reads this, Leviticus 19 14, you shall not curse the death or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God, I am the Lord. It's the basic level. It's a command to respect those who are handicapped and to treat them with dignity and respect rather than hurting them deliberately.
In case of the blind, don't put a stumbling block before them that they're not going to see and then they're going to fall over. It's very straightforward and over time this idea came to mean more than that of course, more than just that physical sort of activity. It took on a spiritual meaning, something that trips a person up spiritually. Let me then read the passage again to you substituting this language and you'll see your translations even will give you a footnote for this.
Let me read it again, beginning verse 5, whoever receives one such child and my name receives me but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great milstone fastened around his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. Go to the world for stumbling blocks. For it is necessary that stumbling blocks come but woe to the one by whom the stumbling blocks comes. And if your hand to your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.
It's better for you to enter life, crippled or maimed, lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And for your eye causes you to stumble. Tear it out and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Well, that way of introduction, let me just highlight our outline and we'll go from here three points. First, verses five and six, Jesus says that we must take care, great care, that we aren't a stumbling block to other Christians. It looks like that. Verse seven, he says, we must be alert as the world puts stumbling blocks before us.
And verses eight and nine, we must take great care that we don't stumble ourselves. Think about the first one with me. We must take great care that we aren't a stumbling block to other Christians. Verse five, whoever receives one such child and my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble.
There are two alternatives, Jesus says, either we welcome them or we wound them. We are to welcome them. We are to receive them, he says, receive Christ's people. That means receiving Christ himself, whoever receives verse five, one such child and my name receives me.
Now what does he mean by such child? Who is it were to receive one such child? But what does he mean by such child? Well, these are the ones we heard of last week in verses one to four.
And who are they? Well, they are the ones who turn and become like little children, like the little child, Jesus placed in front of his disciples and he said, you must turn and become like this little child. And who are they? Well, they're the poor and the needy and the dependent, which is what children do.
Children are, but spiritually speaking, the poor and the needy and the dependent upon God. That is Jesus here in verse five doesn't merely mean we are to receive little physical children, but that we are to receive spiritual children, even his disciples. It's not that he's speaking of children here literally, though he does not exclude them. He's thinking of believers who see themselves as children in humility, poor and needy and dependent upon Jesus.
They can't save themselves. They must have Jesus do it for them. It's not that you don't receive those who are truly physical little children, but that you do receive all who have entered the kingdom by becoming like children, such children. And why do you receive them?
Well, Jesus says, you receive them in my name because of me. This points us to the doctrine of the church. Jesus asks us, commandons us, all, all who are Christians to receive all others who are Christians, to act like what the truth is, that Jesus has united us to himself and Jesus has united everybody else, that he's saved to himself and he has therefore united all of us together in one body, one family, one household, citizens of one kingdom. And we therefore have no right to neglect, ignore, or despise any of his little ones.
The ones heard a line of inquiry at church ought to do before it calls a pastor. Sorry, too late for you. But we might call an assistant. The question you ought to ask was said to the people who know him, how does he treat the church janitor?
That'll tell you a lot about his character, about whether the grace of God is making him, a humble and loving person, or is he high and mighty and standoffish? Or is he humble, appreciative, welcoming? Jesus says, we are to be humble and to receive even the littleists of the Lord's people here. They may be the youngest, right?
The tiniest of disciples whom the Lord gives to his church, or they may be the newest of the Lord's disciples, the most spiritually immature. The ones who from our perspective will they need a lot of work. Those people, do you receive them, welcome them, seek to show them friendship? Do you speak with them?
Or do you ignore them and disdain them, drive them away, or wish they would go away? Jesus is saying we are not to write off any of our fellow Christians and doing so, put a stumbling block in front of them for their own discipleship with Jesus. But we're to receive them in his name because they belong to him. And in doing so, we're actually welcoming and receiving him because he lives inside of them.
The alternative to welcoming them is wounding them, causing one of Christ's people who believe in him to stumble. And that is a terrible sin. Jesus says, verse 6, whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. We're not to cause their stumbling in their discipleship.
But J.C. Ryle, in a terribly convicting way, puts it like this. We put offenses or stumbling blocks in the way of men's souls whenever we do anything to keep them back from Christ. Or to turn them out of the way of salvation.
Or to disgust them with true religion. We may do it directly by persecuting, ridiculing, opposing, or dissuading them from decided service to Christ. Or we may do it indirectly. By living a life inconsistent with our profession and by making Christianity loathsome and distasteful by our own conduct.
Whenever we do anything of the kind, it is clear from our Lord's words that we commit a great sin. Now I read those terribly convicting words this week, and then I had a terribly convicting phone call with a young man about ministry, the possibility even of ministry among us. And in speaking, we got around to his view of ministry and he mentioned his life verses 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 16 which reads, 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.
Keep a close watch on yourself, on your life, and on your doctrine, your teaching, how you live and what you speak. There's such a weightiness to that for the people of God. I'm certain our elders feel it. We know our own failures in this.
Frankly, we know and our families know because they know us better than anyone else. Where we fail to live like Jesus, fail to love God, fail to love others and make it harder not easier for them to believe in Jesus. Our deacons I'm sure know this as do their families. Our deacons are called to sympathy and service in love for others and yet how often the hardest place to show that sympathy and that service is in the family in which we live.
And all of us, whoever we are as believers, none of us are what we should be. Now thankfully we're not what we once were and wonderfully we are not yet but we will be, we are not yet what we one day will be and we will be like Jesus. But here and now we are not what we should be and the truth is the more mature you are and you'll see this about yourself. Just as the stains and the wrinkles of your clothing are more obvious in the clear light of day than when you threw them on in the dark and rushed out for your days work.
So the older you get, the more mature in Christ, the more you realize that you have said things and you have done things that make it harder not easier for others to see Jesus or to hear about Jesus from you. And that what you truly deserve if you received it would be to have a great millstone hung around your neck and to be thrown into the depths of the sea. Not the kind of stone Jesus is talking about, not the kind that you use with your hand to grind a little peppercorn. But the kind that would have a donkey attached to it circling a pole, a great big giant heavy millstone wrapped around your neck and they throw you into the depths of the sea.
And what Jesus is saying here is actually it would be better if that would happen to you before you cause any of his little ones to stumble. It would be better to be swiftly drugged to the bottom of the ocean than that you should be the cause of any other person stumbling. I remember hearing Jeff Thomas who for 50 years was the pastor of Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aborist with Wales. He said as he was getting older that his goal was not to be great, not to be a famous preacher, but his goal was just to finish the Christian race without bringing shame on the name of Jesus or disrepute to his church.
That ought to be our goal. Lord, let me finish the Christian race here and let me be helping out of hindrance to others along the way. We ought, Jesus says, to take much greater care than ever we have that we aren't a stumbling block to other Christians. That's the first thing.
In verse 7 we've got to be alert to the world that puts stumbling blocks in front of ourselves. What are the world for stumbling blocks for 7? Whoa, or alas, or it's a word of judgment. Whoa to the world of human beings who live in rebellion against God, the world as the enemy of the people of God.
Whoa, he says, judgment. For it is necessary that stumbling blocks come, but whoa to the one through whom they come. Such things must come, says Jesus. They inevitably do come in a world that is set against God and believing and trusting in Jesus.
These things come and they inevitably come too as God in his great patience is long suffering with a rebellious world and lets it persist even as he works his saving purposes amidst that world. These things will come, says Jesus, but whoa to the one by whom they come. The judgment he's thinking here is not some judgment out there, but the judgment of a person, of an individual. That individual will not be able to excuse themselves in the last day and say, well, you know, everybody did it.
I just did it too. Everybody believes such and such and so I believe such and such or well, the whole world didn't believe in Jesus. So I just went along with the world too. You won't be able to hide behind the world here.
Jesus brings it right down to the very individual. And so we might say this, whoa to church teachers who teach what is false and confuse the faith of their people or live in a way that is wrong and confuse the understanding of their people. What does? Whoa to church leaders who entice members of the flock to sin and whoa to members of the flock who entice one another to sin.
Whoa to those who've deconstructed their faith. We spoke of one in Sunday school this morning abandoning the faith. These folks who were in the church, now they've left the church, they've abandoned faith and they're now making their livelihood seeking to tear apart the faith of true believers. Whoa to them.
Jesus says, whoa to, well, I don't mean anything about JBU here, but when I was 10 years working among university students at Arkansas, there was a class that the freshmen took. And it was basically dedicated for professors to lord their knowledge of things yet studied by their young, impressionable students. And its purpose seemed to be to destroy the faith of Christians as they arrived at the university. Whoa to them, Jesus says, whoa to the world for stumbling blocks.
It is necessary they come, but what do the one by whom the stumbling blocks come? So do you see how Jesus here even holds divine sovereignty and human responsibility together. Not his sovereign over a world in rebellion against him. He works his sovereign will and his saving purposes.
And yet he holds individuals responsible for their individual acts of rebellion. So whoa to the world and whoa to the one says, Jesus, and why is he telling us this? So that we who are Christians would never be surprised to find ourselves in a world that things were nuts and tells us all the ways that we are for believing in the resurrected savior. So that we who are Christians would never be surprised when the world says that we're nuts or that the message of the gospel is nuts.
Jesus says it's inevitable this will happen. And yet he also reminds Christians and this is why he tells us this, that we can be assured that in the end justice will be done. And now Jesus turns from our relationship to other believers and our relationship to the world to our relationship to ourselves versus 89. And we must take great care that we don't stumble ourselves.
He's not here dealing like he did in verse six with us being a stumbling block to others. That's verse six. But we're a threat to ourselves, he says. If you're handed your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away.
Verse nine, if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away. It would be of course a serious thing to actually cut off your hand, cut off your foot, tear out your eye. Jesus isn't saying literally do that, but he is saying we must deal seriously with ourselves and our own sin. It's the same language Jesus used in Matthew chapter five when he spoke of lust.
You remember that? Jesus said you have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust at her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If you're right, I causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.
And if you're right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. I mean, they're the language is identical. They're the topic was the sin of lust here in Matthew 18.
The subject is anything that might cause us to stumble and become a stumbling block as it were to ourselves. In each case, Jesus says, deal radically with it. Whether it's your hand or your foot or your eye or your mouth or your heart. Early church father, as I told the Sunday school class some weeks ago, origin of Alexandria when his father was martyred in origin in order to provide for his mother and siblings at the age of 16 became a teacher.
And in his classes were young women as well as young men. And as a young 16 year old, fully aware of the danger of sexual desire and his own, he had himself castrated. He thought he was doing what the Lord said tempted men should do, dout out an eye, cut off a hand, take care of the problem once and for all. He later admitted that this was not the wisest choice or the most accurate understanding of the Lord's teaching, which is obviously a case of exaggeration for effect.
Yet so many other Christians follow the example of origin that a hundred years later at the council of Nicaea in 325, they actually had to condemn self mutilation. Because so many had followed the example of origin who misunderstood the Lord's words here. Jesus is not saying, name yourself physically, but he's saying, deal seriously and decisively with your temptations, prefer heaven over hell, prefer life over death, choose the path of righteousness over the path of wickedness. And here he says it in the language of circumcision.
Circumcision, a physical act representing a necessary spiritual reality. It's of course, ultimately the heart which had to be circumcised, not the flesh, the heart had to be had need to be cut. Yeah, you've got a hand or a foot or an eye or a mouth, but the heart needs to be treated this way. Well, mercifully, those sin remains in Christians whose hearts have been circumcised, whose hearts have been changed.
And yet in this life, we continue to find ourselves sinning what we have in Christ abides forever. In Isaiah 53 verse 8 of Jesus, the servant of the Lord, our Messiah, it says he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of God's people. That is he was circumcised out of the living. He was stripped naked, nailed to the tree, died upon that tree, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.
This is your only ultimate hope. What happened to him on your behalf? He was cut off for you. And so Jesus reminds us then here of the destination of those who were never his and never forgiven.
He mentions that it's better to deal decisively with your sin and your stumbling blocks than well, he mentions the Gahana of fire, the place of final punishment, also called the eternal fire. Jesus speaks very frankly about hell. It is not an unloving doctrine and it is not hateful to speak about hell. The most loving person in the universe taught the doctrine of hell.
It's not unloving. In fact, it is not loving to pretend like it's not real. But embedded in the warning of hell is the promise of life, the promise of eternal life to those who repent of their sins and put their trust in Jesus. None of us are going to finish our Christian race without in some measure falling short of our aspirations.
Psalm 130 is right when it asks if you, a Lord, should mark iniquities, a Lord who could stand. Do you agree with that? If the Lord marked out your iniquities, if he wrote them down on a sheet of paper, could you stand in his presence? No, of course not.
Then agree also with the Psalmist when he says this, if you, a Lord, should mark iniquities, a Lord who could stand but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. The hope I can offer you, the consolation that we can have is that with the Lord there is forgiveness and invite you to put your hope in Jesus. The prophet Micah foretold his saving work for sinners in Micah chapter 7 verses 18 to 19. Listen to this, who is a God like you pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot you, Lord. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
The truth that pierces our heart is that we and not just our sins deserve to be cast not only into the depths of the sea but into the very depths of hell. But the grace of the gospel, the good news is that Jesus bore our sins like a millstone around his neck upon the cross and he as it were was cast into the depths of hell. To take away our transgressions, to pardon our iniquities. If you've come to realize then that you are the problem, that you are a stumbling block to yourself and that you become a stumbling block to others, the only hope you have is a real hope that we have in Jesus.
If you have this hope in Jesus, then you, dear brother, dear sister in Christ, if he is your hope, you are to welcome others as Jesus has welcomed you. You are to welcome them because in welcoming them you welcome him and you are then to seek to be a help to them and not a hindrance and you need to be aware of the world which will always try to hinder you and so you need to distrust yourself lest you become a stumbling block to yourself and put instead your hopes in him. Let's pray. Father, you know the whole history of our lives, our speech, our words, our sins, all the ways we have frustrated others, despised others, ignored others, been unkind, unwelcomed and dishained others.
Forgive us, we pray, cleanse us from all in righteousness. Thank you that if we confess our sins, your faithful and just forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all in righteousness. Help us. Now we pray by the spirit to be a help to each other.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Let's say them together and sing.