Well, good morning. It’s good to see you. It’s good to worship with you. Good to look at God’s Word with you this morning. If you have your Bible, I want to invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew chapter 18, verses 1 through 6.

Matthew chapter 18, verses 1 through 6.

Verse 1, it says, At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to Him a child, He put Him in the midst of them, and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

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 be drowned in the depth of the sea.

I read a story about a newspaper cartoonist who amused himself one day by sending to 20 of his friends at random a telegram. And the telegram just said, Congratulations.

No reason. He didn’t know of anything that any of them had done. Yet each of the friends was so flattered, they immediately wrote a letter of thanks back to the cartoonist. And I think that that speaks to how much you and I love affirmation as people. We love to be seen as great. We love to be known as great. But affirmations to be praised, to be thought well of, certainly the way that we as people think of it, it’s really a dangerous thing. And I really think Jesus is teaching us here, it can end up being really a damning thing if we don’t understand greatness as Christ understands greatness for us as His people. What is true greatness? What is true greatness?

It says, At that time the disciples came to Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And calling to Him a child, He put Him in the midst of them and said, Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. So remember what’s happened the last couple of chapters. Jesus has gone on and on

about the agony He must suffer. The death He must die. Jesus has linked discipleship, Christian discipleship following Him to daily picking up a cross and dying to yourself. This has been what Jesus has been teaching. This is what He’s been saying Christian discipleship is.

Somehow, Jesus’ closest followers, the twelve who are with Him and hear everything He teaches and says, they’ve somehow put all that unpleasantness out of their minds and they’re bickering. The other Gospel accounts tell us about who’s going to be the greatest in the kingdom. Who’s going to be the greatest? They are quick to fantasize about prominence, about positions they hope to soon have because they are so close to Jesus. They think, oh, this kingdom’s coming. Who’s going to be the greatest is what they wonder. Calvin says, to dream of what would never take place, is what they were doing. They were thinking that by mere preaching, Christ would obtain a kingdom, an earthly kingdom, and would immediately rise to the highest prosperity and wealth. That’s what they’re thinking about. And as much as it’s easy, a lot of times in the Bible, to get our finger and go, how could you do that, you Israelites? How could you do that, person in the Bible? Friends, I think we have to look at ourselves and wonder, do we sometimes imitate their own folly? We want the end of the thing, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want the road of suffering in between. I want the road to glory to be paved with gravy. That’s how we really would like for it to be. But it is not so. It is not so. Jesus does a remarkable thing. You would think, after putting up with the twelve for so long, here we are, and that’s what you guys are saying? You’re asking about who’s going to be great in my kingdom? Jesus would, you know, chide them, scold them, rebuke them, but He doesn’t do that at all. His patience is remarkable with them, though they have these ideas of grandeur for self, though they are hopelessly shallow and conceited in their question.

Barclay remarks the very fact that they ask the question shows they have no idea at all what the kingdom of heaven was. No idea.

Are we better? Do we have our hearts and minds set on Christ and His kingdom as authentic disciples? Or do we see greatness? Do we see glory for self?

So Jesus confounds them to teach them. And here’s what Christ does. He takes a small child and all these men who think they’re so great, He puts a small child right in the middle of them. And He says, you must be like this if you’re going to be great in my kingdom. And you can imagine their eyebrows squinting and you can imagine their eyes getting huge because Jesus didn’t say you must show charity to these. That’s one thing to show charity to them. But to become like children, that’s something else. Children? To become like children? Because He says turn and become. And if we get to the heart of what those words really mean, He’s not meaning just turn. He’s not just meaning have a different idea. The word turn here means literally undergo a transformation.

It means change. And become means to be born again, to be made like. It reminds us of Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus when He tells Nicodemus, you must be born again.

And Jesus doesn’t say this is a way to be in my kingdom. Jesus says you will never enter my kingdom unless you become like a child. So the kingdom of heaven alone is for those who are transformed into children. You want to get into the kingdom, Jesus says you need to get low. You need to get real low. How does Christ mean it? How does Christ mean it? Whatever He means, it’s got to fit our working definition of the kingdom of heaven that we’ve had for a long time, right? Our working definition of the kingdom of heaven, it’s the spiritual rule and reign of God in our hearts, minds, and lives. It’s me, all of me, what I am physically and what I am spiritually and mentally totally surrendered to God. So He can’t mean you must somehow shrink back down and to be a small little child. You must become a kid again. Look like a kid. He doesn’t mean that. Nicodemus thought that’s what He meant when He said you must be born again. That’s not what He means. And the real answer perhaps is something the disciples don’t even, want to hear.

Here’s what Jesus means. He says if we’re going to become children, if we’re going to become great in the kingdom, we must undergo a spiritual change. That’s what Jesus is talking about. And become so like children. The thing about children, is children don’t have dignity. And I don’t mean the kind of innate worth that people have because they’re humans and all humans have the image of God on them so we all have an innate worth. I’m talking about the image of God. I’m talking about that kind of dignity that we all want to have, that we want other people to think that we’re well to do and we’re successful and we’re accomplished and we can take care of ourselves. Children cannot take care of themselves. Children have needs. Children a lot of times don’t even know what they need. Part of being a child is being without the resources you need to take care of yourself. Children simply lack what they need. And they lack the pride to tell you about it. They don’t care. Children are glad to let you know what they need and when they need it and let mom and dad know and expect mom and dad to snap to it and get it done. Children are by nature dependents, aren’t they? You don’t have to pull out of them what it is they think they need. They just let you know. And friends, that touches on what Christ means for us to become like children. It touches on what Jesus means for us to become children in His kingdom. Because true disciples understand all that I could ever need, all that I could ever really want, only God can provide and God has provided it in Jesus. My soul’s greatest and deepest need cannot be met by me because me got me in all this trouble in the first place. I cannot be the hero of my story. God alone can be the hero of our stories. And if God isn’t the hero of our stories, our stories are pitiful, poor, little tales of self-deceit and pride. The grace of the gospel of God is to show us that the food we eat starves us more, the drink we drink dehydrates us more, the sin, the pleasure of it, our delights in it, all of the successes you could have, all the accolades you can have in life, it’s a little sandcastle and as soon as the wave comes up, it’s gone. You ever built a sandcastle and the water comes up? It’s gone like it was never even there. Grace shows us Jesus is my true food. Jesus is my true drink. Jesus has built a kingdom that the Hebrew writer says cannot be shaken. In Christ alone I find the Savior of my soul. I find the hero of my story. But understand, before you and I can really latch on to Christ and really know Him as such a Savior, friends, what we must do, Jesus says, is we must turn. We must turn. Isaiah chapter 57, 15, the prophet writes, For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy, I dwell in the high and holy place. And also with Him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Contrition is a great word and we don’t use that word too much anymore. We should use it more because contrition is what it really means for this childlike transformation to begin, for this rebirth to happen. You know what it means there in the Hebrew, what Isaiah is saying. Contrition literally means, if you look it up in a dictionary, in a Hebrew dictionary, it means to be broken in pieces on the floor. That’s what contrition means. It means to be undone completely in pieces on the floor. But just on that same passage, God says He dwells with the contrite, but what does it also say? He renews them. And what does renew mean? But to give new life, to give new energy. So see, God brings into His kingdom those who are like children and they are nothing without someone taking them and shaping them and taking care of them. And so in the same way, friends, we must see our great deficit, our great emptiness, our great brokenness apart from Christ and Christ alone being the hero of the story. Remember King Saul. King Saul, for all his sin, he could manage his sin real well. He tried to manipulate it. He tried to manipulate Samuel and God and he just kept trying to do all he could do just to put it all under the rug and move on with life. And Saul, for all his sin, he never forsook his sin. He never really gave it up. He never wanted to be someone else who committed the sins in the first place. He just tried to manage the consequences. But David, for all David’s sin, and David sinned horribly. David was a great sinner. David was a murderer. David was an adulterer. I mean, he could go tit for tat with Saul on nasty sins.

Yet David forsook himself. David forsook his sin. Psalm 51, he says, Hide your face from my sins. Blot out all my iniquities. Listen to this. Create in me a clean heart, O God. God, you’ve got to do this rebirthing in me. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence. Take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. We’ve got to come like David. Though we think we may be great, we may think that we have a title or we’ve got money or we’ve got education or this or that. Friends, Jesus says, whoever you are, you’ve got to come to me like a child with empty hands and say, Lord, I need you. You’re great. I’m not great. You’re great. And you’re enough for me.

But you know another thing about children. Children are perfectly content being known, not seen. It is the delight of a young child’s heart to simply know their parents and know that their parents love them. Despite children’s flaws and their spats of disobedience, a child really is content to know and be known. Really, you could call it just identification with family. Just to know they’re a part of their family’s all-consuming. I don’t know if you’ve ever, maybe if you have young children or you had young children and it’s one of those days for some reason you go to school, whatever, you get to eat lunch with your kid and your kid sees you in the hallway and what do young children do when they see mom and dad?

This is my daddy. Don’t they? They just couldn’t be more proud that this is, I want you to meet my mommy and my daddy. That is the heart of a child. They know these people and these people know them and that is very much so enough for them.

So see, greatness in the kingdom does not reside in those who deeply desire to be admired, but rather those who deeply desire, to admire Jesus and say, oh, He owns me. Look what He’s done. Look at Him. Look, He spilled His blood for me. Look that He would identify with me and let me identify with His cross and He would let me suffer for His name. Because you know, when we come to Acts, we have the same apostles except for Judas, but we have a very different set of apostles though. Very different. In Acts 5, verse 40, it says, And when they called in the apostles, this is the Sanhedrin, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus and they let them go. And when the apostles left the presence of the council, they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for His name. Isn’t that amazing? They don’t want to be seen as great. They just want to be identified with Jesus. And if getting beat means being identified with Jesus, amen for that.

It’s the same kind of transformation, friends, we need. When we turn, when we turn to Christ from self with a childlike faith and posture, worldly ambition, all our ideas of grandeur and greatness and self, they get supernaturally transformed into heavenly surrender. Lord, how do You want my life to be about You? What’s that look like, God? How can this child make Your name great to the nations? How can I decrease and You increase, Jesus? How can my glories fade and Your glories increase? Because that alone, friend, will bring fullness to your soul. That alone will make you happy in a way that human accomplishment absolutely never can.

So for all the outward appearances of discipleship, and perhaps we’re good at all the outward appearances of discipleship, seeming like we know Jesus, seeming like we’re part of the kingdom, nothing can be replaced with a transformation of the heart by which God picks up the heart by which God picks up the broken pieces of your life and remakes you and reshapes you. And boy, you just see Him as your everything. He is enough, and you want His greatness to go on, not your own. That’s true satisfaction. That’s true greatness. Maybe you’ve seen these videos and these pictures that the newest Mars rover has been sending back from Mars. And it’s a stunning 4K video of Mars. Mars, and everyone’s going crazy, but I watched it, and it, you know what it looks like? It looks like an entire planet made of Alabama red clay. It’s not, like, you couldn’t say taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and just let everybody come and look at Alabama red clay, because that’s all that it looks like. I think it’s just exotic, because it’s Martian dirt, you know, but it’s dirt. I mean, there’s nothing to see. It’s, there’s nothing to see. It’s red dirt. It’s just dirt, and, and it’s a reminder, friends, that that’s what you and I come from, not Martian dirt. We, we, we come from just plain old dirt. God grabbed the plain old dirt, and He shaped and formed us and breathed life into us, and He said, you exist for me, and you exist to know me and worship me and be like my son, and that is your greatest purpose. Purpose in life. That’s your greatest purpose. If Jesus’ disciples, who were literally with Him, hearing Him for three straight years, and they still don’t get it, friend, how often do you and I need to be refreshed of that truth? Especially living in the culture we live that says, your life is all about you. What fulfillment can you find at the expense of other people’s happiness, at the expense of truth and right? What makes you happy? What makes you happy? You are your own God. You live for you. Friends, you could find churches that sound awfully similar to that same vernacular, but how we need to come back to the posture of a child and say, no, no, my soul’s greatest delight, my soul’s salvation is in Jesus. My hero is Jesus. I want my dreams to fade to nothingness, and I want the Spirit to renew me daily, and what it means to be in the kingdom as a humble soul. I want the Spirit to renew me daily, and what it means to be in the kingdom as a small child. It’s Jesus, your greatness. In verse 5, Christ goes on and He says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever calls one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and be drowned in the depth of the sea.

So the very conversation the apostles are having, it undercuts literally the nature and person of Jesus, and it undercuts the very philosophy that Christ has come to establish, the philosophy of His kingdom. And what is that? It’s love. Christ has shown us that God loves us by spilling His blood, not for friends, but for enemies, so that God’s enemies would have a seat at God’s royal table in eternity. Jesus came and took what was damned to hell and prepared it for heavenly life. Christ came and took what was dead in you and me, and He made us alive forevermore. Yet Jesus’ closest friends, hearing about this kingdom, they’re wondering, which one of us is going to get to dominate the rest of us? That’s what they’re thinking about. They’re wondering, you know, who gets to really be number two next to Jesus? That’s what matters most to us right now. Jesus equates, though, here in verse six, receiving one who has become like a child in receiving Christ with literally receiving Christ Himself. The apostles think it’s a blessed thing to dominate people. Christ says, no, it’s a blessed thing to receive, to love, to befriend, to support, to show hospitality to people. Christ says, no, it’s a blessed thing to receive, to love, to befriend, to support, to Hospitality to accept those, to live life with those who have accepted me.

Charles Spurgeon reminds us if we want to go up in God’s kingdom, we’ve got to go down. We’ve got to go down to serving Christ and even lower, we’ve got to go down to loving and serving His people. Because this is true. When Christ becomes precious to you, His people will become precious to you as well. No doubts about that. And it’s a dead giveaway when you find somebody that has no love for God’s people in their heart. But when we come to Christ, we realize I don’t have anybody to compete with. I don’t have any competition. I don’t need anybody to see me as great. I don’t need to dominate because God in Christ has shown Himself glorious and how silly are we when we want to be seen as something special over Jesus.

Jesus sets us free from seeing people as obstacles, and He allows us to see people as objects of Christ’s love. People aren’t things to manipulate and use to make me happy because Christ has made me so happy in Him and given me joy. And these are brothers and sisters with whom we go deeper in knowing this Christ and making His glory known. To say it another way, what has the cross of Christ done but resolve all the tensions that we’ve had in our lives? In the dissonance between man and man. That’s what His cross has done. Fellow children are those with whom we see Christ is sufficient to heal us of our sins and to bring us home. That’s why Paul says in Romans 12.10, love one another with

not just affection, he doesn’t say friendly affection. Hey, you guys are from the same state. You know, you’ve got the same pride and the same football team. He says, no, you people should love one another with brotherly affection and, raises the bar, you should be trying to outdo one another and showing honor to one another. Imagine that. You’re living your life to just revere and love and honor and help those fellow children in the kingdom. That’s so much, I think, of what it means. To see the proof of the love of God in my heart, to see it working out and how I am functioning like and how other people in the church are functioning like Christ and how we treat one another with the love of Christ. But he flips it and he says, but, but, if somebody were to cause one of these little children to stumble, you could translate it, the Greek word is skandalizo, it sounds like our word, scandal. If you were to bring one of my children into scandal, he says, you know what, it would be better, it would be better if you just tied a giant old rock around your neck and you were thrown to the very bottom of the sea.

Because Jesus is making clear here, He did not spill His blood for a small reason. He spilled His blood so that people who were separate from God could be called children of God. And I think that we can include children, children, children, because children are precious to God. And He said, let the children come to Me. In the same way that I think lowly and poor and simple people are precious to Jesus because they’re prone to be taken advantage of. But I think certainly it includes all people who have surrendered in childlike faith. So Jesus is saying, if someone is pursuing Me going towards My kingdom and you pervert them and you scandalize them and they’re going in a different direction, God’s judgment, God’s judgment is waiting for you, friend. So Jesus doesn’t, He doesn’t, He doesn’t mince words on that at all, does He? And I certainly think Jesus has in view here false teachers and those who maliciously mislead God’s people for their own gain. I think we think about televangelists. We think about people who, who teach, hey, you know, God exists to make you happy, healthy, and wise. And if you give God money, your present life is going to be changed. You’re going to be very happy. You should be happy and whole now completely. No suffering now. You just believe more and your life’s going to be just as ever so cushy as it possibly could. And it’s a lie. And it’s a lie.

We have churches that are effectively self-help programs and they give you good moral advice and little tips and tricks for being a better you and maybe just how to deal with your problems. But they don’t address the greatest issue of the heart. They don’t demand you get down on one knee and surrender to Christ as King.

And then there is the ever-growing trend of progressivism whereby many happily bend, twist Scripture to say what it needs to mean for you to live the life you want to live. There was a church in Nashville this past week. You may have seen it in the headlines. They did a sermon and released this graphic on the internet because they wanted to make everyone clear about what the Bible is and isn’t. And this graphic on one side says the Bible isn’t the Word of God. It’s a church. It isn’t the Word of God. It is not self-interpreting. Meaning the Bible doesn’t explain itself. The Bible is not an answer or a rule book. The Bible is not inerrant or infallible. On the other side, they say the Bible is a product of community. That means we all get to determine what it says and what it means. It’s a library of texts. It’s multi-vocal. In other words, there wasn’t one inspired author behind the whole thing. The Bible is just a human response to God. This is a church. This is a church an hour and a half up the road with a huge congregation.

Friends, that’s not happening somewhere else. That’s happening right here. Many are deceived in our own time.

You may think, well, hey, I’m not actively misleading people like that. You better not be. But, you cannot escape this reality. You influence all the people around you. No one doesn’t influence all the people around them. No one is a neutral party. Dad, the way that you are living in that childlike posture and receiving more of Christ and making His name great and living for Him or failing to do so is influencing how your wife and your children are or are not pursuing Christ and His kingdom. Fact. Fact. I think so many people are baffled when their kids grow up and they don’t want to go to church. That’s because, well, they never saw church in the home. You know? And that right now, runs the gamut on all parts of your life. When you are the witness of Christ in your workplace, when you come here to the church, can people say, ah, such and such. There’s a person that, man, they just receive me and they build me up in Christ and they point me to Jesus and they encourage my faith. Man, that person is never trying to make it about them. That person is never talking about their greatness. They’re just pointing to Jesus all the time. In what direction are you pointing? Are you leading people? Are you leading people to scandal? Are you leading people to Christ-likeness? We’re all leading people in one direction or the other.

Paul says in Philippians 2, verse 3, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Having this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself and he took the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by being obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Friends, if you have been changed, we must be agents of change in helping others pursue Christ. In what direction are we leading them? We exist to glory in God and point others to know how glorious and great God is. I want to say, and if you’re starting to get sick of hearing me talk about this, then we’re just barely beginning to learn it. I want us to live, to love one another like children because that’s what Christ is calling us to know. I want us to be a Christ-centered community where Providence is a church where all disciples who are pursuing Christ come and let them be poor and let them be lowly and let them not look the way we think they’re supposed to look, but let them come and be pointed towards Christ.

Secondly, I want to say, be careful who you allow to influence you. And that can’t be said enough. I was having this conversation with someone yesterday. There are 10,000 definitions of Christian. There are 10,000 definitions of who Jesus is. Make sure that the person you’re learning from has your Jesus. Or you may find someday the Jesus you have isn’t the Jesus you used to have. All voices are not created equal. Alright? So podcasts and sermons and books and all the things that may seem so popular, do your homework. And discovering is this actually someone that I can trust? Is this a reliable voice? And I think that goes back to the community of have you heard of such and such? Should I be reading them? No. Don’t read them. That’s bad. Let me tell you why. So be careful. You should be built up and that’s good to be a learner. But don’t learn the wrong things.

So let’s go up by going down as a church. Let’s go up by going down. And let me also take this opportunity to say to dad, dads, and husbands. If you’re not, lead your home spiritually. And I do not, you know, get a 10 for 10 on this myself. I’ve in many seasons not been leading as faithfully as I should. But you should be breaking open the Bible with your family at least once a day. You should be teaching your children Scripture. There are so many devotional resources out there. The Bible’s the best one. Just open the thing. You know, read a psalm. What we’ve started doing is reading a psalm in the morning and in the evening. We have a children’s catechism we use. So question number one, you know, what’s the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Right? How do we know how to glorify and enjoy God? Well, the Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. And so these are things that I’m pouring into my kids so when they grow up, they’re pointed in the right direction. So giving you that firm, you know, encouragement. Start growing spiritually with your children and with your family. With your wife if you’re not doing so.

I just want to end by just looking at Galatians 2, verse 20. I think it’s a very popular verse. But I think it’s a great way to really sum up what Jesus is saying to us here in Matthew. And what does Paul say? He says, I’ve been crucified with Christ.

It’s no longer I who live, it’s Christ who lives in me. Amen. Amen. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. Friends, let’s live to live like children with open hands who say, Lord, You are great and all my hope, all my rescue, all my salvation, oh God, it comes from Your Son and Your Son alone. Lord, let my life be a light that doesn’t shine the greatness of Chad or insert your name, but my life, it points to the glory and the greatness of Christ. Use me, God, to build up, to receive Your children. Lord, keep us on the right way. Use us so that we would inherit true greatness. So Jesus’ true greatness is really becoming truly nothing. And in our nothingness, Christ is born in our place. And there we find real purpose and joy forevermore to the glory of God.

And I’ve heard a preacher say it. Whose story do you want to be part of? You know, you can live in your story. And your story might be exciting, but you know, your story won’t be satisfying. You can play the role of the hero, but just like those waves coming up on the shore, your life will be washed over and nobody will remember it. I mean, to be a part of God’s story. That story of how God is saving the people for Himself so they can enjoy it. Boy, how wonderful and glorious He is forever. That story is going to go on forever. Let’s be a part of that story. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Father, Your graciousness and Your goodness, it knows no bounds. Lord, we are reminded from Your Word today that Lord, even in our most ignorant moments of self-deceit, self-obsession,

You’re so kind to show us what we need to see and remind us of the humility of Christ, the goodness of getting low and finding our true purpose, our true joy in living for, Father, the name of Your Son, Jesus.

So Lord, would You shine Your bright, heavenly light on those corners of our hearts where we’re obsessed with, with us and we want our name to be great and we’re worried about us and our welfare and our security and our happiness and we’re not thinking, Father, about the kingdom of Your Son. Lord, let us be found glad to die to self and to lose the world that we may attain Christ, Jesus. Lord, and let that be true of each of us individually. Father, I pray You would bind us together as Providence Fellowship in that very truth. That Providence Fellowship would be a church where Your name is made much of, Lord. So we just bless Your name and we just worship You.