Father, we are drawn to You because Christ has drawn us to Himself.
Jesus has come after us and His cross is a testimony and a testament in all things of Your love. So thank You for that. And thank You is not enough, Lord. I just pray that our hearts would be filled with the deepest, Lord, joy and humility. Of the joy and the life that Your Son gives us. We pray that we would grow up more in that life this morning as we hear from Your Word. We pray Your Spirit would tune our hearts and minds to Your grace, to Jesus.
Lord, so we come with open hands, Lord, ready to receive and to give all that You ask of us. And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, good morning. It’s good to be with you. Thanks, as always, to Chase and Chester and Rebecca for leading us. And thanks to Chase for, you know, it’s one thing to have a worship leader. It’s another thing to have someone that has a real heart for the people, you know. And I’m just grateful for Chase’s heart for you. And he loves you. He loves you deeply. He loves me deeply. So, thank you, brother, for all you do for us. We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 18, verse 10 through 14. If you want to turn there with me. Matthew chapter 10, verses, chapter 18, verses 10 through 14.
Sorry, in verse 10, Jesus says, See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it’s not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
Spring break is upon us for a lot of people.
Summer is soon after that. People start to think about vacations. How often do you hear someone say, well, that’s not my kind of fun. That’s not my kind of rest. That’s not my kind of vacation. Because we all have very different ideas about what fun and rest is. Some of us love the beach. You just want to sit there in the sand and stare out into nothingness and you’re happy. Some people hate it. You want to be at the lake. You’re a lake bug and you’re out on the boat and you like some lake water. My wife’s that way. Some people are like, no, I want to be up in the mountains. Like, send me up somewhere. Send me to the Smoky Mountains and just be there. Just away from everything. Some people, and I’m probably this way mostly, you like a good staycation. I just like to do nothing in my own space. So we all have different ideas of what vacation and what rest is. Different kinds of it. And that’s fine. But when we’re together, we can’t have multiple kinds of love. It’s got to be one kind of love. It’s got to be God’s kind of love. And that’s really what Jesus is talking about this morning to His disciples is that, do you know what it is? Do you have in your hearts and among yourselves God’s kind of love? God’s kind of love. He says in 10, See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven, their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. So this isn’t the first time Jesus has talked about the little ones. Remember He said last week in chapter 17, to receive one of these little ones is to receive me. To not receive them is to reject me. And when you lead a little one astray, He said judgment is on you for that. So He’s talking about it again, which means it’s very important to Jesus. He says, See that you don’t despise. One of these little ones. One of these little ones. Who are the little ones? Well again, I think the little ones are little ones. I think children among us. Children are precious to God. As are poor people. As are simple people. As are people with very little means in life. And again, we talked about this last week. Those are folks who simply don’t have a lot. And they’re easily taken advantage of. They’re easily taken advantage of. They’re easily abused. But I think we could say Jesus is enveloping in that the poor among you, the simple among you, the children among you in the church. But even so, Jesus’ little ones are all of us as disciples. We’re all the little ones to Jesus.
And it’s the little ones that with our fleshly eyes, we’re so prone to despise. We’re so prone to abuse. It’s the poor and the children of the world that are taken advantage of. What does it mean to despise then, as Jesus is talking about? Well, it’s a feeling of contempt. It’s a feeling that, yeah, you’re there, but there’s something about me that’s just a little bit more than you are. I happen to be a slightly superior creature, and I’m not sure if you’re really worthy of my full fellowship and love and help. I don’t quite respect this one as much as I respect this one. I’ll strike up a conversation with this one, but I’m going to stay across the room from that one. You see? In 1 Corinthians 11, verse 17, Paul’s rebuking the Corinthians. He says, But in the following instruction, I do not commend you, because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse. For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions. There are divisions among you, and I believe it in part, for there must be factions among you, in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you come together, it’s not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. For in eating, one goes ahead with his own meal, one goes hungry, and another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? This is despising of the poor. It’s making divisions. He said, You rich people, you well-off people, you’re over here having a time. You’re the in crowd. And the poor people in the church are sitting over here, humiliated, hungry.
James gives a similar situation in James chapter 2. He says, For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place, while you say, to the poor man, you stand over there, you sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? There’s no elite seating in the church. And so it begs the question, who would want to continue to be a part of the church if it amounts to marginalization, humiliation, being treated as inferior, to other people? That’s not love. That’s hate. That’s the culture outside the walls of the church. And Jesus and Paul and James are condemning when we use fleshly eyes and minds to evaluate one another inside the walls of the church. And when we do that, we’re despising one another, and in our despising and showing contempt for the other, we’re not drawing the least of these, we’re not drawing, Jesus’ little ones to Christ. We are, by our actions, pushing them away. And the Father won’t stomach that. Why not? I think for us to really understand God’s kind of love, the first thing we need to know is that God the Father is a longing Father. I want you to remember that the Father is a longing Father. For what does He long? Well, He longs for His enemies, to be called His children. 1 John 3, verse 1, the apostle writes, See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. So God’s not cold. God’s full of love. God’s overflowing with love. God loves righteousness. But God’s love is supernatural, supernatural. You and I, we love people that look like us and like us. And we’re against people who are against us and different from us. Owing to God’s love alone, does the human race exist at all after the fall of man. Since the fall, man has been raising his fists at God in rebellion, and God has not replied in kind. His love is altogether lovelier. God’s love is a kind of love that seeks reconciliation. God doesn’t return blow for blow. He has in His heart, the Scriptures tell us, even before time began, desired reconciliation. Ephesians chapter 1 makes it so clear. Paul writes, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him. What’s it say? Before the foundation of the world. Even before time began, God’s heart was to be reconciled. Reconciled. And at that, not to be a neutral party. You know, when two people get divorced, you hear that word amicable. Well, we’re amicable. We’re on peaceful terms. We’re a neutral party. Let’s just live apart. You do your thing, I’ll do my thing. We’re amicable. God doesn’t want to be amicable with the objects of His wrath. God wanted the objects of His wrath to become the objects of His affections. We deserve the whip. We got a warm embrace. We deserve death. We got a, we got eternal life. All the riches of the heavenly places. For God so loved the world, He gave His Son.
Church, if those deep longings are in the heart of the Father
for sinful man, and He has so loved them and longed for them and called them to be His own children, should we see one another different than God sees us as gracious objects of His affections? Jesus is commanding us. See one another in the church as such. Don’t see one another according to the economy of man. You must see one another according to the economy of heaven. The world sees outward appearance. The world sees social standing. The world sees money. The world sees genius and accomplishment. God sees a soul that He has longed for from the beginning of time. And even before it. A precious object of His affection. You know, a decent parent loves their very bright kid as much as the kid that barely makes the grade. Just, hey, barely getting by. A decent parent loves their very talented kid as much as the one that’s not so talented. A good parent, a decent parent loves their very good looking kid as much as they love their kid that perhaps isn’t so good looking. That’s natural even to a sinful man. Should be. How much more is God able to perfectly love all of His children? He sees each and every one of us and He loves us and He longs for us perfectly. And what it does is it puts a spotlight, doesn’t it, on how poorly you and I can at times love the children of God. We’re so prone to see the people of God with fleshly eyes to size them up by worldly standards. And so we come to this verse where Jesus says, their angels see the face of My Father who is in heaven. Their angels see the face of My Father who is in heaven. Now, angels often appear in the Scriptures. We see angels deliver messages. Think about Gabriel coming to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, to say, hey, this is who John’s going to be, your son. Think about them doing supernatural intervention when the angel, jailbreaks Peter out of prison. You think about just all the ways in the Old Testament and New Testament that angels are in submission to the Father for the sake of God’s people. We see how angels are ready to aid His children as God commands. So why is He touching on this? Why is Jesus talking about angels? Matthew Paul says, Your heavenly Father, so loveth these little ones that He hath given His angels a special charge concerning them. And these angels being continually in the Lord’s presence are ready both to make report how they are used in the world and likewise having commissioned from God to execute His vengeance upon those who neglect, despise, or affront those that He hath taken into such a special protection. In other words, is it a wise thing to make yourself an enemy of those whom God has chosen? And God would send His angel armies to protect and defend. You see, this text ought to humble our hearts to see every child in the church as dear, as precious, as one for whom the Father longs. And if we saw that, we would long not to despise one another, but to nurture one another, to honor one another, to help one another. By it, and prejudice, oh how they vary according to sinful man’s heart. But they’re in vain. And that willingness to size up one another in the church as unworthy of our love and affection may move God to size us up for punishment.
What a tragedy when the church should be the one safe place in all the world where all people can be loved from all backgrounds and stripes of life. Yet they’re treated like they would find in any other place outside the church. Friends, let that not happen. Let us live in the love of God that we have experienced. When the church stops being the church, disciples languish. And when disciples languish, the world doesn’t know about the supernatural longings of the Father’s heart.
I read a story, a Spanish story of a father who had been long estranged from his son. And the son ran away, and the father set off to find him. And he searched for months. And finally, after no success and a desperate effort, he put an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read, Dear Paco, meet me in front of this newspaper office at noon on Saturday. All is forgiven. I love you, your father. And on Saturday, 800 Pacos showed up looking for forgiveness and love from their fathers.
It’s a gracious thing to know that the Father desires reconciliation with us. And it’s a gracious thing to desire to respond to it. So friends, it’s no small thing to despise and belittle and push away anyone whom God has drawn into His church. Let us love the unlovable. Newsflash. You’re unlovable. Everyone is unlovable. And the moment you begin to assert yourself, friends, we need to get on our knees and say, no, the Father has longed for me. Father, give me your heart to love others. In a tumult of a hateful world, let providence be a harbor of love. So I’d say practically, who are you encouraging? Do you have people in your life, hopefully at providence, where you’re saying, man, I know them well and I’m encouraging them. Or on the flip side, who don’t you know? Maybe the best thing to do is to walk across the room and say, have we been sitting in this room together for a couple years? I’ve never met you before. It’s not hard right now, you know? But how are we looking to be not those who despise, but those who honor and respect and push people towards a longing Father?
Jesus goes on in verse 12.
What do you think? He says, If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray.
In modern vernacular, Jesus says, hey, guys, reflect on this. Think about this. If you had ninety-nine sheep, and you lost one, what would you do? You remember in this agricultural society, sheep were important. Sheep were the means of economic sustainability and wealth. Sheep were very important. The answer is obvious. There’s no, well, I don’t know. I’ve got ninety-nine. I mean, that’s enough. What’s one? Or what’s two? Or what’s three to lose? No, every sheep is so precious. Jesus is making it so precious. He’s making obvious that they would all say the same thing. The shepherd would brave the wild. He would brave the wilderness to return that one sheep to its former place. And he would have an elated, special joy for that one sheep over the ninety-nine because each one is so very precious. And so it makes the point, if sheep are so valuable, how much more does the father long for and love his own, who are lost in the wilderness of the world, those he longs to have in his family? And here’s the truth. Those whom the father longs to have in his family, Jesus the great shepherd is absolutely devoted to retrieving them, no matter the cost. The father is a longing father and the son is a devoted son. Jesus is devoted to his sheep, despite the great personal cost. 1 Peter 2, verse 24.
It says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed, for you were straying like sheep, but now have returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls. That’s the great cost. And it was the greatest cost. That Jesus, God’s one and only begotten Son, in whom the father delighted more than anything, Jesus left His heavenly abode and He came to the wilderness of our world and He sought and He recovered and He is recovering until He comes back all of His sheep. Jesus won back to the father all of His own that the serpent thought He took away by His cunning. Jesus says in John, John, John, No one will snatch them out of My hand. Nobody’s going to snatch them out of My hand.
Jesus carries us like a shepherd would pick up that sheep tired, worn out, hungry. It just lays its head against its chest and knows it’s safe forevermore.
Christ lifts up His beloved and He’ll never let the enemy of the world snatch them back again. That’s His promise to be our great shepherd. And more than even leaving the perfections of heaven, which is so much, you know the Scripture tells us that Christ Himself didn’t just come to the world. The Scriptures tell us He became the refuse of the world. He became the very lowest of the low. He became the least and the worst. He carried the sins of the world and in naked humiliation and shame was hung on a tree separated from His Father that we may draw near. Friends, we can’t think enough of the great cost that the Son of God paid that we could draw near to the Father because Jesus was devoted to you. And He was devoted to you before time began as much as the Father longed for you.
Jesus’ devotion is indiscriminate as the Father’s longing is indiscriminate. Well, it’s just Chad we lost. Well, it’s not such a loss after all, is it? Oh, it was just that sheep. You know, he was a hard head. It was just that sheep. What did they really contribute? No, that’s not the heart of Christ. The heart of Christ is an indiscriminate devotion. Be it the moment of conversion or a thousand wonderings after, Jesus is devoted to His sheep because the Father’s heart longs for them and He will keep them. Jesus and the Father have the same pulse of love beating for us.
Isaiah 53.6 The prophet says, all we like sheep have gone astray. You see that? All have gone astray. We have all turned everyone to His own way. Which logically means then we’re all lost. No. It says, you have all strayed, but Christ has bore all your sin. God took your wanderings and your sin and He put it on Jesus. All. All of your sin on Jesus. Church Father Augustine has said, God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. I struggle with that fear as a dad that somehow my children perceive I love one more than the other. My affection looks lopsided. I don’t want anyone to grow up and think one was a favorite or anything like that. God doesn’t have that problem. Because He can say, look at my son Jesus and you see that blood? That was for you. There’s the proof. I love you individually. I love you indiscriminately.
Lastly, Jesus is as devoted to your joy and rest as the Father longs for you. For your joy and rest. Why? Because when you and I have joy in a Father who we should never call Father and we realize we’re a part of a family we should never be a part of and we inhabit a spiritual kingdom that we deserve to inhabit, we worship and glorify God. As John Piper has famously said, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. It’s for His glory that we’re a saved people. Psalm 23, verses 1-3 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness. For what? So I can just go off on my own? No. He does it for His namesake. That we can say, wow, what a God of love and longing and devotion to a sinner. A sinner like me.
Friends, if God is so longing and God is so devoted, how much more should we honor one another for whom the Father did so much and the Son did so much to put us in His family? We should be like Paul saying, Chief of sinners, Chief of sinners, I’m just glad to be on the team. I don’t know how I got here. It was grace. It was grace. I’m not judging. I’m not judging anybody because I haven’t gotten judged. Jesus got judged in my place. Man, I’m just here to love and I’m here to revel in God’s grace with whoever wants to just revel in God’s grace with me. Let’s just do that.
So when one loses their way or one straggles behind or one’s having a hard time, we don’t say, ugh, can you believe such and such hasn’t been to church in a few weeks? And they probably don’t even have the Holy Spirit. You know, I don’t know. Such and such is a backslider. Why can’t they deal with it? They have that same sin problem. Why can’t they get their stuff together like me? You know? You laugh because it’s true.
See, friends, when we come to the cross of Christ, we realize how zeroed out everything is. How equally undeserving and unworthy we are and how we’ve been set free to live in the love of God with one another. And when we live in that love together, friends, it says to the world there’s something different here. This is a special place. This is a unique place where the Father and the Son have made themselves supreme in giving such a wonderful joy to people who don’t deserve it for His glory. Are we devoted to one another as the Son is devoted to us?
A hen and a pig approached some poor children on the side of the road. And the hen said to the pig, you know, we should do something. Why don’t we provide for them a bacon and egg breakfast?
And the pig thought about it for a minute and thought, that’s a good idea. The only problem is it would only require a small contribution from you, but it would cost me everything.
How powerful is that? Because Jesus didn’t make a contribution. Jesus saw your salvation through to the very end. He requires our all in sacrificial living, but He requires us to love one another as He has loved us. So do you and I have the love that we need to love one another as we ought? No, we don’t have that. But we have the Spirit who allows us to together live in the love of Christ and love one another with the love of Christ. So what we have to keep doing is look at Jesus together and live in the Spirit together and see God knit us together in love and see how God can do a mighty work for His glory in us and through us. So no, I, pastorally, don’t have enough love for you. And you don’t have enough love for one another.
But Christ has enough to keep us. And it’s in Christ together and His love, that we’re bound together and we push one another homeward because our great Shepherd provides all that we need.
Jesus says, by this love, the world will know that you’re mine. By this love. Verse 14, Jesus says, so it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven
that one of these little ones should be. And they will perish.
God’s kind of love is a boundless, limitless, unstoppable, indescribable, perfect kind of love. That’s His kind of love. It’s a love that starts in the longings of a father’s heart and they’re carried through in the devotions of a son and in the love of God. Bore all fruit and a spirit that will keep to the very end. It’s an ocean with no bottom. It’s a mountain with no top. It’s more expansive than the universe. It’s like a sailor who gets on his ship and he goes as fast as he can, but he can never reach that line where the water and the sky meet. He can never reach it. Friends, that’s God’s love for you. That’s God’s love for His children. Church, let us look on one another with such love so that the world may say,
who is this Jesus? Who is this Jesus? Because when we are totally satisfied in God, many more will desire to be satisfied in God, which means many more will give all glory to God. Let’s pray.
Father, Your Word and Your Word alone.
Lord, it works first like a mirror to show us
Lord, how unholy and how unrighteous and how different we are from You. Then it works like a healing balm and a spirit to change and make us. Make us into that, Lord. So God, we ask and pray that we would live in Your love. Live in Your truth. God, that we would not be people of this world. We would all the more see the world as a place growing strange to us. And that, Lord, we would come into the church in their Lord.
Know that this is this is the place You’ve called us as Your family, as Your disciples. Lord, to be different in Your love. To have a different, a different kind of happiness. To have a different kind of joy. A joy that can’t be broken. Lord, to have have a heart and have a mind for the things of heaven. Lord, to love people the way that You love us. To worship You. To live for Your glory, Lord, with the people of God.
Father, I pray for our hearts this morning. I pray for our very souls.
That they would be, that they would be overwhelmed just by a waterfall of Your love. To know that, Lord, nothing can snatch us out of Your hand. No sin. No mistake. No failure. That You are guarding us and keeping us and Your Son has loved us perfectly on His cross.
Lord, and so transform our hearts and transform our minds then, Lord, in that love to be loved. To be loved. To honor. To respect. To long for one another. That we would see each of us grown up in Christ. To see each of us make it home to You. To see all of us together reach the world, Lord. Give us the selflessness of Christ. Give us the humility of Christ.
Let it all be for Your glory. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.