Listening No.1 Sin Alert

To the 18th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we're commencing a new series which Pastor Tim and I will be privileged to endeavor to expound, that means to explain and apply during these next few weeks. There is a program of our preaching schedule available by the welcome desk, if you'd like a copy then do take one. And perhaps you would come prepared by reading the passage that we have in mind both morning and evening through, and that will, I think, prove a good investment in enabling you to get hopefully even more value out of the ministry here.

While here our beloved Lord is speaking to his disciples, Matthew 18 verses 1 through to 9. At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? He called a little child and had him stand among them, and he said, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me, but if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, what made him say such things as that? Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin. Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come. 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 maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out, throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

If you want a parallel reading for that earlier on in the gospel, no need to turn to it now, but have it in mind. If you want to check it through, it's in the fifth chapter in the twenty-seventh verse and following, almost word for word, not quite, but virtually the same, certainly exactly the same in substance. Well our series is entitled Listening to Jesus, and this particular address, Sin Alert, though actually those verses fall into three particular teaching aspects.

Our Lord deals with the nature of true greatness in the first couple of verses, the first three to be specific. Then He speaks to us about an appalling, I would almost say the appalling sin, verses four to seven. And then personal discipline, in which sin alert, so to speak, comes to its own, where Jesus says that we are all to be on guard to ensure that we don't fall into grievous sin.

Now if you want to benefit from Bible study, what you always have to ask yourself is this, what is the context behind the passage? Why is it that our blessed Lord at this stage, speaking to His disciples, calls a little child and has the child stand center stage and uses him or her, probably him, as an example? Well if you went to Luke's gospel and to Mark's gospel, you would discover that the disciples have had a little bit of a controversy. You see Jesus has been teaching about His kingdom, that's quite plain from the chapter that precedes this one in Matthew's gospel. He's not only been talking about His kingdom, He's also been referring to His death.

Verse twenty-two, the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill Him and on the third day He will be raised to life. And the disciples were filled with grief.

Yet the grief of the disciples was to be almost like the dew of Palestine. It lasts just momentarily and is soon evaporated by the heat of the rays of the sun. The king, the kingdom, prestige, authority, places of power.

Now there's nothing wrong in a mother wanting for her children the best, but occasionally a mother and a father can overreach themselves. So, the mother of James and John comes towards our Lord and slips in this suggestion, your kingdom, when you come to your kingdom, my lads, grand lads as they be, one on your right hand, the other on your left, seems reasonable, good sons these of mine. And you can forgive the over-ambition of a mother.

The problem for the rest of the disciples was not the insensitivity of the suggestion bearing in mind what Jesus had just been anticipating, His death. The problem for them was that she got in first because as far as prizes were concerned, they wanted number one. At that time the disciples came to Jesus, who is the greatest? He, or I think the authorized version has got the conjunction in so, so He called a little child and certainly the word should be there at least by intimation of the context.

The cause, the disciples asking a question about authority, the consequence, Jesus brings a little child, sets it before them, sets Him before them and says, look, I want to tell you something about greatness. In those days, not a great deal of value was placed upon children. They were not to be taken seriously except as a responsibility.

They were to be looked after and not to be looked up to. And here is our Lord using this little child, and incidentally isn't it wonderful the position that the Lord Jesus gives to children in the Gospels. I think I failed in many areas during my ministry here, but one of the things I have honestly before God sought never to do was to devalue a child.

I always try and stop and talk to kids, not because I feel I should but actually because I love it. One of the things that always entices me back to our fellowship here, probably endorsed, enhanced by the fact we have no children of our own, is the welcome you invariably get from the boys and girls when you return from a trip abroad. Our Lord had no physical children, and yet time and time again you will find in Matthew's Gospel, He puts the spotlight on children, on a day, in a day when children didn't count for a great deal until they became adults and then it was basically the masculine, the male child and not so much the female.

And our Lord corrects both these distortions. He values women in a way that Islam has never valued women, and He values children. Children.

This is why those people who lead children astray are almost at the point of committing the unpardonable sin, but more of that in a moment. Our Lord brings this little child before them and with the disciples grown men that they'd be forming a semicircle, Jesus puts some radical teaching, unless, unless you become as a little child, and Luke's Gospel at that point says that Jesus takes the child into His arms. Unless you become as this child, you can't enter the kingdom.

What is there about a child that is so endearing to our Lord? Well, there's simplicity. There's childlike trust. And that's what the Lord Jesus wants from all who will listen to Him and follow Him.

What's more, there's transparency. And sometimes there is an embarrassing honesty. I'm not saying that all children have these to exactly the same degree.

There are children who, alas, get perverted, but very often the reasons why they get perverted is because of the society in which they live. You see, the difference between me and a child is this, I have to undo. There are times when I have to unlearn.

A child is in the process of doing, a child is in the process of learning, and as a result, in many senses, he has an advantage over an adult. Some of you are old enough to remember the time when a song became very popular in the United Kingdom, Oh Lord, Make Me a Child Again, Just for Tonight. And there are many of us who would like to go back to that transparency and simplicity and trustfulness that we had in earlier years.

I remember, and the story is somewhat humorous, and yet it can be quite painful in retelling because many of us can identify with the scene. I remember the church secretary in the fellowship with which we were associated in London, on one occasion, he had a busy day, and you know what it is, he got to the end of the day and he was glad to be back at home and family. And there was one particular person in the church who always had a habit of calling on him just when he felt that he could do without that particular piece of fellowship.

Her name, bless her heart, was Diana. And there was a ring at the doorbell, and David said, I do hope that's not Diana. And his little girl, she was a doll-like creature in those days, she must be a grown woman with their own children now.

She went to the door, opened it, and there was, you've guessed, and she said, oh my dad said he wished it wasn't you at the door. If you're going to be great in the kingdom, you've got to have the characteristics of a little child. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

And later on, our Lord will start to talk about children playing in the marketplace and so on and so forth. He has a tremendous worth, value, that he invests in children. Our Lord not only speaks about the position of children, but he goes on to talk negatively about those who might influence children wrongly.

It's an appalling sin. Look at verse six. If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Why does our Lord get so personal? Well, look what he had to say in the fifth verse. If you welcome a little child like this in my name, actually, you're welcoming me. Our Lord has a sense of intimacy with his own, which really is quite astonishing.

When Saul was engaged in persecuting the Christians in Jerusalem, he then, you remember, went down to Damascus. And when he's unhorsed, the voice that speaks from heaven says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Our Lord identified with the Christian community in Damascus. Our Lord identifies with children.

This is, you see, why child pornography is so utterly obnoxious. This is why I am almost inclined to say that the abuse of children comes so near to the unpardonable sin. It's almost there, but not quite.

If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin. You know, we live in a world where we're not only showing hostility to our environment and the animal kingdom, but we let pass, without doing a great deal about it, even in the 20th century, great crimes leveled against children. I was watching the TV news, I think it was at lunchtime.

It's very rare I ever see the news at lunchtime. And they were showing a Swedish champion tennis player, who actually was out in the Middle East. He'd gone there on a holiday, and he was watching the camel races.

You ever seen the camel races? The only difference, well obviously there's a difference with the camel and the horse to racing in this country, is this. The jockey is a child. And do you know where some of these children come from? They come from Bombay, and they come from Kathmandu.

There is a sort of trade. It's almost slavery, but not quite. Of bringing kids out from Southeast Asia, and using them in these camel races.

And to start with, they are strapped to the back of the camel, and as they squeal, so it excites the camel more, and it will move with greater alacrity, with greater speed. That is not the 19th century, that is the 20th century. There was an article in the Daily Mail yesterday.

I quote another paper, because some of you feel that I'm just biased towards one. Happened to be in a restaurant, where I was having a cup of coffee, and the mail was there. So I read it, part of it.

School teacher, England, last week. Getting his children to shout out all the obscenities they could think of, as he put them on the board. Oh, of course, there was every educational reason that you could cook up in the book to justify what he was doing.

The bottom line is this. Willingly or unwillingly, he was helping to corrupt the minds of impressionable youngsters. And our beloved Lord says, This is the gentle Jesus that I was referring to when I broke into my reading.

The reason being that the first prayer my mother ever taught me was this, And I thought of our Lord Jesus as a sort of constant, avuncular figure. Always welcoming, always receiving, never speaking harshly. But here, completely out of character, or so to speak, he projects the image of a man for whom it would have been better if he'd not been born.

Or if in the middle of being born, somebody had taken the huge millstone of the two millstones that grind out corn, and plonked it on his head. The millstone being like a gigantic polo mint, if you please. That is so heavy it took the donkey, so they called it the donkey stone, to complete the revolution.

And our Lord says it would be better if that man, if that person, with such potential for harm, had had this thing placed round his neck, and he had been taken out into the sea. The Jews were scared of the sea. They disliked the idea of the sea.

They were terrified of the sea. It would be better if he had been placed in the sea, and sunk to the fathomless depths, where he would be destroyed with no possibility of return. And the reason why our Lord is speaking so strongly is because he has concerns for boys and girls, little ones.

Oh, I know there is the way that one could explain this, or expound it also, and I'm not suggesting there's no significance here, in terms of newcomers into the kingdom, and leading them astray. But I think that you can also take this in a very literal fashion. You see, that's why it's so important that we do have our kresh, and we do have our beginner's department, and we do have our pathfinders, and we do have our youth work, and that you and I pray for the people who are leading these departments.

It's right that we pray for mums and dads, as they have their little children dedicated, because our Lord Jesus puts premium, puts value on the life of a little child. He tells us it's an appalling sin to wrongly influence a minor. Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Woe to the pornographers! Woe to those who exploit children! Woe to those who cause young girls on the streets of Bombay and Calcutta to sell their bodies! Woe to the people who do it, and woe to the clients who take them! And woe to those in our own country who allow things that are injurious to be put in front of our kids.

I pleaded with the town hall authorities across the road there not to allow further fruit machines in this town, and some of them laughed at me. Do you not know that there is an addiction to gambling which eats into the very vitals of a young person? Don't you know that the habits formed in those tender years are the most difficult ones to break in more mature years? And I'll continue to be a nuisance to the council in this area if necessary. But thank God for some of the good things that they do as well.

Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Says our Lord, such things must come. We're in an evil world. Temptations, well, they originate from the devil, and they were there at Eden, and they spread their tentacles.

But woe to the man through whom they come! You may be caught up in an evil world, but if you enhance the evil, you cannot in any way claim that you are not responsible. The Bible says you are for your actions. So our Lord makes reference to true greatness and to an appalling sin.

And that gives him the leeway, the pivot to move into what Tim said in working out this schedule of sermons can be highlighted as sin alert. So our Lord is speaking to members of the redeemed community. He's speaking to the likes of you and me.

He doesn't want us in any way to influence a child wrongly. Neither does he want us in any way to have a feeling of self-importance which actually declares that we have no right to be in the kingdom. He wants us back with the transparency and the simplicity and the trustfulness of little children.

You know, if you ever go to the Holy Land, and you visit Bethlehem, the alleged place where our Lord was born can only be approached by you crouching down. The doorway is about three foot high. The reason is to stop donkeys and camels and animals and also the military from getting in and wreaking havoc.

And on the one occasion I went there, it seemed to me that this was a parable. This really is the way into the kingdom. It's stooping low, and it's guarding your transparency and your simplicity.

It's wanting to be a child again. Now our Lord says, what are those things that cause you to blot your copybook as a Christian, as a follower of me? And he highlights three. And he does so in a metaphorical sense.

He speaks of the hand, verse 8, doesn't he? He speaks of the feet later on in verse 8. And he speaks of the eye. Now what he's talking about is, I'll introduce two difficult words and I'll explain them. He's not talking about mutilation, he's talking about mortification.

You say, what is mutilation? Well, mutilation is when you harm your body deliberately. Now if you read this literalistically and take it at first glance, it might occur to you that this is what our Lord is saying. And indeed there have been those who have been in great error and as a result have done most shocking things to their own bodies because they've completely misunderstood him.

You see, he's not talking about mutilating the eye. If you pluck this eye out because of temptation that comes through the eye, that's not going to help you. You'll have another eye in any case.

And even if you pluck that one out, that's not going to help you because it's not just the eye, it's the imagination which has already been fueled by the eye. By the hands, he's referring to the fondling of things that you should not touch. Here is Eve.

With the eye, she sees the forbidden fruit. With the hands, she handles. And with the feet, she's already made a step towards that which is forbidden.

So our Lord is saying this. There are times when it would be better for you to mortify yourself. In other words, to die to certain aspects of your character and behavior patterns.

There are magazines which it would be best for you always to close your eyes and never see because you cannot handle them. There are places to which you should not go, therefore it would be better for you to be as a cripple. There are things that you should not touch because if you do, they will cause your spiritual, they will act to your spiritual detriment.

Our Lord is not being legalistic. You see, there are certain things that you cannot lay down a fixed code of conduct for. We all have to test ourselves.

We all have our own Achilles heel. If, if, if, if this causes you to sin, if you can't handle that, if you can't do the other, then our Lord says, be a man, be a woman, be sane. Metaphorically speaking, mutilate yourself.

Don't go there, don't watch that, don't read that. Why? Well, it's far better for you to retain your holiness and your purity and enter into heaven. Then says this gentle Jesus, who sometimes is not so meek and mild, then to so jeopardize your eternal well-being that the flames of Gehenna, you remember the rubbish tip by Jerusalem where the fires were always burning? Gehenna was the place where the Israelites in the Old Testament hit rock bottom in paganism when they martyred their own children.

And it became a place of curse and ultimately the spot where all the refuse and the rubbish of Jerusalem was burnt. The fires never ceased. And Jesus uses this with stark force.

And he speaks about eternal damnation. He speaks about the fearful thing of falling into the hands of this living God, refusing to be as a child, using your life wrongly, exploiting other people, using children wrongly, engaging in sin and not knowing repentance. And Jesus says that the net outcome of all that is the fires of Gehenna.

I wish I had the scholastic ability and the eloquence to prove to you that hell is not real, that hell is not eternal. I have ransacked this word, this book, and I can find no justification for diluting the teaching of our beloved Lord in this area. Far better for you not to have a television.

If you cannot handle it, then for you to jeopardize your eternal well-being. Far better for you never to touch alcohol. If you cannot handle it, then to jeopardize your eternal well-being.

Far better for your feet never to take you to a theatre. If you cannot handle it, then to jeopardize your eternal well-being. You see the point? You see the practicality of this teaching? Are you listening? Are you listening to Jesus? For our Lord wants to speak to you and to me through this chapter, through these verses and the ones that are to follow.

He wants us to know that greatness in the kingdom is by serving one another. He is the Royal President of the Association of Footwashers and He inducts you into the society if you become one of His disciples. He is the President of the Save the Children organization and He wants you somehow to save children if you're one of His followers.

He is the President of the Royal Association for the Advancement of Holiness and if you're going to listen to Him and follow Him, then you have to join that society too. It's open to all on the basis of penitence and trust in His life, in His death, in His mighty resurrection. For God's sake, listen to Jesus.

And let's pray with a song, that is, with a hymn. Having just baptized myself here with my drinking water. Number 90, oh yeah, it's not 91, it's coming up on the overheads and some of you who got it written out, it's an old hymn which we had in Hymns of Faith and we've been requested to sing it and it fits well into this part of our service.

We have not known thee as we ought, nor learned thy wisdom, grace and power. The things of earth have filled our thought and trifles of the passing hour. Lord, give us light, thy truth to see, and make us wise in knowing thee.

We'll sing this hymn of contrition in the light of what we've heard from the Word of God which perhaps has found us out and prepare ourselves to take this bread and wine in remembrance of the death of our beloved Lord in a moment or so. We stand and let's sing this sensitively. We stand and let's sing this sensitively.