Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Good morning, church man. What a joy to be together. Amen.
[00:00:12] We're going to be in Matthew 18 today. If you want to turn in there in your Bibles. If you don't have a physical Bible with you today. Why not? I'm just kidding.
[00:00:25] We want, we really believe in the importance of access to God's Word here at Emmanuel. And so I wanna let you know, first off, there are house Bibles around the room. You can just grab one and pull it out from one of the chairs and find the passage. If you don't own a nice copy of God's Word that you can engage and read on your own, would you let me know? Like, I'll get you one. I'll get you a nice one. I'll get you a nicer one than the pew Bibles. I would love to do that. We're gonna be in Matthew 18 today and we're gonna be continuing this short series we're doing titled how to Church. How to Church.
[00:01:00] How does Jesus specifically instruct his church to operate and to behave?
[00:01:07] I love this idea because we need that instruction for one thing. But for another thing, right, like we're going through the book of Matthew verse by verse. And to go through a book of the Bible as big as Matthew verse by verse, it's daunting. It takes a long time. And so taking some of the chunks of Matthew and breaking them into these more bite sized thematic series, I really think it's helpful for us to digest the material. And Matthew 18 is widely considered just a unified teaching from Jesus on the nature of our relationship as the church. I think one of the main things we'll see as we work through this chunk of text is that Jesus describes church life in familial terms. Now, this is not 100% the same, but it's helpful. It's a helpful analogy. Jesus says our relationship with church family is at least similar to our relationship with blood family. As I was thinking about that this week, it got me thinking about my relationship to my brothers. If you don't know, I am one of four brothers. There's a picture of us.
[00:02:21] And honestly, most of you guys have met my brothers at one point because they come hang out and Garrett used to live around here. And if you don't know, these guys are pretty much my best friends. I love my brothers. It's pretty rare for a day to go by where we don't talk to each other, either text or phone call or even hanging out. It's pretty normal. But any of you who grew up with siblings, I'm gonna go on the limb. And you can guess that it wasn't always that way, right? Like, I've been really blessed with great siblings and I have a great relationship with them as an adult. But even so, when we were young, we were as much frenemies as we were friends, right? Like, that's kind of the norm. I see this on full display with my own four kids today. My kids will, in the same day, like in the same two to three hour period, talk about how this sibling or that sibling is their best friend and they love them so much, and then engage in physical hand to hand combat with same sibling, right? Like, it's. Guys, listen, you can laugh, but we all know why when we think about it for a minute, right? Like, this makes a ton of sense because family is complicated.
[00:03:41] Families hard. And kids, Kids are young, they're inexperienced, they're vulnerable, they're needy. They're prone to struggling with these complex relationships.
[00:03:56] They're prone to it. Kids will play and fight, they'll connect and hurt one another. They'll miss each other when they're gone and then get mad and stomp into the other room when they're together.
[00:04:09] All of a sudden, when you think about family that way, it starts to make sense why Jesus would use the image of little children as his analogy for us as his followers. Right?
[00:04:21] As we work through these texts over the next few weeks, we're going to see how this entire chunk that is Matthew 18 builds off of the idea that our life as the church will result in sin and conflict within the church.
[00:04:39] Christians will be brothers and sisters, which means we will be some of each other's closest and most cherished relationships, and we'll hurt each other and cause each other to sin. We'll fall into sin ourselves. We'll stray away from the family and the church. We'll be divided and angry and bitter and in need to receive and give forgiveness. Truly, we are a mess.
[00:05:07] We are little ones trying to figure out this mad world. We are weak and needy. But today we're going to be reminded of one of the most beautiful truths and challenges in Scripture.
[00:05:22] We may be weak and needy when it comes to our spiritual life, but we are not left alone to figure it out, to navigate this world on our own. Beloved, Jesus is on your side.
[00:05:36] He is for you. He seeks you out. He cares for you. And this is our main point today. Like, this is the thing we're gonna talk about today. Because Jesus chased after our wandering and weak hearts. We chase after Those who wander away because of how good Jesus is to us, because he chased after our weak and wandering hearts. We chase after those who wander away. We're going to pick up in verse 6 of Matthew 18. But before we read that, let me remind us we're stepping into the middle of. We're actually stepping into the middle of a sentence in Greek. We're stepping into the middle of a progression of thought that works through this entire text. So I'm going to back up really quick and remind us what Jesus is talking about. His followers have asked him who is the greatest amongst them. They're, they're trying to figure out the pecking order of who's going to have the highest positions in Jesus coming kingdom in this new thing God is doing. And Jesus gives them this wonderful and frustrating and incredibly encouraging response. He. He compares his followers to kids and you. He actually specifically uses the language little ones, right? This is right in the beginning of the chapter. Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. There. Whoever humbles himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. This is an image that Jesus will carry through the rest of the chapter and a few different thoughts. It's a fitting analogy. And one of the reasons is a fitting analogy is you have to remember in first century Palestine, children were not legally protected and culturally idolized the way they are in modern Western culture. You see, we in general as Westerners, we love kids. We love kids. We protect them and nurture them. We have child labor laws, right? We send them to school and educate them. We generally value them. Hey, we advertise to them, right? Because we realize the importance of their economic impact.
[00:07:52] And beyond that, we really elevate and idolize the childhood experience, right? Oh, to be carefree, live living those summer break days full of adventures and drinking out of the hose, right? This was not the case in first century Judaism.
[00:08:09] To have children was deeply valued because it was seen as a sign of God's favor and an aspect of God's covenant. But the child themself and the childhood experience was not looked upon highly because in Jesus day, kids were listed amongst their father's property.
[00:08:31] They had no legal protections around labor or abuse. If you had a good family as a child, then from the minute you were able to do manual labor, you did it alongside your parents. If you had a bad family, you still did that. But if you were bad at it, they beat you or killed you.
[00:08:50] If you frustrated your parents, beat you and kill you and the childhood experience because it wasn't seen in these nostalgic terms of being a carefree adventure.
[00:09:01] Children were looked upon in much of ancient Jewish culture as fools who needed to learn the way of life by way of hard work and discipline. To be a child in the first century, even a loved child in a godly family was to be vulnerable, needy, and socially awkward.
[00:09:20] And this says, jesus is you and me, his kingdom.
[00:09:27] This is my follower. Now, there are beautiful aspects to this that Jim dug into last week. We talk about how children are trusting and how they're expectant of their caretaker's care. And that's beautiful. Children operate from this place of trust and expectancy. And so to live in the kingdom is to trust God's love and provision for you. Amen.
[00:09:47] But we'll see in our text today that part of accepting our identity as Jesus, little ones, is the realization that you are bad at being a Christian.
[00:09:59] You're bad at it. You're weak and vulnerable and needy. In other words, it involves understanding that you're just not all that skilled at being in the kingdom of God. It likens back to Jesus opening words in the Sermon on the mount in Matthew 5, verse 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom. Poor in spirit is not a complementary term.
[00:10:25] It means you're bad at being a Christian. We try and soften the Beatitude by saying, oh, no, no. To be poor in spirit is to have an awareness of one's need for. No, it's not. It's not. To be poor in spirit means bad at being spiritual. You're bad at that. You're bad at figuring out spiritual stuff. And here's the thing, guys, it's kind of nuts that Jesus would say the people who are bad at being spiritual, they're the ones who get the kingdom. They're blessed by God. Us, vulnerable, weak, needy, poor in spirit. Little ones, we are blessed because the God of the universe is on our side.
[00:11:06] So picking up in verse six, Jesus takes a turn on a first reading. This chunk of verses kind of seems like Jesus is just moving from idea to idea. But there is a real continuity here. And it's connected to this Greek word scandalazo, which, by the way, I say this a lot, but I just want to reiterate this. I am not a Greek scholar, right? But I have access to Google, and so that's about as far as my Greek scholarship goes. But this word scandalezo, it is the great, great grandfather of our modern English word scandal. But in Greek, its literal Meaning is stumble, trip. The image is someone tripping. But this Greek word was used to literally mean tripping and stumbling, but also to metaphorically as a synonym for offense, sin, wrong, broken relationship, to offend someone, to sin against them, was spoken of as tripping them, as stumbling them. Each of these words that you read in this chunk of text, we're going to go through, sin, offense, fall away, stumble, these are all derivatives of this Greek word scandalous. And why does that matter? Well, we miss that in the English translation, right? Because we're trying to make it clearer as we translate it. But Jesus is making a small play on words. Here it is. This idea of stumbling is the connecting thought that's going to move from verse 6 through verse 10. It's all part of Jesus progression of thought. So let's go through this verse by verse and see if we can follow Jesus's train of thought. Verses 1 through 5 is what we talked about last week. Jesus has said that his followers are like little children. So to help these spiritual little children come to Jesus is a blessed thing. Now pick up in verse six.
[00:12:48] But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away, it will be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea. See, fall away for scandalizing. Here Jesus is now saying.
[00:13:04] He said, hey, listen, it's a blessed thing to bring little ones to me because it's hard. It's hard to get to me. And so it's a blessed thing to make a way for them. But man, if you get in the way of them getting to me, if you do something that causes them to stumble, if you create barriers for them, that's a cursed thing. That's an evil thing to do.
[00:13:29] And look at verse seven.
[00:13:32] Woe to the world because of offenses, for offenses will inevitably come, but woe to that person by whom the offense comes. See here. Offense for the word scandalizo. Jesus says, here's why it's cursed. Here's why that's such a terrible thing to do. You shouldn't be surprised when these spiritual little children do stumble. The world is so cursed and sinful and broken that stumbling is sorrowfully a normal thing. Happens all the time. So because of that, it's that much worse. If you would make it happen, if you would cause someone who's already prone to stumbling, if you would be their stumbling block, that's an evil thing.
[00:14:13] Then read on with me in verses 8 and 9. For if your hand or Your foot causes you to fall away, cut it off and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to fall away, gouge it out and throw it away. It's better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hellfire. See here. Fall away for scandale. Here Jesus repeats what apparently was one of his go to lines, because this is almost word for word, the same thing he says in the Sermon on the Mount, although there he says it kind of in a different context. What we see here, and it's used here, is that Jesus is giving a reminder.
[00:14:51] One of the reasons it's such a cursed, evil thing to add to the stumbling of these little ones who already struggle is because you yourself are a spiritual little one. It means you are also prone to stumbling, that nature is just as much in you as it is in others. And so you should do everything you can to avoid this.
[00:15:15] You should be willing to make radical changes in your life to avoid your own stumbling.
[00:15:23] And then look at verse 10.
[00:15:26] See to it that you don't despise one of these little ones, because I tell you that in heaven, their angels continually view the face of my Father in heaven.
[00:15:35] This verse wraps it all together. It's a very Jewish way, talking about personal angels. For Jesus to say, look, look, mister, don't get all judgy about how all the other little ones in your life struggle with sin. Don't get all judgy about it. You do too, and you need to know something.
[00:15:54] God sees every single one of these people, these people that you are standing over that you might look down on. God is intimately aware of them.
[00:16:04] He knows everything going on in their life, their strengths and their weaknesses. Don't get on a high horse. You're no better than them, and God has given you all his attention.
[00:16:17] Jesus has built, I think here this really compelling image of the little ones who are part of his kingdom. He's showing us here that all of us, as followers of Jesus, we are equal in our weakness and neediness before the Lord.
[00:16:36] It's an equalizer. Our sin, our weakness, our poverty of spirit.
[00:16:43] It brings us all together. We need help. We need God's intervention and grace in our lives. There's no room in the kingdom for jockeying for position. There's no room in the kingdom for judgmental condescension because we're all in the same mess. In this broken and sinful world, beloved, we are all the little ones. Jesus is talking about all of us. If you're in this space and you've been walking with Christ for decades, and you have seen immense sanctification and growth in your life, and you can look at the sin patterns of your foolish youth and see how God has sharpened you and molded you in his likeness. And God is now using you to disciple and sharpen and call others. Praise the Lord. But I have news for you.
[00:17:32] You were still a little one.
[00:17:35] You are still needy and broken. You are still prone to stumble until the Lord returns and you are perfected.
[00:17:44] You are a little one, prone to stumble, needy.
[00:17:49] And that's kind of.
[00:17:51] Kind of hard to hear, because as much as that image is relatable, I don't know about you guys, but I kind of hear that, and I'm like, okay, okay, cool, cool.
[00:18:00] All right. We're all in this together, right? As much as that image is relatable, I think it's also kind of gloomy, right? You want to follow me? We have to be humble enough to realize that you and every one of my other followers are weak and needy children.
[00:18:19] Wow.
[00:18:20] He talks about how the world is so sinful and broken that our weakness and our neediness. It's going to be a real problem. It's going to be a real issue for us. It reminds me of Jesus looking out on the crowds and being filled with compassion because they were weak and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Right? That's you and me. That's us, beloved. We are the sheep, weak and needy, in a world that wants to eat us alive.
[00:18:49] We are the poor in spirit. So what can you even do then, right? I mean, you can fight your own sin. You can seek kindness to others and to be gracious in their weakness. But as Jesus himself said, we should expect, stumbles in this cursed and broken world. What can you actually do? This makes me think of Paul's lament in Romans 7. So I discover this law when I want to do good, evil is present right beside me in my inner self. I delight in God's law, but I see a different law at work in my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to a law of sin in the parts of my own body. What a wretched man I am who will rescue me from this body of death.
[00:19:39] It's a hard lament to realize how stuck you are in your weakness and your neediness and your brokenness.
[00:19:49] But Paul answers his own question. A verse later by saying this, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
[00:19:58] So then with my mind, I myself am serving the law of God with my flesh, the law of sin. What we see here is, guys, Jesus is the answer to our weakness.
[00:20:10] Who will rescue me from this body of death? Christ.
[00:20:13] Christ will rescue you from this body of death. Who will rescue me in my weakness and need? I can't do this on my own. Exactly. Christ will rescue you. Christ is for you. Look back at Matthew 18 and look how Jesus himself answers this question. Spoiler. The answer is the goodness of Jesus.
[00:20:35] Picking up in verse 12.
[00:20:37] By the way, really quick, I don't have time to talk about this, but just in case you noticed that there's no verse 11 in Matthew 18. And you know, that's kind of weird, I'm gonna put a blog out about that this week, but I don't have. It's so interesting, I just don't have time to talk about it today. Sorry.
[00:20:53] Picking up in verse 12.
[00:20:55] What do you think? If someone has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, won't he leave the 99 on the hillside and go and search for the stray? And if he finds it, truly, I tell you, he rejoices over that sheep more than over the 99 that did not go astray. In the same way. It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones perish. Whoo.
[00:21:21] It's not the will of God that a single one of us and our weakness and poverty of spirit perish in our sin.
[00:21:30] Jesus answers this question with one of his most famous parables. And in this parable is both great challenge and encouragement for us. He gives us the picture of a shepherd who's gone out to pasture with a hundred sheep. And as he's guiding them around, he discovers that one of his hundred sheep has wandered away. Jesus is here, connecting his image of his followers as little ones to his other favorite image for the church, sheep. Now, I know most of you guys know this, but just to say it out loud, right, like, sheep generally are pretty great herd animals for shepherds, but they have one fatal flaw, and that is that they are hopelessly stupid.
[00:22:11] Sorry, that's the analogy we get. It's the one we got weak little children and dumb sheep. Sheep have almost no natural defense mechanisms, aside from being in a herd like that's their defense mechanism is there's enough of us here that hopefully the wolf will get full before he kills me.
[00:22:30] That's how sheep don't Die in the wild.
[00:22:33] It's kind of nuts. And so to say that all that to say this, guys, a single lone sheep in the Near Eastern wilderness is dead.
[00:22:44] That's what that means for that sheep. There's no other way to say it. Aside even from predators, lone sheep will struggle to find food and water. They have a hard time finding their own food supply.
[00:22:58] They oftentimes are terrified of water and won't drink it when they do find it. A lone sheep is a dead sheep.
[00:23:06] That's. That's kind of what you get from this. So what does the shepherd do?
[00:23:12] He leaves his 99 grazing on a hillside and he goes back in search of the wandering sheep.
[00:23:19] And if you don't know by the way, the way shepherding works in the near east and in this region is there's not just like rolling, beautiful fields, there's small chunks of pasture in between, huge chunks of what we would call wasteland. And so shepherding was incredibly important to move the flock from space to space, not just to keep them away from predators, but to actually find sustainable food sources. And so he finds one. He finds a hillside, he leaves the sheep there, and he goes off and he looks for the one that is wandering. It's a beautiful image. It's a beautiful image. I mean, can't you, like, just see it in your eyes, in your mind's eye? The shepherd there, he's setting his sheep up to graze and he's counting them. And then he has that kind of moment of realization, like, oh, no, I lost one. And he, like, goes around, he counts again, and he's going through and trying to remember the last few hours. And you imagine him looking back behind him over that barren wasteland they just trudged through to find this grazing field in that moment where he just goes, okay, and he grabs his staff and just goes out looking for it.
[00:24:24] There's only one problem with this beautiful image.
[00:24:28] That's foolish shepherding. That's bad shepherding. You don't do that. Whenever you read Jesus's parables, it's wise to consider to look at him. This is a good framework to understand any of his parables, by the way, is to look at him and say, what would have been really normal in this story for the original hearers? And then what would have been really weird in this story for the original hearers? Because it's often at the intersection of the normal and the weird that Jesus makes his spiritual point point in his parables.
[00:24:55] This would have been strange to leave 99 sheep unattended on a hill in the wilderness, grazing was very foolhardy. It left the flock as easy prey. It set the stage for more sheep to wander away. A shepherd would normally have been expected to take his sheep home, get them behind the gate or have a second shepherd guard them and then go and seek the lost sheep. But in Jesus parable, the shepherd values the single sheep so much that he's not willing to wait that long.
[00:25:34] And so he immediately goes back and searches until he finds him. This is a shepherd who has an extravagant love and care for a single wandering sheep. This would have immediately caught his listeners ears because no normal shepherd would do this. No normal shepherd would care enough about any single sheep to risk the flock.
[00:26:02] But this shepherd returns with the lost sheep over his shoulder with a huge grin on his face, celebrating the finding of his lost sheep.
[00:26:15] The point here is as sharp as it is beautiful.
[00:26:19] Beloved, God loves each of his little ones like this.
[00:26:25] He loves them immensely. He cares about what makes us stumble.
[00:26:31] He cares about getting us back on our feet when we stumble. He's willing to drop what he's doing to go and seek us out after we've stumbled and after we have strayed away. Beloved, God loves little ones.
[00:26:48] He loves them.
[00:26:50] He knows we are weak and his response is to seek us out rather than abandon us.
[00:26:59] This is how Jesus treats you. Amen.
[00:27:04] For those of you who are in Christ, take a moment with me like I'm serious right now. Like, consider your own testimony.
[00:27:11] Is not this your story?
[00:27:14] Are you not spiritually and emotionally weak?
[00:27:18] Are you not riddled with doubts and rebellions even after receiving the wonderful grace of Jesus? Do you not turn your back on him and return to your flesh and have seasons where you live in selfishness, anxiety and fear and doubt? Do you not have times where you seek your own comfort and your own success, the exclusion of the kingdom and the needs of others and the glory of God?
[00:27:42] And yet God knows you are but a little one.
[00:27:48] He knows you are weak.
[00:27:51] He knows you need him, and he's willing to chase you down and draw you back to Himself?
[00:27:58] He's not. Isn't that not the story of your sanctification, beloved?
[00:28:02] That as you have returned time and time again to your own selfish, sinful patterns, that Christ and His love has sought you out afresh and drawn you back in?
[00:28:13] What a beautiful truth. You remember the parable of the Prodigal son in Luke 15? Remember this one? It's really well known. A man has two sons. One demands his inheritance while the Father's still alive. And so he takes the father's blessing and he abandons his family and seeks out selfish, fleshly pleasures of the world. And eventually the pleasures of this world, they fail him. And he returns home to his father, penniless, seeking mercy. But one of the things I absolutely love about this parable is that when that son returns home, his father is waiting for him.
[00:28:49] You caught that before. His dad is. His dad is ready and waiting for him. He does not respond with judgment or wrath or even, I told you so. This father sees his son approaching from a long distance.
[00:29:05] The image here is of the dad kind of sitting on the front porch, looking down the road. And he sees that dot and goes, I recognize that walk. That's. That's. That's my son. And he runs out to him he has been eagerly awaiting. The son tries to abase himself and apologize, and the father will have none of it. He's too excited.
[00:29:28] They must celebrate right this moment. And later that night, when his other son is angry about this, this son has treated us so poorly. This brother of mine is such a fool. And you're celebrating him and you're doing all these things for him. How could you do that?
[00:29:45] The father's response is so beautiful. He says, we had to celebrate. We had to celebrate and rejoice. This brother of yours was dead, but he is alive again. He was lost, and now we found him.
[00:30:02] Beloved, on the day when Jesus sought you out and bought you, you must know there was rejoicing in heaven that the Father rejoiced at your salvation.
[00:30:18] You sinful, selfish you.
[00:30:22] He found joy in you being brought back to himself.
[00:30:26] God himself laughed with joy and pleasure that his beloved child was dead and is now alive. And let me tell you something else, because we miss this part. It's easy to get that part right. Like, oh, yeah, yeah. So and so met Christ, and they're cheering in heaven. I'm like, yeah. And I think a lot of us even believe that. But you need to know something, Church.
[00:30:48] As much as God celebrated the day he drew you into his kingdom, a few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years later, when you tired of that abounding grace of your Father and you chose to live again in sin and rebellion, God sought you out again, and he drew you back again, and he rejoiced again.
[00:31:13] And a few years after that, when you fell into that habitual sin pattern and you sought to cure your anxiety in the flesh instead of the Father, and you grew steadily more distant from Jesus and your Church, family, God sought you again and brought you back again and rejoiced again. And a few years after that, when you had that painful and traumatic experience and it sent you spiraling into doubt and you just couldn't see how God could possibly be good enough to get you through that, beloved God sought you again and he is bringing you back again. And he will celebrate again. Because Jesus sees his little ones.
[00:31:54] He loves his little ones, he chases after his little ones. And he does this because his will is not a single one of you will be lost.
[00:32:06] What a God. What a gospel. Like, how can you help but worship a God with this much love in his heart for the likes of you and me? Amen.
[00:32:17] So what do we do with a truth this beautiful?
[00:32:23] I said earlier that I believe this text is both encouraging and challenging. We've seen the encouragement, but what's the challenge? Well, guys, it goes back to where we started today.
[00:32:33] Because Jesus chased after our wandering and weak hearts. We chase after those who wander away.
[00:32:41] We get to be the kind of church and the kind of believers who join Jesus in this work of seeking out the little ones who wander. And how do we do that?
[00:32:51] Well, I've got three thoughts that I think come straight from this text and we'll use that to land out today.
[00:32:58] Because Jesus followers our little ones, because we know that's true, we should do three things. I think first off, we should expect stumbling.
[00:33:09] We should expect ourselves and our brothers and sisters to wrestle with their sin.
[00:33:15] If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a little one. You are a sheep. We all are. This means that stumbling, sinning and falling away, these are to be expected amongst the church.
[00:33:29] You know something? I love this church. I love this church family. None of you are Jesus. I'm not Jesus. This means brothers and sisters in Christ will eventually treat you poorly.
[00:33:42] It will happen. They'll hurt you. They'll fall into sin patterns. They'll disengage the family of God. They'll fall into doubt and despair. They'll run away from our fellowship. You should expect this.
[00:33:56] Don't be surprised when you and when those around you wrestle with your flesh because you are a little child in the faith, you are weak and you are needy. Is only by the grace and strength of Jesus that we endure.
[00:34:10] So just like Jesus said in our text, let's have some humility and let's have some grace because this is going to happen. It's going to happen to you, it's going to happen to me, it's going to happen to everyone in this space.
[00:34:26] Number two, remove stumbling blocks. Like, if we know that's going to happen, let's do everything we can to minimize it. It doesn't mean we have to be passive, right? Because just because we know that stumbling and sinning is a real thing, it doesn't make us into passive believers. We can do the work of actively removing stumbling blocks for ourselves and others.
[00:34:49] If you know that you have a propensity to a certain sin pattern, beloved, be bold and be brave enough to make radical changes to avoid that in your life.
[00:35:00] You're struggling with sexual immorality and pornography use hey, get rid of your smartphone. Just get rid of it. Put software on your computer. Jump into a discipleship and recovery group like First Light. Tell some people in your church.
[00:35:14] That takes bravery. That takes boldness, but it's worth it.
[00:35:19] Do you find yourself continually drawn to doubt and despair because of a traumatic experience in your life? Hey, be brave enough to bring your story into the light.
[00:35:28] Share it with a friend or your gc. Let your church help you find a counselor or a pastor to begin the hard work of processing that story. Do you find yourself drifting toward gossip or bitterness? You should probably keep a strong watch on when and how you have conversations. You should probably draw that into the light and ask close friends in your church and your community to call you out the moment you speak ill of another.
[00:35:55] Are you so busy and so stressed out and so focused on worldly accomplishment and comfort that you have squeezed out all time and all desire for connection with your spiritual family so that your church involvement and participation becomes something you do when it's convenient to give you things you want?
[00:36:14] That's you. If you're regularly so tired or stressed that you skip gathering with believers either on Sunday or even your gospel community or even just connection, how about you be brave enough to look soberly at your life and your priorities?
[00:36:30] Beloved, have you made career advancement or sports or leisure or vacation time or making money for a bigger house and more comforts more important to you than your life and the flock?
[00:36:43] Beloved, do not be deceived.
[00:36:46] A lone sheep is a dead sheep.
[00:36:50] That's how it works.
[00:36:53] You will not flourish in your faith by yourself.
[00:36:59] I know you can sit here and go, oh, come on, I got the Holy Spirit. We just sang that cool song. The Holy Spirit's in every single one of us as believers. Yes and amen. Yes and amen.
[00:37:09] But the New Testament is chocked full of commands and structures for how we function together as a family. And if you go off by yourself in your faith, you are amputating the vast majority of your sanctification.
[00:37:23] You will not flourish in your faith on your own. And when you deprioritize the community of the believers, you will see a downward shift in your faith. There is no way around it. I'm not saying that because I'm like, come to church. It makes me sad when you're not here. It does make me sad when you're not here. But I'm saying this because I love you as a brother in Christ and as your pastor.
[00:37:48] Because if you are struggling, if you see areas in your life where you stumble, don't be passive and go, well, we're all being sanctified. I guess. I guess I just won't figure out how to go to church until I in heaven. Don't do that. Don't. Don't be passive.
[00:38:04] Engage the weakness in your faith. Look for the areas where you stumble, where your friends, where your spouse, where your children, where your brothers and sisters stumble. And be the kind of believer who goes around picking up stumbling blocks and making the way easier for others to come to know Christ. That is a blessed thing to help the little ones come to Jesus.
[00:38:26] And then lastly, number three, seek out the stumbled.
[00:38:31] This is probably most strikingly important for us today. Beloved, join Jesus in seeking out those who have wandered away.
[00:38:40] Jesus does this for you. You can do it for others. And there's a twofold nature to this.
[00:38:48] Like on a very simple level that I think we all get, you can be on mission, right? Look for lostness in your circle of influence. Think about your immediate family. Think about your immediate neighborhood. Think about the people you see at the gym, the people in your circle, whatever that circle is. Classrooms, workplaces, friend groups, hobby groups. Think about the circle within which you find yourself. And think about the lostness that exists there. And be the one who is brave enough to seek out those who need Jesus.
[00:39:17] It means praying for them. It means inviting them to come be around Christians and be around Jesus. And yes, it means sharing your story with them, telling them the gospel, telling them how much Jesus loves them, even though that might be awkward and they might think you're super weird afterward and it might change your relationship. Yeah. Yes, yes.
[00:39:38] As though awkwardness in your relationship is somehow worth risking their relationship with Christ and their eternity. Right?
[00:39:45] As 100%, 100%, being on mission is part of how we seek those who are far away and invite them in.
[00:39:52] But I think maybe even a little more pressing for us today is this.
[00:39:56] Seek those who have wandered from the church.
[00:39:59] Those who have fallen into sin patterns, those who have been hurt and then drifted away from a relationship. Those who have sunk into busyness and stress and are just never around anymore. Those who used to thrive in their faith, but now you've watched them slowly deconstruct. Those who are harassed and helpless sheep.
[00:40:19] Look for them.
[00:40:22] Seek them out.
[00:40:24] Seek them out. Be present with them. Invite them back to life in Christ. I would encourage you guys, like, right now, like, right now, in this moment, as I'm saying this, in your mind, in your heart, put names and faces to what I'm talking about.
[00:40:40] Who do you know who has wandered away?
[00:40:45] A grown child, a sibling, a friend, A church person who you've just stopped seeing. A co worker, beloved. If you know that they are in the process of wandering, you can be a voice gospel invitation to them afresh.
[00:41:06] You can. And some of you are going, but you don't understand, Pastor. I've talked to them 45 times and it even has, like, put a wedge in our relationship. Yeah, yeah, yep. I get that. That's painful and that's scary. You can still be a voice of refreshment and invitation to them. You can reach out to them and let them know you love them and you're praying for them. You love to be there for them.
[00:41:30] You can reach out and let them know that you're always available.
[00:41:34] You can be bold and offer an invitation afresh. You can look for opportunities to invite them into things that might be less scary or less triggering for their story.
[00:41:45] So, guys, I'm going to invite you, as we land out, to take a moment and reflect and respond to Christ's call to you. Before we end, I really want you to genuinely and literally and practically consider this invitation band if you want to come back up as you take a few moments to pray. We do this kind of response thing almost every week, right? But as you take a few minutes to pray, I want you to really consider what ways do you naturally stand in pride and judgment over those who struggle?
[00:42:17] You know what I'm saying?
[00:42:19] In what ways do you see other believers struggles and somehow convince yourself that, like, you're doing better than them? You got to figure it out.
[00:42:28] What might it look like for you to respond with the grace of those who expect little ones to be weak?
[00:42:35] What do you need to radically amputate in your life to remove stumbling blocks from yourself?
[00:42:41] How can you be the kind of person who goes and seeks out stumbling blocks and. And pulls them away from other people's feet?
[00:42:48] And then lastly, who can you chase after?
[00:42:53] And even I would encourage you to take it a step further. What would that look like for you this week?
[00:42:58] What would that look like in the next few days? Who do you need to text or call or write a letter to, or drop by their house unexpectedly, or tell them you're thinking about them or let them know you're praying for them?
[00:43:12] I want to invite us to genuinely consider what it means to join Jesus in this work of seeking the lost, seeking those who wander.
[00:43:24] You got to know something, guys, the vast majority of people who wander away, the vast majority of those, one sheep, they make the choice to do so.
[00:43:33] They step into further rebellion. They lean into their flesh, they feed into doubts. They refuse to let the gospel, they harden their hearts. And it can be really easy to be like, yeah, they made that choice.
[00:43:45] Think about that sheep out in that big old scary world.
[00:43:50] No flock around them, no shepherd. Just darkness, just wilderness. Just barrenness. Just predators alone.
[00:44:00] Need weakness. Yes, you can be God's tool to go seek, go call, invite.
[00:44:12] I'm going to end, I'm going to cry doing this. Sorry, I'm going to end with something that's kind of cheesy, but I think it'll be helpful.
[00:44:20] Almost every single night when I put my kids to bed, I sing a song to them. Don't worry, I'm not going to sing to you guys.
[00:44:30] But it's a song we all know. It's one of the most familiar, well known Christian hymns for children.
[00:44:38] I'm just going to read us the first two verses to land out as we get ready to pray. And as I get to this familiar refrain, I want you to do in your own mind what I do with my kids every night.
[00:44:54] I want you to replace the word me with real names.
[00:45:00] Use your name.
[00:45:02] Use the name of that grown up child who has wandered from the faith. Use the name of that friend or sibling who burdens you in your prayer. Put in the names of the real people, yourself included, who need to be sought out by our audacious shepherd.
[00:45:18] Song goes like this. Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so Little ones to him belong they are weak but he is strong.
[00:45:31] Yes, Jesus loves me yes, Jesus loves me yes, Jesus loves me the Bible tells me so Jesus loves me him who died heaven's gates to open wide he washed away our sin to let his little child come in yes, Jesus loves me Pray this with me, church. Yes, Jesus loves me yes, Jesus loves it the Bible tells me so Beloved, take a few minutes to respond with Christ, and we'll continue on.
