Beware of Offending the Little Ones

So Matthew chapter 18, verse number one, the Bible says this. At the same time Jesus came, at the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him. And set him in the midst of them. And said, verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

So there’s no way for any person to get through the pearly gates. No way for anyone to be forgiven of sin and receive eternal life unless they come to God like a child. Lord, I don’t have anything, I don’t know anything, I can’t brag of anything, I’m weak. You have to do it all. That’s the only way, that humility that a child knows innately. We’ve already covered that last Sunday.

We continue in verse number five, the Bible says this, or verse four, whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child the same as greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee. It is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.

It is better for thee to enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Now I’m gonna pause here and say one thing. I dare say that most people, even with the Lord’s exhortation here in verse nine, verse eight and nine, if it really came down to brass tacks and that was what was required, it was either your hands, your feet, your eyes or heaven, probably 95 out of 100 people would choose their hands and feet in their eyes.

That’s just, I think that’s just a fact. Verse 10, take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say unto you that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my father which is in heaven. Such an interesting verse, is it not? Verse 11, for the son of man has come to save that which was lost. How think ye? If a man having 100 sheep and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the 90 and nine and goeth into the mountains and seek of that which is gone astray?

And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the 90 and nine which went not astray. Even so, it is not the will of your father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. Would you pray with me? Our Lord, thank you once again for the opportunity to look into your word.

Lord, we confess that we only scratch the surface of your word, but Lord, we do desire to do that today. So Lord, would you help us? Would you be our instructor and our illuminator? Would you help our minds and our hearts to be inclined to your word, to be ready to hear? Lord, take away, I pray, all distractions from your people, things that are put there to take our attention from you, Lord, for what you have to say.

And Lord, I pray as well. Lord, there is satanic activity all around us that is invisible. And I ask you, Lord, to protect your people. Protect everyone here from the attacks and wiles of Satan that try to get into our mind and our heart to dissuade us, even as we read in this passage from you, from your will and from your word. So help us, protect us, and guide us in our study this morning.

Lord, if there be a person among us who does not know the Lord Jesus Christ and does not have eternal life as a sure fact, prick the heart of that person, I ask you, Lord. Help us now as we look at your word in Jesus’ name, amen. The topic of these 14 verses is, you can pull it down to one basic thing, and that’s little children, little children.

Now we’ve already covered the first four verses in which the Lord takes a little child and sets the child in the midst of the disciples, which is the disciples are the big dogs, the big shot, the big shots in this world. They’re the people whose names are actually written in scripture. They’re bigger than any president or any governor or any king. The names of the disciples, and we’re not even to the Lord Jesus himself, whose name can’t be compared to anyone else, but these are some of the greatest men in history as far as in God’s estimation.

And yet the Lord takes those and sets a child right in the middle of them to serve as an example, a humbling and humiliating example of faith and an example of what is required for a person to come to Christ in the right disposition. And you know, little kids have an advantage that the Lord points out here, and just to reiterate a little bit from last week, and this is why the Lord uses children as examples to adults, children have the right disposition and the right view of themselves that makes them kind of ripe already for Christ, if that makes any sense.

And I mean that in kind of the natural way. In other words, they haven’t yet developed the hardened heart and the firm wrong convictions that adults often have over time. And you know, if you have children or you’ve ministered to children, there is absolutely a difference in disposition from a young child as they age, their attitude and tone towards spiritual things changes naturally, I’m just referring to naturally.

They have this kind of naturally kind of sensitive and humble disposition, and this is what the Lord is describing here. But once they lose that, you don’t get it back. Once you lose that, once a child loses that, it’s very difficult to regain. In fact, it is so difficult that the Lord uses this to adults who must somehow get that disposition back in order to come to Christ in the right heart.

So basically you can’t come to Christ as an adult, you gotta come to Christ as a child. You can’t come to Christ with all your knowledge and wisdom and all your righteousness and all your experience and all those things that we boast to one another of, you can’t come to him with any of that. You come to him empty, you come to him as a child. And that’s why the Lord uses it as an example.

But once a child loses that, that is a difficult thing to regain. And it is actually a huge stumbling block and hurdle for many adults when they are called to come to Christ. Because they don’t wanna humiliate themselves in that way. They don’t wanna put aside all the things they’ve learned in their life and all the ideas they’ve entertained and accepted that might be wrong. They don’t wanna do that.

They don’t wanna acknowledge that they’re sinful and that they’re hopeless and weak. They don’t wanna do that. I mentioned a psychic medium that we talked to yesterday in our evangelism. And you know what, you could go so many directions. You go to the Old Testament passages about necromancy and communicating with the dead and spirits and all these kinds of things. And I actually did bring some of those things up, but really the takeaway from that conversation was here was a lady who was just totally and completely convinced of her own righteousness.

Now that righteousness might look different than what we would describe in a church setting, but at the core, it was the same thing. It was the same thing. That’s the kind of thing that adults are loathe to put aside to come to Jesus. And so the Lord uses children as examples. Now as we continue reading in verse number six, it says this, and we’re gonna spend a lot of time in verse six, but it says, but whoso shall offend one of these little ones.

Now let me just give you a reminder of the definition of offend. Offend, again, does not mean that you say something ugly about someone’s dress or the color of their suit or whatever that they don’t like. That’s not what we’re talking about when we talk about offend. That’s the way we use it, but that’s not it. The word offend means you cause this offender to cause them to stumble.

You lay a stumbling block before them is what we’re talking about. And it’s easy when we lay a stumbling block before another person to say, well, that’s their problem. The Lord does not say that’s their problem in this passage at all, rather the opposite. So that’s what we’re talking about when we see the word offend causing a child to stumble. And this is where it’s really important because again, when you have a child that is as the Lord describes, naturally humble, like a little child, right?

That’s the humility when you look at the verse, verse number three, humility in verse three and four is the specific characteristic the Lord is aiming at here. But if through a stumbling block that is put there by another, a child loses that, the Lord takes great exception. He is very displeased with that. Because again, once that characteristic that the Lord is pointing out is gone, it’s gone.

Then to get to that point again, it takes a lot of the grace of God and patience of God to bring that person to that point again. Because again, adults are not naturally going that direction at all.

So we go to verse five, look what it says. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me, verse six, but whoso shall offend one such little child. Notice there’s the same structure there. So the idea of receiving a child is set in contrast to offending or causing a child to stumble. So to receive a child, it would be the idea of helping that child along rather than tripping them up.

And this is specifically in the context of faith, but I’ll get to that in a second. So to receive a child is to help that child along in the context of faith. Now, the reason I wanna get the context right is because that’s the whole story here. That’s the whole story. When the Lord talks about children in this case, notice what he says in verse six, verse six, whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me.

So that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a child’s relation to Jesus. You with me? So that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a child’s relation to Jesus. You with me? Not just general life, but specifically his relation to Jesus. Now we know there’s a lot of kids that experience a lot of very, very evil things at the hands of adults. We know that. That are just wickedness just in this world, right?

We know that. But although these things definitely apply to those cases, that is not exactly what the Lord is aiming at. The Lord is aiming at those things as it relates to the child’s potential faith in Christ, that particular thing.

So to receive a, notice what it says in verse five, whoso shall receive one such little child, notice the one such, we’ll get to that in a second, little child in my name receiveth me. Now notice the word in my name. Now except for these children that are in Matthew chapter 18, these children are not gonna meet Jesus in this life, right? Just like we haven’t met Jesus in this life.

So that’s why the Lord says in my name. And what that means is that when we receive a child, anytime we do something in scripture that says in my name, in Christ’s name, we are standing in the place of the Lord Jesus speaking for him. In other words, we’re representing him. That’s what it means. If I sent my daughter to go to the bank to make a deposit or something like that, she’s probably thinking, you don’t know what you’re talking about because she worked at the bank.

But if I was to do that, I could say I’m sending her to do that and she’s gonna make the deposit and she’s gonna do it as if she was I, she was standing in my place. That’s what we’re talking about here. So this receiving a child in the name of Christ means that I am standing as a representative of the Lord Jesus, receiving that, bringing that child to Jesus.

I stand in his place. What a responsibility. I and you, all of us who have any interaction or influence with children at all, as a Christian, we stand in that representative place. That’s kind of what’s being described here for our children. That alone should strike a sense of fear in us. That is a profound responsibility and it is a responsibility like we see in the passage for which we’re gonna give an answer.

It is a serious matter. We receive a child as if we were he. Receiving a little child in Christ’s name, that is bringing a child close to Jesus in his name, that can have a profound impact upon that child in adulthood. Now think of Cooper. Just so happened, Cooper, I had no, I totally forgot until you pulled up that Cooper was gonna be here. Like Cooper, Sister Rita takes care of Cooper a lot and Sister Rita stands.

Cooper has no idea at all. He has no clue, but Cooper views Miss Rita in the place of the Lord Jesus because all those things about Christ, he can’t quite fully get. But he has a living, breathing person who is receiving him in the place as a representative of the Lord Jesus. Right? So he’s looking at his grandma, Sister Rita, and he’s looking at her kind of in that way, even though he knows that Sister Rita’s not Jesus, but he’s looking to her for that guidance.

And that is a powerful influence and effect upon a child. Now as a child, it might be a little ambiguous and cloudy as dealing with kids is often kind of hard because kids get easily confused and those kinds of things. They don’t understand everything. But that child is not gonna be a child forever. That child will become an adult.

And during this stage in life, like Cooper’s stage as an example, the child provides no benefit to the church. They’re not gonna give an offering. If we receive them, they’re not gonna give an offering. They’re not gonna be in a place of service. They’re not gonna be anything like that, you know, like an adult would because it’s just a child.

So we don’t receive a child for the benefit that that child provides, but for Christ, for no other reason than the fact that Christ’s, as we see in this passage, his eyes upon that child. Now imagine you receive a child and you encourage a child toward the Lord Jesus as a child and that child has a positive experience. He looks at you, she looks at you, and she sees somebody who exemplifies the Lord Jesus, somebody who talks like and walks like and acts like the Lord Jesus.

That association with the Lord Jesus is going to help that child in adulthood. And that’s gonna shape that child’s view of Christ. Because remember, you’re representing Christ in his name. So that in adulthood, you know what, and this is real, you all know, even if you came to the Lord Jesus Christ as an adult, you probably remember if you had them in your life, some positive experiences from believers in your life who received you as the Lord Jesus in his name.

That’s a good thing. I think that’s a reason, humanly speaking, why a lot of people come to Christ as adults. It’s because of those things. It seems so difficult and it seems so, it requires so much patience at the time, but it yields fruit later.

That potential impact is enormous. It can shape a kid’s view of Christ in adulthood and can directly affect whether that child as an adult will then receive Christ. We need to take this thing seriously. You say, well, someone might be like, I don’t have a kid. All my kids are gone. I don’t have any grandkids or whatever. You might say, I don’t have any influence over children.

Oh, yes, you do. Oh, yes, you do. If you’re a grandparent, you have this what we’re describing here in your life. If you have a relationship with your grandchild. If you have children, this most directly and immediately applies to you and to me. But even the kids that are in this church, even kids in your extended family, we’re about to have Thanksgiving, right? And after that’s gonna be Christmas time, right?

That’s oftentimes where families get together. I have family members that have children and they know, they know very well, they have been informed of their parents that we’re the crazies.

Can I get a witness? No, they have. You know how we know because our kids have come and told us. Does that upset us? Not at all, not at all. Our kids have come and told us.

And that’s perfectly okay. But now that that has been established, has nothing to do with anything we did, but now that that’s been established, when my siblings’ children come, now I represent the Lord Jesus Christ to them.

And almost all of us have some sort of interaction and influence in that way with these little kids. You might be the only positive influence of someone who receives that. Now, that doesn’t mean necessarily you carry your Bible and you give them a sermon, it doesn’t necessarily mean it, but you, in their mind, you represent them. You represent Christ, rather, and they know that. So that interaction you have with them is gonna be profound.

We need to do our best to represent the Lord Jesus Christ, well, to these kids. Well, they’re just kids. That is the wrong thing. That is the opposite of what the Lord is saying here. They are just kids, but they are valuable to the Lord Jesus.

And he is going to, we’re gonna give an account for it. Now notice verse six. This is really the bread and butter of what I wanna say this morning. So in contrast to receiving a little child, there is also a negative influence. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

The Lord’s just speaking hyperbolically, yeah? This is the Jesus people don’t really like. This is not the pastel Jesus. This is the masculine Jesus whose words never fall to the ground without meaning. The Lord means this. I’ll explain to you in a minute. This is violent. Now you might not know what a millstone is. Some of you that have been in, like I know sister Pam, she’s actually ground wheat.

I don’t know if you actually, do you actually use a millstone exactly? No, it’s not a thing. That’s kind of a dated thing. But in some countries, Cambodia is one of them, they would grind rice in that way. And you’re talking about, there’s different sizes, but you’re talking about a large stone. And it has the, the millstone is the bottom portion, right? And then they have a stone on top and you do this, right?

And the grain falls into the hole and it spreads out and it grinds it up and the powder comes out the side. We might compare it to tying a cinder block to somebody’s leg and throwing them in the lake, right? But worse, because this is around their neck and it’s a lot heavier. This is violent. This is not the way, not only that, but this is a violent end by drowning, which is in many people’s estimation, the worst way to die.

And the Lord says, it’s better. It’s better. Speaking as a man, I can’t think of, I literally can’t think of anything that would be, literally anything like having surgery, probably having a baby. I’ve never had one, but from what I hear, I don’t know, Anna, in a few months, in a bunch of months, you can tell me whether this is true or not. I think I’d rather have a baby than have this done to me.

The Lord says this is better than a millstone hanging, hanged about the neck and cast into the sea. Now again, let me, let me say something here. Verse six is one verse that is often appealed to when you talk about crimes that are committed against children, and rightly so. It’s definitely applies to that for sure. And here’s notice, if children are harmed by adults, they ought to be dealt with in the most severe way possible.

That is no joke. And I’ll just, I’ll go one step further. If that has happened to you and you haven’t told anybody, you need to go tell somebody. You need to let somebody into that because that’ll help you heal. There are people here that can help you.

Those people that do that need to be dealt with according to the law. That’s a serious matter. But let me say this. But the context of this passage is not the general harming of children. It’s specifically that harm that touches on their relationship to Jesus. That’s what Jesus is talking about.

Now there are at least two ways that we might cause kids to stumble. Verse six. Let me read it one more time. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me. There’s two ways that we might offend people. I’ll call it, if you’re writing it down, I’ll call it the direct offense and then the indirect offense.

There are people in the direct offense, what I mean by this is there are people in the world that will actually and literally try to dissuade children from believing in Christ. They actively seek to do that. And this is particularly true, not so much here, although it does exist among religions in families and things like that where there’s a different religion in the family and a child is open to the gospel or something like that.

That does happen here, but it is profoundly true on the mission field. We found as missionaries, Cambodia has a lot of young kids, a higher percentage of younger kids and they are everywhere. Louis knows been to mission fields. They’re everywhere, they’re running around everywhere and they are devious, I mean devious kids, devious kids. But some of them are just as sweet as sugar. They are so, so sweet and fun to be around.

They will mock you and then they will love you and it’s just great, it’s great. I actually learned to work with kids. I’m not even that great at it, but I learned to work with kids from those kids on the mission field and it’s a lot of fun. But you know what we found on the mission field that many, many, many, many, the greatest majority of kids were very willing to listen to the gospel.

Almost all of them, almost all of them without exception. We found what the Lord is saying about the disposition of a child, humility, like we see here, was true, just statistically.

And we saw it illustrated over and over again. But then, very often, there would be, usually it was a grandmother or it’d be an aunt, sometimes a parent that after that child had heard about Jesus or after that guardian knew that that child had given any attention to what we were saying, they would immediately try to come and pluck the seed out of that child’s heart.

And sometimes they would mock the child, sometimes they would slander us to dissuade the child and say all these rumors about Christians and they don’t honor their parents and all these falsehoods. And sometimes they would just plainly prohibit the child from having any association with us to turn that child away from the gospel because we cannot have one of our kids who is, we’re a Buddhist family, we cannot have one of our kids follow this Jesus stuff.

That is not gonna bode well in our family. Cannot have that. It was usually due to some personal fear or some sort of aversion that that parent or that guardian had and just like that, that humility, that tenderness that Jesus is referring to is gone, vaporized, it’s done.

And you know the next time we would go to where that child lives, we’d be avoided like the plague. Does that have eternal consequences? Yes. Does Jesus care about those eternal consequences? Yes. Very much so, profoundly. Will Jesus hold those people to account?

I’ll just say this, I don’t wanna be that guy. I don’t wanna be that guy. But the reality is although that happens and probably happens in a lot more places than we’re really aware of in the privacy of homes and families, what we often see more often is the indirect kind of offense.

Now remember what we saw in verse five. Whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receive with me. This idea of representing the Lord Jesus Christ, being a representative for him.

We who are parents and we who are people of influence, even if we’re not the parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, whatever, do in some way represent the Lord to a child whose understanding of God is not completely formed. So if we as God’s representations to them mistreat them, it will have a profound effect upon them. Even if we’re not saying no, you can’t believe in Jesus. No, you can’t go to church.

No, you can’t read the Bible. Even if we’re not saying that indirectly because of our representative place, it can have still have a very negative effect upon the child.

There are many people who set the name Christian, if you look at me here, cause you’ll have to get this part, the Christian example to their kids, grandkids, whatever, to those kids who know no better and in the place of Jesus mistreat those children.

Treat them with disdain. Use foul language around them. Commit sin where their kids are very well aware of it. Slap them around, degrade them, demean them. Degrade them, degrade them. Demean them.

And this is as a representative of the Lord Jesus and we could say, we could excuse it. We could say, well, no, no, I didn’t say I was representing Jesus. Listen, if you claim to be a Christian, you are that. Now someone else out in the world that does not make that claim, that might be a little bit different. But as far as someone who says, yeah, I’m a Christian and they know you go to church and all of those things, if you go home and you treat them, you mistreat them, there’s a, that’s a problem.

That is going to reflect upon their opinion of the Lord Jesus Christ. That will cause them to stumble. Listen now, please. That will cause them to stumble at Jesus.

Oh, listen church, there are so many, it grieves me to say it. There are so, so many people in Christian homes where mom and dad take them to church and treat them in such an ungodly way. It is wickedness. It is wickedness.

At church, they’re, play the part, you know, sing the song, dress up, all, all, you know, to the nth degree, hit the door, it’s another, it’s another story. That shouldn’t be. I want to say something, it will, it will cause our children to stumble at Christ.

You see, kids are not yet keen enough to understand that a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, whatever, who names the name of Christ, sometimes acts in ways that are contrary to Jesus Christ himself. They can’t make those distinctions.

They can’t make those distinctions. And so they connect the two. Now here’s the thing. One thing that really helps, one thing that really helps is if a person is in a, is in a family situation like that, where they have a parent that is a, that is a gross hypocrite who is, who claims to be a Christian and that kind of thing and mistreats the child, that’s bad.

But if that’s the only representative of Christ that that child can look to, that’s really, really bad because that’s the only opinion that they can form. But then there are some people who have another family member that is the real deal, that does love the Lord and does treat them right. And you know what that does? That creates a contrast so that even at that young age, a distinction is formed in that child’s mind and say, okay, well, they say they’re Christian and they say they’re Christian.

I like this one better. And they’re able to make that distinction, but for many kids, that’s not, they don’t have that second good influence there to tragic results, really. Now again, we can, as parents, it’s easy for us to justify ourselves and say, well, that’s their responsibility when they become an adult. And for sure, they will be responsible when they become an adult. And I have no doubt, no doubt about that at all.

But the Lord Jesus Christ himself is saying here that we will also be held to account for the stumbling block that we lie, we lay in their way. You know, we parents are good at justifying the mistreatment of our kids on the grounds of their bad behavior. That’s no grounds to mistreat your children. That’s no grounds to mistreat grandchildren or other kids in your life just because they act bad.

Kids are kids, they act bad. You deal with it in the right way and you move on. That’s not grounds for mistreatment. You see, that justification makes us feel a little bit better, but it is really irrelevant. You know, we can lose our temper and fly off the handle and hurt our children and treat them badly because they act bad, but we can’t do that. And we can say, well, they deserved it.

They had it coming. Well, maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. But you know what, the result’s the same. Therefore, listen please, we’re almost finished. We must resolve by the grace of God to treat our children or any kids over whom we have influence as we see our Lord treating them.

Even when they misbehave, even when they’re noisy, even when they’re difficult. Mark 10, verse 15 and 16 say this, “’Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive “’the kingdom of God as a little child, “’he shall not enter therein. “’And he took them up, the children, little children, “’in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.’” Is that the way we treat the children under our care?

Tender, compassionate, soft, guiding them, receiving them, blessing them. Now, let me speak, before we get to the end, let me speak to one other group of people here. There are probably some people in the, among us this morning, who you’re not the one who has mistreated a child under your care in the name of Jesus, but you are one who has been mistreated.

That’s a hard thing to get over because that connection is almost hardwired in the mind, especially at such a young age. I wanna tell you something though, this is one thing that, those that have learned to get past this problem of offense, here’s what they’ve learned. Jesus did not do that to you. Amen. He never does that to you. Someone with a mask of Jesus did that to you.

And that someone will be judged by him quite severely, but he did not do that to you. Jesus can still be trusted. He’s still tender, he’s still the one that can take up little kids that are now adults into his arms, and lay his hands on them and bless them.

If you can make that distinction, it’ll help you in how you view the Lord Jesus Christ. To know that he is a father to the fatherless, the one who takes in the orphans, who takes care of the widows. He is the one who is tender to little kids like that. There are bad representatives of Jesus. There are.

As an adult, you can, at least on a conceptual level, because you’ve grown up, and you can think and understand much better than when you were a child, but as an adult, you should at least be able to rationally and think, all right, was that Jesus, or was that just someone representing Jesus?

He can help you. Now look at verse number six again. There’s a certain gravity to this truth. Verse six says, but whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me that it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. So it’s better to be drowned with a millstone rather than to lay a stumbling block indirectly or directly before a child.

You know, as a person who offends children, if a person offends children and lays a stumbling block before them, We might do that in this life and see no ill effect. We do it, we mistreat them, and they grow up, and we just move on, and we forget all about it. But Jesus says that it were better if this calamity of the millstone were happened to that person rather than...in other words, in this life, maybe there’s no ill.

In this life, perhaps there’s no judgment. Maybe you die in a ripe old age. You don’t die at the bottom of a lake somewhere. But the Lord says, what is coming when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ is far worse than ending up at the bottom of a lake in this life. That’s what he’s talking about in verse 8 and 9 when he talks about cutting the hands, cutting the feet off, and the eyes.

You know, the thing is, people look at that and sometimes they misunderstand, and people have used this as a, you know, that we’re confused, as a reason to harm themselves. You can gouge out your eye, it doesn’t fix your other eye, and it definitely doesn’t fix your heart, does it? No, it doesn’t. But notice what he says at the end of that, talking about offenses, verse 8.

He says, and if thy eye offend thee, verse 9 rather, pluck it out, cast it from thee, it’s better for thee to enter into life with one eye than having two eyes to cast into hell fire. This is talking about that you have laid a stumbling block before yourself, but the truth is the same. Whether you lay it before another or lay it before yourself, cutting your hands and feet off are better than what’s in store if you miss heaven because of something like that.

That’s the whole point. That’s what’s being described here. The Lord’s trying to drive home, look, this matter of eternal judgment is a serious matter. We might think of it as something far off, but it’s not. It’s something that’s right in our lap, and the Lord’s going to, and He is intent. He uses these stark, violent illustrations on purpose. Verse 7, woe unto the world because of offenses.

Now he’s talking about laying stumbling blocks before children. For it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. You know what this tells me? The things that we read here that I’ve been trying to describe to you are not uncommon. They are universal. They are very common. Very common. The whole world is filled with it. The Lord pronounces a woe, which is a pronouncement of impending judgment because of it.

So I say, like in verse 7, woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. I say, again, don’t be that guy. If you have been that guy, if we have been that guy, you know what we need to do? We need to repent. When we close a service, you need to talk to God. Come down here, talk to God. Talk to God where you are. You need to talk to God and say, God, I have been a terrible example, and I have laid stumbling blocks before the people under my care.

You need to confess that thing, and then you need to go reconcile with that person. You need to go to that little kid and look in those little eyes, and you need to say, I have done wrong this way and this way and this way and this way, and I have not represented Jesus. That’s the only way to attempt to undo any of the damage. You had better humble yourself.

That’s what is required. That’s what we parents have to do. That’s what we have to do. That’s the only way to fix the damage, if it’s possible to fix. Now as we get down to the end here, look what it says, verse 10, rather. Take heed that you despise not one of these little ones. So now we’re not talking about offense. We’re talking about despising. You know what that means?

Look down. It’s very natural for adults to look down on children and devalue children. Don’t forget, they’re just adults in waiting. We got to treat them right. Even if we don’t lay a stumbling block before them, we should not view them in a way that is in that kind of condescending and disrespectful kind of attitude toward the children. He’s not talking about offending now. He’s talking about despising.

One is to cause a child to stumble. The other is to lightly esteem him. We should not lightly esteem children. And the reason is because in heaven, their angels do always behold the face of my Father, which is in heaven. That’s a curious verse. Isn’t that a curious verse? I can’t say I know exactly what this verse is talking about. I just take it at face value.

I will say this. Imagine you went to a school. And in that school, you saw a student sitting there dressed like all the other students, maybe the students five, six years old. But in the back in that classroom, you see four or five secret service agents with their sunglasses on and their earpiece in. And like they do, they’re standing in the back probably like this. That’s the law enforcement way to stand, hands at the ready, just standing there.

And you know those guys are there for that kid. What are you thinking? You’re thinking that’s probably somebody important. That’s probably a kid of somebody. The president, vice president, somebody important, right? And all of a sudden, that kid is not just another kid you might push to the side. All of a sudden, that’s a VIP in this room. This is what I think this is what the Lord is saying.

To him, and I know I don’t want to sound trite, but he is actually saying that in his sight, these kids are VIPs. He’s saying they have angels watching them and those angels have direct access to my father. That’s how important they are. We better not act lightly with them. These kids, Robert and Seth and Nathaniel, little Nathaniel here, and all these other ones, these ones in waiting, and all these other kids that we find, listen, they should be a value part of this church.

We ought to go out, you and I as individuals ought to go out of our way. And so that that kid, when Cooper leaves this church, when he can come on occasion, he ought to leave this church congregation saying, I love that place. People are so nice to me there. That’s what Jesus is saying to do. And lastly, verse 12, how think ye, if a man having a hundred sheep and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek of that which is gone astray?

And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Now this is the parable of the ninety and nine. This is a great parable, but actually the Lord said it to describe children. Even so, verse 14, it is not the will of your father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

That’s what he’s been talking about this whole time. You know, here’s what I want you to see, and we’re done. But David, you come on. Here’s what I want you to see. From start to finish, all this talk about laying stumbling blocks before children, not despising children and receiving children as in the name of Jesus, all of those things, you know what the Lord’s really worried about, worried, but what he’s concerned about, what his eye is upon?

That none of those little kids, not to a person, remember ninety and nine, one individual sheep went astray, was sought out, that not one child among us perish. Not one is mistreated. Not one stumbles. Not one has cause to reject the Lord Jesus Christ. Not one because the Lord is concerned over that individual child’s eternal welfare. That child is that little lamb, that one hundredth little sheep.

That’s that child. How has the Lord worked in your heart? How is he? How are you doing with your influence over these little ones in your life? Let’s pray together.