Christmas Eve Service – December 24 @ 4 p.m.
Let’s turn to Matthew 18. The British historian, Tom Holland, would not describe himself as an evangelical Christian. When he finished at Cambridge, he most likely would have been an agnostic. He loves the ancient history of the Bible but didn’t believe any of it, and generally sided against Israel or against Jesus with anyone who was opposing them.
He loved the power and glory of Greece and Rome. But as an award-winning ancient historian, he found the brutality and dehumanization, in his words, increasingly unsettling.
Two examples. When Caesar conquered the Gauls, he slaughtered a million and enslaved another million. The Spartans raised people custom-made for slavery, tortured them, and killed them indiscriminately.
Now in one sense, that’s not unusual. Every culture has had its slavery and brutality. But what struck Holland was the fact that these things did not just happen but were celebrated by the culture. And he began to be haunted by the question, why does he, as an agnostic, have a problem with this? Or more generally, why does everyone, pretty much, who grows up in Western culture think that things like rape and genocide are wrong?
Some might think, well, maybe it came from Greek democracy or the influence of Roman ethics or enlightenment values or evolutionary altruism. Did these social influences shape Western morality? But Holland slowly, reluctantly came to the conclusion that although there may be many influences, there’s only one primary source for why pretty much every member of Western culture, whether Christian or not Christian, values each individual. And that one primary source in his conclusion was Christianity.
In his book, Dominion, subtitled, How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, he covers many examples. I’ve shared a few in the past. I want to share a different one today, and that is the value of children. Holland writes,
“Across the Roman world, wailing at the sides of roads or on rubbish tips, dumps, babies abandoned by their parents were a common sight. Others might be dropped down drains there to perish in the hundreds. The odd, eccentric philosopher aside, few had ever queried this practice [hardly anybody questioned it]. Indeed, there were cities who by ancient law had made a positive virtue of it: condemning to death deformed infants for the good of the state. Sparta, one of the most celebrated cities in Greece, had been the epitome of this policy, and Aristotle himself had lent it the full weight of his prestige. Girls, in particular, were liable to be winnowed ruthlessly. Those who were rescued from the wayside would invariably be raised as slaves. Brothels were full of women who, as infants, had been abandoned by their parents.”
And with few exceptions, everyone simply took this kind of abuse and abandonment of children for granted until . . .
“Until [Holland writes] . . . the emergence of a Christian people.”
A Christian people. Christians began to transform the value people placed on the most vulnerable, people like Gregory of Nyssa who described the weakest and most vulnerable people among us (slaves, children, others) as having dignity, as being made in the image of God. He preached this in 375 A.D.
“Do not despise these people in their abjection [their low or downcast state]; do not think they merit no respect . . . Reflect on who they are, and you will understand their dignity. They have taken upon the person of our Saviour. For he, the compassionate, has given them his own person.”
Gregory believed you cannot worship Jesus and despise the vulnerable. His sister, Macrina, the eldest of nine siblings, would search the town dumping areas to rescue children, bring them home, and raise them.
So where did this compassion for the least of these come from? Short answer, Jesus. Jesus. Elevated the significance of every individual. And nowhere is this more evident than in his sermon on relationships. This is the fourth major sermon in the Gospel of Matthew. You can break this chapter down into four parts. The basis of relationships, childlike humility. The value of relationships, individual significance, the upkeep or maintenance of relationships progressive communication, the healing of relationships continual forgiveness.
Last week we began with the basis of relationships — childlike humility. We defined that as the sanity of self-forgetfulness. Two parts. Sanity has to do with an awareness. Childlike humility is aware of oneself, not in a self-loathing or in a self-exalting awareness. Not in a spineless doormat way, but a kind of sanity where we see God, ourselves, and others properly.
Childlike humility also has to do with not just awareness, but attention, a self-forgetfulness. Humility is not primarily focused on oneself. Humility is the key to mental health because to be humble is like going outdoors after a week of rain and seeing the sun, and experiencing that ahh — It’s not about me.
Gavin Ortlund summarizes this well, I want to read this again.
“Humility opens our eyes to the wonders all around us. It is sensitivity to reality, the turning of our narrow selves to the vast ocean of externality and ultimately to God himself. In this way, humility is, in every circumstance, the key to joy, flourishing, and life itself.”
Jesus describes humility as the very basis or foundation of relationships. And he illustrates this, as we saw last week, by using start-to-finish language. By start-to-finish, you can see in verse 3, he says, you cannot even enter my kingdom without humility. It not only begins the relationship, it defines the relationship. Verse 5,
“When you receive a child, you receive me.”
And it defines the relationship all the way into eternity, verses 8 and 9. Humility will keep you from experiencing eternal destruction, eternal hellfire. Jesus is describing in verses 1-9 two main characters, the humble and the harmful, that we will either be humble or harmful. And last week we applied that specifically to leaders on Ordination Sunday.
This week, we want to come back and cover some of the same terrain, but apply it to all of us more generally. Three ways we want to apply it. But before we start, I want to warn us that this passage is similar to, say, Ephesians 5, in that it’s easy to under or over spiritualize it.
When you look at Ephesians 5, the section on marriage, he’s talking about an actual husband and an actual wife are called to love and line up under one another. But it’s not just about that husband and wife, because their marriage points beyond them to Christ’s relationship in the church. So it is with Matthew 18, he puts an actual child in the midst. And he’s saying the way you treat that child is the way you treat me. And that child actually matters. So don’t over-spiritualize and write off the way you treat actual children.
But he compares that child to one who believes in me. So he’s pointing beyond that to all children of God, the way you treat one another. So you can see, don’t over-spiritualize, don’t under-spiritualize. You’re going to feel that tension as we walk through. And we’re going to do both. Let’s pray for help.
Father, by your Spirit, open our eyes so that we might value each child, each believer, each person — the very people we might be tempted to see as interruptions, hindrances, annoyances, useless to us — you see differently. Help us grasp this so that we might see the very basis of healthy relationships, we pray in Jesus’s name, amen.
Three ways we’re going to apply this.
1. We are called to be like children, to emulate children.
And this comes out in response to the disciples’ question, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Who’s the MVP, Jesus, of your kingdom? Most valuable person. And Jesus puts the child up, out in the midst, points to him. Verse 2,
“And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”
Notice we don’t just automatically enter this kingdom. We have to turn, which is the language of what? Repentance. Repentance. What are we turning from? Let me give you two examples.
When we turn toward childlikeness, not childishness — that’s bad. Childlikeness — that is good. When we turn, we are turning away from two things, primarily.
Thinking, we’ve got this. No, we turn from that and recognize that we are not trusting in our own ability to get into Christ’s kingdom or to get to God. To become like a child is to recognize that all our best efforts are not good enough.
This is the sanity of self-forgetfulness. God’s holiness is too far from us. My sinfulness is too deep within us. We need divine intervention. So the gospel of Jesus opens our eyes to two unexpected realities.
If you just get one or the other, if you just get the worst sinner part, you’re going to slip into despair. That’s not humility. Or if you just get the other, you’re just going to slip off into delusion. Of course I’m loved. Who couldn’t love me? Hello. Narcissism.
What true childlike humility is, is an awareness of both our deep need (We can’t get to God on our own) and his overwhelming love through Christ. Childlike humility embraces these two realities as we turn from self-sufficiency.
Self-sufficiency and cynicism. Paul Miller in his book, A Praying Life, explains,
“The opposite of a childlike spirit is a cynical spirit.”
Well, what is cynicism? Let me try to summarize some features of cynicism that you’ll see in two or three or four chapters of that book.
Scar tissue can form when we experience disappointment and hurt. It protects us from hurting but prevents us from living and loving. We become crusty, brittle, fragile.
As Alan Jacobs in his C.S. Lewis biography explains,
“Those who will never be fooled can never be delighted because without self-forgetfulness, there can be no delight.”
Cynicism is like scar tissue.
Authenticity. Cynicism is addicted to negativity in the name of authenticity. Cynicism thinks it is in the know. Everyone else is duped.
Cynics have unrealistic expectations that keep getting dashed and lead to weariness and ultimately to whatever.
No one can be trusted except my ability to discern. And then the big one.
Cynicism is the hiss from the serpent’s question in the garden, “Did God actually say?” It puts God on probation, always measuring the goodness of God based on the disappointments and difficulties of life. Miller summarizes,
“Cynicism looks reality in the face, calls it phony, and prides itself on its insight as it pulls back.”
So if child-like humility is turning from all of that. Then we can say, childlike humility looks reality in the face, recognizes the complexities, and humbles itself under the wisdom and goodness of God, pressing in rather than pulling back. Jesus is saying, everyone who does this is the greatest in my kingdom. As we turn from self-sufficiency and cynicism, we are becoming like children in the good sense.
2. We’re called not just to become like children, but to welcome them.
To welcome children. Look at verse 5.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”
Here Jesus points to a child and says there’s something significant about receiving or welcoming this little one. Chris and Jennifer Kaczor learned this the hard way. Chris explains,
“My university experience . . . was rich. I was a college athlete and editor of the campus paper. I discovered a love for philosophy and was thinking about going to graduate school. Life was great, an ocean of potential. And then I got a phone call that changed everything. Only one sentence of the conversation really mattered. ‘I’m pregnant.’”
Over the next few weeks, Chris raged and pouted. He assumed his life was over. In an article entitled, “The Myth of Vampire Children,” Chris writes this,
“I had bought into the myth that children are nothing more than a drain — a financial drain, an emotional drain, a dream-killing drain. I viewed children as little more than vampires sucking the lifeblood out of their parents.”
Thank you for not amening. Chris and his wife Jennifer went on to have seven kids and came to see every one of them, not as vampires, but as blessings. He writes,
“I thought that having a baby was the worst thing that could have happened to me. I could not have been more wrong.”
So why are children not vampires? They will suck your bank account dry. As my father so lovingly would remind us often, I’d be a rich man if it wasn’t for you guys. There are many reasons why they’re not vampires, but let me just give you one. James Smith.
“They are invitations to put on virtues like gratitude, [and there it is] humility, patience, and steadfastness.”
Children will empower, prompt, require you to put on these virtues like humility. And I realize that this can be a painful conversation for those couples who would love to have kids and have not been blessed with them, or some singles who would love to get married and have children, and that has not been given to them at this point. But it’s so interesting that Jesus, while he was on earth, never married or had natural children, but held them up as extremely valuable. Look at verse 5.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me,” Jesus says.
“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me”
Stop for a second. Jesus, yes, is referring to welcoming actual children, whether through birth, adoption, working in kidstuff, nursery, or a thousand other ministry ways. Yes, real children, welcome. But then he goes on to emphasize that he is also referring to children as believers. This is common in the Bible. Think of the children of Israel. Or think of in the New Testament,
1 John 3:1. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God. . . . Beloved, we are God’s children. . . .”
Ephesians 5.1. “Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children.”
When we repent and believe, we are adopted into God’s family through Jesus. And Jesus is saying in Matthew 18, the way we receive one another is the way we receive him. So it’s quite fashionable today to hear people say, I have no problem with Jesus, I love Jesus, I just have a problem with this church, a problem this people.
And Jesus is saying, time out. Can’t do that. Jesus is saying, if you don’t receive them, you don’t receive me. You can’t do that. That’s how much solidarity there is between Jesus and his people. Look at verse 6. He presses this a little further.
“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6)
What is a great millstone? Last month, a group of us were in Nazareth, and one of our teens — thank you, Jakob — was being the mule for the day and was pushing around this actual millstone that was used to crush olives. And these millstones could weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds, sometimes thousands of pounds. And Jesus is saying when you wake up tomorrow, if you have an option between causing a fellow believer to stumble or sin or tying a millstone around your neck, go with the millstone.
That’s how serious Jesus is about treating your brothers and sisters, no matter how well-known or unknown, significant or apparently insignificant they are. In Jesus’s mind, everyone is valuable. And it’s not unusual, like any good parent would say, you can’t harm my kids without harming me.
So we are called to be like children, emulate them. We are called welcome children. And then let’s press that point a little further.
3. We are called to protect children.
In his book, at times gut-wrenching and at times Invigorating, Bullies and Saints, historian John Dickson describes an accusation that initiated what he calls
“the greatest moral reckoning for the church in a thousand years, perhaps ever.”
The accusation came from Father Greene, a Catholic priest in Donegal, Northern Ireland. Father Greene went to Martin Ridge a semi-retired detective and accused a local man of trying to blackmail him with a false accusation of sexual abuse. But when the detective investigated the accusations, he found out they were true. Now I want to quote a part of what Dickson refers to this incident. But I want to warn those of you who are survivors, this is rough. So if you need to step out, feel free. Or if you need to block your ears and count to 40, total respect. Here it is.
“Martin Ridge’s investigations uncovered further allegations of misconduct, and in 1998 he arrested Father Greene. Suddenly, other witnesses came forward throughout Donegal. Greene was eventually sent to prison for raping and molesting 26 boys between 1965 and 1982. In a tragic reminder of the effects of these crimes, eight victims of clerical abuse are buried in the churchyard at Gortahork, Donegal, having taken their own lives.”
The horrors of these events were featured in a 1999 documentary. This helped trigger investigations and exposed abuse literally all around the globe. From the Boston Globe’s Spotlight Investigations in 2001 and 2003 to a Royal Commission in Australia, the largest of its kind entitled “Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse” in 2012. In the years that followed, no church, no denomination was exempt from this crime. Sports clubs, camps, schools, juvenile centers all had to face the unspeakable destruction of abuse.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat is accurate when he wrote this.
“No atheist or anti-clericalist, no Voltaire or Ingersoll or Twain could have invented a story so perfectly calculated to discredit the message of the Gospel. No external enemy of the faith could have sown so much confusion and dismay among the faithful.”
And the church has no one to blame but itself. I have spoken to survivors who were more traumatized by the response of leaders or lack thereof than by the actual abuse they experienced. It is an unspeakable horror to experience any kind of physical or sexual abuse, but it is unthinkable that the very ones commissioned by Jesus to protect the vulnerable would either act as predators or not do something radical to stop it or ensure that those perpetrators are charged.
When our reputation or the mission of the church are held above the safety of the most vulnerable among us, we have lost our way. And it’s time to grab a millstone.
Look where Jesus goes next. He’s not done. Verse 7.
“Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot cause you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if you’re eye cause you sin, tear it out and throw away, it is better to enter your life with one eye than with two eyes to be throw into the hell of fire.”
Can you imagine Jesus using any stronger language? And Jesus’s point is not that if you take an axe and you cut your hand off, you’ll have a better chance of getting into heaven and not going to hell. It’s not a physical point. The fact that you have one hand does not decrease your chance of going to eternal fire.
So what is his point? Think about it. Imagine going home this afternoon, putting your hand on a stump, grabbing an axe and cutting your hand off. Or doing it with your foot. Or taking a screwdriver and gouging out your eyes. Some of you are like, this is gross. That’s the point.
Jesus is saying, if you don’t think of eye-gouging as more pleasant than harming the little one, you don’t understand how much I value these little ones. It is gross, but abuse is gross. Harming vulnerable ones is gross! And Jesus is warning us, you can preach the gospel, you can sing beautifully, but if you don’t take care of the little ones, it’s all for naught. Undermines everything.
So if you’re wondering… Why does North Hills make such a big deal out of everyone who ministered to our kids, background checks, safety protocols, child safety training, I just want to help little kids. And if you’re wondering why we do that, it’s because we believe it is more pleasant to gouge out our eyes than it is to harm one of these little ones. That’s Jesus’s point.
In other words, there is no inconvenience, there is no discomfort, there’s no length that we need to go as ministers, pastors, volunteers, parents, friends, neighbors. There’s no extent that is not worth protecting the least of these. And childlike humility comes to that conclusion because it’s the sanity of self-forgetfulness. It’s not about me, my comfort, my convenience. God did not give you your strength, your intellect, your verbal skills to harm the vulnerable. He gave those to you so that you can emulate them.
Become like a child. Leave your self-sufficiency, your cynicism. Turn. Run to him. He gave them to you so that you would welcome children and protect children. Not harm. And that starts with little children, real children, and extends to all your brothers and sisters. This is the sanity of self-forgetfulness. We begin to see people as Jesus sees people. And this becomes the very foundation.
I know if you’re saying, well, I came to this series on relationships in Matthew 18. I want some tips. No, this is the foundation. If we do not see people as Jesus see people, everything else is for naught. I’ve had couples ask me, what’s the key to an intimate flourishing marriage? You might want to write this down, there are three keys.
1. Humility.
2. Humility.
3. Humility.
It really is the key. That’s why Jesus is hammering this at the beginning of this sermon. Because if we begin there, “God resists the proud. He gives grace to the humble.” What do we need? We need grace. God’s fueling favor is empowering, undeserved smile. That will enable us to do everything else. I’m not saying it’s the only thing we need. It’s the thing that allows us to welcome and receive everything else we need. This is true for friendships, roommates getting along, the way we disciple our kids, the way that we respond to one another.
So that’s on a very personal micro level, but even on a macro level, a society that ceases to value children is done. Finished. This is why in our culture we need strong child porn laws, protecting the unborn, fighting child trafficking, valuing child safety training. All of this flows from the heart of Jesus. And so you can see why an agnostic-ish historian like Tom Holland would look at history and say, well, how did children become valuable from a cultural perspective? It all goes back to Jesus.
Let’s pray. Father, you speak so strongly in this section. And we need your help even to receive it. To know what it means for us today as you call us to turn from our self-sufficiency and our cynicism. We pray, Spirit, that you would move among us, show us our need of you. And then as we turn from these and run to you, it’s going to change the way we think about others. It’s going to even change the way we think about those who are closest to us. Put such a value on them. We’re praying that you would give us the eyes of Jesus as we humble our hearts that we would see you, ourselves, and others the way you do, the way things really are.
And we thank you, Lord, where we have failed. May we not pull away in cynicism. May we run to you for grace. Thank you, Jesus, that you died and rose. That we can receive a strong word like this and know that you’ve given us everything we need for life and godliness. So Spirit, move among us as we respond in Jesus’s name, amen.
