Let’s turn to Matthew 18. You can find a Bible below the seat in front of you if you don’t have one.
In 1938, Harvard Medical School began one of the most enduring research projects in history. The project is called “The Harvard Study of Adult Development.” They began with 724 people from a variety of demographic backgrounds. They’ve been tracking these people for over 80 years. The original researchers have all died. The original participants, most of them have died, but the research continues with children and grandchildren.
Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, in his book From Strength to Strength, describes this study as a “crystal ball of happiness.” The researchers try to figure out the predictors between what they call the “happy/well” and the “sad/sick.” They distinguish between predictors that are controllable and uncontrollable.
Here are some examples of what they called uncontrollable predictors: social class of the parents, having a happy childhood, having ancestors who lived long (genetics), and avoiding clinical depression.
Here are some examples of controllable predictors:
1. Smoking. Happy, healthy people generally don’t smoke.
2. Drinking — Excessive drinking and alcohol abuse predictably lead to sad/sick.
3. Obesity — Maintaining a healthy body weight can influence happiness and health.
4. Sedentary lifestyle — Staying physically active has huge implications on happiness and health.
5. Rumination and reactivity. People who avoid confronting problems, respond with unhealthy emotions, or focus in on problems obsessively, all tend to move towards sad/sick. The researchers recommend what they call an “adoptive coping style.” That is, facing problems honestly and responding properly.
6. Intellectual lethargy. That is, happy/healthy people keep their minds active, learning, reading, rather than sitting like a blob for hours in front of the television.
7. Unstable relationships. Happy/healthy people develop long-term, stable relationships. They have people in their lives who can count on them, and they can count on those people.
In one sense, there’s nothing new here. I think a lot of this is common sense. We know that certain things like this lead to negative results. Others can lead to more positive results. But there is one predictor that emerged from this 80+ year research that I think is really significant. Many of you have heard of this because it’s had a lot of air time. Anybody remember? What is the one major predictor of happiness and health? Relationships, good relationships.
Robert Waldinger, who is the current director of the research, summarizes it this way:
“The lessons aren’t about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this…study is this: good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period…The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”
Very interesting. But of course, as followers of Jesus, we know that there are more important things in life than merely the length of your days. You can actually live a really long, healthy life and invest it in things that absolutely don’t matter. As followers of Jesus, we’re aware of that, right?
But I do think what is significant about this study is that it points to an area that Jesus, several thousand years earlier, kept emphasizing: relationships matter. They matter physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Jesus’s fourth major sermon, as we move through the gospel of Matthew, is all about relationships.
He begins with the basis of relationships: childlike humility. We studied this the last couple of weeks in verses 1-9. Childlike humility, we defined as “the sanity of self-forgetfulness.” You literally cannot be mentally healthy without humility. Everything rests on that.
And when you hear the word humility, too many people think doormat, spineless, passive, compliant, indecisive — not humility. Jesus put a child in the midst to help us understand humility. Look at verse 3, Matthew 18:3,
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn [repent] 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” (Matthew 18:3-4).
Last week, we saw there are three ways Jesus communicates what it’s like to be like a child.
The second major section, we begin today. And that is the value of relationships, individual significance. Obviously, he’s been saying this, but now he just states it clearly in verse 10: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones.” Not one of these little ones.
To despise is to devalue, disregard, or disrespect. Childlike humility refuses to belittle or look down on children, and by extension, fellow believers. Are we clear on that? He’s using a child, a child in the midst. He’s talking about how the way you actually treat children matters, real physical children, but by extension, he’s pointing to children of God, all believers (and we’ll even talk a little later about how, by extension, there are applications beyond that).
Why? Why should we value them? He gives three reasons here. Throughout the Bible, there are many (i.e. “as image bearers,” all of that is in the Scriptures). Here, he focuses in on three.
1. They are privileged.
“For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10b).
In the ancient world, your value as an individual was contingent on your connections. Who’s your dad? Who’s your grandfather? What was their social sphere? Who were they connected to? That’s what determines whether you’re valuable or not. Jesus flips this completely. He puts a random child in the midst (with no resume, no social status) and says, that’s my MVP (most valuable player) in my kingdom. That kid.
Childlike humility, remember, is sanity. That is, it thinks clearly. It’s not deceived by things that generally deceive us. That is, the size of the person, their net worth, their TikTok followers, their appearance, their personality, or their accomplishments. We could go on and on and on.
Jesus is saying, when you see a child in the midst, and that’s the greatest, you are revealing that you are not duped by cultural status markers that tend to define who is valuable and who is not. Jesus is pointing to this snotty-nosed kid and saying, in reality, that kid is valuable. Why? Because he’s privileged. He gives two examples.
You see in verse 10, “their angels.” We don’t know if Jesus is referring to what we tend to call — what kind of angels? Guardian angels. Is Jesus teaching that each of us has a PA (a personal angel) that is constantly looking out for us? Like Clarence was for George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. The Bible never specifically says each individual believer has an individual angel.
We know so much about angels. We know from Daniel 10:13 that there are angelic beings who are over nations or realms of authority, which is fascinating.
We know from Revelation 1-3 that the message was to the angels of different churches. So, possibly angels are over different churches, depending on how you translate that word “angleos,” which can refer to a human messenger, like a pastor. He could be writing to pastors of those churches, or it could refer to an angelic being. We’re not sure.
But what we can be sure of here is that Jesus is saying that the angels of God, whether they’re playing zone defense or man-on-man defense, are deeply concerned for and involved in the well-being of this individual you think is insignificant. They are privileged, and he presses it further.
They have angels who see the Father’s face. Have you seen the Father’s face? Not yet. No one on earth has seen the Father’s face yet. Isn’t that really interesting? Jesus is speaking to a culture that measures people’s status based on who they’re connected to, and he says, you want to know who this snotty-nosed little kid is connected to? They have angels who are continually beholding the face of the One whose face you will never behold in this life.
This little one has “big ones” who are standing in the presence of the big One on behalf of them. They are privileged. Human wisdom isn’t going to pick up on that. That’s the sanity of self-forgetfulness, being able to pick up on things so we’re not judging based on jewelry and outfits and superficial accomplishments. They are privileged.
Before we look at the next one, you’ll notice in the ESV, verse 11 is in the footnote below:
“For the Son of Man came to save the lost.”
The reason for this is that the oldest manuscripts we have don’t include verse 11 here. They include it in Luke 19:10. So it seems obvious that at some point it was added here and doesn’t belong there. But it’s still biblical. We know it’s in Luke 19:10. So we’ll still make that point, but it’s most likely not here.
1. They’re privileged.
2. They are pursued.
Look at verse 12.
“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” (Matthew 18:12)
Let’s do a thought experiment. Jesus called us to think.
If you were to disregard another believer, whom might that be? Don’t answer out loud. Thought experiment. And don’t point towards someone. Is it someone who has hurt you, disappointed you? Someone who maybe has different political views than you? Someone, maybe, who’s been very publicly deconstructing and expecting everyone else to, in an annoying way? Someone who has a public reputation as a follower of Jesus, but you know her well, and it doesn’t match her private life? Do you have somebody in mind?
Jesus here is not saying that you need to agree with that person, or that you need to emulate that person, but that you must not disregard that person, devalue that person, disrespect that person. Why? Well, here, because the Father doesn’t.
The Father is like a shepherd who has 99 sheep, and one goes astray. He doesn’t say, “Well, I’ve got 99 still. What’s one?” He doesn’t write off sheep. He actually sent Jesus to go after the one. This is why he came. So many examples of this we could give. Let me just give you one.
Have you noticed that Jesus never did mass healings? Which seems to me would be very efficient. You walk into a crowd, I sense a lot of you are sick, a lot of you have different struggles, disabilities, or whatever. Healed! All of you! Very economical as far as time. Jesus didn’t do that. There was only one mass healing where he healed 10 lepers, and what was the point of that? Only one came back and gave thanks.
Now he did preach to groups, we’re not minimizing that, but there’s something about his care for the one. He is concerned for the one who is lonely, the one who is straying, the one who keeps wandering off, the one who is stubborn, the one who is self-righteous, the one to your left and to your right. Look at verse 13:
“And if he finds it [that one sheep], truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray” (Matthew 18:13).
I would suggest we know what that feels like on a very mundane level. If you lose your keys, or your wallet, or your phone, and you’re frantically going through the house looking for one of these, and your wife says to you at that time, “What is the deal? You know where 99% of your things are. You know where your house is. We’re in it. You know where your car is. It’s in the garage. You know where your clothes are. Why are you worried about that one thing?” Would that be helpful? No, not good timing.
If you can feel what that feels like to lose something very, very valuable and then multiply it by a million, you get a sense of what God is communicating here: his heart for the one and his potential joy when the one is found. They are pursued. The love of Jesus is after them.
So they are privileged. We value them because they’re privileged. We value them because they are pursued.
3. We value them because they protect.
Verse 14, he says,
“So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:14).
In essence, Jesus is simply saying we don’t write Christians off because the Father doesn’t. And Jesus says this in so many different ways. Listen to these words of Jesus, John 10:27.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish [the Greek there is super strong, ‘they will never ever perish forever’], and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all [even the sheep who stray; he is greater than all], and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one” (John 10:27-30).
They are protected. So we value every little one because they are privileged, they are pursued, and they are protected.
Here’s the question we want to wrestle with as we apply this word: How can we grow as individuals and as a church in valuing each individual? I want to suggest three things that we can all work on.
1. Start with yourself.
About a week ago, I was reading through Exodus, and I was really caught up with the life of Moses. If you look at the life of Moses, especially early on, you can get two totally contradictory perspectives. If you think about it, there are three episodes in his early life:
Episode One: abandoned
He was abandoned as a baby, put in a basket on the edge of the Nile in the reeds.
Episode Two: alienated
He tried to intervene in a conflict where an Egyptian taskmaster was beating on a Hebrew slave. He intervened, and he ended up killing the Egyptian. The very next day, that Hebrew slave asked, “Are you going to kill us too?” So he goes from being abandoned to being alienated. Like, he doesn’t fit anymore, in the Egyptian culture or the Hebrew culture. And he flees, which leads to episode number three.
Episode Three: aimless
In Exodus 2:15, he’s sitting by a well in Midian. The picture is that of a man who is aimless, has no connections, no purpose, the wheels have come off of his life. That’s one way to look at the early life of Moses. Write him off. That’s not the way God looks at it.
If you look at it through the eyes of grace, you see, although he was abandoned, he was rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. Then, even when he intervened and was alienated, he was trying to rescue the Hebrew slave. It didn’t end well, but he rescued that slave. Then, even when he’s sitting at the well in aimlessness, immediately, Jethro’s daughters came to water their animals, and they were driven away. He intervened, and he rescued them. Have you seen a pattern? I know it’s subtle.
Keep going, in Exodus 2:23, God hears the cries of the Israelites. Their cry for what? Rescue from slavery. Do you know anybody who has experience in rescuing? How about Moses? Someone whose early life was one of abandonment, alienation, and aimlessness becomes one of the greatest rescuers in all of history. That’s what God does.
How does this affect the way we view people as significant? Here it is.
If you have no story of grace for yourself, you will not be able to envision grace for others.
It will seem impossible. Let me give you a New Testament example. Same thing. Paul writes Titus, and in Titus 3:2, he admonishes Titus “to speak evil of no one.” In other words, don’t devalue anyone. Avoid quarreling. Be gentle. Show perfect courtesy toward how many people? All people. Yikes.
Now, be careful here because Paul is not recommending some kind of spineless politeness, simply going through life being nice and not standing for anything. That’s not what he’s saying. Read the whole letter. He makes very controversial statements and stands.
He is saying the way you do that matters. If you are doing that at the expense of devaluing people, you’re not getting it. So Paul, “How do I do that? He annoys me. She drives me crazy.” So Paul’s going to give us a very practical method. Verse three,
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another” (Titus 3:3).
Oh, how is that supposed to help me? Look at verse four:
“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, [he gave us what we deserved. Is that what it says?] he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” (Titus 3:4-6).
When we begin to see ourselves through the eyes of grace (which is part of the sanity of humility), it transforms the way we view others. We can begin to envision them, either now or potentially, as experiencing grace. We don’t devalue them because we know he didn’t give us what we deserved. I hope they don’t get what they deserve. I hope that they get grace.
Start with yourself.
2. Ask for wisdom.
One of the most difficult challenges in valuing a brother or sister, especially one who is wandering, is knowing when to pursue or when to give space.
In the parable we’re looking at today, Jesus is describing the Father as leaving the 99 and going after the one. But Jesus told another parable in Luke 15 about a father who had a prodigal son who demanded his inheritance, abandoned his family and father, and went off into what is described there in Luke 15 as “reckless living.” Does the father immediately pursue him? Not until after he repents, and then he runs to him.
If you put these two parables together, you can see there’s a time to go, and there’s a time to let go. Still praying, still valuing, still concerned, but giving space. Not badgering, not stalking. So how do we know when to do which? This is why we need to pray for wisdom. Here are a couple of things we might need to consider:
One is, what is my relationship to this person? What is his age? That would change things, right? As a parent, I’m going to pursue my 16- year-old different from my 21-year old. Also, I think we need to think about our personalities. If I am naturally passive/super laid back/let go/chill, or if I am hyper-controlling/helicopterish, then I may need to prayerfully push against my natural tendency.
The laid-back person may need to move out of his comfort zone and move toward that person. Go into the mountains. Pursue. The hyper-controlling person may need to back off and give space. Slow down. I’m seeking the Spirit’s leading and wisdom from above.
I know in my own life there are times where I’ve gone after someone, perhaps in the flesh, probably shouldn’t have gone then. There are other times, probably more, that I should have gone but didn’t. It’s one of the reasons we need to live in community and seek wisdom.
You can apply this on a very mundane level. In your marriage, there’s a time to raise a difficult/important topic that you really need to talk about, but it may not be right now. I had a spiritual gift early in our marriage to be able to bring up topics at the very wrong time, in an annoying way.
Part of knowing when to go and when to wait applies even right down to the most mundane relational issue. When do I reach out to a friend who’s struggling and say something? When do I quietly pray and encourage? God give us wisdom.
We could apply this on a high-level, missional level. Like, there are whole movements within evangelicalism that are either characterized by reaching out or not. For example, the Seeker Church movement. Are you familiar with that?
It’s kind of died down recently, but for a long time, it was proposing that you design every worship service not for Christians but seekers, for the lost. So sermons, you don’t do what we’re doing here and methodically go through scripture. No one unsaved person is going to be interested in that. You choose everything based on what the lost would want.
The positive there is, you have a heart for the lost. The negative is, what happens when they’re found? How are they going to grow? How are they going to be equipped so that they can actually go and do what they’re called to do?
But then a church like ours, that puts the accent on teaching, can fall off the cliff on the other side and lose our passion for the lost. So God give us the mind of Christ, the wisdom to know when to go, when to wait, and how to do that well.
One more, and this is a big one:
3. Courageously go for more joy.
This past week, Dr. Alan Noble wrote a piece entitled “Dealing with the Youth Loneliness Crisis: Why Young People Need Courage.” He highlights some of the latest research on the impact of social isolation, specifically on young people.
He laments the way kids who are raised on the internet are getting what he calls a “constant dump of information” that the “world is an incredibly dangerous and hostile place.” Which is going to slide you one way or the other, like toward you becoming hostile yourself to fight that, or more often into isolation, more and more into the online world. Many, many distract themselves through doom scrolling, game playing, YouTube watching — hour after hour. Connecting with real people in the real world is risky.
Noble asks this question: “What can we do to encourage young people to break out of social isolation and inhibition?” I would argue this is not a young people problem alone. I think we need to ask that question for all of us. What can we do? This was his answer:
“I believe young people [and let’s apply that to all of us] need to cultivate the virtue of courage in order to lean into who they were created to be.”
Cool, that’s a mouthful. He is saying you will never fully understand who you were created to be if you don’t intentionally develop the virtue of courage. Why? Because relationships are risky. Like, it is risky to meet a new friend. It is risky to ask out a girl. It is a risk to reach out to someone who has gone astray. It is risky to read your Bible with your coworker. It is risky to share the gospel with a non-Christian.
You can feel the risk in our text. Look at verse 13: “And if he finds it…” What does that mean? He may go after a sheep and not find it. He may go up into the mountains searching and get caught in the storm and get hurt, or lose his way.
There is a level of uncertainty to those words, but look what Jesus says next:
“And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more…” (Matthew 18:13a).
He rejoices over it more. He rejoices more. He rejoices, how much? More, more.
North Hills Church, if you want to live a boring, happy-ish life, then make your life all about you. Play it safe, focus on your fears, pursue your comfort, and write off anybody who doesn’t agree with you or who annoys you. Write them off!
\But if you want more joy—more joy—the kind that rejoices more, that Jesus is talking about here, pray for the one who doesn’t want to be prayed for, and when God says go, go for the one who maybe doesn’t want to be pursued. Care for her. Send a word to her or him, and yes, you will probably get hurt.
I know generally when we talk about church hurt, it is typically from the perspective of the wanderer. Someone who used to be deeply embedded in the church, was hurt, and now is on the peripheral or straying, and that’s real. But I believe there is an indescribable level of hurt that can come from caring for someone who doesn’t want to be cared for.
Many of you know what I’m talking about. Praying for someone who doesn’t want to be prayed for. Longing for someone who has chosen a self-destructive lifestyle of addiction or bitterness or anger or hostility or whatever. And you long for them. “There’s so much more for you!” They can’t see it. They don’t want it.
Often, when you reach out to them, they twist whatever you do. If you say something, it was wrong. If you don’t say something, it’s wrong. If you pursue, you’re nagging, stalking, “You bigot!” If you don’t pursue, “You don’t care!” Yes, the risk is great.
Some of you are thinking, “Are you trying to convince us not to do this?” What I’m trying to do is be realistic, that doing what Jesus does cost him his life. This wasn’t a game for him. But look what he did for us: He gave us everything, and he’s calling us to do the same.
Yes, the risk is great. It’s far safer to live for yourself in the short term. But Jesus is saying, there’s joy in “them their hills.” More joy, more joy. Do not despise one of these little ones. Relationships matter. Let’s pray.
Father, we are all in different places. Right now, your Spirit is pursuing some of us because we are wandering, we are straying, we are questioning, we are in some ways fleeing, and you are pursuing. So Lord, we pray for all those whom your Spirit is calling out to right now to come, come. We pray that this morning would be a day of coming to you.
We pray that we could see your heart for the lost, for the lonely, for the fearful, for the failure. You don’t write us off. We pray for many of us who ache for loved ones, for friends. It’s so much easier just to write them off. Some of them we can actually reach out to, and some of them we cannot. Some of them, we need to wait. But we are trusting that your Spirit would first of all produce this compassion, this love that we have experienced for others.
Give us patient hearts and kind words, not compromising convictions. But we’re here. And when you say go, we’re willing to go. Lord, we beg you that we would be a Church that reflects the Father’s heart for the one. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.
