So if you turn with me in your
Bibles to Mark chapter 9, some messages come fairly quickly
when you're seeking something from the Lord to His people. Some messages like this one today
have been laid on my heart for a number of years. It's over
10 years ago now that Lisa and I and our family went to India. I wasn't expecting to teach the
Bible, I was there as a dorm parent, Lisa was there as a teacher,
but within a couple of months of arriving in India, I ended
up teaching the Bible and in the providence of God I was teaching
Mark's Gospel and beginning about halfway through in this passage
we're looking at today. But the other tasks that we had
was that we had somewhere between 15 and 25 young girls, 13 to
14 years of age, and we were their dawn parents. So it meant
that we looked after them basically 24-7. And they were entrusted
into our care by their parents and obviously entrusted into
our care by the Lord himself. And so as you can imagine, the
verse that's at the end of our passage today was one that just
came around and around and around and caused me to wrestle and
struggle and just agonize over what does it mean to cause one
of these little ones who believe to stumble. It's a serious challenge,
isn't it? The Lord says that not many should
seek to be teachers because they'll be judged more severely. Within
12 months of being in India, I was teaching the Bible to somewhere
between 60 and 80 students, as well as looking after the ones
in our dorm. And they were little ones and
they were vulnerable. And I was a big one and I was
responsible. And it was heavy, it was really
heavy. And it's one of the verses that the Lord forced again and
again upon my heart to actually ask what it is. to cause little
ones to stumble. What is the truth? What is it
that we must do who stand and speak to people in God's name
and are commanded by God to declare the whole counsel of God, that
we might be free of the blood of all men, as Paul describes
his ministry in Acts 20. And so that's what is before
us today. Mercifully we have a great context to look at all
this in. And again and again in Mark's
Gospel the context is the Lord Jesus as a gracious saviour,
the Lord Jesus as a wonderful and honest friend to his disciples. And again and again we have the
disciples like us, stumbling and falling and doing so at times
when you would least expect them to do so. The context here as
we looked at several weeks ago in Mark's Gospel is that the
Lord Jesus had talked to his disciples for the second time
about the fact that he was on his way now to Jerusalem. He was on his way to Jerusalem
to be rejected by the elders, to be mocked by the religious
leaders. to be beaten within an inch of
his life, to be stripped naked and hung on a cross while they
walked by and mocked him. And extraordinarily, again and
again when he mentions this, the disciples' response is to
say, which of us, which of us is going to be the greatest?
And if you think this is the last time in Luke's Gospel in
chapter 22, we find that at the Last Supper, when the Lord Jesus
is going through all of what lies before him and yet continues
to serve his people, they have yet another debate about who
is the greatest. And so in this passage before
us in Mark chapter 9 verse 38, Jesus earlier had taken a child
and embraced a child to himself to teach them a lesson. And the
title of my message today is Vital Lessons for Us from the
Little Ones. So he took a child and set it
before them and took him in his arms and said to them, whoever
receives one child like this in my name, receives me. And whoever receives me does
not receive me, but him who sent me. John answered. John said to him, Teacher, we
saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to
prevent him because he was not following us. But Jesus said,
do not hinder him. For there is no one who will
perform a miracle in my name and be able soon afterward to
speak evil of me. For he who is not against us
is for us. For whoever gives you a cup of
water to drink because of your name as followers of Christ,
truly I say to you, he will not lose his reward. whoever causes
one of these little ones who believe to stumble. It would be better for him if
with a heavy millstone hung around his neck he had been cast into
the sea." So in verse 38, We have this continuous, the
continuing of this discussion where they had talked about who
is the greatest. The Lord had put a child and
embraced a child in their midst. And he was rebuking these disciples. And then John answered, as we
all do, So often we all do. We want to talk about something
that we have done, especially something religious that we have
done, especially something for which we think the Lord will
commend us. Teacher, we saw someone casting
out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because
he was not following us. John expected to be commended
for what he had done and the Lord teaches him graciously and
I hope he teaches us a lesson. The Lord Jesus responded, did
not hinder him for there is no one who will perform a miracle
in my name and be able soon afterwards to
speak evil of me." Now obviously this is a challenging passage
of scripture because we have earlier in Mark's Gospel when
the apostles are commissioned to go out. They are told that
if the villages, if the towns accept them because they come
in Christ's name, It is fine, but if they are rejected, they
are rejecting the Lord Jesus. We have in the Bible so many
instances where apostolic authority is unquestionable for those who
are saved. to believe savingly is to believe
what the apostles said about the Lord Jesus. To be apart from
the apostles is to be outside of salvation altogether. But
there are a couple of things we need to bear in mind here.
One is that this is an incident that happened while the Lord
Jesus was there and maybe not far away. So it's very difficult
to do things in the name of a false Christ when the real Christ is
there to be seen by people. I think the other thing too is
that the Lord is showing us and showing his disciples that there
is a right and proper place for tolerance. of those who are God's
servants. The reality is that our understanding
is deeply and severely limited. We don't know everything and
we don't know the hearts of people. And God has his people and God
has his servants in places that will cause us to be absolutely
amazed for all of eternity. And so we need to look out on
this world with reality about the promises of God, about false
teaching becoming prolific and more prolific as the days draw
nearer for the Lord Jesus to come back. We need also to be mindful of
the fact that he saved wretches like us. And if you can save
wretches like us, then out there in this world and out there in
this world nearby us are people who are God's children. And we
don't know who they are yet. And the wonder of the true Gospel
is that we write no one off. Because we never know when the
Lord is going to open their eyes. It's a sovereign activity of
God, not an activity of man plus God. And so when we meet other
people in this world we always meet them with a sense of expectation. Maybe this is the time and maybe
this is the conversation and maybe the Lord will bring words
that bring the Gospel and bring life and light and salvation
to this person. So we should be people who live
in this world looking over the horizon and looking around expecting
God to do great things. Has He done great things in your
life? Let's look around and look forward to the fact that He'll
do great things in the lives of others. Also, before the Lord Jesus was
the issue of those who treated Him and His miracles with contempt. His miracles which were signs,
and attestation of the fact that what he said about himself was
true. And when others are performing
these miracles, even if they weren't part of this apostolic
band, They are still there as a declaration that the Christ
is real, that he really can and he really has plundered Satan's
house and bound the strong man. And in the name of Jesus, demons
are submissive. Elijah was a man who had done
great things for God. He'd gone to Mount Carmel and
700 of the prophets and priests of Baal had been killed. Jezebel and Ahab rose up in anger
against him and Elijah fled. And you can read the story in
1 Kings 18 and 19. But Elijah thought out of all
Israel he was the only one left. But God said to Elijah, I have
reserved for myself 7,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal."
So there was Elijah, God's prophet, travelling around Israel and
yet there were 7,000 of God's children there and Elijah wasn't
aware of one of them. In John 3, The Lord Jesus says
to Nicodemus that the Spirit blows where He wishes, where
it wishes. You hear the sound of it but
you cannot tell where it comes from or where it goes. So it
is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. So new birth is
a spiritual miracle and we should be expecting to see spiritual
miracles around us. They're happening in us all the
time. But as well as that, the Bible
warns us again and again, the Lord Jesus warned his apostles
about false Christs and false messiahs who would come. There is a proper place, a real
and proper place for God's children to be separate from those who
are not preaching the true gospel. You have in your notes before
you those verses from 1 John 4 and this is one of many, many,
many passages in the scriptures that warn God's people. 1 John
4, 1. Beloved, do not believe every
spirit. You are hearing a spirit now. Do not believe every spirit,
but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many
false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know
the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every
spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist,
of which you have heard that it is coming and is now already
in the world. You are from God, little children,
and have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than
he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore
they speak as from the world and the world listens to them.
But we are from God, talking about the apostles. We are from
God and he who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God
does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of
truth. and the spirit of error. So there
is a warning from God to test the spirits, to test what you
hear about the Lord Jesus, to keep on testing it. Test it until
the day the Lord takes you out of this earth. Keep on testing. That's what was laid on my heart
all those years ago in India. with the burden of teaching these
little ones. And I have to confess I went
to India with a distorted gospel and it was the mercy of the Lord
that He continually brought people before me and brought children
before me. to teach me, to test what I'd
been taught, to test what I'd been taught in Bible college,
both the Bible colleges I had association with, to test it
against this Word and to see whether it stood up to this Word. And as you test it, you find
that the glory of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus grows bigger
and bigger and more glorious and more secure as the Lord purifies
the gold by burning off the dross. It's a painful process, but it's
a wonderfully important process. As the Lord grows bigger and
His Word grows deeper, and he humbles you, humbles you because
you've said things to little children left in your care that
were just wrong. So it's very real, really possible
to be sincere, to be loving, to be caring, to be zealous and
to be wrong. It's a great, great mercy from
God when He shows us that we are and reveals His grace to
us. The significance of it is brought
out in the next verse that's before us. At the end of the
day, there are only two groups of people in all of this world. The Lord describes it. in verse
40, for he who is not against us is for us. In a similar verse in Matthew
12 verse 30, for he who does not gather with me scatters. So all of humanity is divided
into two groups of people. Those who are involved in gathering
God's children together, gathering God's children around the Gospel,
gathering God's children around the glory of what the Lord Jesus
has done, gathering God's children around the Gospel of the free
and sovereign and loving grace that flows to all of God's children
purely on the merits of who the Lord Jesus is. The absolute security
of God's children are saved in eternity, they are loved everlastingly. They will be cared for and protected
in this world. They will be carried into the
next in glory and they will reign with the Lord Jesus in heaven
forever. The rest of humanity according
to God's Word, are scattering people. They are against the
Lord Jesus. And in Mark's Gospel we've just
seen so many instances of it. Again and again and again, we
see the Lord going out and reaching out and gathering His people,
healing them, forgiving them, caring for them, loving them.
And the response of the enemies always is the same. Never once
do they rejoice. Never once are they thankful
to God. Their response to the most remarkable
things that humanity has ever seen in this world is bitterness
and envy and rivalry. It's really sad, but it's just
the world we live in. God's people will walk in this
world like the Lord Jesus and they will be opposed They will
be opposed by everything that this world holds dear. They'll be particularly opposed
by everything the religion of this world holds dear. Either salvation is purely the
finished work of the Lord Jesus, or if it's an activity of man
plus God, it's an activity purely of man. And there's no end to
our inventiveness when it comes to religion. So there is no neutral
place. There is no safe haven like Switzerland
survived in the midst of Europe through two wars as a neutral
place. In this world there is no neutral
place. You are on one side or the other.
May God give you the grace to be on the Lord's side, to be
gathering and not scattering. And there's another great lesson
for the disciples here, and a great lesson for us. in verse 41, for
whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because of your name
as followers of Christ, truly I say to you, he will not lose
his reward. When it comes to spiritual things,
everything Everything is completely the opposite to the way the world
views things. To summarise God's estimation
of the things of this world compared to spiritual things, the Lord
says what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in
God's sight. So in the natural world, people
rise up to success and it's measured by how much they gain, how much
they are esteemed in the eyes of men, how much of the world's
treasures they get for themselves. In the spiritual world, success
is measured by loss. In the natural world, wealth
is gained and measured by what a man is able to gain and save. In the spiritual world, wealth
that is gained and measured, wealth, true wealth, is gained
and is measured by how much we give. In natural things, a self-made
man is admired. In spiritual things, a self-made
man is condemned. Whatever is esteemed in the eyes
of men is an abomination to God. And one of the things particularly
in the religious world, in the Christian world, is that we are
so prone to see great things and big things done as the most
significant thing. The Lord Jesus wants us to have
that turned completely on its head. A cup of water. The cheapest, simplest
thing in the world. Just a cup of water, He says. Just to give a cup of water.
to followers of Christ is to have a reward that won't be taken
away from you. We must get out of our heads
this idea that it's the people who are up the front, the people
who are doing the notable things in the eyes of the world. Notable
things in our eyes are the ones that are esteemed. It's the little
things, the insignificant things. that are done because of who
the Lord Jesus is and because of what he's doing in the lives
of his people. These are the things that are
esteemed in God's service. So don't put yourself down for
doing little things of faithfulness. Look to them as great gifts from
God. The greatest reward we can have
in this world is to be saved, to be saved and to be a child
of God, to be loved everlastingly and then to be given a place
where amongst God's people we can give a cup of water. Little
things, just do little things well and the big things will
come along. all by themselves as the Lord
does His work and grows His people. As John Trapp said, if therefore
we would be wise and happy, we will part with the things we
cannot gain, to gain the things that we cannot lose. So all of God's kingdom is the
reverse of what the natural man thinks in this world. And now
we come to the verse that has been so troubling for me for
so long. Whoever causes one of these little ones, now remember
the Lord Jesus is rebuking his disciples about who is the greatest. He is now rebuking his beloved
apostle John, because John wanted to justify himself by his activities. when rebuked, just like the rest
of us do. As soon as something troubling
comes along, we want to go back to our record and say, here I
am, look what I've done, this, this, this and this, all these
good things. Jesus still has the child in
his arms and he says in verse 42, whoever causes one of these
little ones who believe to stumble, Please note the next part of
the verse. It would be better for him, it would be better if
a heavy millstone, in fact the word in Greek is the millstone
of a donkey and the way they ground flour and grains in those
days, they had a huge stone with a hole in the top. and a great
pole attached to it and then they tied a donkey to the end
of the pole. And this great stone turned on another stone as the
grain came down through the hole. It was then crushed to a powder
and came out the edges. And it was turned, it was so
big it was turned by a donkey. A great millstone it is. It's actually better It's better
to have this heavy millstone around your neck and to have
already been cast into the sea. So it's better to be at the bottom
of the sea with a millstone around your neck already than it is
to lead one of these little ones who believe to stumble. If that doesn't weigh heavily
on the hearts of anyone who speaks in the Lord's stead to children,
I fear for you. For me it was just such a challenging,
challenging verse. So what is it? What is it to
make someone stumble? Something helpful in it is that
the word to stumble there is the word that we now have in
our language to scandalize. And when something is scandalized
or someone is scandalized, their reputation is damaged. To cause one of these little
ones who believe is to do or say anything. which damages faith
in the Lord Jesus and damages his reputation in the eyes of
those who believe. That's what it is to make little
ones stumble. It's to present to anyone, especially
to little ones, to present to them a Jesus who is not the Jesus
of the scriptures. A Jesus who hasn't done what
he said he's done. A Jesus who hasn't fulfilled
all of the prophecies of the Old Testament. A Jesus who is
modified to suit the whims of men. A Jesus whose reputation
is damaged. We know in this world that the
reputation of the Lord Jesus is scandalised before us. His name is blasphemed and it
should cause us grief. But what should cause us greater
grief is that the scriptures make it plain and clear in Romans
10 and other places that the name of the Lord Jesus is scandalised
not by what the pagan world says about the Lord Jesus. The name
of the Lord Jesus is scandalised by what the religious, professing
Christian world says about the Lord Jesus. As we go through
Mark's Gospel, we just remember some of the highlights about
who the Lord Jesus is as he is declared in this word before
us. The Father spoke in chapter 1 verse 11 and said, This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased on the Mount of
Transfiguration, There's the added words, hear him. The Lord Jesus came declaring
the gospel and he called on people to repent and believe the gospel. We know that repentance and we
know that faith is a gift from God. God's children repent. They repent of what they are. They repent of what they thought
about who God is and the way he saves his people. The Lord
Jesus' name is scandalized when he is reduced to someone who
will act in response to the activities of man. In Mark's Gospel it is
the Lord Jesus who goes, goes and goes all the time. He goes
to meet with the sinners. He goes to meet with the leper. He goes to the ones who have
no hope in themselves and He's willing to heal and He's willing
to make clean. And it's His will that does those
things. The Lord Jesus is declared in
the scriptures to be God and anything, anything that takes
away from the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is God of this universe. He is its creator, He is its
sustainer, He is its ruler and He is absolutely sovereign over
everyone and everything in this world. To deny that is to scandalise
His reputation. In Mark chapter 2, he makes it
very, very clear that when he met with his enemies for this
first encounter in Mark's Gospel, he wanted them to make sure that
they understood, and they did, that he was saying that he was
God. Who alone but God can forgive sins? The Lord Jesus deliberately
provoked these people to establish the fact that He really is God. The miracle that He did with
that paralytic man was just to establish the fact that He really
is God. And sadly so much of our world
will say so many nice things about him. They'll say he's a
great moral teacher. They'll say that he's a great
example. They'll say all sorts of nice
things about him. But if they deny that he is absolutely
God, then they will deny and cause his name to be scandalised. And it is he who has the right
to forgive sins. And He will forgive the sins
of those who are His people. The great verse that marks all
of Mark's Gospel, highlights all of Mark's Gospel is in Mark
10, 45. For even the Son of Man did not
come to be served, but to serve and give His life a ransom for
many. He came as a servant. He didn't
come to be served by men because there was nothing that we could
serve him with. He came to serve and He gave
His life as a ransom. He paid the ransom price for
His people. And any doctrine which is presented
to little ones to show in any way at all that the Lord Jesus
did not perfectly and completely take away in one event All of
the sins of all of his people is to scandalize his name and
to cause the little ones to stumble. Anything, any doctrine, any teaching
to little ones that says that righteousness is anything other
than the perfect righteousness of the Lord Jesus, that perfect
road that he clothes his people with, that righteousness and
sanctification is something that man does rather than something
that man receives as a grace gift because of the perfect work
of the Lord Jesus, scandalizes His name and causes little ones
to stumble. We have been amongst so many
little ones who we have seen stumble. The Lord says, beware
of the leaven, beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the
scribes. Beware of adding works and especially
law works to the finished work of the Lord Jesus is to cause
the little ones to stumble. Anything that doesn't declare
the Gospel as good news causes the little ones to stumble. If
the Gospel you believe doesn't feel like good news, good news
when you're feeling at your best, good news when you've stumbled
and fallen on your face as these disciples did again and again,
it is good news. If it ceases to be good news
and becomes good advice, the Lord Jesus has been scandalised. When He said it's finished, He
really said it's finished. He meant that the work of bringing
all of His people, gloriously, wholly spotless and blameless
before His Father, and presenting them with joy because of His
work, That's his work. He's done it. He's finished it. So often we have stumbled and
fallen. For those of you who are parents,
I can't think, unless you are far more sanctified than I can
possibly imagine, I can't think that when you look on your life
and look at the way you have cared for your children, love
them as much as you have. How often in our words and our
deeds have we caused little ones to stumble. The great news about
this passage is it's just another declaration of the fact of the
wonder of the Gospel. I was responsible for teaching
the Bible and living a so-called Christian life before. I taught
about 80 children most of the time at that school in India. I had four of my own. I grieve
over the times that I made them stumble. I grieve over the times
that they might stumble now. It's not something that the Lord
Jesus ever wants us to take lightly. But like all sin and all struggles
in our lives, It's something that the Lord Jesus has warned
us about. And like all warnings and commands
in scripture, unless He performs what He asks us to do, performs
it for us, then it can never be acceptable to God. The great
comfort for me out of these verses is again I see the glory of the
Gospel. But it's not about me. My relationship
with God is about the covenant that the Lord Jesus and God the
Father made. That covenant that was sealed
and signed in His blood. That I stumble, I cause others
to stumble. We try and proclaim the Gospel
as faithfully as we can. In our lives we'll struggle. But our Lord Jesus in Colossians
1.12 has said that he's made his people qualified. He's made
us meet for heaven. We run back to our Saviour. We
like the child in this story, snuggle up to him, ask him to
wrap his arms around us. We thank him for taking away
all of our sins. We praise him. for creating a
robe of righteousness which is perfectly fit for heaven. And
my life, my life is now hidden with Christ in God. That's the place for children
to spend their days. Our lives hidden with Christ
in God. May God give us the grace to
stand up for our husband in this world. When his name and his
reputation is brought into disrepute by religious people, may God
give us the courage to stand and be bold and defend his glory. And may he give us the grace
that when we stumble and fall, we'll run back to his arms and
be embraced by him again. and be reminded of what a glorious
saviour and a wonderful husband and an amazing God that we have. Amen.