We're going to be looking at
Matthew chapter 18, if you want to turn in your Bibles there.
The title of the message is, The Greatest in the Kingdom,
and that comes from the question there in verse 1, where it talks
about at the same time, Matthew 18, 1, the same time, that is,
after the Lord had dealt with this issue of paying tribute,
the temple tax, as a non-issue, perform that great miracle, pulling
up a fish with a bear hook and finding a coin in its mouth.
I mean, all of that's just amazing when you think about it. But
what's more amazing than that is the wisdom of the Lord in
dealing with both His children and unbelievers. Because He knew,
and we ought to know too, that Our issue is the gospel. That's
what sets us apart from the world. And that's where we stand and
we cannot budge, we cannot compromise. But on these non-issues that
people get so plagued with in their minds, it doesn't matter. But the gospel does matter. And we have to stand firm, and
we only do that by the grace of God. We don't do that in our
own strength and stamina because we're weak. You know, Paul said,
when I'm weak, I'm strong. And what did he mean by that?
Well, what he meant by that is when he sees himself at the weakest,
that's when he turns to Christ and relies on Christ even more
by faith. And Christ is our strength. So
at the same time, in Matthew 18, it says, came the disciples
unto Jesus, saying, who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
Now think about what they're asking there. We know, and I
wanted to make this clear in the message today, that one of
the greatest sins that we as fallen, sinful human beings have
to deal with is the sin, it sounds like two, but they're one and
the same, pride and self-righteousness. We're so proud. We all think
so much more of ourselves than we ought to. One man said years
ago, and I've used this several times, that just like salvation,
and this is the point, we all think we're saved before we're
saved until we're saved. And the reason is is because
we look at salvation through our own natural pride and self-righteousness
rather than through the reality of our sinful depravity and spiritual
death, which tells us that we deserve nothing. God owes us
nothing. When God chose us, it was the
election of grace. When Christ redeemed us, it was
a redemption of grace. When the Holy Spirit called us
in the new birth, it was a calling of grace. And that means we didn't
earn it, we didn't deserve it. But before we're born again,
I've got in your lesson there, before we're converted to faith
in Christ and brought to repentance of dead works by the Spirit,
this is the sin that keeps us in unbelief, pride and self-righteousness. Think about the Pharisees. Think
about the scribes, you know, how they shut their ears and
closed their eyes lest they be converted. They were too proud.
And that's what we all are by nature. We're just too proud.
And that's why we have to, that's why one of the first things the
Holy Spirit under the preaching of the gospel brings us to see
is our sin because we believe not on Christ. And that is the
sin of unbelief, but it's more than that. It's the knowledge
that without Christ, without being washed in his blood, without
being clothed in his righteousness, everything we are and everything
we do in the eyes of God falls short. It's sin. And we deserve
nothing but death and hell. So that's where we are. That's
what keeps us blind. to the truth. Paul wrote in Romans
chapter 10 about Israel, which followed after, Romans 9 and
10, which followed after righteousness, but they didn't find it because
they sought it by works of the law. Well, why would you seek
righteousness by the works of the law? Pride, self-righteousness. And really what that shows us,
we don't really know what righteousness is. That's why the second thing
that Christ spoke of in John 16, he convicts us of righteousness
because he went to the Father. In other words, righteousness
has to be measured as we see it in Christ. And if we get our
eyes off of Christ and onto ourselves and think that we're righteous
in ourselves, we're deceived. So that blinds us, you see. And
those blinders have to be taken, we have to be given eyes to see
and ears to hear. But here's another thing. After
we're converted to Christ, we still have a problem with pride
and self-righteousness. And it comes in many forms. It's
the flesh, and it's a struggle. This is a big part of the warfare,
the flesh and the spirit. is fighting our own personal
pride. We want our rights. We want our
way. Things like that. And another
thing, even Phariseeism. One old preacher, I can't remember
who it was, he said, we're all recovering Pharisees. So you
think about it. And we are. Because one of the
things that I think of about that is what I call the why me
syndrome. When something bad happens, we
say, Lord, why me? What did I do to deserve this?
Well, everything this side of hell is mercy and grace. So whatever
God has for us, you know. But we're not condemned if we're
in Christ. There's no condemnation to them
which are in Christ. But I've got cited in your lesson,
Psalm 130 in verse three. It's one of my favorite verses.
And not just it as it stands alone. Read the whole Psalm 130.
I won't read the whole thing. But it says this. It says, if
thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? If God
were to mark our iniquities, take note of them, and charge
them to us, who among us would stand? Not one of us. Not one
of us. The best of us, the worst of
us, and everybody in between. We wouldn't stand. And that's
why we're so thankful for the gospel doctrine of imputation.
Because that tells us that God doesn't charge us with our sins.
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It's God
that justifies. Well, what did God do with it? He charged them to Christ. He
laid them to His account. He put our sin debt to the account
of Christ. And therefore, we stand before
God in His righteousness alone, imputed to us. That's why that's
so important. That's the great exchange. Did
the disciples have this same problem? Well, sure they did.
That's why they asked this question, who is the greatest in the kingdom
of heaven? And you gotta understand too, they didn't really at this
point in time now, they'd heard the gospel. The Lord had told
them about his obedience to the law, his death, his burial, his
resurrection, how he must go to Jerusalem and die and be raised
again, all of that. But they were still thinking
in the flesh, and they thought that the kingdom of heaven that
he'd come to establish was gonna be an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem.
They thought that up until the time that he ascended into glory.
Remember in Acts chapter one, they talked about that. And of
course they had to be taught that the kingdom of heaven is
a spiritual kingdom. It's not an earthly kingdom. And Christ didn't come to conquer
their earthly enemies like Rome and raise them up and rule on
earth. And so their thinking is, well,
he's going to establish an earthly kingdom and we're gonna be his
lieutenants, you know? Well, who's gonna be the first
lieutenant? Who's gonna be the second? You see what I'm saying?
That's natural thinking. But it's not gospel thinking.
It's not spiritual thinking. Because in the kingdom of God,
there is no, as one old preacher used to say, no big I and little
you. There's no hierarchy. The false
Catholic church teaches the hierarchies, you say, of people. No, there's
no. We are all sinners saved by grace,
equally saved, equally forgiven, equally righteous by God's grace
in Christ. There's no male nor female, no
bond nor free, no black or white or red or whatever. It's all,
we're all equal. by the grace of God in Christ.
Now there are differences in us and we don't need to deny
those differences like people today trying to deny the difference
between a man and a woman. Well that's crazy. There are
men saved by the grace of God. There are women and the men aren't
going to be women and the women aren't going to be men. But what
he's saying in Galatians 3 when he says there's no male nor female,
he's saying whatever you are as you are naturally born, that
doesn't matter as far as your salvation goes. You're equally
saved. There are different offices in
the church, there are different gifts in the church, there is
an authority in the church, but it's not an authority that puts
one above another in the kingdom as if You're gonna be greater
than me or I'm gonna be greater than you. And of course, the
title of the lesson, The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, who
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Christ is. There's
no one greater than him. And he doesn't set up this hierarchy
below us, above us or below us. It's all about him. So what did
he do here? Now he needed to teach them a
great lesson that we all need to learn. And we need to learn
it over and over and over again. It's, you know, people today,
when I say today, people have always been like this. There are people who have a tendency
to exalt preachers. Now, I know y'all don't have
that problem at all. Y'all, you know, that's just
a fact. We thank God for his preachers,
don't we? We do, because they preach the
gospel to us. But people have a tendency to
follow men and not question what they say by the word of God. And when I say, and the Bible
commands us to do that, commands us to question them. Now, that
doesn't mean we're to be skeptical. It doesn't mean we're to be critical.
in a negative way, trying to find something wrong. I mean,
I've got people out there who listen to my messages for one
purpose only, and that's trying to find something wrong that
they can attack me with. What are you gonna do? That's
an evil thing. But the Bible says, tells us
to be noble Bereans. Test the spirits, John said.
And a lot of preachers don't like that. I've always said that
a lot of preachers act like this. They talk about how great the
noble Bereans are until they meet one. They don't like to
be questioned, but we shouldn't be that way. We're human. My
words are not infallible. The word of God is, and the gospel,
somebody asked me one time, do you think you have perfect knowledge?
No, but I've got a perfect gospel because it's the gospel of God.
It's not my, I didn't come up with this. This is the origin
of God. It's the gospel of God, Paul
said. And I've often said that one of the worst things that
can happen to any preacher, true preacher, is to have a following
for himself. We don't need that. My point
is, is that we all have that problem in one way or another,
and it rears its ugly head in our lives at certain times, and
we've got to be brought down into the dust. We do. And that's what God does initially
in our conversion when he brings us to submit, submission. You
know, blessed are those who are meek. That means submission to
God's will and God's word and God's way. submitted to the righteousness
of God. Over in Romans chapter 10 when
Paul said, they're not submitted to the righteousness of God and
they're going about to establish a righteousness of their own.
But Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believeth. So what does Christ do? Well
look at verses two through four. He says, and Jesus called a little
child unto him. Now we don't know how old this
little child was, but I'll tell you the point that he's making
here now in just a moment. And set him in the midst of them.
And he said, verily I say unto you, except you be converted,
and this is part of conversion. Now, it's not just a one-time
event in the sense that we always have to fight this kind of proud,
self-righteous attitude. And become as little children,
you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Verse four, whosoever
therefore shall humble himself as this little child, The same
is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Now what point's he trying
to make? Well, I've heard all kinds of
things said about this. There are people who say, well,
you know, a little child doesn't know anything about doctrine,
so when you're converted, you don't have to know anything about
doctrine. That's not what he's saying at all. That's not the,
that's not, you know, a little child can't walk, you know, all
that talk about the inability of a little child. The point
that he's making is this, and this is true of every little
child, infant or little child, they are totally 100% dependent
upon mom and dad for their physical life and health. You put them
out, like the cast out infant in Ezekiel, you put it out there,
what's gonna happen? If you don't feed it, clothe
it, clean it, cuddle it, warm it, it's gonna die. And that's
us in the Kingdom of Heaven. He's not using this to show that
once we're saved we're still ignorant of who God is and who
Christ is and ignorant of God's righteousness. No, we are. But
we're still just as totally dependent upon Christ for our whole spiritual
life and well-being from beginning to its final culmination. Like
we were talking about, Leon, grace, grace, grace. Saved by
grace, kept by grace, and entered glory by grace. That's the point
he's making. And we don't deserve or we haven't
earned any of it. None of it's by our works. None
of it. And that's the issue of the little
child metaphor here. The Holy Spirit uses the gospel
to show us this reality of our sin and our depravity. Even the
desire and the will to come to Christ is given us by God, drawn
out by his love for us, which he reveals to us. And this is
how we're given the gift of humility. It's a gift. It's a God-given
gift, just like faith is a gift. We don't have faith by nature.
Faith is not some spark of goodness within us that some eloquent
preacher or emotional preacher can fan and get that spark bursted
into a flame and we make our choice and then God saves us.
No. Faith totally is a gift of God. It's God revealing himself
to us. Repentance is a gift. Humility
is a gift. He humbles us before him himself
to show us that he's the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and
we're all sinners saved by grace, totally dependent upon his goodness,
totally dependent upon his power and his grace to save us and
to preserve us and to bring us to glory, just like that little
child is totally dependent upon mom and dad for its physical
health and well-being. He says, whosoever therefore
shall humble himself as this little child. Now, by that statement,
he's not implying that conversion is something that we do of our
own goodness or so-called free will. Humble yourself. I put it here in your lesson,
neither salvation nor the new birth is brought about by our
own goodness, our own power, our own will. Left to ourselves,
we will not be humbled. Left to ourselves, we will not
humble ourselves. Conversion is not something we
do. You understand that? Like the
book, How to Be Born Again, you believe and then you're born.
No, that's not biblical. I don't care who said it. I don't
care how popular of a preacher he was or how many people followed
him, it's not biblical. The new birth is a birth from
above. Remember in John chapter one,
those who receive him, It was not by their family blood, it's
not by their good works, and it's not by their will, but it's
by the will of God. Christ said you must be born
again, or you will not see or enter the kingdom of heaven.
We've got to have eyes to see and ears to hear, and that's
the gift of God. So conversion is not something we do, it's
something that God does for us as the Spirit gives life to a
dead sinner. It's a literal spiritual resurrection
from the dead. And we can't give ourselves spiritual
life no more than old Lazarus laying in the grave could give
himself physical life. That's why that's a good illustration
of how we're born again. And when this happens, when God
brings about this powerful conversion, providentially by bringing us
under the preaching of the gospel, spiritually by imparting life
and knowledge and faith to us from giving us an understanding,
John said, the Son of God hath come and given us an understanding
of who Christ is, who we are, and how God saves sinners. Then
we come to this humility and we do humble ourselves because
God has brought us down. And we see the same is the greatest
in the kingdom of heaven. Those whom God brings down, they
are all the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, equally. That's what
he's saying. There's not one above another.
Can you imagine that? Do you realize? And listen, we
use language that is probably indicative more of our ignorance
than it is our knowledge when it comes to describing heaven.
Because we don't know a whole lot about that. We know we'll
be with Christ. We'll know that we'll be worshiping forever.
We know there'll be no sorrow, no tears, no sickness. We know
all that. But just to give you as an illustration,
putting this down to the ignorance that we have, when you get to
heaven, if you're walking along the street and you see a big
mansion there, you might say, well, oh boy, the Apostle Paul
must live there. And then you walk on down, you
see a little old cabin, you know, with dirt floor, you say, well,
the thief on the cross must live there. And that's not the way
it is. You know that. Now we'll all
be equally saved, equally blessed of God. We'll all have equal
access to the Father through Christ. David, you're not gonna
have any more access than me, and I'm not gonna have any more
access than you. That's just the way it is, that's grace.
You remember Christ taught that in a parable of the talents,
you know, when he hired one guy in the morning, one guy in the
mid-morning, one guy at noon, one guy in the, and he paid them
all the same. Now he wasn't giving the president an economic program
there. Because if we did that on earth,
in our jobs, it would be wrong. It would be wrong. But he's illustrating
by that parable how salvation is. It's not wrong in salvation
because whether you've been in this thing since you were 15
or You first heard of the Lord when you're 99. You don't deserve
it and you didn't earn it. It's all of grace. And so he
says this. Now listen to how he ends this.
This is important. Verse five. He says, and whoso
shall receive such a little child in my name receiveth me, but
whoso shall offend literally calls to stumble. 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." What he's saying here is that this
thing of our fellowship in Christ, receiving those who have received
Christ, this is no light matter. I know people today, I'll tell
you what, there are people today that are just ready to cut people
off who claim to believe the gospel we believe. And it might
be over some non-issue. You know, there's some people,
you've probably learned this by now, that every issue is vital
to them. But it's not. Just like paying
taxes, the temple tax. I know people, if we were living
back then and we paid that temple tax, they'd say, oh, you're idolaters. You know, people get on these
issues. Now there are gospel issues now. There are vital issues. How God saves sinners, how God
justifies, that's a gospel issue. We can't give on that. The ground
of salvation, who Christ is. The trinity, I know that's being
brought out. You know, people denying the
trinity. My friend, that's what the, listen, the trinity is a
gospel truth. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When Christ was baptized, indicating how he would fulfill all righteousness
by his death, burial, and resurrection, he said, the Father spoke, the
Spirit descended, and here's the Son. This is my beloved Son,
whom I will. That's a gospel truth. And so,
we've talked about that. You've heard people talk about
it on the internet all the time. But there are gospel issues. But what he's saying here, and
the verses that I've got cited in your lesson here, and you
read them, 2 John 9-11, that's he that transgresses and abides
not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God, he's talking about
the doctrine of his person, the doctrine of his finished work,
the atonement, reconciliation. I mean, this thing about who
did Christ die for, that's a gospel issue. That's not something you
can, give into because that directs, that brings us directly to the
glory of God in salvation. Those who believe that Christ
died for everybody, conditioned on what they do, that's a false
gospel. Understand that now. But now,
when we see people come into our Bailiwick as it is, who claimed
to believe this gospel without compromise, were to receive him.
And that's why he said, those who transgress and abide not
in the doctrine of Christ, but those who abide in the doctrine
of Christ, they hath both the Father and the Son. And then
I cited 3 John 5 through 12. That's where John brought up
the issue of this man named Diotrephes who would not receive the brethren.
That's a serious issue because Christ said, if you don't receive
a child of God, you don't receive him. Now what he said there,
verse five, and whoso shall receive one such little child, my name
receiveth me, but whoso shall offend one of these little ones,
which believe in me, now that's the key, which believe in me,
it were better for him that a millstone be hanged around his neck, and
that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Because he's an unbeliever. This thing about dividing brethren
is serious business, I'm telling you. Be careful, because when
these preachers do that, they gain a following for themselves.
They come upon some nuance of doctrine or change what they
preach for 20 years and then draw people away and say, no,
don't go listen to him, don't go hear him. Be careful there. This is serious business. One
old preacher said one time, when you kick one of his children,
he feels the pain. And that's the way it is. Well,
look at verses eight and nine. Or verse seven. He says, yeah,
verse seven. He says, 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. Now, he said over in
1 Corinthians 11, 19, there must need be schisms, heresies. Because that's one of God's ways
of revealing his true children and exposing false brethren.
When these heresies come, who do you follow? Do you follow
the word of God or do you follow that preacher who's disseminating? And so they're gonna come. They're
ordained by God, in essence. But that doesn't excuse the person
who brings the offense. That person is a God, he can't
say I'll cause offense because it's God's plan, as if that would
excuse him. Only God, and I always say this
about when we talk about the sovereignty of God, God is in
control, he overrules evil for good, but only God can do that. You can't do that, I can't do
that. So what are we to do? Well, we're to follow God's revealed
will by way of commandment in his word. And then look at verses
eight and nine. Wherefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee,
cut them off and cast them from thee, it's better for thee to
enter into life, halt or maim, rather than having two hands
or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend
thee, pluck it out, cast it from thee, It's better for thee to
enter into life with one eye rather than having two eyes to
be cast into hell fire." Now, you know what people have done
with that. You know, there's extremes, you know. First of
all, he's not telling us to mutilate ourselves. First of all, if we
did that, that wouldn't take care of the sin problem. You
can pluck out your eyes. You still got a mind and imagination.
You can still dream evil dreams. You can see things in your mind.
You cut off your hands or whatever, your feet, you can still do evil
things. That's not going to take care of the problem. He's using
them as a metaphor for those things that we see and handle,
that we desire, that would hinder us from coming to Christ and
resting in Him and loving His people. That's what he's saying.
And he's saying get rid of anything. Seek to get rid. Fight anything
that would hinder your relationship with Christ and his people. That's
what he's saying. So don't go crazy with it. Christ, listen, and he's not
threatening his people with damnation. He took care of that for us on
the cross. But my friend, There's a lot
of people who claim to believe the gospel who don't, and they
prove that by their actions. And we have to be careful. Don't judge in a self-righteous
way, or a proud way, or a selfish way. Look to the word of God
and receive them as our brethren. And if they're not, it'll be
exposed. So we all thank God for this gift of humility. All
right, okay, we'll close there.