Believers are like Children

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2014 · 23 February 2014

The Word of God is so rich as we continue to study Matthew 18:10-14, “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven. 11 For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. 12 “What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying? 13 And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. 14 Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

As we learned in the beginning of Matthew 18, believers are commonly referred to as children. We understand ourselves in the church to be the children of God. Our Lord in this text reminds us that no one enters the Kingdom unless he or she becomes like a little child, humble, dependent, weak, ignorant, immature and needy. Having entered the Kingdom we remain children. We then are instructed to treat each other like children.

In verses 5 - 9, we are taught to protect them from damaging influences. First, in verse 5, we need to receive each other as though we were receiving Christ. How you treat another believer is exactly how you treat Christ. And then on the negative side, don’t do anything to cause them to stumble into sin, you would be better off dead. Woe to those who cause another believer to stumble. Judgment is pronounced on those who cause other believers to engage in sin directly or indirectly.

So we need to do whatever it takes to avoid that. Take dramatic action, and Jesus uses vivid imagery like cutting your hand off, cutting your foot off or plucking your eye out. Do very severe things metaphorically speaking, in order to not lead another believer into sin. This is part of receiving them as you would receive Christ and protecting them as you would protect a child. Well that is the picture that then transitions over into the spiritual realm.

Now as we come to verses 10-14, we are instructed here also to care for children. It's not just receiving them as we would receive the Lord in a general sense, with love and affection. It's not just protecting them. It is providing for them all that we can, assuming the responsibility we have for the spiritual care of those other believers. And I want to go back to that because it has so many practical implications.

So let us talk about the rule which our Lord establishes in verse 10, and the reasons which He unfolds in verses 10-14. Matthew 18:10, “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones.” And then the reason is triggered by the word “For,” or “Because,” and then you have the reasons to follow. “Be careful that you do not look down on someone, to think little of someone, to have no respect for someone, to treat them with disdain, to see them as worthless or to be indifferent to them.”

We are not talking about physical babies or actual children. It is believers here who are identified as if they are children. We are the offspring of God. We have been born again into His family and we are His children. But it's not just that. We remain needy, weak and dependent. We need help and strength and provision and care from those around us. Every believer is very precious. And the Lord will not have any who belong to Him ignored or treated with unkindness or indifference.

Now remember, this is the first instruction the Lord ever gave to the church. And it comes, a long time before the Great Commission. Of course, in the end, the goal of the church in the world is to proclaim the gospel and see people saved, right? That's the goal. But to achieve that we need to build a strong mature church. A church is internally strong because it expresses love and mutual ministry. The Lord desires that we together as believers have a unified strong testimony to the world.

So the first instruction is for the church to be a real church. The Lord is concerned about how believers treat each other. And following that it is important how believers treat non- believers. It is again about maturing the believers as the path to effective evangelism. When unbelievers see the power of Christ exhibited in the lives of believers that exist in the body of Christ, then the testimony of the gospel becomes believable.

The world of course, looks down on the lowly, for the most part, despises the simple minded, the humble, the meek and the weak. The world lifts up and exalts the great, the prominent and demeans the rest. That is not the Lord's way of dealing with His church. And we better get used to dealing with the lowly because that is basically all of us.

First Corinthians 1:26-28 says, “For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 27 But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; 28 and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.”

And so the church is primarily made up of these kinds of people. We are called then to express loving care and respect for every person in the church, no matter who they may be. Maybe weak, maybe ignorant, maybe they seem to lack giftedness, maybe poor, maybe uneducated, maybe socially deficient, maybe helpless, maybe dependent, but we are to care for all of them.

So how are we likely to mistreat other believers? Maybe by flaunting our liberty. The principle is in Romans 14:3, “Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat. And let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him.” You might be a Gentile and a new Jewish believer comes to your house and you serve him pork. And he says, “My whole life I have been told not to eat that.” Yeah, but you are now free in Christ. Rise, Peter, kill and eat. The dietary laws are now gone. But that is exactly what you don't want to do. Do not be a stumbling block to his new faith.

You may have a person you want to take to a movie or to watch a certain thing on television and this thing which expresses certain immoral behaviors may bring back into that person's mind a recycling of all past temptation. And I don't ever want to do anything that may be a freedom for me but some new convert, some person saved out of something in the past would look at that and be deeply offended. It's a question of restricting liberty so as not to offend.

There is another way that we can disdain others in our fellowship is by withholding from those in need. In society we tend to be reciprocal where we do something for somebody with the expectation that they will do it back. That is not the way we are to function in the body of Christ. 1 John 3:17, “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Little children, let us not love with word but in deed and truth. And what is it that qualifies this person to receive our love? He has a need.

When anybody in need comes across our path, we have a responsibility without respect of persons if the opportunity presents itself and if we have the ability to meet that need to do just that. So we never flaunt our liberty in the face of those we do not need to impress. Let us never look down on the poor and those who are on a lower social strata. Let us never withhold what we have from those in need no matter who they are. God calls us to help those in need the way He helps us too.

Another thing, we should not look with disdain on a Christian who has fallen. There is a temptation to gloat a little bit and pass on this sad demise, usually prefaced by such a statement as, “Oh I hate to say this, but did you hear about So-and-so?” And the net effect of that is to give people the idea that you are the superior one. But in Galatians 6:1 says, “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, each one looking to himself lest you too be tempted.”

Verse 2-3, “Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ (which is the law of love), 3 for if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” The truth is, we are not any better ourselves and we better look at our own heart carefully lest we too are tempted and end up in the same situation. Do not add pain by inflicting more damage on the person by gossiping about the sin that cannot be recovered.

Sometimes it's easy when interacting with people to draw conclusions about their problems being a result of some sin we don't know or understand. That's Job's friend's theology, right? That was the theology of the Jews, this man sinned, or else his parents sinned, that's why he's blind. There are actually people in the Charismatic Movement now that think if you're still in a wheel chair, or if you're ill, or if you have cancer, it's because you are living a substandard Christian life. They are so wrong!

Another way that we can disdain other believers is by looking down on those who are over us because they are young. In 1 Timothy 4:12, Paul instructs Timothy, “Let no one look down on your youthfulness.” Sometimes we feel that age gives us certain rights, age is tantamount to maturity. The truth is that it does not, you can be old and immature and young and very mature. You can be old and carnal and young and spiritual. You can be old and sinful and be young and godly. Age is not the issue.

Another way you can belittle a believer is by taking advantage of a fellow believer for personal gain. First Thessalonians 4:6, “Do not defraud one another.” Do not take advantage of other Christians for personal gain. Do not use people to obtain something to enrich yourself especially not another believer.

Now let's go back to Matthew 18 and remind ourselves that we are commanded to be careful not to despise one fellow believer. And here are the reasons for the rule, okay? Matthew 18:10, “For I say to you that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven.” Why is this important? Because there is a relation of believers to angels, the angels that have as their responsibility the care of believers.

This does not mean that every child has his or her personal guardian angel. There's nothing in the Bible that says every believer has his or her personal guardian angel. All this says is that believers have their angels, that there are angels who are the unique protectors of believers. The guardian angel idea comes from Judaism. The apocryphal story of Tobit indicated that there was a guardian angel for every individual. And there is reference to that idea in Acts 12:15, but it just indicates that that's what the Jews believed.

This is consistent with Hebrews 1:14, which says that believers are ministered to by the angels. They are there in heaven, it says, always beholding the face of My Father who is in heaven. So these angels who take care of believers enjoy the privilege of all the holy angels of being in the presence of God in fellowship with Him, waiting to be dispatched at His discretion to do whatever it is that He would want them to do.

We can find in Scripture all of the areas in which angels do their work on behalf of believers. First, in 1 Corinthians 4:9 they watch the Apostles. In Ephesians 3:9-10, they watch and marvel at the church. In 1 Corinthians 11:10 it says that the angels are watching the submission of women to men in the church. They watch the preachers in 1 Timothy 5:21.

The angels will watch believers being rewarded in Matthew 16:27. They are also guiding and we see several illustrations of this in the book of Acts 8, 10 and 11. They are also providing for Hagar in Genesis 21, providing for Israel in Psalm 78, providing for Elijah in 1 Kings 19, and other occasions. We see them in Psalm 91 protecting the people of God in Acts 5 and 12. We see them giving answers to prayer in Daniel 9 and 10 and even in Acts 12. We even see them attending to the death of the saints in Luke 16 and Jude 9.

So let us see verse 12, “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not lead the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?” Now we move from the relationship of believers to angels to the relationship of believers to the Lord who is seen like a shepherd. And the Father is concerned about every single believer. Verse 13-14, “And if he should find it, assuredly, I say to you, he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. 14 Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”

We then should care for each other like children, to the degree that we pursue each other back from danger, back from sin. And notice it is individual care. It is heartfelt care because when the Father finds the one, He rejoices over it. It is implied then that it is forgiving care. The emphasis here on restoration, recovery which implies forgiveness.

And the Father's joy is great. He even rejoices over this one more than over the ninety-nine which had not gone astray. God, you would think, would have a restrained joy, because He still would have the joy over the people who didn't wander away, but here it says He has the greatest joy over those who wandered away and are recovered. This is because God delights in forgiveness. This is simply shows the extent of God's grace.

Augustine says this, “What then takes place in the soul when it is more delighted at recovering the thing it loves than if it had never been lost?” Until you lose it, you never realize the extent you have missed it. So also is the love of God, this is His heart that recovers. It's an amazing thing, when you help a sinner recover, when you turn a sinner from his ways, as James 5 puts it, when the sinner is found and recovered, the sinner's greatest joy must be because of the Father's great joy. This is the greatness of God's grace.

How we care for one another is important to the Lord. It is the foundation of life in the church and it is the foundation of our effective testimony. We enter the Kingdom of Heaven like children. Now that we're in the Kingdom, we receive one another as we would receive children with love and kindness knowing that how we receive each other is how we receive Jesus Christ.

We protect each other like we would protect children from what could damage and harm them. We care for one another. We pursue one another when they wander away because this is the heart of God and this is the responsibility of the holy angels. Well, are you doing that now in our church? We are all on a journey where we learn new things all the time and sometimes reminders like this make us grow even more, Amen? Let us pray!