Matthew 18:1-6 | Kingdom Now: Who's the Greatest? (with Jeff Stemple)

Good morning.

So funny.

I was scurrying around looking for my Bible.

I thought I'd left it in the back.

It was right up here on this thing the whole time.

Hey, good on you guys for being in church the Sunday morning after the 4th of July.

Ears are still ringing, everybody.

I don't want to maybe hold up your hands.

Maybe make sure you've got all the digits you had yesterday at this time.

Good on you guys. We say it all the time around here.

There's a lot of places you could choose to be on a Sunday morning,

especially on the Sunday morning after the 4th of July.

And you made the choice to be in church.

That is a good decision on you.

I'm sure God is going to.

I was going to say, I hope God, but I just know God is going to honor

that in ways that maybe we could never have imagined.

When we ever we choose to give the first of whatever

it is to God our time, our energy, our talent, our treasure,

God just does something and multiplies that in ways that are really surprising

a lot of times.

So I'm glad to see you in church this morning.

I think you're going to be encouraged by the time that we spend

together today, but I know it is.

And it's just after the 4th of July, so I figured we'd do

a little congregational call and response.

You guys are okay with that?

A little audience, little congregational participation.

Who can tell me what this acronym means?

Greatest of all time.

The Goat gets a lot of publicity, especially in the last

few years talking about the greatest, the greatest of all time.

So I figured I'd just throw out some categories

and we'll see what you guys think.

What are some what are some opinions of the greatest of all time,

greatest NFL quarterback

month?

I knew I'd have a lot of Joe Montana's.

We had a friend, Tarkington, in the first service.

I was like, whoa, that's going way back.

A lot of you guys don't know who that is.

Yeah.

Glad a good quarterbacks that you guys shout it out.

What about you basketball fans.

Greatest point guard of all time NBA point guard of all time

magic.

Who else.

No Steph Curry. Really?

You must have whispered it.

Baseball fans.

Greatest MLB pitcher of all time

Nolan Ryan

Hershiser those are some good ones.

And okay, so we're in World Cup season.

I had somebody come up to me between services

like, dude, you didn't even ask about soccer.

So greatest the Goat soccer.

Wow. Messy Pele Pele again.

You guys are going back.

You guys are getting nostalgic on me.

One last one and it's kind of a giveaway.

Well, we'll talk about why, but greatest hockey player of all time?

Gretzky. Yeah.

So a lot of what you talk

about, you know, if you ask me who the greatest quarterback is of all time,

I'll say Terry Bradshaw because I've been a Steeler fan forever.

Some of you smirked at that. Some of you laughed at that.

So in order to settle the dispute,

I went to the seller of all disputes her, whose name shall remain nameless.

I don't think we have Alexa in here so I can say her name.

Otherwise she'll talk back to us all afternoon.

So I went to Alexa and I said, Alexa, greatest quarterback of all time.

And she said, Tom Brady, sorry, I know, I know.

Greatest point guard of all time.

You guys said Magic Johnson, greatest pitcher of all time.

I went to Siri and to Alexa on this one.

And they were in dispute even between the two digital forces

that be greatest pitcher, according to Siri, was Seung

greatest pitcher according to Alexa was Nolan Ryan.

So you guys decide hockey.

Of course, his nickname is literally the Great one Wayne Gretzky.

And then I didn't even have a chance to go talk about talk to Alexa about who

the greatest soccer player is. Somebody said Pele.

And it just slipped my mind.

Yeah, that's that's crazy.

One of the things about.

Alexis calculations is that it's based on

championships, averages, records, awards

and one of the one of the things you made me

wonder why we're talking about sports greatness.

That's because that's where we're going today.

As we look at the Bible, as we look

at the next sort of installment of our march

Through the Gospel According to Matthew, it's the first book in your New Testament.

And we've been going through verse by verse, passage by passage,

sometimes chapter by chapter

of the Gospel of Matthew.

And so last week we finished up chapter 17.

Pastor Carl did a great job finishing up chapter 17.

And so we get a fresh start at chapter 18.

So if you brought your Bibles with you,

that's where we're going to start chapter 18, right in verse one.

And the disciples ask this question.

At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked,

who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Jesus, who is the greatest?

Not the greatest catcher, not the greatest pitcher,

not the greatest

fisherman?

There were a couple of fishermen in the disciples,

definitely not the greatest tax collector, because those two universes never met.

But they say, who is the greatest person in this kingdom of heaven?

Jesus, you've been talking a lot about the kingdom.

You've been inviting people into the kingdom.

You've been giving details into the kingdom.

You've been making analogies to the kingdom.

So we're wondering who's the greatest person

in the kingdom of heaven.

If you read that like me,

and if you were here last week or caught last week's sermon on the line,

you may be thinking, where is this coming from?

How many of you guys

have have friend groups where there's always somebody like this

in your friend group where they say something, you're like, where are you?

Where did that come from?

What are you even talking about?

If you have high school students, you do this a lot.

Like, where is this coming from?

Usually happens at 11:00 when you're ready for bed and they walk in and they start

deep thoughts, you're like, I have no idea where this is coming from.

I read that and I thought, where is this question coming from?

I thought at that time, it starts out by saying it at that time.

At what time?

Well, let's jog back up to chapter 17 and try to get some context.

And if you're like me and you tried to do that, you realize

that doesn't help at all, because chapter 17 ended.

If you were here last week with a fish story, there's just dialog.

There's back and forth between Jesus and Peter, and Jesus tells Peter,

go fishing, you're going to catch a fish.

There's going to be a coin in their pay our tax bill.

And then chapter 17 just ends.

And so I'm thinking, well, that didn't give me any help.

That didn't give me any context.

I still wonder, where is this question coming from?

Thankfully, our buddy Mark

steps in and goes, Matthew does this a lot.

Let me help you give some.

Let me help give some context to this.

So keep your finger right there in chapter 18 and thumb ahead of you.

Chapters into the gospel of Mark at chapter nine,

chapter nine, verse 33.

It says this.

They came to Capernaum when he was in the house.

Who's he?

Jesus.

When he was in the house, he asked them, who's them disciples?

What were you arguing about on the road?

But they kept quiet, because on the way they had argued about

who was the what, the greatest.

So thank you, Mark.

You gave us a little bit of context.

You gave us a little bit of backstory.

They're on their way from one town to the next.

And on the way,

they started to have this discussion

that turned into an argument.

Spending time with Jesus, following Jesus, walking with Jesus.

This delineation had sort of started to happen.

They had started to split hairs.

They had started to count beans.

Some of them had experienced victories,

some of, you know, shining, literally shining victories.

Some of them had experienced defeats.

We read last week about how the disciples were called on

to do something they had done in the past.

This was a thing that they knew they were able to do, drive out a demon,

and they weren't able to do it, and they kind of got called out publicly.

This guy comes and he says, hey, I ask your disciple, my son has

has this demon, and I ask your disciples to drive out the demon.

And they couldn't do it. What's up with that?

That's kind of false advertising.

And the disciples are like, what a fail, what an epic fail.

And as they had been walking with Jesus and doing life, they had

they had started shocking up these experiences.

Keep in mind, we've got more chapters of Matthew behind us than we do

in front of us.

I thought,

this is how it is in most areas of life.

When we spend some time, when we spend any amount of time in any area of life,

you start to think to yourself, how am I doing?

How is this going?

Should I be concerned?

If there were a cut list, would I make it?

If there were a report card, where would I land on the bell curve?

How am I doing?

They started to get concerned with where they stood, and as I thought about that,

I thought often this type of thought comes from a place of insecurity.

Questions like this so often come from a place of insecurity,

and for some reason, that insecurity can

a lot of times lead to pride, a self-preservation.

These types of environments

often create these types of questions.

So the disciples are looking for the scoreboard.

They're looking for a report card, a quarterly review of where they stood

and how they measured up.

And Mark, thank goodness, tells us this wasn't

some deep theological, calm discussion over coffee.

This was an argument

with heated opinions.

They were arguing and Jesus asked them, hey,

have you ever remember when you were a kid and your and your and your parents like

from the other end of the house?

What are you guys doing in there?

And nothing.

Jesus kind of does one of those.

It's like, hey, what were you guys arguing about on the road?

And they just stood there?

Nothing.

And then they finally work up the gumption to go.

Why don't we just ask him? He's Jesus.

He probably already knows what we were talking about.

He actually said, I know you guys were arguing.

How about you tell me what you were arguing about?

And they're like, he probably already knows.

So let's just ask him, hey, Jesus, who's the greatest?

And if you can imagine,

if you have kids when they're looking to settle a dispute,

it's rarely because they haven't tried on their own yet.

They come to you with very heated opinions.

So they come to Jesus

and they ask this question, who's the greatest?

Because in their minds, where they were status,

achievement, recognition and definitely comparison

were all used to determine

what greatness means.

It was the criteria in their minds.

It was the criteria that by which they determined greatness.

And it's so interesting.

Jesus does not respond

with an explanation, at least not one that they thought they were.

They were going to get.

Wouldn't have been weird

if Jesus responded with a list like, you know, whipped out some whiteboard.

All right, I'm glad you asked, Peter.

You're obviously at the top.

I mean, you do say some crazy stuff every now and then, but you did

have that really good confession and mean, hey,

you got invited up the mountain, so you're obviously at the top, Peter.

And as we go down, you know, John, Andrew.

It's kind of neck and neck between you guys.

You better study the playbook.

We'll see how it pans out for you this week.

Grades are coming out on Friday.

We'll see how you guys end up.

That'd be crazy if Jesus did that.

He doesn't do any of that.

He responds with sort of this object lesson.

He responds with his answer is in the form of an example

with flesh and blood on it.

And really.

It's almost like Jesus is saying,

do you really want to know the answer to that? Have you ever?

Have you ever been in a situation like that

where you ask a question, somebody goes,

do you really want to know the answer to that?

And you're like, I'm not sure.

Now, this was like dating in high school.

Do you really want to know the answer to that?

So Jesus responds and he basically says, you're asking the wrong question.

I'm going to answer this, but it's going to expose how wrong you're

thinking is when it comes to this idea of the kingdom of heaven.

So Matthew verses two through four, it says,

he called a little child and had him stand among them.

And he said, I tell you the truth, unless you change and become

like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child

is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

You guys, it is hard to

overstate how big of a deal this was for the disciples,

how much

spiritual and emotional whiplash

this must have been for the disciples

in their world.

This didn't work.

This didn't make sense in their world.

Although children were loved, they were by no means great.

They did not have this idea

of a child in their minds when it came to greatness.

Children had no resume.

They had no litany of accomplishments they could point to and say, that's

that's me.

They had no authority.

They had nobody reporting to them.

They had no leverage. They had no status.

They had no money, no platform, no influence.

All the things the disciples and we use to determine greatness.

Jesus is like, nope. This is who I'm pointing to.

So the disciples are floored by this.

A child not impressive, not image focused, not agenda driven.

And Jesus literally pulls him into the middle

and says, this is what it looks like to be great.

In verse three that we just read, he says, truly

I say to you, unless you change some of your Bible, say turn,

unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter

the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus saying, this is how important this idea is.

You guys are talking about greatness in the kingdom.

I'm saying unless you make a fundamental change in how you're thinking

about this, don't even talk about what happens when you get in.

Let's just talk about entrance.

He's saying this is how big of a deal it is.

Then what was he calling out in this child?

That makes them great?

What is it about them?

The answer is buried in a word.

In verse four, Jesus says, whoever humbles himself

like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

It's this word that makes all the difference

for us, and it's something we struggle with all the time.

It's that word humble.

It's that idea of humility.

And Jesus is saying this childlike dependance, this trust

in God that this child displays is what I'm talking about.

So that's our big idea for today.

You guys, let me go back.

Jesus taught that greatness in God's kingdom is found through

humble dependance, not status. Or

that's the criteria Jesus taught.

Greatness in God's kingdom is found through humble dependance,

not status or achievement.

Jesus saying, become childlike.

And the disciples, I'm sure because of a way their minds were going,

the way this argument had gone, they were defaulting to not childlike,

but childish.

And they're like, I know, I know what children are like.

And they're thinking they're selfish, they're immature, they're careless.

And Jesus says, no, I mean child like with regard to your faith and trust

and dependance on God, that's what greatness in the kingdom looks like.

Jesus is saying, children don't fuss and fret

with things like, where's my next meal going to come from?

How does my stuff and my car compare to my neighbors?

And how do I rack up

credit card charges to make sure that that's not an issue anymore?

Children don't worry about where the mortgage is going to

or how the mortgage is going to be paid.

I remember when my daughters,

I think they were in junior high, I remember I explained to them

what a mortgage was before that they did not care.

I mean, even after that they did not care, but they just it just wasn't a big deal.

They're just dependent.

And Jesus is

saying, that's what I'm talking about.

They live with a knowledge of dependance, knowing

that someone greater is caring for them.

Jesus is saying, that's what I'm talking about

when I talk about becoming childlike,

and it all stems from being humble.

Did you catch that?

Jesus says, whoever humbles himself, did you guys catch that?

Whoever humbles himself?

This implies this active participation.

There's a few things the Bible talks about I love,

I love, I always try to hone in on when the Bible talks about

do this thing to yourself.

One of the ones that I love is

when it talks about finances.

With regard to debt, the Bible says, free yourself

like a bird from the hand of the Fowler,

like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter.

It implies this you've got to have some skin in.

This game has nothing to do with salvation.

We're not talking about that.

We're talking about this command from Jesus that says, do this to yourself.

And then, yes, God comes and plants his super on your natural

and supernatural things start to happen.

But God says, do this thing to yourself.

And in this case, Jesus says,

humble yourselves.

I remember in

when I was youth pastor, I would always, do you guys know any high school boys?

Maybe some of you are high school boys. Yeah.

Some of you are like, oh, yes.

Unfortunately, high school boys, it does not take being around

high school boys very long.

Before you recognize this sort of one upmanship contest.

I used to call it a jackass contest.

They get into this little, you know, bickering back and forth

about who's better at this.

And it's really stupid stuff all the time.

And I used to tell them, because, you know, we'd have these

little satellites before youth group, youth group would start,

and I would just walk by and I'd hear these discussions

and I'd just kind of hang out and listen to discussion. And I'm like, all right.

And I said, you guys, humility is going to come.

Know that.

Make no mistake about it, humility will come to you.

You will be humbled.

But do what the Bible says and humble yourself.

Because if you don't humble yourself, you get humbled.

And one stings a lot less than the other.

And Jesus says, do that.

Humble yourselves.

So some application questions for us, some gut check questions for us.

Number one, where have I stopped trusting Jesus?

Simply, where are the simple things that Jesus has asked me to trust him in,

that I've somehow rationalized away, that I've somehow said, you know what?

I'll get back to that.

That really doesn't make sense, because I'm in my 30s

now, or I'm in my 20s

now, or I'm in my 40s now, that where have I stopped trusting Jesus?

Simply with all, without all the excuses?

Number two

where have I replaced dependent faith with control?

I remember when my daughter started to get their driver's license

and they graduated from high school, and they got married and they moved out.

All of those things come

with a sense of responsibility, but also what we call autonomy.

This idea that I'm doing it, I'm in control.

And it's so weird.

It almost happens subversively that that control replaces

that dependent, childlike faith.

Number three.

This is a great one.

Where do I believe Jesus in speech?

But I distrust him in practice.

Where does what I say and what I do not?

Where where do I when it's

10:00 on a Sunday morning at flipside and at 72 in fluorescent?

I'll not along and I'll say Amen, and I'll say yes.

And then I'll go out and it's Wednesday at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I'm in

that office, or I'm on that field and I'm with those people, and my amen.

And my yes, somehow have vanished.

Where do I believe Jesus in speech but distrust him in practice?

One of the things we talk about it around here

all the time, it's one of the things I love most about our church.

We talk about mercy and grace all the time.

All the time.

It's just this thread,

these threads that run through the heartbeat of flipside and I love it.

And when we talk about grace, we define grace

as the undeserved favor and blessing of God.

Grace is the undeserved.

We don't didn't earn it, didn't deserve it.

Undeserved favor and blessing of God.

But did you guys know there's this sort of thing that lets grace flow freely?

There's this thing that we that we're a part of, and that's why

Jesus says, do it to yourself.

James

actually talks about this James chapter four verse six.

It says, therefore humble God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

God opposes the

proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

The Apostle Peter also talks about it first Peter chapter five, verse three.

He says, he's telling his readers,

clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.

For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

I think if James and Peter were were here today,

they would say that didn't come from me. That actually came.

They were good Jewish boys.

They were just quoting their scripture that came from Proverbs

chapter three, verse 34.

Some translations say God mocks proud mockers,

but gives grace to the humble.

That childlike humility is what allows God's,

what welcomes God's undeserved blessing and favor.

And Jesus says, that's how big of a deal it is.

And that's what this child displays.

It's so interesting.

Jesus doesn't stop there.

He keeps his foot on the gas.

He teaches what true greatness looks like,

and then he teaches how the truly great treat others.

And he sticks with the object lesson

because I wanted to pull a teenage girl up here and have her do this,

because they do it so much better than I could.

But they do that thing where they go.

I can just see

some of the disciples, a child.

Now, if you had parents like mine and you made that noise, oh, game over.

If I ever went, they were like, what?

Sit down. I'm not done.

And Jesus is kind of like, I'm not done.

He keeps his foot on the gas and he sticks with this object lesson in verses

five and six he says, and whoever welcomes a little child

like this in my name welcomes me.

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,

it would be better for him to have a large millstone

hung around his neck and to be drown in the depths of the sea.

Yikes!

Jesus

basically says, you asked the question.

You guys are the ones who ask the question.

And I'm saying greatness looks like childlike surrender and dependance.

Humility humbling yourself.

And then he makes a statement that could have easily been a question.

He makes this statement that just could have easily been a question.

He basically says, how do you treat people who embody that dependance?

How do you treat those who are an example

of what I'm talking about?

Because the way the disciples

were thinking by that rationale,

greatness is found in things like power.

It's found in things like influence and status.

It's found in achievement and in recognition.

If that's the criteria, the byproduct of that is children

automatically get pushed to the margins because they have none of that.

And Jesus is saying, this is how this is what I want to know about you.

If you can accept that kingdom greatness

is found in humility and dependance and trust and need, then children

suddenly get brought to the center what Jesus was doing.

That's why Jesus literally put a child in the middle of the room.

And that's why Jesus almost immediately moves

from talking about becoming childlike to talk, talking about welcoming a child.

He says, not only is this how I want you to be,

but the way you treat them and those like them

is a reflection of what you think about me.

Because church family, this statement is true.

What we value reveals what we actually believe.

You can tell me what you believe all day long,

but when I find out what you value, that will really be the proof.

And Jesus is saying that.

What we value

reveals what we actually believe.

One of the things I love about our church is that we

demonstrate that value through our children's ministry.

It's so simple.

It's such a simple way to exemplify and to reveal what we actually believe.

Every Sunday there's volunteers that show up and they have

the rooms are clean, they're teaching, they're praying.

They're doing really just fundamental stuff.

Checking kids in,

creating spaces where children can feel loved

and where they can hear that Jesus loves them.

It's not babysitting.

If you're part of the children's ministry, you are doing a sacred work.

Please know that because I know there's some Sundays where it does not seem like

that.

That's kingdom work.

And by Jesus definition, that's kingdom greatness.

Dressing exactly what this this question that the disciples were asking.

I had forgot about this.

This is a sticker that I don't even know how this got in my Bible.

It says, hello, my name is Mr.

Jeffrey and the date on it.

My goodness, the date on it is Sunday, August 14th, 2011.

And it's the 9 a.m.

kids team.

When Jennifer

and I first came to flipside, our kids were really small

and I didn't get involved with the worship team.

I didn't get involved with the tech booth.

I didn't get involved with refreshments.

I started volunteering in children's.

My wife and I both started falling, volunteering in Children's and Mrs.

Stumbles, a kindergarten teacher.

She I mean, those kids, they just they it's like they

I was like, what is going on?

And what am I doing? They can't wipe their noses.

They can't tie their own shoes.

These kids are driving me nuts.

And I was so glad I got involved in that ministry back then,

because it forced me to put into practice what Jesus is talking about.

So thankful for our children's program.

Trish and everybody involved in that program is doing such a fantastic job.

We just had VBS.

It was phenomenal.

Crazy the way God moves in that.

Also Jesus

takes a conversation from receiving kids to safeguarding them.

He doesn't stop at welcoming them.

He says protect them.

One of the ways we're doing that at flipside

right now is through this sheepdog ministry.

Some of you probably are like, what is that?

That's that's by design.

There are people here who involve who are involved in our security team.

You may have seen them with a little headset or a walkie talkie.

Other than that, they are incognito and they are walking around here

making sure that this is a safe place for families and children to come.

Their ministry is

one of the best examples of what Jesus is talking about today.

It's humble service with no real platform,

no real spotlight, no fanfare, no hoopla.

It's just faithfulness.

It's just humble dependance on God.

The disciples asked about greatness

and Jesus pointed to a child.

Jesus says, this is how the greats.

This is how the goats at.

It's the fruits of humility.

These things that he was pointing to are the fruits of humility.

The world says, become great.

Jesus says, how about you? Just be humble.

Let's start there.

The world says, become great.

Jesus goes, let's just be humble.

The Bible says, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God,

and he will lift you up in due season.

And we as adults go, what does that mean?

What does that mean? What does that mean? Lift me up.

I want to know how I'm going to be lifted up. What does that mean? Do season?

Because I'm getting really impatient and I'm getting tired. Wins.

And God says, just be humble and let me take care of that.

The disciples no different than us.

They wanted a scoreboard.

They wanted a report card because everybody understands rank.

We understand promotion.

We understand position.

We understand things like popularity and performance reviews and follower counts.

We understand all of these criteria and means that we can determine greatness by.

And Jesus gives us a child.

He says, be like this.

That's what kingdom greatness looks like.

And that's the lesson for us. Amen.

God, we thank you so much

for your word.

We thank you that we have the opportunity to come to this place today.

And just to start this week off focusing on you and what you have to say

about what true greatness looks like.

I pray that if there's anybody here this morning that is

really struggling with this idea of where they measure up,

especially if it's where they measure up with regard to you, I pray that

if there's anybody here who needs to give their life and their

their surrender, their heart and their surrender their will to you,

I pray that they'll do that and that you will just give them

what your word talks about, the peace that transcends all understanding.

I pray that as we go back into the places you've called us to go

this week, this is going to be a big challenge for a lot of us

because, man, we live in a world of competition.

We live in a world of reviews.

We live in a world of comparison.

And I pray God that even at the end of the week,

our minds will be called back to our time here today,

and it'll just be a safety valve and take all of that pressure off.

Jesus, we thank you for that and we ask all these things in your name.

Amen.