Who Is The Greatest In The Kingdom Of Heaven? (Matthew 18) - A Sermon By Elise Beatrice

TRANSCRIPT

Who Is The Greatest In The Kingdom Of Heaven? (Matthew 18)

A Sermon By Elise Beatrice - Monday 2 June 2025

Holy Father, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, thank You for everything that You do. You have always been doing great things, and we thank You for them all.

Lord Jesus, we thank You for Your inspiration and everything You give us today.

Lord, we love You, and we bless You, and we love Your Father and bless Him forever. We thank Him for You, and we thank You for Him and for Your Holy Spirit. In Your Holy Name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Matthew 18:1-7

Matthew 18:1–7

18 About that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” 2 Jesus called a little child to Him and put the child among them. 3 Then He said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 4 So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. 5 “And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming Me. 6 But if you cause one of these little ones who trust in Me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned into the depths of the sea. 7 “What sorrow awaits the world because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.

The Lord is putting a little child in this passage as the one we should look at. So we must be like little children. Why little children?

Those little children are with Jesus, following Him, and they love Him even without understanding the full picture. They trust Him even without truly understanding who He is. They just know that there is something beautiful about Jesus. They’re just there wanting to speak to Jesus with no personal gain. This is a beautiful thing about little children; they’re not like adults; they can sense who can be evil. The little children are the closest creatures to the Lord, to God, because they are not old enough to know right from wrong, and for this, they’re quite pure and naive. They still have the ability to sin but are not practising sins like adults do. They are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven because they are pure and humble and love the Lord Jesus, their Creator and Heavenly Father, without question or expecting something in return, for they trust Him and know He Is only beautiful things. Suppose death were to come their way, they would go to heaven. God will not bring little children before His judgment seat to give an account to Him.

The Lord Jesus is describing to us little children. What types of little children? Those children who are coming after Him, who trust Him. He wouldn’t say, “One of these little children who trust in Me,” unless He had seen that those little children were trusting in Him.

Little children, given that they are just not brought up in a house of evil people already in the darkness that some can already be so evil at the age of five, they will always be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Given that they are these kinds of little children who are following Christ around, and they seem to be loving what Christ is doing, and they trust God, and they’re so humble, they will always be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christ is even using the example of humble, “Unless you become humble like these little children.”

So, they were humble, and they trusted God, and they were following Christ around out of love. Children can sense what is good.

If an evil person... Suppose satan were to stand in front of a little child, they would sense, ‘Something’s wrong about this one, even if he is coming here pretending to be kind.’ But the Lord Jesus did not have to pretend to be kind: He is Kindness, He is Love. He is Joy. He is pure. And these little children would sense that.

So, who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?

These are the adults, His disciples, asking this question.

So, the Lord did not say, “The greatest is among you.” But “The Greatest is the one who becomes like this little child.” Why?

When you see the little children, how are they with their parents?

They trust their parents, depend on their parents to take care of them, love their parents, and they listen to their parents.

They have seen the beauty in Christ; they can recognise the beauty of Christ while some adults cannot even recognise it. So, we must be like those little children. And since we refer to God as our Heavenly Father,

we must be to God the kind of children any godly father needs.

The children must be obedient to their godly parents. And those little children are standing there before the One who helps us to be godly.

It is God who helps us be godly when we choose righteousness, when we choose to do good things, when we choose to obey God, embrace the Lord’s ways and do His will. And these children are little but are not going to play; they are coming here for Christ. They’re there all willingly with a smile on their faces.

The children can be very trusting, but they also must sense that someone is harmless. They have seen Christ as harmless. And Christ could see the love they had for Him, and the trust they had in Him, and that pleases the Lord. That is the kind of love we should show God. He loves us more than that, but at least the little children give God that perfect love that Christ expects from us. Unless we love the Lord Jesus and His Father, God Almighty, who is our Father in Heaven, with the love of little children, depending on our Father completely and trusting that He can save us, that He can help, that He can provide for us. Unless we have this kind of love and know that Christ is efficient and more than enough; unless we have that, we cannot really count ourselves among the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yes. The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven is that one, whether you’re an elder, a teenager or a middle-aged person, you must be humble like little children. We must abandon our own ways, arrogance and pride; we must abandon our opinions, our own will, and surrender to God and be humble. We are not here to boast about our achievements and what we do or to compete with each other but to be like humble children. Because the children don’t waste their time boasting about themselves, boasting about their work and the many things they do for themselves. They are just there trusting their parents and depending on their parents to take care of them. And if we are the children of God, we must be like little children: we should listen to God, depend on Him to take care of us, and give us what we need and put us where He wants us to be. We must trust God, that He knows what He is talking about, that He knows best. We must trust Him, that He knows everything, every heart, and sees every intention of the mind, and that He knows the future and holds the future into His mighty hands. So when we live like this with pure love - genuine love for God - this genuine love comes with obedience. The Lord is speaking about humbleness, about those who trust in Him and welcome God with a smile without doubting Him and bombarding Him with questions with no intention of hearing the answers. Many are not interested in knowing the truth; they just come there with those questions, seeking an excuse to remain in their own ways.

Many people today don’t trust Christ; they don’t trust God, even most Christians don’t trust Him. That’s why they’re still doing their own ways and value their opinion above God’s ways. They have not really seen that God is enough for them; they’re still looking for something. And that’s why, after many years believing in the Lord, they’re still the same and still living in sin and are not producing any good fruit because they have not let God bless them with His Holy Spirit, who helps us to produce good fruit.

And He is saying, “And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming Me.”

He is speaking about these children who are coming to Him. Children out there who are not old enough to know right from wrong are still the closest creatures to God. So, anything that we do for those children, like nurturing them, nourishing them, feeding them with the words of God to grow their faith even more as they grow up. If now they’re trusting the Lord and suddenly, we neglect them, and they lose that trust in the Lord because of false teachings of the world, if it had been our fault, then we are in real trouble with the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the Lord says, ‘These little children who already trust in Me, who are so humble, who are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven...’ So God is considering those little children already in the Kingdom of Heaven. But now, if they grow up and remain in that, they will still be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. But suppose they grow now and the ungodly parents were to turn them away from God, they would be snatching them away from Christ and handing them to satan.

What He means here is that: ‘Take care of these children; help them grow with faith; it is your responsibility as parents. Bring them up in the way they should go so that they will not turn away from what they know. But if any parent sees this little child, who is not old enough to know right from wrong but they love God and can sense the presence of God, they can feel that love, and they hear ‘God is there’ and rush to see that God, calling Him ‘their Saviour and their Lord, because they trust Him and know they’re safe with Him. And then, you are the parent who comes and takes that away from them; not only are you snatching something beautiful away from them, but you’re also teaching them wrong and sending them into the darkness that might lead them to hell as they grow up. By doing so, you are in real trouble with the Lord. Because He says here,’

“If you cause one of these little ones who trusts in Me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

They are just cute little children who love God; they understand even faster than adults that God is the One who created them.

“It would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

What He means here is that: ‘What you’ll go through later when you will give account to Him at the Judgment, will be so worse; He is referring to hell, the burning eternal fire of hell. If you snatch those little children who trust in Him and send them into the hands of satan, and they grow up into the darkness and end up in hell, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. Because once you find yourself in that fire, it will be unquenchable; it will be so unbearable that you will wish you were at the bottom of the sea, even with a large millstone around your neck dragging you down. At least you’ll be in the refreshing sea even if you have this weight dragging you down because the fire will be such an unbearable place that cannot be stopped, and you’ll go through it continuously, days and days, for eternity.

This is just how severe and grave the punishment of hell will be. It will be a load you cannot carry. No one can carry the load of hell. And the Gracious Lord has warned all beforehand and even died on the Cross so that no one has to end up there.

So this is how much the children mean to God.

Psalm 127:3 says,

Psalms 127:3

“Children are a gift from the LORD; they are a reward from him.”

So yes, ‘What sorrow awaits the world because it tempts people to sin.’

The Lord Jesus is saying that temptations are inevitable. But He is the solution to that. Temptations must come that we cannot stop. But we can prevent ourselves from falling into them by listening to the Lord Jesus.

Let’s welcome the Lord by welcoming those little children and teaching them well.

Let us all listen to the words of the Lord, for they are life to those who find them and healing to their whole bodies.

Yes, I pray this will help you, and then you’ll listen to these teachings carefully and live your life according to them.

Lord, thank You so much again for this sermon. Thank You so much for Your inspiration. Thank You for everything. You are the Lord of lords, the King of kings. You are the Alpha and the Omega. Thank You so much, Lord Jesus. You are continuously showing us the way to Heaven, and You are standing there at the Door so that we can knock, and You let us in. And You also go and knock at people’s door, in Your full humbleness, so that those who hear You may open and You can go in and dine with them, not as the Master, but as friends. And that is something that only You can do. You are a humble God. You are speaking about humbleness because You, Yourself, are humble. You are the King of kings. Thank You, Lord Jesus.

We love You, and we bless You, and we thank You for Your teaching.

In Your Holy Name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.