Sermon Tone Analysis

The following material is adopted from John MacArthur’s commentary on Matthew and his Study guide.

Additional material taken from sources listed at the end

Read and summarize

Look for

— Prayers ( Blue )

— Promises ( Green )

— Warnings ( Red )

— Commands ( Purple )

Chapter 18

Read and summarize

Q: Jesus loved and welcomes children wherever he went.

What are some of your favorite childhood memories?

What do you miss most about the carefree days of childhood?

MacArthur

Scripture describes and identifies the people of God by many names.

But more frequently than anything else we are called children — children of promise, children of the day, children of the light, beloved children, and children of God.

As believers we can rejoice in the wonderful truth that, through Christ, we have become God’s own children, adopted by grace.

Consequently, we bear the image of God’s family and are joint heirs with Jesus Christ of everything God possesses.

We enjoy God’s love, care, protection, power, and other resources in abundance for all eternity.

But there is another side of our being children.

In Scripture believers are also referred to as children in the sense that we are incomplete, weak, dependent, undeveloped, unskilled, vulnerable, and immature.

Matthew 18 focuses on these immature, un-perfected, childlike qualities that believers demonstrate as they mutually develop into conformity to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.

This chapter is a single sermon by our Lord on the specific theme of the child-likeness of the believer, speaking directly to the reality that we are spiritual children with all the weaknesses that childhood implies.

The first lesson in this masterful sermon is that everyone who enters the kingdom does so as a child.

Jesus then teaches that all of us in the kingdom must be treated as children, cared for as children, disciplined as children, and forgiven as children.

It is no exaggeration to say that this is the single greatest discourse our Lord ever gave on life among the redeemed people in His church.

We shall attempt to recover these truths that are so vital, powerful, and needed by the church in every age and place.

— This is the fourth of five great discourses contained in this gospel

Entering the Kingdom ( 18:1-4 )

( 18:1-4 ) At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” 2 Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, 3 and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

4 Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus Loved Children

— He raised a little girl from the dead, the daughter of the synagogue leader Jairus ( Matthew 9:23-25; Luke 8:41 )

— During a funeral procession He was moved with compassion for the grieving mother who lost her son and He raised him from the dead ( Luke 7 )

— Jesus rebuked the disciples for preventing children to come to Him ( Matthew 19:13; Mark 10:13; Luke 18:15-17 )

— Children are the most vulnerable among us both while in the womb and after they are born

— They are innocent, helpless, need constant care and protection and Jesus always showed kindness and tenderness toward children

— Yet, this passage is not about children

Children rest and are content

— Children are young and innocent and believe what they are told

— They are a picture of trust, rest and contentment illustrated by a simple faith

— They are like a “weaned child” ( Ps 131:2) trusting in God, not striving to control every situation or figure everything out

— Children are satisfied with milk and have no need of biblical doctrine

— But Jesus is not teaching that we are to be like unlearned children who simply believe without doctrine

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.”

( Heb 5:12 )

Q: What question is Jesus answering and why did He use a child to illustrate His answer ( 18:3 )?

( 18:3 ) unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven

— From Mark’s gospel we learn that Jesus precipitated this conversation by asking the disciples what they had been discussing among themselves earlier ( Mark 9:33,34 )

— The fact that disciples had been arguing about their relative ranks in the kingdom show they were making little effort to apply what they had been taught

— They were as proud, self-seeking, self-sufficient, and ambitious as ever

— Jesus is using a small child to answer the question of who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven

Unless

RC Sproul

What, then, did He mean?

As we begin to explore Jesus’ meaning, it is crucial that we note His use of the word unless.

Any time we see this term, we know that it introduces a necessary condition that has to be fulfilled for the desired result to take place.

The condition that Jesus said has to be met in order for someone to enter the kingdom of God is conversion.

First, you must enter the kingdom

— The fact that you must enter the kingdom assumes he or she is born outside of it

— Holding an exalted place in heaven is secondary to securing entrance into the kingdom

— First things first

— You must become a little child in the sense that you must be born again

— When you are born again, you start out spiritually as a child

— Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. ( John 3:5 )

Second, you must come humbly like a child

— You bring no accomplishments, status or anything of value to offer the Lord

— You come like children with

— humble and sincere hearts ( 18:4 )

— a desire to be obedient ( 7:21 )

— poor in spirit ( 5: 3)

— You bring a simple childlike belief ( RC Sproul )

— Simplicity, innocence, unquestioning acceptance; yielding like a little child.

— Jesus knew that young children are not little angels; they can be self-centered and demanding

— Instead, He was telling them to become like children in their humility

— A young child does not think that he knows more than his parents, rather a young child thinks his parents know everything

— If a mother tells a child Santa Claus is real, the child will believe his mother

— A true believer must trust God implicitly, because he knows that God is altogether trustworthy

Born a Christian

— I hear people say that “I was born a Christian”

— As a Catholic, I was taught that you are born a Christian and once a Catholic always a Catholic

— But Scripture tells us that everyone ( except Christ ) is born into this world in a state of spiritual death

“ And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,” ( Eph 2: 1 )

— In that sense, no one is born a Christian; you must be born again

Going Deeper

RC Sproul

Recently, as I was reminiscing about my fifty-plus years of teaching and preaching, I began trying to calculate the number of messages I have given.

As near as I could guess, including college and seminary lectures, as well as radio messages, it is somewhere between twenty-five thousand and thirty thousand messages.

Perhaps I should share with you how I mutilated this text in 1958.

I used it to articulate that pernicious idea that invades churches all over the world—that to be a Christian is to have a simple faith.

The New Testament, of course, is clear that if we are called of God, if we are believers in Him, we are not to be satisfied with the milk of the gospel but to grow to the fullness of maturity as God’s people by consuming the meat God has given to us in His Word.

But I told my hearers that day that we do not need to spend copious amounts of time and energy poring over the Scriptures.

I told them that we do not need a lot of theology and doctrine.

Instead, all we need is Jesus.

We need to be simple people with a simple faith.

But that is not what Jesus was getting at when He told the disciples they must be converted and become as little children.

The Danger of Causing a Christian to Sin ( 18:5-9 )

( 18:5-9 ) Whoever receives one little child like this in My name receives Me. 6 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

7 Woe to the world because of offenses!