The Father’s Love (Matthew 18:10-14)

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I want to pray for our guest preacher today. He is a member here at Cityview, Daniel Jensen, but this is his first time preaching with us. Daniel graduated from Moody in May and has preached before while on his internship in the UK Last summer was married. This summer, that was very exciting, right here in Stock. So let me pray for Daniel as well as the church plant rest of the service. Would you join me in prayer, Lord? We pray first of all for how you are leading us as a church. We are so excited to see what you are doing, but Lord, would you provide what we need in this exciting time? We ask for guidance, especially for us as a congregation, but for every one of us as individuals as well. Knowing that some of us will go out with this church plant, would you be stirring in the hearts of the people that you would have a go, Lord? We pray for unity throughout this process, anytime there’s change, Satan loves to gain a foothold, and we know that. And so we pray against that, Lord, and that we would be united. We would be of one heart and one mind in the Lord Jesus, committed to Your glory and the building up of Your kingdom in all that we do. And we pray, God, for missional hearts that we would be willing to make sacrifices for the sake of Your kingdom, that others may know. And Lord, we know that a missional heart will require generous sacrifice of our funds, but of our time and energy, and even the sacrifice of friendships weekly gatherings all together as we send out a group as well. So, Lord, would you prepare our hearts for that as we get nearer to that time? But Lord, we pray that you would establish this new church, that it would be a light in the darkness, a city shining on a hill, drawing people to yourself, because they see who we are in you, because they hear the good news of the gospel, and because you are drawing them to yourself. Lord, now as we turn to your word, we pray for Daniel. Pray that you would prepare him to speak to us, fill him with your Spirit even now, that he might speak boldly and confidently while standing on the rock of your word. And Lord, give us ears to hear your word. We know that your law is perfect, refreshing the soul. So would you refresh our souls in this time, we know that the statutes of you, Lord, are trustworthy, making wise the simple. So, Lord, would you make us wise in this time? We know that your precepts are right, giving joy to the heart. So, give us joy. We know that your commands, Lord, are radiant, giving light to the eyes. So, enlighten us, and that the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. And we know that all of your decrees, Lord, are firm and righteous. So may we listen to them. May we grow in our fear and love for you, for the glory of your name. We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen. If
you’ll open your Bibles to Matthew 18, that’s what we’ll be will be today. We’re continuing in our sermon series, going through Matthew 18. So if you haven’t listened to the previous sermons, I’d recommend you go back and listen to them. They’d help with some of the some of the context. But if you’ve ever been to a jewelry store, you you might have had the privilege of holding a diamond, one of those really, really expensive big diamonds, and you’d know that as you look at it, you just you can’t take your eyes off it. The way that it it shimmers in the light and reflects rainbows on the wall, the way that the light refracts through the different cuts of the diamond, it’s mesmerizing, and all you need to do once you’ve looked at it for a while from one direction is just turn it a little bit, and it looks like a whole new diamond, and you could you could adore it, all anew. And someone might walk by and and they might briefly look at it and and continue on. You’d say no, no. Sit with me. Look, it’s beautiful. I think sometimes we have the temptation to be the man that walks by with God, particularly with the love of God, when in fact we need to behold it, behold Him like a diamond, to just sit and gaze at its beauty, and then we could could even just turn a little bit, get a new perspective, and just adore it anew. God’s love is so wonderful that we can we can do that for our entire lives, and sometimes we think that Sunday morning is enough. And so, in this time, I hope that we can we can spend some time adoring the diamond of God’s love, as we see in this passage. Like I said, we’ll be in Matthew 18. If you’re in the pew Bibles, it’s on page 799. I’m not there yet. That’s embarrassing. Let me read it for us. We’re reading verses 10 to 14. See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. What do you think? If a man owns 100 sheep, and one of them wanders away. Will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that did not wander off. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. This is the word of the Lord. Now, like I said, if you haven’t been listening to this sermon series, I’d recommend you go back to to understand a little bit of the context. But there, there’s one thing that I want to hone in on, because it’s going to be particularly relevant for our text. Throughout this this chapter, Jesus has been using this phrase “little ones, little ones, and and he uses he starts it by by using a child as an example of faith. He says, “Unless you become like one of these little ones, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. This phrase, “little ones, throughout the chapter, it begins to get used as describing believers. So by the time of Jesus speaking in our passage, when he says little ones, he means believers. He’s not talking about little literal children, not necessarily. But we shouldn’t just we shouldn’t just replace little ones with believer, because there’s there’s a beautiful nuance, there’s a beautiful a beautiful piece to that phrase “little ones. The title “Little One. See, as I’ve grown up and kind of gotten into adult life, I’ve seen a lot more things that I have to keep track of, a lot of car things, and insurance, and money, and making sure I don’t get scammed, and now I have money that people want, and they can get it from me if they try hard. There’s just a lot of things to think about that I didn’t have when I was a child. I think the simplicity of the of a child, of a little one, is something that Jesus is trying to get at here. the The life of a little one is simple.
You wake up when your parents tell you. You eat what your parents tell you. You go where your parents tell you. You do what your parents tell you to do. You follow your parents. So maybe when the little boy goes to the store with his mom, he doesn’t need to understand all of the aisles where everything is. He’s just got to follow his mom, or if or if he goes downtown with his with his dad, he doesn’t need to know all the streets. He doesn’t need to keep track of everyone. He’s just got just got to hold on to his hand. I think it’s the same for us, as those who are little ones of God. We don’t we don’t have to understand all the intricacies, all the complic all the complications of life, we need only follow our Father. I don’t mean to downplay the the difficulty of the Christian life, but there’s that utter simplicity. We can follow our heavenly Father because He’s a good Father, and He cares for us. All we need to do is hold on to his hand. Now, in our passage, we’re going to see about God’s love for His little ones, and that’s our big idea. I’ll give it to you up front. God loves His little ones. It’s simple, but we’re going to take some time to to unpack it through through our passage. Now our passage is is going to be kind of like a sandwich. It it starts and ends with some some indicative, some statements just about truth, some facts, and in the middle is kind of some meat of a parable. And so we’re going to to first look at that top statement. We’re going to look at look at the diamond from the top, and then we’re going to go to the bottom. We’re going to look at the bottom, and then we’ll look at it straight on. And I hope that that through this we’ll get we’ll get to to see some of the intricacies and beauties of God’s love for His little ones. So the first statement is verse 10. Let me read it for us. See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. So Jesus first he gives this warning: See that you do not despise one of these little ones. Now that that sounds about what we would expect in the previous. Passage he had mentioned how we ought not to cause little ones to stumble. So he’s he’s giving us a command as how do we are to act, and then as usual Jesus applies that to the heart that we ought not to despise his little ones, and then and then he gives us a reason. He follows it up with a reason. Jesus says, “For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven. This verse has historically been used by some to support the idea of individual guardian angels for believers. Some might say each person has an angel watching over them. Some might even say each person, each child has an angel, but remember, we’re not talking about literal children here. We’re talking about believers, but I don’t quite think that he that Jesus is talking about individual angels for each believer either. We know that the spiritual realm is very real in Scripture. The Bible makes that very clear, but but the the image we get is of generally corporate guardianship. In Daniel 10, Daniel gets to speak to an angel who’s sent on a mission to communicate a message with him, and this angel tells him about how he was resisted by the dark forces and how these forces were overcome. But the image we get is of an angel who’s sent on a particular mission to do something, almost like the angels have areas of jurisdiction, general areas that they that they serve, kind of like police force. You know, we don’t each have a police officer assigned to us at every moment, but the Elmhurst police keep us safe, and maybe in particular times you would have a specific police officer assigned to you.
You can kind of think of it the same with angels, that they have a general area of purview, and sometimes they’re sent on particular missions. So we can say that angels minister to us corporately, but but what is this ministry? Hebrews 114 mentions that that these spirits are sent to minister to us for our salvation, so these angels are are leading us into salvation. They’re leading us in sanctification. They’re leading us into the righteousness of Christ. Let’s see how that pertains to our text. So these angels who minister to us have a direct view of the face of God. We’ve talked about the angels part, but let’s talk about the face of God part. This the face of God is a wonderful thing. We just we just read about it. How how God told Moses nobody can see my face and live, because God, His face is so wonderful and beautiful. It’s it’s more beautiful than every sunset put together. It’s more peaceful than every meadow you’ve ever seen. It’s the goal of the Christian life to see truly uninterrupted the face of God, and that is the image that these angels see? Moses, when he was on Mount Sinai, we just read it. He asked to see God’s face, and God says, “No, but you can see my back. And even after that, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai, his face was glowing so much that the Israelites could hardly look at him. That’s how much glory Moses revealed from looking at his back. How much more glorious is it to see the face of God? Now the the reasoning here is that if the angels, those who minister to us for our salvation, if they receive that honor to see the face of God, always see the face of God. How much more valuable are those whom they serve? How much more valuable are the little ones whom they are supposed to lead into salvation? It’s kind of like if the president had a dinner, and and the Secret Service was getting meals that are worth $500 or more. You know the president is eating even better. In kind of the same way, those who serve us to our salvation see the face of God. Of how much more value are we? Now it gets even better. It gets even better. Perhaps sometime we fall into the line of thinking that the Father is the one who has to punish us for our sin, and Jesus abates His wrath, satisfies His wrath. But that’s not true. The Father longs to richly bless us. In fact, the Father does richly bless us. Ephesians one three says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing. The Father richly blesses us because He loves. Us now. Now think for a moment about the love that the Father has for the Son, the Father has for Jesus, that infinite love that has gone back for all eternity and will continue into all eternity. It’s that love that that overflowed into the creation of the world. It’s that love that that overflows into everything. Now, with with the same love that that the Father loves Jesus, He loves us. With the same level of value that He values Christ, He values us. So every ounce of enjoyment that the Father has in Christ, He has in His little ones. For every ounce of love that he has for Christ, he has for his little ones because we are in Christ. So as we look at Christ, as we look at the Father, and his love for Christ, that is the love that he has for us. Oh, how deep the Father’s love for us, but let’s not forget that this comes right after a warning. So, as strongly as we feel the weight of God’s value, His love for His little ones, we also ought to feel the weight of this warning. Jesus says that we ought not to despise His little ones. Now, like I said, this is this is pretty standard in Jesus’ ministry. He he tells us how to act, but then he also applies that to a heart level. He tells us how we ought to think, how we ought to feel. He tells us not to despise his little ones, and it makes perfect sense.
If God values his little ones so dearly, how backwards is it for us to despise his little ones? Maybe, maybe you’re thinking now of the person that that when they walk in the room you get a little uncomfortable, or maybe you just don’t you just don’t think that highly of them. We have that temptation to view people with with our own eyes, and maybe maybe you’re convicted. You feel like, oh man, I got to try and value them more. But let me tell you, that’s not that’s not how it goes. Christ already values them. You need to only let Christ’s love for them, Christ’s value for them flow through you. Since you are in Christ, you share the mind of Christ. So let His love for them, His value for them, flow through you towards them. Cory 10 Boom experienced this once. Cory 10 Boom was was a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II, and she she suffered a lot, and she suffered the loss of her her dearly beloved sister and her father. This is a woman who knew pain. After the war was over, she was released, and she would travel, and she taught about forgiveness, about the forgiveness that is in Christ. After one of, one of the times that she taught, there was a man that came up to her, and it was, it was a man. It was one of the guards at the camp that she was at. Now he didn’t he didn’t recognize her, but she sure recognized him, and and all of that pain came flooding back, all of that suffering, all of the all of her loss came back, and this man he he said, “Thank you for teaching on Christ’s forgiveness. He has forgiven us. Thank you. And in that moment, Corrie 10 Boom didn’t didn’t know what to do. She she did not have the power to forgive him, and so she prayed, “Christ, give me your forgiveness. And so he reached out to shake her hand, and and she, not by her own strength, but by Christ’s, shook his. And she said she could she could feel Christ’s forgiveness flowing through her arm into this man, she did not have to rely on her own power to forgive. She merely needed to let Christ flow through her. In the same way, maybe that’s what we need when we realize we don’t value God’s little ones as we should. We don’t we don’t love them as much as we should. We need to let Christ’s love for them flow through us, because God values His little ones. God values His little ones. That’s the first point in our outline. The first angle that we’re beholding this jewel at. That’s the top. Now we’re going to shift here, and you might notice that there isn’t a verse 11. Most Bibles will have a little footnote explaining what happened. Basically, there was probably some overzealous scribe who just got really excited at this part, and so he put in the same words from Luke 19:10, where he says, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save.” The lost. So that’s what if your Bible has a verse 11, it probably says something like that. But later we kind of realize what happened, and so we don’t put that verse in right there, just because Matthew probably didn’t originally write that. Those words are very true, very true, just not original right here. So we’re not going to look at them today. So now let’s let’s pivot our view. We’re going to look at look at the bottom of of the diamonds, the bottom piece of the sandwich. We’re going to jump ahead to verse 14. Let me read it for us. In the same way, we’ll we’ll see what that means in a sec. But let’s continue. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. God, your father, like any good father, is not willing that you should perish. He does not want you to perish, but but more than just a passive desire, God God does not just just sit hoping. Oh, I really hope they don’t perish.
God is not willing that you perish, God plays an active part in keeping His little ones, and so so we can say as our second point that God keeps His little ones. God keeps His little ones. There are a few things we can we can say about this. We’re gonna we’re gonna just kind of rotate the diamond a little bit, just like this, right now. First, God keeps His little ones from sin. Now, this is this is kind of a twofold promise. On one hand, God actively guides us out of sin. Hebrews 1210 says that God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness. So when we when we go astray, when we wander into sin, God disciplines us like a loving Father to bring us back into His loving arms, so that we might share in His holiness. That’s such a blessing. That’s that’s the first side of this promise. The other side is that God has already sanctified us. He has kept us from sin. Paul Paul greets the Corinthians in First Corinthians as those sanctified in Christ Jesus. Now you need only read the letter that to know that the Corinthians were not good people, but they were sanctified in Christ Jesus because they were in Him, and so as as washed as Christ is of sin, so are those who are in Christ, because your heavenly Father is not willing that any of His little ones should perish. Maybe sometimes you feel like your own worst enemy. You don’t want to do what you know you should want. You don’t do what you want to do. You do what you don’t want to do. You feel entrapped by sin. Maybe you keep going back to that old sin that you just can’t seem to get out of. Remember, your Father in Heaven is not willing that any of His little ones should perish. The second is that God keeps His little ones from the evil one. Now the devil the devil wants us. Peter says that the devil is like a prowling lion searching for someone to devour. It’s a gruesome image. Satan would would love to grab our ankles and pull us down into hell with him, and yet here we are. Here we are in church, worshiping God, because God keeps His little ones from the evil one. Because your father is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. Now, since we since we are Christians, we are Christians. All that we see done to Christ is done to us, and so when we see Christ be be raised from the grave, Christ be set free from the bondage of sin that is done to us. Every bit of of Christ being kept from the evil one, so are we. Now I ask you, did the devil get hold of Christ? He did not, and so neither can he get hold of those who are in Christ. As free as Christ is from the evil one, so are we, because we are in Christ. And as surely as Christ resisted the devil, so can we by His power. Maybe you can hear the devil knocking; you can feel his temptation. Remember, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. Third, God keeps his little ones from apostasy. God prevents his little ones from leaving the faith. This is. Controversial in some circles, but we believe what the Bible tells us: we have died with Christ, we have been raised with Him, we have been seated with Him in the heavenly places. Can Christ’s work be undone? Can the devil reach into heaven and plunge us back into the grave? Can we be torn from under Christ’s wing? Or, as Paul asks, can anything separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus? No, because your Father in heaven is not willing that these little ones should perish. I imagine there being two types of people here today. One walks in and he feels weak, not sure that he can continue doubting his faith. I consider another that walks in feeling pretty good about himself. Maybe he says, “Yeah, God loves me. How could he not?
This doctrine that God keeps His little ones from apostasy is is not meant to comfort the prideful one; it is meant to strengthen the weak one. And so, if you feel weak, God keeps you. If you feel unsure, God longs for you. I assure you, Christ is a mighty Savior and a strong sustainer. The flip side of this is that God keeps His little ones in faith every morning when we wake up and we still believe in Jesus. It is a miracle. Truly, His mercies are new every morning. So, those of you who are flooded with doubts, unsure if your faith is going to last till tomorrow. Remember, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish. God keeps His little ones. God keeps His little ones. That’s our. That’s the bottom of our diamond. Now we’re gonna we’re gonna turn it and we’re gonna look straight on, right in the middle, at this parable. Let me read it for us. What do you think? If a man owns 100 sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the 99 on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off, and if he finds it truly, I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the 99 that did not wander off. The image represented in this parable is profound. In fact, I think it’s so profound we have the temptation to skim over it. We have the temptation to think, okay, I get what it’s saying. Now I’ll keep going. It’s so easy that we can we can get the big idea, we can get that that central idea, but it’s so deep that we could live our whole lives adoring God’s love as revealed in this parable. As you might have heard it said, but it’s it’s worth saying again, the gospel and this parable is so simple that a child could understand it, and yet so deep that nobody could ever plumb its depths. So let’s let’s let’s take a moment to look at this parable. This parable is probably familiar to you. Most people know the version presented in Luke 15, which is a little different. It’s it’s the same idea: a shepherd loses a sheep and he goes after the one. But in in Luke 15, he’s talking about unbelievers. He’s talking about the tax collector, the prostitute, the the LGBTQ activist, the the conservative or the liberal politician. He’s talking about about those who who don’t believe in Jesus, but but here in Matthew 18, as as we’ve said, he’s talking about his little ones, those who who have confessed their sin, who have faith in Jesus. So we get this this image of of a shepherd with his sheep, and he notices one is is gone, and and he leaves the rest and goes in pursuit of the one. And so we can say as our our last point in the outline that God pursues his little ones. God pursues his little ones. See, God does not merely look down from heaven on us and tell us to make make our way to Him. It might even be gracious if He gave us a path. If He said, “Yep, go go straight. Yep, right. Ugh, you failed. Okay, try again. No, God does not do that. God chose to dwell with His people. From the first pages of Scripture, we see God is a God who longs to be with His people. In the Garden of Eden, God walked with Adam and Eve. In the wilderness, God tabernacled among the Israelites. In the Promised Land, God sent His presence upon the temple. And even there, he wasn’t confined to the building, because when Jonah went went down from Jerusalem, down from the temple, even down into the sea, he still found that God was his salvation, because God pursues his little ones. God pursues his little ones, but I can’t mention all of these Old Testament images without without speaking of that which they point to. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross, he took on our struggles. He took on our sin. He took on our weakness, our shame, our sorrow.
He took that into himself. He faced off with our temptations. He bore the death that we were to die. And why? Why? Because God pursues His little ones, because God pursues His little ones, because God pursues His little ones. I love that in this church we have we have a huge cross that looms over us as we worship. In this, in this cross, we see the depth of God’s love for His little ones. That He pursued us to the grave, that He bore that upon Himself because He loves us. But there’s a reason that we don’t picture Christ still on the cross, because yes, He joined us in that place, but He did not leave us there. He defeated death and dragged us out of the grave with Him. We have been raised with Christ. You who hear me now, God pursues you. You who are weak in faith, God pursues you. You, you who feel weak, apathetic, unholy, not even wanting to do the right things, God pursues You, God pursues you. You who are tempted by sin, God pursues you. You who have fallen into sin, God pursues you. God pursues His little One’s God pursues His little ones. Now I have to say, this whole time I’ve been talking to His little ones, those who are believers, those who have confessed faith in Jesus, and and are actively trying to to follow him. Some of you maybe don’t consider yourselves believers. You might might consider yourself a skeptic, not sure about what you think about Jesus. These words, everything that I’ve said about God’s love, about his his valuing, his keeping, his pursuing love, should not comfort you in your current situation. The offer is made to you to become a little one. Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved. That is a promise more sure than the ground on which we stand, and so the call goes out to you. Come to him, come to him. He is a lovely Savior and a kind friend. He longs to embrace you, to bring you into his fold, to wrap you in His love and establish you firmly in Himself. So the call goes out to all, believer and skeptic alike. Look to Christ. Look to Christ, like a child in in a busy store, just follow, follow your heavenly Father. You’re like a like a a son in the in the city. Just hold on to His hand. Look to Christ. Those of you who do not know Christ, to turn from your sin, and look to him. And those of you who do know him, look to him. So we come back to the big idea. It’s simple, but it stands as the light by which we live our lives. God loves his little ones. I hope that that in that phrase you hear the nuance of everything we’ve seen in the text. God values His little ones so deeply that God God keeps His little ones. God pursues His little ones. God pursues His little ones. God loves you, little ones. Let’s pray, dear Heavenly Father. We thank you for your love. We thank you for the love that you have shown us in Christ, that love which surpasses all understanding. Father, today would you imprint that love on our hearts? Would would you give us eyes to see your love anew? Would we behold your love like a diamond, God? Thank you for your love. As we go out this week, would we would we rest in your love? Would we know your love? Would we long to share your love, God. Those those who are under my voice who feel weak. Would you assure them of your love? Would you assure them of your valuing, your keeping, your pursuing love? God, would you show us Christ? It is in Him that we pray. Amen.