Please turn in your Bibles to Luke 17. It's not that I forgot to clean. I was 19 years old. No, I was 20. I had been married for three months. And you're turning Luke 17 while I'm messing with this thing up here. I had been married to my first wife. Nikki, for three or four months. And I needed a job. And they weren't sending me money back then. And I went to work. My father-in-law was a machinist in a saw shop where we made mandrels and collars and keyways and chop wheels for all things sawmills. And the time came where I was trained in being a machinist, and he went on to go back to his full-time job of pastoring the Liberty Baptist Church of Central City, Kentucky. And I was left alone, and I was using this angle grinder, and for the first time, I was using it to clean up welding and so forth that the other shop had done, and I needed to clean up some joints before I could put things on the lathe to do the work that I needed to do. I had never used an angle grinder before. Some people call these angle grinders, some people call them hand grinders, whatever you call them. You're not grinding your hand, you're just holding it with your hands. But anyways, at least you shouldn't be grinding your hand with an angle grinder. So in any case, I'm sitting here using it, and as happens most of the time, particularly with people of my amazing acumen, I cut the cord in half. And it quit working. I don't understand. It quit working. So one of the owners of the Piper's Saw Shop was Tonto Piper. And Tonto came through and he said in terms that I'd never heard before, you need to tape that back together. Well, I had never worked with anything electrical other than plugging things into the wall. This is before my army days where I was trained in 11,000 volts and so forth. So I wasn't sure, but he said, tape it back together. So I mean, in a three prong, you got, this is two, but in a three prong, you got three little wires in the cord. And so he said, tape them together. What was I to do? I took out my electrical tape and I took the green and the white and the black, I taped them together. I mean isn't that what you're supposed to do? The man said tape it together. So I taped them together and I plugged it in. And it killed the entire shop. It was the strangest thing. Everyone knew what I'd done. And I didn't have to say a word. The only thing worse than cutting through a cord in our verses today is tripping. You might notice in Luke chapter 17, verses 1 and 2, he said to his disciples, it is impossible that no offenses should come, no stumbling blocks. You may have the word sin, that's unfortunate, because it is not the word sin, hamartalos, that is usually translated sin in the New Testament. It is the Greek word skandalon, which is where we get our word scandal. And so verse 1, it's impossible that no scandals should arise. It's impossible that no stumbling should occur among you. Among who? Verse 1, the disciples. Okay. It's impossible. We live in a world where those stumblings will take place. But he says in verse 1, woe to him for whom they come. it would be better for him. A millstone, now a millstone, that's interesting, that is an enormous, enormous round stone that is usually turned in a circle on top of another round stone, typically, and it crushes grain. It is so heavy that usually it took strong people or animals, depending on the size of it, to make the thing roll. Okay, strange. Jesus says it would be better for you to tie that thing around your neck and that you be thrown into the sea than that he, this person who would cause someone to stumble, than that he should offend." Again, that word's skandalon, not sin. Stumbling, offense, skandalon. We're not talking about sin. We're not talking about making someone sin, although it could be included. I mean, you can sin if you stumble, but here this is a little bit more innocent than making someone sin. You're not holding someone and making them sin. You are making it rather impossible for them to do something because of something in their way. And verse two, it'd be better for you to have a millstone hung around your neck and be thrown into the sea than that he, this person who causes the offense, should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins, now this is the word sin. So if you have a version that uses sin in all four verses, Totally, totally unfortunate. Because here, verse 3, Tonight we're going to deal with verses 3 and 4. We're going to try to figure out what in the world are these verses doing one after the other. Don't forget. Luke wrote this as a project, a historical research for a man named Theophilus. He did not intend, brothers and sisters, on this being some kind of dropped-in sort of paratrooper in the middle of a battle with no context. He looks around, what do I do now? It's not that. These verses are not left out in Normandy somewhere cleaning up their stuff. They're not trying to pack their chute back into the duffel bag. These guys belong here. Verses 1 and 2 belong here. Well, we usually have great help. Matthew and Mark, they provide almost no effort for us to interpret what a little one is in verse 2. In Matthew and Mark, they're literal children. They are little ones, and we know that because on both sides of this passage, in Matthew at least, parents are bringing their children to Jesus. Okay, well, the thing is though, is that Luke did not expect you to have Matthew in your lap. Luke expected you to get all the information you needed from what he was writing. Therefore, Luke expected you to get in the flow of the thought and understand what a little one is. you might remember that for four chapters now we have this strange unspoken feud between the pharisees and scribes and the publicans and the sinners and we have been looking all through these last three chapters and in in the back of my mind no matter how Well, I'm trying to do this morning at conveying God's Word. 845 is kicking me in the skull back here. So I'm trying to make sure you get the information you need to be able to see this text as I saw it, as the Lord wrote it, and to apply it thusly. You might remember that the Pharisees and scribes had big problems with Jesus eating with the publicans and sinners. Big problems. As a matter of fact, it carried through chapter 16. And in chapters 16 verses 19 through 31, you got this beggar who is portraying the publican and the sinner. and let's get a little toasting here isn't it so it's it appears that what we need to see is this flow of context and in chapter 17 the little one going back a few chapters is the sheep that needs found the coin that needs found the young man that's coming back from the field he is the unjust steward of chapter 16 and he is the beggar of the rich man Lazarus he is the beggar Lazarus and so here we have the disciples who are being warned that they are keeping people or the Potential exists that they could keep other people from being disciples Don't forget what Jesus is trying to accomplish in communicating with publicans and sinners is that they follow him and that they follow him like the Pharisees are being called to follow and and that they follow him, these publicans and sinners, these tax collecting extortioners, these traitorous countrymen, and their purchased girlfriends, listen to last Sunday night's message if you'd like clarity on that, he wants them to follow him too. He wants them to follow him as much as he wants a cleaned up professional or tradesmen to follow him. He wants them to follow him as much as he wants the Pharisee or the scribe to follow him. And here Jesus is saying, in fact, in verse 1, since he's talking to the disciples, Jesus wants the publican and the sinner to follow him as disciples as much as he wants the disciples to follow him as disciples. The fruit of a disciple is another disciple. That means, then, that what we have taking place here is related to the context. Now, let me tell you, I was not excited about these verses, because they seem so easy. I mean, what is there to explain to the Church of Christ? What is there to explain to God's people on a Sunday morning? It's just dumb. You know what to do here. What am I telling you? This whole act of me coming... Okay, here's what it is. The Lord expects the pastor to not do things in a predictable manner so that you can ignore it. So here I am in verses 1 and 2, the perfect scripture. And here I am going to take what I would see as a normally ridiculous exercise of me preaching a well-known passage to you and making it matter to you. So let's give it a shot. I have five little stops on the way to our completion. Here we go. Number one. The first thing you need to know regarding tripping over a cord is that it has to occur. Cord tripping has to occur. Now, think through this with me for a minute. How can Jesus, on the one hand, hold people accountable if they do it, and on the other hand say, hey, we're in a world where it has to happen? It's really important for us to see the words of Jesus in verse 1. It's impossible, but that offenses should come. Why is that? Well, to quote my good friend, the good theologian, Pastor Zach Smith, everything that takes place in this world is because God says yes to it. If it were not appropriate in the all-wise mind of our Lord, He would have disallowed it. Yes, He's all-powerful. Yes, He's all-loving. Yes, he's omniscient. Yes, he's omnipotent. He could keep all offenses, keeping you from following Christ, and all offenses that you may introduce into this world, keeping others from following Christ. In God's great, wise heart, good friends, he has said yes to the possibility that we live in a world where stumbling can occur. He is the God who said yes to a serpent in the garden. He is the God who said yes to a bunch of rogues in Genesis 11 building the Tower of Babel. He is the one who said yes to the crucifixion of his dear son. And in that same way, he says yes to a world where you get to jump over barrels on your way to following Christ. Like some kind of outdated Atari game, you get to jump over things, step over things. And while you are doing that, stay clear of putting them in the paths of others. You're totally supportive this morning, by the way. Thank you for coming at your assigned time, and thank you for not being so quiet. Singing at 8 o'clock in the morning is hard work, and you've proven that you think Jesus and God the Father are worthy of it. And I thank God for you. Meanwhile, we live in a world, according to Luke 4.1, it was the Holy Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. Don't forget, we live in a world where the Holy Spirit drives us deep into the wilderness to be tempted. On the morning in January, I believe January the 6th, 2019, when we ordained David Barham to be a deacon here, we preached on that passage, where the Lord drives us into situations by His Holy Spirit that are neither joy-filled nor desirable, and yet He has allowed it. When I get a text message early on a Sunday morning from Tommy Swanson, who's been up all night with his wife at the hospital, and we have prayed, and you have prayed with us for healing with her back surgery, they don't need to know that God is able and God is loving. They know that up here. They need to know in here that God is wise. And somehow it was the right thing to do for her to be in the hospital this morning. We can keep ourselves from a lot of messes if we will just admit some of that stuff. God in his kindness, do I think that the Lord is sadistic? No, I think he's wise. I think he allows us to bump into things in the sin-filled world. Number two, I would like to say that tripping over the cord need not occur through us. Now God has designed a world with stumbling opportunities, and we expect them through Satan, we just talked about that. But we should not expect them from Christ's disciples. So don't forget, an offense or a stumbling is by definition something that keeps someone from becoming a disciple. A little one, not just a child, but someone who we might consider undesirable and less qualified than us to be a Christian. Less qualified than us to be a disciple of Jesus. Anything that gets thrown in the way of someone else becoming a disciple, no believer, no disciple should have any part in providing that stumbling. That is really what Jesus is driving at here. He's not speaking to the Pharisees, friends. Verse 1 tells us He's speaking to you and I, who call ourselves followers of Jesus. I don't even have to. If I had an extra half hour to preach the sermon, I don't even have to get creative about how to apply this in your heart. The Holy Spirit is well equipped to sit beside you in your pew and to have conversations with you right now about ways in which we are actually satanic in our influence in the lives of others, keeping them from following our Christ. have all the conversations we want to about Calvinism, predestination, and even free will. Well, they had a choice. They could have jumped over my fence. The Lord does not have that conversation in these verses. He lays the responsibility at the feet of me and you. Number three, stumbling over a cord is a concern to the disciple. Now, what I mean by that is literally the word disciple. The root word of disciple is the same as the root word of discipline. If I were to have a microphone traveling through, with a gloved hand, traveling through, with a spit guard, the sanctuary this morning, and asking you, what is your definition of a disciple? You might say something that's incredibly acceptable, like someone who follows Christ. Okay, very good. You might say some other things, like someone who does what Jesus says. That's fine. But I have found that etymology, or the way that words are built, is really helpful sometimes in determining what a word means. A disciple, frankly, is someone who is disciplined. And not just disciplined, but disciplined in the teachings of their master. Here we find that just like we would expect someone who is on a ball team to show up to practice, I mean, if you're a baseball player on a team, we would expect you to have certain disciplines like warm-up, dress-up, gear-up, show-up, step-up, move-up. Any obstacle, any obstacle mom and dad would be placing on the young person to do these things would be a hindrance to the young person being disciplined and in the very very, very basest definition of the word disciple, they would be actually keeping their children from being a disciple of baseball. In the same usage. I mean, we talk about the disciplines that make a disciple. If you were to be a disciple, you would have habits that you formed by the disciple who leads you. In other words, when you say, I didn't have anyone disciple me, you're saying, I didn't have anyone teach me the disciplines that a person should have who's following Christ. Now these seem laborious, but no person in this room will ever be a solid follower of Jesus. By the way, I just want to say not only to my friends over here, but also the voice of children does not bother me. And it doesn't bother you either, does it? Alright, we're okay with children being in here, aren't we? Alright, so don't worry about it on our account, alright? So a disciple is someone who has learned disciplines. A Christian does things because they want to be a solid follower, a disciple of Jesus. So they have disciplines that help them do that. Like, get up earlier than you would have and read your Bible and pray. Like, go to church when you're supposed to. Like, and we're gonna find out tonight, there's another discipline. Fasting and feasting are both disciplines. Mourning and rejoicing are disciplines. They have places in the life of a follower of Jesus. And so, when we're talking about keeping people, if you want to put handles on this thing, of what it means, actually, to put a stumbling block in front of your children, or grandchildren, or co-worker, or neighbor, or friend, or acquaintance, or social media pal, It means that you are doing things that keep them from disciplining themselves to follow Christ. And that can be very literal on a clock, it can be very unliteral. What drives us then, friends? What drives us to try to have lives that do not cause other people to stumble? What causes us to do that is because there was a time in our lives, hopefully that everyone in here can remember, where we put our faith in the work of Jesus on the cross. He saved our souls. He brought us into the family of God, the church. He gave us new disciplines that make our life better because instead of getting up and having a glass of wine and abusing in the morning, we get up and have a talk with the Lord and get our day started that way. Instead of looking at pornography like we used to perhaps, we pick up our Bibles and we ask God to fill our minds with things that are clean. We exchange one old nasty sin-laced habit and we replace it with a Christ-glorifying discipline. And that is becoming a disciple. We're not asking people to clear their calendars of all things. We're asking them to replace old, nasty, sinful stuff with what we have already done in front of them, and that is replace the old us with the new us by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we so crave the new life that we don't want anyone else to miss out on it, even if we get to have our rights. Alright, so I know it's very un-American on Memorial Day weekend, but there you are. Number four. Quickly, we're wrapping this thing up. Tripping on the cord is being kept from the disciplines. I already said that. Number five. That was easy. Number five. It only apparently costs the person causing the tripping or the stumbling. So you might notice in verse 2, Jesus says it's actually better for you to have a very, very, very, very heavy object tied around your neck and that you are actually pitched into the water. It would have been impossible for anyone to swim with this millstone around their neck and that is really the point. There's no real recovery from causing someone to stop following Christ. Okay, so it's... I already said that. We're talking about putting something in the way of a person who might have otherwise walked in the way of Jesus. And Jesus says, in fact, and this is going to bother some of us, it would have been better for you to die sooner in your life. Isn't that what verse 2 says? If it doesn't mean that, we have some talking to do because it means something. It's better for a disciple to die early by drowning in the deepest part of the ocean than it is for one single person to stumble over my behavior on Facebook. That is so convicting. It's convicting because the way that I treat the mailman, the visiting, uh, sorry, Jim Plummer, just popped in my head, the, the, the electrician, the person coming to fix my roof, how I treat them in business. It's better for me to just go ahead and die early than it is for me to keep them from following Christ because I gave them an attitude. All right. And so there are ways I can do this. Yeah, I have one way that we can do this, that I can do it. What are some key ways that you and I can cause someone to trip and hurt the relationship with Jesus Christ? We can cause them to sin against their conscience. What are some ways I can do that? Well, friends, there are people not meeting this morning because in their conscience they feel like at this point it's better for them to watch the live stream at 1030. It is a sin. for us to make them feel bad for not being here. If they are obeying their conscience that God gave them to be umpired by the Holy Ghost to be at home this morning. Now those are big ifs. And I think that there are some people that will not gather for months because they are partakers of other carnal issues. But it is best for my soul and my mind and yours to, because of love, 1 Corinthians 13, believe all things. It is better for us to assume the best of people so that we don't sit around and have our guts eaten up with resentment. And so, I can leverage my authority over them to do something they feel is morally or biblically wrong, and that is stumbling. This could be a parent to a child, this could be an employer to an employee, this could be a pastor to a flock member. To review, I am to be a disciple of Jesus, I am to be a disciple maker of Jesus, and I can have the reverse effect on somebody as they are walking after Jesus, I can actually hinder their doing so. And this is not easy. Everyone in this room who calls themselves a child of God will have to deal with this on a personal basis. And I am so confident that the one who wrote this word and sent forth his spirit is able to manage the conviction in this room. Will you stand with me in prayer?